It was back right where it had been before, sitting up in the curve of her stomach. Looking at him.
He shook his head, frowning. Of course it wasn’t looking at him, it was his imagination; it was just a toy. He must have been so wrapped up in anticipation that he’d flaked—and
Easily fixed. He took the few steps into the room, grabbed the bear by one ear, and threw it into the bedroom closet, closing the door on it. Molly didn’t stir, and he retired to the living room and his treasure chest.
On the top layer of the box lay a tangle of leather and rubber. He sorted out the straps carefully, laying out all the restraints in their proper order, with the rubber ball for her mouth and the gag to hold it in there first in line. That was one of the most important parts. Whatever sound got past the gag wouldn’t get past the neighbors’ various deficiencies.
Something was definitely moving in the next room. He heard the closet door opening, then the sounds of shuffling.
He sprinted to the door—
Only to see that Molly was lying in exactly the same position, and the bear was with her.
He shook his head. Damn! He couldn’t be going crazy—
Then he chuckled at a sudden memory. The third kid he’d done had pulled something like this—the kid was a sleepwalker, with a knack for lying back down in precisely the same position as before, and it wasn’t until he’d stayed in the bedroom instead of going through his collection that he’d proved it to himself. Molly had obviously missed her bear, gotten up, searched blindly for her toy, found it, then lay back down again. Yeah, come to think of it, her jumper was a bit higher on her hip, and she was more on her back than her side, now.
But that bear had to go.
He marched in, grabbed the bear again, and looked around. Now where?
The bathroom, the cabinet under the sink. There was nothing in there but a pair of dead roaches, and it had a child-proof latch on it.
The eyes flashed at him as he flipped on the bathroom light and whipped the cabinet open. For one moment he almost thought the eyes glared at him with a red light of their own before he closed the door on the thing and turned the lock with a satisfying click.
Back to the box.
The next layer was his pictures. They weren’t of any of his kids; he wasn’t that stupid. Nothing in this box would ever connect him with the guy they were calling the “Sunday-school killer” because he left them dressed in Sunday best, clean and shining, in places like parks and beaches, looking as if they’d just come from church.
But the pictures were the best the Internet had to offer, and a lot of these kids looked like the ones he’d had. Pretty kids, real pretty.
He took them out in the proper order, starting with the simple ones, letting the excitement build in his groin as he savored each one. First, the nudes—ten of them, he knew them all by heart. Then the nudes with the kids “playing” together, culled from the “My Little Fishie” newsletter of a nut-case religious cult that believed in kid- sex.
Then the good ones.
Halfway through, he slipped his hand into his pants without taking his eyes off the pictures.
This was going to be a good one. Molly looked just like the kid in the best of his pictures. She was going to be perfect; the last of the season, the best of the season.
He was pretty well occuppied as he got to the last set, though he noted absently that it sounded as if Molly was up and moving around again. This was the bondage-and-snuff set, very hard to get, and the only reason he had them at all was because he’d stolen them from a storage-locker. He wouldn’t have taken the risk of getting them personally, but they’d given him some of his best ideas.
Molly must be awake by now. But this wasn’t to be hurried—there wouldn’t be any Mollys or Jeffreys until next year, next spring, summer, and fall. He had to make this one last.
He savored the emotions in the pictured eyes as he would savor Molly’s fear; savored their pleading expres sions, their helplessness. Such pretty little things, like her, like all his kids.
They wanted it, anybody knew that. Freud said so—that had been in that psychology course he took by
