The Judas Child (19 page)

Rouge set the papers on the edge of the desk. “But Beckerman’s only interested in little boys. That doesn’t help much.”

“Well, he won’t get any more boys. We’re gonna hold him for the Canadians. The extradition is in the hopper. That was good work, kid. Any ideas on the truffle?”

“If we’re looking for a mushroom fanatic with an interest in truffles, why not tell the troopers and the town cops?”

“I want absolute containment, Rouge.”

“But the cops and troopers know the area and the people.”

“If this guy knows we’re close, those kids are dead. Not a single word goes over to the uniforms.”

“Captain, one of the kids is already dead. You know that parka was in the ground. She was buried. So I can forget the runaway angle, right?”

“No. I gave you a line of investigation, and you’re gonna stay on it, even if it’s just for show. As long as we’re searching for runaways, I got no problem with the home-owners. But if the press finds out we’re looking for evidence of murder, the summer people might revoke consent for the vacant houses. Then I need probable cause and specific warrants. Got the picture, kid? So you stay with the program, or I put you back in uniform. Any questions?”

“If you’re gonna bust me down to—”

“Okay, I lied.” Costello sat back and regarded the younger cop. “That’s not gonna happen, Rouge. I know this assignment was hard on you—two little girls the same age as your sister. When they found Susan’s body, you must have died. You’ve got to be reliving that.” And he knew what it was costing this young man. “
Officially,
I need to keep you on the runaway angle as long as the press loves your face. As for what you turn up on the side—you bring that to me. I’m always here, kid. If you need help, if you got questions.”

Rouge finished his shot of whiskey and crumpled the cup as he leaned forward in a pose for confidential words. Before he said anything more, it was understood that this was just between the two of them. “I know Susan’s photograph was part of Ali Cray’s briefing. She must have seen a connection, but you took it off the easel.”

“That never made any sense to me. It didn’t follow the pattern. It would have confused the—”

“She said the bastard was flexible, changeable. Suppose Paul Marie didn’t kill my sister?”

“The priest? Oh, for the—” One hand covered Costello’s face for a moment, and then it fell away. He shook his head slowly from side to side. When he spoke, his voice was close to a whisper.

“Don’t.”

It was a single-syllable instruction for Rouge to leave that idea alone—just the one word, dropped gently in the air between them, and said with the greatest kindness. It was a caution against opening old wounds, bleeding from them, and dying all over again.

 

The windows of every house along the shoreline had gone dark, and the clear night sky was pocked with starlight. This part of the hill was clear of trees, and unchecked breezes swept upward from the lake to rush around the stones. A racket of dead leaves spiraled in a wind devil’s funnel and ran a dusty circle around his legs.

Rouge Kendall closed the iron gate behind him, as though he had entered a proper residence. He knew the legends on every marker between the gate and his sister’s grave. The corner stone in the family plot bore the year 1805. Next to this reserved section lay older remains of the postman’s progenitors.

Among the elaborate pieces of marble adorned with lengthy scripts, scrolls and cherubs, his sister’s stone was a thing apart, austere and pure white. Only her name was engraved above the dates of her birth and her murder. Some people found it curious that there was no carved sentiment, no line of poetry. But after Susan’s corpse had been found, her parents had nothing left to say. Their silence had lasted for years.

This was the first time Rouge had come to the cemetery without flowers.

As a small child in grief therapy, he had wandered the greenhouse with Dr. Mortimer Cray and learned the ancient Persian art of flower-talking, studying the meanings of floral shape and essence as a second language. After these sessions, he would visit the graveyard with white carnations, a child’s message of ardent love. In the spring he had brought bluebells to remind Susan of his constancy. He could speak to her, but they could never again be more than half alive. Twin had not been cleaved from twin; he was forever in two places, above and below ground.

Rouge looked up into the darkness of the firmament. Instead of the stars, he saw an open rectangle of light blue sky rimmed with mourners in dark clothing. And then the first shovel of dirt flew into their eyes—his and Susan’s.

