Now that the news is good Wes isn’t feeling so kindly toward Hannah. He has thought to ask her why she hadn’t left a note for him at the house, what she’d expected him to think, arriving home to find no one there … “Like the Mary Celeste, d’you know what that was?”

  “Mary—who?” Hannah is baffled, chagrined.

  So quickly Wes’s moods can shift. So quickly a conversation with him becomes adversarial.

  “Not who, what. But never mind.”

  Hannah apologizes. She’d been distracted, anxious about Katya …

  But why should she apologize to him, Hannah thinks. So far as Wes knows, he is the guilty party having been away at this crucial time.

  Hannah recalls, her father had been equally moody, unpredictable. Jovial, smiling, (seemingly) delighted with Hannah, yet the most subtle intonation in Hannah’s voice that suggested resistance, the most minute alteration of her facial expression that suggested opposition, even playful opposition, an aggressive Joker Daddy emerged to swat her down like an impudent fly.

  But Wes is more easily placated, fortunately. Once Joker Daddy became enraged about something, he could not be approached for hours.

  How rare this is, Wes and Hannah having lunch together. A late lunch in the hospital cafeteria. Hannah is light-headed with hunger but fears eating too much, too quickly. Wes had an enormous breakfast in Chicago but he’s hungry as hell, he says, eating from Hannah’s plate as well as his own.

  A special occasion, an observer might think. If Hannah had foreseen the two of them seated side by side in a restaurant booth, intent upon conversation, as close together as conspirators, she’d have been disbelieving.

  “There are some ‘passing thoughts’ it’s best you keep to yourself, Hannah.”

  Wes speaks matter-of-factly as if pointing out an obvious truth. He will not let the subject drop just yet. In silence Hannah stares at the tabletop waiting for the ordeal to end.

  “You have this habit …”

  Speaking the truth? No.

  I never utter the truth if I can avoid it.

  Best to remain quiet, rebuked. Soon Wes will lose interest in chiding her, satisfied that Hannah has acquiesced.

  Hannah thinks: Wes does have reason to punish her. But no idea what the real reason is.

  Through the long day at the hospital the Jarretts remain stalwart, stoic. To the hospital staff they are a couple. Ismelda has driven Conor home in Hannah’s car, it’s a relief to be alone together. The Jarretts together in the intensive care unit beside the bed of the sick child who drifts in and out of a fevered sleep. Into a heartbreakingly thin vein at the bruised crook of Katya’s elbow IV fluids drip continuously.

  Hannah stares at Katya’s flushed face. Scarcely able to look away.

  Hannah vows—Never again will I risk so much.

  She reaches out to take Wes’s hand. Half in dread that he won’t return the gesture, will ease away, instead he squeezes Hannah’s fingers, he is looking fatigued, vulnerable. Of course, Wes loves Katya, too. Wes is Hannah’s husband, the father of her children. Their children.

  It seems to Hannah, her strength is doubled by clutching at Wes’s hand.

  At eleven it’s suggested that they go home for the night and try to sleep. Their daughter’s condition has stabilized, they must take care of themselves now.

  Stabilized! Hannah tries to comprehend that this is good news.

  Breathe

  When I died it was not peaceful!

  When I died it was in rage!

  When I died it was a terrible struggle!

  When I died I was trying to breathe!

  When I died I was trying to breathe, trying to tear the wire from around my throat, trying to dig my fingers beneath the wire tightening around my throat to tear the wire from my throat, to breathe

  to breathe

  to breathe

  BODY OF MISSING 12-YEAR-OLD FOUND IN BLOOMFIELD PARK BELIEVED TO BE 7TH VICTIM OF “BABYSITTER”

  “Isn’t this—terrible! These poor, poor children …”

  “Why on earth can’t the police find whoever is doing this …”

  “… a monster, a pervert, someone must know who it is …”

  “… if you were this poor boy’s mother …”

  “… from a foster home, probably doesn’t have a mother …”

  “… from this Catholic orphanage in Ferndale …”

  “… Royal Oak …”

  “… not from here …”

  “… not from here, most of them, why are they being ‘displayed’ here …”

  “… ‘psychopaths’ they call them, not crazy, just monsters …”

  “… all our children are terrified …”

  “… we are terrified.”

