The Judas Child Page 16

  “It was a vision.” The voice from the center of the room was hysterical. Frund’s words were said in a high-pitched whine. The louder voices of larger men rained down questions like fistfalls.

  “Anyone ever call you short eyes?” asked Sorrel. And another voice asked if the little girls were still alive. “And where are they?”

  “I had a vision,” said the little man, crying now. “I saw the little girl in—”

  “In your vision. Right.” Sorrel’s tone was pure acid. All the voices dropped to a lower level that was somehow more threatening.

  When Rouge turned his chair back to the desk, the bodies of encircling cops had blocked Martin Frund from his view. He looked down at the transcript of the old murder trial. He was undisturbed by the rising volume of the little psychic’s plaintive bleating, hardly aware of the sound of a chair hitting the floor, and then the soft crying.

  Rouge scanned the property list inserted at the back of the transcript. The only physical evidence against Paul Marie was the silver bracelet. On the witness stand, BCI Investigator Oz Almo had insisted that bracelet was found in the priest’s bedroom. Paul Marie had admitted to finding it, but said he had placed it in the parish lost-and-found box.

  The only defense witness, Father Domina, had been vague in his recollection of “a shining ring of silver” in the box among the more mundane lost items. The district attorney had destroyed the elderly priest’s credibility with indirect attacks on the man’s failing eyesight and his memory. But nothing could destroy Father Domina’s faith in the young priest’s innocence.

  At last Rouge understood why Father Domina had remained in the church well past retirement age. He wondered if the frail old man had not overstayed his life as well, hanging on, waiting for a miracle: the parole of a child killer, so Paul Marie might take his place as the head of the parish.

  Rouge skimmed the testimony of Jane Norris, the young woman who claimed Paul Marie had assaulted her when she was only fifteen. Under the most listless cross-examination by the defense counsel, it had come out, almost by accident, that Paul Marie was only fourteen years old at the time, and that the relationship had lasted four more years, culminating in a broken engagement.

  When Rouge looked up from this page, he saw Sorrel handing Martin Frund his coat. The psychic’s eyes roamed from face to face, perhaps wondering if this was a trick. Then he edged toward the door, tripping on the tails of the coat slung over his arm, and knocking his head into the wall with a bang.

  Good. Rouge turned back to his reading, undistracted by the sound of Frund’s running feet in the stairwell.

  Inserted into the following page was a folded summary of police reports filed by this same witness. Aided by an enthusiastic therapist, Jane Norris had recalled early memories of incest and other sexual assaults by policemen, teachers, doctors, and the school bus driver. Rare was the man she had not accused of rape. At the bottom of the page, a handwritten footnote told him that the district attorney had read the same report before putting the bogus witness on the stand. More incredible than this, the defense attorney had received full disclosure and signed a receipt for the police reports.

  But there were no appeals filed for the defendant. Other convicted felons had walked away from jail time despite more solid testimony and fewer trial errors.

  Lesser offerings into evidence were signs of Susan’s struggle in the snow near the church. But she had been at the church for choir practice only a few hours earlier. The attorney for the defense had not contested the rather loose description of child and adult footprints, and there were no photographs taken. Rouge wondered if this was tainted evidence as well.

  He closed the transcript. There was nothing to say that Paul Marie was innocent, nor was there any proof of murder.

  When he opened his desk drawer, he was startled by the rolling motion of an old baseball bearing his own signature. This had not been in the drawer twenty minutes ago when he left for the men’s room.

  Even before he looked out the window, he knew what he would see in the parking lot below. David Shore’s small white face was floating in the gathering dusk of the dinner hour. The child was rubbing his red mittens together and stamping the cold from his feet. How long had David been standing there, patiently waiting to be noticed?

