James's grin grew impossibly wider. “I ain't tradin' nothin', Miss Molly. You earned it. Skulls in the backyard's better'n anything James ever done to get hisself on the news. But you think of me, you need an on-air quote 'bout how wonderful you are, hear?”
Molly laughed. “I hear. Now, give.”
It wasn't Twinkies. It wasn't Ding Dongs. It was Hostess Cupcakes, the most decadent of James's treats. Molly held out her hand like a supplicant at communion.
“How old are you?” Sasha suddenly asked James.
Molly snatched her hand away, almost losing her treat. “Sasha,” she warned.
“Wayne Williams,” Sasha said simply.
Fortunately, James didn't understand the reference to the nation's most notorious black serial killer. “Thirty-five. Why, Chernobyl? You lookin' for a date? James'd show you a fine time, I can promise you that.”
Sasha took one look at James's favorite gold canine and offered a frosty smile. “I'll let you know.”
James hooted in delight and dropped the snack treat in Molly's lap before sashaying on down the hall to spread medication and benevolence like a hip-hop St. Nick. Left behind, Molly reluctantly scribbled his name at the bottom of her list.
“Now what?” Sasha asked, watching.
“You're going to show me that illegal stuff. And then, if we're slow enough, I'm taking a full lunch break to get started on the computer in your office. Okay?”
“Certainly. Just don't tell me.”
And so Molly spent her break poring over hospital and employment records she had no business accessing. She was looking for patterns, because if there was one thing she understood from her research, every serial killer followed an inviolate pattern that only ended in his or her death. Maybe the specifics were different. Maybe his parents were drug addicts instead of alcoholics. Maybe the abuse suffered was psychological or merely the most awful abuse of childhood, the unfillable void of absolute neglect. Maybe the psychopathic triad of bed-wetting, fire-starting, and animal abuse was incomplete. But there were always markers along the way. Markers that were absolutely obvious to everyone who ever saw the child as he grew inexorably toward his destiny.
Molly knew of at least a half dozen juvenile officers who kept files of kids they were just waiting to see appear on the NCIC computer. She knew teachers and social workers and psychotherapists who watched a child progress from maladjustment to rage to predatory behavior and played the same game Molly had all these years. Everyone who touched the children who had been hurt knew that they were watching the progression of a terrible disease of violence they had no way to prevent.
Molly didn't have access to any juvenile records. They were still closed and expunged in Missouri. But she had work records. She had the knowledge of how evaluations were worded to avoid blatant accusations. And she had the understanding that a person caught in the thrall of serial offense was an uncertain employee. No matter the image, like Bundy or Gacy with their bright smiles and public personae, the serial killer never really succeeded at anything as well as his crime. And the more the obsession controlled him, the more energy he drained from the rest of life to feed his primary goal. The stalking and killing of humans.
Molly looked in the files of her candidates for interpersonal problems. For questions of misbehavior. Angry outbursts, difficulty dealing with other employees, suspicions of sneakery of any kind. Voyeurism, harassment, patient abuse. Any or all could show up on a serial offender's work record. And all could be and had been tolerated by hospitals too short of staff and
too afraid to face the consequences of a precipitate firing. In fact, much to Molly's chagrin, they had been tolerated in five out of the first twelve names she investigated.
Well, that made her feel safe, she thought as she stretched out new and crankier kinks. If she'd seen a pattern of escalation in any of the men, she would have called Rhett right away. As it was, it seemed more a chronic problem than an acute one. A chronic problem the hospital was already liable for, since at least one of the men had been caught in inappropriate behavior involving female patients. But nothing so far that rang the big bells.
The good news was that James the pharmacy supervisor had come up absolutely clean. Dr. RattleSpizer himself, on the other hand, seemed to make a few ICU nurses uncomfortable. Considering the fact that he had a widow's peak like Wolfman and a leer like Jack Nicholson, Molly could imagine why.
Molly spent her shift at the sinks where she helped cool off every screaming child in the city with a temp and took her breaks in Sasha's office. And then, because she'd finally figured out how to coerce her information from the computers she so loathed, after clocking out she adjourned back to Sasha's office until it was too late to see Donna Kirkland let the psychopath out of the bag on the ten o'clock news.
Molly had told Patrick that she wasn't afraid. But she was. She was terrified.
And it wasn't just body parts and methodical murderers that scared her. It was news. Notoriety.
More than once Molly had found herself at the mercy of the minicam, and it was still enough to traumatize her. Her face on the news, her past tossed up like compost to explain her behavior. Her follies and frustrations the Tinker Toys of a media's need for quick explanations. It had been tough enough seeing Rhett's reaction to the ignoble idiocies of her past. She couldn't bear it on the fatuous faces of media stars.
Finally, though, Molly knew she had to get home to at least check on Patrick. Stretching out every tired and cramped muscle she had, she shut down the computer, closed Sasha's office, and headed back to get her stuff for home. Tomorrow was soon enough to see if any of her possible suspects also had psychiatric evaluations or court-ordered care.
She knew it was necessary. She even knew she was doing it for a vital cause. It didn't make her feel any less soiled.
Which was why, of course, it was so appropriate that she walked into the lounge to find Frank settled on the couch like one of the inmates.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “I got off three hours ago.”
Considering the fact that she'd had a sum total of about two hours sleep the night before and no memory for grooming, it seriously displeased her to see him looking so neat and slick.
“Why I'm checking up on you,” Frank said happily, never taking his eyes from the television.
