CHAPTER FIVE

In his dimly lit lair, Scratch dashed frantically back and forth among the hundreds of clocks, trying to get everything ready. It was just a few minutes before midnight.

“Fix the one with the horse on it!” Grandpa yelled. “It’s a whole minute behind!”

“I’ll get to it,” Scratch said.

Scratch knew he’d be punished anyway, but it would be especially bad if he didn’t get everything ready on time. Right now he had his hands full with other clocks.

He fixed the clock with the curling metal flowers, which had fallen a full five minutes behind. Then he opened a grandfather clock and moved the minute hand just a little to the right.

He checked the big clock with deer antlers on top. It often fell behind, but it looked okay right now. Finally he was able to fix the one with the rearing horse on it. It was a good thing, too. It was all of seven minutes behind.

“That’ll have to do,” Grandpa grumbled. “You know what to do next.”

Scratch obediently went to the table and picked up the whip. It was a cat o’ nine tails, and Grandpa had started beating him with it when he was too young to remember.

He walked toward the end of the lair that was separated by a chain-link fence. Behind the fence were the four female captives, with no furnishings except wooden bunks without mattresses. There was a closet behind them where they went to relieve themselves. The stench had stopped bothering Scratch quite a while back.

The Irish woman he had fetched a couple of nights back was watching him carefully. After their long diet of crumbs and water, the others were wasted and weary. Two of them seldom did anything more than weep and moan. The fourth was just sitting on the floor near the fence, shrunken and cadaverous. She made no noise at all. She barely looked alive.

Scratch opened the door to the cage. The Irish woman leaped forward, trying to escape. Scratch lashed fiercely at her face with the whip. She cringed back, turning away. He whipped her back over and over again. He knew from experience that it would hurt plenty even through her tattered blouse, especially over the welts and cuts he’d given her already.

Then an uproar of noise filled the air as all the clocks began to strike the midnight hour. Scratch knew what he was supposed to do now.

As the racket continued, he hurried back to the weakest and skinniest girl, the one who seemed barely alive. She looked up at him with a strange expression. She was the only one who had been here long enough to know what he was about to do next. She looked almost as if she were ready for it, maybe even welcomed it.

Scratch had no choice.

He crouched beside her and snapped her neck.

As life ebbed out of her body, he stared up at an ornate antique clock just on the other side of the fence. A hand-carved Death was marching back and forth across the front of it, clad in a black robe, his grinning skull face peering out from beneath his cowl. He was cutting down knights and kings and queens and paupers alike. It was Scratch’s favorite of all the clocks.

The surrounding noise slowly died away. Soon there was no sound at all except the chorus of ticking clocks and the whimpering of the women who still survived.

Scratch slung the dead girl over his shoulder. She was so feather-light that it took no effort at all. He opened the cage, stepped outside, and locked it behind him.

The time, he knew, had come.

CHAPTER SIX

A pretty good act, Riley thought.

Larry Mullins’s voice was shaking a little. As he finished up his prepared statement to the parole board and the families of his victims, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears.

“I’ve had fifteen years to look back,” Mullins said. “Not a day goes by when I’m not filled with regret. I can’t go back and change what happened. I can’t bring Nathan Betts and Ian Harter back to life. But I still have years to make a meaningful contribution to society. Please give me a chance to do that.”

Mullins sat down. His lawyer handed him a handkerchief, and he wiped his eyes – although Riley didn’t see any actual tears.

The hearing officer and case manager conferred with each other in whispers. So did the members of the parole board.

Riley knew it would soon be her turn to testify. Meanwhile, she studied Mullins’s face.

She remembered him well and thought that he hadn’t changed much. Even back then, he had been well-scrubbed and well-spoken with an earnest air of innocence about him. If he was more hardened now, he hid it behind his expressions of abject sorrow. Back then he had been working as a nanny – or a “manny,” as his lawyer preferred to say.

What struck Riley most was how little he’d aged. He’d been twenty-five when he’d gone to prison. He still had the same amiable, boyish expression that he’d had back then.

The same wasn’t true of the victims’ parents. The two couples looked prematurely old and broken in spirit. Riley’s heart ached for all their years of grief and sorrow.

She wished she’d been able to do right by them from the beginning. So had her first FBI partner, Jake Crivaro. It had been one of Riley’s first cases as an agent, and Jake had been a fine mentor.

Larry Mullins had been arrested on a charge of the death of one child on a playground. During their investigation, Riley and Jake found that another child had died under almost identical circumstances while in Mullins’s care in a different city. Both children had been suffocated.

When Riley had apprehended Mullins, read him his rights, and cuffed him, his smirking, gloating expression had all but admitted his guilt to her.

“Good luck,” he had said to her sarcastically.

