CHAPTER 35
THE ELECTRICITY WAS still out when the killer made himself a cold meal, ham on rye with a dill pickle. He’d never tasted a dill pickle until middle school, when the band sold them to raise funds for a trip to perform at Disneyland. That’s how he met Toby.
Toby played the clarinet. A tall, skinny boy who favored polo shirts and skipped, rather than walked. A pickle pusher. Toby wanted that trip to Disneyland and he hit up everyone he passed. A quarter changed hands, a pickle was passed, a friendship was made.
Toby was the only one he ever brought home, and Toby seemed to understand and respect the peculiarities of the mortuary and the ways of the woods behind the funeral home where they played. Sometimes they caught small animals, or mummified grasshoppers. He taught Toby the
