The Target

by Catherine Coulter

  “Would I have to feed all those people, too?”

  “Emma, was that a joke?”

  Emma thought about that, then gave her mother a small smile. “I don’t think so.”

  “No, they wouldn’t eat out of your hand. Well, they might, but not literally.” Molly looked out over the beautiful grounds. She put her arms around Emma and drew her back against her. She desperately wanted to ask her what she was thinking, what she was feeling, but she was afraid that she wouldn’t say the right thing if Emma were to tell her something awful. Instead, she said, her voice bright and warm with the overwhelming love she felt for her daughter, “We’ve got sun today, kiddo. What do you say we go to Bunratty Castle? Maybe have a picnic on the grounds? Since it was raining the other day when we went, you just got to spend ten minutes there. Ramsey says it’s a great place to visit, when the sun’s out.”

  Emma grinned every time someone mentioned Bunratty Castle, just west of Limerick, where William Penn had been born in 1644, and where his father, Admiral Penn, had surrendered in the civil war and sailed off to America. Ah, and that had led to stories of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, a good half dozen that Ramsey had been told growing up near Harrisburg.

  Emma wiped her hands on her jeans as she said to Molly, “I’d like to climb all those steps. Maybe I’ll get all the way to the top this time without Ramsey having to carry me. Yes, let’s go, Mama. Tommy said that the tourist buses will start coming soon. But it’s still early, he said.”

  Molly blinked. It was the end of May. Life had changed so irrevocably that Molly had forgotten the day of the week, much less the month. “Yes, it is very early in the tourist season. Isn’t that something?” A month before she’d been taking pictures, trying to polish her craft, her life busy and fun. Not really full, but that was okay. Emma would be starting first grade in the fall. They’d both looked forward to that. Then Emma had been kidnapped and their lives had flown out of control.

  Suddenly, Emma held out her left hand. “Tommy gave me this.” It was a small elaborately worked dark silver ring with a purple stone in it. “Tommy said it was Celtic.”

  Molly held her daughter’s small white hand and looked at the lovely child’s ring on Emma’s middle finger. “It’s beautiful. He gave it to you this morning?”

  “He said if I ate my oatmeal, he had a small present for me. It was yesterday.”

  Molly felt a sudden jolt of fear. She’d seen Tommy speaking to Emma, but when had he given her the ring? Was Tommy one of those monsters? Was he trying to seduce Emma into trusting him? For a moment she was so afraid she couldn’t breathe. No, she was being ridiculous. He was a nice boy, no older than seventeen, hair as red as a swatch of crimson silk, face very fair and freckled. No, Tommy was simply a nice boy. Still, she found herself taking Emma’s hand for no good reason at all.

  “Mama, you’re hurting me.”

  “What? Oh goodness, Em, I’m sorry. Look, there’s Ramsey. Let’s see if he wants to go to Bunratty.”

  They left Dromoland grounds an hour later, a picnic basket packed in the backseat beside Emma, with ham-and-cheese sandwiches, nothing else, because the Irish, Molly said, evidently didn’t believe in mayonnaise or mustard or tomatoes or lettuce. They did, however, have potato chips. And lots of local cider.

  The lanes were so narrow that if another car came along, they had to back up into one of the bulges, Emma called them, and park until the other car passed. “I’m nearly used to driving on the wrong side,” Ramsey said as they passed a car on a turnout. “In the east of Ireland there are lots more people and better roads. By the time you get over Dublin way, you’re pretty much used to all these strange things.”

  There was only one tour bus parked at Bunratty. They had nearly the entire shaded park to themselves. Emma climbed the castle’s main stairs all on her own.

  “WE think we’ve found him, or at least we know who he is.”

  Ramsey gripped the phone tight. It was midnight in Ireland, seven o’clock in Washington, D.C. Savich said again, “Ramsey, you there? Damned telephones. We got a poor connection?”

  “No, it’s fine. You really found him, Savich?”

