BETHANY LOOKED AROUND the room, blinking back sleep. Jon was gone. From where she lay on the couch, she could see the open doorway to the cellar stairs. A phosphorescent glow pulsed from below, as if from a laboratory where bizarre experiments were being conducted. You’d think they’d turn off the equipment, she thought.
She wanted to close the door but did not want to get closer to it. She wanted to flee. Now. Leave her dream house. She felt filthy and afraid in it. She wanted to scour herself, let hot water rinse her flesh if not her mind of last night. She wanted to dress in new clothes, cut her hair, transform herself into a woman who knew nothing of this world. Take her son out in the fresh air. Breathe. She feared whoever had killed Jessica would be back. That this was not the end of things; but just the beginning.
She admired Jon for his work. He’d made a career of taking cases for underprivileged victims of violence. Especially juveniles. Boys. But this case. It was trouble from its inception. Dangerous no matter how you looked at it. The couple he was representing had had their civil rights violated, and Bethany believed in their cause; but they were not victims of the sort Jon normally took. He did not take civil cases. He prosecuted. Yet, he had taken this case, against Bethany’s wishes. They’d quarreled. Bethany had warned him the case would bring out a radicals. They’d blame Jon. Target him. Target his family. Jon had called her paranoid.
It could have been me in the cellar, Bethany thought. Me.
Bethany lifted baby Jon from his crib. She stroked his head as she saw the detective from the night before, the woman, out on the back lawn.