Madman on a Drum Read Free Page B

pedophiles. We wanted Victoria to be scared when we found her. We wanted her to be angry. We’d even be happy if she was screaming bloody murder. Our greatest fear was that instead she’d have the quiet, vacant-eyed, used-up look of a child who had been drained of her humanity, who was irretrievably lost. I had seen that look in children before. So had Bobby Dunston.
    I pointed at the tape machine. “He knows us,” I said.
    â€œWhich means we know him,” Bobby said.
    â€œFrom where?”
    â€œI don’t know. The voice…”
    â€œYou can get a decent voice changer off the Internet for forty-nine ninety-nine,” said the agent sitting at the table. I never did learn his name. “This sounds like an ST-JC-007, but that’s just a guess.” I was told later that he was a “tech agent.” It was he who brought all the additional phone lines into Bobby’s dining room. He was also the agent who dealt with the phone companies, setting up traps and traces.
    â€œEven disguised there’s something about it,” Bobby said.
    â€œThe patterns, the way he uses words,” I said.
    â€œAnd the laugh.”
    â€œI know that laugh.”
    â€œWe have people at the St. Paul PD pulling files,” Harry said. “We’re in the process of reviewing every case you two ever worked on.”
    â€œDon’t bother,” I said.
    â€œWe never worked together,” Bobby said.
    â€œNever?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œNot once?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWe were never even in the same district,” I said. “When I was working out of Central, Bobby was in the Western District. When he was working Central, I was in the Eastern District. We never worked the same cases. We were never in on the same busts.”
    â€œNever?”
    Bobby’s voice was filled with frustration. “How many times do we have to say it?” he said.
    Honsa stepped between Harry and Bobby. He was still smiling his reassuring smile. “The unsub knows you both from somewhere,” he said.
    The unidentified subject. Yeah, think about him, I told myself. Don’t think about Victoria. If you think about her —everything had happened so fast since I entered the house that I hadn’t had time to get my head around it. Not the way Shelby and Bobby had. That was probably for the best. If I thought about it—I was the one who taught Victoria how to keep her hands back while waiting for a pitch, taught her how to stride into the ball as she swung the bat…
    I looked at the hardwood staircase leading upstairs.
    â€œI’ll be right back,” I said.
    Â 
    I was surprised at how loudly the steps creaked under my weight. The house, so alive throughout my life, now felt silent and empty. You wouldn’t think a four-foot-eleven girl could take up that much space, but she had. In Victoria’s absence every sound, every conversation now reverberated like an echo in an abandoned mine.
    I peeked into the room at the top of the stairs. Katie and Shelby were lying in Katie’s bed. Katie was asleep in her mother’s arms. Shelby gave me a head shake, warning me not to speak. I nodded in return. Big, prominent, solemn green eyes stared back at me. If I had not known her, I would never have guessed that those eyes had ever winked at anything, had ever smiled.
    I continued down the corridor to Victoria’s room. There were posters on the walls. Angelina Jolie as Lady Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movies and Jennifer Garner as Elektra—both armed to the teeth, both kicking butt. The bed was unmade. Along with the floor, dresser, and chairs, it was littered with clothes, some washed, some unwashed. Books and magazines with the creased, smudged look of the heavily read were scattered among them. At least two dozen stuffed animals— dusty and neglected—were heaped in a mesh hammock stretched high across one corner of the bedroom. Beneath