Among Prey

by Alan Ryker

  “Honey,” Sarah said.

  George nodded and exhaled loudly and slowly through his nose. “We know that’s no excuse. Bobby has gone through a lot of treatment. Everyone agrees he’s a good boy. He just doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with that level of stress, which is why we need someone to provide constant supervision.”

  “They mentioned he doesn’t like men,” Carol said.

  “It’s true, but it’s not really his fault. Men are intimidated by his size, and his expression. He can’t help that heavy brow ridge, you know. Always makes him look like he’s glaring. Anyway, he can pick up on things like that. Agitates him. And we think he might have had some bad experiences with the male staff at the institution.”

  Sarah nodded in agreement, and her eyes began to tear up. “He loves his dad, but Bobby is a mama’s boy. He’s calmer around women.”

  “And because he never developed”—George hesitated for just a second—“sexually, we don’t think it’s an issue for him to have a female nurse. The state advised us to find a male practitioner, but we don’t put a lot of stock in what the state says. We are also interviewing for someone to sit outside his room at night—to keep watch. With all the medication they’ve got him on, he’s pretty well knocked out for at least ten hours.”

  Next came Bobby’s bedroom. While his dayroom was arranged chaotically, his bedroom was sparse. Just a basic bedroom set and a bookshelf full of picture books.

  George said, “His therapist said he should only use his bedroom for sleeping. He can get overstimulated easily.” He gestured to an empty recess in the wall. “That was for a television and video player, but we took them out. He apparently developed some sleep issues when he was institutionalized.”

  “They say it’s due to the medication, but I think it was the stress of being away from us.”

  “They admitted stress has a lot to do with it, hun.”

  “But they never admitted why he’d be stressed in the first place,” Sarah said in a tone that implied George had better not say one more thing in the defense of the people who stole her baby. He didn’t.

  Back out in the hallway, Carol took note of the small table and the big, plush armchair pushed against the wall. “Is that for the night man?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve worked nights. Don’t even let him see that chair. Get a straight-backed, wooden chair unless you want to pay someone to sleep.”

  George laughed. “Will do. I like how you think.”

  Carol didn’t have a lot of expectations about the servants’ quarters, but she definitely hadn’t expected a suite of rooms more spacious and much nicer than her apartment, fully furnished with a kitchen full of brushed-aluminum appliances.

  “Our woman lives at home with her family, so this would be for you, if you’d like,” Sarah said.

  If she’d like? She liked very much, though she tried not to appear too stunned in case there was negotiating still to be done.

  Back outside, she sipped her soda as if her heart weren’t attempting to escape her rib cage. It was an odd sensation for Carol. She didn’t often feel nervous. She also was never disappointed, because she’d never set her sights too high. If this fell through, though…

  “We’d like to offer you the position,” Sarah said as she and her husband emerged poolside through the sliding glass door.

  Carol forgot any notion she’d held of negotiating as she rushed to sign the papers before they could be snatched away.

  * * *

  The years passed quickly. Carol didn’t exactly feel like she was fulfilling her calling in life, but she’d never felt a calling, so that didn’t bother her much. In fact, she found the work more rewarding than she’d expected, as Bobby moved into the tiny group of people in her life she cared about.

  She knew some of it was a maternal instinct buried within her. You take care of the things you love, but you also end up loving the things you care for. And Bobby was lovable, even if other people didn’t see it. It angered her, the way people prejudged him, but she understood. He was intimidating. His concern was for his own needs. She figured he felt closer to her than anyone else, including his parents, yet he didn’t display any affection for her, because he didn’t display affection. She realized how well-suited to the job she was. They’d chosen her because she seemed tough. But even if she were the sort who could be intimidated, that would have worn off soon enough. Once you got over his size and learned how to deal with his territorial streak, Bobby just wasn’t that scary of a guy. She’d be much more wary of an average-sized drunk out carousing with his buddies on a Saturday night. But a softer person might have found it difficult to put such care into someone who displayed no love or appreciation. Bobby was as dependent as a toddler, but displayed no redeeming affection.

  It didn’t matter to Carol. At first, it didn’t matter because it was just a job. A very lucrative job. Later, it didn’t matter because she knew that even if he didn’t show it, not even with his eyes, that Bobby did love her. And as she closed in on menopause, she figured he was the closest thing she’d ever have to a son.

  After Carol had had the job for a few years, her mother died, and she had to reexamine her situation. If she were going to do something else with her life, it should be then. She had no responsibilities. She had a pretty fat bank account, and she’d been maxing out her retirement savings. She still had time, but it was growing shorter. If she wanted to go to school and pursue a career, or if she wanted to somehow meet a man and start a family, she needed to do it, and she couldn’t do it while caring for Bobby.

