Medusa (7 page)

“Here’s where he got in.” LeGrandville shook his head, but betrayed no emotion.
 

The abductor had cut a huge, almost perfectly round hole in the metal screen, through which he had apparently entered. He had then cut the chain on the simple lock on the back door, and exited with the girl. The parents slept in a room less than thirty feet away, and they had heard nothing. The family owned two hounds, and they hadn’t barked a single time on the night of the abduction, although at night they were kept in a pen right outside, beneath the girl’s window. The abductor, seemingly, had walked right past them, with the girl in his arms, and they hadn’t even noticed.
 

There was no evidence on the scene that the girl had been injured. There was also no suggestion of a struggle.
 

“We never heard a thing,” LeGrandville said hollowly, his voice thick with a Cajun accent. “The police, they say it is a genuine conundrum.”
 

I nodded and frowned sourly. I had seen another such conundrum, even more baffling, so I wasn’t quite as stricken with awe as others might be, but I certainly understood more than most, too. I recognized the handiwork, the evil genius of it, and I could almost see it played out in my mind’s eye. Samson Fain was at it again, had probably never stopped. I felt a chill as I stood and wondered how many others had gone to their fate at Fain’s hands while he had been successfully obfuscated from the outside world.
 

“Tsk, tsk,” Tiller said quietly, after LeGrandville had gone back into the house. “Just like I thought, no lights out here. They were practically inviting him in.”
 

“No one invites something like this, Tiller,” I felt I had to say.
 

“In this world we have bungled and botched into existence, Roland, if you don’t get up earlier than the scum that infect our great society, you are asking to get taken down, and they invariably oblige you. That’s not the way things ought to be, but that’s the way they are.”
 

I simply nodded, feeling sick at the images playing out in my mind, images of Fain in action once again. I had hoped, wished, prayed for another chance to catch that demonic psychopath before he struck again. I had wanted a second chance to catch him since his escape. Now, here it was, my second chance. I had to bring him down for good, this time. I looked around Danielle LeGrandville’s empty room and swore an oath deep in my soul. I swore to her silently that I would not fail her.

Chapter 9

He is a big man, but he moves with a grace that belies his size. He creeps quietly through the dark summer night, beneath the trees that move softly in the Gulf breeze. From shadow to shadow he moves, ever closer to his goal. He knows the grounds well; he has sat in the nearby woods many times, studying, studying. Tonight is the night, and his moves are confident. He has carefully prepared for everything that he must do tonight.
 

Over the last few weeks he has carefully made friends with the family dogs, while the family was away at work and school. Now they do not even bark as he walks past the pen where they are kept at night. From his belt hang tools that he has brought along for specific tasks: bolt cutters, metal shears, and a small metal bottle, filled with ether. Each object is wrapped with felt tape so as to make no noise. In his pocket there is a thick cloth.
 

Now he pauses next to the back porch. He has chosen this house and this family after months of careful observation. He is methodical. Different situations call for different approaches. In more urban settings, he might have to enter while the target is out, hide himself, and wait for the right time. It was a risky and time-consuming proposition. He doesn’t take risks unnecessarily.
 

He has eliminated four other candidate houses before his arrival at this place, tonight. There were four other girls he thought of visiting, four other angels that he has carefully considered and ruefully had to cross off his list of possibilities. They will never know just how lucky they are. One home was too close to a busy intersection. At another, one member of the family was a young man, a night owl; his comings and goings were too unpredictable. No use risking an interruption.
 

The others also had little things about them that made his plans untenable, minor things, but enough to cause him to look elsewhere. He had learned this lesson long ago, as the slightest mistake carried dire consequences. He was meticulous and careful. One had to be, to avoid detection and capture, as he had done so often. He never took a chance if it could be avoided. So he had patiently observed, noted, and, when a particular house had proven simply too dangerous to be considered a target, he had crossed them from his list with a deep sigh of disappointment.
 

In the end, he had decided upon the LeGrandville home. It was a quiet dwelling, all one level. It was well-shaded, and set far back away from the road, and there were no neighbors nearby. Preliminary reconnaissance had revealed no security cameras in the rear of the dwelling. Most important of all, however, the LeGrandvilles had one thing in common with all the other families that he had so carefully considered—a beautiful daughter in her early teens. She was long-limbed and had long curly hair of burnt gold, and she had a musical laugh that carried far in the still summer air.
 

Danielle LeGrandville’s room was situated right next to the low porch, a wide, screened-in affair that almost covered the rear wall of the house. Outside her bedroom window was a dog pen, and on the other side of the porch, a barbecue grill.
 

A week before, he had sat in the woods opposite the wide back yard and watched the LeGrandville family have a cookout. Just the three of them, father, mother and daughter. He had been touched by the loving scene. He had watched them pitch horseshoes, and play Frisbee, pet their dogs. Obviously a family that loved each other very much. He felt envious. His own parents had been distant, never understanding what a special person he was. It was never like what he saw here, at the LeGrandville place. It made him feel superhuman that soon he would take that happiness away from them forever.
 

Samson Fain smiles now in the darkness, and takes out his metal shears. He carefully cuts a large round hole in the screen near the wall of the house. The shadows are deepest where he does his work, although no one in the world can see him, except God, if any such being exists and is watching him now.
 

He does this because he knows that the screen door on the porch creaks very loudly; he was able to hear its noise from his hiding place in the woods. He had taken this little fact into consideration, as he had everything else, when crafting his plan.
 

He carefully steps through the screen, setting his booted foot onto the quiet back porch.
 