Indeed, luck turned against Riley and Jake as soon as Mullins was in custody. He had firmly denied committing the murders. And despite Riley’s and Jake’s best efforts, the evidence against him remained dangerously thin. It had been impossible to determine just how the boys had been suffocated, and no murder weapon had been found. Mullins himself only admitted to letting them out of his sight. He’d denied murdering either of them.

Riley remembered what the chief prosecutor had said to her and Jake.

“We’ve got to be careful, or the bastard will walk. If we try to prosecute him on all possible charges, we’ll lose the whole thing. We can’t prove that Mullins was the only person who had access to the children when they were killed.”

Then came the plea-bargaining. Riley hated plea bargains. Her hatred for them had started with that case. Mullins’s lawyer offered the deal. Mullins would plead guilty to both murders, but not as premeditated killings, and his sentences would run simultaneously.

It was a lousy deal. It didn’t even make sense. If Mullins had really killed the children, how could he have also been merely negligent? The two conclusions were completely contradictory. But the prosecutor saw no choice but to accept the deal. Mullins finally faced thirty years in prison with the possibility of parole or early release for good behavior.

The families had been crushed and horrified. They’d blamed Riley and Jake for not doing their job. Jake had retired as soon as the case was over, a bitter and angry man.

Riley had promised the boys’ families she would do everything she could to keep Mullins behind bars. A few days ago, Nathan Betts’s parents had called Riley to tell her about the parole hearing. The time had come for her to keep her promise.

The general whispering came to an end. Hearing Officer Julie Simmons looked at Riley.

“I understand that FBI Special Agent Riley Paige would like to make a statement,” Simmons said.

Riley gulped hard. The moment she had spent fifteen years preparing for had arrived. She knew the parole board was familiar with all of the evidence already, as incomplete as it was. There was no point in going over it again. She had to make a more personal appeal.

She stood up and spoke.

“As I understand it, Larry Mullins is up for parole because he is an ‘exemplary prisoner.’” With a note of irony, she added, “Mr. Mullins, I congratulate you on your achievement.”

Mullin nodded, his face showing no expression. Riley continued.

“‘Exemplary behavior’ – what does that mean, exactly? It seems to me that it has less to do with what he has done than with what he hasn’t done. He hasn’t broken prison rules. He’s behaved himself. That’s all.”

Riley struggled to keep her voice steady.

“Frankly, I’m not surprised. There aren’t any children in prison for him to kill.”

There were gasps and murmurs in the room. Mullins’s smile turned into a steady glare.

“Pardon me,” Riley said. “I realize that Mullins never pleaded to premeditated murder, and the prosecution never pursued that verdict. But he pleaded guilty nonetheless. He killed two children. There is no way he could have done so with good intentions.”

She paused a moment, choosing her next words carefully. She wanted to goad Mullins into showing his anger, showing his true colors. But of course the man knew that if he did, he’d ruin his record of good behavior and would never get out. Her best strategy was to make the board members face the reality of what he had done.

“I saw Ian Harter’s lifeless four-year-old body the day after he was killed. He looked like he was asleep with his eyes open. Death had taken all expression away, and his face was slack and peaceful. Even so, I could still see the terror in his lifeless eyes. His last moments on this earth were filled with terror. It was the same for little Nathan Betts.”

Riley heard both mothers begin to cry. She hated bringing back those awful memories, but she simply had no choice.

“We mustn’t forget their terror,” Riley said. “And we mustn’t forget that Mullins showed little emotion during his trial, and certainly no sign of remorse. His remorse came much, much later – if it was ever real at all.”

Riley took a long, slow breath.

“How many years of life did he take away from those boys if you add them together? Much, much more than a hundred, it seems to me. He got a sentence of thirty years. He’s only served fifteen. It’s not enough. He’ll never live long enough to pay back all those lost years.”

Riley’s voice was shaking now. She knew she had to control herself. She couldn’t break down in tears or shout with rage.

“Has the time come to forgive Larry Mullins? I leave that up to the boys’ families. Forgiveness really isn’t what this hearing is about. It’s just not the point. The most important matter is the danger he still presents. We can’t risk the likelihood that more children will die at his hands.”

Riley noticed that a couple of people on the parole board were checking their watches. She panicked a little. The board had already reviewed two other cases this morning, and they had four more to finish before noon. They were getting impatient. Riley had to wrap this up immediately. She looked straight at them.

“Ladies and gentleman, I implore you not to grant this parole.”

Then she said, “Perhaps someone else would like to speak on the prisoner’s behalf.”

Riley sat down. Her final words had been double-edged. She knew perfectly well that not one single person was here to speak in Mullins’s defense. Despite all his “good behavior,” he still didn’t have a friend or defender in the world. Nor, Riley was sure, did he deserve one.