  Bobby was awake for thirteen hours a day, from eight AM to nine PM. She cared for him for those thirteen hours a day, five days a week. It certainly wasn’t the hardest work in the world. Not the hardest work she’d ever done. And yet by the time she gave him his evening pills, a cocktail of antipsychotics, neurotransmitter adjusters and a healthy tranquilizer, she was ready for him to fall asleep so she could hand him over to the night man. Luckily, his meds knocked him out in twenty minutes flat every time. Well, mostly knocked him out. They also had the counterintuitive side effect of causing frequent parasomniac episodes. Carol doubted whether they needed nighttime help until once when the night man had no-showed and they’d decided to just lock Bobby’s door for the night. While he could be gently guided back to bed if found early enough during an episode, the family discovered that night an episode could quickly escalate into a full-on night terror if left to run its own course. As the walls shook around her, Carol thought she was experiencing her first earthquake and ran to Bobby, only to find him looking confused among the debris of a pulverized door. Luckily, the hallway light had awakened him.

  So Bobby took all of her energy. During the week, she managed to keep her eyes open for two, maybe three hours after putting Bobby to bed. She spent Saturday with her sister and her niece, and then spent Sunday sleeping, watching television, and generally recharging for the week ahead. If she ever wanted to do more with her life, she’d need to do it elsewhere.

  In the end, though, she decided she enjoyed her life. She had interests, sure, and maybe one day she’d talk to the Miltons about giving her more time to pursue them, but she felt pretty fulfilled by the work she did with Bobby. She saw too many people striving and striving and never appreciating what they had. She had been able to pay for her mother’s care so she felt no remaining debt for her upbringing (she knew that was a strange way to think of the relationship with a parent, but Carol’s mother had chosen that, not Carol), she would one day be able to retire and do almost anything she wanted, she had money to spoil her niece with, and she genuinely enjoyed her work.

  For nine years, she’d taken Bobby to the therapist on Wednesdays, and then to get ice cream at the parlor across the street. Everyone at the ice-cream parlor knew Bobby. They sort of treated him like a pet, which annoyed Carol to some degree because she knew Bobby understood more than he could express, but it was miles better than the gaping awe he inspired so
mewhere like a park, or the avoidance and terror when people were forced into close confines with him, such as in the aisle of the grocery store as he chose his breakfast cereal.

  Carol had never paid much attention to the doll store. She’d once offered to take Lacee there to make a doll, but her sister didn’t want Lacee to get uppity, which Carol knew was meant to imply Carol had gotten uppity. Carol, who had worked in a factory all day and then went to school all night for two years to take on a burden her sister couldn’t. That was the last time Carol gave a conscious thought to LYLAS Dolls, until she found herself walking alone to the ice-cream parlor. She made Bobby hold her hand when they crossed the street from the therapist’s office, but not when they were strolling.

  The absence of the soft scrape of his work boot eventually raised an alarm, and she spun to find Bobby peering in a door. Beneath the awning, she couldn’t tell which store he was looking into, but she felt sure that several terrified people were probably staring back at him, and she jogged over.

  Amber had seemed so nice. Carol appreciated the way she tried to make Bobby feel normal, to treat him as she would any other customer, despite the fact that it would be nearly impossible to find a less typical LYLAS Dolls customer than Bobby. The fact that she did it not just once, to keep the giant freak happy, but every time they came in, never giving him the cold shoulder, never trying to discourage them from returning, really endeared Amber to Carol.

  So when Carol realized it was Amber who had sent the police to the Miltons’ door, her chest went hollow and airless for just a moment before rage rushed in to fill the void. No other employee had ever been present, and those photos would never have drawn suspicion on their own.

  Carol had been watching one last cartoon with Bobby before he’d need to take his pills when the doorbell rang. Curious at the intrusion at such a late hour, she went to the top of the stairs and saw two officers standing in the foyer. They nodded up in her direction, and Mr. Milton turned and looked, and Carol made out her name when he looked back. They waved her down and explained the situation.

  The Miltons were furious. The police were embarrassed. Carol was stunned. Then sad. Then very, very angry.

  The police seemed very conscious of the fact that two of the people they questioned regarding Bobby’s whereabouts owned half the town, almost literally.

  Carol got her planner and could account for their times away from the house almost to the minute. Bobby was never alone during any of the times when the abductions occurred because he was never alone. The housekeeper could have verified both Carol and Bobby’s presence in the house, but she’d gone home, and after talking to the Miltons, Carol, and even to Bobby—an interview that yielded even less fruit than the rest—the police didn’t feel it was necessary to call her. Hell, at the time of one abduction the entire family had been on vacation in Orlando. Well, the Miltons were attending a conference while Carol watched Bobby wade in the hotel pool or stare out at the ocean from a spot in the sand when she managed to drag him away from his portable video machine loaded with his favorite seasons of the Power Rangers. The Miltons wanted to see tanned skin.

  The police did go upstairs to the dayroom to look at the dolls, and they did bear far too close a resemblance to the girls to be a coincidence. Carol had never noticed, but their clothing even matched the descriptions given by the newspaper of what they were last seen wearing. As she encouraged Bobby to draw out one doll after another, the bottom dropped out of Carol’s stomach. How did he know about the girls? He couldn’t have done it, but how did he know? He couldn’t read the newspaper, and the photos didn’t show them in the outfits they were abducted in. She didn’t watch the news in the dayroom, but only in the evening in her own suite as she fought heavy eyelids. Bobby literally spent every waking moment in Carol’s care. She’d know if he’d been exposed to this information.

