“My place,” Yale said. “That’s another reason why I have to leave. They are searching my brother’s place right now, and they’ll find my place next.” Abruptly he raised the gun and fired.
Simon swore as the bullet tore through the top of his shoulder, slamming him against a brick wall. He heard footsteps as Yale walked closer, and Simon knew it would be a killing shot. He gasped in pain and waited for just the right moment. When Yale came close enough, Simon hooked the back of Yale’s knee with his foot, then bolted upright and swung around, landing a hard right fist. The gun fired again and once more, but Yale was already on the way down. Simon kicked the gun free and stomped on his wrist, hard. With his left foot holding Yale’s wrist, Simon slammed his right knee hard into Yale’s gut and held him down.
Incongruously the yellow ball always in Simon’s pocket rolled free to land on the sidewalk beside Yale.
Yale laughed uncontrollably. “Oh my God, how appropriate. It was yours, you know? I kept it all this time.”
Simon responded by jamming his knee deeper in Yale’s gut, as he stared at the man he no longer knew. To even think the ball had been a memento of his nightmare at Yale’s father’s hand and that Yale had even wanted to keep it…
Looking up at him, Yale gasped. “Just shoot me,” he said. “I don’t dare get caught.”
“Seems like you should have been caught a long time ago,” Simon said bitterly. “It wouldn’t have taken anything to get the help you needed. Your sister was right there.”
“She’s always been there, but she knows more about what we do than any of us. She’s been trying to help us through it, trying to get us to understand what we’re doing.”
“Is she really though? If two of you are pedophiles, are you sure she isn’t one too?”
Yale laughed. “It’s our only connection to her. It’s the only connection we have to our past and our history. We do whatever we can to keep her. She’s tried to walk away from us many times, but we know how to keep her.”
“What do you mean?” Simon asked.
“Curiosity. Professional curiosity,” he said, with a chilling voice. “As long as we can keep her engaged, we’re part of her life. And that’s what we need. What we desperately need. She is the only family we have. The only family we’ve ever had.”
“So she knows what you do?” Simon asked him, his stomach wrenching in disgust.
“She knows it and questions us constantly on it.”
“How many?”
Yale shook his head. “No clue,” he said.
“Hazard a guess,” Simon said.
“Too many,” he said sadly. “I’ve known this day would come, but I didn’t know when.”
“So why didn’t you get out early?” he asked.
“Because you’re right. I’m a terrible cheater, and I need money,” he said. “I don’t have a job, and it’s getting harder and harder to keep the house. And anything I do that separates me from my brother takes me away from what I really love.”
“Children,” he said.
Yale nodded. “I never abused them, you know?” he said. “I loved them. I just wanted to keep them. My brother couldn’t do anything but abuse them. But he wouldn’t call it abuse either. He would say he loved them.”
“And that little dead girl I found?”
“Youfound her? She was my China Doll after I got her from the pedo that kidnapped her, but I think it was my brother’s idea to snatch her after he became obsessed with her,” he said, “but she was sick right from the beginning. I knew that she didn’t belong to this world. There was just something very ethereal about her. Still, I held her for a long time, and then my brother took her. He wanted her bad to replace Jason. His beloved pet of so long. He kept that boy for six months, and, after he lost him, he was so depressed that I got worried. He had my little girl only a short time before somehow he broke her neck, but I don’t think he meant to. Still she wasn’t meant for this world. I miss her terribly.”
“You’re sick,” Simon said, staring at Yale, a banked rage inside him. He wanted to blow him apart, but he still had to get information.
“I am sick,” he said. “I’m so very sick. I’m just so tired of it all.”
“Tired of what?”
“The lies, the deceit, the struggle,” he said. He looked up at Simon. “Kill me, please. Just kill me.”
But Simon shook his head. He got up off him, slowly twisted, then rolled him over and pulled his hands behind his back, biting back a groan at his own pain. “You’re not getting out of this that easy.” And he bent down, looking for something to tie Yale’s hands with, when his phone rang. He swore when he realized who it was. “I’m at Hemlock and Broadway area,” he said, “and I have one of your two pedophiles.”
“What?” she roared.