The Judas Child (37 page)

Even now he had a companion. The shadow under his bed was a constant presence, a reminder that his own mind was far from stable. This evening, he had given up the fight to call the thing by its true name—insanity. He accepted it now, and at the same time, he despised this debased entity, so smitten with him that it lay on the floor of his cell only to be near him.

The shadow had forgiven Mortimer Cray.

And the priest? He never would—never.

The shadow was apparently less sure of this, for hope emanated from the darkness under the bed.

 

The Christmas bells of three churches were tolling in the distance. Mortimer Cray stood in the greenhouse among his flowers, beholding a young fruit tree he had raised from a seedling. Its shape was almost feminine, thick leaves rounding out its form in an hourglass essence of the Lady Nature, the deity he loved best.

He looked away from the tree and turned inward to listen to the more insistent Old Testament God, a petulant Being prone to temper tantrums, Who was always shooting craps with the Devil and losing, then taking His losses out on the faithful. Poor Job had the bad luck to be created in the wrong half of the Bible.

Mortimer looked down on his shaking hands. He should have died years ago. Keeping him alive so long was the ultimate sadism. A gun lay in the top drawer of his bedside table. He visualized it in his hand and raised one finger to his temple, but failed with a sudden trembling, too much the coward to pull an imagined trigger.

Now a movement in the greenhouse glass had his full attention. Someone out in the yard was staring at him. It was a smooth young face so like Susan Kendall’s. Mortimer stepped backward and knocked a plant off the table. The pot shattered in a hundred pieces, but his attention was riveted on the young policeman beyond the transparent wall.

Rouge Kendall had been his youngest patient, the one he held responsible for the resurrection of his own long-dormant emotions. All through the long process of grief counseling, the child had unwittingly tortured his doctor by crying with Susan’s eyes, innocently opening up Mortimer’s soft underbelly, forcing him to empathize with a ten-year-old’s pain.

It seemed that young Rouge had lost his sister and then lost his sanity on the following day. The little boy had sat with his doctor, expressing fears over the selection of Susan’s small custom casket, for it left her no room to grow. Rather than point out the irrationality of this idea, Mortimer had interceded with the parents to give Susan an adult’s casket. At the time, he thought they would find the request absurd, but they had ordered it without protest to quell the anxiety of their living child.

At the service, he had been appalled by the effect of that tiny girl lost in the cavernous space of the white satin lining. His meddling had been a tragic mistake. He whispered a few words of apology to her corpse. And then, just for a blurred moment, her image had doubled, and he believed he had seen two children lying together. He had rubbed his eyes and told himself this was only stress. Or was it an insight into the dark mind and desires of the surviving twin? A hidden agenda for the larger casket? Suicidal ideation in a ten-year-old boy?

When faulty vision had corrected itself, and Susan was restored to her singular self, he had looked everywhere for her brother and found the child at the edge of the mourning crowd. Rouge was watching him with grave suspicion, as though, in the previous moment, he had been staring at Mortimer from the casket—from Susan’s point of view.

Muddled old fool.
This was no child in the window glass, but a full-grown man. Rouge was reaching into his coat, exposing the gun in its holster.

But it was not a gun that the young policeman was holding up to the glass. It was a black-and-white portrait of two little girls with their arms entwined around one another. He secured the paper to the window with bits of tape.

Mortimer had seen these posters everywhere in town, yet now it took him forever to read the single word below the photograph: Please.

When he lifted his eyes from the page, Rouge Kendall was gone.

 

In the smoky light of Dame’s Tavern, Rouge put up one hand to hail the bartender, then pointed to his companion, Arnie Pyle, who needed another round of bourbon.

The FBI agent was still apologizing for his ignorance. “I swear, I had no idea your sister was a kidnap victim. I never saw any material on her case.”

“The State Police found the killer on their own, and pretty quick. There was no reason to call in the FBI.”

“Short-shot me again,” said the agent to the waiting bartender. “Really thin it out this time, okay? Watered-down bourbon is my version of abstinence.”

