Douglas paused, apparently waiting for Stevie to ask him what his job was. Of course Stevie didn"t say a thing.
"The thing is," said Douglas, "there"s a bad person in Steuben these days who"s been kidnapping kids. Do you know what kidnapping is?"
Stevie nodded.
"Well, you"re going to be hearing a lot about this guy at school tomorrow. What grade will you be in?"
"Third."
"Yeah, you"ll hear a lot. Your teachers will tell you, cops like me will come to school and tell you-stay away from strangers. If somebody grabs you, scream your lungs out."
"We already taught him all this," said DeAnne. "He already follows these rules."
"Well, I"m glad to hear that," said Douglas. "Do you always follow those rules?"
Stevie nodded.
"And what if somebody wanted you to go off alone with him, and you said no, cause it was against the rules, but then he said, All right, but don"t you ever tell anybody that I asked you. What would you do?"
"Tell Mom and Dad," said Stevie.
"What if he said that if you told, he"d hurt you."
"I"d still tell."
"This boy"s been well trained," said Douglas. "Stevie, I hear you have some good friends."
DeAnne stiffened, and Step said, "Mr. Douglas."
"Now, now, Stevie doesn"t mind talking about his friends. Do you, Stevie?"
Stevie shrugged. A little one-shoulder shrug.
"Well, I"m not going to ask anything hard. I just want you to tell me one thing. Who was it who told you their names?"
"Jack," said Stevie.
"Jack," said Douglas. "Now,. is he one of those friends, or are you thinking about some other Jack?"
"He"s one of them," said Stevie.
"So he told you his own name," said Douglas.
Stevie nodded.
"And everybody else"s name."
Stevie nodded. "Except Sandy," he said.
"And who told you Sandy"s name?"
"Sandy," said Stevie.
"Stevie, I bet you love your mom and dad, don"t you?"
Stevie nodded, immediately, deeply.
"Well, I just want you to know that I"ve been talking to them for the last while and they really love you, too. More than you even know, and I"ll bet you already think they love you a lot, don"t you."
Again he nodded.
"They love you so much that they want you to be safe, all the time. Now can you do that for them? Can you keep yourself safe? Follow all those rules?"
Stevie nodded.
"Well that"s it then," said Douglas. "I"m glad to meet you, Stevie. And if anybody ever gives you any trouble, you just tell them that Doug Douglas is your friend, and they better be nice to you, all right?"
Stevie nodded again. And then said, "Thanks."
"Can you go off to your room again now, Stevie?" said Step. "We just need to talk to Mr. Douglas here a little bit more, OK?"
Stevie headed back to the hall. DeAnne got up and followed him; when she came back a moment later, she said, "I just had to make sure he was back in his room."
"Well," said Step. "I don"t know what you could possibly have learned from that."
"Oh, I learned what I needed to learn," said Douglas.
"And what was that?"
"Your son"s honest," he said. "He"s sweet. Deep into his heart, he"s sweet. If G.o.d could taste him, that"s what G.o.d would say: This boy is sweet, right through."
Step wasn"t about to disagree with him, but he didn"t see how Douglas could know that from the ba.n.a.l little conversation he had with Stevie.
"He reminds me of my late wife," Douglas said. "She"d have nightmares sometimes, terrible ones. She"d wake up in the middle of the night and make me hold her close and she"d tell me the nightmare. And then I"d get up in the morning and go to work, or sometimes I"d get a call that very night, and it would be a crime that had something to do with her dream." Douglas leaned back, remembering. "One time she dreamed of a blue dress, trying to put it on, only it kept slipping off of her, she couldn"t wear it, and it frightened her, you know the way it is when you"re dreaming, you get scared over silly things like that, not being able to put on a dress. And then I get to work and there"s this woman and they"re taking her statement and the story is that she was raped that night, the guy chased her, and three times she slipped out of his grasp because of the dress she was wearing, that blue dress."
"Oh," said DeAnne.
Step had studied folklore in college and he knew from the start how the story would end. They all ended that way. "That actually happened to your wife? Or didn"t you hear it from a friend of a friend?"
