The things they did in the dark to the baby were unspeakable. The older one had been watching crime shows on television, and so he knew about things like fingerprints and bits of skin that might be found under fingernails. It was high summer in the poorer part of Cicero, Illinois, hot and green, and beneath the heavy, pre-thunderstorm clouds and the whine of insects buzzing in the humid air, everything around the yard was open—the garage, the rickety gardening shed, the side door to the house. They’d gone scavenging in secret and picked up things like a couple of sets of dirty gardening gloves, rusty trimming shears, a hand-sized hoe fork, a partially used roll of duct tape and a flashlight from the garage. Then, while the mother was in back hanging the wash on the line—trying to save electricity and keep the ancient dryer from dumping more heat into the small, shabby house— they went into the house and took the eighteen month old girl from her crib.
And when they saw that the mother had left the five year old girl to watch over the toddler…
Well, they took her, too.