  Rouge stared at the baseball’s autograph. There was only one season when he could have signed it. Had David been a face in the crowd on one of those summer days after a game? He only remembered a hundred tiny hands thrusting out cards and balls and bits of paper for their heroes to sign. And now he recalled one particular day when he had spotted Mary Hofstra, miles taller than the mob of little fans at the gate. He had waved to her, thinking she had come to see him play, to cheer him on. But the housemother had disappeared by the time all the autographs were done and the last child was satisfied. And now he realized that she must have come that day for David’s sake, the little boy with real heart for the game.

  So they had met before—for the few seconds it took to scrawl a signature on the child’s baseball. David could only have been five or six years old.

  Mary Hofstra had told him to create a comfort zone to ease the boy’s shyness, but he had done nothing toward that end, and David could not wait any longer; he was making a mighty effort to get past the fear of talking to an adult, a cop.

  There were no civilian cars in the front lot. Where was Mary Hofstra now?

  The phone rang. He never took his eyes off David as he picked up the receiver. “Kendall here.”

  “Hey, Rouge?” The state trooper’s voice sounded tired and harried. “You got a phone call from St. Ursula’s Academy. It’s a lady—a Mrs. Hofstra? You wanna take it?”

  “Sure, put her through.” Rouge wondered if Mrs. Hofstra could still read his mind, and from such a distance.

  “Rouge?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was haunted by the scent of peppermint tea, as though he could smell it through the telephone wires.

  “Is David with you?”

  “Yes, ma’am, he’s here. I’ll bring him home.”

  “Thank you, Rouge.” Then Mary Hofstra was gone, and the peppermint connection was broken.

  He threw up the sash and leaned out into the cold air. “Hey, David?” The boy raised one red-mittened hand, and his breath came out in white puffs on the cold night air. “You wait there, all right? Mrs. Hofstra wants me to drive you back to school. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

  Rouge closed the window, donned his jacket and put the baseball into his pocket. He didn’t take the hallway to the parking lot, but went down the back stairs to the basement. He flicked on the light near the door, and it bounced off the row of new metal lockers installed by the task force to house their gear. The old green wooden storage cabinet had been pushed to the back wall and blocked by stacks of cartons bearing the New York State Police logo. He worked quickly to clear the cabinet. Finally, the doors creaked open on their old hinges to display all the gloves and bats once used by the Makers Village Athletic League. Now that the baseball field had been sold off to a furniture store, he wondered if this equipment would ever be used again.

  He pulled out a bat, old but well made. This had been his own contribution to the cabinet, a souvenir from his days with the Yankees rookie league. He hefted it in one hand, testing the weight of the Louisville Slugger.

  “Hey, kid,” said a familiar voice behind him.

  He turned to see Buddy Sorrel. The senior investigator was staring at the bat, which must seem an oddity in winter. “Would I want to know what you were planning to do with that, Kendall?”

  “I’m gonna play ball.” Rouge pulled the baseball out of his pocket and held it up to the older man as proof.

  “Yeah, right. You know, I haven’t played the game since I was a kid.” Sorrel cracked a smile at some old memory, and then his expression became rueful. “Okay, Kendall, you know the rules. If you beat up a reporter, you hit him where it doesn’t show—and no witnesses. You got that?”
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  Rouge met with no more questions as he left the police station armed with a bat and a pitcher’s glove.

  David was standing in the same place at the fringe of light from a lamppost, his white face so pale between the dark ski cap and the collar of a midnight-blue jacket. His eyes were perfectly round as he stared at the bat and the glove.

  Rouge pulled the baseball out of his pocket and tossed it. David plucked the ball out of the air and threw it back. Their conversation had begun.

  This time Gwen neither drank nor ate anything from the tray, though she was starving and the lure of food was strong. She flushed the cocoa and the biscuit down the toilet, not bothering to crumble the bread, for it would be too tempting to eat just one crumb and then another. With great regret, she watched the precious meal spinning down the bowl and out of sight.

  Slowly revolving in a groggy haze, her eyes took in each detail of the large bathroom and finally settled upon the wall hamper. She walked toward it, stumbling once, then falling to the floor and crawling the rest of the way.

