The Judas Child (51 page)

Mortimer turned to the federal agent. “I have to take this call. I’m exercising my right to remain silent.”

Pyle forcibly turned him around and pushed him back to the wall. “I don’t have time for your rights, Doc. Two kids are dying. I’m flat out of time.”

Rouge’s disembodied voice said, “You have all the time in the world, Dr. Cray.”

“We picked up your patient,” said Arnie Pyle, stepping back a pace. “He’s chattering like a magpie.”

“Pyle is lying.” Rouge’s tone was all contempt. “The FBI has nothing solid, and Dr. Penny isn’t under arrest. Feds, cops—they’re all idiots spinning their wheels.”

The troopers left the garden to enter the main house. Rouge remained to hold him prisoner from the dark side of the glass wall. Yet the young man was as close as a lover when he whispered through the phone connection and into Mortimer’s ear, “You told your niece that I was your patient.”

“I never did.”

Agent Pyle was yelling now. The priest’s eyes were furious. “Your patient is quite a sadist, isn’t he, Doc? But you would know all the details better than I would.”

The old man closed his eyes to blot out Arnie Pyle’s face—Paul Marie’s eyes. Mortimer’s hands began to tremble, and he nearly dropped the phone. When he opened his eyes again, the agent was gone, walking away.

Rouge said, “He’s bluffing. Ali gave him the profile of a sadist. That’s all he has to work with. And by the way, a sadist was all Dr. Penny ever was. But you knew that, didn’t you? You told Ali all about me—about us.”

“I never told anyone that—”

“Liar. She was on my case the day she got into town. She knows something. How could she know unless you told her?”

“What could I have told her? This is—”

“Stop lying. Dr. Penny promised you’d keep my trinkets safe. But you gave them to the police.”

“That’s not true, none of it.” Mortimer watched Rouge pace the garden, one hand rising in a fist.

“I saw you puttering around with that stupid little pot. You did everything but hang a sign on me.”

“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“How stupid do you think I am, old man? You gave the cops my property—mine. I want it all
back
, and I don’t care what you have to do to get it. That bastard, Penny. First he only wants to watch, and then he takes my things. He said they’d be safe with you.”

“I never—”

“I was there.” Rouge’s voice was rising. “I saw you and that damn blue pot. You wanted them to find my things—
my
things.”

“No, I swear—”

“You think your hands are clean because you didn’t say my name out loud? You
gave
them the evidence. And you
did
tell Ali. I can’t let her tell anyone else. She doesn’t have your
ethics.
Ali will be Dr. Penny’s first solo killing. He’ll probably botch it. But I can’t be everywhere at once, can I?”

“Time’s up, Doc.” Arnie Pyle was back and standing very close, too close. “I need a name, a place, something. I need it now. Get off the damn phone!”

Rouge whispered in his ear, “Maybe Dr. Penny will record Ali’s screams. You can play them back at his next session.”

“No, please don’t. She’s—” Mortimer waved off the FBI agent as the man grabbed at the phone.

“Not a purist, Dr. Cray? It’s all right to kill other people’s little girls, but not your own precious niece?”

It was a penetration of sorts, this voice on the phone, in his head, an invasion, a rape.

“Unlike me,” said Rouge, “Dr. Penny always preferred grown-up victims. He had to make do with little girls. Those were the only murders he had a ticket to watch. But I’d say his first bona fide kill is a sign of real personal growth, wouldn’t you? You must be so proud. Do you know how much he really hates women? Of course you do. And he’s a doctor. Who knows more about pain? All those sharp instruments—”

“You can’t let him do this!”

“Not so loud,” said Rouge, so softly. “You don’t want everyone to know you betrayed a patient. Not after all your sacrifices. Oh, wait—those were other people’s sacrifices, weren’t they? Well, perhaps what Ali’s going through—this is retribution for your sins. I guess you’ll have to eat it, won’t you?”

“Please, you have to stop Myles before—”

“Myles?” The connection was severed, and the young policeman in the garden was folding up his cell phone and hiding it away in his pocket.

With only the mention of Myles’s name and Rouge’s inflection of a question, Mortimer realized, with stunning speed and hellishly clear insight, that he was both betrayer and betrayed.

