“No, honey, it’s still nighttime. What’s behind your back, darling?”

“Can we see Chelsea?” he asks again.

“Not right now,” I repeat steadily, still eyeing his hands, still waiting to see what he’ll do next.

“I want to go to the park,” he says.

“In the morning, honey.”

“I want to make a new friend today.”

“Evan, turn around now. It’s time for bed.”

Evan abruptly sticks out his hands. He turns them palm up, so I can see that they’re empty, that he hasn’t been holding anything. The expression on his face is guileless, but then, as I watch, I can see it. A shadow moving in the back of his eyes. A faint smile curving one corner of his mouth.

He knows what I am looking for.

He knows he has it, and that I don’t know what to do.

The shadow in his eyes moves again, and I fight the chill creeping up my spine. Evan isn’t the only one in this house who’s afraid of the phantom.

I take a deep breath, snapping off the flashlight and putting my hand on my son’s shoulder. His body is relaxed beneath my touch. He lets me lead him to the foyer, up the stairs. We follow the bright glow to his bedroom, where I tuck him back into bed. He’s already half-asleep, his eyes heavy-lidded as I brush a few blonde wisps from his forehead.

“I love you to the moon and the stars and back again,” he murmurs, a line from our favorite book. I caress his cheek.

“I love you, too.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says dreamily, already drifting off. His blue eyes open. “But I do.”

Friday

CHAPTER SEVEN

D.D. slept until seven the next morning, an unusual luxury when working a high-burn case. She needed the two extra hours of shut-eye, given the late-night trip to the hospital. More to the point, today would be about interviewing friends and family, and they generally didn’t care for detectives knocking on their doors before nine.

She showered, downed two shots of espresso, and considered the morning. Neil had agreed to spend the day with the ME, attending the autopsies. That left her and Phil to follow up on the initial canvass of the Harringtons’ neighbors.

D.D. swung by HQ long enough to skim the pile of reports on her desk, including the transcripts from interviews conducted last night with available neighbors. Two individuals stood out: a Mrs. Patricia Bruni and a Mr. Dexter Harding. Both claimed to know the Harringtons well: Mrs. Bruni attended the same church; Mr. Dexter hosted poker night with the father.

As good a starting point as any, D.D. decided. She took the transcripts with her, then headed into Dorchester, where Phil had promised to meet her outside of the Harringtons’ sealed-off home.

Neighborhood was quiet this morning, maybe even somber, but that could’ve been D.D.’s imagination. She always found it eerie to visit a scene the day after. The blood was no longer fresh, the sounds and smells had faded into memory. The house became a shell of what used to be. Once a family had lived here. Maybe they’d laughed and loved and been happy. Maybe not. But one way or another, they’d been carving out a life. And now they weren’t. Just like that.

D.D. pulled in behind a Chevy Tahoe. She spotted Phil up ahead, standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Beside him was his new shadow, Police Academy professor Alex Wilson.

D.D. frowned, already aggravated, though she couldn’t say why. She opened her car door, felt the ripe August heat slap against her face, and scowled harder. She clipped her creds to the waistband of her jeans, wished she could’ve been wearing a tank top instead of a short-sleeved blue cotton shirt, and got on with it.

Phil and Alex stood head-to-head in dark suits, apparently becoming fast friends. Both men looked up when she approached. Phil wiped a smile from his face; that already had her suspicious.

“Hey,” she tossed out to Phil, then turned her attention to Alex. “Back for more?”

“Glutton for punishment,” he assured her.

“We’re interviewing today, building profiles of the vics. Not exactly crime-scene material.”

The professor shrugged. “Never know when you might learn something useful.”

She remained skeptical. Alex wore a charcoal-colored jacket over a blue dress shirt, dark slacks. He should be sweating, she thought, given the heat. It bothered her that he didn’t sweat, especially when she could already feel the first bead trickling down her spine to pool at the small of her back.

“Okay,” she said crisply, unfolding her paperwork. “We have two primary targets this morning. Mrs. Patricia Bruni and Mr. Dexter Harding. In the interest of time, I’ll take Bruni. You two can take Harding.”

Phil looked her. Alex looked at Phil.

“What?” she demanded.

“It would be better if we did them together,” Phil told her. “Multiple impressions of what the individual has to say.”

“Three on one? We’ll intimidate them before they say the first word.”

“Then you take the lead,” Phil replied easily. “We’ll hang back, blend into the backdrop.”

“Ride my coattails?”

“Exactly.” Phil took the first sheet from her. “Patricia Bruni. Lives four houses up. Let’s go.”

He started walking before she could say another word. Alex paused a beat, then fell in step beside her. “Heard you had an interesting night at the hospital,” he commented.

“Not really.”

“I caught the Red Sox game myself.”

“Never follow baseball.”

“More of a Patriots fan?”

“More of a homicide fan. In case you forgot, fieldwork doesn’t keep regular hours.”

She sounded prickly even to herself. Alex just grinned. That was it. He and Phil were up to something.

“What are your thoughts on Italian food?” Alex asked.

“Food is good,” D.D. allowed.

“Great. We’ll have to get some later.”

They arrived at Patricia Bruni’s house, another triple-decker with a broad front porch. D.D. was distracted.

“When? Do you mean for lunch?”

“Something like that,” Alex said, and with that enigmatic grin still on his face he followed her up the front steps.

Patricia Bruni turned out to be a wizened old black lady who went by Miss Patsy and believed in serving her guests, even cops, megaglasses of iced tea. D.D. had a good feeling about Miss Patsy, and not just for the cold iced tea; in D.D.’s experience, wizened old ladies always knew the most about what was going on in the neighborhood.

Miss Patsy invited them inside, “out of the heat,” she said, and they gratefully followed her into her lower-level unit, where window air conditioners chugged away at full throttle. Her home was modest, boasting six rooms, lots of furniture, and an impressive collection of Hummel figurines. From what D.D. could tell, if it was small and breakable, Miss Patsy collected it.

D.D. took up the antique wooden chair across from Patsy. It was fun to watch Phil and Alex stand awkwardly in front of the camel-backed love seat, trying to figure out how to sit on its broken-down form. Alex finally perched gingerly on the edge. Older and heavier, Phil reluctantly followed suit. The love seat groaned, but held.

“You’re here about the Harringtons,” Miss Patsy said straight off, patting her tightly coiled hair. “I tried to tell that officer last night, don’t you be thinking this was drugs or any of that other nonsense. Patrick and Denise were nice folks. Good Christian couple. We’re lucky to have them on the block.”

“They live here long?” D.D. asked, sipping her iced tea. Sweet and cold. She loved Miss Patsy already.

“Bought the house last fall,” Patsy provided, confirming the timeline D.D. already had in her head. “Duffys lived in it before that. Kept a lot of late hours, the Duffys did. Seemed to entertain on a regular basis, if you know what I mean.”