by John Moralee
Riley met up with Lee outside the housing complex where Petrosian lived. His flat was not far away from the route Rachel would have taken home.
“I can’t believe they let out an animal like him,” Lee said, as they walked towards Petrosian’s flat. “What were they thinking?”
“The file says he made a deal with the prosecutors. He received a reduced sentence in exchange for giving up the identities of the other members of The Fatherhood. Otherwise, he would have received a mandatory life sentence without the possibility of release. They arrested thousands of perverts thanks to his information, but it still makes me sick. The only way he should have got out of prison is if he’d killed himself.”
Riley knocked on the door. A handsome, dark-haired man opened it. He looked like a normal person. But most perverts did.
“Gregory Petrosian, I’m DS Riley. This is DC Lee.”
“Police? What am I supposed to have done now?”
“A girl has gone missing. Her name is Rachel Harper. She’s only nine.”
“So?”
“A man matching your description was seen following her shortly before she disappeared.”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Then you won’t mind answering my questions?”
Petrosian grumbled something. He had no choice but to let them enter the flat if he wanted to remain free. The flat was cold and gloomy. It smelled of sour sweat, like a gym. The carpets in the hall and living room had food stains. Riley saw Chinese takeout boxes scattered at random on chairs and tables. There were no personal effects, nothing decorating the grey walls.
“Haven’t I been punished enough by living in this dump?”
“Beats prison, doesn’t it?”
A bedroom and a bathroom were to the right, a tiny kitchen to the left.
“Do you like jogging?” Riley asked.
“Yeah … why? Not against the law is it? I like keeping fit.”
“Do you have a blue tracksuit?”
“Yeah, why?”
“I want to examine it.”
“Okay. It’s probably in the washing machine.”
It was. It was clean. It took a minute to scan it for Rachel’s DNA. It came up negative.
“You won’t find anything,” Petrosian said. “I’m a reformed man.”
“We’ll be the judge of that.”
Riley privately communicated with Lee on his i.ware for him to bring in the forensic equipment. Lee nodded and left.
“Where’s he going?”
“He couldn’t stand your smell.”
“Hey! I don’t have to be insulted!”
“No, you don’t have to be insulted. But I like it. Sit down.”
Petrosian sat down, saying nothing. Riley stood over him, not wanting to sit on anything in the place in case he caught a disease.
“Where were you yesterday between four and five?”
“I was here, detective.”
“Can you prove that?”
“As a matter of fact, I can. I’m molecularly tagged by the probation service. They know where I am at all times. You can check their data files. They’ll show I was home yesterday. I’m not allowed to go out by myself even to buy food unless a probation officer gives me permission like I’m some kind of dangerous maniac.”
“You are a dangerous maniac.”
“I’m in control of my … behaviour.”
“You refused proper treatment.”
“Proper treatment? You mean I didn’t want my brain altering with a butcher’s knife?”
“Nanosurgery that would improve you, making you into a decent law-abiding human being. Without it, 98 per cent of offenders re-offend.”
“I’m in the two per cent,” Petrosian said.
“If I find even a molecule of Rachel’s DNA you’ll never see daylight again.”
“Go ahead,” Petrosian said, but he looked worried when Lee brought in a metallic cylinder the size of an old-fashioned fire-extinguisher. It had red warning labels on it.
“What’s that?” Petrosian said.
“It’s a SPORE machine. Scanning Particle Organic Room Examiner. It’s technology they didn’t have the last time you got caught. It basically ejects a cloud of nanomachine ‘spores’ that look like a heavy fog. They examine every object in the room, looking for organic material – such as DNA. The information is transmitted back to the cylinder’s AI for forensic analysis. After the spores have done their work – which will take twenty minutes – they will self-destruct into harmless gases. We’ll all have to leave during the process because it’s not pleasant to breathe in the spores. You can accompany us to the back of our police vehicle.”
“This is an infringement of my rights.”
“As a convicted paedophile you must comply as part of your probation conditions.”
Twenty minutes later the SPORE machine finished.
Bad news: no DNA from Rachel.
Worse news: Petrosian’s alibi was verified by the probation service.
According to their information, he was in his flat when Rachel disappeared.
“You’re going to have to release me now,” Petrosian said. Reluctantly, Riley unlocked the door. As Petrosian climbed out of the police car, he stared into Riley’s eyes, a half-smile forming. He licked his lips with a grey-pink tongue, the gesture sickening. “As the Americans used to say - have a nice birthday.”
Riley’s heart kicked. How did he know that? The creep must have accessed his birth records while he and Lee were examining the flat. Riley could feel the anger building. He stepped back before he did something.
Petrosian returned to his flat, closing the door with a grin.
*
Riley and Lee took a lunch break in a café. They talked in whispers so as not to disturb the other customers. Riley could not taste his food.
“If Petrosian’s guilty I can’t figure out how he’s fooled the probation service. Their tag system is supposed to be impregnable. It tracks a person 24-7. It can’t be removed because it’s in every cell. Nobody tagged has ever gone anywhere without the computers knowing it. His alibi is perfect.”
