“Then we drop him off near there and tell him to walk in himself.”
Gil shook his head. “He’s only a year old. He can barely walk.”
“If we drop him off close enough, he could make it. I think that’s the best we can do.”
He was right. This was the best plan. Anything else would end with one or both of them getting a lethal injection. Gil wished he hadn’t brought Kai. He wished he hadn’t gotten him involved. He hadn’t been thinking straight. The idea of Eddie raping his daughter had clouded his judgment. Deep down, he’d been hoping Kai would stop him from doing anything too bad to Eddie. Instead, the boy had egged him on. When he first showed up at Eddie’s door, he had intended to talk to him, get his version of the story, maybe kick his ass if he had to. Seeing the man’s face, smiling, had set him off, enraged him. It had been all downhill from there. Nothing anyone could have said would have changed a thing. Once he threw that first punch, the rest had been inevitable.
“Okay. Let’s find a fire station.”
They drove around for twenty minutes before they found one nestled in a quiet residential area, where two guys and a kid would go unnoticed. It was across the street from a park where there were lots of kids playing, mothers and couples with strollers, people walking dogs. All of them were potential witnesses, but they were also the perfect camouflage. Gil wasn’t sure if this was the best location or the worst.
“What do you think?” Kai asked.
“I don’t know. Could be a lot of witnesses.”
“We could park around the corner, by those trees,” Kai said, pointing to a small copse of trees on the other side of the park, opposite the playground and slightly further away from the fire department. There was a small parking area there with six parking spaces, only two of which were occupied. Everyone else had parked in the larger parking lot closer to the community playground.
“That’s a long way for Little Eddie to walk by himself,” Gil said.
“Yeah, but it’s the only place that isn’t exposed and where there aren’t a lot of people.”
He was right. It was the only place they could let Little Eddie out of the car without being seen. Gil’s head swiveled back and forth, scanning the park, the street, the sidewalk, checking to see if anyone was looking their way as he piloted the truck to a halt in the parking lot.
“Okay, let’s get him out.”
“He smells like shit!”
“Well, I’m sure that’s exactly what happened. He’s not potty-trained yet. Just get him out of his car seat.”
Kai unstrapped Little Eddie from the seat and placed him down on the asphalt.
“How are the firemen going to know who he belongs to?”
Gil shook his head. “They probably won’t. Not until Amy manages to track him down. They’ll take him to Child Protective Services and he’ll spend a few nights in foster care.”
“What if she never finds him? I mean, what if no one ever realizes he’s Little Eddie?” Kai looked genuinely concerned.
Gil felt bad for thinking the kid had no feelings. But he didn’t have an answer either. Gil shrugged. “I guess we could write it on his clothes somewhere.”
“Can’t they match handwriting?”
Gil didn’t know. “He’ll be fine. Let’s just send him over there before someone sees us.”
Kneeling down so that he was eye to eye with Little Eddie, Gil pointed toward the fire station. “See that building over there? That’s a firehouse. That’s where firemen work. Mommy is waiting for you over there with the fire engine. You like fire engines?”
Little Eddie nodded.
Gil felt wretched, but he continued. “Run over there and the firemen will give you a ride on their fire truck and they’ll take you to Mommy, but you have to be quick. Go ahead! Run!”
Gil aimed Little Eddie toward the fire station, and off he went. He and Kai watched the little toddler stumble across the field. The park seemed even bigger than it did before, watching Little Eddie waddle his way to the sidewalk and into the street. The street!
“He’s going to cross the street!”
Gil started after him, but Kai held him back.
“Someone will see you. I’m sure he’ll be okay. The cars will stop for a baby. There’re hardly any cars on that road anyway. He won’t get hit.”