The thrill of entry wiggles through him; he has always felt it when he steps into another family’s space, the sacred inner sanctum of people less careful than himself. He has always thought of himself as a thief in the temple, and he smiles now in the darkness at the thought of that. He has definitely come for something precious.
 

Once inside the screen, he encounters a welcome surprise. There appears to be a new concrete floor, covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting. No creaking boards to give him away. Good job, dad. A big man must always be wary of boards that groan and give away his approach. Another lesson hard-learned. Silent as a mouse, he walks to the back door. He knows that it has only the lightest of security. He turns the knob and opens the door. A chain lock lets it open only about five inches. With a smile in the darkness he takes the bolt cutters from his belt. Snip, snip, and it is done. He pushes the door open, and the darkness of the house invites him.
 

He replaces the bolt cutters and enters the hall. There, to the right, is Danielle’s room. Danielle, the long-limbed girl with brown hair the summer has turned to gold. A dark-eyed, luminous waif, a bit of a tomboy, just entering the first fresh flush of beauty. He wipes a tear from his eye and takes a deep, silent breath in the still hall. He takes the little bottle from its leather pouch on his belt. The lid is secured with a tiny chain. He unscrews the cap and holds the bottle away from himself with his left hand.
 

With his right, he takes the cloth from his pocket. With a practiced motion, he upturns the bottle into the cloth and silently counts off two seconds. He caps the bottle and returns it to the pouch on his belt. He then transfers the cloth to his left hand, and, with his right, slowly turns the knob on Danielle LeGrandville’s bedroom door. There, in her bed, reposes his angel. She is sound asleep and dreaming the sweet dreams of the young, her hair sprayed out about her like the corona that surrounds the head of a saint, shining in the silvery light of the bayou moon that filters wanly down through the window. He bends and applies the cloth to the delicate features; once, twice; not too much. He shakes her a little, to see if she will awaken. No. She is under, now, her natural sleep deepened to a deathlike slumber by the ether.
 

He turns down the covers and picks up the slender girl, clad in her panties and a t-shirt. No matter; he has brought her a comforter, which awaits in his van; she will not awaken cold. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispers to her in the darkness. He walks out, with the girl over his broad shoulder. To one of his great strength, she is no weight at all.
 

He crosses the yard once more, the shadows pawing at him as he goes, the night deathly silent, the trees stirring idiotically in the warm salty breeze. He gently lays the sleeping girl in the back of his van, which is parked near the clearing in the woods from which he had watched the family cookout. An old logger’s road takes him out onto a county road. He drives a carefully prepared route that takes him down no major highway, just quiet country back roads on which he meets not a single car, at this late hour. It is a work night, and in this quiet rural area, all are asleep. In the morning, the LeGrandville home will be a place of terror and grief. But Samson Fain does not concern himself with that. Danielle LeGrandville will be safe. Safe in his arms. His little angel.

Chapter 10

Tiller and I walked along the pier. We moved past a crowded open-air fish market. People sat in the cool evening, or milled about and talked; vendors scooped out prawns and shrimp by the pound, fresh from the Gulf; slapped down snapper and sea bass, grouper and swordfish too, fresh onto the wet plastic tarpaulins that covered the tables, fish and other creatures that had only an hour or so before swam miles out in the deep water.
 

“After seeing that crime scene, I’m convinced. I know, I said before that I believed you, back in Birmingham, Longville, but maybe I still had my doubts. Now, any shred of doubt I was holding onto is gone.”
 

“What was it that finally convinced you?”
 

Tiller looked decidedly uncomfortable with the question.
 

“I hate to put it this way, and if you ever tell anybody I said this, I’ll deny it, okay?”
 

I nodded, saying nothing.
 

“When I walked into the girl’s room, I felt the bastard’s presence there. When I stepped out onto that porch, I knew he’d been there. I could just feel it. So go ahead, laugh, but now I know I can’t leave here until we’ve run him to ground again. Until we put him away for good or kill him, I’m on this case.”
 

I nodded again. “I’m not laughing, because I know exactly what you mean. Call it two old cops with intuition, call it ESP, whatever. Maybe that little girl’s guardian angel is giving us a hint. I don’t know. One thing that I do know, Tiller, and that is what you and I felt was . . . evil. Like when you are walking down a quiet little path in the woods and hear a rattlesnake. I know, because I felt it too.”
 

We stood there silently for a moment, looking out over the calm yellow sunset of the Gulf Coast. The gulls were wheeling above us, and the sailboats calm and lovely in the distance. The two of us stood there silently by the sea, and thought about evil.
 

A pungent, fishy smell hung in the spicy air, and I felt a thin layer of sweat break out on my skin in the clinging Gulf Coast heat. We walked along for a while, without speaking. There were many offbeat little shops with wide windows in front, selling souvenirs. Voodoo dolls, large stuffed crawfish, beer bongs and beads, model pirate ships, Mardis Gras posters. Anything and everything that evoked the mythos of the Gulf Coast in general and New Orleans in particular; the real, historical city and the mythic place that lived only in the imagination, all was for sale here.
 

I took a look around at the milling crowd, and saw a man in a light blue suit stop suddenly, and then walk awkwardly into a shop doorway that he had already passed. He had been looking directly at me when I turned around to look.
 

Tiller pointed to some shrimp in a bin nearby, and whispered into my ear.
 

“We’re being followed.”
 

“I just noticed him myself.”
 

Tiller chuckled. “Yeah—the guy in the powder blue suit? I thought so, too. I thought, ‘That’s somebody who’s trying a little too hard to look like a tourist.’ I mean, who in the hell is he trying to fool in that get-up? A suit like that would get you noticed in the crowd at Disney World.”