Annabelle Mirellin from 5C believes that Mosses was attacked by a wild animal and wonders if this could be possible grounds for suing Holly Oaks for mismanagement. She is not swayed from this belief by the fact that the door was locked from the inside and no trace of a wild animal was found inside the room.
The police, more sensible creatures than the neighbors, are baffled. But it will be days before they discover the small strand of
hair hidden underneath the dislodged carpet, and it will be months before they fully understand its importance.
***
The Smiling Man is unconcerned about this most recent development. The town of Applegate is already proving to be a distraction, and he is busy planning, plotting his next move.
He parks his white car at one corner of the street and strolls toward where the crowd of people (fifty-seven) have gathered, watching in fascination as medical personnel (four) wheel out a large gurney that carries something (one) large and bulky, hidden from view by a large, black blanket. Many have never seen this manner of death up close, one that does not point the blame at old age or sickness.
This provides ghoulish enjoyment, for the town is too large to know of the little perversions that move in villages, yet too small for its residents’ spirits to have been toughened by the crimes of cities. There is a thrill in relishing the suffering of strangers, and they hide their interest with worried faces. The dead man, Blake Mosses, had not been One of Them, and they can afford to treat him as a source of unfortunate entertainment rather than one of genuine bereavement.
The Smiling Man wanders in and out of the crowd, the dead children forced to keep up with every step. He does not bother to look at the man’s corpse, for he does not specialize in this kind
of death. His eyes are trained on a young girl who has wandered some distance away from the group. She sits on a small park bench opposite the apartment block, engrossed in her music.
The Smiling Man sets up shop at the other end of the bench, ostensibly to watch the drama unfolding on the other side of the street. He observes her when she is not looking.
“I don’t think your mother would want you watching all this,” he says after considerable time has passed.
The girl shoots him a suspicious look. Few adults, in her experience, would condescend to talk to children the way this man does with such impunity. She takes an earbud out of one ear. “Mommy’s a policewoman,” she says. “We were driving home from school when the alert came on her radio. She was the closest to the crime scene, so she had to investigate. Mommy says we don’t have enough cops in this town, so we always have to adapt. She told me to stay inside the car,” she adds, as if this was a trivial detail not worth repeating. “But it was stuffy inside.”
“That is true,” says the Smiling Man, whose interest wanes slightly once the girl divulges her mother’s occupation. “But I don’t think she’d like to hear you’ve been talking to strangers, either.”
“Mommy said talking to strangers is dangerous,” the girl admits. “Are you a stranger?”
“I live in Massachusetts,” says the Smiling Man. “So I suppose you can call me a stranger. Can you say Massachusetts?”
“Massachusetts,” says the girl. “I’m not an idiot. Are you dangerous?”
The Smiling Man laughs at her courage. “Well, it was dangerous for that man over there, wasn’t it?” he asks, sidestepping her question and pointing toward the crime scene, where the crowd surges closer, straining to see more of the dead as the medical technicians begin loading the body into the back of an ambulance. A flock of reporters (eight) swarm around the police officers (five), firing volleys of questions into the air at them like bullets. “They say he was a stranger, too.”
“That’s true,” the girl concedes. “Maybe strangers can also be dangerous to each other.”
The man laughs again, amused. “My name is Quintilian.” “Sandra,” the girl counters and adds, “That’s a weird name.” “My mother named me after a Greek philosopher.” “Mommy named me after her favorite soap-opera actress.” “Sandra is a nice name.”
“I wish she’d named me after someone more famous. Like Marie Curie. I think Marie is a nice name. Or maybe Marie Antoinette.” “Marie Antoinette had her head chopped off by a group of angry Frenchmen.”The girl is unfazed by his choice of words. “But she got to go to parties and wear wigs and eat a lot of cake. What are the names of all your other friends?”
“What friends?”“All those kids sitting on your back.”The man stills suddenly, and his smiling face changes. His gaze is now wary, and his hand slowly dips into his coat pocket and stays
there. “There aren’t any kids on my back,” he says, trying to sound like a patient adult dealing with a rather precocious child.
“I can see them. They’re grouped all around you, and they don’t look very healthy. Why are they all afraid of you?”
“What an interesting child you are, Sandra,” the Smiling Man says. “What a funny little child.” From his pocket he withdraws a folded handkerchief, sending a faint whiff of chloroform into the air. He should not be doing this so close to the police cars, he knows, but sometimes the thrill of it fuels his motivations.
“You’re quite creative when it comes to making things up, aren’t you?”
“Sandra!” a woman’s voice calls from where the throng of people is thickest, laced with a mother’s worry and panic. “Sandra! Where are you?”
This produces a most unusual change in the Smiling Man. Where his body had been tense and coiled, as if he was biding his time to spring, he now relaxes and slides back against the bench. His hand slackens, and he slips the handkerchief he is toying with back into his pocket, out of sight.
“It appears your mother is looking for you, Sandra.”The girl pops the bud back into her ear and skips across to where her mother stands, a tall woman with cropped hair and a dark blue police uniform, a tall woman struggling between a job that takes up too much of her life and a child who needs too much of her time. The anxiety in her face shifts into a cross between welcome relief and anger as she spots her daughter.
“What did I tell you about leaving the car? I told you to stay inside!” she scolds, as she brings the girl to where a police car is parked half a block away, the windows rolled down and the doors unlocked.
“I’m sorry, Mommy,” the girl says sincerely. “But it was really hot inside.”
“What am I supposed to do with you, Sandra?” The woman is exasperated. This is not the first time her daughter has wandered off on her own.
“The guy from Massachusetts and all those kids with him kept me company.”
“What guy from Massachusetts?” The woman’s maternal instincts have been triggered, knowing there is something odd about her daughter’s words without knowing why. She scans the crowd, hunting for a face that may strike her as strange or unusual.
But when her eyes come to rest on the bench, no one is sitting there. Making his escape while the cameras flash and the sirens turn on, while the door slams shut behind what is left of Blake Mosses and the ambulance speeds away, the Smiling Man has disappeared, and with him, all the dead children he has killed.