“Later,” he told her.
He watched them carry Mona out before going in. Romero stood at the desk looking at the photos of Hollis’s victims. He remembered Romero saying how he wanted to save a life someday, to atone for his lost girlfriend. God had been kind to him.
“You got your wish,” Valentine said.
Romero turned around. His eyes were filled with tears, and he nodded solemnly.
“God works in strange ways,” the FBI agent said.
Chapter 57
If anything good had come from the arrest, it was that Lois was finally safe. Going into the kitchen, Valentine found a phone, and dialed his house. “We got him,” he told his wife. “Guy named Farky Hollis. He had a big crush on you, if you can call it that.”
“You’re sure he’s the killer?” Lois asked. “I mean, there were a lot of boys — ”
“Trust me,” Valentine said. “He’s the one.”
“What about the prostitute he picked up?”
“We saved her. She’s going to be okay.”
“That’s so wonderful.” She paused, then said, “Is it okay if I tell the detectives watching me the news? I’m sure they’d like to go home, and be with their families tonight.”
“I don’t see why not,” Valentine said.
“Will you be home soon?”
“Another hour or two.”
“I’ll stay up. Thank you for keeping your promise to me. I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Valentine said goodbye and hung up. He heard someone coming up from the basement. Banko appeared at the top of the steps looking shaken. His superior went to the sink and let cold water run, then splashed it repeatedly in his face.
“Something wrong?” Valentine asked.
Banko indicated the basement stairs. “Down there. He wasn’t just into women.”
The basement stairs were old and creaky, and Valentine descended while clutching the wood railing. At the bottom, he found himself in a large, finished room used to house Hollis’s vast collection of magic equipment. There was more stuff than Uncle Al’s store, and he saw several rows of folding chairs facing a makeshift plywood stage on the other side of the room, and guessed that Hollis had put on shows for the neighborhood kids.
A uniformed cop stood on the stage next to a large trunk. The trunk was covered with stickers from faraway places like Singapore and China. It looked like a prop, only the uniform’s ashen face said otherwise. Valentine climbed onto the stage.
“This is sick,” the uniform said.
“What’s sick?” Valentine asked.
“See for yourself.”
The uniform flipped back the trunk’s lid, and Valentine stared inside. His heart skipped a beat. A little boy lay face-down in the bottom of the trunk. The child was small, with bushy brown hair the texture of cotton candy, and wore a small tuxedo.
“God damn monster,” the uniform said.
Valentine looked at the empty chairs facing the stage. Had Hollis snatched a kid from the audience of one of his shows, and later killed him? It seemed the likely answer, only he couldn’t remember a young child having gone missing in a long time. As the uniform closed the trunk, Valentine noticed a name stenciled on the trunk’s lid. Woody.
“We need to let the medics handle this,” the uniform said.
Valentine flipped the trunk open, and touched the back of the boy’s head. The hair was fake. He grabbed the boy by the collar, and lifted him clean into the air.
Woody was a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Valentine raced up the creaky stairs holding Woody in his arms. The kitchen was empty, and he ran out the front door. The cruiser with Hollis had left. He found Banko standing in the driveway, and shoved Woody into his arms.
“It’s a dummy,” Valentine said.
The horror ebbed from Banko’s face. “Is this what I saw in the basement?”
“Yes. Hollis is a ventriloquist. That’s how I got tricked the other day at the Bijou, when the piano nearly fell on me. You need to alert whoever’s driving that cruiser that Hollis can throw his voice. Otherwise he’ll trick him, just like he tricked me.”
Banko climbed into the cruiser. Getting on the radio, he called Marlene, and told her to contact the cruiser, then call him back. Hanging up, he said, “I got fooled by a dummy. God, I thought I was going to have a stroke.”
The dispatcher called back a few moments later.
“He’s not picking up,” Marlene said.
