Boyle remembered how she had refused to eat. How she got weak and then sick. How he had brought her out to the Belham woods to strangle her and was interrupted by Darby McCormick and her two friends – Melanie Cruz and the blond girl he later stabbed inside the foyer. What a mess that was. He was trying to remember the blonde's name when the voice mail picked up.
'You've reached the office of Darby McCormick. I'm either away from my desk or on another line -'
Boyle hung up and leaned back against the wall.
Chapter 20
Boyle stared up at the wall crammed full of pictures of the women he had hunted over the years. Sometimes he sat here for hours, staring up at the faces and recalling what he had done to each of them. Pleasant thoughts to pass the time.
Tacked to the bottom corner was an old picture of Alicia Cross. She had lived two streets over, on the other side of the woods behind his house. She was riding her bike along a long stretch of empty road when he pulled up next to her. Alicia's mother, Boyle had told the twelve-year-old, had sent him to come get her and take her to the hospital. Alicia's father had been in a serious car accident. Alicia was so upset she left her bike on the road and got into his car.
She was too scared to fight, too small to fight. Boyle was sixteen and strong.
For an entire week – the second week of his mother's monthlong vacation in Paris – police and volunteers combed through the woods and surrounding neighborhoods. Boyle watched them through his bedroom window. For three days, police and volunteers from the neighborhood searched the woods around his house. He recalled the long summer afternoons he sat by the window, listening to Alicia's mother call out her daughter's name over and over again while he stimulated himself.
At night, he would go downstairs into the wine cellar and remove Alicia's restraints. Sometimes he chased her through the dark basement. There were many places to hide.
While that was fun, nothing compared to the hot, blinding rush of excitement Boyle felt when he strangled her.
The night he killed her, he couldn't sleep. Strangling Alicia was magnificent, but it wasn't as fulfilling as watching the fear in her eyes, the way she stared at the rosary beads on the floor while she feebly clawed at the rope around her neck.
Boyle felt a tremendous sense of power – not the power to kill, no, that was too easy. What he held in his hands was the power to alter and shape destinies. He could change the shape of the world around him any way he wanted. Gripped in his hands was the power of God.
Early the next morning, while it was still dark, Boyle headed out into the woods with a shovel. When he came back for the body, he found his mother standing in the kitchen. She had come back from her Paris trip early. She didn't say why, didn't ask why his clothes were so dirty or why he was sweating. She made him take her luggage and shopping bags up to her bedroom and then spent the rest of the day sleeping.
Later that night, he dumped Alicia's body in the grave. Boyle stood over her body, gripped with a peculiar sadness. He shouldn't have killed her. He should have strangled her until she passed out. That way, when she woke up, he could do it all over again, as many times as he wanted.
Boyle heard a branch snap behind him. He turned around and saw his mother, her face clear in the moonlight. She didn't look angry, or sad, or disappointed. She looked blank.
'Hurry up and bury it,' was all she said.
She didn't talk to him during the long walk back to the house. He spent the time wondering what would happen. Two years ago, when she caught him strangling a cat, she sent him to his room. She waited until he fell asleep and then came in and hit him with the buckle end of a belt. He had the scars to prove it.
His mother locked the front door. 'Did you keep her in the house?'
He nodded.
'Show me.'
He did. Alicia's rosary beads were on the floor. They must have fallen from his pocket.
'Pick it up,' his mother said.
He did. By the time he stood, his mother had locked the door to the wine cellar.
During his two-week confinement, he used the same slop bucket Alicia had used for her bathroom needs. He slept on the cold concrete floor. His mother didn't visit him. She didn't bring him food.
Trapped alone in the cool dark that never went away, Boyle never cried or called out for his mother. He used the time constructively, thinking about what he would do next.
He had some wonderful ideas for his mother.
One day he woke to voices. There was a vent in the adjoining room and he could hear his mother talking to someone upstairs – the police. His mother had called the police. Panic gripped up and then floated away when he heard his grandmother's voice.
'You can't leave him down there forever,' Ophelia Boyle was saying.
'Fine,' his mother said. 'You can take Daniel home with you. I've been thinking he should be spending time with his father, anyway. Should I bring Daniel by the club or the office?'
Boyle had been told his father had died in a car accident before he was born.
This isn't the first time Daniel's done something like this,' his mother said. 'I told you about the animals who disappeared around here last summer – and let's not forget the time Marsha Erickson caught him peeking inside her daughter's window in the middle of the night.'
Boyle thought about his cousin, Richard Fowler. Richard was Marsha's friend. He had been inside her house several times, had stolen her money and lacy underwear – Richard was the one who had put the sleeping pills in Marsha's beer. When she passed out, Richard called Boyle and said to come over. The two of them spent a wonderful night playing with Marsha inside her bedroom. Her parents were away for the weekend.
After that weekend, Boyle would often wake up in the middle of the night, remembering what he had done to Marsha. Several times he would venture outside and stand by her bedroom window to watch her sleep, imagining all the new and wonderful things he could do to her – only this time she would be conscious. It was more fulfilling when they fought back. He thought about the prostitute Richard had choked to death in the backseat of his car. She didn't pray to God or beg for her life; she fought back with everything she had and might have hurt Richard severely if Boyle hadn't come back with the rock.
His grandmother's voice snapped Boyle out of his daydream: 'Daniel is your problem, Cassandra. You're going to have to figure out -'
'I want him gone.'
'You had your opportunity,' his grandmother said. 'I told you about the doctor in Switzerland who would have gotten rid of the bastard with a simple operation, but you absolutely refused because you wanted to blackmail -'
'What I wanted, Mother, was for you to protect me. Daddy climbed into my bed, he put his hands between my -'
'You've punished me sufficiently, Cassandra, and you've certainly used the situation to your advantage. I met all of your demands. I built you this brand-new house, filled it with everything you wanted. I bought you expensive cars – I've given you everything you wanted on top of the princely sum of money you demanded. Now you've run through the money. I'm not giving you any more.'
'And you keep forgetting that Daddy was the one who got me pregnant,' his mother said. 'That… thing downstairs is your son, not mine.'
'Cassandra -'
'Get rid of him,' his mother said. 'Or I will.'
Days later, his grandmother opened the door. She told him to shower and get dressed in his best suit. He did. She told him to get in the car. He did. Four hours later, when she pulled up in front of a military school that specialized in treating what she called 'troubled boys,' she told him not to call home for any reason. His grandmother would handle all financial matters. She gave him a private number to call.
