The Judas Child

by Carol O'Connell

  Mortimer Cray stood in the doorway to the conservatory. This glass room, full of life, was where he found peace. This was his true church.

  Blessed be Dodd, for in his employer’s absence, the valet had restored the tender young fruit trees to their pots and rescued the rarest of the orchids. Mortimer was moved by this simple act of kindness, as gardening was not among the servant’s regular duties.

  The effects of the tranquilizers were wearing off. William Penny had stood over his patient to watch him swallow one more pill, but after the surgeon’s departure, Mortimer had spit it out. And now, all too lucid, he surveyed the rows of tables covered with loose soil, plants broken and beyond salvage, and others that might yet be saved. He was pulling on his gardening gloves when Dodd entered the room carrying a telephone.

  Mortimer waved the phone away. “I can’t speak with anyone. My lawyer says—”

  “Miss Ali has been calling for hours, sir,” said Dodd, cutting off his employer in an uncharacteristic breach of etiquette. “Dr. Penny wouldn’t allow me to disturb you. I promised your niece you would make a return call after the doctor was gone.” He held out the phone again. “Please, sir?”

  Considering the valet’s extreme composure and reserve, this was tantamount to an emotional outburst and could not be dismissed. “Of course.” He dropped his gloves on the table. After the number had been dialed for him, he accepted the telephone and waited for a desk sergeant to connect him to the proper extension. His valet, soul of discretion, was leaving the room.

  The psychiatrist had seldom wondered what went on inside of Dodd, the perfect servant, almost an automaton without expression of mood or feeling—at least in Mortimer’s view. And now he began to see his valet as a man like any other, easily moved by the desperate plight of small children.

  Ali was on the line.

  “Dodd asked me to—”

  “Uncle Mortimer? How are you feeling?”

  “I think we can dispense with the pleasantries, Ali. I know what you did to me, and I mean all of it. The consultation on the truffle? You set me up for that, didn’t you? You wanted me to be closely involved with the case from the beginning—all that additional pressure. Very neatly done, my dear.”

  “Uncle Mortimer.” He heard the tears in Ali’s voice as she spoke again. “I’m begging you. Where is that little girl?”

  “It’s Christmas, Ali. She’s been dead since early morning. You established that pattern yourself, and very—”

  “They found some of Sadie Green’s clothing at an accident scene this morning. Now that’s strange, isn’t it? In all these years, he’s never shown any interest in items from the Judas child. He was totally, exclusively obsessed with the little princess, the primary target. Gwen Hubble is still alive, and you know it.”

  “Ali, you’re extrapolating—”

  “I heard you ask Costello if anything of Gwen’s was found. In all the cases I tied together, after he stopped leaving the bodies out on the road, he still left some part of the dead child’s clothing where the police or the parents would find it on Christmas morning. That’s why he staged that accident. He wasn’t trying to cover up Sorrel’s cause of death. He wanted someone to find those little purple socks this morning—evidence for Sadie’s death, not Gwen’s. It’s a breakdown in the pattern. Something has gone wrong. He hasn’t killed Gwen Hubble yet.”

  “Ali, you never mentioned that detail to the police, did you? Costello didn’t say anything whenI—”

  “About the clothing? No. Cops hold out information all the time, even from other cops. I thought it could have been one of them. Is it? Will you tell me that much?”

  Silence. He would say nothing, but he would not hang up on her.

  “You’re too close, Uncle Mortimer. You can’t see it, can you—your own part in this? Try to understand the break in the old pattern—why he wasn’t compelled to leave the bodies for the parents to find on Christmas morning.”

  “I thought your own theory was rather good on that point. His fear of exposure—a growing awareness of forensic evidence, what the bodies might tell the police.”

  “I was wrong. He doesn’t need to do it anymore. Think about it, Uncle Mortimer. All those years of therapy. He was getting it all from you—everything he needed. You’ve been feeding the sadist all this time. It must have been so satisfying, delivering those little trinkets to you.”

