Long before I picked up the receiver I knew it was going to be bad news—so I wasn’t shocked or even surprised, only saddened, when it came.

It was Merrill. He was violating a direct order by calling to tell me that Anthony Thomas had been murdered in the infirmary the night before—stabbed and raped with a surgical scalpel, which the murderer had left in the body.

36

“You look awful,” Molly Thomas said.

She was seated in the only chair in my living room, wearing a pair of dark blue jeans, a white oxford button-down shirt, and white leather Keds.

When she’d knocked on the door, Laura had let her in, not realizing who she was. Apart from her clothes, she looked like the grieving widow she was. Her eyes were deep and hollow with large dark circles beneath them. Her auburn hair was thin and wispy, part of it standing up, and she had aged ten years in the ten days since I had last seen her.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be here,” I said. “I’m very sorry about Anthony, but I’m not the one to help you right now.”

“I’ve got to talk to you,” she said, her voice flat, her face expressionless. “I know what I’ve put you through, but I’m going to make it right. I wanted you to know I was sorry. I just didn’t know what else to do.”

Laura stood near the door, watching, listening, protecting.

“I was just trying to protect Tony, to get him transferred to another institution. Away from Skipper.”

I nodded.

“It didn’t work. Obviously. It got him killed. But I’m gonna make it right. I mean for you.”

“I doubt what you did got Anthony killed. The things he’s been doing, the men he’s involved with . . .”

“He wasn’t this bad when he went to prison. I mean, he was . . . He had his issues, but . . . the last time I saw him . . . That was someone else entirely.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m gonna make it right,” she said. “Tell the authorities and the press. I’ve wronged you more than any other person ever. I just . . . It was all to try to save Tony.”

Later in the afternoon, while Laura was helping her mother go through her Uncle Russ’s things, Anna came over to watch the tapes from Russ Maddox’s house that Dad had dropped by earlier.

“You sure you want to do this?” I asked.

She nodded. “Don’t move. I’ve got this.”

She placed the tapes in a stack on top of the television—an old thirteen-inch TV on an old-fashioned TV stand with a VCR on the uneven shelf below it.

“Dad said he appreciated us doing this. Said he was having a hard time getting anyone in his department to watch them.”