Kidder smiles that weird smile, that’s his only outward physical reaction to Gatling’s pincerlike grip on his forearm, which has to hurt like hell. “Didn’t I just say you were God? So what’s your problem? You’re all-powerful, right? You can fix things.”
“What do I have to fix? What happened here? And why are you wearing that stupid hat?”
In answer Kidder peels up a corner of the hat, using his left hand, awkwardly. Revealing a mass of clotted blood and hair. “You tell me,” he says. “I really want to know.”
Kidder leads him through the garage, into the cottage and down into the basement lockup. He points at the floor, where a pool of blood has coagulated into a dark mess. “That’s where I woke up. Last thing I remember, I was watching the ball game. Pedroia got a single, he’s on first. I’m thinking the little bastard always gets on base, how does he do it? And then I wake up with my head stuck to the floor. I mean it was like my skull was welded to the floor. It made this really scary sound when I tore myself loose. Like my brains had leaked out or something.”
Staring at the floor, feeling sickened by the loss of control, Gatling snaps, “That’s blood, not brains, you idiot. Your brains, such as they are, are still in your skull. You were hit from behind with that piece of two-by-four,” he adds, pointing.
Kidder giggles horribly. “I knew you were God. The all-seeing, the all-knowing. So what happened next? Your humble servant tore himself loose from the floor. Then what?”
“Are you crazy? I can’t play this game. We haven’t got time for this.”
Kidder fumbles at him, pawing, his expression strangely gleeful. “Your humble servant crawled up the stairs and out into the yard. There were stars in the sky. They say that stars are like the sun, only farther away, but I never believed that. Stars are where God poked pinholes in the night. And the light that shines through, the little twinkles? That’s you. God himself.”
“You’re insane.”
“You made me. Whatever I am, that’s on you.”
“Don’t touch me,” Gatling says, jerking away.
“This is my confession, God. I crawled up the stairs and went out into the shiny night and I found him. The boy. He was in one corner of the yard and when he saw me he started waving, that’s how I noticed him. Hard to see with all the blood in my eyes, you know? That’s how it is for us humans, we don’t see in the dark too good when our brains have been spot-welded to the floor. So the little brat makes it easy for me to find him. Isn’t that odd? He can’t get away because of the fence, but still you’d think he’d try to hide.”
“What are you talking about? What fence? And where’s the woman?”
“Just a little old electrified fence. Why would you notice? Stuff like that is beneath God’s interest. It was supposed to be powered from a twelve-volt battery, like a cattle fence, but I did a little rewiring, hooked it up to the household current with a hundred-amp breaker. That’s enough to kill us normal humans, but somehow she must have got around it. The breaker was tripped. She got away. Left the kid behind and took off. Told me all about it, the little brat.”
Gatling is incredulous. “If this was last night she could be on her way back here with the cops any moment. Why didn’t you call me when it happened?”
Kidder, amused, says, “Gee, God, you must have been too busy listening to all those prayers, huh? Too busy to notice what was happening to me. Otherwise you’d know I crawled up the stairs and went out and found the kid and locked him in the closet, and then I passed out again.”
“Show me,” Gatling demands.
Kidder leads him to a bedroom closet. The bi-fold closet door doesn’t lock, so the door has been blocked shut by a heavy bureau. Gatling lends a hand and they both shove the bureau out of the way, Kidder dusting his hands melodramatically and saying, “Hoo-ha! Everything’s easier when God’s on your side.”
Gatling studies the closet door and frowns. There’s nothing he likes about the situation, but he knows what has to be done. The building will have to be burned to the ground, to destroy any evidence of the kidnapping, but first he has to take care of the boy, who is himself the most damning piece of evidence. Gatling reaches into his back pocket, snakes out a plastic Ziploc bag, holds it to his side. With his left hand he sweeps open the bi-fold door.
Crouched in the corner, small hands covering his eyes, is Joey Keener.
“Come out of there, little man,” Gatling says softly, soothingly. “It’s okay, you’re safe. I’m the good guy.”
He takes an ether-soaked rag from the plastic bag and holds it to the boy’s mouth until he stops struggling.
Chapter Forty-Nine
Wicked Bad
The first Naomi Nantz case I ever worked involved a teenage girl, a movie star and a nationally known wacko-religious cult that will remain nameless in these pages because I really hate finding rattlesnakes in unexpected places. At first I didn’t believe a word of the girl’s story, touching, as it did, on midnight visits from extraterrestrial beings, but Naomi was somehow able to cut through all the spin and special effects (mostly created by the movie star) to the core of truth about what really happened. It’s like the average person—me for instance—when confronted by the impossible, sees exactly that, the part that couldn’t possibly be true, and can’t get around it. Whereas Naomi sees behind the impossible, and is able to make cognitive leaps that to this day boggle my little mind.
Case in point, the strangely encoded message that arrived about ten hours after we returned from our failed mission to rattle Taylor Gatling’s gilded cage. Naomi is in the command center with Teddy, all screens blazing, the two of them sifting databases for clues on where Gatling might be hiding a five-year-old boy. They’re working from a fifty-mile radius of Boston, in light of the fact that Joey and Mrs. Mancero were filmed on Harvard Bridge, within sight of the MIT dome. Compiling cross-references to buildings and properties that may have any connection to Gatling, his company, his extensive business contacts and his circle of friends.
Teddy has a satellite map up on the largest screen, with red dots indicating possible locations. This seems to include most of southern New England.
“Exclude business locations,” Naomi suggests. “Try residential properties owned by anyone who has ever crossed paths with Mr. Gatling.”
Teddy does so at the stroke of a key. If the dots were pimples the poor screen would have a very bad case of acne. “Why exclude business locations?” he wants to know. “A lot of these involve warehouses and storage facilities.”
Before Naomi can explain, every screen in the command center goes blank.
“What the hell?” says Teddy, his voice rising an octave or so.
The largest screen, the one that had been dedicated to the satellite map, starts to glow blue. Then a white dot begins to bounce along the middle of the screen, as if to an unheard musical beat. Teddy, eyes bugging, is frantically jabbing at various keyboards, to no effect.
“Wait,” Naomi says softly.
The dot finally settles in the middle of the screen, condensing and expanding in a way that reminds me of a beating heart. Bah-bump, bah-bump.
“Now,” she says. “The escape button, top left.”
Teddy deliberately depresses the escape button. At first nothing happens. And then the pulsing dot expands and changes, morphing into an image of a young girl in a frock-style dress. Not a photograph, an illustration of some kind. Looks familiar, but I can’t place it.