  She waited in silence, perhaps thinking that he would deny his participation, this collaboration with a murderer of children. Mortimer said nothing. Ali went on, “He didn’t need the parents’ reactions. He didn’t have to settle for watching the mothers crying into television cameras. He had you—right there—in the flesh. Immediate gratification.”

  Her voice was breaking, almost unintelligible. She was crying. Then a long silence ensued. And now she must have pulled herself together; he thought her closing shot was comparatively cool. “All right, one last question. Did he become your patient after Susan Kendall died—or was that little girl still alive while he was telling you all the details?”

  She didn’t wait for a response, but neither did she slam the receiver down in anger, as he might have predicted. If profound despair could be discerned in the simple mechanical click of a disconnected telephone, then he understood her state of mind.

  Marge hesitated at the door of the darkened room. The overhead lights had been turned off. In the deep interior gloom, the room’s sole occupant, Ali Cray, sat in the island glow of a desk lamp. The agents and investigators had deserted the police station. And there was also a dearth of troopers and cops in the house. She guessed they were all out looking for small children, and with little hope of finding them.

  Marge understood.

  These men and women could not sit and do nothing, watching the clock, waiting for Christmas to be over and the children to be finally pronounced dead in every mind. So now they were all out spinning their wheels. She imagined a small army of cops on the road, looking for hope, wanting to believe. Some of them, like Leonard Costello, would have lost their faith, and in the private spheres of the automobiles, these people would be in tears.

  And then there was Ali Cray.

  It was unlikely that this young woman would be spending any part of the holiday with her uncle. Ali was homeless.

  “Honey, you can come over to my house,” said Marge. “I got a bird all cooked—just needs a little reheating. Got all the trimmings too. Well, most of the trimmings. We have to make a deli stop on the way.”

  Ali shook her head. She kicked off her high-heeled shoes and folded into herself, arms wrapping around her slender body, legs drawing up. Her bare feet were on the chair cushion now, in the fashion of a child who had not been taught the proper way to sit on furniture. Then one small hand sent a pile of clutter from her desk to the floor in a single angry swipe.

  The glossy, full-color portrait of a girl lay at Marge’s feet, and she didn’t have to be told that this was Rouge Kendall’s sister. The resemblance was uncanny. But for the long hair, this might be an old photograph of the surviving sibling.

  Marge buttoned her coat against the cold and left Ali Cray in peace—or she hoped as much, for the young woman’s head lay on the desk, pillowed by her arms, and her eyes were closing.

  On the way out of the station house, Marge stopped near the front desk, temporarily reclaimed by Chief Croft so he could catch up on his paperwork for the Makers Village Police Department. He held a phone to his ear as he screamed for Officer Billy Poor, and then made check marks against a list on his clipboard.

  Marge decided to forgo the holiday wishes. For the first time in many years, she would be alone on Christmas night, and she lacked the proper spirit to say the words.

  Billy Poor exited the men’s room in a hurry, belting his pants as he presented himself at the front desk.

  “Hey, Billy,” brayed the chief, as though this young cop were still in the men’s room. “Didn’t anybody talk to that old lady’s family yet? I got a note
here from—”And now Charlie Croft held a sheet of paper closer to his near-sighted eyes. “Oh, shit. It’s from Buddy Sorrel. Must have been here since—”

  “What old lady are we talking about, Chief?”

  “You know—the dead one who lived on the lake.”

  “Oh, the mushroom lady.”

  “Just a minute!” Marge Jonas turned away from the door and walked back toward the young man in the blue uniform.

  “Merry Christmas, ma’am.” Billy Poor politely doffed his cap.

  “Merry Christmas my ass,” she said, slamming her purse on the desk. “About the mushroom lady?”

  eleven

  The fever was taking her down and down, slipping into dark water again and floating, gliding along a slow-moving river between the sun and the moon. A small white figure was running along a beach of black sand and calling out to her, but the words were too faint. Gwen looked directly into the face of the sun—the bulb of the flashlight. Sadie shook her again, saying, “Don’t go to sleep.”

