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he’d killed eight women. He’d broken into the homes of two of them. Walt installed a home security system and fit dead-bolt locks on both the front and back doors of their duplex. He insisted she buy a cell phone and got her a small canister of industrial-strength pepper spray. Susan wasn’t the only one taking precautions. Seattle mothers armed themselves with handguns, switchblades, or knitting needles. Police encouraged women to have whistles or alarms on their key chains whenever they stepped out with their sons. Playground dates became group excursions. Police beefed up security at playgrounds throughout the area—ironically, more for the safety of the mothers than their children. Whenever Susan needed to go somewhere with little Michael, she called her neighbor, who was also a new mom, and they went out as a team.
    It should have been an idyllic time for Susan, with her first baby. In so many ways, it was. She felt lucky to work at home with the part-time consulting-nurse job. Walt was a great dad, very doting. He was an engineer for Boeing, and every afternoon, when he returned home from work, he’d look after Michael so she could have a run, go to the store, or just steal some alone time. Susan remembered many an afternoon, handing the screaming baby to Walt before he even made it through the front door.
    Walt. If someone had ever told her she’d end up marrying a man who was follicularly challenged , she would have told them they were crazy. She usually liked a guy with a nice, full head of hair. But Walt was practically bald on top. He had a handsome, chiseled face—with intense blue eyes and thick, dark brows. Both of his sons had inherited his long eyelashes. Walt was a fitness nut, and he had the lean, wiry body to prove it. As soon as Michael could sit up, Walt regularly took him out in the special jogger’s stroller—or he set him in the little canopied attachment that trailed after his bike. Susan couldn’t do that. She couldn’t risk going out alone with her son.
    She remembered one case in particular in November 1999, because she’d planned to take Michael to his first movie, a matinee of The Borrowers . But then she read about Dianne Rickards, thirty-nine-year-old Bellevue stay-at-home mom, who took her seven-year-old son to see the same movie at Factoria Cinema. During the film, she left her coat on the seat and went to use the restroom. Dianne’s son never saw her again. In the pocket of his mother’s coat, police found two slightly banged-up Matchbox trucks. Dianne’s son remembered a man sitting behind them, but he’d never gotten a look at his face in the darkened theater. An engineer with the Burlington Northern Railroad spotted Dianne’s bruised and battered body in a marsh beside the railroad tracks in Kent two days later.
    At Walt’s urging, Susan postponed taking Michael to the movie. Mama’s Boy often waited just long enough between victims so that mothers let down their guards—and then he’d strike again. And everyone would be on edge once more. Sometimes, Susan got fed up always looking over her shoulder, and she’d resolve not to let this creep scare her. But then little things would happen—like someone calling and hanging up, or a piece of trash that mysteriously made its way into their backyard—and suddenly she’d feel hunted.
    One solace: at least none of the victims’ sons had been harmed, not physically anyway. But Susan often worried that if anything were to happen to her, Michael wouldn’t have any memory of her.
    It was strange, after all the precautions they’d taken, they still couldn’t escape tragedy. But it was Mattie who couldn’t remember his father or older brother. Susan kept plenty of framed photos of them at home to help her son feel connected to them. She didn’t want to lose that connection either.
    She still needed it—even now, with Allen in her life.
    “You know, maybe Allen will rent us a boat tomorrow,” Susan said, with a glance