to which the therapist calls will have to be added.
“Did you have to park a cruiser in front of my house?” Beth asks.
Sergeant Mason smiles. “That’s the car I work in, ma’am.”
“I don’t think Dani’s done anything wrong.”
“Let’s hope not.”
“I think it’s the stress,” Beth says, pressing her hands to the bridge of her nose, “with school and tennis and music and college applications and so on. And I wasn’t home often enough.”
“Lots of kids are under stress these days, ma’am,” Mason says.
“I don’t think she did anything wrong. Yet you’ve parked a marked police car in front of my house. Was there any reason to bring her here? Couldn’t you have called from the station?”
101
JANET RUTH YOUNG
Dani looks out at the driveway. The elderly couple across the street methodically removes bags of groceries from the trunk. The woman passes them to the man, who carries them inside. Neither of them seems to notice the squad car. They’re sweet elderly people, but Dani stopped waving to them when she started having thoughts about yelling that they would die soon.
The cops exchange looks. “She’s your child,” Mason says.
“She’s living at this address, and she should be home.”
Beth moves closer to the door. “What will I say when people ask why a cruiser was parked in front of my house?”
Pinto smirks. “Tell them you got a visit from the parenting police.”
“I didn’t know anything about this until you walked in the door five minutes ago.”
“You should pay more attention to your kids, ma’am,” Pinto pushes.
“Kid, singular,” Beth says.
“Tell me, ma’am,” Pinto asks, “where is your husband?”
Beth smirks. “I killed him. Joke!”
“We have another call,” Mason says.
“Just one more question,” Beth asks. “Is this going to be in the papers?”
“It’s up to me if I want it in the police log. I’ve suggested you take your daughter to see somebody. I’ll check back in a week to see if you’ve done that.”
“All right,” Beth says. “But call next time. Don’t just . . . drive up like that.”
102
T H E B A B Y S I T T E R M U R D E R S
“Good luck, ma’am,” says Pinto.
Mason claps Dani’s shoulder. “No more trouble from you, okay, young lady?”
Dani has a lot of experience smiling under stress. That’s from both winning and losing tennis matches. “Thank you for bringing me home,” she tells them.
“She seems like a nice girl,” Mason tells Beth.
Because Beth has been painting, the windows are open. Dani hears Officer Pinto on his way to the car.
“Nice girl? She’s a freaking whack job,” he says to Mason.
“And it’s always the rich parents who have their heads in the sand.”
103
26
“Oh, thank God it’s over. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how to say it. Can you see why I had trouble making people understand, because it’s so weird? But now I told and babysitting is finally over.”
Dani kept it together when the police were in the house.
Now she feels like throwing up tears. She’s taller than her mother, but she needs the sensation of someone solid and established taking charge of her situation. She inhales the smells of her mother’s lotion and paint and fabric softener.
Beth hugs Dani. “It’s all right. It’s all right,” she says into Dani’s hair. “Dani, did you tell me everything? Did you hurt Alex?”
“Mom, of course not!”
“Is there anything you didn’t tell the police? Did you ever touch Alex . . . sexually? If there is anything at all, this isn’t the time to keep secrets. You have to tell me now so we can get a lawyer.”
“Alex? No. That’s so gross.” The grossness of it propels Dani into walking away, the same way Shelley helplessly waved her hands while thinking about touching Mr. Gabler.
“Then what did you do?”
“I never did anything. I kept picturing weird things happening, T H E B A B Y S I T T E R M U R D E R S
and I didn’t want them to happen, so I told Mrs. Alex I couldn’t babysit anymore. That’s all.”
“What kind of weird things?”
“Like stabbing him or something.”
Beth follows Dani to the far corner of the room. “I wish I could see inside your mind. You look the same as you did yesterday. But the things I hear you saying . . . We have to get a doctor.”
“Okay, we’ll get a doctor.”
“So what did you tell Mrs. Alex? How much does she know?”
“That I had thoughts of harming Alex.”
“Why did you tell her that?”
“So