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Good for you, the detective thought. That took guts for a sixteen-year-old kid.
The detective had seen Barbara's blackened, flycovered body. He had seen a number of
deceased in his day, and this particular deceased was no glory. Nonetheless the detective
had marked out the blonde hair, the freckles (which had faded in death), the daintiness of
the girl in general, and there had been a pressure at the inside comers of the eyes that
meant unmanliness. He could see an adolescent boy doing what he did.
The questioning of Bobby and Cindy was close but short. Dr. Adams was there to see that
they were not overtaxed.
Bobby, who was the more reliable observer, detailed the man who came in with a knife
(Cruz had one; the children had found it) and forced Barbara to lock them in the closet.
That was it until John came and let them out. In every other way his story corresponded
with the other kids' stories.
The detective looked over at Dr. Adams and decided to question no further. People like that
shouldn't be put through criminal proceedings.
Cindy went last, and she seemed the most untouched. By this time the detective bad heard
how she had sobbed and cried in the closet all night because she was afraid. It certainly
didn't show in questioning.
Now she was out, and the detective noted how swiftly things pass with the young. Her
mischievous little eyes sparkled: she almost seemed to enjoy the attention of being
questioned. She seemed already a woman with secrets. She was coy and cute. Even if
Dianne were included, the little girl seemed to be the least scared of any of the children
who had been with the deceased. What was odder yet-this was the detective's opinion
only-if Cindy could have her dearest wish, she would want to look like and be like her dead
baby-sitter.
The Pickers in the county were also questioned, and they answered evasively and
nervously. Yes, some of them knew Cruz. No, he wasn't a troublemaker ex-
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actly, but he was funny. He refused the wage sometimes, and he refused to live in the
quarters provided. He went off by himself sometimes, they never knew where. Yes, they
had seen him just before the white girl was killed; he hadn't been working, but he had
money to spend at Tillman's store. Go him with god.
The detective talked with the county coroner. The girl had been sexually assaulted,
tortured, and killed by strangulation at or within a time that corresponded with the five
kids' stories. There was no way of telling if the man, Cruz, had done it; the coroner had to
examine him in virtually two halves. The detective could go for the rest of his evidence to
the fingerprint material supplied by the state police. (The place stunk of fingerprints: only
someone stupid would have left them in so many places, they said.) That closed the case;
the detective's work was done.
The girl's body lay in the morgue, waiting for her parents. Not far away lay the body of her
killer.
Stupid waste, the detective thought.
The Adams came home, of course, but they knew about Barbara's death before they got
there. Dr. Adams had called from New York with the happy news of their arrival, and he had
gotten the unhappy news from a neighbor who was substituting for the dead baby-sitter
that Barbara was dead. And the children were all right so far, but get home fast.
So the long-awaited-awaited by so many people for so many reasons-took place. The
Adams came into Baltimore on the shuttle down from New York and were met by another
neighbor, Mr. Tillman, and driven to a desolate home and crying children.
Within the year they moved.
The house was drenched in sorrow. The trees hung that winter; the sky hung overhead; and
it rained all spring. Pretty, springy, athletic Barbara in the blue cotton dress with the floral
print, the girl who got off the bus in Bryce, had been killed there, and the whole land was
sick. Dr. Adams moved, and afterward the
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house stood vacant nearly half a year-weeds grew up through the kitchen steps by the
river; the rooms (Barbara's, of course) and the hall and bathroom and in· tended rec room,
fell to dustiness-and eventually it was sold to a new group from Wilmington with noisy dogs
and drinking friends who loved the place, but they were never very happy there. A
fundamental sorrow infected the very ground. (This was true, although they razed the
tenant house, and planted over it the second season following.)
The children, of course, had future lives that began immediately. What would happen as
their future histories unrolled is open to wonder.
Did Paul crack? That would be a question. And if he began to show signs of it, did Dianne
have to take steps to stop it?
A more mundane thought. Did John make the varsity, and if so, what did he think about
during that season? And if he did and found a girl who liked foot· ball players, whom did he
think of when he kissed her, and what did his eyes look like to her then?
Bobby and Cindy-Cindy with her love of telling things sooner or later-what became of
them? When Bobby's sense of duty=-excellently executed-was balanced against his later
judgment on what he might have done, what became of him? When-possibly years later-he
had the intellectual tools to think about god and man and philosophy and what-ought-to-
be-done, what did he do then? How did it affect him?
Cindy, when she became the housewife and silken pussy cat on a cushion she was always
going to be, did she drink too much? Did the failing of telling secrets come to the fore?
Did Freedom Five ever meet again per se? What did they talk about? Did they ever play the
game again? Even years later when they were grown-ups themselves with more adequate
means? Or did life complicate and close them off forever?
Touch the petal of a flower and shake a star.
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Little things intrude.
What of Barbara's role afterward? Barbara, who thinks of you?
Barbara's mother and father were, of course, equally killed. It is not possible to lose a child;
it runs against the current of things. Barbara's parents went on living, but only because
they had to; they kept pictures of her around their ever silent house.
Barbara's nominal boyfriend, Ted, read about her death in the newspapers and had a very
unpleasant thought. He was shocked, unbelieving, sad, deprived of something in his life,
and he was genuinely sorry for Barbara. Since he had never had her, however (in fact, he
had only had one girl so far and paid for that), she exited from his life as the forever
unattainable girl. Her worth was heightened, and he wondered what it would have been
like to do that to her. Simply by having the thought, he changed his own life. He knew
himself, and that is a sort of death in itself.
He would have made a good but rather a strange husband for her.
Terry-this would certainly have astonished Barbara-was the most nearly destroyed of them
all. She heard about it when she got back from her summer at the Cape. She went down to
the newspaper and dug up the stories of Barbara's death and then went home to fling
herself on the bed and cry in a way that people rarely cry.