Gil watched with his heart in his throat as Little Eddie teetered out into the street . . . and a bright, canary yellow Hummer H2 came rolling down the road, just a hair over the twenty-five mph speed limit, still slow enough to stop, as long as the driver saw Little Eddie. The driver was a woman with bright red hair that had been dyed so many times it looked like cotton candy. Even from halfway across the park, Gil could tell she wasn’t paying attention to the road. She was staring at something in her hand, probably a phone. She was probably texting some equally vapid friend. Gil thought how ironic it was that Hummers were such big, testosterone machines, yet he almost always saw women driving them. It was quite rare, in fact, to see a man driving one. Perhaps men were worried people would think they were overcompensating. Not worried enough to stop driving big Ford and Ram trucks with lift-kits on them though.
“Oh no.”
She never hit the brakes. There was no squeal of tires. There was just that strangled cry and a thump like a vehicle bottoming out at the end of a driveway or coming off a curb. A dark smear stained the street. Silence rushed in, crushing the sounds of children’s laughter that had echoed from the playground just moments before.
Gil turned away. “Let’s go.”
“Shouldn’t we see if he’s okay?” Kai asked.
“He isn’t.”
6.
As they had planned earlier, Gil and Kai drove to the outlet mall to buy new shirts. They wound up buying entire outfits. They drove all the way to Georgetown to dispose of their bloody clothes. They threw them into a drainage ditch. Gil hoped the steady stream of water trickling through it would wash away any evidence if anyone were to find them.
Father and son barely said a word to each other as they drove back home. Any pride they’d felt for doing what needed to be done to Eddie was lost when that Hummer rolled over Little Eddie’s tiny body. The sound of that thud, Little Eddie’s head hitting the bumper and falling under the wheels, that sound would haunt them both forever.
“W-what’s Amy doing here? D-do-do you think she knows?” Kai stammered.
“How could she? If she knew what we did, the cops would already be here.”
“Maybe they’re on their way.”
Gil looked up and down the lush, tree-lined street with the nearly identical brick and stucco houses. Kids played on the front lawn of one house. A man in his sixties applied coat after coat of wax to his aging Buick Regal. An overweight bleached blonde jogged by dragging a small, heavily panting collie. A Mexican couple pushed a stroller while their son, no older than five, teetered on a small bike with training wheels that were bent at such an angle that only one wheel touched at a time. A warm, moist breeze blew through the Monterrey oak in front of his house. A bird sang. All was calm.
“I don’t think so, son. Just relax and don’t say anything. Let me do all the talking.”
Gil and his son stepped out of the truck and headed up the front walkway. Before he could put his key in the lock, the door opened. Natalie stood in the doorway with Amy. They were both smiling.
“It was all a mistake,” Natalie said.
“What?” Gil asked. “What are you talking about?”
“Eddie didn’t do anything. Selma made it up.”
Gil’s legs went weak. He put one hand against the red brick veneer to steady himself. For a moment, everything threatened to go dark before coming back into vivid focus.
“What the fuck do you mean she made it up?”
Natalie visibly recoiled form the hostility in his voice. “She-she said Eddie didn’t do anything. They just sat and watched cartoons all night. She made up everything about him touching her. I called Amy and told her
what Selma said and she came right over and we asked her together. She said she made it all up. I tried to call you on your cell phone, but you wouldn’t answer.”
“I-I had it on silent.”
Gil looked at his cell phone. There were eleven missed calls. “You sure she wasn’t intimidated? Maybe she changed her mind because she didn’t want to upset Amy?” Gil said.
Natalie shook her head. “I don’t think so. You can ask her yourself, but it might just make her more confused.”
Gil closed his eyes, tilted his head back, and ran both palms down his face. “Oh. My. God.”
Natalie’s smile faltered.
“What is it?” Amy said.
“But-but why? Why would she make something like that up?” Gil asked.
He turned and looked at Kai, who was standing directly behind him with a smug, arrogant grin on his face and he knew. He knew without the slightest shred of doubt. Kai had told her to say it. Gil’s eyes were wide as his mind worked through the implications.
“Why? Why did you do this, Kai? Why?” He grabbed his son by the shirt and pushed him against the wall, slammed him against it.
