"Herb? Are you all right? Where's Danny? Where's Sara?"
At the mention of her name, Herb's head turned to look at Bill but his eyes never seemed to settle on him, never seemed to focus. After a few seconds, he returned to staring into the air.
Bill approached him cautiously. A part of him deep inside knew that something awful had happened here—or possibly was happening still—and screamed for him to turn and run. But he couldn't run. He couldn't—wouldn't—leave this place without Danny.
"Herb, tell me where Danny is. Tell me now, Herb. And tell me you haven't done anything to him. Tell me, Herb."
But Herb Lom only stared upward and outward at a corner of the ceiling.
Upstairs… he was staring upstairs. Did that mean anything?
Turning on lights as he moved, flipping every switch he passed, Bill found the staircase and headed for the second floor. Dread clawed at his throat as he called out the only names he could think of.
"Danny? Sara? Danny? Anyone here?"
The only reply was the creaking of the stair treads under his feet and the faint howl from the uncradled telephone receiver on the table in the upper hall.
He stopped and called out again, and this time he heard a reply—a hoarse whisper from the doorway at the top of the stairs. Unintelligible, but definitely a voice. He ran toward the dark rectangle, lunged through it, fumbled along the wall with his hand, found the switch…
… light… a big bedroom… the master bedroom… red… all red… the rug, the walls, the ceiling, the bedspread… didn't remember it being so red… Danny there… by the wall… naked… his head lolling… so white, so white … on the wall… arms spread… nails… in his palms… in his feet… face so white… and his insides… hanging out…
Bill felt the room lurch as his legs went flaccid under him. His knees slammed on the floor but he barely noticed the pain as he fell forward onto his hands and gripped the sticky red rug, retching.
No! This can't be!
"Father Bill?"
Bill's head snapped up. That voice… barely audible…
Danny's eyes were open, staring at him; his lips were moving, his voice was raw skin dragging through broken glass.
"Father, it hurts."
Bill forced his legs to work, to propel him across the red room. So much blood. How could one little boy hold so much blood? How could he lose it all and still be alive?
Bill averted his eyes. How could he be so cut up? Who would—?
Herb. It must have been Herb. Sitting downstairs in some sort of post-epileptic funk while up here… up here…
And where was Sara?
The nails. He couldn't think about Sara now. He had to get the nails out of Danny's hands and feet. He looked around for some way to remove them but all he saw was a bloody hammer. Bill fixed his eyes on the boy's bloodless face, his tortured, pleading eyes.
"I'll get you free, Danny. You just wait here and—" God, what am I saying? "I—I'll be right back."
"Father, it hurts so bad!"
Danny began screaming, hoarse, raw-throated wails that chased after Bill, tugging at the very underpinnings of his sanity as he raced downstairs. He pounded into the living room and hauled Herb from his chair. He wanted to tear him in half and he wanted to do it slowly, but that would take time, and he didn't think Danny had much of that left.
"Tools, fucker! Where are your tools?"
Herb's unfocused eyes stared past Bill's shoulder. Bill shoved him back into the chair that flipped backward with Herb in it. He landed in a twisted sprawl on the floor and stayed there.
Bill ransacked the kitchen, found the door to the cellar, and ran down the steps, fearing all the while that somewhere along the way he'd trip over Sara's remains. He was sure she was dead. He found a toolbox sitting on a dusty workbench. He grabbed it and raced back up to the second floor.
Danny was still screaming. Bill took the biggest set of pliers he could find and began working on the nails, removing the ones from his feet first, then moving up to the hands. As his ghastly white little body slumped to the floor, Danny's eyes closed and he stopped his hoarse, breathy, barely audible screams. Bill thought he was dead but he couldn't stop now. He pulled the spread from the double bed and wrapped the boy in it. Then he headed for the street, carrying Danny in his arms, racking his brain for the whereabouts of the nearest hospital.
Halfway to the car Danny opened his eyes and looked up at him and asked a question that shredded Bill's heart.
"Why didn't you come, Father Bill?" he said in a voice that was almost gone. "You said you'd come if I called. Why didn't you come?"
* * *
The next few hours were a blur, a montage of white streets seen through a fogged windshield, of battling skidding tires and locking wheels, of bouncing off curbs and near misses with other cars, all to the accompaniment of Danny's nearly voiceless screaming… arriving at the hospital, one of the emergency room nurses fainting when Bill unfolded the bedspread to reveal Danny's mutilated body, the ER doctor's blanching face as he said there was no way his little hospital could give this boy the care he needed… the wild ride in the rear of the ambulance, racing into Brooklyn with lights flashing and sirens howling, skidding to a stop before Down-state Medical Center, the police waiting for them there, all their grim-faced questions as soon as they wheeled Danny away to surgery.
And then came the thin, chain-smoking detective with yellow stains between his right index and middle fingers, mid-fortyish, thinning brown hair, intense blue eyes, intense expression, intense posture, everything about him aggressively intense.
Renny had got a look at the kid in the ER.
Twenty-plus years on the force and he'd never seen anything even remotely like what had been done to that kid. Turned his stomach upside down and inside out.
And now his chief was on the phone telling him he could pack it in until the day after tomorrow.
"I'm gonna stick with this one, Lieu."
"Hey, Renny, it's Christmas Eve," Lieutenant McCauley said. "Unlax a little. Goldberg's taking eleven-to-seven and what the hell is Christmas to Goldberg? Leave it to him."
No way.
"Tell Goldberg to cover everything else on eleven-to-seven. This one's mine."
"Something special about this one, Renny? Something I should know?"
Renny tightened inside. Couldn't let McCauley know there was anything personal here. Just play the cool, calm professional.
"Uh-uh. Just a child abuse case. A bad one. I think I got all the loose ends within reach. Just want to tie them up good before I call it a night."
"That could take a while. How's Joanne gonna handle that?"
"She'll understand." Joanne always understood.
"All right, Renny. You change your mind and want to pack it in early, let Goldberg know."
"Right, Lieu. Thanks. And Merry Christmas."
"Same to you, Renny."
Detective Sergeant Augustino hung up and headed for the doctors' lounge he had commandeered. That was where they were holding the guy who'd brought the kid in. He said his name was Ryan, claimed he was a priest but he had no ID and the sweatsuit he was wearing didn't have a Roman collar.
Renny thought about the kid. Hard to think about much else. They didn't know anything about him except what the so-called priest had told him: His name was Danny Gordon, he was seven years old, and until this afternoon he'd been a resident of St. Francis Home for Boys.
St. Francis… that was what had grabbed Renny. The kid was an orphan from St. F.'s and someone had cut him up bad.
That was all Renny had to hear to make this case real personal.
He'd left a uniform named Kolarcik on guard outside the lounge. Kolarcik was on the walkie-talkie as Renny approached in the hallway.