  “Yep. Well, we don’t have him in the slammer yet, but we know who he is. His name’s John Dickerson, aka Sonny Dickerson, aka Father Sonny. He’s forty-eight years old, an ex-priest, finally booted out by the Church because he’d been so flagrant that the good bishops and the cardinal had to oust him. You remember how they used to just ship the pedophile priests from one unsuspecting parish to another after having sent the offending priest off for spiritual and psychological rehabilitation?”

  “Yeah. Thank God the Church now hands them over to be prosecuted.”

  “Yes, once they realized there were no cures. This guy was so over the edge that at the last parish they sent him to the people found out about him within a week of his arrival. Unfortunately, he had time to molest a little girl while her mother was in the church bathroom. There was a wedding rehearsal going on at the same time. Everyone came running out when they heard the mother yelling her head off. The bride and groom got an eyeful. He was in prison until about a year ago. He was supposed to register when he got out, but he didn’t. He’s been a fugitive, but no one ever really tried to find him, not enough cops, larger cases, until now.”

  “Does he look like Emma’s description?”

  “Have I got a surprise for you. I inputted the police sketch, just as if it were a photograph, into what we call the Facial Recognition Algorithm program. The general public doesn’t know about this program yet; I got it from a friend who helped develop it for Scotland Yard. I’ve made modifications and have been working on it for the FBI. We’ve already uploaded photographs of every convicted child molester in the United States, and several other groups of violent felons too.

  “With MAXINE’s help, we treated the police sketch like a photograph and ran the program. What this program does is compare the photo, or the sketch in this case, to the photos in the database. It compares, for example, the distance between the eyes, the length of the nose, the exact size of the upper lip, the distance between various facial bones, you get the idea. Since MAXINE and I are pretty flexible, we managed to make the comparisons and came up with a list of a couple of hundred who resembled the sketch. We found Father Sonny in the group in under an hour. He fits all the other characteristics: he’s a heavy smoker, has rotten teeth, drinks too much, and he’s been out of Folsom for about eight months. His prison records indicate he refused any dental care. He said, and I quote: ‘I won’t have any of those drill-wielding assholes in my mouth.’ He’s a real hard case, Ramsey, real hard. They only let him out because they didn’t have a choice.”

  “Did he molest both little boys and little girls?”

  Savich said, “Evidently he didn’t have a particular preference, at least then. Obviously if Shaker hired him to kidnap Emma, in order to bring Louey into line, he’s no longer on Shaker’s payroll since Louey’s dead, and since Emma managed to get away from him.”

  Ramsey said, “I can’t imagine that Shaker would ever want to see this guy again, unless it was to have a little talk with him. No way Shaker knew he was a child molester when he hired him to kidnap Emma.”

  “So what Father Sonny did in San Francisco was all on his own.” Savich paused a moment, then added, “He took a hell of a risk taking Emma right from under your nose. That’s really out of control.”

  “Yeah, that’s close to obsession. I’d say, bottom line, he’s left common sense way behind.”

  Savich cursed, something rare for him. “Fixation, obsession, whatever the shrinks want to call it, Father Sonny’s there. Our shrinks who deal with child molesters say it’s common. A guy can come to believe that a certain child will save him. In this case, since the guy’s an ex-priest, he might even believe that Emma can save his soul and cleanse him, heal him, maybe even make him acceptable to God again. Usually, though, after they’re done with the child, they’ll carefully select ano
ther child and believe the same thing all over again. Why does he want Emma back? Was it because she managed to escape him and so he wasn’t the one who got to decide? He wants the control, the power? His can be the only voice?”

  “Or maybe,” Ramsey said, “he still believes that only Emma can save him, that she wasn’t through cleansing him, so he’s got to have her back. She said that he needed her more than God needed him, something to that effect. You know what? I want to kill the fucker.”

  “Yeah, you and about a zillion other people. We’ve got everyone countrywide clued into Father Sonny. That’s what most of the other prisoners called him. He’ll surface sooner or later. Someone will see him, recognize him. We’ll get him. Your cop friend in the SFPD, Virginia Trolley, she’s heading things up out there. How is Emma doing? She love Ireland?”

