Billy Read online

  FOR THOSE CHILDREN

  -

  Part One

  BY REASON OF DARKNESS

  1.

  Suddenly he was there, remarkable and perfect. The next instant he had disappeared into the crowd. Barton gazed after him, but not for long. People noticed you watching children. He walked on.

  As soon as he felt it was safe he turned around and overtook the boy from behind.

  He had no intention of being carried away yet again by his natural enthusiasm. Another mistake would be too much to bear.

  On this particular day he was searching Crossland Mall for the fourth time. He'd been in Stevensville for a disappointing week; he'd been thinking of giving up on Iowa altogether.

  He stopped at the mall bookstore and retraced his steps. Now he could safely get a good look at the boy from the front. And what a remarkable face he saw. There was fire in the eyes, along with a boy's natural softness. The face was the sort you could look at for hours; such beauty was a kind of food. His fair cheeks were pinked by the sun, his features at once gentle and sharp, and yet full of dignity. His nose was graceful, but there was also a sweet bluntness to it. His lips were as red as if they had been blushed. The boy's hair was strawberry blond, his skin like cream. His brown eyes were touched like the hair by subtle flame. The expression was affable, with an edge of mischief around the eyes—and yet there was also something else, almost a sense of command. That was so interesting.

  The child held his head proudly. The tip of a smile played across his lips as he encountered another boy, obviously a friend. By comparison this other child was a shadow.

  Barton watched carefully as they went into a video arcade. His target established himself in front of one of the machines. This was a bit of a disappointment. Perhaps this child was not the extraordinary creature that he seemed. But his looks! God.

  Barton had to be extremely careful with this one.

  He could do wonders for the right boy, of that he remained convinced. The last time was so awful that he'd made the decision to change his ways. He'd sealed that decision by mixing his own blood with an innocent's.

  For hours a given relationship could be so good. His heart opened, the boy's heart opened and they were truly father and son. In those times he would have given his life for his boy.

  But inevitably the relationship changed. The boy sneered, he cursed or even spat. Then the truth came out: the vicious punk had despised him all along.

  Ending a life properly was a craftsman's work. You had to do it with the dedication of a lover, the care of a professional, the considered pace of a libertine.

  You didn't necessarily want to. But once the relationship had collapsed . . .

  Obviously the boy in question couldn't be set free.

  These thoughts, brief as they were, led him to other, darker ideas, tempting notions from a diabolic corner of his soul.

  He found himself imagining that lovely face wet with tears, the eyes pleading, the voice shrill, and his own hands moving as if under the control of the terrible instrument that they held.

  The image was so vivid and horrific, it made him shake his head and gasp. The floor rocked. He put a hand to his mouth to force back the sickness.

  Barton had secret knowledge: when skin burns it smokes; a pierced lung sucks.

  He had to will himself to calm down, let the bad thoughts fade away.

  'OK, take it easy,' he told himself. 'All that's wrong with you is that you're very excited by this child. He's a treasure and nothing bad will happen. No, with the right boy, there will be no bad part.'

  Barton was stable.

  This time he would do everything exactly right.

  In the past he'd picked them up off the street. "Your mother told me to come get you and take you home." "I'm with the police, son." "There's been an accident, we have to take you home now." It depended on how young they were and how neglected they looked. "Want to take a ride, go to McDonald's, get some candy?" And to the saddest, shabbiest of them: "Want to be my friend?"

  Timmy had gone for that one. Jack had fallen for the police gambit. For that ruse Barton had worn a bluejacket and some insignia he'd bought at an army surplus store.

  The current problem was going to be much more challenging. This child was happy and bright and might not fall for a simple lure, which meant that one could not be risked. If he wanted a specific boy, he only had the one chance. He'd tried forty kids before he got Timmy—who had been flawed, of course. When he'd trusted to chance, he always had problems. He had finally accepted the fact that he could not get a perfect child unless it was by careful choice.

  To be certain that the child was right he was going to have to make a closer approach, risk some brief interaction with him.

  There were benches for parents in front of the arcade. He sat down, pretending to tie his shoe, and looked the place over as he did so. It was very ordinary: a deep room with fifty or so games and a lot of noise. There were maybe ten kids listlessly pumping the machines.

  Only one child looked as if he was standing in a shaft of light.

  Barton ached to try a street ploy, but that was not the prudent course. Instead he would proceed slowly and carefully. First he would go outside and sit in his van for ten or fifteen minutes, then re-enter the mall in dark glasses and wearing a different shirt. If he was lucky, he could have a brief conversation with the child. Tone of voice, vocabulary, expression— they would reveal volumes.

  He did not want a coarse child, a bitter child, a delinquent child. This one must not be bruised. He must be intelligent, well adjusted, good of heart.

  Then it would work.

  He returned to his Aerostar which he'd parked not far from the mall's main entrance. To fill the time he enjoyed one of his secret pleasures: he wrote about the boy on a yellow pad. Usually he just wrote a description, which gave him the enjoyment of calling the child's image vividly to mind. Other times he might write a letter, or simply repeat the name again and again, such as "Timothy Weathers" written until it seemed a kind of sweet penance. But he didn't yet know this boy's name.

