It was three o’clock in the morning. Unafraid of being detected, he leaned nonchalantly against a red maple tree and stared at the house. The corners of his mouth lifted slightly.
The moon, stark in the black cloudless sky, was incapable of dispelling the darkness that dressed the dwelling as it gazed indifferently down on the tract houses in the town of Paradise, Illinois.
But he didn’t need moonlight, or the feeble light from the sparsely populated streetlamps, to know that he was at the right place.
He had been so sure the last time, so certain that they were finally dead, that they had not eluded the justice only he was capable of meting out.
But they had escaped. And had run to this nothing house, this nothing street, this anonymous, middle-America neighborhood that held no special interest to anyone but the inhabitants.
And him.
Oh, yes, he was very interested in Mr. and Mrs. Nondescript. They could paint on friendly, trustworthy, and solicitous faces, but he knew them, knew their hearts and their murderous souls.
Baby killers.
His smile became a reality as, with an intake of breath, he shifted away from the shelter of the tree. In two strides, he was across the sidewalk to stand at the edge of the walkway that led to the front porch.
Every detail of this house was locked into his memory. He had driven by during the day, making sure he could find it in the dark. His confidence was absolute: the baby killers were inside. Still alive, still pretending to conform to the society that harbored them.
To the right of the front door, an indistinct shadow he knew to be a double bench swing hung from large chains bolted into the crossbeam of the porch. More shadows clung to the left of the walkway; yellow and orange chrysanthemums. The shadows to the right were rose bushes—red, pink, and yellow. He also knew that dandelions were scattered across the poorly manicured lawn which was beginning to creep across the concrete walkway.
He took a few steps, and a breeze struck the left side of his face. He scowled. Strange for this time of year, a wind from the north. And stranger yet, this time of the morning.
The wind became more brisk. Leaves in the trees shivered as the air softly sighed through the branches. The rose bushes swayed gracefully, first to the right then to the left, while the chrysanthemums bent unnaturally in the opposite direction ... left then right. Back and forth, right then left, left then right, back and...
Something hit his shoe. Momentarily he took his eyes off the house and the moving flowers to glance down at the ground. What he saw made his heart beat quicken. Small pebbles skittered on the walkway, playing follow-the-leader in a circle around his feet.
And then he felt the universe shift. There was just no other word for it. The house still stood before him, the shadows still where they had been a moment before. But he sensed a wrongness in everything around him.
The air grew heavy with a combination of odors that were recognizable and repulsive. There was the throat-clogging bite of burnt popcorn, the nauseous stench of animal waste, the acrid odor of body sweat—and maybe the sulfurous stink of rotten eggs? But there was something even darker beneath the obvious smells ... something putrefied, almost sweet.
The odors intensified. The grass on either side of the walkway trembled. He heard the groan of the porch swing as it began to move forward then back, slowly at first, then faster. The air thickened. It suddenly became more difficult to breath.
A shadow materialized on the steps leading to the porch. The corners of his mouth drew up in a wide smile that never reached his eyes. The tune he hummed ceaselessly picked up in tempo as he took another step.
Raindrops keep fallin’ on my head ...
And now here they were, face to face, in suburban Chicago. The fricative wind hammered his body, tearing at his clothes. Debris in the form of rocks, glass, twigs, and dirt abraded his skin, opening a gash above his right eye, scoring deep scratches through his pants and shirt to cause bleeding on his legs and arms.
Heat seared his face. He laughed when his mind filled with a vision of himself at the end of a noose, dying from strangulation, yet still in tremendous pain.
Through his chaotic thoughts, Mariah understood the madness that had created the monster, recognizing it for what it was. And she hesitated.
Reason decreed that he should be brought to trial, to be sentenced for the murders he had committed, for the suffering he had caused so many families. But would he? She ground her teeth in frustration as she envisioned Gregory Sinclair living out the rest of his life at the expense of the taxpayers, coddled by psychiatrists in their futile attempt to cure him, protected by a society full of bleeding hearts that pitied his circumstances—they who would believe he had been punished enough by the physical loss of his children and the mental loss of his wife.
Even worse: would he be set free on some legal technicality? No justice for the families who had lost their parents, grandparents, brothers, sisters, aunts, and uncles. The mockery of justice would be for this man who had refused the help he needed when he needed it, to now get the help he could no longer use.