He turned his face down to the simple monument, as if, after all this time, he might find some overlooked, unread line written there. And there it was. Another visitor had been here before him—and recently. He crouched down by the base of the stone and picked up two flowers, an unsigned message of hue and form. The purple hyacinth stood for sorrow, and the peony for shame.

The base of each stem was cut at a slant, the mark of a florist shop. But they might have grown in a private greenhouse. The one who left these flowers knew something about his sister’s death; Rouge was certain of that. And the involvement went deeper than guilty knowledge, for the sentiments also spoke of complicity.

Angry now, he roamed among the stones until he found wreaths and bouquets from a recent funeral. He stole a red rose and brought it back to Susan’s grave, stripping off the leaves as he walked, but leaving every thorn. In the poetic art of the Persians, this told his sister’s visitor,
You have everything to fear.

 

The two cars were the only vehicles on Lakeshore Drive at three o’clock in the morning. The air was bitter cold, and exhaust was ghosting from the tailpipes as the Bentley and the Ford converged from opposite directions. It was a chance encounter, and each driver had surprised the other.

Instead of passing, going on in their separate directions, the cars stopped. The drivers acted in unison, each clearing a face-wide circle in the fogged window glass. They only stared at one another, with no words or gestures, and then they moved on—Gwen’s father heading east, and Sadie’s father heading west. The cars moved slowly, for one might easily miss a lost child in the dark.

 

The dog stood on two legs, choking himself on the chain with each attempt to lunge. The man smiled at every whimper, every whine and bark, knowing that the starving animal was enraged because he could smell the meat but not get at it.

The man worked by the eerie glow of the cellar lights, cutting a shallow rectangle as the dirt softly ploffed on the ground beside the second hole. The air was moist and warm; the earth gave way with ease. And now he paused to lean on his shovel and look down at his work, two tiny graves side by side—one full and one waiting.

Investigators and agents ate their dinners
from brown paper bags, take-out containers and microwave packages. Soda cans and coffee cups littered every surface in the squad room. Ali Cray jumped in her skin as one of the cans crashed into a metal wastebasket behind her chair. She looked around to see the offender three desks away. The FBI man who had made the long shot gave her an apologetic smile as he resumed feeding from a plastic dinner tray.

Only one cop seemed to have no appetite this evening, and Ali knew that was her fault, for she had given him Father Marie’s trial transcript. Rouge Kendall sat at his corner desk, solemn as a schoolboy, slogging through a volume two inches thick. He was so absorbed in his reading, he took no notice of Mr. Frund, the file clerk
cum
psychic.

Ali turned her attention on this small gray-suited man from Connecticut. He was standing only a few yards away in conversation with Captain Costello. Martin Frund’s weak watery eyes were enlarged by thick lenses. His shoes alternately touched down and lifted again in a light tap dance, as though the floorboards might be hot. Urged by a wave of Costello’s hand, the man gingerly sat down on a chair at the center of the room, but his feet went on dancing. Though Ali could barely hear his small strained voice, she understood the gist of what he was saying to Costello. Frund was claiming to be a virgin in the psychic trade.

Close to Ali’s chair, two BCI men sat on either side of a desk which doubled as their dinner table.

“This is a waste of time,” said the younger man, dipping his fork into a plastic container of salad, apparently finding it much more alluring than the psychic file clerk.

“That depends on what the little guy knows—maybe something he shouldn’t know,” said Buddy Sorrel, a senior investigator with an iron-gray crew cut.

Sorrel wore a suit, but whenever Ali thought of him, she saw him in an army officer’s uniform, perhaps because his pants were sharply creased, and his suit jacket was not. But the real giveaway to his history was the footwear; his shoes had the high luster of a military spit-shine polish. He peeled back the top layer of rye bread and directed a look of deep suspicion at the mound of pastrami on his sandwich. But then, Ali had noticed that suspicion was Sorrel’s only expression. His gray eyebrows were always arched, as if frozen that way after decades of police work. It was a good trait for a law enforcement officer. One always felt a little off balance with him, and disbelieved from the first word of the most casual conversation.

