Among Prey (9 page)

In a high voice, Derek said, “I thought it was my mom’s car. It was raining so hard I couldn’t see inside, and I just jumped in.”

* * *

Derek never felt more disconnected from the rest of society than when the sun rose. As his shift ended and he packed his laptop and magazines into his backpack, the sun peeked at him from the window at the eastern end of the hall, reminding him that when he prepared to rest, the flock stirred. It was the time of day when they could forget there were predators like him roaming the world, when the air was brisk and the sun was bright and kind.

He didn’t like it. He preferred to be in his bedroom with heavy blankets tacked over the windows before the sun rose.

Just as he was getting ready to walk downstairs and out the front door, Mrs. Milton came up the stairs.

“Derek, I’ve got a big favor to ask.”

“What’s that, Mrs. Milton?”

“One of my contractors has really screwed the pooch. I need to get on-site to smooth this over. Could you stay a few extra hours? I’ll be back by lunch. You’ll get double-time.”

Derek hesitated. Double-time sounded nice, but he’d never dealt with Bobby while he was awake. “Will that be okay with Bobby? He doesn’t know me well.”

“Bobby lives in his own world. It doesn’t matter to him. Give him the TV remote and he’ll forget you’re there.”

“Okay, then. Sure. You know I can’t give meds, right?”

“I’ll give him his morning pills before I leave, and then be back before his lunch pills. Don’t worry.”

Derek reintroduced himself to Bobby, who didn’t pay him the smallest bit of attention as he dressed himself. At breakfast, Derek enjoyed the rare opportunity to flirt with Martha. She wasn’t old enough to be his mother, but she was closer than not and she was hot anyway. She looked like she’d know what she was doing in the sack, and she always made eyes at him when they passed in the morning. But working opposite schedules, they never got to speak.

“So what’s the story with Carol, anyway? Why’d she quit? Hadn’t she been here forever?” he asked, cup of coffee in hand.

Martha stood at the kitchen counter, cleaning up the breakfast dishes. She shook her head tightly and waved him over.

She said, “I don’t think it’s good to talk about her in front of Bobby. The Miltons don’t agree, but I think Bobby misses her.”

“So what happened? Why’d she quit?” He’d barely gotten a word about the situation out of the Miltons.

“Well, she didn’t exactly quit… Listen, I probably shouldn’t be talking about this.” She leaned against the counter beside him and crossed her arms.

“Come on.” He slid just a bit and bumped her with his hip. “I can keep a secret.”

She stared at the floor, smiling a bit. He bumped her again. “Come on.”

She looked up at him, one eyebrow raised, then smiled. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“Look at this face.” He pursed his lips and batted his eyes. “This is the face of an angel.”

“Oh, the devil is known to take a pleasing shape.” She stared into his eyes, and he just smiled. He knew he had her. “Okay, like I said, Carol didn’t exactly quit.”

“What do you mean?”

Martha looked over at Bobby, who was pouring another bowl of cereal, then said quietly, “I don’t think they fired her, but she knew she wasn’t welcome back. She hit Bobby.”

“Really?” Derek looked over at the giant sitting in a special reinforced chair and leaning down to eat from a table that barely cleared his knees. “No way.”

“Yes way. I saw it. I had to stop her. She didn’t just hit him, she was wailing on him.”

“And he just took it?”

“Like a dog. Like he thought he deserved it.”

“Did he deserve it?”

“Of course not!” Martha raised a hand to her mouth and glanced at Bobby, who still didn’t look up. “Her niece went missing, and she got some crazy idea in her head that Bobby knew about it.”

A wave of adrenaline flooded Derek’s veins. He didn’t know which little girl was Carol’s niece, but he knew how Bobby would know what had happened to her. Because he’d told him. But Bobby had been asleep. And he didn’t talk. Derek forced himself to breathe slowly, and tried to force his forehead to stop sweating. “Why would she think that?”