“This grisly discovery in the Central West End is, evidently, not the first ⦔
Molly heard the all-too-familiar excitement, the almost moist pronunciation of the words of outrage, and faltered to a halt. She hadn't waited long enough after all. There was Donna Kirkland plastered all over the lounge TV, which meant that all hell was about to break loose.
“Oh, Molly, you
are
still here,” Lorenzo said behind her. “I thought you'd gone home.”
Molly turned around a little too quickly, much preferring Lorenzo's sweet smile to Donna's barracuda intensity. “I'm going now. I don't suppose you could keep Frank here till I get away?”
“You don't want him to,” Frank said, his eyes still on the TV. “Frank has a present for you.”
“I don't want any more presents from you, Frank.”
“Sure you do, Mol. St. Molly of the Masses, meet Kathy Kinstle.”
At which point Molly noticed the quiet, middle-aged woman seated next to Frank. Soft, she thought. Comfortable. Kind. A pretty face, cropped chestnut hair, and a mother's figure. A wardrobe that looked to include the same kind of suits Molly wore to the ME's office. Turning from the televised images of Molly's backyard, she offered Molly a kind smile.
“Hi, Kathy,” Molly greeted her. “What awful thing has Frank done to
you
?”
“Molly, excuse me,” Lorenzo interrupted behind her. “I have to get back. There was a message for you, but I thought you were gone. They said you'd understand.”
Molly's stomach lurched. There were so many messages Molly didn't want. Beginning, she thought, with the fact that Donna was even now unleashing reporters toward her house like clouds of flying monkeys.
But Lorenzo surprised her again. “It's about the Water Child?” he asked, understandably confused.
The Water Child. It actually took Molly a second to comprehend. To remember, briefly and vividly, the frail, limp weight of him in her hands. “What about him?”
“The NICU nurses wanted you to know that he sank. Is that supposed to mean anything?”
At first, Molly could only blink. All that work. All that fierce, focused hope. Sasha would have said he was lucky. Sasha was probably right. After spending the evening searching for the detritus of abused children, Molly almost agreed.
Almost.
“Come on, Frank,” she said, grabbing her coat off the rack and turning for the door. “Let's get out of here.”
“But Donna's not finished,” he protested, hand out to the television.
“She'll never be finished.”
“In which case,” he said with a bright smile as he and Kathy got to their feet, “you'll be more than happy to talk to Kathy.”
Molly stopped and considered the small, kind woman. “Are you the psychiatrist?” she asked.
Kathy laughed. “God, no,” she said. “FBI.”
It figured. “Well, come on,” Molly suggested and turned for the door.
Along the hallway, the spate of baby fevers had, if anything, grown worse. In addition to all the traumas and chest pains, the place still overflowed with fretful, flushed toddlers, all up to their navels in stainless-steel sinks filled with tepid water. Staff scooted around like bumper cars, and at least half the parents were complaining in voices only a bit more fractious than the kids.
Molly led her little gaggle through them like Moses through the Red Sea. And then she went the hell home.
Frank and Kathy Kinstle followed right behind.
Patrick wasn't home again. The alarm wasn't set. The kitchen, however, was fairly tidy. Molly spent a moment letting her excited dog out of the house and casting her by-now obsessive peek at the porch for surprises.
“Your answering machine's blinking,” Frank offered as he slid off his jacket. “You want me to check it?”
“No. It's undoubtedly somebody I don't want to talk to. Sit down, Kathy,” she suggested. “I'll make us something hot so we can talk and Frank can go home, like I'm sure he wants to.”
“Not on your life,” he said. “I provided the entertainment, I get to stay and enjoy it.”
Kathy smiled like a mother.
Molly slammed her teapot down on a burner. “I hope he didn't drag you over to see me against your will,” she said.
Kathy was still smiling, her hands folded neatly on the table. “Not at all. This isn't an official visit, but when Frank told me what was happening, well ⦔ It was just a small shrug. A glitter in the eyes. That quickly, Kathy went from Betty Crocker to Janet Reno and back again. “I'm in between assignments and can't get into my office until the support staff gets back from shutdown, and I admit I'm a little antsy. It also looks like you've stumbled over something interesting.”
Molly handed Kathy her mug and ignored Frank when he absconded with hers. “Stumbled being the operative word. I almost put my foot right through it.”
Kathy spooned in sugar and nodded. “Yeah, I heard. Would you like to tell me about it?”
Molly took a considered look at the notes she'd compiled that sat at the side of her table and then at Frank, who was standing over by the door as if Molly wouldn't see him. She didn't want to offer this stuff up to him. She didn't want his help or his sporadic concern. But he
had
been the only one in town to provide an FBI agent.
“You're local?” Molly asked Kathy.
“I am now. I came in from the Norfolk office. But I've done profiling on a part-time basis the last ten years.” A quick shadow passed over the complacent features and was gone. “I don't have the stones to do it full time. Too many kids.”
Having just done the research, Molly nodded. Seventeen-year-olds were bad enough to deal with. She couldn't imagine facing what was happening to the real children.
Easing herself into a chair, Molly pulled over her legal pad. It occurred to her in passing that a lot of unpleasant business had taken place at this table lately.
“So far we don't have enough for anything definite,” she said. “No victim. No murder scene. Not enough to start a real profile of any kind.”
“Tell me what you do have.”
As concisely and dispassionately as she could, Molly did just that. She mentioned the victimology both she and Rhett had done without actually showing it. She shared the list she'd made up and what she was discovering on it. She even alluded to her illegal computer work.