Cries of the Children(55)

Without understanding what was wrong, Samantha lifted the child into her arms and ran back to the house with her. The dogs followed, barking in confusion. Samantha brought Julie into the kitchen, threw open the cold-water faucet, and flushed away whatever it was that had gotten into Julie’s eyes. The child struggled, but Samantha held fast. All her emergency-room training came into play as she tended to the child’s injuries. At last Julie’s screams diminished to a quiet whimpering.

Samantha hugged her close.

“Oh, God,” she gasped. “What happened?”

“The light hurt my eyes,” Julie said. “The flash—it burned my eyes.”

Samantha sat the child down and knelt to take a good look at her. Julie’s eyes were open now, but bloodshot. Samantha held up a few fingers.

“What do you see?”

“Three fingers.”

Julie was seeing all right. Samantha thanked God for that. She knew of people who had gone temporarily blind from flashbulbs popping in their faces. The little Polaroid could never have done such a thing. Why had Julie’s eyes reacted in such a way? She’d been in terrible pain!

“Close your left eye.”

Samantha checked each eye individually and found out that, despite Julie’s obvious suffering, her eyes seemed perfectly normal.

“I’m going to take you to a friend of mine,” Samantha said. “Just to be sure everything is okay.”

“I don’t want to see another doctor!”

“Julie, I think—”

“No!” Julie cried out. “I’m okay. Really, I’m okay!”

Julie got up and ran out of the room. As if nothing at all had happened, she began to romp around the backyard with the dogs. Samantha decided to let the incident pass, with plans to watch Julie’s vision very carefully.

She went back to the playhouse to retrieve her camera. Julie’s picture was on the ground. Samantha picked it up and looked at it. She’d managed to catch the young girl while she was still smiling. It was a clear picture that would certainly be of help to Detective Sherer. And it was a good thing, because obviously she wouldn’t be able to take any more pictures of Julie.





25


JOE TREFILL had to bite his lower lip to keep from swearing out loud. He was inches away from the exit to the bus, held fast from behind by a security guard who seemed half his size.

“Let me go,” he said. “I need to get on that bus!”

“You so desperate to lose your money down there that you have to knock people down?”

Trefill did not know what “down there” meant until he read the sign for the departing bus: “ATLANTIC CITY.” He was vaguely aware of crashing into someone, but he hadn’t been paying much attention. He had missed catching Lorraine by a few seconds. Now she was safely on the bus, and he was entertainment for a gathering crowd.

“Sir, I’m gonna letcha go now . . .”

Trefill didn’t cause any more trouble. There was no point in it, now that Lorraine had made her escape. But she wouldn’t get too far ahead. All he had to do was follow her. Atlantic City was a big place, but a fat little kid with black hair should be easy to spot.

He turned to walk away, and found that people were still staring at him. He wanted to shout at them, to curse them for being so intrusive, to take out the gun under his jacket and say:

Mine’s bigger than the guard’s.

But that would draw more attention, and Walter LaBerge had made him swear he wouldn’t draw attention to himself.

“Not like that job I gave you in Orlando, Joe. Remember Disney World? Remember standing up on the trolley and screaming because someone cut you off and that guy got away from you?”

Remember? LaBerge had never let him forget.

But he had a second chance now, and all he had to do was calm down and buy a ticket. Keeping his eyes fixed on the counter ahead, he pushed through the crowd. He took a quick glance behind himself to see that they had dispersed, finally realizing there was nothing left to gawk at.

He went up to the counter and pushed a bill forward.

“Atlantic City,” he said.

The man behind the glass window looked at him through wire-framed glasses.

“I can sell you a ticket,” he said, “but you missed the last bus of the night. Next one leaves seven-o-five A.M.”

Trefill’s fist clenched. The little freak had nearly ten hours’ head start!

“I’ll take it,” he said.

He paid for the ticket, then left the terminal. There was no point in spending the night in this place, among the ragged homeless and the druggies. He’d rent a room for the night, and in the morning he’d head down into Jersey. There he’d find Lorraine, and this time nothing would stop him. If he had to waste the two kids who were helping her, then he’d do it.