Read Online The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Carol O'Connell
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when—precisely when he had become Rouge Kendall’s interrogation subject.
“So I’m the only one working the runaway angle,” said the younger man, “because you really think they were snatched.”
Costello smiled. Kendall obviously understood his place in the world. While the real BCI investigators were working the case, he was to be the fetcher of minor facts and loose threads, the task-force janitor, and most important, the press decoy.
Rouge Kendall rose from his chair. “You don’t seriously think a ten-year-old went out to meet this pervert in secret—like a lover. You figure it was someone who knew Gwen would see Sadie that day. But you don’t know if it was a relative, a friend of the family or a stalker.”
All right, so Kendall has the raw makings. But there was still the matter of a heart for the job.
The young cop turned his back and walked to the door, saying, “You think David Shore is hiding something, maybe he saw something—important.” His hand was pulling on the knob. “Are you sure you don’t want a real investigator to cozy up to the kid?” Kendall passed through the open door, and his voice trailed into the next room. “Oh, sorry. You probably tried that, and it didn’t work.”
Costello sighed. Perhaps the heart was overrated.
And tell me, Dr. Mortimer Cray, how does your garden grow? With guilty secrets and children’s graves laid out all in a row.
The air of the conservatory was dense and moist, rich in aromas of flowering plants and earth. A small pony motor hummed with the work of running the plant mister, and his spade scraped out the grittier noises of metal, soil and a clay pot. Outside the glass walls, living leaves still clung to his hardiest hybrids, but the ceiling of the pearl-gray sky was low and menacing. Nature was threatening to kill his garden with the first snow.
Always in thoughts of death these days. Mortimer Cray knew when he would die and how, just as he knew the times and particulars of all his appointments.
His right hand, thick with veins and dappled with liver spots, dropped the spade and began to tremble. A side effect of ending the new medication, he supposed. This little self-deceit was short-lived; he knew what the tremors meant.
At age sixty-nine, he was semiretired from the practice of psychiatry, removed from all but a few of the really dangerous minds. Still, he thought of death six times in an hour. It rankled him that he should spend his last days troubled by a Sunday school God Whom he had tossed out in childhood, but Who had lately come back to him with such great wrath. New atrocities bloomed in the doctor’s brain and would not leave him be.
These past few days since the girls had disappeared, he had tended to put off going to his bed. Fully clothed, he would fall asleep at the desk in his study and wake up at odd hours. All his habits of regimentation had dissipated, and he was without any order which servants did not create for him. The meals were still served and eaten at the same hours, but the man who ate them was unshaved, unwashed. And he always brought something to the table with him, something in his eyes which made his valet, Dodd, avoid looking directly at him.
His niece Ali had planned a small cocktail party today, and for this occasion, he had allowed Dodd to make him presentable with a razor and a clean shirt. Also thanks to the valet, his suit had been recently tailored to fit the ever decreasing dimensions of his thin body. Now he was disguised as merely slender, not sick and wasting.
The gravel in the driveway crunched under a slow and ponderous weight. He wiped one hand across his apron and adjusted the frames of his gold-rimmed glasses, the better to see the black Porsche pull into formation with his own vintage Mercedes. Standing behind a camouflage of dangling vines and a mosaic of flowers, Mortimer peered through the glass wall as Dr. Myles Penny unfolded his lanky body from the passenger’s side.
Ali
“So I’m the only one working the runaway angle,” said the younger man, “because you really think they were snatched.”
Costello smiled. Kendall obviously understood his place in the world. While the real BCI investigators were working the case, he was to be the fetcher of minor facts and loose threads, the task-force janitor, and most important, the press decoy.
Rouge Kendall rose from his chair. “You don’t seriously think a ten-year-old went out to meet this pervert in secret—like a lover. You figure it was someone who knew Gwen would see Sadie that day. But you don’t know if it was a relative, a friend of the family or a stalker.”
All right, so Kendall has the raw makings. But there was still the matter of a heart for the job.
The young cop turned his back and walked to the door, saying, “You think David Shore is hiding something, maybe he saw something—important.” His hand was pulling on the knob. “Are you sure you don’t want a real investigator to cozy up to the kid?” Kendall passed through the open door, and his voice trailed into the next room. “Oh, sorry. You probably tried that, and it didn’t work.”
Costello sighed. Perhaps the heart was overrated.
And tell me, Dr. Mortimer Cray, how does your garden grow? With guilty secrets and children’s graves laid out all in a row.
The air of the conservatory was dense and moist, rich in aromas of flowering plants and earth. A small pony motor hummed with the work of running the plant mister, and his spade scraped out the grittier noises of metal, soil and a clay pot. Outside the glass walls, living leaves still clung to his hardiest hybrids, but the ceiling of the pearl-gray sky was low and menacing. Nature was threatening to kill his garden with the first snow.
Always in thoughts of death these days. Mortimer Cray knew when he would die and how, just as he knew the times and particulars of all his appointments.
His right hand, thick with veins and dappled with liver spots, dropped the spade and began to tremble. A side effect of ending the new medication, he supposed. This little self-deceit was short-lived; he knew what the tremors meant.
At age sixty-nine, he was semiretired from the practice of psychiatry, removed from all but a few of the really dangerous minds. Still, he thought of death six times in an hour. It rankled him that he should spend his last days troubled by a Sunday school God Whom he had tossed out in childhood, but Who had lately come back to him with such great wrath. New atrocities bloomed in the doctor’s brain and would not leave him be.
These past few days since the girls had disappeared, he had tended to put off going to his bed. Fully clothed, he would fall asleep at the desk in his study and wake up at odd hours. All his habits of regimentation had dissipated, and he was without any order which servants did not create for him. The meals were still served and eaten at the same hours, but the man who ate them was unshaved, unwashed. And he always brought something to the table with him, something in his eyes which made his valet, Dodd, avoid looking directly at him.
His niece Ali had planned a small cocktail party today, and for this occasion, he had allowed Dodd to make him presentable with a razor and a clean shirt. Also thanks to the valet, his suit had been recently tailored to fit the ever decreasing dimensions of his thin body. Now he was disguised as merely slender, not sick and wasting.
The gravel in the driveway crunched under a slow and ponderous weight. He wiped one hand across his apron and adjusted the frames of his gold-rimmed glasses, the better to see the black Porsche pull into formation with his own vintage Mercedes. Standing behind a camouflage of dangling vines and a mosaic of flowers, Mortimer peered through the glass wall as Dr. Myles Penny unfolded his lanky body from the passenger’s side.
Ali
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