“Hello, Tim. I apologize for barging in like this…”
“That’s all right. Tim Junior said you had a warning…”
“In a way. I received a cryptic letter from what might be a former patient today. It had what some might consider a threatening tone. That was directed primarily at me. But it also indicated that the letter writer might contact one of my relatives. I have been calling around the family to alert people, and to determine if anyone has already been approached.”
There was a deadly, cold silence on the phone that lasted nearly a minute.
“What sort of patient?” Tim Senior asked sharply, echoing his son’s query. “Is this someone dangerous?”
“I don’t know who it is exactly. The letter wasn’t signed. I’m only presuming it is an ex-patient but I don’t really know for certain. In fact, it might not be. The truth is, I don’t know anything yet, for certain.”
“That sounds vague. Exceedingly vague.”
“You are correct. I’m sorry.”
“Do you think this threat is real?”
Ricky could hear a harsh, hard edge lining the man’s voice.
“I don’t know. Obviously it concerned me enough to make some calls.”
“Have you spoken with the police?”
“No. Sending me a letter doesn’t seem to break the law, does it?”
“That’s exactly what the bastards just told me.”
“I beg your pardon?” Ricky said.
“The cops. I called the cops and then they came all the way over here to tell me they couldn’t do anything.”
“Why did you call the police?”
Timothy Graham didn’t immediately answer. He seemed to take in a long breath of air, but instead of calming himself, this had the opposite effect, as if releasing a spasm of pent-up rage.
“It was disgusting. Some sick fuck. Some slimy sick motherfucker. I’ll kill him if I ever get my hands on him. Kill him with my bare hands. Is your ex-patient a sick fuck, Uncle Frederick?”
The sudden outburst of obscenity took Ricky aback. It seemed dramatically out of the ordinary for a quiet, well-mannered, and unprepossessing history professor at an exclusive and conservative prep school. Ricky paused, at first a little unsure how to reply.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Tell me what has happened that has made you so upset.”
Tim Senior hesitated again, breathing in deeply, the noise making a snakelike hissing sound over the telephone line. “On her birthday, if you can believe it. On her fourteenth birthday, of all days. That’s just disgusting…”
Ricky stiffened in his seat. A memorylike explosion burst behind his eyes. He realized he should have seen the connection right away. Of all his relatives, only one by the greatest of coincidences, shared his birthday. The little girl whose face he had so much trouble recalling, and whom he’d met only once, at a funeral. He berated himself: This should have been your first phone call. But he did not let this observation creep into his own voice.
“What happened?” he asked bluntly.
“Someone left a birthday card for her inside her locker at school. You know, one of those nice, oversized, tritely sentimental cards that you buy at the mall. I still can’t figure out how the bastard got in there and got the locker opened without being seen by someone. I mean, where the hell was security? Unbelievable. Anyway, when Mindy got to school, she found the card, figured it was from one of her friends, and opened it. Guess what? The card was stuffed with disgusting pornography. Full-color, leave nothing to the imagination porn. Pictures of women tied up in ropes and chains and leathers and penetrated in every imaginable fashion by every conceivable device. Real hard-core, triple-X stuff. And the person wrote on the card: This is what I intend to do to you as soon as I can catch you alone….”
Ricky shifted about in his seat. Rumplestiltskin, he thought.
But what he asked was, “And the police? What do they tell you?”
Timothy Graham snorted with a dismissive burst that Ricky imagined had been used on slacker students for years and was likely to freeze them with fear but in this context spoke more of impotence and frustration.
“The local police,” he said briskly, “are idiots. Complete idiots. They blithely tell me that unless there exists substantial and credible evidence that Mindy is actively being stalked by someone, there’s nothing they can do. They want some sort of overt act. In other words, she has to actually be attacked first. Idiots. They believe that the letter and the enclosures are practical jokes. Probably upperclassmen at the academy. Maybe somebody I gave a lousy grade to last term. Of course, that’s not outside the realm of possibility around here, but…” The history professor paused. “Why don’t you tell me about your former patient? Is he a sex criminal?”
Ricky hesitated himself, then said, “No. Not at all. This doesn’t sound like him at all. Really, he’s harmless. Just irritating.”
He wondered if his nephew would hear the lies in his voice. He doubted it. The man was furious, flustered, and outraged, and was unlikely to have the ability to recognize a departure from the truth for some time.
Timothy Graham was silent for a moment. “I will kill him,” he said coldly. “Mindy has been in tears all day. She thinks there’s someone out there who wants to rape her. She’s just fourteen and never hurt a soul in her life and is impressionable as hell and she’s never been exposed to that sort of filth before. It seems like only yesterday she was still into teddy bears and Barbie dolls. I doubt she’ll sleep much tonight, or for the next couple of days. I just hope that the fright hasn’t changed her.”
Ricky didn’t say anything, and the history teacher continued after pausing to catch his breath.
“Is that possible, Uncle Frederick? You’re the damn expert. Can someone have their life changed that quickly?”
Again he didn’t reply, but the question echoed within him.
“… It’s awful, you know. Just awful,” Timothy Graham burst out. “You try so hard to protect your children from how sick and evil the world really is, then let your guard down for a second and blam! It hits you. Maybe this isn’t the worst case of lost innocence you’ve ever heard of Uncle Frederick, but, then, you’re not listening to your beloved little girl who never hurt a single soul in her entire life, crying her eyes out on her fourteenth birthday because someone somewhere means her harm.”
And with that, the history professor hung up the telephone.
Ricky Starks leaned back at his desk. He let a long, slow breath of air whistle between his front teeth. In a way, he was both upset and intrigued by what Rumplestiltskin had done. He sorted through it rapidly. There was nothing spontaneous about the message he’d sent to the teenage girl; it was calculated and effective. He’d obviously put in some time studying her as well. It also showed some skills that Ricky guessed he would be wise to take note of. Rumplestiltskin had managed to avoid security at a school, and had the burglar’s ability to open a lock without destroying it. He was able to leave the school equally undetected and then travel straight down the highway from Western Massachusetts to New York City to leave his second message in Ricky’s waiting room. The timing wasn’t difficult; the drive wasn’t long, perhaps four hours. But it denoted planning.