by Robert Pobi
Deacon had been near the trees, taking pictures, when someone came over to talk to him.
Benjamin Winslow was probably charming and friendly. But that wasn’t what had won over Trevor Deacon—no, that had been accomplished with the photographs. In exchange for keeping them secret, all little Benjamin had wanted was to learn.
Deacon hadn’t had a choice, not in any real sense of the word, because Benjamin’s intelligence had only been surpassed by his sadism. Deacon quickly grew frightened of the child.
Then one night not too long ago he had squeezed between the bars of Trevor Deacon’s windows and injected anesthetic into his eye while he slept. It was a battlefield anesthetic that he had stolen from an old field kit in the museum. Then he cut Deacon’s feet off while he had still been alive. Just for kicks.
Phelps had said that his grandson would have a hard time squeezing his skinny ass through the bars. A hard time, sure, but not impossible.
By the time he was finished, Trevor had been reduced to the unarticulated parts. His body left on the bed.
Because a ten-year-old boy could not lift it.
And the shoe print on the chair? Benjamin had worn his father’s size ten triple-E brogues from Church’s. He used the chair as a ladder to reach the photograph he had given Deacon as a warning, taken at his dumping ground. He had given his father a picture taken at the same place. His dad had had it framed and put it up on the wall with the pictures of his other birds.
Benjamin had been set off by the picture that had captured Dr. Brayton and all the little handsome men to be that he had created. His own little biological empire. The photo had shown up in the Times the morning after the opera and that had been it, the fire had started.
Like his biological father, Benjamin Winslow had been a narcissist. And his practical father—Dr. Neal Winslow—had nurtured that in the boy. He had raised him as special. The boy had grown up alone, in a terrarium built for his uniqueness—like an exotic poisonous reptile kept for display. And he wanted no competitors in his little ecosystem. The only-child syndrome taken to an extreme conclusion.
He began with the e-mail list. It hadn’t been hard to hunt them down. Not for a boy with his aptitude.
Benjamin had started with the girls because there were fewer of them. As he moved down the list he had discovered that he had an aptitude far beyond geometry and language.
Phelps had spoken with Dr. Winslow’s travel agent and the trip to Greece last year had been his son’s idea. The agent remembered Winslow insisting on the dates and saying that his son really wanted to go. Because he had known that Tanya Everett would be there. He had swum out with her and the rest of the children and pushed her under and held her down between his legs. The police in Greece weren’t noted for their forensic prowess and the two hundred witnesses had negated any suspicion of foul play.
The others had been just as easy.
Heidi Morrison hadn’t jumped in front of that train, she had been pushed. Benjamin hadn’t been visible on the surveillance tapes because he was too short to be seen on the packed platform.
The boys?
They hadn’t been abducted. They had been lured.
Benjamin had had no trouble moving among the boys because he was one of them. And in all the eyewitness accounts, children had been around. Even Daniel had passed the schoolboys that morning. The Grant boy’s driver would never have suspected a child. Miles Morgan would have felt superior around Benjamin—but Benjamin Winslow had been way too smart for a boy like Morgan to deal with.
The kid had even outsmarted a good street cop like Lincoln.
Solomon Borenstein had walked away from the front door to his building because Benjamin had called him over to the car. And just like in Tanya Everett’s death, Dr. Winslow had been used as a dupe. It had all gone wrong when little Solomon had started to cry and asked to go home. Dr. Winslow didn’t understand what the problem was—he thought Solomon and Benjamin had a playdate.
Dr. Winslow saw his son slit the boy’s throat in the rearview mirror. He had grabbed the knife. Fought with him. Crashed the car.
And lost.
They had been blind on so many fronts. The garage attendant where Dr. Selmer parked his car had said that kids had been around when Selmer left the garage—his throat had been cut less than two blocks away. At a downward angle. Because the killer was only four feet tall.
A ten-year-old killer had never factored into the equation.
Bobby Grant, the docile piano prodigy, watched Benjamin cut his driver’s throat. After that, he would have listened to Benjamin—either he forced the Grant boy to come along or he told him that he had killed the driver to save him. Ten-year-old children believed things like that. Even gifted ones.
Benjamin had been walking with Nigel Matheson’s group when he disappeared. He had pulled the boy down an alley and off the face of the earth with the promise of basketball tickets.
The toughest one to figure out had been Simmons on the ferry.
The surveillance film of the boy entering the staircase to the engine level, not coming out, then reentering it a second time had stumped them. They thought he had gone out through the escape hatch, then gone back in by the staircase.
Wrong again. Just another old magic trick, like Pepper’s Ghost. Smoke and mirrors and getting the observer to use their own preconceptions to work against them. Everyone believes their own eyes. Even when they are lying.
There were two boys in the video.
Two boys who looked so much alike—dressed in their school jackets—that they were virtually indistinguishable.
First on the screen was Benjamin Winslow. He opened the door with the access code—the one he had seen a crewman punch in the day he had taken the ferry with his father—and descended the stairwell to the engine level to wait. He told Simmons to meet him there where he’d show him something special.
And when it was over he had gotten out exactly like Delaney had proposed—by crawling through the escape hatch that came out on the car deck. Then he had disembarked with the rest of the passengers. And a knapsack containing more hunting trophies.
Benjamin Winslow, for all his mathematical acumen and encyclopedic knowledge, had still only been a jealous ten-year-old boy.
And his diary had outlined the sexual abuse he had suffered for years. Monsters aren’t born, they’re made.
Dr. Winslow followed a strict vegan diet and had fresh meals delivered daily; he never used the freezer. Which was why Benjamin had been able to store his little museum of trophies in there for the few short days his killing spree had lasted.
It was amazing what a child had accomplished with nothing but determination and a hacksaw. They would be talking about that kid for years.
Hemingway checked her watch. If she wanted to make the clinic she’d have to start back now. And she had people to speak to. Forgiveness to ask. Amends to be made. There was her father. And Daniel. More of Uncle Dwight’s damage control in action.
Maybe she’d take that vacation with her father and tour the vineyards of Burgundy. She took her hand off her stomach, picked up her paddle, and dug the blade into the water. Her shoulder clicked with the movement and the bow of the kayak started to swing around, away from the roil of Hell Gate.
And across the river of the dead.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have to thank Charles Shutt, MD, FACOG—dedicated doctor, passionate writer and bruddah—for helping me get the business end of the fertility clinic right. His input on medical records and EMR access was concise and thoughtful, and his explanation of the way the client-patient privilege actually plays out from a legal standpoint helped me dig my characters out of one of the holes I always seem to write them into. The true parts are his. The rest is mine.
I would also like to thank Detective Alfred King (retired) of the NYPD, who unknowingly had a part in writing this novel—I hope he doesn’t mind seeing his name in print.
ALSO BY ROB POBI
Eye of the Stor
m (formerly titled Bloodman)
Simon & Schuster Canada
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Robert Pobi
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This Simon & Schuster Canada edition January 2015
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Interior design: Lewelin Polanco
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ISBN 978-1-4767-2878-0
ISBN 978-1-4767-2872-8 (ebook)
