The Light at the End of the Tunnel (16 page)

Nicole, sadly, looked at the chaplain and
opened her hands. They had the information they came for, so there
was no reason to stay longer. They started for the door.

“And they’ll keep doing it!” Cassandra said
in a voice not even recognizable. She also didn’t look up.

They both stopped and stared at the young
girl who now was old far beyond her years.

“They hurt those other girls—I know it! Even
that smallest little shit wanted to!” The girl, her friendly face
absolutely gone, glanced toward them, then right back to her
notepaper—which she then tore to shreds, “And that boy the same age
as me, I know he
wanted
to! But the big boys wouldn’t let
him!”

Chapter 28
The Engagement

“Rad, that girl was practically begging to go
with us,” Nicole said as they turned north onto US #183 to again
return them to Nebraska.

“I know, and I wish we could have taken her
too.”

“You do?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Then hear me out, Rad.” Nicole reached over
and squeezed the chaplain’s upper arm, then withdrew, “First we
find Les Paul and dispatch him, then we go back to Kansas and adopt
that girl.”

“
Adopt?”

“Yes, we get married and then, with our
professional status as private detectives, we shouldn’t have any
trouble at all.” Nicole was talking really fast.

“Get
married
?”

“Yes, you’d like to marry me,
wouldn’t
you?”

“Nicole, I….” The chaplain glanced at the
gorgeous woman on the other seat, then rubbed his chin, “I don’t
know what to say.
You
would want to marry
me
?”

“Of course I would. Why do you act so
surprised?”

Nicole said that so nonchalantly that the
chaplain again glanced at her, and let out a breath, “I’m
just…well, we’ve never talked about it.
Why
have we never
talked about it, I wonder?”

“I guess I was hoping
you’d
bring it
up. Of course we’ve been busy, one wild goose chase after
another…”

“And yet you’re still with me.”

“Yes. I didn’t become your partner just to
abandon you when the going got rough.”

“Yes. Sleeping in the van half the time—do
you have any idea how many times...,” he hesitated.

“Yes? How many times what…?”

“How many times I’ve wanted to just roll one
time and land in your arms?”

“No. How many?”

She smiled that delicious smile that the
chaplain so loved to see.

“How many nights have we slept in the
van?”

“That many, huh?”

She reached to his upper arm, and squeezed,
“My God, Rad, you’ve been a wonderful gentleman. You’ve been the
best
.”

The chaplain patted her hand, “Thank you,
Nicole.”

Nicole turned her hand into the chaplain’s,
squeezed it, then turned back on her seat and faced the road,
“We’ve been together for nine years, Radford, it…it’s time we get
serious about our relationship. I’ve stayed with you for two
reasons. The first one, of course, is to dispatch Les Paul, and the
second…”

“Yes…?”

“You really don’t
know
, do you?”

“I….”

“It’s because of the kind of man you are,
Rad. All these years you have looked at me, yes, I’ve noticed, and
many times you’ve looked at me with a lust in your eyes, but you
have never—well, you’ve touched me when the occasion necessitated,
like my elbow, to get me going, or the back of my upper arm, or
shoulder, and there have been times when you could have touched
much more deeply and it would have looked like an accident, but you
never
did.
Sometimes I have wondered if you just didn’t find
me attractive.“

“My god, Nicole, of course I find you
attractive.” The chaplain reached his hand out to Nicole’s hand and
squeezed it gently, “I think you’re quite beautiful.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really. How many hundreds of times have
I felt so proud to be walking beside such a gorgeous woman, as you,
and, to just slightly change the subject,
‘dispatch’
…Les
Paul…?”

“Yes, kill him—that’s why we’re tracking
him…right?”

“We can’t just
‘kill’
him, Nicole—my
god, then we’d go to prison too. I can’t believe you’d actually
even think that way.”

“I know, Rad, and that isn’t, exactly, how I
think. The killing would have to be clandestine, and we’d have to
get rid of the body…” She hesitated, then laughed.

“Okay, I know you’re kidding, Nicole, but
don’t you see? If we were to—just—kill him that would be the same
as the state killing him.”

