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Chapter 23
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in There’s Someone Inside Your House, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma, Loss, and Grief
Guilt, Shame, and Redemption
Alienation
Gossip vs. Communication
Inner Change
Summary
Analysis
After Makani and Ollie give statements to the police at Greeley’s, Chris drives them back to the Larsson house. He leaves them alone to take a call in the other room. Makani can’t believe they were wrong about David going after Caleb instead of Zachary. Ollie’s beginning to think David isn’t targeting bullies. Makani agrees, but neither of them can figure out what David’s angle is. Chris returns and tells Ollie and Makani that David has just killed Katie Kurtzman. Chris has to return to work, so he drives Ollie and Makani to the hospital to be with Grandma Young.
That David Ware attacked Caleb instead of Makani forces Makani to rethink her previous theory about David’s motives for killing. One of Caleb’s most distinctive features is his status as an overachiever, and David’s other victims have been stand-out students as well. By contrast, David is completely forgettable and untalented. So it's possible that he’s targeting students out of jealousy.
Themes
On the way to the hospital, Makani remembers something: Katie Kurtzman had texted her this morning wanting to talk. Makani had thought it was odd, since Katie and her had never talked before. Chris thinks it’s weird, too, but Ollie thinks it was just Katie being her usual nice self. Ollie asks Chris what the police know about David’s movements. Chris tells them that after attacking Makani’s house, David went upriver and back into town. Then he hid out in Greeley’s, assuming correctly that everyone would be busy searching for him in the countryside. After attacking Katie, David stole her Ford Fiesta and left town. Ollie, Makani, and Chris tense and release every time a similar-looking car passes by.
David has had numerous opportunities to leave Osborne and travel far away where he could likely evade capture, yet he continues to return home. This tells readers, perhaps, that his killing spree isn’t over. It also suggests that the town of Osborne itself is somehow significant to David’s murderous plans—he wants to kill people in Osborne, not anywhere else.
Themes
Ollie and Makani arrive at Grandma Young’s room hospital room. She’s asleep and heavily sedated. A TV in the room is airing more news coverage about the attacks. Finally, at daybreak, the TV announces breaking news in the Osborne Slayer case: security footage has placed David at a truck stop outside Boys Town, Nebraska, at 11:00 last night. He hitched a ride with an unidentified truck driver headed back toward Osborne. The trucker hadn’t recognized him. “The killer ke[eps] going home,” thinks Makani.
Once more, we see that David “ke[eps] going home.” That Makani explicitly spells out this fact is further evidence that this is an important detail to keep in mind as she—and the reader—try to get to the bottom of why David has chosen to kill.
Themes
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