“Maybe he hacked into the network and changed the files?”
Riley didn’t think it was likely. Government security wasn’t as weak as it used to be. “It’s more likely he has a connection in the probation service. Remember he was a member of the Fatherhood. What if someone he knows is working on collusion?”
“We’d never prove it,” Lee said.
“I know,” Riley said. “Damn it!”
His anger caused a couple at the next table to look over as if were a mad man. He pushed his plate away, unable to eat.
“We need solid evidence to tie Petrosian to Rachel. But the only piece of evidence we have is the hoax call, which ended in a dead end. Unless …”
“What?” Lee said.
“The hoax. It was such an accurate simulation that it fooled Rachel’s father. Any computer can make a simulation, but it would require an intimate knowledge of each person being simulated. That includes Rachel, her friend Lucy and everything else. How did Petrosian get such information? I think Petrosian must have been inside Rachel or Lucy’s home. What if he got careless and left some proof?”
*
The SPORE machine analysed Rachel’s house. It detected several different DNA samples, corresponding to Rachel, her parents, some of Rachel’s friends … but nothing from Petrosian. Afterwards, Riley and Lee took the SPORE machine to Lucy’s house and ran the same tests. It took an agonising twenty minutes.
“I don’t believe it,” Riley said.
“What?”
“We’ve got a hit. Dead skin cells. DNA matches a known paedophile.”
“Petrosian?” Lee asked.
“No – someone called Peter T. Ryman.”
“Peter who? I’ve never heard of him.”
“He was also in the Fatherhood. He was once an IT teacher, an expert with computers. He was one of the men Petrosian ratted out. Ryman was g
oing to face life in prison, but he vanished before his arrest. He’s been in hiding for twenty years. I imagine that made him pretty mad with Petrosian.”
“You mean this Ryman guy wanted us to think it was Petrosian, a sort of payback?”
“Looks like it.”
“Jesus. What does he look like?”
A picture of Peter Thomas Ryman appeared.
Riley had seen him before under another name.
Lee gasped. “Is that who I think it is?”
“Afraid so. You go the address. I’ll go to the school. We’d better hurry. He might decide to run.”
*
“This is it,” Keller said, as the police car stopped at the house. “This is where that pervert lives.”
“Wait outside,” Lee ordered. “I’m going in alone. You stay there and call for support.”
“Fine with me,” Keller said.
Lee approached the house with his stun gun ready. Keller stood outside. Without announcing himself, Lee silently unlocked the door with a police override command and stepped into darkness. The hall was cold. He didn’t switch on the lights. He didn’t want his presence known. He moved through the house quickly, looking in each room. The rooms looked empty. He stepped into the bathroom and found what he expected inside the medicine cabinet. He continued. He crept up the stairs, to the bedrooms. In the first bedroom he saw sophisticated computer equipment. Lee crept up to the next room. The door was closed. He thought he could hear a noise on the other side. Very slowly, he tested the doorknob. The door was locked. Breathing hard, he kicked it. Wood splintered. As the door swung open, he swept his stun gun from side to side. The noise stopped. Then he stepped into the room.
The room was grimly bare except for a bed in its centre. Cameras had been installed at every conceivable angle.
He found Rachel on the bed, bound and gagged. His stun blast had knocked her out. But she was still breathing.
He rushed to her, pulling off the tape and ropes. She moaned. He worked faster.
“It’s going to be all right,” he promised her.
He heard a creak behind him.
“Keller, I thought I told you to stay outside?”
Riley walked into the classroom, his stun gun out. Mr Lincoln looked shocked to see Riley again.
“What’s going on?” he said.
“Mr Lincoln, I have an arrest warrant. I know the identity of Rachel’s kidnapper.”
“You think it’s me?”
“No. It’s Neal.”
“Neal? You can’t be serious. He’s only nine.”
“I’m very serious. His real name is Ryman. He’s not nine. He’s seventy-two. He must have taken enough rejuve to make him a kid again. He’s been pretending to be young so he can be around kids. Where is he?”
“He said he was going to the toilet ten minutes ago, but he hasn’t come back.”
*
When Keller did not reply, Lee looked over his shoulder.
He gasped.
Neal was rushing towards him with a knife.
The blade swept down at his crouching body, aimed at the back of his neck.
Lee didn’t have time to reach his stun gun. He twisted around, blocking the knife with his elbow. The blade cut deeply into his flesh. Blood jetted out. Neal yanked it out and stabbed a second time. Lee managed to block it as he started to stand up. Neal slashed at him desperately. He cut Lee’s hands and arms.
He was losing a lot of blood.
Neal laughed. He stabbed for Lee’s groin. Seeing the knife coming, Lee yelled and slapped the knife across the room. It landed in the corner. Neal’s eyes flashed with anger. He looked at the knife, but then he saw Lee trying to get out his stun gun, his bloody fingers struggling. Lee was determined to pull the trigger, even if it mean stunning himself as well.
Neal swore - no doubt realising that he could not fight an armed adult.
The boy turned and ran.