  “Oh yeah. She’s big into feeding the ducks here at Dromoland Lake and into visiting castles. She hasn’t had any nightmares since we’ve been here. You know, I was getting worried since she was always so quiet, so well behaved. Today she was a real kid, Savich. She finally whined this afternoon, didn’t want to do something her mother told her to do. It warmed me to hear that fretful, obnoxious little voice. Molly says it’s tough not to spoil her because of all that’s happened to her. But we’re trying.” He paused, then said, “I saw Molly shooting photos of her this morning. Emma was feeding ducks, laughing, the sun bright, the ducks carrying on madly.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t know,” Ramsey said. “I really don’t know why I was telling you that.” He saw Emma’s beautiful face in his mind’s eye, then, suddenly, saw her lying on her face in the forest, saw the marks on her small body, the blood on her legs. Vicious deep rage nearly overwhelmed him. It drummed all the way into his bones. He was clutching the receiver so tightly his knuckles showed white. “It’s not right, Savich. This shouldn’t have happened. Not to Emma, not to any little kid.”

  “You know how common it is, Ramsey. God knows you saw enough of it in your time in the U.S. Attorney’s office, and probably some when you were a trial lawyer. And now as a judge.”

  “Some people in the San Francisco area think I’ve been too tough on crimes like this, but I don’t agree. There isn’t a cure or rehabilitation for child molesters, as the Church finally discovered, so it behooves us to keep them well away from children for the rest of their lives.”

  They spoke of Paris, of Sherlock’s continuing reaction to the word pregnant. Savich was laughing as he said, “I accidentally said the accursed word in a three-star restaurant on the Isle St. Louis. She nearly puked in her fancy French mushrooms stuffed with something I can’t begin to pronounce. I’ll bet it means something like ‘greasy tourist innards’ but I could be wrong. In any case, our waiter was wild-eyed, flapping his white waiter’s towel around, but he got her to the women’s room just in the nick of time.”

  “The bathroom was very nice. It was too bad that I didn’t make it to the toilet.”

  It was Sherlock and she was laughing. Ramsey said, “It shouldn’t last much longer, should it?”

  “The doc says another month. I’m thinking of taping Dillon’s mouth shut to keep that word stuck in his throat, but then he couldn’t kiss me properly. It’s a tough call, downsides everywhere. How’s Molly?”

  “She’s hanging in, taking lots of pictures, even of me. I look up and there she is, turning all these dials on her camera, assuming strange contorted positions, muttering about backlighting and the like. She’s spending a fortune on film. You want to speak to her?”

  Molly slipped out and came around to Ramsey’s bed. Thank God Emma was sound asleep. She listened, then spoke to Sherlock. She laughed, a warm infectious sound that made Ramsey smile. She was humming to herself when she slipped back into her bed beside Emma.

  28

  RAMSEY BRUSHED HIS teeth, put the cap back on the toothpaste, and rinsed out his toothbrush, standing it bristles-up in a glass on the sink. He was leaning into the small shower stall to turn on the water. He heard something, straightened, and turned back toward the bathroom door.

  Molly was standing there in her cotton nightgown, her hair tousled from sleeping, and her eyes were remarkably bright and focused. She was staring right at his cock.

  “Molly?”

  “Uh? Oh, Ramsey, I’m sorry. I wanted to go to the bathroom, I wasn’t listening, I didn’t realize you were in here and I—” Her voice fell like a rock off a cliff.

  She continued to stare at him. Even when she’d spoken, she hadn’t looked at his face. She hadn’t even gotten as high as his chest.

  She said now, still not looking at his face, “I guess I’d better leave now.”

  “I’ll be out in just a few minutes.”

  “I can hold it.” She was out the door in a flash. He looked down at himself. He was getting erect, fast. Well, damn, he was a man and a man didn’t have any say over that. It was the only completely independent organ of his entire body. Actually, given all the time they’d spent together, it was surprising this hadn’t happened before. Actually, he rather wished, as he lathered soap on his chest and belly, that he’d been the one to walk in on Molly. He wondered how she’d have reacted if he’d just stood there staring at her body, his eyes not getting above her neck. He also found himself wondering what she’d thought of his body. She’d seen him with a hard-on before, particularly in the mornings when they’d slept in the same room. But he hadn’t been naked.