“Well, her niece turned up. The little slut had just run off to meet some guy she met on the Internet. But Carol thought she’d been abducted like all the other little girls.”

“But why would Bobby know about that?” he asked too loudly. He smiled, then took a sip of his coffee.

“He doesn’t, but for some reason the police came and talked to him about the missing girls. I don’t know. I wasn’t here, and no one would tell me anything about it. I’d bet it’s just the standard BS. People don’t understand him, so they’re scared of him.”

That could be true, but Derek didn’t think the police would come question someone just for being a giant, scary retard. There had to have been something else, and he had to walk a fine line to discover what it was. He couldn’t be too persistent or interested, or he’d bring suspicion down on himself. But he also couldn’t sit around with his thumb up his ass, because the cops might show up on his doorstep next.

* * *

Derek settled Bobby in front of the television in his dayroom and then opened the photo gallery on his phone. He’d intended to immediately delete the photos of the dead girls, but he hesitated as he looked at them. He didn’t want to let them go.

Somehow, when he wasn’t paying attention, Derek had become one of those serial killers who seems to be actively working to get himself caught. He’d always scorned the killers who were smart enough to have gotten away with their crimes, but then did stupid things like taunt the police or keep trophies. Now, knowing how close the police had come, Derek realized he’d unconsciously been making the same mistake. Was it inherent in being a predator? Even if it were, he had to stamp the tendency out. He liked killing, and he liked freedom, and to keep both he’d have to be more careful.

And that meant getting rid of the photos, the only evidence besides Bobby’s defective brain that could link him to the murders.

This should be the easy part. Bobby’s defective brain was encased in a thick skull guarded by two dull, staring eyes and 400 pounds of bulk. Finding out how the seemingly inert mass raised suspicion in someone enough that they actually called the police would be difficult. Bobby didn’t answer questions, so Derek would have to somehow work on the Miltons.

Getting rid of the evidence, though, was beyond easy. And yet, looking at the pictures, he couldn’t make himself do it.

He turned the screen off. Then pulled out the memory card. It would be easier to do this without looking into their eyes. Besides, just deleting the files might leave traces, if TV police dramas were to be believed.

He dropped the tiny card onto the floor and ground it beneath his heel. When he lifted his foot, the card was still perfectly intact. He looked at Bobby, who was completely engrossed in his cartoon.

Derek knelt down beside the table, lifted one leg, and set the card beneath it. After pressing down repeatedly on the corner of the table until the crunching stopped, he scooped up the fragments, went to the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet.

When he returned, Bobby hadn’t moved an inch. Now for the hard part.

Derek sat beside Bobby on the couch. Bobby looked at him with those deep-set, piggy eyes like you’d find buried in the fat face of some monster, hunch-backed porker, the scary kind that’d eat a person as soon as slop. He turned back to the television.

“Bobby, why did the police come talk to you about the missing girls?”

Bobby didn’t respond, or even act like he’d heard the question. Derek asked a few more times, then reached out and pressed the power button on the remote clutched in Bobby’s hand.

Bobby turned to stare him straight in the eyes as he pressed the power button and switched the remote to his far hand. He held Derek’s eyes for a few seconds longer, then went back to his program.

Derek stood and walked away. Turning back to look at Bobby’s bulbous head, he had the urge to take a heavy object and brain the imbecile with it, but reminded himself how much he enjoyed freedom. He could work on a way to get back at Bobby later, but he needed to concentrate on the task at hand.

Having no idea what he was searching for, or if there were anything to search for, he looked slowly around the room. His eyes snapped back to the sketchpad on the table. He’d noticed it before, when he crushed the memory card, but now he understood why: it was a potential method of communication.

As soon as he opened the book, fear coursed through Derek. The first picture showed a battle between some sort of costumed superheroes, but what struck Derek was how advanced the drawings were. Bobby didn’t speak. He didn’t respond. He acted like he didn’t understand anything, but as Derek flipped through the pages, he realized Bobby was smarter than he seemed.

