“What about this lack of legs? Feet and no legs? How is that possible?”
The doctor flipped a hand. “If it’s an amputee, perhaps prosthetics, unusually small, compact... hidden by the tugged-down garment. If a dwarf, stubby legs that the sweater might hide or simply be unseen, the individual being so close to the ground. We’re talking low lighting, the officer under assault from a low-lying attacker.”
The chief leaned back. “All right, then. You’re a doctor. If you were to see something, someone, like this — a patient maybe... what would you call it?”
“I’d call it ‘him.’”
Cutter raised a palm in mild surrender. “All right. Him. We’re not dealing with a creature or a beast, but I never thought we were. This is a human being. Do you know of cases of deformed human beings like this?”
The doctor’s shrug seemed almost in slow motion. “I know of them. And we’re only guessing about what precisely these birth defects might be.”
Cutter thought about that. “Might someone burdened by severe birth defects blame those defects on the doctor who delivered him?”
Ryan nodded. “It’s possible. And the parents, of course.”
“Or maybe... doctors in general?”
“Perhaps.” Ryan thought a moment or two. “Or more likely — as Helen theorized earlier — specifically specialists in pediatrics. And you’re looking for links between the three murdered medics, aren’t you, Blake?”
Cutter nodded, once. “We are. But if you feel we’ve established that the assailant who struck here is in fact a deformed individual, that narrows the search.” He took the sketch book from Helen and held up the nightmare image. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to locate someone who answers to this description, should it?”
“No,” Roy said. “They’d require special training, specific therapy... but there could be a hitch.”
“Like how?”
The doctor let in and out slowly. “It’s not as bad as it once was, but in the old days, particularly? A family might never let it be known that one of theirs bore the ‘sin’ or ‘embarrassment’ of congenital deformities such as these. Cruel, backward thinking might lead to hiding a child away — think of the gothic horror stories where some poor twisted member of the family was sequestered away in an attic or institution.”
A quick look passed between husband and wife.
Then the doctor went on: “A child raised under such restrictive, hurtful conditions could itself become twisted. If you tell someone they’re ugly long enough, they may become ugly... inside.”
No one said anything for a while.
Finally, Cutter said, “Thank you, doctor, for your insights. And thank you, Mrs. Ryan, for sharing your artistry. We’re quite fortunate to have an artist as talented as you right at hand. We’ll get this sketch circulated to all medical facilities statewide.”
The young cop asked, “Chief — what about distributing that to the media?”
Cutter frowned. “You want to start a panic, Dickson? And if the national media gets a whiff, there’ll be a fleet of TV trucks down here and we’ll be crawling with reporters. ‘Halloween Comes Early to Southern Hamlet!’ Not a word, get me?”
“I got you, Chief.”
From behind the couch, Richie suddenly leaned over, a wide-eyed child in Six Million Dollar Man pajamas. “Boy, does that guy look weird!”
Helen turned the sketchbook face down on her lap. “Roy, get your son out of here! I don’t want him seeing this.”
Of course he already had, Cutter thought.
But Richie was leaning across the back of the couch even more. “If that’s a bad guy you’re after, Chief Cutter, and you put him in a cage or something?” He looked at his mom eagerly. “Can I have that drawing for my room? I’ll put him up by the Incredible Hulk!”
She ignored that, though the boy’s sideways face was next to her. She turned away, toward her husband, and said, “Roy, deal with this. It’s bad enough Richard saw that other horrible thing upstairs!”
“Ah, Mom. He’s my friend. He’s not hurting anything. He’s just sitting around.”
Now she swung round to face the boy. “You get back to bed. Right now!”
The child’s expression grew pouty. “You guys were making a lot of noise down here. You woke me up. It wasn’t my fault.”
“I don’t care whose fault it was,” she said, “you get back to bed.”
Richie repositioned himself on the other side of his mother to address his father. “Dad, don’t I have any rights?”
“You have the right to remain silent,” he said, “and go to bed. Or maybe get a swat of my right hand across your tail.”
The boy raised his hands in surrender. “I understand those rights.”
And he went slowly up the stairs.
“Where’d he get that?” Helen asked her husband.
“TV,” he said. He turned to Chief Cutter. “This makes two attacks in two days. What do you suggest we do now?”
“You double-check all windows and doors,” Cutter said. “Both floors. I’ll get a support team from the Atlanta suburbs and cover a wider swath, including that wooded area our intruder came out of both nights.”
Helen asked, “Is there any chance that it... he’s... gone now?”
Roy picked up on that. “Our visitor knows we’ve increased security and that he’ll really be up against it here on out. Maybe that’ll be enough to scare him away.”
Cutter looked from the husband’s face to the wife’s and back again. “Doctor... Helen... whatever it is we’re after has killed before. We know that now. We also know we have a shrewd adversary whose motives are irrational and yet focused. I’m afraid it will take a bullet... probably more than ‘a’ bullet... to stop him. He has specific targets and the next two on his list are you, Roy, and... I’m sorry... but your son.”
Ryan was frowning deep. “What are our odds in this, Chief? As you see it?” He glanced at his wife. “We have a right to know.”
Cutter got to his feet. “In our favor... as long as we can keep you isolated, and covered.”
And everybody went off to catch a few hours of sleep.
Or at least try to.
Chapter 7
Roy still had work to do in his one-doctor clinic in the cement-block building to one side of the big old house. He’d determined to call each of his patients personally and assure them the physicians he was referring them to would be more than up to the task of filling in for him, and that he should be available again for consultation before too very long. The vagueness of this was obviously not terribly reassuring, but virtually all of his patients appreciated him making the effort.
Of course he’d been vague as well about the reason for the indefinite hiatus in his practice, saying simply, “I have some family matters to deal with.” Most all of his patients — probably most of the population of Peachtree Heights — knew that those “family matters” likely had to do with his wealthy estranged wife and their special boy. But no one was tactless enough to bring any of that up.
Word about the attacks at the Ryan compound didn’t seem to have gotten out, which in such a small town was a big miracle. But Chief Cutter ran a tight ship and his men, many of them NYPD early retirees Cutter had worked with during his tenure on that department, knew how and when to keep the lid on.
Roy and his wife, since the guest room blow-up last night, had kept out of each other’s way ever since. Oh, they’d shared a quiet, polite breakfast in the company of their chipper son — the husband making breakfast again, eggs and bacon and toast this time — and Helen had found a quiet corner in the big living room to do sketches for a painting she was planning. Richie said he was going to read comic books and then do his Special Olympics training.