The Judas Child

by Carol O'Connell

  One detective in the middle row raised his hand, and she nodded to him.

  “Pretty good organization skills for a psycho.” His tone of voice was dubious, distrustful.

  “He’s not crazy,” she said. “Don’t underestimate him. Even prominent psychiatrists are changing the language to read evil instead of ill. This man functions as a normal person. He has a job, some tie to the community. I know he understands the difference between right and wrong, because he takes steps to avoid being captured. And I believe he’s a local man.”

  She stood to one side of the center easel displaying a map of the tristate area. “Most of the children were from surrounding states, but their photographs appeared in national magazines and major newspapers. But not Gwen Hubble. He’s seen this little girl close to home—close to his home.”

  Neither Rouge’s photograph nor his sister’s had ever appeared in public either. The Kendall twins had been very protected children. He wondered if Ali Cray knew this. He suspected she did.

  “There’s more.” She turned to the map. “These red flags mark the homes of the children who lived across the state line. Every location is a day trip from this town. A full tank of gas, bought locally, will get him there and back. No credit card purchases, no gas station attendant to remember a stranger in town. There’s no signature on a motel registration. He’s just another motorist passing through. As I said, the bodies are never found anymore. I think the other children are all close together—a mass grave in a secure location. This may support the idea that he owns property.”

  She nodded to another raised hand in the crowd.

  “These other cases—did they call in the feds?”

  “Yes.” She gestured to the easels. “In these two kidnappings, they were called in after the bodies were found.” She pointed to the first portrait on the left. “In this case, the FBI determined that the battered child was the main victim because of the rage in the beating that killed her. But I believe this child was the bait. He used her to call out the other girl—and he had to hurt her to make her do that.”

  Another hand shot up, and a woman’s voice asked, “What’s the frequency of the attacks?”

  “Sometimes a few years go by between incidents. It doesn’t take much time to locate the private school of the wealthy child. The newspaper articles usually solved that problem. But it does take time to find the right bait, a close friend from a less protected environment—less money, no professional security. This is important to him—everything must fit. The elaborate pattern is what identified him. All my case summaries share the same basic elements.”

  She was staring down at the papers on the lectern, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “And last—all the children were taken when the schools closed for the holidays. The family’s guard was down. It was perfect timing. He’s sadistic, but he’ll show some patience with Gwen Hubble. He’s made an investment in her. He’ll keep Gwen alive until Christmas morning.”

  “Gwen?” A woman FBI agent stood up, not waiting to be recognized. “What about the other girl?”

  “Sadie Green is dead.” Ali Cray’s tone implied that she thought this was understood. “That’s the pattern. He probably killed that child an hour after he stole her.”

  In the dead silence of the room, there was a ripple of movement throughout the crowd. Younger heads were shaking from side to side in denial, and older people were nodding to say, Yes, of course she’s dead. It all fits.

  As Ali Cray moved away from the lectern, her eyes locked with those of Special Agent Arnie Pyle. A conversation took place between them in this brief exchange of passing glances, and Rouge decided there was more to this relationship than the business of criminal acts.

  Wiry Agent Pyle seemed almost cocky as he walked toward the lectern. He moved with the attitude of an elegant pool hustler in clothes that hung well on his lean body. In a further departure from FBI cloning, he loosened his tie until the knot hung inches below the undone collar button. As he moved farther away from the company of federal agents, he seemed to cross over to the ranks of the state investigators, with a knowing nod and a tough smile for the troops. And they smiled back at this man’s man, a cop’s cop. Pyle had become one of them, even before he took his place behind the lectern. And because of this masterful illusion of defection, Rouge deeply distrusted him.

  Agent Pyle stood before them without notes or props, for this was not a speech to strangers, but a conversation with old friends whom he was meeting for the first time in his life.

  “Dr. Cray only picked out the facts that supported her case. You know nationwide stats on runaways are staggering. We’ve got more than ninety thousand kids on the road every day of the year, right?” His expression conveyed that this was a given, that they all knew the lady’s theory was crap.

