“Son,” said the little man with the big coat. He looked at the boy with a heartbreaking doubt in his face. “Is what she says true? Could you have done something like that?”

“Dad,” the boy said pleadingly, as if his father could stop what would happen next. “Don’t make me go through this.”

Tolliver’s arm tightened around my waist.

The man gave the boy a little shake. “You have to tell them,” he said.

“It was already hurt,” the boy said, his voice exhausted and dead. “I just watched it till it died.”

“Liar,” Xylda said, her voice dripping with disgust.

After that, things really went downhill.

THE deputies did their digging and found the aforementioned cat, a dog, some rabbits—baby rabbits—and a bird or two. They kicked around the stalls, making dust from the stale hay rise up in thick clouds. All they discovered was the stalls had bare-board flooring, so there couldn’t be any animal corpses underneath. The father, Tom Almand, seemed absolutely stunned. Since he was a counselor at the mental health center, he would know as well as anyone there that one of the early signs of a developing serial killer was the torture of animals. I wondered how many kids who tortured animals didn’t grow up to be murderers, but I assumed that would be impossible to document. Was it possible to do something so vile and yet become a well-adjusted adult with healthy relationships? Maybe. I hadn’t studied the phenomenon, and I sure didn’t plan to do any research on it. I saw enough in my day-to-day work life to convince me that people were capable of dreadful things…and wonderful things, too. Somehow as I looked at the tear-wet face of Chuck Almand, age thirteen, budding sadist, I couldn’t feel optimistic.

I was sure that Sheriff Rockwell would be pleased. We’d kept the locals from making a foolish mistake, we’d uncovered a genuinely disturbed source of future trouble, and I wasn’t going to charge a penny on my own behalf for the distress I’d been put through. They did owe Xylda some cash, though, and I wanted to be sure they’d pay it.

The sheriff was not looking sunny, though. In fact, she looked tired, discouraged, and disheartened.

“Why so glum?” I asked her. Tolliver was making conversation with Manfred; he’d forced himself to do the polite thing. Xylda had hold of the arm of one of the officers, and she was giving him an earful of talk. He looked dazed.