“Would anybody like to speak?” the hearing officer asked.

“I would just like to add a few words,” a voice said from the back of the room.

Riley gasped. She knew that voice well.

She whirled around in her seat and saw a familiar short, barrel-chested man standing in the back of the room. It was Jake Crivaro – the last person she expected to see today. Riley was delighted and surprised.

Jake came forward and stated his name and rank for the board members, then said, “I can tell you that this guy is a master manipulator. Don’t believe him. He’s lying. He showed no remorse when we caught him. What you are seeing is all an act.”

Jake stepped right up to the table and leaned across it toward Mullins.

“Bet you didn’t expect to see me today,” he said, his voice full of contempt. “I wouldn’t have missed it – you child-killing little prick of a weasel.”

The hearing officer banged her gavel.

“Order!” she shouted.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Jake said mock-apologetically. “I didn’t mean to insult our model prisoner. After all, he’s rehabilitated now. He’s a repentant child-killing little prick of a weasel.”

Jake just stood there, looking down at Mullins. Riley studied the prisoner’s expression. She knew that Jake was doing his best to provoke an outburst from Mullins. But the prisoner’s face remained stony and calm.

“Mr. Crivaro, please take your seat,” the hearing officer said. “The board may make their decision now.”

The board members huddled together to share their notes and thoughts. Their whispering was animated and tense. Meanwhile, there was nothing for Riley to do but wait.

Donald and Melanie Betts were now sobbing. Darla Harter was weeping, and her husband, Ross, was holding her hand. He was staring straight at Riley. His look cut through her like a knife. What did he think of the testimony she just gave? Did he think it made up for her failure all those years ago?

The room was too warm, and she felt sweat breaking on her brow. Her heart was beating anxiously.

It only took a few minutes for the huddle to break up. One of the board members whispered to the hearing officer. She turned toward everybody else who was present.

“Parole is denied,” she said. “Let’s get started on the next case.”

Riley gasped aloud at the woman’s bluntness, as if the case were about nothing more than a parking ticket. But she reminded herself that the board was in a hurry to move on with the rest of their morning work.

Riley stood up, and both couples rushed toward her. Melanie Betts threw herself into Riley’s arms.

“Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you …” she kept saying

The three other parents crowded around her, smiling through their tears and saying “thank you” over and over again.

She saw that Jake was standing aside in the hallway. As soon as she could, she left the parents and ran to him.

“Jake!” she said, giving him a hug. “How long has it been?”

“Too long,” Jake said with that sideways smile of his. “You kids today never write or call.”

Riley sighed. Jake had always treated her like a daughter. And it really was true that she should have stayed in better touch.

“So how have you been?” she asked.

“I’m seventy-five years old,” he said. “I’ve had both knees and a hip replaced. My eyes are shot. I’ve got a hearing aid and a pacemaker. And all my friends except you have croaked. How do you think I’ve been?”

Riley smiled. He’d aged quite a lot since she’d last seen him. Even so, he didn’t seem nearly as frail as he was making himself out to be. She was sure he could still do his old job if he was ever needed again.

“Well, I’m glad you were able to talk yourself in here,” she said.

“You shouldn’t be surprised,” Jake said. “I’m at least as smooth a talker as that bastard Mullins.”

“Your statement really helped,” Riley said.

Jake shrugged. “Well, I wish I could’ve gotten a rise out of him. I’d love to have seen him lose it in front of the parole board. But he’s cooler and smarter than I remember. Maybe prison has taught him that. Anyway, we got a good decision even without getting him to freak out. Maybe he’ll stay behind bars for good.”

Riley didn’t say anything for a moment. Jake gave her a curious look.

“Is there something you’re not telling me?” he asked.

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple,” Riley said. “If Mullins keeps racking up points for good behavior, his early release will probably be mandatory in another year. There’s nothing you or I or anybody can do about it.”

“Jesus,” Jake said, looking as bitter and angry as he had all those years before.

Riley knew just how he felt. It was heartbreaking to imagine Mullins going free. Today’s small victory now seemed much more bitter than sweet.

“Well, I’ve got to be going,” Jake said. “It was great seeing you.”

Riley sadly watched her old partner walk away. She understood why he wasn’t going to hang around to indulge in negative feelings. That just wasn’t his way. She made a mental note to get in touch with him soon.

She also tried to find a bright side to what had just happened. After fifteen long years, the Bettses and the Harters had finally forgiven her. But Riley didn’t feel as if she deserved forgiveness, any more than did Larry Mullins.

Just then, Larry Mullins was led out in handcuffs.

He turned to look at her and smiled wide, mouthing his evil words silently.

“See you next year.”