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, rustproof, 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 over-rode 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 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.