Tommy made a face. “I just don’t want him to be around me, that’s all. If he was a grown-up and he tried to cut somebody’s heart out, he would have to go to prison, wouldn’t he?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “And Dennis will have to pay for what he’s done. But at the same time, I hope someone can help him understand why he did it.”

“’Cause his brain doesn’t work right,” Tommy said matter-of factly as the waitress brought their drinks.

He was bored with the subject now, having stated unequivocally the root of the problem. He took a big gulp of his Pepsi and looked up at his father.

“Dad, can I go play Pac-man until the pizza comes? Please?”

“Sure,” his father said, digging quarters out of his pocket. “Excuse yourself from the table.”

“Excuse me, please, Miss Navarre.”

“Have fun,” Anne said, watching him dash for the arcade machines. “You have a very special little man there, Dr. Crane.”

“He’s a good boy. I’ll thank my lucky stars today especially, after hearing about what the Farman boy did. It’s difficult to imagine a child that young having that much rage inside him.”

“I don’t think Dennis has had the best childhood,” Anne said. “We really can’t know what goes on in someone else’s family.”

“No,” Crane agreed. “Every family has its secrets, and those secrets can run deep—deeper than lies, deeper than death. And they impact every member of that family in ways we can’t know.”

“True enough,” Anne said, thinking of her own family secrets. Her father’s philandering and callous treatment of her mother had left lasting scars on her, though certainly no one outside the Navarre household knew anything other than what a model family they had appeared to be.

“I worry a little about Tommy,” Crane admitted. “His mother can be a very negative influence on him. I do my best to counterbalance that aspect of my wife’s personality. But will it still have an impact on Tommy? Probably. Will it drive him to knife a playmate? I don’t think so, but with all this talk about serial killers this past week, you can’t help but wonder what drives someone to do that.”

“Hopefully the killer will be caught soon, and we won’t have to think about it at all,” Anne said, steering the conversation on to activities coming up on the school calendar for Tommy and his classmates, including a field trip to the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, which Tommy had seemed especially excited about.

She felt relieved to have set things straight with Tommy. One burden off her shoulders. She tried not to think about Dennis Farman, who was spending the night on a cot in the same interview room where she had seen him that afternoon. Instead, she tried to enjoy the pizza and the company.