“How does the perp do it, Buddy?” The younger of the two men was perhaps thirty-five and genuinely perplexed. “How can anybody control a kid? I can’t control my five-year-old. I told my wife I don’t do baths anymore.”

“Well, nobody can control
wet
kids,” said Sorrel, somewhat philosophically, as he bit into his sandwich.

A smaller voice drifted back to her from the center of the room. “I’ve never told anyone about my visions before,” said Mr. Frund. “But this time, I knew I had to come forward—for the children’s sake.” His tone was full of apology and humility.

“We appreciate all the help we can get, Mr. Frund.” Captain Costello was very amiable today—not his natural state. Like Sorrel, he usually exhibited a deep distrust of everything that moved and everything that didn’t. Yet now he was almost charming, radiating warmth and good fellowship.

“It’s
Martin
Frund, isn’t it? Do your friends call you Marty?”

“Uh, no, sir. Just plain old Martin.”

Costello put one hand on the file clerk’s shoulder. “Are you a married man, Martin? Any kids of your own?”

“No, sir, no wife, no children.” Martin Frund colored as he said this, and Ali guessed that he had not had much luck with women.

Was Costello wondering the same thing? Perpetrators sometimes insinuated themselves into police investigations. Some went so far as to join the search parties hunting for their victims. However, in Ali’s own experience, the psychics usually had other agendas.

For his performance this evening, Martin Frund had dressed up in a brand-new cheap suit, and the opening in his jacket revealed the fold line of a white shirt fresh from a discount-store box. But the footwear was not a recent purchase. When he crossed one leg over his knee, the shoe displayed a sole with wear that threatened to become a hole with every step, and the heel was run down on one side.

The little man might be in it for all the money the tabloids would pay, or he could have a craving for public notoriety. It was also possible that Frund was a true believer, sincerely deluded in the dream that he was gifted. The need to feel special would be very strong; Ali could see his entire life, past and future, in the nervous darting of his myopic eyes, the constant tapping of one foot, and the exposed sole.

All around the wide room, armed men and women were stealing glances at the little file clerk, appraising him between bites of dinner, chewing and watching.

Disgust was clear in Buddy Sorrel’s eyes. The senior investigator had probably seen this man’s ilk before, when other children had gone missing, when the parents had gone over the moon, all the way crazy with fear, eager for a fake to tell them lies and get them through the days of waiting.

But Sadie Green’s mother didn’t seem crazy, though both the fathers appeared to be catatonic. Ali looked for Gwen’s mother in the crowd. She spotted Marsha Hubble standing by the rear wall and away from the show, her arms folded against the charade. This woman was definitely not a believer. Ali guessed the lieutenant governor had no faith outside herself and no god but politics. The estranged husband, Peter Hubble, was sitting quietly by a bank of tall windows, his face turned skyward, perhaps looking for omens in the clouds scudding by. Harry Green sat beside him, perusing a map and occasionally drawing lines with a red marker.

Buddy Sorrel was bent over an open notebook on his desk, making rapid pen strokes, writing disconnected words and phrases. Ali had no difficulty reading them: “water, trees, phone lines, power cables, random letters, numbers, lone man, nondescript car, ambiguous road, purple and other flyer stats.” And now Sorrel put away his pen and pulled out a pocket tape recorder.

So she had guessed right. This BCI man was definitely familiar with the psychic’s game.

Captain Costello shouted, “Heads up, people,” and now he had the attention of every law enforcement officer but Rouge. “Let’s get this show on the road. Mr. Frund? Martin? If you would please tell us about your visions?” Captain Costello withdrew to the door and stood there with his arms folded, blocking the only exit from the room.

“Could I hold something that belonged to one of the children?” Frund wore a weak smile as he addressed the captain, silently apologizing again. “It would help me to focus.”

Becca Green was dipping into her purse when Buddy Sorrel caught her eye. He shook his head to warn her off. She withdrew her empty hand and snapped the purse shut. Sorrel reached out to one corner of his desk and picked up a sealed manila envelope. Not bothering to stand, he tossed it to the little man. Frund missed the catch and went down on one knee to retrieve it.