“No, that can’t be.”

“Yes, it would be. He has to die by the hand
of any other than the state, or the state’s representative—us, in
this case.”

“So, what? We have to just keep tracking
him…till when? Forever?”

“For now, Nicole, we just have to find him,
and determine it
is
him.”

“Oh, it’s him.” Nicole dropped the chaplain’s
hand and crossed her arms, “From what people have been telling us,
the evil they feel from him—it’s him all right.”

“I think it is too, but still, we have to be
sure. Then we can decide what to do.”

Nicole uncrossed her arms and faced him
again, “So what about us getting married? There’s probably a time
limit, I mean, we probably have to be married for a while before we
can adopt.”

He looked over at her. Her smile, to him, was
the light of his world. He knew he should try to express that to
her…somehow,” Are you sure, Sunshine?”

“I am, Rad, here—“ She held out her hand,
“Hold my hand. You can drive with your left, and very soon, when we
lay our heads down, I am going to show you just how much you mean
to me.” Again, that entrancing smile.

****

From her window Cassandra could just see
Nicole’s minivan leaving. Then she sat down with a new sheet of
paper. Soon she had drawn a nice picture of a white house, a big
yard, a tall green tree, and three stick-figures: A man with white
hair, a woman a little shorter with long brown hair, and a little
girl wearing a yellow dress. She whimpered, a sound she never made
because she knew it showed weakness, but she whimpered again, and
choked, slightly. Her eyes felt strange, like maybe tears wanted to
come—but she blinked several times, and then she screamed silently
within herself and stopped them, and roared just in her own mind,
and crumpled her nice drawing of three happy people by their happy
little home, then she uncrumpled the paper and tore it into many
little pieces.

She knew about tears; she knew what they
were, but she was pretty sure there were
none
in
her
!

Her teeth were gritted so hard and her mouth
was so tight it almost hurt.
Why are those people looking for
Baby Boy-Doe9?—and what a stupid, stupid, name! Did they want to
take him home to his real parents? Where he would live happily ever
after? Why didn’t they come for her instead?
She held her dolly
more tightly to her front. Nicole was so nice.
Why couldn’t she
love ME?
She whimpered again, and those tears
really
wanted to come, but little Cassandra would not let them. Somewhere
far back in her mind she knew tears did not help a thing, and that
if she ever let herself start crying she would never stop—

“Cassie!” the woman’s voice. She had never
told that woman she could call her
‘Cassie’
yet she did, and
she hated her for it. “Cassie!” the woman called again, sounding
impatient, “Come eat your supper!”

She knew she had to go. She turned and
started to rise, and stopped, and felt her eyes grow big and then
get regular again, and her mouth tightened.

The man, staring at her, stood in the
doorway. His left hand held onto the framework of the door.

“Cassie!!!! You come and eat! Right now!”

The man dropped his hand and stepped back.
She held onto her doll, rose, and ran past him to the kitchen, and
would have sat down right away. But the woman said something that
drove the wedge—that had been there between them from the start,
but only partially driven—all the way, “Cassie, you need to start
growing up a little. You don’t need that doll with you wherever you
go. You’re nine now…that’s right, isn’t it? You’re nine,
right?”

“Yes.” If she could possibly have laughed
right then she would have.

“So a nine-year-old doesn’t need to drag a
doll around everywhere she goes, so you take that thing back to
your room and then come back and eat.”

Cassandra tightened the doll against her
front but did turn. Now the man stood in the kitchen doorway.

“Franny, let her past,” the woman said.

The man grinned but did step aside.

She hurried to her room and laid her doll
with her head on the pillow and pulled the other, smaller, pillow
to her side, then grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair and
put it over her doll and tucked it into her side, then leaned over
and kissed her only friend, “I’ll be back soon, Rachel Ray.”

