RATH SAT SLOUCHED on the floor, back against the couch in the darkened living room, blindly watching the TV on mute. Rachel was asleep in her old bedroom, but Rath did not want to chance waking her. She needed her rest.
The psychological and emotional toll she’d endured from learning the truth about her parents had scarred her. Changed her. Diminished her buoyancy and zest. Deadened her eyes. It had driven her to hole up in the motel, isolate herself from this man who loved her and had betrayed her. Rath could only hope her estrangement from him was temporary and his daughter would return. She’d not had the energy these past days to show the anger he knew she must have for him. There would be many hard days ahead. He was prepared for them. He’d wanted to talk to her about it when she’d come home, but she’d been too exhausted. All he could do was be there for her when she was ready. She had Felix, too. A good kid. A good young man. He cared for Rachel and had been there for her. He was out now getting her favorite take-out pizza from town for when she woke up. He was strong and nurturing and caring. Tender. Everything Rath had not been at his age.
The news came on, and Rath got up and crouched right in front of the TV, so close he could feel the heat of the screen. He turned the volume up the slightest so only he could hear it from a couple feet away.
A bleached-blond female reporter looked all of fifteen years old as she stood in front of the St. Johnsbury courthouse, her overly sprayed golden locks vibrating in the wind.
She messed with her earpiece for moment then addressed the camera with her best serious, big-girl face.
“A Dr. Martin Langevine was arraigned today on shocking charges that rocked the small town of Canaan, Vermont, and stunned the entire country. The charges include kidnapping, torture, and one count of first-degree murder of a girl whose name has not been released. More charges may be pending.”
The reporter paused. She looked bewildered.
“It was briefly thought that Langevine’s mother was involved. Betty Malroy, seventy-two, a former nurse and the founder of The Better Society nonprofit for family values, and Better Days Play School, which caters to at-risk single moms and their kids.
“Dr. Langevine has allegedly made dramatic claims that Malroy is not his actual birth mother, and as a nurse induced his birth from a woman who had asked her for an illegal abortion. He claims Malroy kept him as her own, and that he knows this because she told him of it when he turned thirteen. He has also confessed to the 1985 Halloween attack on a Mrs. Marianne King, whom he claims was the woman carrying him at the time. Marianne King had no comment.
“It is known that Betty Malroy owns Better Days Adoption Agency, and it was thought there might be a connection between it and Langevine’s motive. However—”
Rath drew closer to the TV, glanced back over his shoulder toward Rachel’s doorway.
“—one Mr. Boyd Pratt III,” the reporter continued, “a prominent Vermont citizen from a distinguished family who recently put in place plans to adopt a child from Better Days, has refused to speak with us. His lawyer insists Mr. Pratt met with Ms. Malroy at a resort in Stowe to finalize the legal adoption. But in light of the news, he will not be moving forward with the agency. It is alleged other girls might have met with Betty Malroy at the resort about possible illegal adoption, though what connection this has to her son’s alleged crimes is yet unclear.”
“It is also alleged that Dr. Langevine stalked his victims outside meetings for group counseling for pregnant women and lured the young girls with his slight physical stature by assuming the guise of an elderly woman in need of help. Dr. Langevine has allegedly said that he did what he did to save other innocents from dying. That girls ‘like this’ have many abortions and he was preventing many murders by doing God’s work. He was quoted as saying: ‘Now, we must rescue those who are unjustly sentenced to death; don’t stand back and let them die.’ ”
The reporter tucked a length of hair behind her ear. She was outside in the cold, and her makeup was beginning to crack. Rath thought he heard a noise behind him and looked back toward Rachel’s room, to find nothing but a dark hallway.
“It has been reported that the remains of two other girls were found in an incinerator at the back edge of the estate on Ravens Way.”
Rath knew from Sonja that the other girls were Sally and Fiona. Where was Mandy? Why had they not found her?