  Uplifted female voices with the sound of distressed, indignant birds, in the main dining room of Machus Red Fox Restaurant, Telegraph Road, Bloomfield Hills, on a Thursday in late April 1977. Most of the restaurant’s patrons are businessmen, the air is hazy with cigarette smoke. Hannah is one of eight beautifully dressed women at a large round table but Hannah is not involved in the vehement conversation, indeed Hannah is appalled, dismayed that one of the women has brought that morning’s Detroit Free Press to lunch with her.

  Trying not to hear her friends’ voices. Oh, why!

  Obscene subject of the Oakland County serial abductions, rapes, murders, “body displays” taken up at such a time, a time meant to be celebratory, a time for relaxation and laughter, before a waiter has even brought the women their drinks … Hannah doesn’t want to see the front page of the newspaper with its glaring banner headline, photograph of the most recent child victim, photographs of previous victims, several articles devoted to the Oakland County Child Killer a.k.a. Babysitter, as Hannah had not wished to see the identical front page that morning when Wes was reading it in the kitchen, so rapt in attention he’d ignored the scrambled eggs cooling on his plate.

  She’d asked Wes not to speak of the abductions when the children were within earshot. Above all not to utter the name Babysitter if there was a chance that they might overhear.

  And please would he dispose of the newspaper when he was finished with it, don’t just leave it in the kitchen for Conor to discover. Nothing more terrible, Hannah thinks, than photographs of smiling children in the newspaper above captions identifying them as murder victims.

  As Joker Daddy used to caution: Never smile when your picture is taken.

  Why?—you might ask.

  Because the picture will outlive you and you will look like a Goddamn chump, grinning when you’re dead.

  “And what do you think, Hannah?”—one of the women is asking.

  Among her women friends Hannah Jarrett has a reputation for being warm, gracious, funny, smart. But not too smart.

  But now, Hannah’s mind is blank, they’ve been discussing—what?

  Still on the subject of Babysitter. Oh, why!

  “I—I think it’s—terrible … Tragic.”

  Hannah stammers, weakly. For what is there to say, in mere words? The last thing Hannah wants to be thinking about in the festive interior of the Red Fox is murdered children, still less murdered naked children displayed in public places.

  Thursday lunches with women friends are supposed to be mirthful, lighthearted, and gossipy, not grim and fearful. Not so serious.

  It turns out, all of the women at the table, excepting Hannah, have children between the ages of ten and fourteen—the age category of Babysitter’s victims.

  Unfortunate for them, to have to care so much. To feel fear, apprehension, while Hannah is spared, her children are too young for Babysitter.

  Unless Babysitter changes his habits, and seeks out younger children.

  “… he takes them when they’re alone, hitchhiking …”

  “… hanging out at the mall …”

  “… unsupervised. Left to ‘run loose’ …”

  “… in parking lots, vacant lots …”

  Her children are protected at all times. Picked up at school, never alone in the house, always under the eye of an adult.

  Playdates with other children have been curtailed, or halted. Conor and Katya are disappointed but Hannah is relieved. Being a mother is so much simpler if there are fewer choices.

  “… something has changed! In America.”

  “Yes! Definitely.”

  “Since the sixties …”

  “… all those marches, protests …”

  “… assassinations.”

  Hannah agrees: Some sort of trust has been broken. Bitter cynicism in American life as deadly as a drop of anthrax in a reservoir.

  Out of this, not surprising that Babysitter has emerged.

  “… things the newspapers can’t print, terrible details …”

  “… you’d never see on TV …”

  “… not sure what ‘ligature’ is …”

  “… ‘sex torture’ … they can’t print that.”

  “… ‘rape’ … ‘sadistic’ …”

  “… you hear, I mean I’ve heard, he ‘revives’ them and—and chokes them until they pass out, then …”

  “… oh, stop! That’s disgusting! Terrible …”

  “… such sick souls in this world. ‘Perverts’ …”

  “… men.”

