Alex sighed, which pissed me off.

“I’m sorry,” I said, surprised by how forceful it came out. “Are we an annoyance to you? Are we taking time out of your day?”

Dan and Gregg said nothing. Alex looked at them and then at me and started stepping back away from me, while I stepped forward toward him. He seemed to get smaller and smaller with every word.

“We have been terrorized by someone because of you. He made us afraid, and I’m almost certain the police are looking at us for murder because there were body parts in our yard.” I continued walking forward. Alex continued walking back.

“Now here you are sighing and acting like all of this is just another day. No! You don’t get to do that.”

Alex was backed up against the wall now. He slid down into a crouch, buried his head in his arms, and started sobbing.

Dan and Greg were now behind me. Alex murmured something.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s not enough,” I told him. “Saying I’m sorry and crying is not enough.”

Greg walked up next to me and looked down at Alex. “Did you kill my dog?”

Alex didn’t look up. He just stared at his hands. Dan had moved to the doorway of the room.

“Carla did,” Alex said. “She was into some pretty weird witchcraft after her parents died. She became very strange.”

He looked at Dan in the doorway, then at Greg, then at me, and asked, “What are y’all going to do to me?”

I looked at Dan. He raised his eyebrows and shrugged his shoulders. He indicated that he would do whatever I wanted to do. It was all up to me.

“We’re not going to do anything to you,” I said. “You are going to the police. You are going to tell them everything you’ve done. Before you do that, though, you are going to make all of this stop.”

Alex stood. He walked to the door. Dan stepped aside. Alex walked to the room next door to the one we were in and locked the door.