The Hidden Man

David Ellis The Hidden Man

The first book in the Jason Kolarich series, 2009

For my beautiful Abigail

SUMMER 1980

1

ACT NORMAL, whatever that means. Normal. Like everyone else.

Not different. Not like a freak. Just another person at the park.

It was a beautiful day, a glorious weekend in June, so bright you had to squint, so mild you didn’t feel the air. The playground was a perfect chaos, abuzz with children’s high-pitched squeals and whining pleas, parents calling after them in scolding voices, various playground contraptions in full animation, like busy turbines propelling the jubilant park.

Audrey. That was the name they called her. A surge of vicarious joy, watching her, her purity, her unadulterated innocence before the world turns cruel.

I feel like you sometimes. Like a child still. A child trapped in a grown-up’s body.

Audrey. She wore pink overalls and a bonnet with polka dots. Her tiny forehead crinkled in concentration as she gathered the sand in her hands and watched, fascinated, as it dissipated through her fingers.

I know we have a connection, Audrey. I know we do.

Audrey. She looked around her, up at the sky, at the other children in the sandbox, at her mother, a range of emotions crossing her tiny little face as the toddler slowly discovered the world around her.

“Audrey.” Saying the name aloud was dangerous. Someone might hear.

Don’t dare get close. Her mother isn’t far away. They’ll know. They’ll read it on my face, what I feel for you.

“C’mon, sweetheart.” Her mother scooped her up in her arms. “Sammy! Jason! Jason, get Sammy. C’mon, guys.” The boys, older by a few years, were over on the swing set. They jumped off the swings and landed with a flourish. The mother led the boys, still holding Audrey-Audrey-as she walked away.

I will follow you, Audrey. I will see you soon.

2

MARY CUTLER’S HEAD jerked off the pillow. A mother’s reflex. She’d been a light sleeper since Sammy was born seven years ago. Probably some shift in the pressure in the house, some break in equilibrium, had stirred her. Probably that was all.

Her eyes drifted to the clock by the bed. It was ten past two. Frank must just be getting home, probably reeking of alcohol and cigarettes, maybe even perfume. A brief surge of rage penetrated her sleepy haze. She wondered if she would have the energy to raise the issue.

Her eyes closed again as she surrendered to exhaustion, one maternal ear open to external sounds as her face fit into a cool, comfortable space in a pillow, as her conscious mind spiraled away-

Her eyes popped open. Her body stiffened. Something dark and uneasy filled her chest. Her legs slid out of the bed. She stepped past her slippers and moved across the carpet in her bare feet. An unknowing feeling of dread reached her throat as she moved down the hall and pushed the bedroom door open, where her boy, Sammy, slept over the covers of his bed.

She crossed the kitchen toward Audrey’s bedroom and felt a breeze reach her. She picked up her pace to a jog. Before she saw the empty bed, with the covers pulled back, she saw the open window, a window that had been closed when she had put her daughter down hours ago.

She didn’t hear herself scream.

AS HE NAVIGATED the corner in his sedan, Detective Vic Carruthers groaned. A small crowd of neighbors had already gathered around a squad car that had just pulled up outside the house. Was it idle curiosity surrounding the police presence? Or had word leaked out?

It had been five hours since two-year-old Audrey Cutler had been abducted from her home-snatched out of her bed at two in the morning. An insomniac neighbor, three doors down, had seen someone running down the street from the Cutler house. It looked like they were carrying something, the neighbor had said, with a trace of after-the-fact apology.

The trail had gone cold. The description was next to nothing. Medium height, baseball cap-best the neighbor could do from a distance of a football field, with the lighting weak at best. Nothing telltale from the scene. No fingerprints, no shoe prints, nothing.

Until they had run a check on prior offenders. Griffin Perlini, age twenty-eight, lived a quarter mile from the Cutler home. He had a kiddie sheet. And not just minors: He liked them young.

The arrests had been for sexual contact, but one had been dropped, the other convicted on the lesser charge of indecent exposure. Griffin Perlini had lured a four-year-old into the woods by a playground in a downstate town. The state had apparently decided it couldn’t prove the sexual touching, but they convicted on eyewitness testimony that Perlini had been seen pulling up his pants as the witness approached him.

“Got a feeling about this,” Carruthers told his partner, Joe Gooden.

They got out at the curb. Carruthers nodded at the uniform who followed in step behind the senior officers. Carruthers did a once-over. It was a ranch, like many of the places on the block. Old place with vinyl siding. Cobblestone steps leading from the driveway to the small porch. The lawn had seen better times. No vehicle in the driveway. A one-car attached garage.

Only seven in the morning, but already sticky-hot. Gooden had a sheen across his forehead.

Carruthers rang the doorbell and stepped back, keeping an angle that allowed him to look for movement near the windows. It came quickly, a stirring of a curtain on the east side front.