She said, “You never stop worrying. Never. You remember the first time he climbed out of his crib and fell to the floor before you could reach him. And you thought he was dead. Just for a second. And you remember the horror of that thought. When he grows older and rides his bike and climbs trees and walks to school on his own and darts out in front of cars instead of waiting for the light to change, you pretend it’s okay. You say, ‘That’s kids. I did the same thing at his age.’ But always in the back of your throat is this scream, barely suppressed. Don’t. Stop. Please don’t get hurt.” She turned from the window and stared at us from the shadows. “It never goes away. The worry. The fear. Not for a second. That’s the price of bringing life into this world.”

I saw Mae reaching her hand down by the mouth of that dog, how I’d felt ready to jump, to tear the head off that Scottish terrier if need be.

The phone rang. Nine-fifteen. All three of us jerked at once, and Diandra crossed the floor in four strides. Angie looked at me and rolled her eyes upward in relief.

Diandra picked up the phone. “Jason?” she said. “Jason?”

It wasn’t Jason. That was immediately apparent when she ran her free hand up along her temple and pressed it hard against the hairline. “What?” she said. She turned her head and looked at me. “Hold on.”

She handed me the phone. “Someone named Oscar.”

I took the phone from her and turned so that my back was to her and Angie as another set of lights went out in the building beside us and spread the darkness across the floor like liquid while Oscar told me that Jason Warren had been found.

In pieces.

19

In an abandoned trucking depot along the waterfront in South Boston, the killer had shot Jason Warren once in the stomach, stabbed him several times with an ice pick and bludgeoned him with a hammer. He’d also amputated his limbs and placed them on windowsills, left his torso sitting in a chair facing the door, and tied his head to a dead power cable hanging from an elevated conveyor belt.

A crew of forensics cops spent the night and most of the next morning in there and never found Jason’s kneecaps.

The first two cops on the scene were rookies. One quit the force within a week. The other, Devin told me, took a leave of absence to seek counseling. Devin also told me that when he and Oscar entered the truck depot, he’d first thought Jason had run afoul of a lion.

When I hung up that night after receiving word from Oscar and turned to Diandra and Angie, Diandra already knew.

She said, “My son is dead, isn’t he?”

And I nodded.

She closed her eyes, and held one hand up by her ear as if motioning for a room to be quiet so she could hear something. She swayed slightly, as if to a breeze, and Angie stepped up beside her.