Dragon's Teeth (41 page)

He’d do the part with the knife in the bathtub, of course, so there wouldn’t be any bloodstains. He knew exactly how to get blood-evidence scrubbed out of the bathroom, what chemicals to use and everything. They’d have to swab out the pipes to find anything.

But the bear was a problem. He’d have to figure out a smart way to get rid of it, because it was bound to collect all kinds of evidence.

Maybe give it to a kid?
Maybe not; there was a chance the kid would remember him. By now it had probably collected fibers . . . .

He had it; the Salvation Army box, the one on Colby, all the way across town. They’d let that thing get stuffed full before they ever emptied it, and by then the bear would have collected so much fiber and hair they’d never get it all sorted out. Then he could take her to MacArthur Park; it was far enough away from the collection box. He’d leave her there like he always did, propped up on a bench like an oversized doll, a bench off in an out-of-the-way spot. He’d used MacArthur Park before, but not recently, and at this time of year it might be days before anyone found her.

But the bear—better get it away from her now, before it collected something more than hair. For one thing, it would be harder to handle her if she kept clinging to it. Something about those eyes bothered him, too, and he wasn’t in a mood to be bothered.

He cracked the door open, slipped inside, pried the bear out of her loose grip. He threw it into the bathroom, but Molly didn’t stir; he was vaguely disappointed. He’d hoped she show
some
sign of coming around when he took the toy.

Well, he had all night, all weekend, as long as she lasted. He’d have to make the most of this one; she was the last of the season.

Might as well get the stuff out.

He went into the kitchenette and dragged out the plastic step-stool. Standing it in the closet in the living room, he opened up the hatch into the crawl-space. It wasn’t tall enough for him to see what was up there, but what he wanted was right by the hatch anyway. He felt across the fiberglass battings; the paper over the insulation crackled under his fingers. He groped until his hand encountered the cardboard box he’d stored up there. Getting both hands around it, straining on tiptoe to do so, he lowered it carefully down through the hatch. He had to bring it through the opening catty-cornered to make it fit. It wasn’t heavy, but it was an awkward shape.

He carried it to the center of the living room and placed it on the carpet, kneeling beside it with his stomach tight with anticipation. Slowly, with movements ritualized over time, he undid the twine holding it closed, just so. He coiled up the twine and laid it to the side, exactly five inches from the side of the box. He reached for the lid.

But as he started to open it, he thought he heard a faint sound, as if something moved in the bedroom. Was Molly finally awake?

He got to his feet, and moved softly to the door. But when he applied his eye to the crack, he was disappointed to see that she hadn’t moved at all. She lay exactly as he’d left her, head pillowed on one arm, hair scattered across his pillow, lips pursed, breathing softly but regularly. Her red corduroy jumper was still in the same folds it had been when he’d put her down on the bed, rucked up over her hip so that her little pink panties showed the tiniest bit.

Then he saw the bear.

It was back right where it had been before, sitting up in the curve of her stomach. Looking at him.

He shook his head, frowning. Of course it wasn’t looking at him, it was his imagination; it was just a toy. He must have been so wrapped up in anticipation that he’d flaked—and
hadn’t
thrown it in the bathroom as he’d intended, or else he’d absent-mindedly put it back on the bed.

Easily fixed. He took the few steps into the room, grabbed the bear by one ear, and threw it into the bedroom closet, closing the door on it. Molly didn’t stir, and he retired to the living room and his treasure chest.

On the top layer of the box lay a tangle of leather and rubber. He sorted out the straps carefully, laying out all the restraints in their proper order, with the rubber ball for her mouth and the gag to hold it in there first in line. That was one of the most important parts. Whatever sound got past the gag wouldn’t get past the neighbors’ various deficiencies.

Something was definitely moving in the next room. He heard the closet door opening, then the sounds of shuffling.

He sprinted to the door—

Only to see that Molly was lying in exactly the same position, and the bear was with her.