  "Dearest Child, I would like to ask you if I can be your new father. I know it sounds crazy and you love your dad, but just please listen to me for a second. I don't have a boy and I can't, and I'd give you every single thing you could ever want. I won't ever punish you. You make all the decisions. I work, I'll earn the money for us."

  He stopped writing.

  It would be so beautiful!

  "There is something so marvelous about you. Thinking of you now I can smell the grass in the backyard, see that wonderful old elm that was almost my second home in the summer. You make me feel so good, so deeply happy.

  "I know you are a magnificent human being. I can help you fulfill your great potential. I can take you out of this wretched cultural desert and help you to flourish and become the great soul that God meant you to be.

  "Let me love you, serve you, become you."

  He stared at the last two words. That wasn't what he meant at all. "Become you"—what was that supposed to mean? Barton wasn't crazy. He crossed them out. In their place he wrote: "enter your life." Now that was precisely correct.

  "Oh, my God," he said, "he's so incredibly special."

  Obviously he had already fallen in love with this child. Oh, he would be such a good father! He could do it, he would be just wonderful.

  Barton tore the paper into tiny bits. These he put into a plastic bag which he would eventually pour into some dumpster somewhere behind a gas station. Although he had no evidence that anybody was investigating him, the possibility was always there.

  That was why he'd quit making his acquisitions in California, and partly why he was working rural areas. Small towns were so open, and their police departments usually had very limite
d resources. Also, his experience was that small-town America produced better-looking, sweeter, smarter children.

  Another important consideration was location. He was always careful to choose towns close to the interstate. This wasn't only because of the need to leave quickly, but also because the citizens of such towns were used to seeing strangers passing through. One more wouldn't arouse anyone's suspicions.

  His watch told him it was time to go back. The capture itself was always nerve-wracking, but these new preliminaries made the whole process much worse.

  Barton said to himself, "You don't have to do it."

  He groaned so loudly that a man walking past his van glanced his way. 'OK, you're losing it again. So take a deep breath, imagine every muscle in your body is melting. That's better.'

  The thought of losing this boy was just unbearable.

  Barton told himself he had to be strong. He must stick to his plan. What if the boy was rotten inside, foul-mouthed or dirty-minded? He certainly didn't want any of that, not anymore. This child had to be right.

  The next step was to get back in that mall and make the final decision. If it was in the affirmative he would then locate the boy's home, find out his name and get some idea of his family situation. To some extent poorer was better, and it helped if the family was new in town. It was easier to get kids who had unhappy homes, but that had been his mistake in the past. They might look fresh and beautiful, but too many of them were grim and sullen and rotten with greed, the vicious little bastards!

  Looking first to be sure nobody was near the van, he pulled off his tan knit shirt. Then he took the blue button-down out of his small suitcase and put on the dark glasses.

  His clothes changed, he got out of the van and moved quickly toward the mall entrance.

  Noon was approaching and waves of heat rose from the cars in the lot. Barton was sensitive to heat. The other kids had called him "Leaky," he sweated so much. That and "Fat Royal."

  That was a long time ago—longer than it felt. But mentally Barton was never far from his own childhood. He kept going over things. People who remembered childhood fondly were lucky; they were the ones who had put the pain to rest.

  Crossing the pavement he bowed his head against the sun and was grateful to push through the doors into the air conditioning.

  In the old days department stores had smelled like malls did now. It was the perfume of merchandise. The smell always took him back to the days when his gang—well, not really his, but the gang he was in—used to ride bikes down to Woolworth's on Main and Mariposa where they had a comic book rack and cap guns and toy soldiers and a lunch counter where you could get a hamburger and large Cherry Coke for seventy-five cents. He wasn't really in the gang, of course, but he rode with them. Or rather, he took the same route. The guys would all sit at the counter; he would be in a booth nearby.

  Remembering those days, he smiled a little. Mom had given him one thorough strapping that time he got caught shoplifting those Uncle Scrooge comics. If he'd only managed to pull it off and gotten one for every member of the gang, maybe then they would have taken him in.

  Mom had laid it on right in the middle of the living room. Then they watched Have Gun Will Travel, and he lay there on the floor where she had left him.

  He passed Midplains Savings and Wilton's Jewelers, its main window literally jammed with ceramic brooches illustrating flowers and little hats and ladybugs. In another window there must have been a couple of miles of gold chain.

  The mall was moderately crowded. When he was in crowds Barton was compulsive about looking into faces. He was also sensitive to the aesthetics of skin. Smooth, pale skin inspired him. He loved to brush a soft arm or beautiful hand. To taste its salt sweetness, to inhale its miraculous variety of scents—of such things he dared only dream.

  Another pass by the video arcade and he saw the boy again, still at his moronic game. Barton took a deep breath, stopped walking and closed his eyes for a moment.

  Now came the frightening part: he went into the arcade.

  There was a skeeball game in the front, and beside it a locked display case full of cheap trinkets and candy. Each item was marked with some ridiculous number—fifty skeeball coupons to get a miniature Whitman's Sampler, a thousand for some cheap sunglasses.

