Sylvia grabbed the coffee cup out of his hand and picked up the empty bag from the donuts and turned to drop them in the trash can.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Ben struggled off of the low stool, reaching for his still half-full coffee cup.
“Getting you off your ass.” Sylvia let him take the coffee cup back now that he was standing. She balled up the empty bag and tossed it in the bin. “I could really use your help today trying to keep up with the readers. With the auction this week we were going to be behind anyway. And then you disappeared and the auditor took over your seat. You have no idea what this place can get like when we get behind.”
“What, you mean there’d be something like work?” Ben drained the last of the coffee in one gulp and tossed out the empty cup.
“No, you never catch up. And you have to stop saying things like that where the auditor can hear you,” Sylvia hissed.
“Frankly, at this point I don’t really care. The fact that someone can just walk in and take over my office and determine that I can’t do my job after being here less than five minutes is ridiculous.”
“Yeah, well, we work for the government. They like oversight. This person gets raped by that person and that person gets raped by that person, who in turn gets raped by the president. It’s standard American procedure.” Sylvia poked and prodded at Ben, trying to get him to leave his place of solitude, but he wouldn’t budge. He did not care for a pint-sized woman trying to tell him what he should or should not be doing, regardless of the fact that all her arguments were spot on.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky and the auditor will decide they don’t need me.” Her persistence had him a few feet out of the shelving units.
“Well, they definitely need somebody, even if it’s not you. Look, are you going to help me at all today?” She paused in her attempts to get him to cooperate and stood between him and his stool, hands on hips.
“Probably not.” Ben made as though to return to his hideaway and Sylvia grabbed his arm.
“Look, I know you’re distracted, but this isn’t helping anything!” She held tight, trying to make him meet her eyes. “I bet I know what you’re doing when you go home now. You’re snooping on that Lenny guy. Obsessing over him, aren’t you? That’s why you took off when you heard. You had to find out everything you could about him. What did you do? Go to your police friend?”
Ben steadfastly avoided her gaze. It was eerie how well she had come to know his habits in such a short span of time. He wondered if he was that obvious, or if she was just that observant. “Kind of.”
“Jesus! Look, you’re going to lose your job here—which I know you like to take advantage of—which is allowing you to search for your son and keeping you from living in a hovel on the streets of Atlanta. Why can’t you just let this go for the few days you’re under scrutiny? Seriously.” She finally grabbed his chin, forcing his face to look down at hers.
“Because this is it. I mean it could be. And I just have to make sure that everything…happens I guess.” Ben finally met her eyes and saw the tears she was holding back. He couldn’t tell whether she actually cared about him or if she was just frustrated with him.
Sylvia dashed away the standing water in her eyes. “It’s all going to happen anyway.”
Ben was silent. He could admit, at the root of everything, that Leonard was going to get his due from the justice system, that the boys would all be identified, and that his ministrations didn’t actually make a difference. But he couldn’t help the fact that he had this constant compulsion to keep trying, to keep researching, that maybe he would be the deciding point, in some obscure manner, that would bring his son home.
Their staring contest was broken by shouts from the doorway to the warehouse. “Stop it! Don’t let it get away!”
“Where’d it go?”
“There!”
Celine and Byron slammed into the warehouse, closely followed by Jillian. Whatever they were chasing skittered across the floor and threw itself under the shelves of the closest bay. Sylvia and Ben hurried over to see what was going on, Ben grateful for the distraction. The three readers had surrounded the shelving unit on its three free sides on their hands and knees to try and figure out where their prey had gone to.
“What is it?” Sylvia crouched down herself, all the reprimand in her voice having been replaced by excitement.
Celine was panting. “Some kind of lizard. I opened the box and it just leapt right out. Who mails a lizard?”
“Idiots. That’s who.” Byron had gotten all the way down on his stomach trying to see into the gloom.
Sylvia got up and disappeared into the next bay, coming back with a flashlight. “Lizards can go days without food. That’s probably what someone was thinking when they stuffed him in there. Why’d we get the package?”
Celine gave up and sat back. “The address was fake, no return.”
“Poor guy.” Sylvia took Celine’s place and laid down on her stomach. “Ben? I think there is a terrarium in 2007, can you go get it?”
He went to retrieve the container, trying to picture what kind of person had so little regard for the animal’s life that they sent it through the U.S. post. The glass rectangle didn’t have a lid, so he grabbed a roll of mosquito netting from the next bay over and brought it all back. “Here it is.” He placed the glass box next to Sylvia and stood back to unroll the sheeting.
Sylvia flicked on her light and spotted the critter backed up against the wall. “Got him.” She wiggled forward and stretched out her hand towards it. A muffled hissing reached their ears.
“Careful, it’s probably poisonous!” Jillian was still crouched down, trying to see what was going on.
“Hardly. I do believe that we have been graced with a dragon, folks.” The scrabbling of claws and more hissing came from under the shelf and Sylvia yelped. “Just a claw, don’t worry.” After a bit more scrabbling she managed to haul out her prize. She dropped the flashlight and used both hands to pin the critter’s front legs to his sides. The brownish spiky lizard had a huge bristling beard that glowed in bright shades of red and orange. “Well, aren’t you pretty.”
