The Judas Child (23 page)

The child put her shoulder to the armoire, but it would not budge. She returned to the cot and pulled away the sheets to expose the canvas sling stretched across a wooden frame. She flipped it over, viewing the underside with a critical eye to the narrow slats threaded into the canvas hem. With one foot braced on a long board, she tugged at a short slat at the end of the frame. The wood was old and the nails gave with ease. She slipped it out of the canvas and carried it to the armoire, sliding it into the crack between the wall and the wardrobe. When she pulled on her lever, it broke in two. She sat down on the floor and stared at the jagged shard of wood in her hand, genuinely perplexed that such a good idea would not work out in real life with solid materials.

Next, she pulled the cot’s remaining frame bars apart and freed them from the loops of canvas. She put the two longest slats together as a single pry bar and fitted them into the crevice. This time, the heavy piece of furniture moved a bit when she pulled on the slats.

“Oh, stupid, Gwen,” she whispered. Pushing was easier than pulling. She braced her back against the wall and pushed on the wooden lever. The armoire moved a few inches. Now she put her whole weight into the effort, but this time it would not move at all.

Well, that was not logical, not right. Someone had changed the rules that governed physical objects. Exhausted, she stopped for a moment, and her gaze was pulled back to the hamper again. She averted her eyes and put all her energy into the slats. Nothing happened. Gwen sat down on the floor to rest before the next attempt. Though she never looked at the hamper, it was all but calling her name, daring her to work out another problem of logic: Why lock a hamper? Instead, she turned back to the problem of the immovable object, and then she solved it.

The child was staring down at cracked tiles and the lakes and rivers in the corroded grout between them. The wooden legs had settled into wide gaps where pieces of tiles were missing. She put the pry bar slats underneath the armoire and used all of her weight to leverage it back just far enough to kick the small rug under the front legs. One shoulder ached, and she wondered if she had pulled a muscle. Only the suggestion of a possible pulled muscle had caused her father to keep her from gymnastics for a month. But she had been content to sit on the floor of the gymnasium, watching Sadie going through routines on the parallel bars.

Resting again and taking deep breaths, she avoided looking at the hamper. She knew the answer to the puzzle was in her head. Of course it was Sadie’s lock. If the window gave her a way out, could she leave without knowing what was inside that thing? What if she was leaving her best friend behind?

Gwen let these grim questions alone and went back to work. The armoire now sat at a wide angle to the wall, and there was room to stand between its wooden backing and the window. She pressed her face to the cool glass pane. There were trees everywhere, the lines of bare-limbed oaks and birches were silvered by moonlight, and the pines had roundness of form. But there were no electric lights and not a rooftop or a chimney in sight—no one to hear her if she screamed—as if she dared to make any noise.

The ground was a long way down, judging by the scale of the driveway. Her next project was automatic, the stuff of bad movie plots. And her father always said that movies would rot her mind. If only he could see her now.

But Sadie would be proud.

Gwen shook her head, saying no to this dark idea. She picked up one of the sheets and tried to tear it down the center to fashion a longer rope. But she was still weak, and now she was frustrated because it would not rip. She dragged it over a nail sticking out of the remaining cot slat until she made a hole in the material. Then she easily tore it down the middle. When all the lengths of two torn sheets were tied together, she anchored them to a back leg of the armoire with a double knot.

Gwen opened the window, and she was foiled again by real life intruding on her scheme to escape by a bedsheet rope. The air was cold—shocking. Shivering, she pushed the mass of sheets over the sill and put her head out the window to watch them unravel along the sideboards of the house. The white material dropped past two dark windows. From the end of the rope to the yard below was how far? One window?

She leaned her upper body over the sill and looked straight down at the ground, focusing on the moonlit shapes of a trash can and a birdbath. The objects telescoped downward, growing smaller and farther away. The yard was spinning; the floor beneath her feet tilted; and her stomach lurched upward in a wave of nausea. She was not breathing—sudden fear had stopped her lungs. Shutting her eyes, she pulled back inside and slammed the window.