  The electronic games all depicted murder and mayhem, brawls and violent death. They promoted machismo and reinforced unconscious racism. Little thought was required. Rather, they demanded what the streets demanded: dexterity and feral cunning.

  Barton moved closer to the boy. His heart began to pound and his underarms to grow damp despite his powerful antiperspirant. He could see the boy's back moving as he breathed. The boy wasn't a fantasy anymore; he was a human being in a black-and-white-striped T-shirt and black shorts.

  The vulnerability of children could be extraordinarily intimidating. Barton wasn't a predator, he was a romantic and did not like to see himself as an exploiter. Getting close to kids also meant seeing their imperfections, which could ruin everything ... or it could be delicious.

  On the side of this boy's perfectly white left hand there was a small brown mole. Farther up his arm there was another. These were not fatal imperfections, like Jack's relentlessly foul mouth or the black birthmark on Timmy's thigh. Rather, they enhanced the child's beauty in an almost poignant manner.

  Watching this sensitive child play Space Harrier was like watching an angel hitting on a bottle of booze.

  Barton moved closer. The boy's skin shone in the arcade's lurid fluorescence. It was all Barton could do not to touch the warm smoothness of his hand, to let his finger brush across the mole.

  As the boy's Space Harrier game ended Barton put a quarter into the RPM machine beside it. This was a two-person game. In a quavering tone, he asked, "Want to race?"

  "Sure."

  Wonderful voice! Soft, yet richly melodious. And a real surprise: this voice was kind!

  The boy came over and dropped a quarter into his side of the machine. He barely reached Barton's shoulder.

  Even though Barton tried his hardest, he was bested three times in a row, which he found lovely. Nothing was said until the end, when the boy looked up at him and with a sparkle in his eye said, "Want to play for money?"

  Barton smiled. "This is already costing me."

  The boy laughed and went over to his dark-headed friend. A moment later the friend's brittle, sneering voice drifted back: "Just some queer."

  The boy glanced quickly at Barton. There was apology in his soft eyes.

  The boy's friend had, in addition to his pimples and his coal-black hair, the extended face of a horse.

  Suddenly it hit Barton: I'm being seen by a potential witness! He had to get out of here, even if it meant losing the boy.

  That was a monstrous thought! In his few minutes on RPM he'd fallen far: he could hardly bear the thought of letting the child out of his sight. But prudence demanded that he leave at once.

  The van was stifling. He started the engine and turned the air conditioning on high.

  The locals were all talking about how hot and dry a summer it had been. The corn was stunted, and the farmers wanted rain. Barton had learned to talk about it, too. Every morning he read the Stevensville Iowan, and when the waitress served his breakfast he might say a few words about the weather.

  This way if she was ever questioned she would review the past few days and say, "No, officer, I don't remember anybody unusual at all." She would not say, "Gee, yeah, now that you mention it there was this guy that ate here a few times. Real quiet. Never said a word. Kept his head down."

  Never mind waitresses, though; here was a strong, direct witness: "Yes, officer, there was this guy in the mall who played RPM with him." And then would follow the description, the IdentiKit portrait, the poster.

  Thank God for dark glasses.

  He pulled out of his spot and sped to the nearest exit. Once on Lincoln Avenue he headed for the Burger King. Eating would pass the time.

 
; He entered the order line behind a blue Camaro. Three girls were in it, ages sixteen to eighteen. He wished that he could say something to them about their smoking, offer them some help with their addiction. They were all so young!

  He watched them order Whoppers, fries, shakes, desserts. Their blond heads bobbed as they talked, the driver's skin gleamed in the sun as she worked the microphone button.

  If he got to a child in time, he was convinced that he could transform anyone of sufficient intelligence into a cultured human being. With the right care, the soul would bloom.

  "A Whaler and a small dinner salad with blue cheese dressing,'' he said when his turn came at the order window. "And a glass of iced tea." Not "icetea," like they all said. "Iced. Tea." In the English language it was two words.

  As the Camaro left the takeout window he drove up and got his things.

  With his food on the seat beside him he accelerated into traffic. He fought the desire to go back to the mall earlier than was safe.

  Please don't leave, son. Dad had called him that, and he enjoyed pretending to be Dad. Power was the greatest aphrodisiac.

  He made himself go out on the interstate to kill a little more time before he attempted to relocate the child and follow him home.

  Grueling hours of search might be necessary this time around. He just didn't know. This was all new to him. And as far as getting the boy—his idea was more a fantasy than a plan. Would it work? He had no idea.

  Driving along, nibbling nervously at the Whaler, his thoughts returned to the boy. Wasn't that a wonderful voice? Just exceptional. And that extraordinary face. The word "handsome" did not suffice, and "pretty" was demeaning. This boy had a quality of the miraculous about him.

  Even to glimpse such beauty was a privilege.

  Barton himself was not beautiful and never had been, but he had made himself into a worthy soul.

  The rich white clouds reminded him of the past. He had looked for shapes in the clouds, and had seen the Flying Dutchman there, and his mother had said, "There's a gallows and an old man hanging, and the wind is tearing off his head."