  Why put a lock and chain on a hamper? Gwen knew this could be worked out if only she could hold on to a thought for two consecutive minutes. She pressed one ear to the metal hamper and held her breath. Not a sound, nothing living inside of it—something dying? Sadie? It was the right size to hold a ten-year-old girl.

  The child banged on the metal. “Sadie!” she yelled, and then put her hands over her mouth, suddenly frightened by the sound of her own voice. Well, what did not frighten her? Gwen banged her fist on the metal again, this time in frustration. Now she was grateful for the effect of the drug; she was at least not running about the room, screaming and flapping her arms like a goose.

  Gwen gripped the hamper’s chain and slowly stood up, more steady on her feet now. She began to pace the bathroom in slow circles, willing her mind to clear away the cobwebs of drugs. Turning to the hamper again, she focused on the padlock of bright blue paint and chrome. It was like the one St. Ursula’s had issued to every student with a bicycle.

  There had been a rash of bike thefts in September. Boarding students and townies alike had been victims. This padlock was an expensive brand with the option of individual settings. On the day the locks were handed out, the teachers had instructed every student to set the combination to their own birth date, so they wouldn’t forget the numbers. Gwen had dutifully done as she was told. But this padlock couldn’t be hers. Her own lock was at home, on the bike chain in her knapsack.

  Sadie’s?

  She turned the dial to the day, month and year of Sadie’s birth, but it failed to open.

  Her head snapped up, and she stood at attention, forgetting to breathe. She could hear the movement of heavy furniture sliding across the floor in the next room.

  She returned to her cot and slipped under the sheet. Every muscle was tensing, joints locking up, her whole body freezing into a solid, inert block of fright. Her fear subsided for a moment as she stared at the massive armoire, trying to remember something of importance. It didn’t belong in this room—and something that did belong here was missing.

  On the other side of the bathroom door, she could hear scraping of wood on wood. Some heavy object was sliding out of the way.

  There was no access to the baseball diamond. The field was surrounded with chain-link fencing, and the gate was locked. Rouge motioned David to join him in the wider area of the front lot used by library patrons. The asphalt, marked with yellow lines for parking spaces, was unpopulated in the dinner hour.

  He handed David the bat, and in the next moment, the first pitch was in the air. David swung; the bat sounded a loud crack. A long fly ball sailed to the back of the lot, where it bounced once on a dark sedan, then rolled across the wooden ski rack on the roof of a station wagon.

  Officer Billy Poor’s hand was frozen in the act of reaching for the car door. He stared at the ball, not immediately comprehending what it was doing there, for every fool knew that baseballs only flew in summer. Then he looked toward the front lot. When he saw Rouge and the boy with the bat, Officer Poor grinned.

  “Hey, you guys are dangerous. You need a damn outfielder.” And then the village cop was with them in a game of three. In only a few minutes, they were joined by a state trooper in uniform. Then a BCI investigator, with his tie undone, came running out to play, arms laden with baseman’s gloves for all. Another village cop, Phil Chapel, came up behind David, who gracefully conceded his place at bat.

  The investigators, the troopers and the hometown boys in blue were out in force, and more were on the way down the steps of the station house. Rouge watched their faces glow by lamplight. They had been used up and haggard at the end of a shift and facing another tour of overtime. But now they were reborn, and it was no longer December, but high summer; not night, but day, a warm, dry one; all boys again, gloves reaching out to the long high curve of a ball in flight, poetry in ballistics, gravity undone.

  Buddy Sorrel appeared at the fence gate with a pair of bolt cutters in hand, and soon the chain hung loose and broken. The gate swung open, and the players filed through to the old baseball diamond.

  On the sidewalk, Christmas shoppers stopped to stare at them through the links in the fence. The field was well lit by the security lights intended to safeguard a stack of construction materials.

  Cops were in the outfield, and one was up at bat. Buddy Sorrel wore a catcher’s face mask and crouched behind home plate. David was pitching fastballs and killing the batters off one by one. Now a trooper, still wearing his uniform, hit a long ball into left field, and he began to run the bases in his regulation leather shoes and a glorious grin.