Chapter 29
Last Foster Home

Les Paul stood waiting with his handler at
the entrance to his next home. The handler had both hands on his
shoulders. Les Paul didn’t like being touched. He had
never
liked the touch of the many adults—men and most women both—that had
been in and out of his life as long as he remembered…

He saw himself surrounded by many people,
maybe hundreds. They were dressed funny. Most clothing was dark,
many had hoods. There were no bright colors or styles, just people
staring at him. Then he realized his hands were not only shackled
in front of him but they were clamped in some sort of wooden
contraption…so was his head.

An official-looking man appeared, official
because he was dressed differently from all the people watching.
The man looked at him but said nothing, then looked to the side and
nodded. He sensed something happen to the contraption that held
him. It shuddered slightly, then a blast of wind as the steel blade
dropped with a ‘Chunk!’ For just a split second as his head dropped
and rolled he could see up, could see the blood spurting from his
decapitated body.

Les Paul’s handler knocked again on the door,
which was heavy-appearing and made from fine wood.

The scene in his head passed. He dismissed
it, as he always did, but, lately had begun to wonder more strongly
about those occasional strange daydreams he had. But they were
happening more than occasional, and he knew they weren’t normal
daydreams. He knew what a real daydream was: things he
wanted
to think about and dream about. But those thoughts
that came out of nowhere, of what he had done or imagined he had
done, in some long ago, far off, distant time and country…sometimes
he wondered if the memories actually
could
be his, other
times he fiercely denied them. He was even too young to have
committed such atrocities. Strange the word
‘atrocity’
would
even pass his thoughts. He had just learned the word, had heard it
on television when a judge was lecturing some criminal for some bad
thing the criminal had done, some
‘atrocity’
the criminal
had performed. But Les Paul considered those so-called atrocities
as games, and fun.

The door opened and a very pretty lady, about
forty, appeared, wearing a short black dress—dressed for the
evening?—and blonde, very blonde. Instantly he saw her clothes
disappearing. In seconds she was down to panties and bra. Panties
and bra he had seen before. What, exactly lay beyond panties and
bra resided only in his imagination. Sometimes he would imagine the
girls and women he had known as having a penis, something like his
own, but he was pretty sure it was probably something different. As
for the top part, well, he suspected they looked much like his own
immature chest, just swelled quite a bit, depending on the age and
size of the girl or woman. But even though he didn’t know what,
exactly, to expect their naked body to look like, every pretty girl
or woman he met from ages six to about fifty or sixty, he undressed
in his mind. He had no real comprehension about the age of his
women but he definitely knew if they were pretty, or not, and only
the pretty ones did he undress.

The really, really, young, girls he undressed
very quickly, just to get it over with, like he felt he shouldn’t
even
be
undressing
them
—and he saw the very immature
child’s body as blank, with no shape, something that shouldn’t even
be
seen
by a man. It always gave him a quick reminder of
that really far, far, far, back, memory—the good one he continued
denying belonged to him, yet kept having it—of his own woman and
little girl child. He would always vehemently dismiss the woman and
the little girl child. He couldn’t possibly have a memory where he
had a wife and child…and that was his only saving grace, that in
his sex habits—till then—sex habits he didn’t even have yet—he
wanted only
grown
women,
not
children, but, given the
consequences to his sex habits—not the consequences to himself, but
to his victims—liking grown women over children really wasn’t much
of a saving grace.

But it
was
something.

He wondered sometimes why he wouldn’t like
girls his own age and then, always like an instinct, thought back
to that very earliest of his memories. Strange, even though he
didn’t believe those awful memories were even his, or the good
ones, the fact he could sometimes remember them on command seemed
even stranger. But he didn’t care and again, from out of nowhere
this time came that far, far, back memory…
he was in a cave. Of
that he was sure. It was damp; it was night; he was naked except
for a skin of some dead animal hung over his shoulder and another
around his middle. A woman, his woman, worked by a fire preparing
food. He even felt hungry watching. Another woman, a very, very,
young woman, a child, a girl child, his darling little girl child
played near the fire, with a roly-poly wolf puppy. The puppy made
his darling little girl so happy. This was his family. It was a
happy scene. Among his many memories, these few moments were maybe
the very best he had ever experienced.