“You have to show this to Garnett,” he said, staring at the drawing. “This is really creepy, Anne. This isn’t something to mess around with—not when you add this to him screaming at you that he wishes you were dead.”

“If I take this to Garnett, Dennis will be expelled.”

“Yes, and . . . that would be bad . . . how?”

“He needs help, Franny,” she said. “He’s got so much rage inside him, and he doesn’t know what to do with it.”

Franny’s jaw dropped. He grabbed the notebook out of the desk and pointed at the drawings of women with knives sticking into their bodies. “This is what he wants to do with it! Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“He’s a little boy.”

“He’s the son of Satan!”

“He’s the son of a man who beat him so badly last night he can’t sit in a chair today!” Anne said, keeping her voice down even as her temper rose.

“Did he tell you that?”

“No.”

“Did you see any marks on him?”

“No.”

“Then tell Garnett, give this to him, and let him handle it,” he said, tapping his finger against the notebook to make her look at it. “You have to get this kid out of your classroom before he does this for real.”

“But, Franny, if Garnett expels him, what’s going to happen to him? He apparently has a difficult home situation. He’s socially maladjusted. He has no friends. He found a dead body, for Christ’s sake.”

“And let’s make sure the next one isn’t yours.”

“He’s eleven.”

“Do you not go to the movies?” he asked, incredulous. “Did you not see Halloween? Michael Myers was SIX YEARS OLD when he killed his sister.”

“And if we were living in a John Carpenter film, I’d be really scared.”

“You are really scared or you wouldn’t have come running to me. You would have told me tonight over Chinese. ‘Oh, by the way, Franny, one of my students did the most interesting thing today. He unleashed the contents of his disturbed mind in a sexually sadistic work of art. And how was your day?’

“And, if you’ll remember, last night you were telling me he was talking about other bodies in the woods, and that his only playmate is afraid of him.”

Anne sighed. That was all true. But she couldn’t help feeling that being in school with supervision and guidance was a better option for helping Dennis Farman than turning him loose, isolating him, giving up on him. Clearly, no one was there for him at home, physically, emotionally, or otherwise. If she could reach him now, maybe she could turn him around.

“And where is Mr. Dream Detective?” Franny asked. “Has he called you back?”

“No.”