Only then.
You swear to yourself again, in the dark, with your head burrowed into your tear-stained pillow, that tonight was the last time he will get away with it. Ever. You will tell your mother what he has been doing to you, and she will toss the bum out of the house and then call the police. The police will come to the house in their black and white cars with their sirens screaming and their blue lights flashing, and they will take the man away in handcuffs and you will never have to see him again.
It is a satisfying fantasy, and it never fails to calm your ten-year-old fears.
But the dream, the long-repressed memory, is always the same. You never do tell your mother. You never tell her because, if you’re going to be honest with yourself, you are afraid, somewhere in the back of your frightened ten-year-old mind, that she already knows, or at least suspects. She knows or suspects what he has been doing and just won’t admit to herself what she knows or suspects. She is either too afraid or too uncaring to take action. To protect her child.
The dream is always the same, and you wake up screaming. Unlike during the real-life horrors of your childhood, when you were never able to scream, when you choked down the humiliation and terror, you wake yourself up screaming. Your throat is hoarse, it hurts from all the screaming, but you don’t care. You scream.
CHAPTER 23
MARTIN WAS EXHILARATED. HE hadn’t felt this alive since his first couple of successful snatches, and those had taken place years ago. He actually was beginning to believe he owed a debt of gratitude to this Bill Ferguson character for forcing him outside his comfort zone, for making him break away from the same, tired ritual he’d been performing over and over.
It was patently obvious that finding a new companion was now not going to happen the way he had been operating. He had been successful over a dozen times using the same scenario, but after the near-miss last week, he had to acknowledge that the authorities were becoming too familiar with the rest stop gig. But now he had a fresh challenge and objective and was totally focused on it—Carli Ferguson. And the best part was that he wouldn’t have to go anywhere near a highway rest stop to get her.
No, the best part was that he could mess with the interfering busybody’s mind at the same time he was accomplishing his objective! Of course, he had known that handing the letter to his angel would make achieving his goal more difficult, but he couldn’t resist rubbing Ferguson’s nose in it. Besides, anything worth having was worth working for, as his father used to say—not that that loser had much personal experience with working.
Besides, the pleasure of a few moments’ interaction with his angel yesterday had made all the extra effort worthwhile. It was everything he had imagined it would be and more. She was smart and pretty and exuded the sort of innocent sexuality that really cranked his engine.
And, really, where was the fun in getting what you wanted if it came too easily? As a philosopher once said, “life is a journey, not a destination.” Or maybe it was a songwriter, but who cared? The point was still the same. Maybe part of the reason he had ultimately been disappointed with his previous companions despite his initial high hopes was because they had all come too easily to him. There was no real challenge in stealing young girls from under the unwitting noses of grazing sheep.
Now, though, things were different. Now, he had a challenge worthy of his skills. The authorities knew he was coming to sweep his angel off her feet, and they thought they could stop him. Martin knew exactly how they thought. They would be convinced he wasn’t actually going to grab her after passing her that note, but, hey, that was their problem, not his. This time, when he welcomed a companion into his home, it would be after outwitting the authorities and sticking it to that nosy bastard. Just planning it gave him an adrenaline rush.
Martin looked at his watch and was astounded to discover it was now nearly ten p.m. He had been daydreaming about Carli for over three hours! He smiled at his foolishness; he was acting like a love-struck teenager. It was okay, though, because a chance at possessing a fresh, innocent girl like Carli would never come along again, and there was nothing wrong with savoring that.
Still, as enjoyable as it was to sit around and daydream about his upcoming conquest, what he wanted more than anything else in the world was to have her here, to enjoy her in the privacy of his home in all of the ways he craved, but that “society” said was wrong. Just who was “society,” anyway? And what right did “society” have to intrude on his pleasures?
Martin thumbed his remote, and a new porn DVD sprang to life on his big-screen TV. He loved porn; the X-rated action relaxed him and formed a backdrop for most of his best thinking. Some people listened to Mozart for inspiration; Martin enjoyed the artificial ecstasy provided courtesy of the adult film industry. You say tomato, I say tomahto. The point was, he had some serious planning to do if he was ever going to be together with his little angel.
Martin Krall relished the challenge. He sipped his drink and got to work.
CHAPTER 24
BILL DIDN’T THINK THERE was any way he was going to be able to sleep that night. The adrenaline was still pounding through his body at a rate nearly as strong as when he first finished reading that taunting letter from the I-90 Killer. He knew at some point in the not-too-distant future, all that adrenaline would wear off and he would crash, feeling headachy and sick to his stomach.