Grimacing, Lee managed a loose two-handed grip on his stun gun and chased after him. Neal was running down the stairs at a speed that he couldn’t hope to beat. He would escape. Lee stopped at the top and fired down. The stun blast dropped the boy instantly. He tumbled down and down, crashing onto the floor below. His neck made a sound like a broken branch.
Lee thought it had to be the first time ever a suspect had really fallen down the stairs while resisting arrest.
Lee sank down against the wall.
“Officer down, needs assistance …”
*
When Riley arrived at the house, he found Keller outside, his throat slashed. He was dead. Riley rushed into the house. He saw Neal dead, too. He looked up the stairs and heard his partner’s groan. He dashed up the stairs. Lee looked pale but not too seriously wounded. The flow of blood had slowed down. Lee managed a weak smile.
“The ambulance will be here in a minute. Just don’t move.”
“Don’t worry … about me. I’m okay. The girl … the girl is in the bedroom. Get her home.”
“Okay, I’ll get her -”
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“Happy birthday.”
“Yes,” Riley said. “Yes, it is.”
Diamond Pass
Death and guilt brought Cal back to Diamond Pass. He could have driven faster, but he wanted to delay his arrival, and prepare his mind for what was ahead, by staying well below the speed limit on these rough and unpredictable mountain roads.
Ten miles from the town, the black BMW passed over a precarious bridge of rust-red girders and wooden planks, the vehicle shaking as though frightened. His wife Heather woke up and looked around, blinking in the flickering sunlight. She gasped as she saw the river far below. The river was burgeoning with melted snow from the dark peaks of the Catskill Mountains, the water roaring over the engine noise.
“Cal?” she said.
“Nearly there,” he promised.
When the car reached the other bank, it seemed to sigh with relief, though it was just the air-conditioning changing pace. Ahead, the road disappeared into the forest of spruce and balsam firs. Cal still did not recognise the scenery, but after another couple of miles a feeling of familiarity crept up, slowly, until he felt as if he had never left. Suddenly, the road plunged into a green valley filled with bright light and a river as shiny as spun glass. They were there: his childhood home, Diamond Pass.
Not much had changed in fourteen years. Pushed to one side of Diamond Pass like the unwanted bastard child of a rich man, the Bradley and Sons trailer park where he had grown up sprawled alongside the riverbank for two depressing miles. It was hard to look at, so he looked instead at the town itself, which was much more appealing to the eye, the stores and hotels looked like an old frontier town prettified by a Norman Rockwell fan.
Cal was coming back officially for his mother’s funeral. He had feared and hated her just as much as loved her while she was alive, and he felt pretty much the same about her now. Yet here he was. He did not even know why; it was as though a long and invisible umbilical cord had reeled him back against his will into the darkness of her womb.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” he lied.
Heather knew he was lying but said nothing. They had been married seven years now, and she knew his moods better than he did. He felt ashamed. He felt like a criminal returning to the scene of a crime.
Diamond Pass, the official town, was a small but affluent tourist town where many bright, young New Yorkers kept their second homes and spent their vacations. There were three large hotels, the best of which was the Grange Hotel at over two hundred dollars per night. Cal and Heather booked in at the Grange Hotel. Their suite was large and looked out on a perfect view: the Catskill Mountains, the peaks still heavy with snow, the huge blue sky hazed with heat.
“It’s beautiful,” Heather said, hugging Cal from behind.
He nodded, but inside he felt sick. He was still delaying his arrival. Heather sensed his tension and pulled away.
/>
“Do you want to see your family today or do you want to leave it until tomorrow?”
“To –” He changed his mind mid-sentence. “- morrow.”
For the rest of the day they did the usual tourist things, assiduously avoiding the trailer park for the sumptuous sights up among the mountains and reservoirs. In the Catskill Forest Preserve they stood beside lakes and waterfalls and ancient trees just enjoying the pure, sweet air. Then, that night, they made love as if for the first time. It would have been perfect – if Cal had not let his own thoughts wander to another time and another woman, Nadine.
Nadine. She had been his first love, the girl he wished he’d married fourteen years ago. The last time he’d seen her she had been sixteen. Today Nadine would be thirty, he realised with shock. The big 3-0. In fact, it had been her birthday last week. He had forgotten until that moment. Since their last time together, Cal had been around the world as a soldier in the US Marines, gained a college education, achieved a degree in psychology, and married a brilliant woman. His life was good. Better than good – perfect. He wanted Nadine’s life to have been the same; she had been the only ray of light in his dark past. She had encouraged him to leave Diamond Pass even though he’d not wanted to leave her. She had understood that living there would have been the death of him. She had recognised something within him that he, as a teenager with little ambition and no dreams, had not. She had saved his soul by insisting he signed up for the Army, the hardest decision either of them had ever made. The Army had educated him, given him a sense of freedom that had opened his mind to new possibilities, new interests. It was his time to thank her in any way he could.
As Heather slept, Cal lay awake, wondering if Nadine still lived in Diamond Pass. He had no illusions about them getting back together (he was very happily married to Heather) but he did need to know what had happened to her.
