She looked around the room, either weighing her options or searching for the right words, I didn’t know which. Then she turned back. Her eyes locked onto the piece of paper between us.

“Dear Brendan,” she said in a whisper.

“Just Brendan?”

“Yes. Please read this to your brother and sister, because you’re the big boy in the family.”

I took it down verbatim, writing fast to keep up with her.

“Mommy has to be away from you for a while, but it won’t be long, I promise. Promise.

“Wherever you are now, I know they are taking good care of you. And if you get lonely, or want to cry, that’s okay, too. Crying can help let the sadness out. Everyone does it sometimes, even Mommy, but only because I miss you so much.”

Mary paused, and a pleased look came over her, as if she had just seen something sweet. Her eyes were fixed on the far wall, and she had an almost heartbreaking smile on her face.

She continued, “When we’re all together again, we’ll go for a picnic, your favorite. We’ll get whatever we want to eat and drive out somewhere pretty and spend the whole day. Maybe we’ll go swimming, too. Whatever you want, sweetie pie. I’m already looking forward to it.

“And guess what? You have a guardian angel watching over you all the time. That’s me. I give you good-night kisses in your dreams when you go to sleep at night. You don’t have to be afraid because I’m right there with you. And you’re right here with me.”

Mary stopped, shut her eyes, and sighed loudly.

“I love you very, very much. Love, Mommy.”

By now, she was leaning much closer to the table than when we’d begun. She held on to the letter with her eyes—still speaking to me in a soft voice. A whisper.

“Put three X’s and three O’s at the bottom. A kiss and a hug for each of my babies.”

Chapter 106

Chapter 106

THE MORE I HEARD, the more I doubted that Mary Wagner could have invented these three children entirely. And I had a bad feeling about what might have happened to them.

I spent the afternoon trying to track the children down. The Uniform Crime Report came back with a long list of child victims matched to female killers in recent decades. I’ve heard and read somewhere that shoplifting and the killing of one’s own children are the only two crimes that American women commit in equal numbers to men.

If that was true, then this thick, voluminous report only represented half of the child murders on record.

I gritted my teeth, literally and figuratively, and did another run through the disturbing database.

This time, I searched for multiple homicides only. With that list compiled, I started wading through.