When Pyle’s drink arrived on the coaster in front of him, it was already paid for. The bartender pointed to a silver-haired man at the end of the bar. Julian Garret lifted his own glass in salute, drained it and walked away. The FBI man seemed relieved as he watched Garret’s progress toward the door. Then he swiveled his stool around to face Rouge. “So we have a deal? From now on we share?”

They clinked glasses to seal a bargain that Rouge had not actually agreed to.

“Good.” Pyle took a healthy swig from his glass. “I already know what you got from Caruthers. The old access road downshore from the boathouse? I hear the BCI techs pulled a few tire molds from the tracks.”

Rouge nodded. He was not inclined to elaborate.

“So you figure that’s where the perp stashed his car,” said Pyle. “Nice work. Now here’s the deal. You get me those molds, and the FBI lab will tell you where the perp shops for tires—and real fast. Our guys are the best.”

“No, you don’t want those molds.” Rouge smiled, aiming at coyness and succeeding, for the agent was already rearranging himself on the stool and cocking his mouth for an argument. Rouge put up one hand to stop him. “We only got fragments of tracks. Maybe ten or twelve different tire treads and some partial shoe prints.”

“We can do a lot with that, kid. The lab can tell you—”

“Arnie, I already know where most of them came from. That road leads to the foundations of a burnt-out house. It’s a hangout for teenagers. They drink beer, smoke a little weed.”

“Our guys could still make a pass for fibers and tread fragments. Might match what we got from the boathouse. Then when we catch the perp, we can place his car near the crime scene. Deal?”

Rouge shrugged, conveying boredom and reluctance with that single gesture—less work. “Okay, Arnie, I’ll get the molds for you.” And that neatly solved Captain Costello’s problem of how to get the feds to do tedious forensic work without demanding payback. “My turn.” Rouge ran one finger around his glass. He had not yet touched his first shot of whiskey, ordered twenty minutes ago. “You seem to know Julian Garret pretty well. Are you one of his sources?”

“Absolutely not, but we’ve done a lot of drinking together.” Pyle smiled over the rim of his glass. “Julie’s not gonna hear anything from me, if that’s what you’re worried about. No leaks.”

“No, that doesn’t worry me at all—since he’s a political columnist. He’s not here for the kidnappings. Are you?”

Arnie Pyle looked deep into his glass, as if his next strategy might be written on the ice cubes. Finally, he faced Rouge with a smile that might be genuine. “My compliments, kid. All right, Julie Garret thinks my only interest is Mrs. Hubble—developing her as a witness against Senator Berman. And I
do
think she could tie that little rat bastard to mob money. So Julie was
almost
right. But I had better leads to work in Washington. If not for Ali Cray, it wouldn’t have been worth the trip.”

“How did you know Ali was in Makers Village?”

“I always know where Ali is.” The agent worked on his bourbon and never seemed to notice that Rouge’s glass remained full.

“Did Ali ever tell you that you reminded her of someone?”

“No. Why do you ask? You know her from someplace?”

“She lived in Makers Village when she was a little girl. You didn’t know that?”

“I didn’t even know she had an uncle in this town,” said Pyle. “Not till Costello asked me to bring her to the hospital. All the early paperwork I could find on Ali Cray came from the Midwest. So you knew her when she was a kid?”

“We were both in the church choir when I was nine. The next year, I was shipped off to military school, and Ali’s family left town. That’s it. Now let’s hear your story.”

“My history with Ali?” Pyle drained his glass. “I met her when I was working a case in Boston. In those days, I was still hunting for missing kids full-time—and I was the best. But Ali knew more about pedophiles than the freaks knew about themselves. I tried to recruit her for the Bureau. She turned me down flat.”

The agent put up one finger to the bartender to request another round. “So, Rouge—what you were saying before —about me reminding her of somebody. Who would that be?”

He shook his head. “You just looked familiar is all. Ever sing in a church choir?”

“Only in my mother’s dreams.” Pyle’s drink arrived and barely had time to settle on the bar before the glass was in his hand and on the rise.

“I had the impression you didn’t like Ali very much.”

“Wrong.” The agent settled his glass in the exact center of the cocktail napkin, with a precision practiced by drunks affecting sobriety. “I’m gonna be in love with Ali Cray until the day I die.”

“You have a strange way of showing it.”

