This is where, Roy thought, moving away from them, a human being would crouch and meet the boy at eye level.
Instead, Parsons just looked down at his grandson — who looked up at him like a young mirror — and said, “Have you been a good boy?”
“Pretty good, Grandpa. Pretty good.”
“Very nice to see you.” Then Parsons seemed uncomfortable, possibly realizing he hadn’t brought a gift of any sort for the boy. The grandfather dug in his pocket and came back with a five-dollar bill. “Here’s something for you, Richard.”
“Thanks, Grandpa.” Richie looked at it, his eyes bright with the possibility of the comic books he could buy.
Parson raised a finger and again smiled faintly. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”
“I won’t, Grandpa.”
He gestured vaguely toward the library. “Now, run off and go back to doing what you were doing. I need a little time with your mother and father. For some grown-up talk.”
“Yes, Grandpa.”
And Richie ran back to resume his coloring in the library, where his mother was still standing as frozen as Lot’s wife.
Her father summoned his daughter with a curling finger and walked toward the couch, passing his son-in-law like a vehicle in the slow lane and saying, “Come along, Roy.”
Parsons settled on the couch, patted the cushion next to him and, with a look, informed his daughter that she should sit there, which she did. Roy pulled up a chair, positioning himself between them, the unlit fireplace to his back.
“Does the boy know,” Parsons said, quietly, “about these attacks?”
“No,” Roy said. “But you do, apparently.”
“Belatedly,” Parsons said, eyes narrowing. “I had to hear about it from my sources, and then not till this morning.”
That had been after Cutter brought other cops in from the suburbs — the chief couldn’t keep as tight a lid on with the outsiders in the mix.
Helen told her father, “We didn’t want to concern you.”
“Very thoughtful,” her father said, dryly. He looked pointedly at Roy. “Well, this stops now... I’m going to take my grandson and his mother with me, back to Atlanta, to our home, where I can provide professional security of a standard appropriate to a horrific situation like this. And with the full support of the Atlanta police.”
“Richie is staying here,” Roy said. He had long since stopped allowing Alexander Parsons to roll over him. “And Helen is welcome to stay.”
“How generous of you,” Parsons said.
Helen looked from one man to another as each spoke, as if she were watching a tennis match she’d bet heavily on.
Roy shrugged. “The boy likes having his mom around. As unfortunate as these circumstances are, mother and son are spending time together and that’s a positive.”
Parsons shook his head, not in disagreement just general disgust, his upper lip curling back bitterly. “You would put the safety of my grandson and daughter in the hands of a bunch of bump-in-the-road hick police? You’ve been irresponsible in the past, Roy, but now you’ve really outdone yourself.”
Roy didn’t flinch. “Chief Cutter has taken personal charge. He’s former NYPD and so is much of his staff. He’s filling in with other neighboring departments and I’m satisfied he, and they, are up to the job.”
The older man huffed a disparaging laugh. “That’s a blatantly ludicrous assessment. My understanding is that you’ve had a note threatening my grandson, and a bomb thrown through a window...”
“A Molotov cocktail, yes, which I promptly threw back out.”
“...with a police dog strangled last night, and an officer badly beaten. And an apparent tie to the three previous murders of those doctors. You’re under siege here! And this, this... creature is still out there.”
“He is.” Roy shifted in his chair. “But every effort is being made—”
“What if,” Parsons said, his tone suddenly reasonable, “I remove Richard from the sphere of this threat? To somewhere out of state? Some secure, secret location where he could be properly guarded and protected?”
Roy waved that off. “He’s guarded and protected here. Anyway, taking Richie out of this environment might confuse and badly disorient him. You have no idea how he has grown and flourished in these last six months.”
The upper lip curled back again. “Away from my influence, you mean.”
“You said that, not me. But he’s going to school with other children now, not being sequestered and tutored and psychologically poked and prodded. He’s becoming a normal little boy.”
Parsons grunted a non-laugh. “Going to school with other ‘special needs’ students. What in God’s name is normal about that? Roy, you’ve never been able to face reality. Richard took forever to walk, to talk, he lagged way behind in so many areas...”
“He’s made strides. He is a normal little boy.”
“In Special Education classes.”
“For now.”
Parsons shook a fist, but kept his voice down. “He’s almost eleven and behaves as though he were much younger!”
“He got off to a slow start and it wasn’t helped by you trying to seal him off from the world. But he’s doing fine now. And institutionalizing him would only stunt that growth.”
Another grunted laugh. “You like that word don’t you, Roy, ‘institutionalizing’ — you like to say I wanted to put the boy in an institution when you know damned well it was a school, a specialized school!”
“Live-in. Out of sight. Out of mind.”
Had Parsons sat any farther out on the edge of the couch, he’d have been on the floor. “I will take this to court so fast your damn head will swim. I will charge you with endangerment of my grandson. You’ll lose the custody you should never have been given in the first place.”
Roy knew how to curl back an upper lip, too. “You need to understand, Alex — that ‘creature’ is indeed still out there, and he’s trying to get in. If we remove Richie from the equation, the attacker may recede into the darkness and then turn up again when least expected. Right now we have a shot at stopping and catching him.”
“You’re insane,” Parson said, his voice quiet but trembling. “I will not allow you to use my grandson as bait for this killer.”
“You’re right that we’re dealing with a killer. Three other doctors murdered, and his note threatens both Richie and me. Hiding Richie away won’t stop this fiend from pursuing his twisted goal.”
Helen had said nothing as yet. Parsons turned to his daughter. “What do you have to say in this, girl? My understanding was that you came down here to talk some sense into this man!”
“That was before we faced this menace,” she said. “And before I spent some time with Richie.”
Richie, Roy thought. She called him ‘Richie’...
“I thought you agreed with me,” her father said, something pitiful in his voice now, “that the boy needed structure. That his imagination has a tendency to run away with him — that he can’t tell fantasy from reality!”
Helen looked at her husband, and he knew she was weighing it — whether to tell Parsons about her son’s “friend” in the attic upstairs.
“He watches television,” she said, “and he reads comic books. And he understands they are not real.”
“You’re on the side of this man who would use your son as bait!”
She shook her head once. “I’m on Richie’s side. And if Mother were still alive, that’s whose side she would be on.”
Parsons took that like the verbal slap it was.
His daughter continued: “And if the moment comes when I think Richie and I would be better off elsewhere, under your protection, I will call you immediately. That much I promise you, Dad.”