Occasionally, he lucked out and found ladies changing, bathing, relaxing in the nude before they dressed, and thinking they were alone. He particularly liked to catch neighbors tanning topless or fully naked by their swimming pools. His neighborhood did not have any two-story homes, and the backyards were relatively private, especially the ones surrounded by high fences or hedges. Florida sunshine provided almost year-round warm weather, and it didn’t take him long to make a schedule of who sunbathed on what days and the time on the clock when they did it.
There were no windows between him and the sunbathers. Only air separated him from their bodies. He wanted so badly to walk up, touch them, and rub the shimmering oil all over their glistening skin. On numerous occasions, he tried to talk himself into it, but knew he had no chance. The only way to keep enjoying the ride was to do so in private. If he were to make himself known, it would surely end.
One evening after spying on a lady, he walked down the alley behind his house. A stack of magazines on the ground by an overflowing dumpster caught his eye. The top cover had a voluptuous brunette posed seductively, a strand of ribbon veiled the tips of her bosom, and her legs were crossed to conceal the obvious. He looked around, decided the coast was clear, flipped the magazine open, and discovered a dream come true. Naked ladies gazed directly into his eyes, smiling, posed with bedroom expressions and yearning lips. They begged him to look, lust, and burn for their supple, gratifying flesh.
“Yes,” they called to him. “Yes, you can have me whenever you want, however you want, because I want you, too. Turn the page. I’m here for your pleasure.”
The pile of magazines was too large to carry, and he shuffled through them, hurriedly selecting the covers that looked most satisfying. He stuffed them in the front and back of his shorts and pulled his shirttail over the top. When he went inside, his mom and dad weren’t there to ask him where he’d been, how his day was, or what he was up to. He sat in his room, alone, and pored over the pages of each issue. His fire burnt hotter than ever.
For weeks, he obsessed over the magazines in the comfort and privacy of his bedroom. He conversed on a first-name basis with many of the adult models. Dirty words, the kind he heard older boys use at school, started working their way into his one-sided conversations. It became another way to push the limit, expand his horizons, and keep it fresh.
The dumpster in the alley ingrained itself in his mind as a means. He checked it daily for new material. It didn’t matter where they were coming from—maybe some guy with a flavor for nudie entertainment constantly refreshing his collection—but occasionally there were more. They replaced all but a favorite edition or two he prized too much to trash. This went on until puberty and hormones aggressively mutated his compulsion for the images. The magazines were great, but no longer as exciting as they once were. Every issue had differences, but they were all the same, one girl on the beach or another on a velvet couch with fine fabrics or hides lying here and there. There was an issue for the blonde lovers, brunettes, or redheads. Exotic bodies with dark skin, hair, and naturally voluptuous curves hit the pages one after another.
As chance had it, a cure presented itself. On a walk home from the beach, a street bum approached and asked for money. Without intention, a bold plan blossomed, and Ricky acted. It happened without even trying.
The newsstand on the boardwalk sold gum, candy, a few pairs of cheap sunglasses, newspapers, and magazines. Blacked-out shelves obscured a certain section of the magazines, only revealing the top one-third of the cover. It left little to the imagination, but enough to entice buyers with a taste for more. Ricky tried to buy several different issues with titles like Hustler, Penthouse, and, more obscure yet obvious, Juggs. The foreign man in charge of the cart refused him unless he had a valid ID. Short of stealing, another means of attainment never crossed his mind until lightning struck.
“Look.” Ricky snatched a ten-dollar bill from his pocket, waved it in front of the homeless man, and motioned toward the magazine stand. “If you’ll go back there and get me a Penthouse, you can keep the change and …” He patted his pocket. “I’ll give you ten more.”
He couldn’t believe the words that just shot out of his mouth, but they had. He felt scared and thought about running. When the grungy beggar didn’t say no, though, he held his ground.
The man scratched an inch-long beard with a set of fingernails that looked like they hadn’t been washed for a year. “Penthouse, you say?”
“That’s right, Penthouse. You keep the change, and I’ll give you ten more bucks.” Ricky’s heart thumped from adrenaline, and his hands shook. His ears turned red, and he searched over both shoulders for anyone eavesdropping.
“You’ve got the money?” the homeless man asked.
“Yes.”
“Let me see it.” The bum raised his eyebrows in anticipation.
Ricky pulled another ten-dollar bill from his pocket.
“How do I know you’re not a cop?”
Ricky thought for a second. “Do I look like a cop?”
“No, I guess you ain’t old enough. Suppose you tell someone where you got it?”
“I’m not telling anyone.” He tried to think of the right things to say. “Not if you don’t.”
“All right. I guess it don’t hurt none. Where you want me to bring it to ya, sonny?”
Ricky looked around for an ideal spot. He pointed across the road. “How about over there by those trees?”
The man looked toward the trees and nodded. “Penthouse?”
Ricky nodded in return and handed him one of the tens.
Five minutes later, he jogged home with a new magazine wrapped in his beach towel. In his room of an empty house, he slammed the door and ripped off the plastic cover. He sat down on the bed, opened the crisp pages, and, for the first time in his short life, learned from an erotic image the meaning of sex. The pictures soaked into his mind, a dry sponge willing to absorb the first wet thing to come along, and stained his psyche. With an illustrated guide to follow, his first physical experiment began.