  No, not every waking moment. The weekend nurse. She must have been watching the news on Bobby’s television. It was the only answer. She’d talk to the Miltons about it.

  Looking around, she saw that thankfully no one had seen her space out momentarily. Her spinning head settled, she listened to George Milton whisper-shouting at an officer examining one of Bobby’s dolls under Bobby’s watchful eye. “For God’s sake, a mentally handicapped kid accidentally splatters some paint or colors outside the lines and they’re supposed to be murder wounds? I mean, come on!”

  The police officer holding the doll nodded to the other, then handed the doll back to Bobby. “I know, sir, but we have to check every angle. These abductions are the worst crimes the area has ever suffered. Can you imagine if word got out that we didn’t take every lead seriously?”

  George nodded his head with a bit too much vigor to show goodwill, but he said, “I understand. You have to do your job. I just can’t believe someone would accuse Bobby.”

  “Well, we’re very sorry to have bothered you and your family, and we’ll let you get back to your evening.”

  The officers left, and Carol gave an overstimulated Bobby an extra tranquilizer. He tried to watch another cartoon, since his viewing of what was to have been his final show of the evening had been interrupted (Carol was amazed anyone thought Bobby didn’t notice what was going on around him), but the pills soon had him dreamy and she led him to bed just before the night man showed up.

  Before she went to her own room, she went to the dayroom to look at Bobby’s dolls. She didn’t say anything to the Miltons or the police, but the marks must certainly have been wounds. His other work with the dolls had been too careful to dismiss this as “a mentally handicapped kid accidentally splattering some paint.” He was smart. No one knew for certain what had happened to the girls who’d gone missing, but, while their parents held out hope they’d be found, it was hard to believe someone had a basement full of live little girls. The weekend nurse had let Bobby see the news, and then he’d inferred the same sad conclusion Carol had: the girls had been murdered.

  * * *

  Bobby’s therapist agreed to meet with him at the city hospital, where he spent half his time anyway. Carol and the Miltons decided it would be best if Bobby didn’t go back to LYLAS Dolls, even after George had ensured that Amber was fired from the store. Bobby was a creature of habit and willful about certain things, and even if Carol didn’t take him across the street, she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t go himself. What she was very sure of was that if he got it into his head to do so, she couldn’t stop him. So they just never returned to the area.

  Stephanie, the weekend nurse, also lost her job over the debacle. Carol could have let it slide, the fact that she must have been letting Bobby watch the news, but Stephanie had called in sick too many Saturdays. Over the previous decade, weekend nurses had come and gone, but Carol had become part of the family. She had no trouble convincing the Miltons they needed a new weekend nurse. They were generous people, as Carol felt the very wealthy should be, but they wouldn’t stand for being taken advantage of, particularly not with regard to Bobby.

  Otherwise, things got back to normal pretty quickly. They didn’t talk about the episode, as it brought out too much emotion. Carol had to hold back from telling them how lucky they were to be rich. If they’d been average people, things could have gone much differently.

  Little girls continued to disappear. Two more were abducted, others also disappeared from sight because their parents no longer allowed them outside. They didn’t walk home. They didn’t play in the streets, the park, even in their yards. The little girls were gone, locked away like dolls inside their toy boxes and dollhouses. Boys ran wild in the streets as usual, but parents stopped even escorting their daughters out. It only took a moment of inattention for the predator to snatch a child. A parent could be reading the ingredients on a box of snack cakes and look up and have no daughter. They could be in the bleachers at a ball game and pay a little bit too much attention to an exciting play and turn to find nothing but an empty seat and a lingering warmth in the air.

  B
ut there were no bodies. And unlike in the serial killer thrillers Carol often liked to read on a lazy Sunday, this killer didn’t leave elaborate clues. Like most criminals, this person didn’t want to get caught, but to continue committing crimes.

  There was only one odd occurrence before Carol’s world came crashing down. She was straightening up after Bobby, something she didn’t technically have to do, but which she sometimes did just because clutter annoyed her. Bobby had left his dolls out. She couldn’t shake the feeling they weren’t tossed about haphazardly, but had been twisted into their death poses. She wished for the thousandth time since that night with the police that she could throw the damn things out, but Bobby would have gone ballistic.

  As she surveyed the grisly scene, she noticed two drawings lying among the dolls. At first, she’d thought them rejects from his sketchpad tossed aside randomly. Then, like the dolls, they clicked into place. What seemed random chaos was not, but fit into a pattern Carol couldn’t understand, and that frightened her.

  The drawings portrayed the two newly missing girls. Girls who’d only gone missing after the Miltons had fired the weekend nurse.

  How the hell was Bobby getting this information? Though he showed no signs of being literate—showed no interest in written words whatsoever—Carol had started keeping the newspaper out of his dayroom.

  Carol walked over to Bobby, where he sat watching cartoons. She wanted to ask him how he knew what the girls were wearing when they were taken, and why he thought he knew how they had died. Beaten, from the bruising on their faces, then strangled, from the bruising around their throats. But she knew she would get no answer from him. So what she asked for was the television remote.

  He looked at her outstretched hand, but didn’t move his own, which almost engulfed the controller.