Gwen took great gulps of air and flattened her body against the solid, unmoving plaster wall. Her eyeballs rolled back in their sockets, and her breathing quickened while she weighed the fear of going against the fear of staying. Even if she could make herself climb over that windowsill, suppose she lost her grip on the bedsheet? What if the material ripped? She would fall and break her bones in a hundred pieces on the hard ground. Even if she could hold on until she reached the end of the sheets, she might still break her legs in the long drop to the yard. She could not bear pain in any measure. And then there was the cold to deal with. Barefooted she would not get far. How she hated the cold.

Every muscle of her body was pressing up against the wall, limbs and fingers spread across its surface as a second skin to the painted plaster. With effort, she slowly turned her face to the window, the only way out. The night wouldn’t last forever. The sky would lighten to gray. Soon the giant insect would come back to her with a tray of orange juice and an egg. His rubber fingers would crawl in her hair, on her face, and this time she would be hideously awake. In her mind, she was already screaming in anticipation of the thing.

There was only one exit.

Sadie could do this; she could climb over that windowsill with no fear of the hard landing. In gym class, Sadie could fly.

Gwen could not.

Not in a million, zillion years could she lower her body out that window. The ground was farther away each time she looked at it with her mind’s eye. She was too much a coward even to peer at it through the glass pane one more time.

The child edged along the wall and away from the window, listening to her own heart beating louder, faster, marking time at the speed of frenzy. Soon it would be light. She had to leave, but how? Gwen closed her eyes, and suddenly she was in free fall, dropping past all the dark windows, and the unforgiving ground was spinning, spiraling, rushing up to meet her.

The child’s eyes snapped open, and she was staring at the chained hamper. It held less terror for her now. As she returned to this unsolved riddle, a calm settled over her, and she could think clearly again. She had used her birth date as the combination for her own lock, just as she had been instructed.

But since when did her best friend ever follow instructions?

What number did Sadie love the most? Thirteen? Not enough digits. Suppose she added the number 6 for Friday?
Friday the 13th
was a favorite movie title. But now this idea linked to another as she recalled the plot of a better loved film about a changeling demon.

“And you shall know him by this mark,” she whispered, as she bent over the lock, moving the dial to the right, then left, and for the last digit, right again. The padlock came open in her hand with the mark of the beast, 666.

How appropriate.

 

At midnight, the boathouse was a swarm of activity. Village policemen and state troopers walked the grounds in close ranks, almost touching shoulders, their eyes trained on the earth. Beyond the glare of large floodlights on metal stalks, flashlight beams combed the grass at the water’s edge. Farther up the shore of the lake, another team was working over the rocky beach.

Rouge stood on the wharf just outside the door. The old building had been searched days ago. But the troopers had been looking for two missing girls, not forensic evidence in the disturbance of dust. He made a note on the second broken lock, the one that belonged on the telephone box. He hadn’t noticed this in his first perusal of the building. Apparently it had also gone unnoticed by the person who had repaired the splintered door frame and cleaned up the damage of the broken exterior lock.

Black lights and black dust were the tools used by the FBI technicians inside the boathouse. They were scrutinizing every pore of wood surface, and even opening old paint cans which had been undisturbed for years. One tech stood in the open doorway holding a shred of purple rayon by metal tweezers as he lowered it into an evidence bag.

Buddy Sorrel and Arnie Pyle joined Rouge on the wharf.

“Nice work—for a cop in training pants,” said Agent Pyle, surveying the crime scene.

Sorrel clapped Rouge on the back. “Kendall, I think you found your niche. So what else did the kid tell you?”

“He said there was a dog in there, and it didn’t belong to Gwen or Sadie. He never saw it—just heard it barking.”

“Well, at least we know the bastard has a dog.” Captain Costello strolled toward them along the smooth wooden boards of the wharf. His eyes were on the plastic evidence bag Agent Pyle was holding. It contained a small electronic device. The plastic casing was smashed. “A pager. Expensive one, too. Is that a bloodstain?”