Did he remember Derek talking to him in the girls’ voices? He shouldn’t. They had him on heavy meds, and with his parasomnia disorder, even though his eyes were open, he was asleep. But Derek couldn’t know for sure.

He turned away from the sketchpad, and found himself facing a flannel wall. He looked up into Bobby’s blank face, but questioning eyes.

Derek got the feeling Bobby didn’t like him.

Being pinned between the table and the giant was too much, and he sidestepped. Bobby slowly reached out, and Derek stopped moving, not wanting to spook the beast.

Bobby’s fingers, thick and creased at the joints as baby-doll limbs, closed on the sketchpad and removed it gingerly from Derek’s hands.

“Those are good drawings. Superheroes, huh?” Derek circled until he had space, then began to back away. He couldn’t make himself turn his back on Bobby, who watched him from that round, blank face.

Then Derek’s foot went out from under him and he was falling backward. His right hip smashed into something hard and bounced him to the left, where he lay for a moment as pain flowered through his side.

“Fucking shit…” Derek picked up the toy he’d tripped over. A doll. A girl’s doll. He’d managed to stick his foot right between the doll and its backpack so that it stuck when he’d tried to correct and step out of it, and down he’d gone.

He snorted. The big moron played with baby dolls. He was about to toss it aside when he noticed something peculiar, and instead he looked closely at it.

The bruises. The mud. The white shirt with the red heart. If the lanky brown hair had been wet, he would have recognized it instantly. It was the first girl—his first kill.

Adrenaline galvanized him and he flipped to his knees. He found another doll of another girl. Her wounds just like those in the photos he’d spent hours staring at. Photos he’d showed Bobby.

He saw that what he’d smashed his hip on was a wooden toy box overflowing with his victims.

“What the fuck, Bobby?” He had to get the dolls out of there. He started tossing the dolls into the toy box, but realized it was too big for him to leave the house with. He ran downstairs and into the kitchen. Martha had moved on to another room, and he found a trash bag beneath the sink.

Back in the dayroom, he began to toss the dolls into the bag as Bobby watched, but didn’t move. Derek kept looking to see if he’d do something, but he just stood nearby and watched. Once he’d bagged up all the dolls, Derek stood and began to back toward the door.

Then Bobby moved.

Just like with the sketchpad, he slowly reached out for the bag of dolls. But this time, Derek didn’t wait for him to grab it, but kept going. He was almost to the doorway when Bobby lunged forward and grabbed the bag. Derek had never seen him move at anything more than a bovine plod, and was unprepared for the burst of speed. But he didn’t let go of the bag.

Again moving slowly, Bobby pulled the bag in to his chest, bringing Derek with it.

“Let go of the bag,” Derek said. “Let go of the fucking bag.”

When it became apparent that Bobby wouldn’t just let go of the bag, Derek attempted to pry his big fingers open. It didn’t work.

“Give me the bag right now or you’re in big trouble. Give me the bag or you won’t get to watch TV. Let go. Let go!”

Derek tugged at the bag, but was trying not to rip it. He had to get those dolls out of the house. His entire future depended on it. And yet he stared into the uncomprehending, doughy face of a retard who was going to get him sent to prison for life.

Derek started to shake with fury like he hadn’t felt in a long time, not since high school, when he’d been trapped with fucking jock preppy assholes who fucking laughed at him. But he wasn’t that wimpy kid anymore.

“You stupid retard, if you don’t let go of this bag, I will fucking kill you. Do you understand? I will stick a knife in your goddamn neck and bleed you like the hog you are.” When Bobby didn’t react, Derek got louder. If Martha heard, he’d lose his job, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was destroying those dolls.

“Hey, retard!” He started jerking the bag. He hit Bobby’s forearm. “Let go—”

That unexpected quickness again. Bobby grabbed the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall. And again. And again. Derek could feel Bobby’s clenched hand and the wall trying to meet through his rib cage, and then there was a snap, and Bobby still slammed him again, and Derek let go of the bag as a star burst across his vision.