“Just tell me this,” Arnie Pyle was saying—yelling. “Did the pervert tell you where he took the girls? Can’t you tell me that much? They’re only ten years old. You think I can’t touch you because of the doctor-patient confidentiality?” said Pyle. “I might just reinvent the fucking law—all for you, Doc.”

Chief Croft entered the room and walked up to Agent Pyle, trying to get his attention.

The FBI man waved him off and turned on Mortimer again with renewed anger in his eyes—eyes of a priest. “Oz Almo rolled over on the pervert, Dr. Cray. Almo’s been blackmailing William Penny. I know what the doctor does with little girls.”

One of the village policemen stepped forward. “That’s not why Oz was blackmailing Dr. Penny.”

Arnie Pyle’s expression showed real pain. “Oh Jesus, kid, could you just back off for six seconds?”

“Come on, Billy.” Chief Croft was pulling the officer out of the fray and back toward the wall.

The young man’s voice was still clear and carrying to every quarter of the room. “But Rita Anderson confessed. Cracked wide open. She helped Oz blackmail the doctor. Rita really hates Dr. Penny.”

Chief Croft put one arm on the young policeman’s shoulder, leading him toward the door. “Go back to the station and make out a report, okay, boy? It’s quieter.”

“When we picked up Dr. Penny at the motel,” said the officer, missing his second cue, “Rita thought we were after
her
. She just broke down, right there in the parking lot. Everybody in screaming distance knows Dr. Penny was screwing his patients’ wives.” Billy’s voice trailed into the garden. “You should’ve seen that guy’s face while we were cuffing him. Rita was just screaming away and running her mouth likea—”

The FBI man was suffering in silent resignation, staring at some distant point, eyes gone to soft focus.

“It’s okay, Arnie.” Rouge Kendall was standing in the doorway. “We had the wrong Penny brother. It’s Myles we want. Dr. Cray confirmed it on the telephone.” He turned to the door leading into the main house. “Hey, Donaldson?” A state trooper stepped into the room. “Donaldson was listening on the extension—two witnesses.”

Rouge had just shoved his old doctor into the abyss.

With Chief Croft back at his side, the young policeman was directing all the officers in the room. “Harrison? Call Marge and have her run a license plate for
Myles
Penny. Donaldson? Chief Croft says there’s no one at the Penny house, so check the clinic.”

Mortimer stared at his garden beyond the transparent wall, pondering a case of ethics and betrayal. More officers were flooding into the greenhouse. In the dark reflection of the glass, he watched Rouge raise his hand for silence.

“I need all the units on the street. You’re looking for Myles Penny’s station wagon. Marge Jonas has the plate. She’ll be giving out the search coordinates. You’re gonna cover all the roads around town. Wherever you find his car, that’s where the kids are. Now move.”

The room had been quickly cleared of state troopers and local policemen. Rouge and Charlie Croft stood in conversation at the center of the room. The FBI man was some distance away from them, speaking into his cell phone. And where was Ali? Why wasn’t she here in her moment of triumph? The old man walked in halting steps, unsteady as he moved across the stone tiles. Rouge turned around at his approach.

“I need to know,” Mortimer began. “About Ali—”And then he lowered his head, deciding that he did not want to know if she had planned his destruction. Instead he asked, “Where is my niece?”

“Ali’s checking out a vacant house at the lake.” Charlie Croft glanced at his watch. “I told her I’d—”

“Checking for what?” Arnie Pyle appeared at the chief ’s side. “What’s Ali doing out there?”

“She told me she was looking for truffles.”

 

Ali saw the cellar with more detail now, the film of dust on the appliances, the wadded towels in a wicker basket below the laundry chute, and the dials of the furnace. But no fuse box. Maybe she would find it in the subcellar.

She turned to the top of the stairs leading up to the parlor floor, straining to hear a distant noise. It was the sound of a car engine. So Charlie Croft was back. She debated waiting for him to join her, and then decided to take the second staircase to the subcellar.

The door at the bottom of the stairs opened when she turned the knob. There were no buttons on this lock. And now she saw a shaft of light, interrupted by the trunks of large trees.
Trees in the house—incredible.
Her flashlight followed their branches up into the darkness of a ceiling crossed and recrossed with pipes and lined with a million dark lightbulbs.

How amazing.

