But Maggie sat there, almost smiling at what was happening.
Please help me, he thought.
Instead, she wagged her stub of a tail.
Michael was sure the dog understood just what he was saying, just what Mr. Hansen was doing to him. The dog, he reasoned, was evil.
The first time that Michael hurt Maggie was entirely by accident. He was coming down from his bunk bed and didn’t see the dog curled up on a sleeping bag that held the newest arrival, Kenny.
Maggie yelped when Michael planted his foot on her hindquarter. Instead of dropping down to see if the dog was all right, Michael felt an odd surge of something that he couldn’t quite peg at first. Something about hurting that animal, though accidental, felt good.
He did it again. This time, he put some effort into it.
Maggie growled and the noise only served to excite Michael. He wanted to jump up and down on the dog, busting its ribs into shards, cutting through the dog’s organs, the lungs, the heart…and stopping her from that stupid dog smile.
“Hey, you’re hurting her!” Kenny said, sitting up, wide-eyed with fear.
Michael pulled himself together, the vision of Maggie flattened into a bloody mess passed. “She’s in the way!”
The new boy cradled Maggie. “Leave her alone.”
Michael grinned. He didn’t know it then, of course, but he’d just found something that gave him both pleasure and control. The smile that he gave Kenny had nothing to do with genuine joy. It was an involuntary, natural response to another person’s fear.
In time, Michael started kicking the dog when no one was around. A while later, he graduated to other animals in the neighborhood. The first one that he killed was a neighbor’s tortoise that had free rein of their backyard, eating bugs, vegetation, and enjoying the California sun that filtered through the eucalyptus and sycamore trees. Michael stole a screwdriver from Mr. Hansen’s workbench and drove it through the reptile’s shell. He sat there and watched the life drain away.
Two days later, he cut off the head of a cat that he’d beaten with a plastic baseball bat. It was easy to do, and it felt good, too. The tabby hadn’t even put up a fight. It just looked up from the garbage can and he landed a blow, stunning it. He’d stolen a box cutter that he’d intended to use on Mr. Hansen’s penis one time, but never found the nerve for it. But the cat was different. The cat couldn’t get him in trouble.
Michael was surprised how easy it was to cut through the tabby’s matted fur. It was nothing to slice through the skin, the tendons, and the vertebrae. Then, like a plucked orange from the mini citrus grove two doors down, the head fell off. So easy and so very final. He crouched behind the house next to the corral Mr. Hansen had built for the garbage receptacles and watched, coolly absorbed in the sight of a pool of maroon fluid as it slowly filled the spaces between the crushed white rocks that Mexican workers had hauled in the week before.
“That’s so pretty,” Mrs. Hansen had said. “Like a fairytale beach.”
Not anymore, he thought. He felt nothing for the cat he’d decapitated. It had been a nuisance, anyway. It shouldn’t have been in the trash in the first place.
When Mrs. Hansen saw the blood on his shirt later that afternoon, she said nothing. She didn’t bend down to see if he was hurt. There was no running to the bathroom for a bandage and antiseptic as his mother might have done. No offers to kiss him and make him better.
She didn’t chide him for making a mess of himself. She didn’t do a damn thing.
He was sure he knew why.
She thinks Mr. Hansen hurt me. She’s a stupid fat cow.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Cherrystone
Donna Rayburn, the lawyer who’d filled in for Cary McConnell at the Crawford lineup, stood at the gas pump in $300 jeans, stiletto-heeled boots, and a creamy white leather coat that looked so soft it had to have been spread on her. Cherrystone, Washington, didn’t see people like her too often.
Emily Kenyon doubted her Ethan Allen leather sofa cost as much as Donna’s coat.
“Nice coat,” the sheriff called to Donna from her gas pump, a row away—too close to pretend she didn’t see her. She wanted to say something about how the coat’s coloring was a near ringer for Donna’s BMW, but thought better of it. “You look like you’re headed off somewhere.”
Donna nodded in Emily’s direction. “Cary and I are going to his cabin. You know how he loves the great outdoors.”
It was the first acknowledgment between the two women that they’d both dated Cary. Emily was relieved that her liaison with Cherrystone’s most narcissistic lawyer was long since past. At the same time, she almost felt sorry for Donna. She was sleeping with the devil and didn’t even know it.
“Oh yes, the cabin,” Emily said. “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time.”
Donna turned off the pump and waited for her receipt.
“Only going for one night,” she said. “Cary is such a workaholic.” Donna slid into her car, waved at Emily, and drove off.
Emily finished filling the Crown Vic, wondering how on earth the department could justify the gas-hog that barely got fifteen miles to the gallon. She also wondered who approved such a hideous kelly green livery for the small fleet of department cars. Mostly she pondered how long it would take Donna to wise up about Cary.
She’d been up to the cabin a couple of times in the beginning of her relationship with Cary. It was a few miles from the Schweitzer Mountain Resort, in northern Idaho. The whole place was a shrine to Cary and his quest to be the most formidable at all the things he did. Everything was the best. His snowmobiles, fishing gear, and ski equipment. Weekends at the cabin were exhausting, and not for the reasons most being romanced would hope.
Poor stupid, BMW-owning Donna. She’ll just have to figure out things on her own.
Chapter Forty
Stanton, California
Michael Barton was never quite sure how it came to be that he and Sarah were taken from the Hansens’ foster home to the Ogilvy Home for Children in Stanton, California. Was it something he did? The dead animals? The little fire he set? Maybe it was that he was no longer wanted once a younger boy named Jeremy came to stay.
Maybe he was really worth nothing after all?
Years later, he’d tell Olivia about it, in terms that suggested a kind of rescue, but he really felt more regret than anything.
“The Hansens were despicable,” he said one time when he let her inside a sliver of his dark past, “but it felt like home. Sick. But home. Ogilvy always felt like a concentration camp for the lost.”
“It couldn’t have been that bad,” Olivia said. “It was state approved, wasn’t it?”
Michael allowed a wide smile across his face. Inside, he wanted to scream at the woman to whom he sought to make himself whole, normal.
“Of course. But Ms. McCutcheon did things her way.”
Marilyn McCutcheon was the floor director of the “intensive” unit of the Ogilvy Home. The building that housed the home for the wayward and the disposable had once been part of Stanton High School. It had a cafeteria, gymnasium, and forty-four classrooms which were converted in 1961 into dormitory rooms and offices for a staff of eighty, full-and part-time. Most who worked there, caring for the 220 children on the way station to either reform school or a foster home, were there because they couldn’t get a better-paying job elsewhere. If they were half decent in their appearance, skill, and work ethic, they’d be there no longer than six months.