  “Is that a movie title?”

  “If it isn’t, it oughta be.” Sadie pulled her up to a sitting position. “Come on, get up. We have to be near the door when he comes.”

  “No use. I can’t walk anymore.” Gwen’s wound was throbbing, stabbing her with little messages from her nerve endings. But she would not cry, for they were forging a relationship of sorts, the pain and the child. “It was a good idea, Sadie. It was. But I’d never make it through the door. You know that.”

  “I’ll carry you. We can do this.”

  “You can do it—alone.”

  Sadie shook her head. “This can only work if I let the door lock behind me. It’s the only way to beat a gun and longer legs.”

  “Then take the parka and go. Get out. Get help.”

  “And leave you locked in here? With him? No way. Get up and do this or we both die.”

  “I’m dying anyway, Sadie.”

  “Never. I won’t let you.”

  But this matter of life and death was surely beyond Sadie, not in her bag of tricks. Gwen’s wound stank, the swelling bulged over the white line of the gauze bandage. She tried to move her leg and failed; it had grown heavier while she slept. The fever gave way to chills and shaking. Her very bones felt cold, and this growing awareness of her own skeleton was pulling her mind back to the hole in the ground, the grave. “Don’t bury me. Even if you think I’m dead, I might only be asleep, and then—”

  “Like Guy Carrell in The Premature Burial.”

  “Ray Milland, 1962. I couldn’t stand that, Sadie.”

  “Or the Lady Madeline in The Fall of the House of Usher.”

  “Marguerite Abel-Gance, 1928. You won’t bury me. Promise?”

  “I promise. But I don’t—”

  “I want you to get something for me.” Gwen was totally focused now. Apparently the axe-wielding Joan Crawford had been right about that connection between shivering and clear thinking. “There’s a bottle in the white room.”

  “You want another pill?”

  “No, something else. It’s in the upper cabinet—green powder.” She clutched Sadie’s arm with a weak grip. “If I could’ve made that jump from the end of the bedsheet rope to the ground—we’d both be home by now. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Naw, you would’ve broken your neck. Then I’d be all alone down here.” Sadie hugged her. “You’re in a lot of pain. I’ll get you a pill.” She stood up and started off toward the white room.

  “No!” Gwen called after her. “No pills. All I want is that jar of green powder.”

  Sadie walked away from the trees, kicking up dead leaves in her flashlight beam. When the child had traveled to the end of the aisle of mushroom tables and passed into the white room, out of sight and beyond hearing, Gwen whispered, “I could’ve made that jump, Sadie. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But I know what to do now.”

  Chief Croft wore an amiable grin as he ambled across the wide floor and pulled up a chair next to Ali Cray’s desk. “I understand you’re interested in mushrooms.”

  “And truffles—high-class fungus.” Marge Jonas stood by the open door with her hand on the shoulder of a younger man in uniform. “Oh, this is Billy Poor.” With a light prod, she propelled him ahead of her as she sailed past empty desks and chairs. “Sit down, hon.” Obediently, he settled into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Billy’s brand-new,” said Marge.

  Ali smiled, for the young officer did look freshly minted. He had the chubby, ruddy cheeks of a boy who had recently come in from playing in the snow. His eyes were fresh and clean, and somehow she knew that Billy Poor had never traveled more than fifty miles from his home.

  In the same tone she would use to reprimand a puppy, Marge said, “Tell Dr. Cray about the mushroom lady, Billy.”

  “She didn’t have any real mushrooms, ma’am,” said the young officer, removing his cap as he addressed Ali. “It was just a lot of pictures and books—shelves full of knickknacks, things like that. Oh, and the kitchen clock was shaped like a mushroom.”

  “Billy,” said Marge. “Start at the beginning.”

