Sometimes there were those rare moments when the words of Suzanne and the others made him feel better, less evil, less like some kind of monster you saw in the movies on Chiller Theater on Friday nights.

But then he’d touch another child and feel their Hurting and see what was going to happen to them and Know there was no way to change it or make it better and he’d do what had to be done and then get sad and sick all over again.

Which is why, when his parents put him in the group home, he decided that he was never going to touch another human being again for as long as he lived.

No one ever suspected that he was “Uncle Ronnie,” the horrific child-murderer responsible for the deaths of seven children in as many years (they never knew that he’d killed Suzanne, so she was not included in the thick files that contained information on all his “victims”). The assumption on the parts of the police and FBI had been that they were dealing with an adult who had been severely abused as a child. It never occurred to any of them to look for a teenager.

Many of the people living in the home with Ronnie thought he was unfriendly because he never touched anyone, or wanted to be touched by any of them; but he was always willing to talk to them, or listen to them, or sit by quietly as they cried because once again their parents had failed to come to see them on Visiting Day. (Ronnie always thought of a way to make these others laugh and feel better when this happened to them—and it happened to a lot of them, the group home being the place where ree-tards and speds were tucked safely away where they couldn’t annoy, inconvenience, or embarrass their families.)

And then came the night of the Valentine’s Day dance.

Ronnie had never been so terrified in his life. He volunteered to serve punch or help with the records that were going to be played—anything that meant he wouldn’t have to touch someone—but the social worker who’d been assigned Ronnie’s case (a lovely, short, compassionate woman named Ruth) wouldn’t hear of it.

“Ronnie,” she said to him, “the whole point of this dance is for all of you to work on your social skills, understand?”

“But I do good in the workshop,” he replied. Which was the truth. Ronnie—like everyone else who lived in the group home—was bussed five days a week to a sheltered workshop run by the Central Ohio Department for the Developmentally Disabled—better known as “Sped Central” by those who thought assigning it a mocking moniker to be clever.

Ronnie worked in Cell #5, one of the more advanced cells of the workshop—meaning that he was permitted to use tools such as hammers, nails, saws, and screwdrivers. Ronnie’s cell was always assigned the more complicated jobs, such as a big one they’d had a few months back assembling wooden shipping crates for a local manufacturer of small farming equipment. Because the work done at the sheltered workshop was considered by the state of Ohio as “training,” each person was paid a “training rate”—not by the hour but by the completed piece; in the case of the shipping crates (one of the best-paying jobs the cell had all year), twenty cents apiece.