  He hadn’t worked out in a month except for that session with Savich in Mason Lord’s state-of-the art gym. Sure he’d walked a lot, kept his cardiovascular system going at a fast clip through sheer stress, but it wasn’t the same thing. He needed to work out. His body missed it. He flexed and stretched. He wondered if there were any gyms in Ireland. He’d just have to hike more, maybe carry Emma on his shoulders as a free weight.

  He was whistling as he thought: So what’d you think, Molly? Did you like what you saw? He was whistling when he came out of the bathroom, completely dressed. “All yours,” he said, and smiled at her.

  She forced herself to look him straight in the eye and said, “Thank you.”

  LATE that afternoon, sitting on the Cliffs of Moher, waiting for that huge brilliant sun to sink down into the Atlantic, Ramsey took Molly’s hand, lifted it to his mouth, and kissed her fingers, one at a time. She became instantly as still as a deer in the glare of headlights. He said quietly, still holding her hand, “Emma’s not looking right now. I think she wants us to buy her another Celtic ring from that vendor over there. She’s looking at every piece of jewelry he has. I’ve got my left eye on her. Don’t worry. So, Molly, I think we should get married. What do you say?”

  Molly jumped to her feet and took three quick steps back. Ramsey didn’t move, just twisted around and looked up at her. Then he looked at Emma, who was now strolling not ten feet away from them, hovering near a man and a woman and their two young girl children.

  Molly wrapped her arms around herself. She was shaking her head, her red hair a wild halo, corking out in all directions, simply beautiful. The sun, stark against her, turned her hair molten. She didn’t look at him as she said, her voice low and strained, “Just because I saw you naked this morning and just stood there and stared at you, my little heart filled with lust, you think you’ve got to marry me? That doesn’t make any sense, Ramsey. I know what men look like. I’ll admit that you look the best of all the men I’ve ever seen—”

  “And how many does that make exactly?”

  “Two.”

  “You’ve made my day.”

  “Two, counting you.”

  “I take it back.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve seen lots of pictures, movies with men very nearly nude. You’re as good-looking as the best of them, and you surely know it, you’re not blind.” She stopped suddenly, as if aware in that instant of what was coming unbidden out of her mouth. She pursed her lips, like a pissed-off grade-school teacher. “Just because I can still see
you clearly in my head, it won’t do to speak about you at any more length. No, I didn’t mean to use that exact word. It was just a slip of the tongue. Yes, enough about your body.”

  That was probably a good thing since he was getting hard and they were in public, and he wanted to laugh. “Okay, that’s fine, at least for now. Incidentally, I didn’t ask you to marry me just because you happened to walk in on me. I was thinking it’s kind of surprising that it hadn’t happened before. Do you think if the shoe had been on the other foot, so to speak, you would have felt compelled to propose to me?”

  “Oh, goodness. I would have sunk into the floor. I’m not beautiful like you, Ramsey. I’m so skinny.”

  He looked at her face, at her glorious hair, and said, “Don’t you ever speak ill of yourself again. It really pisses me off.”

  She swallowed, looked down at her feet. “It’s just the truth.”

  “Bullshit.” He looked back at the sun, getting lower now. He said, not looking at her, “Sit down. I don’t want you to miss this.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have said what you said at such a precious moment. It beat out the setting sun for sheer drama.”

  “I thought putting the two precious moments together was a bang-up idea.”

  Molly looked at Emma, who was playing now with the two children, the parents looking on. Molly waved to them. The woman waved back.

  She sat back down, slowly, carefully, as if she were wearing a dress that he could look up if she wasn’t careful. She sat Indian style, her palms flattened on her thighs. Her fingernails were short, blunt, like his. She was wearing black jeans and black half-boots. Her vivid yellow windbreaker was billowing out behind her as the stiff offshore early-evening winds swept in.

  She didn’t look at him, just stared at that bright red sun that was close enough to the water now to turn it a gleaming golden red. “Have you ever been married before, Ramsey?”