Anyone who pays him. He's the most violent killer I've ever seen, Bree. He likes to hurt people. And there are others like him. It's a name they have for killers for hire: Tiger."

“So he took Nana and the kids? He did this? You're sure about that?”

“Yes,” I said as the phone rang again. “And that's him.”

The phone kept ringing-and I began to pace around the house, going from room to room, thinking about my family all the while. Rosie followed me everywhere.

In the kitchen, Nana's favorite cookbook was still out-The Gift of Southern Cooking. I checked and saw it was open to a starred recipe for chocolate-pecan cake.

Nana's famous gabardine raincoat was draped over the back of a kitchen chair. How many times had she told me, “I don't want another raincoat. It took me half a century to get this one worn in right”?

I walked around Ali's room.

I saw his Pokemon cards laid out carefully on the floor. His beloved plush toy Moo. A hand-painted T-shirt from his fifth birthday party. A copy of Ralph S. Mouse spread open on the night table.

When I got to Jannie's room, I sat down heavily on the bed. My eyes ran over her precious collection of books. And the wire baskets brimming with hair accessories, lip glosses, fruit-scented lotions. Then I spotted her reading glasses, prescribed only a month or so ago. That got to me. There was something so vulnerable and telling about her new glasses sitting on the desk.

I sat there holding Rosie and heard the phone ring again. Bree picked it up.

She said, very quietly, “Fuck you.”

And she hung up on whoever it was this time.

Chapter 132

I WAS GOING to get my family back. I had to believe that. But was it true? What were the real odds that I would? They were definitely getting worse.

From six-thirty until close to seven that morning, I sat out on the front porch and tried not to go completely crazy. I thought about taking a drive, to see if it would relax me.

But I was afraid to be away from the house for any length of time.

At a little past seven, the phone hang-ups stopped and I got about an hour of sleep.

Then I showered and dressed and called in one of the patrolmen from the street. 1 told him to take any calls for me and gave him a cell number where I could be reached.

At nine, Bree and I attended an emergency meeting at the Daly Building.