Pyle was staring at Rouge’s virgin glass, untouched, and perhaps he was trying to count his own shots, for he was slow to answer. “Well, I’m not a sensitive, New Age kind of guy.”

“She dumped you, right?”

“You got it.” Pyle pushed his glass away.

“Because she was frigid, or because she was a lesbian?”

He grinned. “It was the scar. I just had to know how she got it. It was the one thing she didn’t want to tell me—so I had to know. It got to be an obsession with me. I drove that woman nuts—
never
let up on her. And then I drove her away—my own fault. But I could never quite let go of Ali. I used to follow her everywhere. She could’ve ruined my life with a stalking charge, but she didn’t. One time, I banged on her apartment door all through the night—drunk out of my mind and screaming in pain. The next morning, I woke up in the hall outside her door. There was a blanket wrapped around me. After I passed out, she’d covered me up with a damn blanket. I think she understands pain like nobody I’ve ever met before.”

“Still no idea how she got the scar?”

“No, but I think about it a lot.” Pyle was staring at his glass, and perhaps his head had cleared enough to realize that he was doing most of the giving in this new relationship of share-and-share-alike. “Do you know how she got it, Rouge? Any theories?”

“Nope. Sorry.”

“Are you at least gonna tell me why you stopped by Mortimer Cray’s place?” Pyle had just a slight edge of suspicion in his voice. “You sure didn’t stick around very long.”

“I wanted to ask him something about Paul Marie. Then I decided it might be a better idea to drive out to the prison tomorrow and talk to the man myself.”

“You mean the priest? Let me save you a trip, kid. That little scene at the hospital—that was the first I’d heard of Paul Marie. So I asked Costello, and he tells me the guy is a child killer who just blew parole. Now this freak will probably never get out of prison, but as long as he thinks he has a chance of winning over the next parole board, he won’t cooperate with you. I’ve been through this a hun—”

“Here’s something you didn’t hear from Costello. The guard at the prison said the priest wanted to kill Mortimer Cray this morning. Paul Marie has something solid. If he can trade information for parole—”

“Well, that changes everything,” said Pyle. “Mind if I come along?”

“I don’t care. Sure, come along.” And since this invitation to the prison was the last item on his wish list, Rouge slid off the bar stool. “I have to get home. My mother’s waiting dinner on me. I’ll pick you up at your hotel. Eight in the morning?”

“Eight it is. But before you go—there’s something I want you to think about, kid. You should go back to school and finish your degree. Then I can get you into the Bureau with no trouble. You got the talent to—”

“I don’t think so, Arnie. But thanks.”

“Like you’re gonna get a better offer? You got a first-class brain, Rouge. You’re wasted in a toy town with one cop car and one traffic light.”

“But we have
four
fire engines. We’re real big on fires around here. If we ever have one, we’ll be ready.”

“Makers Village doesn’t even have Chinese take-out, for Christ’s sake.”

“No need.” Rouge bent down to the table behind the bar stool to pluck a sugar packet from a bowl. He read the text printed on the back and then handed it to Pyle.

Now the man could read his proverb without the trouble of cracking open a Chinese fortune cookie. “ ‘If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise.’ ”

Arnie Pyle put up his hands in surrender, only quibbling that this quotation belonged to William Blake, who was not actually Chinese.

 

“All right,” said Gwen. “Suppose we get him to hold the Sitting Bull pose long enough. If it
does
work, that dog’s going to rip the man—”

“The Fly.”

“He’s going to rip The Fly to shreds. He’ll kill the—”

“Good. The Fly dies. That’s the idea.”

“No, Sadie. You never think things through.” Gwen covered her mouth. “I’m sorry. I’m sucha—”

“No, no more.” Her arms wound around Gwen, perhaps afraid that she was going to cry again. Stubborn Sadie had not accepted any apologies during the past half hour of tears, and she would not listen to them now. In Sadie’s eyes, her best friend could do no wrong.

“Okay.” Gwen put her hands up to say that she was in control of her emotions again. “Maybe what he did to you was an accident. Suppose he didn’t really mean to
kill
you. But when he put you in the ground, he
thought
you were dead, didn’t he? You
made
him think that. You don’t know what—”