“There are dogs.” Taking another silent step.
No response as McGee thought about that. Or her next move.
“You must find a safer place,” I said.
“Where?” Still caressing the child she would kill.
“No one looks under the porch.”
Mary Louise blinked, all panic and heartbeat. I held up a finger. Wait.
“No,” McGee said. “No darkness.”
The next step brought me to within two yards. “Sun always shines through the slats.”
McGee whipped around, startled at my proximity. “Get back!” Shooting upright.
“Let her go.”
“No.”
Now or never.
“No one looks under the porch!” I shrieked.
Three things happened.
I lunged for McGee.
Mary Louise rolled, then scrambled away on all fours.
A form burst from the shadow of the boundary wall.
Hull and I hit McGee at the same time.
It took thirty seconds to subdue her.
Another ninety to gather Mary Louise.
CHAPTER 43
THE EARTH HAD twirled on its axis fourteen times. Charlotte was enjoying one of those midwinter flukes that make you thankful you live in the South. The sky was an endless blue-gold dome, the temperature somewhere in the low seventies.
Mary Louise chose mango, topped it with strawberry and pineapple chunks, walnuts, raisins, and a thousand gummy things. It was a truly impressive amount of poundage.
We took our frozen yogurt to a small iron table outside the Phillips Place Pinkberry and watched post-holiday shoppers there to score bargains or off-load unwanted gifts. We made a game of guessing what item each might be returning. The kid’s ideas were much more inventive than mine.
In the previous two weeks, CSS had spent days tossing the apartment on Dotger. The contents of the freezer were as I suspected. Blood. Scalp. Swabbed saliva. DNA testing showed everything came from Anique Pomerleau.
Chloral hydrate capsules were found in an unmarked vial in a bathroom cabinet. A syringe. A dish and pestle for mixing the powder with water.
Drawstring plastic bags were recovered from a kitchen drawer. Content analysis demonstrated that those remaining in the box were from the same manufacturer and batch as the one McGee had taken to Sharon Hall to asphyxiate Mary Louise.
A purple wool coat was collected from a hook in the bedroom closet. Fiber analysis linked it to the threads snagged on Ajax’s backyard hedge.
In addition to Lizzie Nance’s other ballet slipper, the box on McGee’s desk contained news clippings covering the murders of Gower, Nance, and Estrada, and the disappearance of Donovan. And more pictures of me.
Mary Louise seemed unscathed, more than willing to talk about her ordeal. On her way home from school, she’d stopped by the annex to give me a picture of Birdie she painted in art class. Getting no response to her ringing and knocking, she’d decided to read her book on the patio and wait a short while.
She’d barely settled when a woman appeared, claiming to be my friend. The woman said I’d been taken ill and that I’d asked her to contact Mary Louise about minding Birdie, whom she had in her car. Trusting the woman, who was wearing scrubs and therefore a nurse, Mary Louise went to gather the cat.
Mary Louise remembered sharing apple slices as she and the woman walked to her vehicle; after that, “only swimmy bits from the romp on the lawn.” Her words.
Ironically, at the time Mary Louise was being abducted, I’d been two blocks away, at the Marcus home.
Remains of an apple were found in Tawny McGee’s Impala. Tox analysis showed portions contained chloral hydrate. The injected slices had been notched at one end.