The Judas Child Read online

  “Hold up the other half of the biscuit so he can see it,” said Gwen. “Yell Sitting Bull.”

  “Sitting Bull!”

  The dog backed off a few feet and sat down, all his muscles tensing, eyes fixed on the bit of biscuit in Sadie’s hand.

  “Throw it to him.”

  Sadie did, and the dog caught the biscuit in the air, jaws clamping down on it. Even above the mechanical hum of all the tiny motors behind them, the girls could hear the rows of sharp teeth gnashing and chewing.

  “Nice throw,” said Gwen. “Now we’re going to do it again with another biscuit. We’ll keep it simple—just work with the tricks he already knows. But it’s important that he takes orders from you.”

  “Why me? You’re the dog expert. You trained Harpo to—”

  “But you make a better Alpha wolf—a pack leader.”

  Sadie was neither wounded nor afraid. Gwen was a coward, and the dog knew it, even if her best friend did not. She could never command this animal; she respected him that much. “Everything he does from now on is all about staying alive. But even wolves take orders.”

  “From the Alpha wolf.”

  “Right.” And once he became Sadie’s dog, she would be less inclined to kill him. It would have been just a matter of time before Sadie began to experiment with the dog’s food and the chemicals in the white room. One would only have to inhale the green powder to know that it was lethal.

  “Whoever feeds him gives the orders,” said Gwen. “So Geronimo is the attack command. He needs something to attack.”

  “I got just the thing.” Sadie ran down the aisle of mushroom tables and disappeared into the white room. In another minute, she came strolling back with the black felt mask held up high. “Like it?” She stopped by a cart, picked up a handful of plastic bags and stuffed them into the mask as she walked. When she handed it to Gwen, it was rounded out in the shape of a human head.

  Gwen threw it to the center of the dog circle. “Now yell—”

  “I know. Geronimo!”

  The dog fell on the mask. He sank his teeth in and shook it until Gwen whispered the countercommand, and Sadie yelled, “Sitting Bull!”

  The dog broke off the attack, and she was about to break a biscuit.

  “No,” said Gwen. “Throw him a whole biscuit. And then you have to praise him. Mr. Stuben says that’s very important.”

  Sadie begrudgingly threw him the biscuit, but seemed reluctant to say anything nice to the dog.

  “Sadie, do it,” whispered Gwen.

  “Good dog.”

  “Louder. And say it like you mean it, Sadie.”

  “Really good dog.”

  Over the next hour, they made more trips to the biscuit bag.

  “I think the dog likes you, Sadie. He doesn’t growl anymore. Look at his eyes. Friendly, right? Isn’t that nice?”

  The other child seemed unconvinced. “Geronimo! Yeah, look at him rip into that head. What a nice dog.”

  Gwen watched, smiling as the animal’s teeth closed on the dark cloth head. He whipped it back and forth, tearing the felt skin. “Our parents are probably going crazy right now.”

  “Not mine,” said Sadie. “Sitting Bull! My mother’s pregnant.” She tossed the dog a biscuit in a languid fashion, already bored with this new game of shuttling the animal between frenzy and repose. “Right now, the school shrink is probably telling my parents I ran away from home—acting out my anxiety with a bid for attention.” Sadie knew all the jargon words. She had been sent to the school counselor that many times.

  “Dr. Moffit is such an ass. But parents are really into that crap, aren’t they?”

  “Geronimo! Gwen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your language.”

  “My language?”

  “Sitting Bull!” Sadie tossed another biscuit. It was not a long throw, for they were sitting closer to the animal, only a few feet from the invisible border of the circle. “If you say crap to your dad one more time, he’ll never let me sleep over again. I never say crap in front of my parents.”

  “Crap, crap, crap.”

  “Shit, shit, shit,” sang Sadie in the higher register for the second bar of “Jingle Bells.”

  “Crap, crap crap,” chimed Gwen.

  And they harmonized on “Shit, fart” for the finale.