  Rouge was up at bat when the children of the Christmas shoppers abandoned their parents on the sidewalk and poured through the opening. Those who hadn’t seen the unlocked gate in the parking lot were scrambling up the chain-link fence spanning the sidewalk. Boys and girls dropped into the field, hitting the ground at a dead run. Some ran toward home plate to take a turn at bat, and others scrambled into the outfield.

  The cops behind the bases were laughing as each one gave up his baseman’s glove to a child. The men backed off to the cheering section by the sidewalk, where the taxpayers were gathering in greater numbers.

  A new catcher, much shorter than Sorrel and heavily freckled, tossed the ball back to David on the pitcher’s mound; it was a bad throw and wide of the mark. David only stepped to the side, extended his arm in a long, slow reach and caught it with no apparent effort, as though he had taught the ball to fly home to his glove—almost magic. He looked up to the sky of this make-believe summer, and snowflakes fell into his eyes.

  Cheers and whistles came from the sidewalk gallery as another boy ran all the bases and skidded into home plate on his little backside. Cars were being moved into position along the parking lot section of the fence, and now the baseball diamond was bright as day, and large fluffy flakes of snow drifted down in a shower of white confetti.

  Every base was loaded with a child set to run, only awaiting the next batter. Rouge handed the bat to a little girl with killer-blue eyes, a brunette heartbreaker with a red beret. He watched as she crouched over the bat like an old pro, and he half expected her to spit chewing tobacco from the side of her mouth. David was on second base when she popped the ball into right field. Off David flew to third base as the girl slid into first, and her red beret went flying. David skidded into third, and the little girl stole second. While the ball was flying back to the pitcher’s mound, David touched down on home plate, and a roar went up from the crowd of spectators on the sidewalk.

  Now David was startled as the little girl, sans red beret, slammed her small body into the dirt behind him, having stolen one more base against all odds of making it. She jumped to her feet, wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him in a pure, spontaneous act of joy.

  David’s eyes were shining, his grin was foolish, his face was red—all the symptoms of a perfectly normal boy in the clutches of a girl.

/>   For the first time in recent memory, Gwen was frighteningly awake. The door opened with a metallic click of the lock, loud as gunfire in the dark. Her eyes were open by the barest slits as the large black shape was silhouetted against a harsh white light from the outer room. Gwen closed her eyes, and the light diffused into a pink blot on the delicate membranes of her eyelids.

  Her mind was working through the fear; it was the only part of her that still functioned, trying to disassociate itself from her trapped body with the distraction of new questions. She knew the bathroom door had been locked, for she had just heard the key working the tumblers. But something heavy had also blocked the only exit; she had heard it sliding away from the door. Why? Surely the lock was—

  The door closed. The glow beyond her eyelids was extinguished, and she was blind to everything now. But there was a terrifying acuity to her sense of hearing. The thing was walking toward her cot. It came on two feet like a human, yet the idea of a large insect prevailed.

  Gwen stiffened as the thing settled into the chair by her cot; she heard the wicker sounds of stress and protest as the strands of woven wood gave way beneath a heavy weight.

  Utter silence now.

  Was the thing also listening to her? Did it know that sleep breathing was different? Sadie Green did; she had gone on at great length about the art of shamming sleep in horror movies.

  Gwen let her breath come out loud and labored. Was she overdoing it? No. The creature in the chair seemed satisfied with this, for now she could hear the thing breathing, too. And there was motion; she had the sense of the giant insect wildly twitching, reaching out with its antennae, growing larger in the dark. The thing was breathing faster, more excited now. When it lightly touched her hair, she could not scream; she was paralyzed. It was a fight merely to breathe again.

  The chair pulled nearer to the cot. Gwen could smell waves of stale sweat and breath of wine. She could sense it closing in on her. Something was massing just in front of her face. What was it doing with its hands? They might be reaching for her eyes. If it touched her again, would she scream this time? It was coming closer; she could anticipate it, almost see it through her skin, which prickled and grew small bumps.