“Probably,” said Pyle. “There’s no prints on it, but we think it might belong to our perp.”

“It didn’t belong to either one of the kids,” said Sorrel. “The parents told me the girls never had pagers. Peter Hubble
did
have a transmitter sewn into his kid’s knapsack. Too bad Gwen didn’t have it with her when she was snatched.”

Captain Costello held up a small address book with a wet and faded cloth cover. “A trooper found this on the rocks downshore. Looks like it’s been in the water for a while.” He handed it to Rouge. “It’s your crime scene, kid. What do you make of it?”

Rouge stared at the tiny book’s purple cover. There was no doubt that it belonged to Sadie Green. He thumbed through the pages indexed by tabbed letters of the alphabet, and this was all the legible print to survive the water damage. Everything written on the pages was lost in smears of purple ink. “This backs up Ali Cray’s theory. Sadie wasn’t a mistake—the freak needed her to get to Gwen. He tried to force Sadie to call Gwen out, but the kid wouldn’t do it.”

“How do you figure that?” Arnie Pyle was looking down at the address book, incredulous.

“The H page is missing,” said Rouge. “You know Sadie wouldn’t tear it out. This was the one with her best friend’s phone number. Even if she knew the number better than her own, this was probably the most important page in her book.
He
ripped it out—the pervert. It fits with the broken lock on the phone box. He
had
to use this address book to get Gwen’s number. Sadie wouldn’t give it to him. I wonder if he killed her for that?”

The other men stared at the little purple book, then turned their eyes away, not wanting to see it anymore, nor all the images that fastened themselves to it. The idea of the child standing up to this man was inconceivable, and the violence that must have followed was unthinkable. Yet no one ventured a contrary theory; they had all been struck dumb and sorry, a small troop of four armed men, mourners every one, standing in silent tribute to a ten-year-old girl who was most certainly dead.

Ali Cray had been right about everything.

Costello took the bag with the broken pager from Pyle. “I think we might’ve overlooked something.” He seemed to be weighing this bit of high technology in his right hand. “It’s just possible a security freak like Peter Hubble has a trap on his phone line.”

“A wiretap?” Rouge thought he had misunderstood the word. “But didn’t you—”

“No, a
trap
,” said Sorrel. “I asked about wiretaps first thing. Hubble said no, but I’m not sure I believe him.”

Ah, but Sorrel believed no one.

“Anyway,” said Costello, “a phone trap would be better than nothing. No conversation, but it would fix local calls, times and numbers.” He turned to Sorrel. “Buddy, check it out.”

The men turned back to the shore at the sound of a woman’s angry voice. Marsha Hubble was trying to force her way past the state troopers on the periphery of the crime scene marked by yellow tape.

Costello put one hand on Rouge’s shoulder. “You’re the family liaison. You wanna handle the lieutenant governor? I think she likes you.”

Rouge was silent, only staring at the woman. She wore a flimsy blazer over her pajamas. Her feet were clad in wooden mules with no socks, no protection against the cold night air. People made such odd choices when they were terribly frightened.

“No?” Costello was taking Rouge’s silence for reticence. He turned to his senior investigator. “Okay, Sorrel, you’re with me.”

They walked up the wharf toward the shore. Rouge and Arnie Pyle trailed behind them. Gwen’s mother had broken the yellow tape, passing through it like a marathon runner, and now she bore down on Costello with ferocity, pointing one finger at him as though it were a gun. “I heard about the baseball game!” she yelled. “Did your boys have a good time tonight?”

Costello put one hand on her arm. “If you’ll just come with—”

“I’m not going
anywhere
!” Marsha Hubble shook off his hand. “I saw that damn ball game on the news. Everyone saw it. Where in hell do you bastards get off playing silly kid games while Gwen is still missing, and God only—”

“And
Sadie
,” said the captain, ungently reminding her that there were two children missing. “It was the damn baseball game that led us to the crime scene, lady.”