  Rouge looked around the room and heads were nodding, already agreeing that Ali Cray was a civilian, an outsider—an amateur.

  “In an overview of any hundred cases, I can use stats to develop lots of patterns that don’t exist.”

  And now, judging by the expressions of the other investigators, Rouge knew that Ali’s case was nearly a dead issue; the FBI man had killed her off that quickly.

  Agent Pyle turned to look at the easels and pointed to a child’s photograph on the far right. “That little girl’s name is Sarah. There was a ransom demand. Dr. Cray never mentioned that.” His tone condemned her for that. And then, in a slight elevation of volume, he bordered on evangelistic zeal with his next words. “We caught the perp who sent that ransom note, and we got a conviction on the bastard.” Unspoken were the words, Praise God and the FBI, my brothers and sisters.

  There was a sprinkling of applause which died quickly, as each man and woman realized that this was not a revival meeting. But it was a contest of sorts, a game of oneupmanship. However, the agent was playing by himself. Ali Cray was only a passive observer now. If Rouge could read anything in her face, it was disappointment in Agent Pyle and no animosity whatever.

  Curious.

  “I can’t speak for the cases where we weren’t called in,” said Pyle. “Some of the kids might’ve had good reason to run—abuse in the home, beatings, incest—I’ve seen it all. About the statistics in Dr. Cray’s group of ten-year-olds. Sometimes you see stats clustering in one area for no good reason. And this tristate region has a dense population.”

  Rouge thought this had the ring of covering ass, or getting even. Something in Pyle’s delivery made his assaults on Ali Cray’s theory all too personal.

  “I don’t believe we’re dealing with a pedophile,” said Agent Pyle. “The logic is pretty clear. This is a crime for profit. The fact that there are no public photographs of Gwen Hubble supports this theory. The kidnapping of Sadie Green was a screwup, an accidental departure from a plan to kidnap the Hubble girl for ransom. The perp was in the right place, but he snatched the wrong kid. The only thing Dr. Cray and I can agree on is that Sadie Green is probably dead. Sadie was just an error in his—”

  “I heard that!”

  All eyes turned to the door, where Sadie Green’s mother was struggling with a state trooper. The captain waved the uniformed officer back. The woman entered the room, tightly wrapping her brown cloth coat closer about her body, perhaps feeling a sudden coldness. Costello walked toward her, moving quickly to head her off before she could see the photographs on the front wall. “Mrs. Green? The purple jacket—was it your daughter’s?”

  “Yes, it’s Sadie’s!” she screamed at the captain, but her eyes were on the FBI man at the lectern. She stretched out one arm and pointed a damning finger at Pyle, yelling, “She is not dead.” Her hand closed into a fist. “And she’s not a mistake! Not an error!” Her voice trailed off with her next words, not from lack of anger, but from exhaustion. “She’s a little girl, and I want her back.” The angry fist was still raised high, and she paused to stare at it now, surprised to see it growing there at the end of one plump arm.

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Her hand dr
opped limp to her side. Four federal agents were moving in tandem to block the easels with their bodies so she would not see the giant photographs of dead children.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said to all of them. “Please don’t hate me.” She was smiling as she peered into the faces of the men and women surrounding her, seeking their reassurance.

  Rouge ached for her. That smile must have been bought at an enormous cost. Her shoulders sagged, and it seemed to drain her, trying to maintain this more friendly expression.

  “I’m in trouble, I know that.” She turned to the captain. “But you said if I remembered anything important—Well, I did.”

  She avoided Costello’s attempt to take her arm. In a burst of renewed energy, she stepped to the center of the room, like a dancer hitting the chalk marks on a stage. “But first, I want to thank you guys for turning out that time my daughter did her arrow-in-the-heart routine.” She grinned, playing to every pair of eyes in her audience. “Sadie still looks back on that as her best day.”