“I wanted you to care,” Kai said. Defiance bristled in his voice and in his furious eyes. “You haven’t given a shit about this family in years. You work all day and then you spend half the night at the gym with Eddie. When you come home, you’re too fucking tired for your own goddamn family! You eat and go straight to sleep. I wanted to see if you still gave a shit about us!”
“Where’s Eddie?” Natalie asked.
Gil shook his head.
“I tried to tell you,” Natalie whispered. Her voice was trembling now. Along with her bottom lip.
Gil let his son go and turned to the two women. A tear rolled from the corner of his left eye followed by one from his right. He wiped both away quickly.
“I-I did something terrible,” Gil said. He thought about what happened to Little Eddie. He could still see the boy’s little body going under the wheels of the bright yellow Hummer, the blood . . . and that sound. Gil dry heaved, remembering what he’d done to Eddie. He could taste his own bile scalding the back of his throat. He swallowed it down and shuddered. He wondered if Eddie was still alive. He hoped he wasn’t. It would be easier for all of them if he was dead. Eddie’s injuries were grotesque and painful, but Gil didn’t know if they were life threatening. There was the risk of him dying from shock. He’d looked pretty bad when they’d left him. And if he did survive, he would probably be horribly disfigured, physically and emotionally. He’d never be the same again.
“Where’s Eddie? Where’s my husband? Where’s Little Eddie?” Amy cried out, looking from Gil to Natalie to Kai and back to Gil.
“I did a terrible thing.”
“What did you do? What did you do?” Amy cried. “Where’s my baby!”
“I—” But there were no words.
SINS OF THE FATHER
Wrath James White and Sultan Z. White
Test. Test. I am at One Schroeder Plaza in Boston, speaking with Officer Walter Knox of the Boston Police Department. Officer Knox was first on the scene at the horrific massacre at the Mercy General nursery. Can you describe what you saw, Officer Knox?
It was fucking terrible! Excuse my French. This fucking nut job was just going from one bed to the next, twisting these babies’ necks like he was slaughtering chickens. Little newborn babies! He bashed most of their skulls open with a fire extinguisher, and then I guess he got bored with that so he started strangling them with his bare hands. I didn’t even know what I was seeing at first. He’d already killed two orderlies and three nurses who tried to stop him; he snapped their necks like he was doing to the babies. So the doctors, those fucking cowards, were just standing there outside the nursery, three of them, watching him murder those little newborn babies. Not doing shit to stop him. I mean, I know they were scared. That fucking lunatic had just murdered five people in front of them, but they could have, I don’t know, they could have done something. Those fucking nurses, God rest their souls, were heroes. They tried to stop him. So, I shows up, and these doctors are standing outside the door to the nursery, watching this guy, and they point to him. I look in there and I see him holding this little baby. I feel terrible. I just couldn’t believe what was happening. He killed another baby while I was standing there like a fucking idiot trying to figure out what was going on. Then I took him down.
How?
I didn’t bother going for the Taser or my baton, if that’s what you’re asking. I pulled my gun. And I was just hoping this piece of shit resisted. I was hoping he would go for the next baby, because I wanted to kill him so bad. I wanted to kill this fucking nut job so bad my dick was hard. I mean literally. I had an erection I was so hot to kill this piece of shit. You’ll edit that part out right?
Sure. Then what happened?
The guy just smiles, puts both hands behind his head, and kneels down on the floor. And he’s just staring me right in the eyes and smiling the entire time. I cracked him one. I kicked the crazy son of a bitch right in his smug little face. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t care who was watching. I just couldn’t stand that crazy bastard staring at me like that.
And how did he react?
He didn’t. Crazy fuck never stopped smiling. His nose was busted and blood was running down his face, turning his teeth red, and he just kept fucking grinning at me. I tell ya, it made my fucking skin crawl. I cuffed him, and me and my partner, Vinnie, hustled him out of there as fast as we could. You want to know something crazy? When I said he was going from bed to bed, killing those little babies one after another, that wasn’t entirely correct. He skipped some of them. It was like he was choosing between them. I talked to Detective Monroe, and he said there was no similarity between the ones he killed. You know, he wasn’t picking them based on race or gender or anything like that. He killed white, black, Asian, Hispanic, red-haired, blonde, brunette, blue-eyed, green-eyed, brown-eyed little girls, boys. It didn’t seem to matter. You know, these kind of nuts usually have a type they go for. Not this guy. But what he did say is that the ones he didn’t kill all looked the same. Black hair. Dark brown, almost black eyes.