Ben nudged the terrarium forward and Sylvia carefully lowered him into it. Ben spread the fabric over the top and around her arms, which she then removed quickly. “I got it.”
“Jillian, could we have some packing tape, please?” Sylvia poked at the scratches on her hand, but none of them looked like they had actually broken the surface.
Byron was studying the lizard. “A bearded dragon, right?”
“I think so. I’ve always wanted one.” Sylvia left off studying her hands and leaned down to the cage. “But they usually have black beards. This one is different.”
Ben cleared his throat, almost unwilling to bring her attention back to him, but he felt he would be safe from her recriminations now that she had something small and scared to take care of. “A sunburst beardy.”
Sylvia jumped, almost as if she had forgotten he was there. “A what?”
“A sunburst bearded dragon. My college roommate had one. They’re rare.” Sylvia smiled up at him, and Ben hoped that she might be forgiving him a little bit, but then her face clouded up again. It was apparently going to take more than an assist on a rescue to get back into her good graces and keep her from haranguing him about his search methodologies.
“Look, I’ll take care of this little guy. You should go do something useful.” She turned back to the terrarium. She sprawled on her stomach, feet in the air, and smiled at the runty lizard. The dragon had let its beard collapse and was now trying to hide in the corner of his tank. “Valiant, that’s your name. Proper name for a dragon, don’t you think?”
Ben could tell she wasn’t speaking to him, but he decided to answer anyway. “Apt, too, what with his dash to freedom.”
She
glared up at him. “Look, why don’t you go make sure all the bays are straightened up after the inventorying from this week so if the auditor decides he needs to make a spot inspection or something it’s all right there.”
“Fine. I can do that.” Ben stormed away from the group surrounding the poor terrified lizard. He went first to long-term storage, reaching up a hand to idly run across the journals. It was almost like he could feel his computer calling him, but a peek around the corner showed Reg still firmly ensconced. There would be no making progress on his research for now, so he decided to actually take Sylvia’s suggestion.
He came around to a chest of drawers and opened the first one. It was where they kept all of the firearms that came through the Center. He vaguely remembered something from the manual about needing to keep all firearms for thirty years in case they ended up being needed for a criminal investigation. There were four in the drawer.
Back at Ben’s desk, the auditor turned on the morning radio news report. They were talking once again about the arraignment hearing for Leonard Moscovich. Ben forgot about the the lizard and the auditor as he heard the reporter listing the crimes Moscovich had been arrested for. Twelve counts of kidnapping and eleven counts of murder. All victims under the age of ten, all male. All Ben could see was Benny’s face, hear Benny calling him for help in the middle of the night because of monsters under the bed. Those monsters had been more real than Ben had been willing to believe.
Ben realized he was staring at the guns. One was a little pearl-handled revolver, only good for making an elderly woman feel protected on her way home from church; there was also a long-barreled revolver out of a Wild West movie and two black pistols.
The radio continued its inane chatter, the disk jockeys expressing surprise and shock as they rehashed, again, the traffic stop and the terrified young boy found in the truck. They had no idea what the horror was really like, for a parent, a father, living every day hoping for some answer, only to be presented with the worst of their nightmares. And then they cut to an interview with the little boy.
“Can you tell me what happened? With the man in the truck?”
“He said he had baby animals at his farm and that he’d let me feed and pet them, so I...I got in his truck. I knew I shouldn’t, but I really like animals. My mommy took me to the zoo last year, and I really like the baby zebra,s and the man said he had baby horses which were better than baby zebras and I could pet them...”
Ben couldn’t see the drawer he was clutching as a wave of black crossed his vision. It could have been Benny talking on the radio. They had seen the same baby zebras, though Benny had dragged his family along to look at the monkeys instead. And this man, this abomination, had tried to take this little boy from his family, had taken eleven other little boys just like this one, just like his boy, had probably killed his boy.
The interview had ended and the jockeys came back on.
“Did you hear that his lawyer has already filed a not guilty by reason of insanity? He’s claiming Moscovich had no idea what he was doing. Mentally retarded or something like that.”
“That’s what they’re saying. Personally, I don’t believe it. But watch, he’s going to get sent to some looney bin instead of executed like he should be.”
Not guilty by reason of insanity. The words rattled around inside Ben’s head. The monster was going to try and get away with it, after killing all those boys, all those boys who had just started to grow out of their fear of the monsters under their beds, whose unsubstantiated fear was replaced all at once with the monsters in the real world.
He looked around on the shelves to see if there was any ammunition, finding only one box.
The bullets were obviously too big for the pearl handled shooter, but he wasn’t sure about the other three. He struggled to get them open, giving up on one of the pistols as he simply couldn’t figure out where the release was. The bullets were too small for the revolver, but they seemed to fit okay in the magazine of the last pistol.
