The Judas Child (3 page)

The officer was holding each man by one arm, keeping them apart. He was calmer now, saying, “I want you guys to cool off, or I’m gonna start writing tickets.”

“Tickets?” Miss Fowler’s voice had the effect of a gunshot. Three heads turned in unison to face the imperious seventy-two-year-old woman, five ten in her fluffy pink slippers. Not for nothing had she spent the last forty years terrorizing the young.

“I don’t have any use for tickets, Officer. I want them arrested.” She looked from one culprit to the other. “Unless one of you pays for the damage to my fence—and right this minute. Do I make myself clear?” She turned to the young patrolman who had surely begun to shave only last week, and then only nicking a few whiskers his first time out with a razor.

“It was his fault!” yelled the smaller of the young policeman’s captives, pointing one bony finger at the larger man, who squirmed out of the policeman’s grasp and ran down the sidewalk. The officer sprinted after the escapee and tackled him. Miss Fowler grasped the smaller man firmly by the arm, lest he also try to escape. And now she caught sight of a familiar car rolling slowly past them. One fogged window was half open, the better to see what was going on.

It was Rouge Kendall, and he was out of uniform. No doubt he had just come out of Dame’s Tavern at the end of the street. He was probably planning to drive right by, to roll on home and into a nice warm bed and a long sweet sleep.

Well, she would fix that.

She called out to him, “Rouge, you
better
stop!” Her tone of voice implied that she could still make his life a living hell of extended piano practice, though he had not been her student since he was nine years old.

He did bring the car to a guilty stop. Old habits died hard; he had always been a polite child, respectful to his elders. The car glided to the curb as the other policeman was marching his prisoner back to the broken fence. The uniformed officer turned to Rouge and waved him off. “I can handle it.”

Miss Fowler thought not. She turned a stony eye on Rouge. He grinned at her and shrugged. Behind a long fringe of auburn hair, his slow roving hazel eyes took in the damage to her fence. He might be over six feet tall, but otherwise Rouge had not changed so much since the days when he had been her worst student. The general features of the boy hung on in the man—but for the eyes. She thought his eyes were too old for a youngster of twenty-five, almost a breach of natural law.

Well, all of St. Ursula’s students had been a bit odd in one way or another.

While the other policeman was flipping through the pages of his notebook, Rouge’s gaze was fixed on the purple bicycle. “Which one of them was riding it, Phil?”

“Butt out,” said the officer in uniform, puffing up his chest like a blowfish imitating a larger fish. He spoke to the two men. “I’m going to issue tickets for disturbing the—”

“It was that one,” said Miss Fowler, pointing at the larger of the two men. “I saw him fall off the bicycle.”

She had seen his type before, a shabby dresser, an unshaven, wandering man. And by the smell of him, she knew the derelict was in dire need of a change of underwear. So she was hoping to pin fault on the smaller man, who seemed a more solvent prospect to pay for the broken fence.

Rouge turned to the man in uniform. “It’s a girl’s bike, Phil. Top of the line racer—maybe three, four hundred dollars.” And now he turned back to the unshaven man with the secondhand clothes and the bad smell. “So what’s wrong with this picture?”

Phil turned on the man squirming under his grip. “You
stole
that bike,” he said, as though this were his own sudden flash of insight.

The derelict broke loose again and would have run, but Rouge extended one long, lazy leg to trip the man and bring him down.

The uniformed officer sat down on top of the thief and handcuffed him. “Rouge, I can handle this myself.”

Rouge was amiable, despite the rebuff. “The bike won’t fit in your trunk, not unless you throw out all the roadblock gear.”

“What?” said the officer.

Miss Fowler looked at the back end of the patrol car. The trunk latch was tied down with wire, and through the partial opening, she could see the blue wood of a barricade and the tips of orange cones used to divert traffic from an accident scene.

“Phil, you can have all the credit for the great bike caper, okay? But now you’ve got two disorderly drunks and a bike to transport. And your witness, Miss Fowler? She doesn’t drive.”