He shook his head. Damn! He couldn’t be going crazy—

Then he chuckled at a sudden memory. The third kid he’d done had pulled something like this—the kid was a sleepwalker, with a knack for lying back down in precisely the same position as before, and it wasn’t until he’d stayed in the bedroom instead of going through his collection that he’d proved it to himself. Molly had obviously missed her bear, gotten up, searched blindly for her toy, found it, then lay back down again. Yeah, come to think of it, her jumper was a bit higher on her hip, and she was more on her back than her side, now.

But that bear had to go.

He marched in, grabbed the bear again, and looked around. Now where?

The bathroom, the cabinet under the sink. There was nothing in there but a pair of dead roaches, and it had a child-proof latch on it.

The eyes flashed at him as he flipped on the bathroom light and whipped the cabinet open. For one moment he almost thought the eyes glared at him with a red light of their own before he closed the door on the thing and turned the lock with a satisfying click.

Back to the box.

The next layer was his pictures. They weren’t of any of his kids; he wasn’t that stupid. Nothing in this box would ever connect him with the guy they were calling the “Sunday-School Killer” because he left them dressed in Sunday best, clean and shining, in places like parks and beaches, looking as if they’d just come from church.

But the pictures were the best the Internet had to offer, and a lot of these kids looked like the ones he’d had. Pretty kids, real pretty.

He took them out in the proper order, starting with the simple ones, letting the excitement build in his groin as he savored each one. First, the nudes—ten of them, he knew them all by heart. Then the nudes with the kids “playing” together, culled from the “My Little Fishie” newsletter of a nut-case religious cult that believed in kid-sex.

Then the good ones.

Halfway through, he slipped his hand into his pants without taking his eyes off the pictures.

This was going to be a good one. Molly looked just like the kid in the best of his pictures. She was going to be perfect; the last of the season, the best of the season.

He was pretty well-occuppied as he got to the last set, though he noted absently that it sounded as if Molly was up and moving around again. This was the bondage-and-snuff set, very hard to get, and the only reason he had them at all was because he’d stolen them from a storage-locker. He wouldn’t have taken the risk of getting them personally, but they’d given him some of his best ideas.

Molly must be awake by now. But this wasn’t to be hurried—there wouldn’t be any Mollys or Jeffreys until next year, next spring, summer, and fall. He had to make this one last.

He savored the emotions in the pictured eyes as he would savor Molly’s fear; savored their pleading expressions, their helplessness. Such pretty little things, like her, like all his kids.

They wanted it, anybody knew that. Freud said so—that had been in that psychology course he took by correspondence when he was trying to figure himself out. Look at the way kids played “doctor” the minute you turned your back on them. That religious cult had it right; kids wanted it, needed it, and the only thing getting in the way was the way a bunch of repressed old men felt about it.

He’d show her what it was she wanted, show her good. He’d make it last, take it slow. Then, once she was all his and would do anything he said, he’d make sure nobody else would ever have her again. He’d keep her his, forever. Not even her parents would have her the way he did.

Under the last layer of pictures was the knife, the beautiful, shining filleting knife, the best made. Absolutely stainless, rust-proof, with a pristine black handle. He laid it reverently beside the leather straps, then zipped up his pants and rose to his feet.

No doubt, she was shuffling around on the other side of the door, moving uncertainly back and forth. She should be just dazed enough that he’d get her gagged before she knew enough to scream.

He paused a moment to order his thoughts and his face before putting his hand on the doorknob. Next to the moment when the kid lay trussed-up under him, this was the best moment.

He flung the door wide open.
“Hel
-lo, Mo—”

That was as far as he got.

The screams brought the neighbors to break down the door. There were two sets of screams; his, and those of a terrified little girl pounding on the closet door.

A dozen of them gathered in the hall before they got up the courage to break in, and by then Jim wasn’t screaming anymore. What they found in the living room made the first inside run back out the way they had come.

One managed to get as far as the bedroom to release the child, a pale young woman who lived at the other end of the floor, whose maternal instincts overrode her stomach long enough to rescue the weeping child.

Molly fell out of the closet into her arms, sobbing with terror. The young woman recognized her from the news; how could she not? Her picture had been everywhere.