She let go of the door and rounded a tree trunk to find the source of the second light. It was another flashlight, trained on a prone figure in a little red jacket and long blond hair. As Ali moved toward the small body, the door slammed shut behind her. She whirled around. Fingers tore at her hair, twigs of a low-hanging branch.

There was no one at the door.

Ali turned back toward the small figure lying beneath a tree at the far side of the little forest. She was running, high heels spiking into the dirt, when she tripped over something that blended well with the dark. Another body. Her flashlight shone on the carcass of a dead dog. She stumbled to her feet again and moved on toward the child with the little red jacket, Gwen Hubble.

Ali sank down on her knees, directing her light to the girl’s face. The eyes were closed, as if in sleep. The skin was luminous white against the dark soil and dead leaves. Her golden hair lay across the ground, spread around the small head in a fantastic halo. Ali touched the child’s body.

Just like the dog, cold and stiff.

Something green and light as dust trailed from the little girl’s clenched hand, and there were traces of it on the breast of the red jacket. Ali wet her finger, dipped it into the green powder and tasted it. Only a few grains burned her tongue at first contact, and she spat it out. Her brain was reeling, trying to make sense of this. Very small children did not commit suicide—not on this planet. This could not be.

The cellar lights came on, bright as day and blinding Ali before her hands could rise to shield her eyes. Her vision was slow to adapt, and she could barely make out the shape of a man standing in the narrow stairway, holding the door open with one hand.

“Charlie?”

She could see more clearly now, but the man’s face was averted as he closed the fuse box. It was high on the staircase wall and set into a niche of rock.

“Let there be light,” said the familiar voice. He nudged a block of concrete against the door to prop it open. Ali was seeing afterimages of every object in reverse shadows, nebulae of light. He was coming closer, saying, “So you found Gwen.”

“Myles?”

He stood over the child’s body and nudged it with the toe of his shoe. “Little bitch.” The prod of the shoe moved the stiffened corpse all of one piece like a statue. “Stonedead. What a waste.”

Hammerfall.

“You seem surprised, Ali. I gather you didn’t backtrack this place through me.”

So William was only a cheap opportunist. Myles was the true sadist in their family, and she had overlooked every one of his signals. “No, I’m not surprised, Myles.” Not anymore. “It was the light. It hurt my eyes.”

Now she could see, and she was looking backward, working through the details she had missed. That day in the greenhouse must have thrilled him to orgasm—discussing the autopsy, divulging intimate details of Susan’s Kendall’s anatomy, setting Uncle Mortimer’s hands to trembling, forcing the old man to spill his wine, to lose his mind.

“You didn’t know it was me.” His tone was challenging. This was important to him, that Ali could not have guessed.

No, she had never suspected him. “Remember my first grown-up dinner party, Myles? It was the year I came east for school. I was eighteen years old.” How soon before Charlie Croft returned?

“Yes, I remember that night.” Myles was gloating.

He had probably relived that dinner party a thousand times, for he had been the one who told her about Susan Kendall’s death. And so detailed was his description of the crime, Ali had seen that tiny body every single day for years—Susan, lying in the snowbank, so cold, dying.

“That was the first time you heard the story, wasn’t it, Ali? Well, I’m not surprised.” He made a halfhearted kick at Gwen Hubble’s body. Strands of gold hair moved and shimmered with the illusion of life. “This is the only one that ever made national television. As I recall, your parents hustled you off to Nebraska that year.”

Ali nodded. Her uncle had convinced her father to accept a Midwest job offer. Uncle Mortimer had even volunteered to sell their house, to take over every chore of settling her parents’ affairs so they could move quickly. Ali had been in a hospital for weeks. No one had told her that Susan Kendall had gone missing, that later, she had been found dead.

“Have you figured out why the old man wanted you out of town?”

“Uncle Mortimer thought you were going to kill me.”

“Very good guess, Ali. He probably saw it as the ultimate test of his ethics, the worst torture I could devise for him—killing his brother’s child. Fool—sees himself as a latter-day Job. I swear that muddled old man can’t decide if I’m God or the Devil. He must have died when you came east again. Oh, that was a time.” Myles was grinning, clearly enjoying himself. “The night of that old dinner party?” He seemed almost girlish, giddy now. “I actually told you details that weren’t in the newspapers, things that William didn’t even know, and he was the medical examiner.”