Page 88 of Holmes, Margaret and Poe

“It’s okay, Frankie,” his mother choked out. “Just go inside and finish your show.”

“Will you come watch with us?”

“In a minute, baby.”

He reluctantly shut the door.

Mrs. McCoy gazed up at us. “How do I explain this to him? He idolizes Dalton.”

“It’s going to be very hard, ma’am,” Sampson said. “Which is why we can call somebody for you.”

She nodded but looked miserable. “My sister, Judy.”

Mrs. McCoy gave us the number. Sampson went down off the porch and called.

I sat beside her. “I know it’s not enough, but we will catch whoever did this.”

She shrugged. “He did it. That can’t be taken back.”

“No. It can’t.”

Mrs. McCoy broke down again, then put her hand across her mouth and shook her head violently. “I can’t go to pieces. I just can’t.”

“That will come later,” I said. “But I’d like to ask you some questions if you don’t mind.”

She swallowed hard. “Go ahead.”

Over the course of the next few minutes, I learned that her husband had told her the night before that he was getting up for his five a.m. CrossFit class. She didn’t hear him leave their bed. She had no idea why he would have been at Tyler Elementary at four thirty in the morning.

Sampson returned and said, “Your sister is on her way.”

“Thank you,” she said.

“Glad to help,” Sampson said.

I asked if she knew the passwords for his phone, laptop, and iPad.

She gave us the phone and laptop passwords. “He doesn’t own an iPad,” she said.

“We found one in a briefcase in his truck,” Sampson said.

Mrs. McCoy shook her head again. “We … he couldn’t afford something like that. Money has been kind of tight.”

We let it drop, though I suddenly wanted to know what exactly was on the iPad and indeed on all of McCoy’s electronics.

“Is there anything else?” she said. “My sister will be right along. She doesn’t live far, and the kids —”

“Just one more quick question,” I said. “Did Dalton ever have problems with the law when he was younger? I mean, as a juvenile?”

She frowned, then nodded. “He was embarrassed about it. He stole a pair of cleats from a sporting-goods store in his home-town and got caught. They expunged it from his record when he was eighteen. Why?”

“Just something we noticed about several of the other victims,” Sampson said.

“That they did something illegal as kids?”

“Correct,” I said. “Whether it matters or not, we don’t know yet.”

A Jeep Wrangler came squealing into the driveway. An older woman in a sweatshirt, leggings, and running shoes burst out of it, calling, “Karen!”

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