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.Some of the children were photographed having sex, with one another, with adults, with animals.Two were of babies, not yet two, being used."God damn it," Anna hissed."God damn it!" She clicked the flashlight off so she could breathe.Still she could feel the images pressing in from the walls.Anna might have spent most of her adult life with squirrels and pine trees, but she, like every other American, was aware pedophiles stalked playgrounds and the Internet.What she hadn't wrapped her mind around was the sheer magnitude of the horror.In her brief and truncated passage through the photographs Jordan lived amid, she'd been drenched with the cruelty; hundreds of children being used like objects.Did the monsters not see their victims' eyes in the pictures? Dead eyes in five-year-olds, frightened grimaces, terror, dull acceptance, frozen smiles? How could anyone see past those to the point of his perversion? Or was the palpable misery part of the payoff for the pervert?"God damn," Anna whispered, and it wasn't an empty curse; it was a request for the Almighty to put each and every one of them into everlasting hellfire.She had no desire to crawl deeper into Jordan's lair.She had all she needed.She would call the police and tell them she'd peeked in the window and seen what she'd seen.Regardless of the murders perpetrated in New Orleans on any given night, there wasn't a policeman in a thousand who wouldn't jump at the chance to put a bastard like Jordan away.Anna backed toward the door as if, in the black pitch of the hole, should she turn her back on the images, the very walls would pour forth sufficient blood and tears to drown her.The dog, invisible in the ink she couldn't bear to disturb with her light, woofed.For a moment she was overwhelmed by a desperate need to rescue the little guy.Surely even a dog did not deserve to live with images like this poisoning the air around him.Another woof, and she felt the silk of his fur brush her calf.The dog was headed for the door as if he, too, needed to get away before the lights came on and the tragedy on the walls filled the room like concrete.Then he was barking a happy bark and scratching at the wood.Welcoming his master home.A key struck the lock with a metallic click.The slimy wretch had come home early.It was just the sort of thing a prick like Jordan would do, Anna thought.NINETEENThe sun was well up by the time Clare had gathered together the tools of her trade--this time a trade of her life for that of a man.Laid out on the counter of the kitchenette, like all else white-on-white but for stainless steel drawer pulls, were the items she had walked two miles to the Walmart to buy with David's money.The bathroom would have been the logical place for the transformation, but Jalila had exclusive use of the bedroom and Clare hadn't had the courage to commute through it to the bath except as nature demanded.The hair dye was dark brown--almost black--the stage makeup was the cheapest kind, stocked in children's toy departments for face painting and dress-up, but it would do.People saw what they expected to see.To pass cursory inspection, Clare need only provide the expected clues: hair, clothes, roughened skin, facial hair.Picking up the scissors, she stepped back into the living room, where Mackie slept under the glass coffee table.David had hung a mirror beside the front door as was his habit.Before exposing himself to the eyes of the world, he always checked his looks.That or admired himself one last time.Over the years Clare had come to suspect the latter.Using the Walmart shears, she began hacking off her hair.The Fugitive.Harrison Ford in a gas station bathroom.Only she would do the last part in reverse.Where he had cut off his beard, she would glue hers on.Her hair was collar length, thick and light brown.There was enough natural wave to cover the butcher job she did with the scissors.When she'd finished, the effect wasn't impressive, but it would pass.The back looked as if Mackie had chewed it off, but a ball cap--the ubiquitous head wear for American men--would cover most of it anyway.Bending at the waist, she shook her fingers through her hair to get out the pieces.At her feet was what looked to be a sea of hair.DNA.Hers.Strands of it pushing into the carpet, wriggling down into the weave.Could they get DNA from hair, or did they need to have a bit of skin or root with it? She'd never played a forensic anything and so hadn't bothered to learn about it."You're a criminal now," she said aloud."You better learn to think like one." Already her voice had slowed and cooled, deepened.Without conscious effort on her part, her careful articulation had gone; in its place was a rough edge of anger.Letting the criminal mingle with the ghost of whoever she was becoming, Clare cleaned up the hair with a vacuum she found in a narrow closet in the kitchenette.David did not do housework.Ever.Not so much as put a dirty cup in the dishwasher or the milk back in the refrigerator.It was a matter of pride and entitlement that this was done for him and done by women.Women who were not paid.Clare's husband knew it was the wife's duty or, failing that, the daughter's.He would not allow "a stranger in to do work that is yours." Jalila must have cleaned for him.Clare emptied the contents of the vacuum into the garbage disposal, wiped her prints off the vacuum, and replaced it in the closet.At some point she would need to wipe down the apartment and clean up the vomit by Jalila's corpse."Don't think about it now," she told herself.Mackie rolled a brown eye up at the sound of her voice.White showed beneath the dark iris.The dog was worried."I'm rehearsing, not insane," she said.When he continued to look at her with concern she added, "I don't think you are in any position to judge me.You consumed the brains of the au pair." The callous words startled her.They weren't hers.They were the words of whomever she was becoming, a man without much to run on but hatred [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]