  Hannah shudders, wishing she were elsewhere. Why are her women friends so obsessed with this lurid story!

  As, not so long ago, you couldn’t avoid hearing of Vietnam War atrocities. Those photographs of napalmed children!—victims of American warfare.

  Hannah rises abruptly from her seat. “Excuse me!”—needing to escape to the women’s room.

  Making her way through the buzzing restaurant. Eyes light upon her, casually assessing as men do, half conscious, without intention, some of the men acquaintances or even friends, recognizing her as Wes Jarrett’s wife, which one are you and the answer is: His.

  A solace! A place to hide: women’s restrooms in restaurants like the Red Fox, scent of expensive soaps, hand cream, linen towels, rosy wallpaper, and mirrors shrewdly lit to flatter.

  Babysitter! Hannah shivers, her teeth are on edge.

  As a child, frightened of fairy tales. Once upon a time is no-time, no-place.

  Shadows on the ceiling. Daddy longlegs. The door to her room easing inward, ajar. His figure, very still.

  The first abductions had been in the winter, in Oakland County. Since he displayed his small victims in snowy places, parks, wooded areas, municipal lawns the unknown killer came to be known as Snow Killer.

  Always the children were discovered, early in the morning, lying naked in the snow, thin bare arms crossed over their chests, clothes neatly folded beside them.

  With the passage of time, as the snow melted, and the killings persisted into spring and summer, the killer came to be known as the Oakland County Child Killer.

  Eventually, a name devised by a local reporter that caught on immediately with the media: Babysitter.

  Not a good name, Hannah thinks. A name that “normalizes” its subject. Trivializes. Blurs the borders of gender.

  Seven children have been abducted. No (evident) connection has been found among the victims: The first was a resident at the Saint Vincent Children’s Mission in the suburb of Royal Oak, Michigan, a Catholic group home for boys between the ages of six and eighteen; others lived with single mothers, or with some semblance of families, in more “normal” households.

  It isn’t believed that individual children have been targeted, rather the abductions have been random and “opportunistic”: a child happens to be available, the abductor strikes. Babysitter is a predator on the prowl, seemingly tireless, with an uncanny skill at eluding detection. One of his victims is glimpsed crossing a parking lot but never emerging from it; a vehicle is glimpsed departing but too far away to be identified. Or, a young adolescent is hitchhiking on Woodward Avenue after school …

  So far, Babysitter’s hunting grounds have been limited to the suburbs north of Detroit. But there is no reason to assume that Babysitter is a resident of one of these suburbs.

  Babysitter is a “white man”—“not old and not young”—“dark-skinned”—“light-dark-skinned”—“not white.” He is “stocky”—“maybe has a beard”—driving “some kind of van”—“some kind of pickup”—“blue hatchback, maybe a Vega”—“dark gray four-door sedan, maybe a Chevy.” By the spring of 1977 there have been more than fifteen hundred calls to local police from self-declared witnesses.

  Most calls are useless, of course. Some calls are vindictive, “witnesses” hoping to incriminate relatives, neighbors, former spouses. But virtually no call, police say, can be disregarded.

  Many leads, but just a few “persons of interest.”

  The child victims have been discovered within a circumference of approximately six miles. Those who discover them report that they thought at first they were seeing mannequins, or “angels.”

  Could not believe my eyes, what I was seeing! Had to walk right up to it—to her—even then, it was hard to focus my eyes to see. Right there on the ground, out in the open, looking like she was asleep, this little angel girl …

  Of the seven victims only two have been girls. Short-haired, wearing clothes that could be mistaken for boys’ clothes, so police have speculated that Babysitter may have mistaken them for boys.

  … like whoever Babysitter is, he wants to show he takes care.

  Bathing the children’s battered bodies, after he has sexually abused them. After he has tortured and murdered them. As in a cruel parody of mothering, washing and ironing their clothing, including underwear and socks, folding the clothing neatly beside them.

  As his mother had taken care, maybe. Or—maybe not.

