And that was just from the stories in the Ohio papers.

That’s how she’d had the information about Tim Beals so readily available to her. She had read each story taped to her walls so many times that she had the facts in at least seventy different cases memorized; the age of the children, the parents, the method of the child’s abuse and/or death, and the punishment bestowed—or, in too many cases, not bestowed—on the killers, the abusers, the torturers and rapists.

Knowing full well that all of that didn’t even take into account the number of cases that were never reported, the bodies never discovered, or the fates suffered by the little ones like Sarah who’d been snatched away by one of the countless filthy Monsters out there.

It was a fucking miserable world. She often wondered why she bothered sticking around.

She thought of the hand-carved figure Thalidomide Man had given to Sarah.

(“It’s Misserhands!”)

Now that figure was all she had left to remind her that she once had a family.

That, and her memories; of a family that now could never be, of a daughter gone forever, of a husband now living apart from her in another city because he could no longer stand to be around her bitterness, anger, and never-ending grief. “We have to move on, honey,” he’d said a few days before moving out. “And you won’t. I miss her, too, and the thought of what might have happened to her makes me sick, but we can’t spend the rest of our lives cut off from the world moaning and groaning over our loss. And drinking won’t help bring her back. It only makes you ugly.”

Right. Very practical, was Eric. Like losing his daughter to some monster was no different from losing money on a bad stock investment—but, of course, Eric never made any bad investments, which is why Lucy was left so well-off in the divorce settlement. If she were careful, frugal, she could afford to never work again.

Guilt money, that’s what his generous settlement amounted to.

She never touched it unless she had to.

After leaving the meeting, Lucy stopped off for a few drinks at some dive between Heath and Cedar Hill, and those few drinks turned into a few more, then one more, then one for the road.

She was quite drunk by the time she got behind the wheel of her car.

And didn’t give a tinker’s damn about it.

It was a little after nine p.m. The late September weather had taken one of its many unexpected turns (“If you don’t like the weather in Ohio, come back in twenty minutes,” as the saying went) and what had been a balmy but not unpleasant evening was now gearing up for a strong storm. Already the rain was getting fairly heavy and flashes of lightning could be seen in the distance. The low rumbles of thunder, like the growl of a starved beast creeping stealthily up behind you, were getting louder and more threatening.