Phil was staring at his patrol car and working on the logistics of who would fit where. He nodded in defeat.

Five minutes later, Rouge pulled his car away from the curb. The purple bike was in his backseat, and Miss Fowler sat beside him. She thought he took her criticism quite well, responding with a “Yes, ma’am” at every suggestion for turn signals. She graced him with a rare smile. Rouge was a strange one, and she believed he spent entirely too much time in Dame’s Tavern, but he was fundamentally a good boy.

Rouge’s car turned left into the station house driveway, following the only patrol car in Makers Village. Once, the town had sported two cruisers, but the second one had disappeared into Green’s Auto Shop last summer and was never seen again. Some had believed the vehicle might be saved; others said no. The mayor had finally settled this debate, claiming the patrol car had gone to heaven to live with Jesus. Miss Fowler suspected that the mayor also drank.

When they pulled into the police station parking lot, which was actually the library parking lot, it was hard to miss the bright lights of the camera crews and all the vans with major news-show logos printed on their sides. As she stepped out of the car, she also noted four New York State Police vehicles, one long black limousine and two rider-less motorcycles.

Miss Fowler was first to reach the top of the stairs. She held the door open for Rouge as he carried the bicycle into the station house. The reception area was not much bigger than her own front parlor and crowded with so many people, it was certainly in violation of the fire codes. Before the door had swung shut behind them, a woman’s voice yelled out, “The bike!”

A portly figure in a shapeless blue dress was walking toward them, a woman of average height and average features, even to the limp mouse-brown hair. She yelled again, “That’s my daughter’s bike!” A photographer blinded Rouge with flashes, and another man with a microphone was bearing down on him.

Or maybe there was more to this, for the yelling woman had clearly been crying, and now she was caressing her child’s purple bicycle. Well, this person was obviously a professional mother. Miss Fowler knew the breed: the soft plump arms and ample bosom could comfort three children at once on a bad day, and the thick waist spoke well for her cooking. The woman’s face was full of mother terror, and there was a siren in her voice, teetering on the screaming pitch of a three-alarm fire.

Miss Fowler was nodding in general approval of traditional motherhood when another woman stepped forward. This one was slender and smartly tailored, with suspicious highlights in her upswept ash-blond hair. No yelling from this one—only cool composure and élan.

This blonde had the classic good looks of a television personality, but when she spoke, her voice was laced with acid. “Well, at least someone on the force is awake and earning his salary.” The blond woman turned on the prisoners, looking from one to the other, as though deciding which man she would have boiled alive for her late supper.

Miss Fowler made a moue of distaste as she recalled this woman’s face from a recent photograph in the Sunday newspaper. The blonde was Marsha Hubble, estranged wife of the reclusive Peter Hubble, whose family had lived in the same house since 1875. Oh, and she was also the lieutenant governor of New York State.

And now Miss Fowler realized she had overestimated the lady politician’s composure, for Mrs. Hubble’s eyes were struck with fear. On the inside, this woman was screaming—silently, madly.

Another mother.

In the late afternoon, Rouge Kendall
had ended his longest tour of duty, and now he sat on a bar stool in Dame’s Tavern. His eyes were red and sore; he had not seen his bed since yesterday morning. Finding that purple bicycle had changed his plans to sleep off last night’s liquor.

A television set was mounted high on the wall behind the bar, and photographs of the missing children appeared on the screen in a pastiche of home videos and still shots. Mercifully, the bartender had turned off the volume. The silent pictures changed to coverage on the young boy who had spotted Sadie Green’s abandoned bicycle at a bus stop. Young David Shore had neatly backed up the bike thief’s story. The camera framed the thief with a jacket pulled up over his head to hide his face from the press as he was led away by state troopers.

In the next shot, a camera zoomed in on ten-year-old David exiting the building with his guardian, Mrs. Hofstra, a willowy woman with iron-gray hair. The boy was tall for his age, handsome and graceful. There was much about him to inspire self-confidence, yet throughout the police interview, shy David had never said one word which was not whispered into Mrs. Hofstra’s ear and relayed by her larger voice.

