From downstairs, the click of the back door and the sounds of the kettle being filled. A dozen butterflies took flight in the neighbor’s stomach. A glance at the clock. Around fifteen minutes before the door-knockings and questions would begin again.

The Lockwoods were watching this scene unfold with the frozen expressions of comic-book characters: eyes widened; mouths, slack and loose; splayed fingers pressed to cheeks. Their bodies were angled toward the police cars in the way that plants are pulled toward the sun. Not a flicker of movement between them, mesmerized by the sight of Mrs. Lockwood’s favorite television crime dramas seemingly brought to life opposite their new home, a bruise on the surface of their fresh start.

All except the girl, who was taking photographs with her phone.

* * *

Three hours later, when the moving men had left and the sun was dipping below the horizon, but the air was still ripe with heat, they brought out the body.

A single-use sheet covered the fifth victim’s face, but the detective inspector on the scene—white-faced and trembling—was more concerned with accelerated decomposition in the hot weather than contaminants, and the cadaver was hurried into the mortuary van.

There was no wind to lift the sheet and expose this unfortunate soul to the journalists and photographers, the TV anchors and camera crews who filled The Avenue with their noise and coffee cups and cars that parked at awkward angles. But there was no need.

Everybody knew what lay beneath because it was always the same.

A body, fully clothed. A painted face, subtle blush across the cheekbones; lips, berry-colored; lashes lengthened, dark and thick; a light foundation to disguise pallor mortis. As if the victim were not dead, but waiting to be played with, to be kissed back to life by a parent, a lover, a child.

Shoes removed. Hair brushed. Each eye gouged from its bloodied socket with a scalpel and replaced with a miniature glass replica.

The handiwork of a killer the newspapers had named The Doll Maker.

And the face at the window knew who that killer was.

3

Four little monkeys jumping on the bed,
one fell off and bumped its head.
Mummy called the doctor and the doctor said,
“No more monkeys jumping on the bed.”

Now

Four of them moved into 25 The Avenue on that summer’s afternoon, but when the end came, only three of them left. I could hear the boy crying as they loaded up the car, a knife-edge I-want-my-mother kind of cry, but I would not pry. I thought about coming out to say good-bye, to wish them well on the next chapter of life’s journey, but what business of it was mine? Enough damage had been done.

Damage. When you say it aloud, there’s a melody to it, a teasing introduction that finishes on a hard, aggressive note. We all damage others. A thoughtless word. A deliberate exclusion. A knife in the back. But you, of all people, understand that.