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entire
backyard, including the white picket fence that surrounded it and
formed the boundary with her neighbors’ houses on either side. She
stood there for a couple of minutes, surveying the yard in the dim
light coming from the bathroom window. After she eyed the gate
located at the far end of the house near the backdoor and saw that
it was closed and presumably locked, she finally stepped back from
the window and breathed a sigh of relief.
    This is crazy! she thought. For the
second time that night she thought she’d heard something out back,
and both times had been false alarms. Why was she being so
paranoid? she wondered. Stress? Or was she letting herself get all
worked up over Marsha’s murder? A murder that happened a week ago
and over a hundred miles away—
    I need a
cigarette!
    She fled the family room and went into
the kitchen to find her purse, which was lying on the counter. She
opened it up and was searching frantically inside for her
cigarettes when it suddenly dawned on her that she’d made a point
of throwing every pack she owned into the trash when she had
decided to quit smoking a couple of weeks ago. Cursing herself, she
debated whether or not to throw on a coat and drive to the
convenient mart to buy a pack. Then she recalled the pack she’d
found hidden under Amy’s dresser. She had stashed Amy’s cigarettes
in her own dresser as “evidence,” but hadn’t yet confronted
her.
    Totally disregarding the fact that she
was about to break her vow never to smoke again, Ann ran up the
stairs to her bedroom and over to the dresser. She opened the top
drawer and found them neatly tucked away under her stockings.
Snatching up the opened pack of Marlboro Lights like an addict
about to give herself a fix, she slammed the drawer shut and ran
back downstairs to the family room.
    With quivering hands, Ann lit up a
cigarette and inhaled deeply, the smoke feeling much harsher in her
lungs than her regular brand. Her nerves were frayed to a frazzle,
she realized, from the effects of the tumultuous, emotional week,
compounded by her sudden grim outlook for the future. A couple of
weeks ago she had actually started feeling like she was at last
adjusting to her new life as a transplanted divorcee, but Marsha’s
untimely death had thrown everything back into turmoil and brought
all her doubts to the surface once again.
    And now, to top off everything else,
she was alone in this house and starting to hear things.
    Ann took another drag, retrieved her
wine and sipped. She needed to calm her nerves; to try and relax,
get a hold of herself. Nothing has really changed, had it? she
thought. Her best friend has just been brutally raped and murdered
by an unknown assailant, and she was shocked and devastated by
this, but as Sam had told her: life goes on. She had to come to
grips with her loss, accept it, and let the healing process begin.
Marsha’s death had absolutely nothing to do with the present—her
insecurity of being alone and on her own, her concern over Amy’s
incorrigible and frightening behavior, her doubts about whether
she’d done the right thing in divorcing Sam. So why was she so
fucking edgy tonight?
    Was she in fear for her own life? If
so, then why should she be? She was probably safer than anyone in
Smithtown was—Woodcrest was a hundred miles away and most likely
the last place on earth the murderer would be right now…
    Hysteria, Ann decided. That’s
it. She, along with every other woman who knew about Marsha’s
murder, was naturally going to feel a little temporary hysteria
right now, if not at least a little threatened. It was a perfectly
normal response, given the circumstances. There was a demented
madman on the loose who had just raped and strangled a poor
defenseless woman in her own home. No clues, no motives, and the
only material witness is a five-year-old who is so traumatized that
he can barely utter a single word. What woman wouldn’t be scared
out of her wits?
    Ann took another