What She Saw... Read Online Free PDF Page A

one. She didn’t want Roberta to worry the way she had last Halloween when she and Brenda had stayed out trick-or-treating until well past dark, even though they were supposed to be home before. But at the very last minute they’d heard about a “really good house” on the other side of town rumored to be handing out silver dollars as if they were M&M’s, and they’d been unable to resist.
    As it turned out, that “really good house” had been handing out chocolate coins, which were tasty but not worth getting into trouble for, which is exactly what Phoebe and Brenda got in. Roberta hid the very candy Phoebe had worked so hard to obtain. Brenda wasn’t allowed to watch TV for a week—a major blow considering the Cuddihy kids, despite their religious background, usually had unrestricted access to network television, whereas Phoebe and Emily were limited to one hour per day. (They could see all the public-television programming they wanted—as if they wanted it. At least, Phoebe didn’t.)
    Indeed, it was only under duress that she subjected herself to those British period dramas that made Leonard hallucinate with pleasure. The
Masterpiece Theatre
theme music was catchy, sure. As for the plots—all those pasty English people getting worked up about who got to sit where in the barouche—Phoebe was less than riveted. Her favorite evening drama was
The Dukes of Hazzard.
There were guaranteed to be at least two good car chases per episode. And the Duke brothers—unlike Emily—always treated their kid sister, Daisy, with the utmost respect. The only problem was that the show ran a full hour. So watching it meant forgoing her otherwise daily
Brady Bunch
and
I Love Lucy
rerun fix. That’s where Brenda came in. Phoebe could always count on her best friend for detailed plot descriptions of the previous night’s shows.
    When that got boring, they’d talk about religion. Tears brimming in her lugubrious brown eyes, Brenda would implore Phoebe—herself of the gray-blue-eyed persuasion—to convert from her heretic faith. “How can I walk to school with you every morning knowing you’re going straight to hell?” was Brenda’s preferred line of reasoning.
    â€œBut I told you, we celebrate Christmas!” Phoebe would seek to reassure her. “And I swear I’ve only been to synagogue once in my entire life!”
    Never to any avail.
    BUT THAT FRIDAY night, as Phoebe and Brenda made their way “uptown,” they hardly spoke at all, such was their abject fear of their immediate surroundings. No matter that they knew every shrub along the way by heart—every mailbox, streetlight, telephone pole, and patch of grass with four-leaf clover potential, too. In fact, they walked the same six blocks to and from Whitehead Middle every weekday morning and afternoon of their school-year lives. At the advanced hour of 7:30 P.M., however, so very foreboding seemed the landmarks of their school route that they might as well have been negotiating the slums of Rio de Janeiro. The rosebushes seemed eager to prick their fingers, the telephone poles intent on crushing their skulls. There was no doubt in either girl’s mind that famed serial murderer Son of Sam, though reported to be incarcerated, was lying in wait inside the bright blue mailbox on the corner of Catalpa and Main.
    The little stone house on the corner of Briarcliff was another kind of horror story—the real kind. A year earlier, a veteran of the Vietnam War had sweet-talked his way into the basement, where he’d strangled to death a Whitehead ninth-grader in her own rec room. Brenda and Phoebe had stumbled upon the crime scene on their way to fourth grade. It had rained the night before. There were felled branches all over the street, and colored leaves blowing everywhere, and two Whitehead cop cars parked at right angles on the front lawn. And standing behind the yellow