Just like him.
Yeah. Just like him.
How has this affected you, Officer Knox?
You mean mentally? They made me go see a shrink. It’s standard procedure after something like this, but you just tell those guys what they want to hear and they clear you. But I still have nightmares. About the babies. You know what I dream about the most?
What?
That one baby. The last one he killed. The one he murdered while I was standing there, just staring at him, before I pulled my gun. I thought it was a doll. It was so small. I didn’t know it was a baby. I mean, who would think someone would do that? Who would expect to see something like that? He saw me. That fucking lunatic saw me. He made eye contact. And that’s when he first started smiling. He was smiling, looking me right in the eyes, while he wrung that little baby’s neck. I still have nightmares about that.
***
Bush Correctional Institution. First interview with Adam Horrowitz, convicted serial murderer. The date is July 9, 2014.
How are you today, Adam?
Are you flirting with me? You want a date?
What? No.
Are we going to be neighbors? Are you looking for a friend?
No.
Then let’s forget about the small talk. Agreed?
Agreed. Point taken. So, how about you just tell me about yourself. Tell me about your parents. What was it like for you growing up?
It is a cliché to blame all my crimes on bad parenting. I know. It makes me sound like I’m trying to avoid taking personal responsibility for my actions. I am not. I know what I did. I also know that I would not, could not, have done any of it were it not for my father.
My father believed that it was his, that it was every father’s responsibility to make sure his son was a better man than he wa
s. A noble sentiment, but my father took it too far. He was not content to simply provide me with a better education, a better upbringing, better job opportunities. He wanted more. See, my father was a biological engineer. Starting to get the picture? He didn’t believe that nurturing alone was the key to better parenting. For him, a better child meant better genes. So he went directly to the heart of the matter. He began “improving” my DNA, altering my genetic code.
I remember hearing him lament marrying for love. He said it was selfish. That he had failed me in this regard. He should have married the woman who would have given him the best genetic offspring. My mother was short, of average intelligence, average educational achievement, slightly above-average looks but no beauty queen. That’s where my father believed he had failed me. He thought he should have married a woman who was tall, athletic, with above-average intelligence and beauty. It was an insult to my mother, who was perfect to me, but I said nothing in her defense, and this is where I take full responsibility. I never spoke up for myself. I never told my father to stop. I let him do whatever he wanted to me. See, I didn’t want to disappoint him. I guess part of me wanted to be the superman he always told me he would make me, stronger than a locomotive, faster than a speeding bullet, smarter than Einstein. I wanted it too. Who wouldn’t? And I trusted my father implicitly.
It was not just a matter of trust. That makes me sound like some naive patsy. We both know that was not the case. The real reason I let him do all those things to me was that I was afraid, afraid of disappointing him. To say he would have been disappointed were I ever to object to one of his experiments, if I had told him I was happy with who I was and didn’t need any more “improvements” is an understatement. He would have been appalled. To him, it would have been the same as someone who was desperately poor turning down a million dollars. And I do believe that is how he saw me, at least in the genetic sense: desperately poor.
So what exactly did he do to you?
I’ll get to that. This is my story, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to tell it my way. You need to know who my father was as a person if you’re going to write my story. I could sell this story to anyone, you know? I know everyone’s curious. The whole world wants to know what I am, what I can do, why I did what I did. I get their letters. Scientists. Psychologists. Journalists. I chose you because of that article you wrote about designer genes in Scientific Discovery. It showed not just an understanding of the science but of the motivations behind it. And that’s why you have to hear the entire story, to understand my father’s motivations as well as my own, because, after all, we are co-conspirators, my father and I. In the same way Dr. Frankenstein was complicit in his creature’s crimes.
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