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“He was living up there and they didn’t know?” Sadie asked. She sounded intrigued.
Dad nodded. “Possibly. Definitely spending a lot of time there. Probably came downstairs when nobody was home.”
Sunshine rubbed her arms. “Her mother said afterward she’d heard things moving around up there for months. She thought it was squirrels.”
I looked back at Dad. “And they never knew?”
“Not until afterward.”
Sunshine shuddered. “Hence my lifelong policy on attics.”
Riot glanced at Dad. “Still couldn’t touch Bancroft.”
Dad’s expression changed. “Bancroft,” he agreed.
The Bancroft Butcher was one of the worst.
“He picked them,” Dad explained, carving into his steak as though the subject deserved no interruption to his appetite. “That was the part that always bothered me. He didn’t pick victims. He picked families.”
Sunshine stopped halfway through cutting a potato. “Buck.”
“What? You got to talk about attics. Our turn.”
“We’re eating.”
“So is he,” Riot pointed out.
Marion elbowed him. Hard. Riot grunted and kept chewing.
It was always funny watching a tiny, delicate blond princess running a houseful of giants.
We were at the Bishop house.
Rook had gotten home from the hardware store late and was still wearing his work shirt. Ruckus had come straight from the restaurant smelling faintly like fried food. Micah’s tennis bag was dumped beside the back door, and Clayton and Chief had both showered after football and changed into T-shirts and jeans, their hair still wet, both of them looking exhausted.
I’d changed after school into a fitted white tank and cut-off jean shorts, my hair loose down my back.
Normal. All of us together. Dad telling murder stories over steak.
Completely normal.
Sadie’s parents were, in her words, “having another episode of whatever the hell their marriage is,” so she’d migrated to our family for the evening. She sat beside me, listening with considerably more interest than Sunshine thought appropriate.
“What do you mean by ‘picked families’?” Sadie asked cheerfully.
The dads couldn’t have found a better audience than Sadie. She loved the grisly cop stories more than anyone.
Sunshine pointed her fork at her. “Do not encourage them.”
“I’m not encouraging. I’m asking for clarification.”
“That’s how it starts,” Marion told her.
Dad smiled. He liked Sadie.
She had the unfortunate habit of asking exactly the questions he wanted somebody to ask.
“He found families he admired,” Dad continued. “Sometimes he watched them for months. Learned their schedules. Schools, jobs, routines. What time they went to bed. Which bedroom light went out last. Which doors they used. Who came home first.”