  “We’ll be here all day.” Charlie Croft pulled a small notebook from his back pocket and scanned the first page. “The old woman died a natural death. We searched the house to make sure there was nothing missing. You see, a robbery complicates things, ma’am. And Howard Chainy—that’s the medical examiner—he had a damn bug up his butt. ’Scuse me, ma’am. He thought the hired girl might’ve run off with the old lady’s valuables, and maybe that’s why she never reported the death.” He closed his notebook and waved one hand to say, That’s it—all done.

  Ali wondered where this was supposed to lead her. The truffle found in the child’s jacket did not fit with the old lady’s quaint mushroom collection. “You went through the whole house?”

  “Every room—basement to attic.”

  “Did the basement have a dirt floor?” She asked this more for the sake of politeness than information. She had lost the threads of the exotic fungus quest, only now recalling that one would need an oak tree in addition to the dirt.

  “A dirt floor?” Chief Croft consulted his notebook again. “One minute, ma’am. We’ve been through a lot of houses in the past week.” When he had scanned a few pages, he looked up at her again. “I took the upper rooms. Billy here and Phil Chapel went through the parlor floor and the basement.” He turned to his most junior officer. “Which one of you searched the basement?”

  “I did, sir. I’m pretty sure it had a cement floor. It was just a little laundry room. I remember the washer and dryer.”

  Now Charlie Croft turned in his chair to face the younger man. “Must’ve been more to it than that.”

  “There was a furnace,” said Billy. “A big one. But there wasn’t much room down there for anything else. No boxes, nothing like that. It was real cramped.”

  Marge leaned close to Billy’s ear, and in the manner of a prompting stage mother, she said. “So it was a real small house?”

  “No, ma’am,” said Billy. “Big place, maybe fifteen rooms.”

  Charlie Croft was nodding in agreement. “That damn house sprawls out all over creation.” He turned back to Billy. “And you’re telling me the entire basement was a cramped laundry room?”

  Seconds dragged by as the two men stared at one another, and finally Charlie Croft said, “Oh shit.”

  “I’m just telling you what I saw,” said Billy, sinking in his chair. He stared at the paper plate of cold french fries on the corner of Ali’s desk. “You gonna finish that, ma’am?”

  “Help yourself, Billy.” Ali pushed the plate toward him. “Do you remember seeing a door in the basement?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Did you look for one?” asked Charlie Croft.

  “No, sir. We were just making sure the place hadn’t been robbed.” Billy had demolished the fries, and now he was appraising a box of doughnuts on the desk next to Ali’s. “I didn’t think
there could’ve been anything down there worth taking.”

  “That’s okay, baby.” Marge ruffled Billy’s hair as the young man inhaled a glazed doughnut and reached for another. She handed Ali the list of house-to-house searches in the lake district. “One of the investigators crossed off the old lady’s place.”

  “Well, we searched it, didn’t we?” Billy had downed two sugar doughnuts at amazing speed, and there was one left in the box—at the moment.

  Charlie Croft looked at Ali. “This is my fault.” He turned back to the junior officer. “You can go now, Billy. I guess we can handle it from here.”

  The young policeman was cramming the last doughnut into his mouth, and he was nearly to the door when Marge called after him. “Billy? You checked the old lady’s refrigerator, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Marge grinned. “How do I know these things?”

  “Nice catch,” said Ali. “So, Billy—no mushrooms in there, right? Nothing strange-looking?”

  “No ma’am, nothing at all. Clean as a whistle. I guess the mushroom lady was planning to go on a trip.”

  After Billy Poor had left the room, Charlie settled back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Marge, if you promise not to mention this little screwup to Costello, I’ll take a run out there now and check the basement.”

  “You got it, Boss.” Marge squeezed his arm to assure him that her allegiance lay with the signer of her pay-checks and not with the temporary camp of the State Police.

  “Mind if I come along?” asked Ali. It was better to be in motion tonight, even if she only moved in circles.

  “Glad to have the company.” Charlie was flipping through his notes again. “I seem to remember one other odd thing about that place, but I can’t think what it was.”