  Gwen applauded, and though it was difficult to lose her balance from a sitting position, she managed it, falling backward like a toppled bowling pin. Perhaps Sadie was right about the pills; maybe she was a little stoned. But at least there was no pain—she could not bear pain. The child was grinning entirely too wide as she righted herself to a cross-legged sit. “Now let’s do ‘Silent Night.’ Shi-i-i-it —”

  Sadie put up one hand to stop her. “That’s a movie title. You remember it? I taped it for you last year.”

  “Silent Night, Deadly Night, 1984? Killer Santa Claus versus the evil nun?”

  “Yeah.” In a rather good imitation of Mr. Caruthers, the closest thing to Santa in the flesh, Sadie puffed out her stomach and lowered her voice. “And what did we learn from this movie, Gwen?”

  “Never trust a nun?”

  “Close.” Sadie whispered, as though the dog might be listening, “This movie has two monsters, right?”

  The chained animal barked.

  “David told you that? David the Alien?” Sadie’s father smiled for the first time since the interview had begun.

  “He’s a strange little boy, isn’t he, Mr. Green?” said Arnie Pyle.

  “Yeah, but some of the weirdest people I know are children.” He smiled at the FBI agent. “Call me Harry.”

  “Do you know a lot of small children, Mr. Green?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said affably. Innuendo and rudeness had sailed past him. “I started coaching Pee Wee League baseball when Sadie was big enough to swing a baseball bat. But my kid really shines in gymnastics.”

  Rouge cut off Arnie Pyle’s response and said in a softer tone, “So you didn’t know anything about these meetings at the boathouse?”

  “No, I had no idea that probation nonsense was going on. Peter Hubble’s an odd bird. I don’t know why he’d want to keep them apart. He didn’t much care for the films they were watching, but I figured he was over—”

  “What films?” asked Pyle. He had not been privy to Rouge’s detailed report on Sadie’s genre of choice.

  “On Saturdays,” said Harry Green, “I used to drive the kids down to Milltown. There’s this little theater on George Street.” He turned to Rouge, a local man. “You know the place with eight million kids lined up to see vintage horror movies? Ever been there?”

  Arnie Pyle leaned forward to get the man’s attention back. “You exposed the girls to horror movies?” He might as well have suggested that this big man with the sad smile had exposed his naked body. But again, Pyle failed to place his shot.

  “Pretty tame stuff really.” Harry Green seemed to take no offense. “You’d laugh at them. The kids do. Sometimes you can see the seams in the monster suits, the wires and the wheels. But then Peter Hubble made the theater off-limits for Gwen. So now the kids tape the same old movies from cable TV and watch them on the VCR.” He shrugged. “But Peter doesn’t seem to mind that. Go figure.”

  Arnie Pyle stood up as a signal that the interview was ended. There was nothing to be had from this large and friendly man who refused to acknowledge an insult. Another agent escorted Harry Green out the door.

  Buddy Sorrel also rose from his chair and motioned Rouge to join him in the next room. “Nice job. Now you’re on your own.” Sorrel gave him a stiff smile. “Go back in there and hang out with the feds. The captain doesn’t want any part of the interview with Mrs. Hubble. This time, you play it Pyle’s way. I don’t care what he does to the lady, you let it blow back in his face—not ours. Got it?”

  Yes, he got it. He was to be Captain Costello’s fly on the wall, and nothing more. Rouge looked through the open door. A technician stood at the end of the long tab
le, face averted as he leaned over to set down the polygraph equipment. When Rouge walked back into the room, Arnie Pyle did not seem happy to see him. The agent turned his back and looked down at the machine.

  “Why a lie detector?” Rouge watched the tech adjust his dials. “The parents have already been through this—all of them.”

  Without turning, Pyle said, “Well, Mrs. Hubble is going through it again.”

  “Why her and not the others?”

  “Because I have a few questions you guys never asked.” Paper was scrolling across the machine bed, and the FBI agent was intent on the test of waving black lines beneath three moving needles. “And she’s a politician, isn’t she? A professional liar.” His back was still turned when he said, “It works better when there are fewer people in the room.” He waved vaguely toward the door. “You mind, kid?”