  Rouge didn’t see what happened next. He was too far back in the crowd. Perhaps the woman had tripped on something, or maybe her legs simply gave out from the shock of identifying her daughter’s purple jacket. Mrs. Green fell to the floor. All the cops in the room were on their feet, moving toward her with outstretched hands.

  “No, don’t help me. I don’t want to be any trouble.” She smiled wide and openhearted, and then she shrugged. “So pratfalls are not my best thing.”

  Captain Costello knelt beside her, not touching her but wanting to, hovering in the manner of a parent supervising a child’s first steps. Becca Green found her legs and slowly stood up.

  Costello’s voice was surprisingly gentle. “Mrs. Green, you said you remembered something.”

  “Something important—yes.” She opened her purse and fished around inside with one hand. “My Sadie is an artist.” And now she had found what she was looking for and brought it out. “Here, look! This is Sadie’s eye.”

  The agents and the investigators stared in horror as Mrs. Green held up an oozing, bloody eyeball speared on a fork. No one moved. No one breathed.

  “She has lots of others,” said Becca Green. “But this is the good one for special occasions. Like when we have company for dinner? And they don’t know Sadie all that well? She palms it like this.” Mrs. Green pulled the eye off the fork. It made a small sucking noise.

  Though it was obvious now that the eyeball was a rubber mock-up, a veteran BCI man shuddered, spilling coffee on his pants as he settled down to a chair. Spellbound, he didn’t notice the spreading stains.

  Becca Green cupped the fake eye in her palm and covered her own blue eye with this same hand. “Then she pokes the fork through her fingers, like so.”

  Rouge didn’t want to watch the woman stabbing the fork between her fingers and into her eye socket, but he couldn’t look away.

  “And voilà,” said Becca Green, pulling the fork out again, still covering her socket with one hand to maintain the illusion that she was now half blind. She thrust the fork high in the air, so all could see. The rubber eyeball was once again stuck to the silver prongs. “Now that’s entertainment.”

  She lowered her arm and looked down at the bloody, slimy thing on the fork. “Of course, you’re not getting the full effect,” she said, in a somewhat offhand tone. “When Sadie does it, she puts the eyeball in her mouth and chews on it—that’s her big finale. But I can’t do that.” She wagged the speared eyeball for emphasis. “I draw lines, you know?”

  The nervous laughter began with an agent in the back of the room, and then it rippled forward, and Becca Green chimed in with her own heartier laugh as she dipped back into her little purse of terrors. “What a kid, huh?”

  This time she produced a small red gargoyle. It crouched in the palm of her hand. Agent Pyle had come out from behind the lectern to stand beside her. She held the toy up to his face, and then she hurled it to the floor at his feet. The bounce of the rubber hind legs made the tiny monster appear to jump as though it were alive.

  “So this is what I remembered,” she said, turning to look into all their anxious faces as one hand rose in the air, commanding their silence. “Listen.”

  And they did. They were all listening, straining so hard it created a palpable tension in the room, a network of electric expectation.

  “My kid spent her whole life in training to meet the bogeyman. She’s alive! You got that? But she’s so little. You’ve got to find her fast and bring her home.”

  Arnie Pyle was nodding, staring at her with his great dark eyes, which conveyed compassion and sorrow with no effort at all, for they were shaped that way—just an accident of genes.

  “You keep that!” Becca Green pointed to the toy at the agent’s feet. “A memento of Sadie—so you don’t forget her. Don’t you give up on my daughter. I won’t believe she’s dead until I see the body. And then I’d probably stick her with a pin—just to be on the safe side.” Sadie’s mother began to laugh again. And it was echoed here and there, spreading like a contagious, nervous cough.

  She moved perilously close to the backdrop of smaller photos tacked to the front wall, images of dead little girls, eyes and flesh damaged by elements and animals. Rouge pushed and elbowed his way to the front of the crowd. “Mrs. Green.” He gently grasped her shoulders to prevent her from turning around, from seeing the wall. “Let me call your husband. He’ll come and—”

  “No, not yet—please.” She danced away from him, back to the middle of the room, to the center of the stage. “You’ve got to see my Sadie the way she really is. She’s not just a short, unfinished person. I swear to God, you’re gonna love this kid.”

