with the art. The depth was breathtaking.
“Are you okay?” I felt the child’s small hand tugging at my sleeve.
“Of course, child,” I replied. “I was merely absorbed in the book, looking for—”
“But you were doing it for an *hour*!” she said, her voice not so much complaining as. . . nervous? Frightened? I could not determine.
“Ah, well, that is likely to occur when a person gazes at works of art. One becomes lost in the work.”
“You were looking at my drawings?”
“Yes, I was. They are quite. . . remarkable. But aren’t your teachers. . . annoyed at your defacement of the books?”
“They used to be. But now they know I won’t turn them in at the end of the year. My father has to buy them. From the school, I mean. So they don’t get mad anymore.”
“Are you bored, Zoe?”
“No! I’m having a good time. Really.”
“I didn’t mean here, child. I meant in school. Do you draw during class because the material is so boring?”
“I don’t know. I always do it, I guess.”
“And then you learn the material at home? By yourself?”
“I. . . guess. I always do my homework, so nobody ever gets mad.”
“But what about your grades? Your. . . report card, I suppose it would be called.”
“I always get all A’s,” she said, without the expected vein of pride in her voice, just stating a fact.
“Is that right? Your parents must be very pleased with your performance.”
“My. . .” The child looked stricken, unable to complete her thought. She stood frozen, an unconnected look on her face. It was. . . familiar, in a way I myself could not articulate.
“Your grades, Zoe,” I said gently. “Weren’t they pleased with your grades?”
She did not respond. I had observed both catatonia and elective mutism in captured children previously, but this was neither of those states. Acting on some perhaps primal instinct, I wrapped her in a blanket and carried her over to the couch. She responded only by curling up in a tight fetal ball.
It was almost forty-five minutes before she stirred. If she was surprised at finding herself under the blanket, she gave no sign. “Are we going to study?” she asked.
“It seems you have already mastered the material in your own books,” I told her. “Perhaps you would be interested in learning something about computers. . .?”
“Sure!” she said enthusiastically, throwing off the covers and coming over to where I was working on the portable machine.
Two hours later, she was sufficiently familiar with the basics of programming to create a small module of her own. Once she did that successfully, I opened a modified version of a drawing program and showed her how she could use the electronic stylus to create freehand drawings on the screen.
She was still working on acquiring the feel of the stylus when I told her it was time for supper.
Oh, I knew him then. But I couldn’t figure out if he was testing me or telling me. I called for Xyla, playing out the lie that she couldn’t retrieve what had just disappeared from the screen.
“Want me to—?”
“Just a minute,” I told her. “There’ll be one of his questions next. Let me ask you something, what does this stuff mean?” I pulled a pad of paper off the desk and wrote down the symbols he’d been using.
“Oh,” she said smiling. “The ** marks around a word is the same thing as italics. Most computer programs won’t let you underline unless you’re connecting with someone using the same ISP. Some people use ###### for chapter breaks, like if they’re sending you something in segments. And the >> and <<, those are quote marks, but you only use them when you’re quoting something that’s already on the screen from another person, see? I don’t know why he uses them the way he does. You understand?”
“I. . . guess.”
“Oh, you’ll get used to it,” she promised brightly. “I wonder when he’s going to—”
His message interrupted her.
>>You ever conduit?<<
I was with him by then. I couldn’t see why, but I could see where.
yes
It was supposed to be a job. A job of lies. All liars. Every one of them. And I fit right in. I work for money, but I live for revenge. If I’d had a target, if I’d known who took Crystal Beth, I never would have gotten into this whole thing.
First I thought, this killer, maybe he had a list somehow. You want a list of all the neo-Nazis, you ask ZOG. But if you want a list of all the fag-bashers, who is there to ask? Maybe this guy? And, sure, I’d get him out of here in exchange for that list—Crystal Beth’s killers would have to be on it somewhere.
But once we connected, I could see it. He had no list, this Homo Erectus maniac. He had a fetish. Like any serial killer. That’s why they’re so hard to catch. Random hitters, triggered by something too common to protect— blondes, hookers, gay hitchhikers, red shoes, priests—symbols, not individuals.
Whatever he was, he’d started out snatching kids. Hard to tell if killing the kids was anything other than what he said it was—that he was an artist, and killing the kids was no more than keeping his paintbrushes clean. But all the record searches came up empty.
Was he some kind of insane fiction-writer, playing out his fantasy to thousands of people at once, me thinking I was the only one? Or just too much of a narcissist to keep his light under a bushel?
Why Wesley?
If I could get that, I could get him.
But it was hard to care, and I couldn’t figure out why I did. Whoever put Crystal Beth in the ground, that’s where they were too, thanks to the hit man—if what Strega said was true.
And I believed it was. Strega did things no man could understand, but she wouldn’t lie.
Responsibility isn’t a legal thing. If the hit man, the one Gutterball thought was Wesley, if he did the other two from the drive-by car when they got to the garage, then the only one in the crowd
