She’d hit a button in the old hag. The adopted nephew wasn’t retarded like her own son and Balinda had taken exception to the fact.
Jennifer swallowed and walked to the window. It was fastened down with one screw. What kind of mother would raise a boy in an environment like this? The thought of Kevin crying as they passed by the house yesterday came with new understanding. Dear Kevin, what did she do to you? Who was the small boy who lived in this room?The screw was loose in its hole.
Balinda followed Jennifer’s stare.
“He used to crawl out of that window. He didn’t know that I knew, but I did. Nothing happens around here without my knowing.”
Jennifer turned back and brushed past Balinda. Nausea swept through her stomach. In a twisted way, Balinda had probably raised Kevin with noble intentions. She’d protected him from a terrible world full of evil and death. But at what price?
Slow down, Jennifer. You don’t know what happened here. You don’t even know that this wasn’t a wonderful environment for a child to be raised in.
She stepped into the living room and calmed herself.
“I knew he was sneaking out,” Balinda was saying. “But I just couldn’t stop him. Not without beating him raw. Never did believe in that kind of discipline. It may have been a mistake. Look at where it got him. Maybe I should have beaten him.”
Jennifer took a shallow breath. “What kind of discipline didyou use?”
“You don’t need discipline when your house is in order. Life is discipline enough. Anything more is an admission of weakness.” She said it all with her chest puffed, proud. “Isolate them with the truth and they will shine like the stars.”
The revelation came like a cool balm. She looked around. So Kevin’s rearing had been weird and distorted, but maybe not terrible.
“A man has been threatening Kevin,” she said. “We believe it’s someone your son—”
“He’s my nephew.”
“Sorry. Nephew. Someone Kevin might have known when he was ten or eleven. A boy who threatened Kevin. He had a fight with this boy. Maybe you remember something that might help us identify him.”
“It must have been the time he came home all bloody. I do remember that. Yes, we found him in bed in the morning and his nose was a mess. He refused to talk about it, but I knew he’d been out. I knew everything.”
“What kind of friends did Kevin have at that age?”
Balinda hesitated. “His family was his friend. Bob was his friend.”
“But he must have had other friends in the neighborhood. How about Samantha?”
“That fool girl? They sneaked around. Don’t think I didn’t know. He let it slip a few times. She was the one who may have ruined him in the first place! No, we tried to discourage him from keeping friends outside the house. This is an evil world. You don’t just let your children play with anyone!”
“You didn’t know anyof his friends?”
Balinda stared at her for a long time and then walked for the door. “You’re starting to repeat your questions. I don’t think we can help you more than we have.” She opened the door.
Jennifer took a last look around the house. She pitied the poor boy who grew up in this distorted world. He would enter the real world . . . naive.
Like Kevin.
But Balinda was probably right. There was nothing more to learn here.
16
Sunday
Afternoon
SAMANTHA PACED THE FLOOR of the hotel room for the hundredth time. She’d anticipated almost every eventuality, but not Kevin’s disappearance.
Roland had paged her and she’d called him from the room phone. He wasn’t thrilled about her having turned off her cell but agreed that her plan had some merit. Meanwhile they had set up a meeting with the Pakistani, Salman, in Houston. This evening. Removing Kevin from the game by pulling him out of Slater’s reach might have been the best way to stall the killer until her return tomorrow. But she hadn’t considered the possibility that Kevin would disappear. Now she was due to catch a flight in a few hours, and Kevin was gone. Jennifer Peters would be burning up the phone lines by now, trying to find them, but Sam couldn’t bring herself to tip her hand—not yet. Something about the whole investigation bothered her, but she couldn’t put a finger on it. Something wasn’t right.
She reviewed the facts as she knew them.
One. Someone, probably a white male, had terrorized Sacramento over the last twelve months by selecting seemingly random victims, giving them a riddle to solve, and then killing them when they failed. He’d been dubbed the Riddle Killer by the media and the name had stuck with law enforcement. Jennifer’s brother, Roy, had been his last victim.
Two. She had opened an undercover CBI investigation under the premise that the killer had or was an inside man. Nothing indicated that the killer knew of her investigation.
Three. Someone with almost the same MO as the Riddle Killer was now stalking both Kevin and her in a game of riddles.
Four. A concrete connection had been established between this same killer and a boy who’d threatened both her and Kevin twenty years earlier.
On the surface, it all made perfect sense: A boy named Slater takes to torturing animals and terrorizing other children. He’s nearly killed by one of those children, Kevin, when Kevin locks him in a cellar to protect a young girl Slater intends to harm. But Slater escapes the cellar and grows up to become one of society’s worst nightmares—a man void of conscience with a lust for blood. Now, twenty years later, Slater learns that the two children who tormented him so long ago are alive. He stalks them and devises a game to deal with both in one fell swoop. Obvious, right?
No. Not in Sam’s mind. For starters, why had Slater waited so long to go after both her and Kevin? Did the small incident in the cellar just skip his mind for twenty years? And what was the likelihood that she, employed by the CBI, just happened to be assigned to a case involving the same person who tried to kill her twenty years ago?
And now, in the eleventh hour, this new lead from Sacramento— someone in Houston who claimed to know Slater. Or more accurately, the Riddle Killer. If she was right, they were all barking up the wrong tree.
Sam glanced at her watch. Two-thirty and still nothing. She had a plane to catch for Dallas at five. “Come on, Kevin. You’re forcing my hand here.”
She sighed and picked up her cell phone. She reluctantly switched it on and dialed Jennifer Peters’s number.
“Peters.”
“Hello, Agent Peters. Samantha Sheer—”
“Samantha! Where are you? Kevin’s gone. We’ve been trying to track him down all morning.”
“Slow down. I know Kevin’s gone. He’s with me. Or was with me, I should say.”
“With you?This isn’t your investigation. You have no right this side of hell to act without our approval! You trying to get him killed?”
Wrong, Jennifer, I don’t need your approval.“Don’t insult me.”
“Do you have any idea how crazy things are down here? The media’s gotten wind, presumably through that deadhead Milton, that Kevin’s disappeared, and they’re already suggesting Slater kidnapped him. They’ve got cameras on rooftops, waiting for the next bomb, for heaven’s sake! A killer’s loose out there, and the only man who may be able to lead us to him has gone AWOL. Why didn’t you call? Where is he now?”
“Take a breath, Jennifer. I have called, against my better judgment. I’ve put in a request to share what we know with you, but only you, do you understand? What I share with you, no one else hears. Not Milton, not the FBI, no one.”
“Put in a request with whom?”
“With the attorney general. We’ve been working this case from a new angle, you might say. Now you know, but no one else does.”