Ricky established a rapport with the homeless man near the beach. Every so often, he scouted the newsstand for what he wanted, found the man, and paid him the same way. He always based his selections on the pursuit of nastier, riskier magazines. Once, he came to buy another magazine and was instead presented with a videotape and asked what he was willing to pay. The urge grew irresistible, and he bought it with extra spending money his mom had given him.
He sat on the couch in his parents’ living room and watched the live, vocal action right before his eyes. He was only fourteen and had the house to himself. In the privacy of neglect, another layer was added to his lustful addiction.
He started requesting increasingly graphic films and eventually developed a taste for violent sex. A year later, he met the bum at their usual spot near the beach. Ricky burned through a video a week and found himself bored with each film more quickly than the one before. He waited in earnest to see what new material the guy would have for him.
“What’s going on?” Ricky said when he arrived.
“Got something a little different for ya today.” He made a gesture toward his backpack but made no motion to retrieve it.
“All right. What is it?”
The bum eyed him suspiciously. He bored a hole right into Ricky and said nothing.
“Well?” Ricky pushed him.
“You’re always asking for something new. That right?”
“Yeah.” No matter how many times they did this, it felt awkward to engage in conversation, like it made it more wrong. It was easiest when they did the exchange and went their separate ways.
“You got to promise not to tell.” The man had a serious look on his face, like Ricky might not like what he had.
“I promise. I don’t want to get caught any more than you do.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” He let out a long breath and kept his face down. “Listen here, sonny, if you get caught wit
h this … you don’t know me, ya hear?”
“I hear,” Ricky said. He felt hesitancy in his voice. What the hell? He couldn’t imagine what all the cloak-and-dagger shit was about.
The sooty salesman extracted a VHS from his backpack. It was in a black case, not like the commercially sold videos he usually brought. He handed it over.
Ricky turned the case over, but the back was also blank. “What is it?”
The man looked off into space. “It’s … young girls.”
“Cool! Like college girls?” His grin ran the width of his face. He locked his eyes on the little plastic box.
“Look, they’re just … younger.”
“Okay.” He liked the thought of it. “How much?”
The man shook his head and pulled up his cheeks in a grimace to make his eyes wrinkle around the edges. “Just take it home and see if you like it. If you don’t, throw it away. If you do, I can probably get more, but you’ll have to pay next time. This is a … sample.”
Ricky took the tape home and put it in the VCR. The undisclosed mystery that shrouded its contents held him in suspense, and his fingers busily fumbled with buttons and the remote. The screen came up. The image on display was not what he expected. There was no music, only a solitaire little girl in a room filled with toys. She sat on a daybed with white linens and pillows. She was pretty, a sundress and strawberry blonde hair in a braid, and couldn’t have been more than five years old. The scene did not look authentic. Rather, it was like a stage.
He watched in silence for the next thirty minutes, too tense, shocked, and deeply infatuated to move. A man who never showed his face entered the picture, molested, raped, and violated the little girl in more ways than Ricky could fathom. The girl screamed and cried as she was used. Without question, it was the highest of all highs, the thrill Ricky spent each subsequent day of his life in pursuit of. Children were no longer safe in his company. They were his ultimate drug.
* * *
Still in the recliner at his cabin, thoughts moving from the past to present, he couldn’t shake the feeling of dissatisfaction. Regardless of the glory of his last success, Lindsay Watson was no Josie Snow. Somehow, someway, he had to have her.
Chapter Thirty-One
The remainder of Isaac’s patrol went by without incident. The weather cleared, and the sky shone bright. He thought it peculiar how life has a way of sustenance. When a soul needs fed, the cosmos delivers. When he left Ruidoso, there were no expectations beyond flying a patrol and spending the short evenings in between with his parents. What he never saw coming, or even realize he needed, was for things to go exactly the way they had. Inside, he still had broken pieces yet to mend. One rainy day, a cancelled flight, and a morning with Tom in the shop worked a small miracle and led one step further down the road to wholeness. He didn’t even know he needed it until it happened. Letting go of his strength and allowing himself to crumble, submit to the weakness of sorrow in his heart, renewed his spirit and made him stronger.
He turned his classic Chevy pickup onto their street on the mountain above Ruidoso and saw the little house he called home. He missed his girls and could hardly wait to see them. He wanted to walk up the back steps and receive the same “welcome home” greeting he did every Saturday evening. Now more than ever, such a small thing seemed so big. Everything he and his family were forced to endure was awful. But it did stir a new awareness and appreciation for life, an awareness that he knew would last until the end of his days. He was blessed. Truly blessed. It was impossible to walk this earth without attaining scars along the way. They remind us to hold life in perspective and not forsake the richness of each moment.
Josie came running to the sound of the back screen door. She leapt into his arms and squeezed him tight. “Did you see MaMaw and Pa Paw?”
“I sure did, kiddo, and they said to do this.” Isaac nuzzled his nose and mouth into the crook of her shoulder and began kissing her cheek and neck.