  Rouge sat down at the table. The fed smiled. “Fine.” He turned to a trooper standing near the door. “Bring her in.”

  “Ask her to come in,” said Rouge to the same officer.

  The man in uniform grinned, touching his cap in a nonregulation salute as he walked out the door.

  Arnie Pyle nodded in recognition of the point scored. “This time, I’ll handle the questions, okay?”

  “Sure. But if she breaks you in half, I’m not gonna shoot her for that.”

  “Oh, I think you might even drive the lady’s getaway car. I believe you found your calling, kid—white knight.”

  “Why don’t we do a deal, you and me. You don’t call me kid anymore, and I don’t call you shithead.”

  “But that’s his name,” said the silver-haired man standing just inside the door. Taken by surprise, Rouge was slow to extend his hand to this old friend of the family. It had been years since they last met. Julian Garret had once been a regular at the Kendall dinner table. But the famous political journalist showed no recognition as his eyes passed over the younger man. Nor did Garret notice the hand suspended in the air as he turned his back on Rouge.

  Julie, don’t you know me?

  “Buzz off,” said Arnie Pyle to the journalist, “and right now.”

  Pyle was too anxious to get rid of this man, and Rouge had to wonder why. He was certainly not protecting the lieutenant governor from the press. All the reporters had round-the-clock access to Marsha Hubble.

  Julian Garret turned his head to smile at Rouge as he shrugged off this blatant rudeness. “I blame Arnie’s bad manners on his mother. It was a tragic incident in his formative years.” The old man sat down on the edge of the desk.

  “Go away,” said Pyle.

  Did Julie’s presence make him nervous? Yes.

  Garret ignored the FBI man, speaking only to Rouge, still regarding him as a stranger. “It happened after school one day. Little Arnie—poor child—never heard so much as a warning bark before his mother ran out from under the front porch and bit him.” Julie feigned interest in his manicured fingernails. “I’m told Mrs. Pyle also chased buses and cars.” He turned back to the FBI agent. “Planning to wire the lady politician, I see. You’re probably wondering howI—”

  “Get out, Julie,” said Pyle. “I mean it.”

  That had the tone of an implied threat, and perhaps the unraveling of a deal. With a political columnist? Suppose the famed reporter was not merely covering the press conference of a high-profile senator with a governor in his pocket and alleged mob connections—though Rouge’s mother had not used the word alleged.

  The journalist smiled, inclining his head a bare inch in farewell. Garret swung his walking stick across the outer room with well-remembered panache.

  Rouge closed the door, saying, very casually, “So why do I think your interest in Marsha Hubble has nothing to do with her missing daughter? Who’s the target? Senator Berman?”

  The look of surprise on Arnie Pyle’s face told Rouge that he had been sorely underestimated, but that was all changing behind the agent’s eyes. So dirty politics held sway over missing children. The fed was that cold. You bet your ass, babe, as his mother would say.

  They sat in uneasy silence for the next few minutes, and then Gwen’s mother was escorted into the room. There was no polite conversation, not even a hello from Arnie Pyle. But the lady seemed not to care about this slight. Her eyes were riveted to the machine; what it implied was not lost on her. Pyle ignored her while the young civilian technician was taping the wires to her skin. Her look of disbelief was blending into resignation.

  Pyle stood to one side, giving Rouge his first clear view of the polygraph tech, a very young man with boyish cowlicks and freckles across the bridge of his nose. The FBI had more seasoned pros at their disposal, and Rouge had to wonder if this examination was all for show.

  When the technician was done with the mundane test questions, Pyle stood over Marsha Hubble, almost threatening in his posture and proximity. He had bound the woman with wires, and now she must know he was about to hurt her. Her hands balled into fists, and she sat a little straighter, bracing for the first salvo.

  “You have no idea what happened to the kids?”

  “No,” she said.

  “But you still resist the idea that Gwen ran away?”

  “It’s not in my daughter’s character.”

  The young technician leaned forward and said, “Ma’am, could you please restrict your answers to yes and no?”

  “Shut up,” she said, never taking her eyes off Pyle.