The reporter continued, “It is believed that each girl had been pregnant at the time of abduction, and that Dr. Langevine tried to keep the girls alive long enough for them to give birth, but —”
The reporter turned abruptly away from the camera toward the court steps, the camera trying to get back in front of her. “It appears Dr. Langevine is coming out now.”
The camera swung and its angle went wide to capture both her and Langevine as he descended the steps slowly. His movement was stiff. His face was scabbed and bruised. A vicious zipper of stiches ran the length of his left cheek, from his eyebrow to the corner of his mouth. He looked washed out, until he stepped up straight to the camera, and flashed a look of supreme confidence and defiance.
“Today, I pleaded not guilty to these absurd charges, based on the defense of Vermont’s Third-Person Defense Statute.”
Rath blinked. This was insane. What was he possibly arguing? Was he setting himself up for an insanity plea, or something else much more cunning?
“This defense statute states—” Langevine squared himself: “ ‘A person may defend the life of another third person when that third person is unable to defend itself against personal bodily harm. And if that third person is being threatened with mortal violence, they may be defended in kind.’ That is exactly what the law states. And that is exactly what I did. I am a doctor. I heal people. Save them. I obeyed Vermont’s law. God’s law.” His tongue flicked like a viper’s.
Rath turned up the volume slightly, breathless at the words coming from this man’s mouth and the certainty with which he spoke them.
Langevine smiled as if he’d just been elected president, and made the sign of the cross. “Psalm 82:4 reads: ‘Rescue the weak and needy and innocent; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.’ I tried to do just that, even if I may have failed at it.”
Astonishingly, a smatter of cheers arose from the crowd.
The reporter looked as flummoxed as a cheerleader at a spelling bee, her heavily made up eyes batting, the mascara starting to seize in the cold, giving her a slightly frozen, frightful look. But, she jabbed a mike in front of a woman cheering and asked, if not in the most professional manner, perhaps the most sincere: “Why in the world are you cheering?”
The woman shouted, “He dares to do what is in his heart. We are—”
“Turn it off,” a frail voice said, and Rath turned from where he was crouched, the TV’s sick light playing on him, to see Rachel staring at him, hollow-eyed and brokenhearted, clutching her bathrobe to her throat. “Please, turn it off.”
Rath picked up the remote and clicked off the TV, then turned back to Rachel. But she was gone, and all he saw was the light of her bedroom extinguished as her door shut with hard click.
RATH JOLTED AWAKE on the floor, blinking in the darkness.
“Dad,” a voice whispered in the chilly room.
Rath rubbed his eyes and blinked in the darkness.
Rachel knelt beside him. She had a blanket, and she unfolded it now and lay it over him, making certain to cover his feet, pulling the blanket up to his chin.
He reached from under the blanket and touched her hand. It was cold. “How long have you been out here?” he said.
She shrugged. “Awhile.”
He propped himself against the arm of the couch. He looked at his daughter, breathless before her. The humiliation he bore for jeopardizing her might have crushed him if it were not buoyed by the rush of euphoria he felt at her very presence beside him.
“I—” he began.
She took his hand and put it back under the blanket. “Rest,” she said, and pulled the blanket to his chin again as she helped him lay back down. This was not how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to be comforting her.
“I should never have—” he began again.
But she would not let him continue.
“Rest,” she said.
She laid her head on his chest, and he felt his heart pounding the way it had pounded all those nights the first months she’d been a baby in her new home with him.
“I should have protected you.” His voice drifted from him. Soft. A whisper.
“You can’t,” she said.
No, he couldn’t. It was the pain every parent must live with, always.
His chest rose, and she laid a hand on it to calm it though it would not calm. “I—”
“Rest,” she said again. “Shhh.”
“Thank you,” he said.
She tried to speak, but her voice hitched, and he knew she was crying, could feel her starting to shake and sob. He reached a hand out form under the blanket and cupped the back of her head and held her close.