Douglas laughed softly. "You"re the man who called me up because you had that list, and you"re asking me if this is just some fairy tale? Yeah, we"re always skeptical about the other guy"s story. But I don"t really care whether you believe me because that"s not what I"m trying to tell you anyway. What I"m telling you is, there"s some people who do things so bad it tears at the fabric of the world, and then there"s some people so sweet and good that they can feel it when the world gets torn. They see things, they know things, only they"re so good and pure that they don"t understand what it is that they"re seeing. I think that"s what"s been happening to your boy. What"s going on here in Steuben is so evil and he is so good and pure that he can"t help but feel it. The minute he got to Steuben he must have felt it, and it made him sad. My wife was like that, always sad. The rest of us, we"ve got good and evil mixed up in us, and our own badness makes so much noise we can"t hear the evil of the monster out there. But your Stevie, he can hear it. He can hear the names of the boys. Only, just like my wife made a dream out of it, a dream of trying to put on a dress, your Stevie takes those names and he makes friends out of them. And to him those friends are real because the evil that pushed those names into his mind, that is real."
"So you don"t think Stevie is crazy," said Step.
"h.e.l.l, you know he ain"t crazy. You got the list, don"t you?"
"Is there something we should do?" asked DeAnne.
"I can"t think of anything, except hold on to your children, hold them tight, keep them safe."
"Yes sir," said Step.
Douglas got up. "I need me a cigarette now, so I"ll be on my way."
"I"m sorry we bothered you about something that turned out not to be helpful to you," said Step.
"Oh, this helped me a lot."
"It did?"
"Sure," said Douglas. He stood in the open doorway. Step and DeAnne stepped out onto the porch with him. "Before you called," said Douglas, lighting a cigarette, "we weren"t a hundred percent sure that there even was a serial killer. But now-well, now I know. Because otherwise your son wouldn"t have known those names, now, would he? They wouldn"t have been all together in a list, would they, unless they all had something in common with each other and with no one else. There"s a few kids disappear every year, and it"s not evil, it just happens. It"s part of the order of nature. Your son never noticed those. These he noticed. So now I know."
"You can"t use this to prove it to anybody else," said Step.
"Don"t have to prove it to anybody else," said Douglas. "I know it. So now I"ll never rest till I find this guy and stop him."
"And then will Stevie stop having these-imaginary friends?"
"When the source of his affliction is gone, then there won"t be any need for him to deal with it anymore, will there? My wife never dreamed the same dream twice."
He started to walk toward his car, when DeAnne called after him. "Do you still want us to give you a list of people we think might"ve sent that record?"
"Why not?" he said. "Might turn out to be useful."
"We"ll phone you this afternoon, OK?"
"Fine," he said. "If I"m not there, tell it to whoever answers the phone, they"ll be expecting it."
He got in his car and drove off. DeAnne and Step went back in the house, sat down at the kitchen table, and wrote down their list of names. People who had reason, or thought they had reason, to hate the Fletchers as of the time they got that record in the mail. Mrs. Jones, d.i.c.ky Northanger, Lee Weeks, Roland McIntyre. They debated back and forth about including Dolores LeSueur"s name, but they finally did. It was ludicrous to think of Dolores LeSueur as a serial killer-it was ludicrous to think of a woman as a serial killer-but the list had to be complete or why make it?
They phoned it in. As Douglas had said, the man on the phone was expecting them, and he was thorough and businesslike. And then it was done.
Step and DeAnne faced each other across the table. "What a Sunday," said Step.
"This is going to sound awful," said DeAnne, "because that serial killer is still out there somewhere, but ... I feel better now."
"Me too," said Step. And then he laughed in relief. "Stevie isn"t crazy. All that s.h.i.t from Dr. Weeks-forgive me, but a spade"s a spade-that"s all back in the crock it came from. Whatever"s going on in Stevie"s life, it isn"t made up and we didn"t cause it and he isn"t crazy. It"s the real world that he"s living in, only just as we thought, he sees it more deeply and truly than the rest of us. And when you think about it, it"s kind of sweet, isn"t it? I mean, whatever happened to these lost boys, they still live on in Stevie"s mind. He imagines them and he"s made playmates out of them, he"s made friends out of them. And I"m not afraid of them anymore."
"I"m still afraid," said DeAnne. "I can"t help that."
"Well, so am I-of the killer."
" I wish we lived somewhere else," said DeAnne. "I wish we could take Stevie away from this place."
"Me too," said Step. "But this is the place where the doctors know about Zap. This is the ward that fasted and prayed for him. The rest of us can live anywhere, but Zap is already part of the life of this place. Those people in our ward, you think they"re going to watch Zap grow up and think, What a strange-looking kid, why can"t he hold his head up? No. They"re going to say, we know that boy, he"s one of us. We"ll never find that anywhere else, DeAnne."
