Free Halloweenland by Al Sarrantonio Page A

would have hurt your family.”
    “That’s no excuse.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “No. I always prided myself on being strong, and I wasn’t strong. I was weak. It’s been a . . . very difficult five years, Detective.”
    “Samhain hasn’t . . .”
    “Nothing like that.” She laughed nervously. “I just mean . . . personally. Chuck and I divorced about a year ago, and I haven’t been as . . . tough as I once was.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.”
    “Believe me, I’m sorry to say it. It’s been . . . tough not being tough, if you know what I mean. I’ve had nightmares about Marianne and that . . . baby. And, well, I haven’t been the best mother to Baby Charlie and his brother. The thing is, I wanted to tell you that there was nothing you could have done.”
    “I’m not so sure of that.”
    “Absolutely nothing. That Samhain creature had things sewed up from one end to the other. I’ve thoughtlong and hard about this, and it’s true. Either you and I are both to blame or we’re not. And I’ve decided we’re not.”
    Grant was silent.
    “That’s all I’ve got to say about it,” Janet said with finality. “I was wrong to harbor bad thoughts about you.” She paused, and Grant could feel a change in the air. “But that’s not the real reason I called you.”
    A tingle, the slightest breath of hope, brushed along the back of Grant’s neck.
    “I talked to someone at the police station who said you had just been fired.”
    “That’s right.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that. I almost told him what I wanted to tell you, but something told me not to. Chip Prohman was a dope in high school and for all I know—”
    “Believe me, Janet, he’s worse than a dope now.”
    Grant waited, his anticipation building. He found that he was holding his breath.
    “I think I might know where Marianne’s baby is. Though she would be, what? Almost as old as Baby Louie.”
    Grant could not keep his voice steady. “Yes, five.”
    “I thought you’d want to know.”
    “Yes, I very much want to know. Where is she?”
    “Well, I’m not sure, exactly. This was almost a year ago, last summer, when I was still pissed at you. Chuck and I were going through the last of our problems. We had separated, and he had moved everything he wanted out of the house. I threw all the rest on the front lawn and put out a rummage sale sign one Saturday. This was . . . just after the Fourth of July, whatever Saturday that would be.”
    Grant waited while she took a breath. His hand wasclutching the phone so tight he could hear the plastic case threatening to break.
    Come on, come on . . .
    “Anyway,” Janet Larson continued, “we were having this rummage sale, and Baby Charlie—who I just call Charlie now, I mean you don’t call a six-year-old ‘Baby’ in front of his friends or nasty things happen—Charlie was helping me and we must have had a hundred cars show up before noon, parked all over the street, in the driveway, up on the curb, you should have seen that pill Mrs. Jakes next door with her sour face, and a mob scene for a while. I guess some of Carl’s crap was worth something, because by noon most of it was gone. In the afternoon we had a few more cars, and one in particular caught my eye because it passed the house twice before parking across the street. Big black thing, not a limo exactly but along the lines of a Lincoln Town Car, those big boats. The windows were tinted all around and it just sat there, nobody got out. Some woman was arguing with me over the price of one of Carl’s old golf clubs, not the new ones which he took with him, and I was distracted, and when I looked back the window in the backseat of the Town Car had rolled down and a face as white as the moon was staring at me. Just for a second but it was ghastly, pale as a sheet with two dark eyes and hair that hung down in a straight ugly cut. I’ve never seen a more ghastly looking little girl. Just for a second, because the window was already going