Now the television screen showed Rouge an event he had not witnessed from his post inside the building. The reporters were converging on the boy, their winter coats flapping in the wind like the wings of crows as they screamed out their questions and thrust microphones in the child’s face. David’s blue eyes rounded out with extreme fear as both hands rose high to fend off the assault. His guardian put one protective arm around the ten-year-old and guided him into the waiting car. Rouge couldn’t tell what Mrs. Hofstra was saying to the reporters, but he hoped it was obscene.

A camera panned back to the door of the police station. Lieutenant Governor Marsha Hubble was standing at the top of the steps, an imperious blonde in a black leather trench coat. She was not as pretty as her daughter Gwen, but she did hold a man’s attention. She was flanked by the two male FBI agents who had questioned David at the station. These men might be taller than Marsha Hubble, but there was no mistaking where the power lay in this trio. The lieutenant governor was raising one fist in the air, and Rouge could guess what that was about. The bicycle at the bus stop supported the theory of runaways. But the lady politician preferred her own game plan of wall-to-wall federal agents, troopers, roadblocks and a tristate manhunt for a kidnapper. Her face was an angry hot flush.

Gwen’s mother was a strong woman, pushy as hell, and Rouge admired that. This politician would do anything to get her child back, and she didn’t care if the voters took her for a world-class bitch.

Rouge lifted his glass to the screen.
Go, Marsha, go.

The images changed, and Sadie’s mother, Becca Green, was eliciting more sympathy with her simple cloth coat and her plain broad face. The camera cut to a shot of this crying woman, clutching a microphone and imploring everyone to help find her little girl.

It was just as well the television’s volume had been turned off. Rouge didn’t need to hear those words ever again. His own mother had said them all, fifteen years ago, in a futile public begging for his sister’s life.

The moment he thought of Susan, something moved in the mirror on the other side of the mahogany bar. He caught sight of his dead twin’s hazel eyes peeking out from behind a line of bottles.

Fool
. Of course they were his own eyes and not Susan’s—only a reflection, nothing more. Yet he moved to a stool farther down the bar and away from the mirror. Now, between Rouge and the back wall of dark wood, a large pyramid of stacked wineglasses replicated his pale face in a honeycomb of small distorted images; his short hair elongated around the curving bulb of every glass. And so, twenty little girls with shoulder-length auburn tresses moved their faces in tandem with Rouge as he swiveled his stool around to scan the room.

Most of the tables were empty. Two women sat near the front window. One was a blonde, and the other was blonder. They both played catch-eyes with him, looking up and then dropping veils of thick mascara.

Another woman interested him more, but this one had no face yet. As she moved across the floor, her slender hips rolled to a soft rock tune from the jukebox. Sleek chestnut hair hung down to her shoulders, making a straight line across the back of a creamy silk blouse. Her long black skirt ended a few inches above a pair of high heels.

All the heads of the Susans in the wineglasses were nodding in appreciation. Rouge loved high heels.

The woman sat down at a nearby table and showed him the curve of her left cheek, but no more. The slit of her skirt fell open to expose a long leg, a knee and a bit of thigh.

And she was wearing her own skin—no tinted stretch of nylon between his eyes and the white flesh—an ocular feast in winter. One high heel dangled at the end of her foot. The shoe fell to the floor, exposing unpolished, naked toes.

He planned to give himself up without the customary token resistance. She could come and get him anytime she liked.

The woman turned around to stare at him, and he couldn’t look away. Only two things could fascinate so; extreme beauty was one. But he was looking at the most grotesque face he had ever seen a woman wear in public. A jagged line ran down her right cheek in an angry red scar, twisting her lips up on one side and forcing her to smile with half her mouth.

As she took in his reaction, the other side of her mouth also tilted up. Her pale gray eyes were unnaturally far apart, and the eyebrows were thick and dark, nearly meeting above a small, straight nose, her only perfect feature.