"I know," she said. "I know." But she was not yet comforted.
"The danger is still here," said Step, touching the newspaper article again. "But it"s not pointed at us. I mean, it"s like the article says, a child in Steuben is still far more likely to be killed in a traffic accident or a gunshot accident than to be a victim of this killer. Parents have to be less trusting of strangers for a while, that"s all. And we were already nearly paranoid, so I think we"ll be fine."
She nodded.
"And we can"t afford to move, DeAnne. Unless you think it"s worth abandoning everything and scurrying home to your parents" bas.e.m.e.nt."
"I guess I"m just thinking, I don"t want to be a grownup anymore. I want to go home and have mom and dad take care of me." She laughed at herself. "It"s hard to be mom and dad. Isn"t it? Because anything you decide might be wrong."
"Heck, everything we decide will be wrong," said Step, "because no matter what we do, something bad will happen later. So I refuse to regret any of it. I don"t regret taking the job with Eight Bits and I don"t regret quitting. I don"t regret all those expensive tests they ran on Zap, because we had to know. I especially don"t regret that day when I saw you talking on the phone and I thought I had never seen anything so beautiful as my wife being kind to someone else who was in need."
She leaned over to him and put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest for a moment. "You make me feel so good."
"And think of this," said Step. "We not only got some a.s.surance that n.o.body in our house is crazy, but we also got our bedroom cleaned for the first time since we moved in."
She pretended to bite him through his shirt, and then sat back up. "Well, no matter what I feel, it"s time to feed Zap, if I can wake him up. I"m beginning to think if I didn"t wake him up for meals he"d sleep the rest of his life away."
"I know the feeling," said Step. He carefully refrained from pointing out to her that she had just called the baby Zap. He did that the first time she called Elizabeth Betsy, and she had made it a point never to call her that again, so the poor kid was growing up thinking that she was one person to men and another person to women. Which might not be that far from reality, of course, given the way society worked. Pretty soon he"d probably give in and stop calling Betsy Betsy, so she"d have the same name to everybody. But he thought Zap was a great name, at least until he was old enough to complain about it, and if he could get DeAnne to slip into using it, too, that would be nice.
Step stayed in the kitchen and looked mindlessly at the newspaper for a moment. Then he realized that they had both lists out on the table-the list of Stevie"s friends and the list of people who might hate him enough to send an anonymous threat. He got up and put them in a high cupboard. No matter what Douglas had said, Step wasn"t really happy with either list. He"d much rather that everybody on both lists just leave his family alone.
Late that same Sunday night the phone rang. DeAnne woke up and sleepily answered it. She listened for a moment. "It"s late," she said. "I think he"s asleep. Oh, no, he isn"t. He"s right here." She held out the phone to Step. "S"for you," she said. She was back to sleep almost before he got the phone out of her hand.
"This is Step Fletcher," he said. "Who am I speaking to?"
"Hey, this is Gla.s.s, Step. Remember me? From Eight Bits Inc.?"
"Yeah, of course," said Step. "Isn"t this a little late to be calling, though? I mean, it"s almost midnight."
"Well, see, this isn"t exactly a social call. They only let me make one phone call, and I thought about it for a minute, and you were kind of my best choice. Or at least I sure hope you are."
"Best choice for what?"
"I"m down at the police station. I need a ride home. Can I explain it to you later? I"m not arrested or anything, I just don"t want to be driven home in a police car, you know? It looks bad, people ask questions."
"If you"re not arrested, then how come you only get one phone call?"
"Oh, like, that was just theatre. You know? Just making it more dramatic than it is. It"s really nothing. Except that I need a friend right now, you know? To pick me up and then not tell anybody where he picked me up."
"I won"t lie for you," said Step.
"Oh, right, I knew that," said Gla.s.s. "But see, you don"t work at Eight Bits Inc. anymore and you haven"t exactly been keeping in touch so I figure, who"s going to ask you? And you aren"t going to go calling people up and telling them, right?"
"I don"t know where the police station is," said Step.
"Well it"s right downtown. Corner of Center and Church. Big city-county building, you can"t miss it. I"ll just meet you out front so you don"t have to park and come in."
When Step hung up the phone, DeAnne roused enough to murmur, "Who was it?"
"Gla.s.s. Roland McIntyre. He"s been picked up by the police for questioning and now he wants a ride home."
DeAnne"s eyes opened now. "He was on our list."