The Tower

"Fine." Darby's hand shot up and nervously patted her hair in the back. "He got a can of Lysol or something from under the kitchen sink and a match. He held the match under the spray and set the poor little thing on fire." Her voice cracked. "I came out when I heard it scampering around the deck. He was… he was…"

"Masturbating?" Jade said.

She looked quietly at Jade. Her cheek was quivering and he could see the pulse beating in her temple. "Yes," she said.

The phone rang in the kitchen and she was gone instantly.

"Well, hello there! Yes, yes, we're fine. Fine. Great. Uh-huh. Oh really?"

Jade, Travers, and Thomas sat quietly in the living room as Darby's conversation continued. Jade caught Thomas's eye, but he lowered his head and began his mindless tracing again. Darby's laughter filled the room. After a few minutes, she hung up and returned.

Her smile faded as she entered the room. She locked eyes with Thomas.

"Sorry," she said softly without taking her eyes off her husband.

"What'd you say when you found him?" Jade asked her, picking up right where she'd left off.

"I told him he'd burn in hell forever," she said. Then she laughed, a mature giggle. "No, no. We're quite liberal people, Mr. Marlow. I told him that the masturbation part was normal, even healthy. I believe it is," she said, as if someone had disagreed with her. "I didn't want him to feel guilty about it. But I was very upset about the poor animal, and I scolded him for that. A lecture about cruelty to animals. If only I'd known. That should've been the least of my concerns."

A long, awkward silence ensued. Thomas cleared his throat twice but said nothing.

Jade finally broke the silence. "That was before Allander's kidnapping, wasn't it, Darby?"

She looked down for a while, then turned and walked to the mirror. "Yes," she admitted. "It was."

"That's interesting," Travers said.

"Actually, I think it's quite disturbing," Darby said, cutting her off curtly with a smile.

"No, I mean about how you responded to him masturbating. One of Allander's elementary school teachers caught him masturbating and gave him a big lecture," Travers said. "And a spanking, if memory serves."

"It does," Thomas said. "He was quite upset about that. You've certainly done your digging, Ms. Travers."

Travers bit her lip. They were trying to build trust, and she had just made it seem as if the FBI was digging through all the family laundry. Which, of course, it was.

Although Jade was irritated with Travers for her interruption, he realized that it was an important point. At an early age, Allander had received conflicting messages regarding his sexuality from two female authority figures. And his mother was more sexually open, less restrictive than the other. He was bound to be confused.

"It's okay," Thomas said. "We know you have to pursue all avenues." He chuckled though nothing was funny. "Actually, Allander always said he wanted to be a policeman when he grew up."

"Many killers go through periods where they're infatuated with the police," Jade said. "They're attracted by the fact that cops have authority and power, and that they deal with death for a living. It's quite a common interest."

"Not in our family," Darby said. "Umm. No offense."

Jade smiled. "None taken."

"So there you have your incident," Darby said in a rushed voice. "'Beating-Off Boy Burns Furry Animal.' But that was the last of that. Then we had the summer, those three days that stretched to a lifetime. And I'm sure you know the rest."

And they did. Allander had been kidnapped from a shopping mall, lured by one Vincent P. Grubbs into a blue van and taken to a filth-ridden motel where he'd been held for three days. The Columbus Motel. If those three days had seemed like a lifetime to the Atlasias, Jade could only guess what they had felt like to Allander.

"What store were you in when you first realized you'd lost him?" Jade asked. It might have been a cruel question, but he wanted to gauge how they spoke about it-especially if he was going to ask the big question later.

"Shoes. A shoe store," Thomas said. "I was looking at a pair of brown tasseled shoes the fourth row up from the bottom and I fail to see the significance of this, Mr. Marlow." His voice rose, ever so slightly.

That was good. It gave Jade a chance to isolate Darby. If Allander had, in fact, raped or attempted to rape her, he wasn't sure she would've told her husband. She was strong enough to have carried it around by herself to save Thomas the agony. Judging from their closeness, Jade would've bet she had told him, but it just wasn't worth taking the chance.

He would ask Darby, and he would ask her in private. Dr. Yung thought it was a gamble to pursue this point, but Jade felt it in his gut, and his gut had yet to be wrong.

"Thomas, I can see this is hard for you. Perhaps I'd better speak to Darby alone," Jade said.

"Is that okay?" Travers asked.