sorrow in her eyes, deep and penetrating, that no amount of cats or clutter would ever ease. She suffered, and she accepted her own suffering. She gazed at us now, knowing these questions would hurt, and resigning herself to her fate.
“Thank you for seeing us on such short notice,” I said.
“You said it’s about your sister?”
“Some new questions have come up, regarding the death of Donnie Johnson—”
“You mean his murder?”
“Yes. These detectives, they’d like to ask you about that time. About Shana, Donnie, your neighbors. All of it.”
Mrs. Davies cocked her head to the side. She frowned, seeming unsure, then relented with a short nod. “Well, it’s been a while now, you know. Lucky for you, though, seems with age, my memory prefers the past to the present. Ask me about last week, I don’t know that I could help you. But thirty years ago . . .” She sighed. “Thirty years ago, I still remember things I’d rather forget.”
“Tell us about Shana Day,” D.D. spoke up.
Mrs. Davies shot me a look, as if she wasn’t sure how to proceed in my presence.
“It’s okay,” I assured her. “I have no illusions regarding my sister. You don’t need to worry about speaking ill of her in front of me.”
“She’s soulless,” Mrs. Davies stated immediately. No emotion, just matter-of-fact. “Oh, the number of kids Jeremiah and I had taken in by then. Troubled kids, sad kids, angry kids. Boys and girls, all ages. We thought we’d seen it all, could handle anything. We were arrogant. Pride is a sin, and the devil sent Shana to be our undoing.”
“Did you have other kids at the time?” Phil asked.
“Three others. An older boy, Samuel, who was seventeen and had stayed with us for three years. Jeremiah had taken him under his wing, had taught him carpentry. It’s an issue with the system, you know. The kids turn eighteen, and that’s that. The state turns them loose, ready or not. The older boy, Sam, he was nervous about what was to come. But Jeremiah thought he could get him a job with a friend. And we’d told him he could stay with us; he was like our son. Didn’t matter what the state had to say. We weren’t turning our backs on him.”
“Do you still hear from him?” D.D. asked.
“Yes. He lives in Allston now. Comes by when he can. Course, everyone’s so busy these days. And carpentry’s not the job it used to be. He travels a lot, to find work. I don’t see him, maybe, as often as I used to.”
I noticed that on her lap, Mrs. Davies was clutching her hands so tightly, the knuckles had gone white. One of the cats, a gray one, nudged her. She obediently stroked its back. On my own lap, the orange tabby was purring away, a strangely soothing backdrop for such a troubling conversation.
“And the other kids?” Phil continued.
Mrs. Davies rattled them off. A little girl, eight, most beautiful mocha skin, who’d been there for only two months, then had bounced back to her crack-addicted mother. Plus a five-year-old boy, Trevor, whose parents had died in a car crash. The state had been working on locating other members of his family who might be willing to take him in. In the meantime, he was set up with the Davieses.
“And then Shana, of course. The state had warned us she was a problem child. She’d already been in six or seven homes in the past two years, which is never a good sign. Problems getting along with other kids, problems with authority. A cutter.” Mrs. Davies paused. “You know what that is, right?”
“She used razors to cut her arms and legs,” D.D. supplied.
“Well, yes. That was the most about it I knew, too. But Shana, um, cut a little higher on the legs than strictly necessary. More, like”—Mrs. Davies’s voice dropped to a whisper—“up there,” she said meaningfully. “I thought she was having her girl time and offered her appropriate products. But no, she was bleeding from her own hand. First time I brought it up, she just stared at me. Not, thank you for offering assistance, no appreciation for someone else trying to look out for her, just . . . nothing. I asked why she hurt herself like that. She shrugged, said why not.
“And that was Shana. There was nothing you could say or do. . . . I’d catch her stealing red-handed, her fingers in my purse. She wouldn’t deny it, just shrug