Kevin O'Brien - Disturbed

“What’s going on? You sounded pretty grim on that message. Are the kids okay?”

Molly hesitated. She could hear the TV go on in the family room. “The kids are okay — for now,” she said carefully. “It’s Angela, honey. Trish just called. Angela’s dead. She and Larry and his daughter were murdered last night. The police — they think it’s a cul-de-sac killing.”

She heard a sigh on the other end of the line. “Oh, my God. .”

“I think the police are supposed to be over here pretty soon,” Molly continued. “I just got off the phone with Trish about five minutes ago. I haven’t said anything to the kids yet. . ”

“Molly!” Erin yelled from the kitchen. “My SpaghettiOs are burning! And I can’t reach the Cocoa Puffs!”

She turned and saw Chris treading down the front stairs with his backpack slung over his shoulder. He wore a wrinkled blue shirt and jeans. He glanced at her. He must have seen something was wrong from the expression on her face. “Is that Dad?” he asked.

With the phone to her ear, she nodded. “Chris, could you do me a favor? Could you turn off the stove in the kitchen, and move the pan? And then could you get Erin her cereal, please? I’ll be there in just a second.”

He frowned at her. “Is Dad okay?”

She felt like such a coward, but she just nodded. She waited until Chris headed toward the kitchen before she got back on the line with Jeff. “Honey, are you still there?”

She heard muffled crying on the other end of the line. She swallowed hard. “Jeff, honey, what do you want me to do?”

“There are Snap, Crackle, and Pop pencil pals inside this unopened box of Rice Krispies,” Chris announced as he sat down at the breakfast table with his little sister. “I’ll trade you them for the remote.”

Erin thought about it for a moment. He’d already poured her a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, and she was watching some inane preteen situation-comedy on ABC Family or the Disney Channel, he wasn’t sure. He just knew that all the kids looked like catalog models and none of them could act worth shit.

“ ’Kay,” she said, at last. She set the remote on the lazy Susan and gave it a gentle spin. Then she went back to eating her Cocoa Puffs.

“Thanks,” Chris said, grabbing the remote. He switched over to news for the latest sports.

He was trying to feel normal again after all the weirdness that went down the day before yesterday. He’d already replaced the combination lock on his locker. He’d had no desire to borrow Molly’s bike lock. The less he had to do with Molly right now, the better. He just couldn’t get over the fact that her brother had shot those people.

He really wished he’d been able to get out of the house and away from her for an evening. Apparently Larry and Taylor had canceled their field trip, so his mom hadn’t been alone last night after all.

Right now Molly was in the study on the phone with his dad, whispering and acting weird.

Chris poured himself some Rice Krispies, and then fished the little packet of pencil pals out of the box. “There you go, kitten, knock yourself out,” he said, pushing the packet across the table at his little sister.

“Thanks, Chris!” she replied. She ripped the packet open with her teeth.

He was reaching for the milk to pour over his cereal when he heard the newscaster on TV. “Breaking News this morning from a cul-de-sac in Bellevue,” a pretty Latino reporter announced grimly. Dressed in a red coat, she stood in front of a swarm of police cars with their lights flashing. They partially blocked any view of the house in the distance. “Three people are dead in what police sources here say has all the earmarks of another cul-de-sac killing. The identities of the three victims are being withheld for now, but I can tell you that two of the victims are adults — one male and one female. And the third victim is a teenage girl. The last time the Cul-de-sac Killer struck, three teens were slain in Federal Way. This is a quiet street in a family neighborhood—”

Chris hit the mute button. He didn’t want his little sister traumatized by this grisly news report. He was about to switch channels when he glanced across the table at Erin. She didn’t seem to understand the gravity of the news story. Smiling, she scratched the top of her blond head, and then pointed at the TV screen. “Look! Isn’t that Uncle Larry’s house?”

Chris turned toward the TV. From the roof and the location of the trees, the house behind that pretty reporter might have indeed been Larry’s. But it couldn’t be. No, so many of the houses in those Bellevue subdivisions looked alike.

Yet Chris unsteadily got to his feet. He looked at the TV, and that roof of that two-story Colonial — so much like the one he’d slept under every other weekend for the last few months. He kept thinking of the reporter’s description of the Cul-de-sac Killer’s latest casualties: a teenage girl, and two adults — one male, one female.

Chris told himself that they would have heard from the police by now. But then, that was why the names were being withheld. The families still didn’t know.

With the sound muted on the TV, he could hear Molly down the hall in the study, whispering to his dad on the phone. He couldn’t make out the words, but she sounded so worried — even panicked, as if she might have just heard some disturbing news.

Chris started toward the front of the house. He saw Molly step out of his dad’s study. She held the cordless phone to her ear. Biting her lip, she gazed at him with pity. “Honey,” she whispered into the cordless. “I’m going to put Chris on.”

He numbly stared at his stepmother. He couldn’t move.

She handed him the phone. “Chris, your dad needs to talk to you.”

For the next few hours, all Molly could think about was holding on until Jeff came home. It was a grueling, sad nightmare. When she and Chris had sat down with Erin to tell her that her mother was dead, the six-year-old didn’t just cry, she shrieked at the top of her voice — as if she were being attacked. It seemed to take forever for Chris to calm her down. Every time Molly even touched her, Erin went into a fit — maybe it was because Molly had been the one who had actually told her that her mother had been killed. Chris rocked her to sleep in the rocking chair in her room, the same chair that had once been her mother’s.

Two plainclothes police detectives arrived around ninethirty. Molly had barely enough time to run a brush through her hair and throw on some jeans and a sweater. Chris talked with them at the breakfast table. Meanwhile Molly made them coffee and screened calls. The phone wouldn’t stop ringing. One of the calls was from her doctor’s office. She was being charged for missing her appointment. She didn’t bother arguing with them.

Another call was from Lynette. Apparently Trish had her number, too. Lynette said she was coming over with some lunch for them in a couple of hours, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. Molly didn’t argue with her, either.

Chris told the police that he hadn’t seen his mother in over a week. He hadn’t noticed anything unusual the last time he’d stayed at Larry’s house. Once the detectives were finished with their questions, Chris retreated to his room and shut the door.

Molly was so frazzled by the time she sat down with the two cops, her thinking was muddled. She told them about her lunch with Angela the day before. She thought they’d want to know about the strange, threatening calls Angela had gotten on her cell — from that woman. But she didn’t know much beyond what Angela had told her. To Molly, it seemed totally unrelated to the cul-de-sac murders. She’d read all there was to read on those killings, and at no time was it mentioned that any of the victims had been threatened beforehand.