She squealed and squirmed to get away from the ticklish whiskers. “That tickles!”
“It’s from them, not me.” He set her down. If they had done this once, they had done it a thousand times. Somehow, it felt new. “Did you and your mom have a good time?”
“Yeah.” Josie put a hand on her hip, turned her face to the side, and tossed her hair. “Do you like my hair?”
Her new cut was shorter than the last one, just long enough to cover the back of her neck and put into a ponytail. It flowed, soft, smooth, and light. In that moment, Isaac was the most important man in her life, and she cared what he thought, more than any other. Soon, he knew it would not be that way. In the blink of an eye, she would blossom into a woman and turn the heads of boys who thought they were men. Hopefully, like her mother, a strong sense of self-worth and good morals would keep her on a track of healthy relationships and in the company of people with her best interests at heart. Not much longer, important life choices would begin falling into her lap. Isaac could only watch and pray that he had prepared her for the long, arduous, and rewarding journey we are fortunate enough to travel.
“I love it!” he proclaimed. He squatted to her level, squared her shoulders with his large hands, and looked into her eyes. “You are just as pretty as your mother.”
“Thanks.” The sparkle in her eye said that she felt pretty. “I helped Mom make supper, too.”
“What else have you done while I was away?”
She shrugged. “Everything. Mom showed me how to make cherry cobbler.”
“Oooh.” He looked around the kitchen. “Where is it?”
Josie pointed to the utility room where it was cooling.
“Think we should try some?” He stood back up.
“I wouldn’t. It just came out of the oven, and unless you want to burn your taste buds off, you’ll have to wait.” Sarah stood in the double doorway open to the living room. She came forward and kissed him on the lips. “You had a good trip?”
“Yep. Rain had me grounded at Mom and Dad’s the first morning.”
“At least you were at your parents and not a hotel. Did you and your dad get to hang out?”
“Yeah.” He decided not to tell her about the chest. He wanted it to be a surprise when Tom finished it. “How was your week?”
She looked at the floor. “Fine. You know, just did stuff around the house, showed Josie how to cook, and went to the Smith’s one night for dinner.”
He knew she had something she didn’t want to say. It wasn’t difficult to see. A personality without pretension, she was an open book. “Anything else?”
“Josie, if you want to help put supper on the table, go wash your hands and face.”
She brightened and ran from the room. Isaac gave his wife a puzzled look.
“A letter came in the mail today,” she said. “I haven’t opened it. I don’t know. Maybe I’m paranoid, but it seems out of place.”
His heart sank, and he recalled the conversation with Charlie on Wednesday morning before he left. Other than that, there was no reason to assume the worst.
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to be alone. It’s gross. What if there’s something bad in it?”
He knew exactly what she meant. For hours, he had laid awake at night, seeking to understand what corrupted some creep’s mind to send gruesome pictures and sick letters to children. Isaac loved life and the world, but he also understood that evil people shared it. And one of them was after his family.
“Where is it?”
“In your desk box. I didn’t want Josie to see it.”
He went into the living room and stepped through a set of French doors that separated his office. Stacked on top of a book sat a plain, white envelope with a handwritten address. If it were from the killer, more than a letter was inside. He could feel an object approximately a quarter-inch thick.
“I think something is in it,” Sarah noted.
He nodded.
“Should we open it?”
He inhaled and let out the lo
ng breath with a reserved sigh. “I think we have to.” He gestured toward the doors. “Close those, will you?”
Sarah leaned her head out. “Josie, after you wash your hands, set the table, please.”
“Okay,” came a reply from the hallway bathroom.
He put the blade of his pocketknife to the envelope and went to cut it.
“Wait!” Sarah scolded. “Charlie said not to open anything suspicious. We could contaminate evidence. Call him and tell him we might have another letter.”
Isaac didn’t want to. He wanted to open it right there and find out what was inside. If there were another threat against his little girl, he wanted to know about it immediately. But Sarah was right, and he had to make the call. If he messed up anything by opening it, he would never forgive himself. He picked up the handset and dialed.
“Charlie Biddle,” he heard after the second ring.
“Hey, it’s me.” His tone was grave and emotionless. “I think we have another letter.”
Charlie’s voice grew serious. “Are you sure?”
“No, I’m not sure, but it’s suspicious. There’s no return address, and the handwriting looks like the other one.”
“Is anything else in it?”
“Yeah, there is, but I don’t know what. It’s right here on my desk.” Isaac tried to remain calm. He hadn’t been home for more than ten minutes, and the situation grew more agitating by the second. “I don’t know what to do with it.”
“That’s fine,” Charlie reassured. “Don’t touch it anymore. I’m coming right over. Just … leave it where it is.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Charlie leaned over the desk in Isaac’s study and analyzed the standard white, slightly bulging envelope. He removed his cap, frowned, and tucked a jowly chin to his chest. The longer he scrutinized the handwritten address, the more his balding scalp shined.
“What do you think?” Isaac asked from the opposite side with his arms crossed. He looked at Charlie, then to Sarah, and back at Charlie.
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