He returned the clip to its slot, hoping the sound was masked by the chattering voices resonating through the warehouse from the auditor’s general vicinity. Ben slipped the gun into his pocket and headed towards the exit. He had no idea what he was even planning to do with the gun, not really. He knew he wanted to get a better look at Moscovich, and if he was prepared, who would blame him, really? He’d be a hero for taking out such a villainous character. He would be Benny’s hero for taking out his killer.
“Where you off to? Not lunch yet, is it?” Reg called out as he passed.
Ben didn’t even slow down as he responded. “Nope, just trying to find someplace I’ll actually be useful. Later.” He banged his way out of the warehouse and exited through the rear door of the Center. He didn’t want to have to explain to Judy why he was taking off so soon after getting to work.
Once he was in his car, he took the pistol out of his pocket. Throwing his briefcase into the back seat, he cradled the black metal. It was heavier than he had expected. The weapon was covered in a thin layer of dust, which he cleaned off with his shirttail until it gleamed dully. He could barely make out the etchings on it, but he was pretty sure it read 1911, though he had no idea what that could mean. He had never wanted anything to do with guns, had made excuses not to spend afternoons after high school plinking with his friends because he had thought it was a waste of time. Now, he wished he had gone at least a couple of times so he wasn’t quite as unfamiliar with these tools. Not if he actually got a chance to do what needed to be done.
He put the gun on the passenger seat under a windbreaker that he hadn’t needed since March but had never gotten around to taking out of the car. He turned on the radio to the news station, waiting until they started at the top of the hour to recite the current news articles.
…and as we promised you before, we will be coming to you live at noon from the arraignment of Leonard Moscovich, the man accused of kidnapping eleven boys and killing ten, at the Fulton County Superior Courthouse. That’s right, we said eleven. What kind of mind could be capable of this, I hear you asking? Let’s go to our in-house psychologist. Dr. Borden, what kind of disturbances could this man be suffering from?
Possession might be able to account for the atrocity of it, or maybe complete sociopathy, but whatever it was, Ben was sure it was pure evil, and someone should make sure he couldn’t do it again. He pulled out of the parking lot and started to drive toward the middle of the city, vaguely recalling where the courthouse was from his hours of staring at the map on his wall.
Well, Jim, we have to take into consideration the fact that the victims here are all of the same type. Young boys. This would seem to indicate a pattern or fixation on this population. It is entirely possible that he suffered some trauma at that age, and in killing these boys, he is trying to cut that out of his life. Or perhaps he’s just a psychopath and this is his way of feeling things.
Ben snorted. As if anyone could “just” be a psychopath. He reached over and turned off the radio, weary of the second-guessing, the second-rate hack job psychology. The man was a sick bastard, that was all. A sick, murdering bastard. Ben glanced over at the passenger seat frequently, checking to make sure that the gun was completely covered. He wasn’t sure what the gun laws were in Georgia, but he was pretty sure they weren’t lenient.
He had to circle the courthouse a couple times before he found parking, but he finally found a spot and fed the meter. He had about a half an hour before the arraignment was supposed to take place, so he found a bench that faced the courthouse door and sat, his windbreaker draped over the gun in his lap. He kept going over every detail of the case, of his son’s disappearance, of Moscovich’s life, and every point at which they might have intersected and brought this monster into their lives. Every cruel thing the man might have done to his son flickered through his mind. He could only think of one thing that would make it all stop
.
After a few minutes, he had to remove his hand from the handle of the gun and stretch his fingers and pop his wrist. His palms were sweaty, as was the rest of him. The bench was in the sun, and the temperature was well over ninety. He leaned his head back, then rolled it around, trying to stretch out the muscles, but snapped upright at an increase of sound coming from the courthouse. He nearly let the gun drop out of the windbreaker but caught it at the last second.
However, the noise was just a bunch of news vans pulling up, readying their equipment for their first live shot of Leonard. Ben checked his watch and found it was just now noon, which meant that it would still be a few minutes before the killer was brought out of the courthouse to return to jail. He figured there was no way he could be released on bail. Not with ten dead boys in the ground. He would be cuffed, with an escort, which would make it more difficult to get close to him, but this needed to be done.
Ben wandered back to the steps of the courthouse and started milling between the news crews. There were radio and television, as well as print reporters of all kinds. Boom mics were being lifted and camera batteries checked. He fingered the trigger of the gun wrapped in the windbreaker in his arms, wondering if Leonard would look at all like his pictures online. He had to be sure that he was taking out the right man, the murderous bastard, who must have made his son’s last moments on this earth a terrifying agony.
When the noise on the steps escalated again, Ben knew for sure it was because Leonard was coming. The reporters descended on the group leaving the courthouse, shouting.
“Leonard, why did you do it?”
“What was the decision?”
“Mr. Moscovich, is it true you killed your mother, too?”
The man was hunched up with his lawyer’s suit coat over his head, the green tweed distinctly clashing with his orange jumpsuit. Ben started to push his way through the throng of people, trying to angle his movement to intersect the besieged party as it hit the street. Abruptly, he was in front of the man and staring into heavily lashed, frightened eyes.
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