  Hannah has been regarding herself critically in the restroom mirror. In her face there is a new maturity, she thinks. Since her humiliation at the hotel. Since the nightmare of Katya’s illness.

  A face registering chagrin, humility. One who has had a close call.

  Yes, but I have learned. I am no longer that person.

  “Hannah?—are you all right?”

  One of her friends has entered the ladies’ room, smiling quizzically at her. Hannah is annoyed, of course she is all right.

  “… drinks are slow today. We’ve been here, how long …”

  Hannah isn’t keen on speaking with the other woman. Especially as the woman heads for a toilet stall.

  Returning to the large round table in the buzzing restaurant just as smiling slim-hipped Mario is bringing the ladies their drinks, white wine for most of them, prosecco for Hannah, hardly what you’d call a drink.

  “And you, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  Giddy with relief also to see that the damned Free Press has been put away, is nowhere in sight.

  “Children Not Loved & Not Deserved”

  Next day, an anonymously sent message is received by the reporter at the Detroit Free Press who has been covering the Oakland County child abductions/killings for the past eighteen months, who’d coined the catchy name “Babysitter.”

  Hand printed, neat block letters in purple ink on a sheet of stiff construction paper the innocent hue of daffodils. The kind of paper kindergartners color on, with Crayolas:

  BABYSITTER TAKES ONLY CHILDREN NOT LOVED & NOT DESERVED

  Something mocking, derisive in the very color of the construction paper: pale, pale yellow. The color of hope.

  For: Included with the cryptic message are three eight-by-eleven photographs of the fourth child victim, a ten-year-old boy abducted “in broad daylight” at the rear of a strip mall on Woodward Avenue, Birmingham. In the photographs the boy, lifeless, naked, hands folded across his narrow hairless chest, lies displayed in an Oakland County park several miles from the strip mall.

  Soft-focus close-ups of the child, in neutral colors, blurry at the edges as in a dream or (as a local art historian will note) as in photographs of children by the nineteenth-century photographer Julia Margaret Cameron. A (deceased) child as an aesthetic shape rather than a human child, wraithlike, face peaceful in death, small mouth slightly parted.

  Ligature marks visible, if the viewer looks closely.

  It will be speculated: How brazen, how reckless, the child killer dared to linger in this public place to take photographs after he’d positioned the body on the ground where another would have fled; is there not, in Babysitter, a perverse sort of tenderness, love in such a ritual?

  Forensics experts examine the daffodil-colored construction paper, the photographs, the purple-ink block letters.

  The manila envelope addressed to Hal Hornsby, c/o Detroit Free Press, Detroit, MICHIGAN is meticulously examined but yields no clues.

  Observers note: What is curious (amid so much that is curious) is that the child killer has now openly acknowledged “Babysitter” as if with pride; and, though much effort must have gone into the mailing, the envelope was received at the Free Press stamped INSUFFICIENT POSTAGE with only two first-class stamps affixed.

  As if he’d wanted to save the price of an extra stamp. A compulsive personality, obsessive in details yet hyper-frugal. Prone to overplanning, hyper-cautious yet likely to overlook the most crucial matter: whether his message would be received at all.

  Armed

  Laying them out naked, that’s pretty obvious: bare white skin.”

  Wes’s voice quakes with rage. Wes is certain that Babysitter isn’t from one of the suburbs (as police seem to think) but from Detroit, showing his contempt for suburban residents by dumping (white) children’s bodies in (white) communities like Bloomfield Hills.

  “It’s terrorism. ‘Destabilizing.’ Targeting white children. Can’t be an accident that all of the victims have been white. He strips them naked and takes their pictures to rub it in our faces.”

  And: “Imagine how we’d feel, if one of our children was one of them.”

  Yes, Wes has purchased a gun. No, Wes doesn’t want anyone to know about it.

  Hannah is upset: Wes bought the Smith & Wesson Magnum in a Detroit gun shop without consulting her. Unknown to her, too, he’d acquired a Michigan homeowner’s license for a gun, though not for a “concealed weapon”; his gun cannot be taken from the house.