Meanwhile one of the others who had fled the whimpering thing on the living room floor got to a phone and called the cops.

The young woman closed the bedroom door on the horror in the next room, took the hysterical, shivering child into her arms, and waited for help to arrive, absently wondering at her own, hitherto unsuspected courage.

While they were waiting, the thing on the floor mewled, gasped, and died.

Although the young woman hadn’t known what to make of the tangle of leather she’d briefly glimpsed on the carpet, the homicide detective knew exactly what it meant. He owed a candle to Saint Jude for the solving of his most hopeless case and another to the Virgin for saving
this
child before anything had happened to her.

And a third to whatever saint had seen to it that there would be no need for a trial.

“You say there was no sign of anything or anyone else?” he asked the young woman. She’d already told him that she was a librarian—that was shortly after she’d taken advantage of their arrival to close herself into the bathroom and throw up. He almost took her to task for possibly destroying evidence, but what was the point? This was one murder he didn’t really want to solve.

She was sitting in the only chair in the living room, carefully not looking at the outline on the carpet, or the blood-spattered mess of pictures and leather straps a little distance from her feet. He’d asked the same question at least a dozen times already.

“Nothing, no one.” She shook her head. “There’s no back door, just the hatches to the crawl-space, in each closet.”

He looked where she pointed, at the open closet door with the kitchen stool still inside it. He walked over to the closet and craned his head around sideways, peering upward.

“Not too big, but a skinny guy could get up there,” he said, half to himself. “Is that attic divided at all?”

“No, it runs all along the top floor; I never put anything up there because anybody could get into it from any other apartment.” She shivered. “And I put locks on all my hatches. Now I’m glad I did. Once a year they fumigate, so they need the hatches to get exhaust fans up there.”

“A skinny guy, one real good with a knife—maybe a Nam vet. A SEAL, a Green Beret—” he was talking mostly to himself. “It might not have been a knife; maybe claws, like in the karate rags. Ninja claws. That could be what he used—”

He paced back to the center of the living room. The librarian rubbed her hands along her arms, watching him out of sick blue eyes.

“Okay, he knows what this sicko is up to—maybe he
just
now found out, doesn’t want to call the cops for whatever reason. He comes down into the bedroom, locks the kid in the closet to keep her safe—”

“She told me that a bear locked her into the closet,” the woman interrupted.

The detective laughed. “Lady, that kid has a knot the size of a baseball on her skull; she could have seen Luke Skywalker lock her in that closet!” He went back to his deductions. “Okay, he locks the kid in, then makes enough noise so joy-boy thinks she finally woke up. Then when the door opens—yeah. It’ll fly.” He nodded. “Then he gets back out by this hatch.” He sighed, regretful that he wouldn’t ever get a chance to thank this guy. “Won’t be any fingerprints; guy like this would be too smart to leave any.”

He stared at the outline on the blood-soaked carpet pensively. The librarian shuddered.

“Look, officer,” she said, asserting herself, “If you don’t need me anymore—”

“Hey, Pete—” the detective’s partner poked his head in through the door. “The kid’s parents are here. The kid wants her teddy—she’s raising a real howl about it, and the docs at the hospital don’t want to sedate her if they don’t have to.”

“Shit, the kid misses being a statistic by a couple of minutes, and all she can think about is her toy!” He shook his head, and refocused on the librarian. “Go ahead, miss. I don’t think you can tell us anything more. You might want to check into the hospital yourself, get checked over for shock. Either that, or pour yourself a stiff one. Call in sick tomorrow.”

He smiled, suddenly realizing that she was pretty, in a wilted sort of way—and after what she’d just been through, no wonder she was wilted.

“That was what I had in mind already, Detective,” she replied, and made good her escape before he changed his mind.

“Pete, her folks say she won’t be able to sleep without it,” his partner persisted.

“Yeah, yeah, go ahead and take it,” he responded absently. If things had gone differently—they’d be shaking out that toy for hair and fiber samples, if they found it at all.