  And the technician did shut up. His broad farmboy face was reddening as he ducked his head to look down at his waving needles and rolling graph paper.

  Agent Pyle stood behind her and rested his hands on the back of her chair. “Your husband says Sadie’s a bad influence on Gwen.”

  The technician’s voice was more timid now. “Sir, if you could structure your questions—”

  “Butt out!” The FBI agent raised one hand in a futile gesture, perhaps wishing he could call the words back. All pretense of a polygraph exam was blown—that much was in the lady’s face. Rouge wished that Arnie Pyle could see the disturbing new light in Marsha Hubble’s eyes.

  The agent ran his hands down the sides of her chair. She must have felt his fingers brushing against her clothes, but she gave no indication of it. Rouge was becoming more fascinated with every passing second, for Pyle did not seem to realize that the game was up. His voice was even and low. “Your husband is a very worried man.”

  “And a humorless man. Sadie believes he’s the bad influence. I tend to side with the kid.” She was more testy now.

  “I think your husband worries about other people too, enemies who—”

  “Worrying is a way of life with Peter. He’d keep Gwen wrapped up in velvet padding if my lawyer wasn’t smarter than his.” Her voice was getting louder, stronger.

  “You have some formidable enemies, lady. I don’t blame him for being worried.”

  “What the hell are you getting at, Pyle?” She was done playing with him.

  He came out from behind the chair and leaned one hand on the table. He regarded Marsha Hubble with mild contempt, not even acknowledging the anger in her face.

  Bad mistake, Pyle.

  In Rouge’s experience, it was always a good idea to keep one eye on the end of a fuse—so a man could pull back before his balls were ripped off by the blast. All women carried dynamite; it was issued to them at birth, along with many packs of matches for lighting fuses.

  “I think you know who took the kids.”

  “So now I planned it? You moron. What do you think I did with the extra kid?”

  Pyle obviously didn’t hear the tension in her voice, a woman’s only warning that she was striking the matches. The agent settled into a chair next to hers and leaned back, folding his hands behind his head. He was entirely too comfortable with what he was doing to her. “Lady, you made—”

  “You’re so smart, you little bastard? You try making a baby from scratch materials.”

  Rouge could smell sulfur and smoke in the air.


  “Okay,” said Pyle, so glib he annoyed her even more—another error. “Let’s talk about your enemies. Senator Berman really wanted to knock you off the governor’s ticket. But you managed to stay on for another election. So I gotta wonder what kind of leverage you used. You must’ve considered the mob as a possible—”

  “I know your background, Pyle. I mean after you left the Center for Missing and Exploited Children.” She ripped off the lie detector wires, one by one, with great deliberation and no hurried motions. “I understand you received a commendation for your work on New York crime families.” The last wire was gone; the lady was unbound and rising. “You would use my little girl to build a damn mob case against Berman?”

  Rouge thought her voice was entirely too calm as she hovered over Arnie Pyle. The FBI man never blinked. Rouge wondered if Pyle simply lacked the good sense to move away from her before—

  “You son of a bitch!” Her closed fist connected with the agent’s right eye, hard enough to rock Arnie Pyle on the rear legs of his chair, to tip him backward and send his head slamming into the wall as the chair slid out from under him.

  The civilian polygraph technician was stunned, and then his mouth widened in a boy’s grin. “Nice one, ma’am.”

  She had quit the room by the time Arnie Pyle had risen from the floor. His hand went to the back of his head. “She acts like a bitch, but she’s got those humongous balls. I’m so confused.”

  “And so full of yourself.” Becca Green was standing on the threshold. She entered the room, followed by Captain Costello. “I don’t know what you did to Gwen’s mother, but if you do it again, I hope she beats the crap out of you.” She advanced on him and put one pointing finger into the middle of his chest.

  Pyle backed up a step. He had suddenly learned some measure of respect for mothers. “I’m not her enemy, Mrs. Green.”

  “Damn right you’re not. You’re just something she bumped into in the dark. So, you wanna tell me about the ransom note now, or do I call that woman back in here to finish you off ?”