Free Family Murders: A Thriller by Henry Carver Page B

sister was." He looked down at his boots. "People say the world is a dangerous place, but mostly it's just filled with dangerous people. People like him."
    "The man who tried to take your sister? The man with the pink sunglasses?"
    "Yes."
    "The ones you're wearing right now?"
    "I know what it must look like to you."
    Angela said nothing.
    "You know, when all this started I thought you must be in on it," Eric said. "I thought no one could be stupid enough, blind enough, to be so close and yet not see."
    "See what?" she asked, but he just kept talking.
    "And so the sunglasses were supposed to be a message. I didn't know if they would mean anything to you, but I figured you would would pass on the message."
    "What message? To who?"
    "You really don't know, do you?" Eric threw back his head and laughed. His laugh was hard and deep, and somehow desperate.
    "This is funny to you?" Angela asked.
    "No. It's sad. It's so fucking sad, either you have to laugh or you have to cry."
    "So cry."
    "I haven't cried since my sister died. But I've been laughing a lot. Watching your family, hell, it's been the best time of my life in a decade."
    "Why? Why us?"
    "Well, not the whole family. Just one very special person."
    Angela felt a cold tongue lick up her spine. Rocky must have felt it too—he lowered his center of mass and started growling again.
    "If you ever look at my daughter again, I'll—I'll kill you."
    Eric shook his head. "What are you doing out here? The way you kept coming when you saw me…I thought you had at least some of this figured out. You're way off. Aren't you listening? I didn't hurt anyone. I don't want anything to do with your daughter."
    "Right, sure, the invisible man did it, the man no one has ever seen."
    "He did do it. But he's not invisible. I found him." His eyes were glowing now, and turned upward. He looked triumphant, but also blissful, like a burden had been removed.
    "After all these years," he said, "it was so easy. A simple coincidence. I don't believe in God, but sometimes little things like that make you wonder, you know?"
    Rocky leaned forward.
    "After all these years, I was reading the paper, an article off the wire. I think they picked it up as a human interest piece. An editor would probably call that a slow news day. For me, it was the biggest news day in a decade."
    "A human interest piece?"
    "About rose gardens."
    "Rose gardens?"
    Eric actually rubbed his hands together, jittery with an uncontainable kind of glee.
    "Rose gardens, Angela. One in particular. I can pull that picture up in my head any time, it's burned in there: that face, smiling and standing next to a bunch of prickly fucking bushes. Who cares? But they printed thousands of copies, and I saw one. I recognized him right away. I can't forget that face. I see it every night when I go to sleep."
    He seemed genuinely crazy now, pacing and rubbing his hands.
    "And the caption! It was all so easy—revenge as color-by-number. The world doesn't work like that, Angela, it must have been the hand of something bigger than you or me. Print a picture of a murderer, then put his name right underneath it."
    Rocky was getting upset, pulling at his collar, swinging left and right like a pendulum as Eric moved back and forth.
    "And do you know what the caption said?" he asked.
    "No."
    "Guess."
    "No."
    "Don't worry, I know it by heart. It said: Local gardener Ted Gray shows off his prize winning roses. "
    Angela just looked at him.
    "Do you get it now? Do you understand? Your husband is a rapist and a murderer. He's a hunter, and his prey is little girls. How can you let your daughter live in the same house as him?"
    Angela took a deep breath, hoping there was a way to talk him down off the mental ledge he'd worked himself onto.
    "Listen, I get it. This…this thing happened, and now you're looking for someone to blame. I don't know why you picked my family, whether it's because of my daughter or something else, but you have to stop. Do you hear me?