All of the monsters he'd been led to believe never existed were alive now and raging inside of him. As a toddler, they'd had the decency to stay in his closet or under his bed, but now, as his future closed on him like a door, they all came out to torture his mind. Soon the cops would be on him, and they would send him back to that p/ace-suddenly the words were too awful to think-and he'd have nowhere left to hide. The monsters would come and consume him. He would become one of those animals who had terrorized him for nine months in the JDC, alive on the outside, but dead in his heart.
His darkened soul guided his eyes down to the gun in his hands. A terror like he'd never known gripped his heart as he realized that he in fact had ultimate control over his destiny. He lifted the pistol up to eye level and stared down the barrel. Close up, it was like staring down a manhole. The bullets were huge.
Death was a kind of freedom, wasn't it? And it's what everyone wanted. Why waste all that electricity in some prison when he could take care of it right here, in less time than it took to blink an eye? No more chases, no more loneliness, no more beatings.
He could be with his dad again, and live with the angels. He could meet his mother. He smiled at the thought of seeing in person the face he'd learned to love from a picture. He could almost feel the warmth of her hug, smell her heavenly perfume. His dad would smile at him again, and then they would all walk off among the clouds to be a family again.
Nathan's lip trembled, and a single tear dripped from his chin as he pulled the hammer all the way back and brought the muzzle of the big gun up to his head, just in front of his right ear. A little pressure, and it would all be over. He'd be free. He'd be happy. One. .. two…
Greg Preminger was nearly bursting with pride. His discovery of the BMW had been a feat of pure police work that had already awarded him a spot on the evening news-even the networks were mentioning him by name. This was the kind of thing that led to recognition and promotions. As he traveled from door to door searching for witnesses, he allowed himself to fantasize about finding the boy as well.
Problem was, it was still early; a lot of people weren't home from work yet. His current beat was Little Rocky Trail, where only three of the last twenty-two houses had been occupied by anyone, and none of those had seen a thing, though every single person had heard of the Bailey case. One woman shocked him by telling him he should be ashamed of himself for making things more difficult for "that poor little boy."
Emotions always ran strong on highly publicized cases such as this, but Greg was personally offended that the death of a law enforcement officer was so easily swept under the carpet in people's minds. People had an idealized picture of what childhood was supposed to be like, and they found it difficult to accept the reality of today's kids. In his years as a cop, Greg had seen countless hoodlums in kids' bodies, and as far as he was concerned, the size of the package didn't affect the seriousness of the crime. When this Bailey kid was caught, he hoped they'd throw him in a cage forever.
If Greg had anything to say about it, he was going to be part of that process. While most of his cop buddies thought Nathan would have fled further away from the Beemer, Greg had a feeling that the boy was close by. According to the reports he'd read, Bailey had spent the first night less than a half mile from the prison. If Greg were in the kid's position, he'd want to get under cover just as fast as he could, and that would mean Little Rocky Creek.
Greg refused to be discouraged. These things often took time. At those houses where no one was home, he left his card and a hastily-authored information sheet on the boy. If someone knew something, he was confident that they'd speak up.
As he approached the house at 4120, he was already folding his card into the next flier in the stack. He knocked on the door as a formality, really. He had come to recognize the look of an empty house.
Nathan jumped a foot and fell to the floor at the sound of the door knocker. His first thought was that the gun had fired. Then, in the next instant, he knew exactly what was happening. Through the sheer curtains over the front window, he could see the unmistakable outline of a police officer waiting at the front door. He became perfectly still, not even daring to breathe.
The cop had a bunch of papers in his arm, and the papers looked for all the world like a picture of Nathan.
"Jesus Christ," Nathan whispered. "They found me."
But the cop wasn't acting like he'd found anything at all. He was acting like he was looking for something. He rapped on the door a second time, then peered through a cupped hand into the darkened living room, after checking over both shoulders to see if anyone was watching. Nathan would swear that they looked right at each other.
Still, there was no reaction. For the second time in as many days, he'd come eye to eye with his enemy, and nothing had happened. After perhaps fifteen seconds more, the cop slid one of the papers behind the screen door, then turned and walked away.
For a long time, Nathan stayed frozen to the floor. He couldn't have moved if he had wanted to. As the adrenaline drained from his system, he felt light-headed and sick to his stomach. He rose to his knees, then swung himself back onto the sofa, where he allowed himself the slightest smile. They'd been fifteen feet away from him, and they still missed. Someday he hoped he'd have the opportunity to tell them about it.
Someday.
Into his darkness crept a tiny ray of light. Where just moments before there had been only bleakness and the future had seemed unbearable, there now was reason for hope. His dad had once told him that hope was the most valuable possession a man could own. When he'd first said it, Nathan hadn't known what he'd meant. Now it was clear. Hope was where tomorrow resided.
His eyes fell once again to the gun in his hands. With its hammer drawn back and poised to fire, it looked evil, like a single-toothed serpent, offering such simple, permanent solutions to life's difficult problems. In the diminishing light of the evening, he realized the shame of what he had nearly done. A shiver wracked his body as he remembered his finger tightening on the trigger he could barely reach.
If it weren't for the cop at the door, he'd be dead now; yet it was the specter of encountering the police that had driven him to peer down that huge muzzle in the first place. He'd visited a place in his soul where he hoped he'd never return. What frightened him the most was how easy and effortless the trip had been.
Nathan let the gun slip from his hand onto the carpet, and, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, he started to cry.
Over a hundred miles away, Lyle Pointer swung his Porsche onto the Beltway heading north. In the uniform he wore, he looked just like a police officer.
Chapter 23
Jed had assumed that Ricky lived alone. There was no record of a wife, and none of the JDC staff had mentioned anything about a significant other. He was certain the question had been asked; it was standard procedure. When he requested the key to look around the apartment, though, the manager told him that Ricky's girlfriend was still there and could let him in. Her name was Misty.
The Brookfield Garden Apartments were built in the early sixties to meet the county's growing need for affordable housing, mostly for young military families. Somewhere along the line, the owners of the complex had landed subsidized housing contracts from both the state and federal governments, and now it was on the police dispatcher's Trouble List: two cops minimum for any disturbance call.
Physically, there wasn't much difference between these garden-style apartments and the garden-style apartments in Fairfield that continued to attract the young professional crowd. Except, of course, that these grounds were littered with trash, the chains on the swing sets were rusted, and the in-ground swimming pool hadn't seen water in a decade.