  And now Captain Costello was ripping the brutal pictures off the wall and the easels, lest the mother should turn and see the decomposing bodies of small children. The photographs flew through the air, and investigators crawled on hands and knees as they collected the pictures and hid them away. Some were crying, and Becca Green was laughing high and shrill. Anyone entering the room at that moment might have believed they had all gone mad together, Sadie’s mother and the cops.

  five

  Rouge Kendall checked the rearview mirror. There were no reporters pursuing his old tan Volvo, and that made him curious. The news crews were entirely too well behaved this morning.

  Becca Green slumped against the passenger door, watching the storefronts and sidewalks slip past the side window. The woman was trying very hard not to cry, and he believed she tried for his sake. Today, all her energy had gone into fashioning an etiquette for dealing with the police. How many times had she apologized for some imagined transgression in the odd society of people with guns?

  “Mrs. Green?”

  “I’m sorry. You were asking about the boy—Sadie’s shadow?” She made a poor attempt at a smile. “My daughter calls him David the Alien—because he never speaks or consumes food.” And now the smile was more natural. “Every time he sees Sadie in the school cafeteria, he spills his lunch in his lap, turns bright red and walks away without a word.”

  Rouge nodded, recognizing the symptoms. Captain Costello might have misread David’s anxiety. The boy was probably not holding anything back; he was simply in love. “So David Shore never talked to your daughter? They wouldn’t share secrets, anything like that?”

  Becca Green shook her head. “Sadie’s not the most approachable kid for somebody as shy as David. One time, maybe a year ago, the school counselor told Sadie to stop torturing the boy. Two days later, David’s housemother shows up at my door.”

  “Mary Hofstra?”

  “That’s the one. Said she’d like to have a cup of tea with me. Well, we’re coffee drinkers in my house, right? So this woman pulls a little tin box out of her purse. Next thing I know, we’re sitting in the kitchen, drinking herbal tea. Not bad stuff—a little sweet maybe, but I buy it for Sadie now. Anyway, this woman is apologizing for what the counselor said. She told me David was depressed. He thought Sadie w
ouldn’t go near him anymore because she hated him. So Mrs. Hofstra actually wanted me to sic my kid on David. If Sadie promised never to pressure the boy into talking, she could torture him all she liked—that was the deal. You know, Sadie did her arrow trick just for David. He screamed out loud for the first time ever.”

  “Why does Sadie do things like that?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. You think it might be a ploy for attention?”

  Her sarcasm was light, and Rouge smiled. “She got a lot of attention when the cops turned out for the archery trick.

  “Oh, Sadie even fooled the school nurse,” said Becca. “Consider the genius of putting the arrow over her heart so no one could check it for beats.”

  Rouge pulled up to the curb. This end of the cul-de-sac offered a panoramic view of the lake. Though the surrounding structures were more than forty years old, this elegant street of gracious homes, green lawns and grown trees was still called the new housing development. The large gray-brick colonial was not what he had expected from the owners of a gas station.

  Mrs. Green read his expression. “It’s a barn,” she said, apologetically, as they walked up the flagstone path. “You won’t believe how long it takes to clean the place. Harry wants me to have a cleaning woman come in, but house-work is practically the only exercise I get. And I’d feel strange having some other woman touching my things. You know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” he lied. Far into his teens, a staff of women had cleaned up after his own small family, cooked their meals, washed their clothes and run their errands. A personal secretary had handled the condolences on the death of his sister.

  Mrs. Green opened the door and motioned him inside. He walked into a wall of warm air and the ripe, fruity smell of furniture polish and fresh floor wax. He followed her through a generous foyer and into a wide room where warmth was built into the environs with the leather bindings of books, the rich print of an Oriental carpet and the glow of honey-colored walls. This space was filled with good solid furniture, built for comfort, but expensive in its quality. And he knew at least one of the paintings on the wall was not a reproduction, for the Kendall family had once owned it.