Jan Burke - Nine

“That’s where you’re wrong, you fucking idiots. I’m after you now!”

He pulled smoothly and slowly away from the curb, following at a discreet distance. He nearly lost them once, then saw that they were getting on to Interstate 40. It was easier for Frederick to hide the Bronco in the freeway traffic, and there were few taxis on it. He smiled and hummed the William Tell Overture.

The cab exited on Tramway Boulevard. Frederick stayed farther back now but had no difficulty keeping the cab in sight. When it pulled into the Sandia Peak Tramway parking lot, he kept driving. He waited, found a place to park along the road, and pulled out a set of high-powered binoculars.

The cab pulled into a passenger unloading area. As the driver got out to retrieve the bag, both Meghan and the male passenger exited. A burly man with graying sideburns-not Gabe.

The truth was instantly clear to Frederick. Meghan was going up to the mountains to this big dude’s cabin, where he was going to fuck her brains out. Obviously the guy was married and cheating on his wife with Meghan, or they wouldn’t have met behind the hotel. It was really sordid. Frederick had a hard on thinking about it.

He decided that he’d let the man take her up there, let them start to drink a little, let them get naked, and then he’d give the big old dude the last surprise of his life. For Meghan, he had many other surprises in store.

Castillo del Chapulínes Resort

Near Oaxaca, Mexico

Tuesday, May 20, 2:16 P.M.

The heavyset and graying man who called himself Gerald Majors studied the two new arrivals. He watched from the balcony of his room, where their voices had come to him as he lay thumbing through a magazine full of photos of naked young boys.

The men by the pool were German tourists, evidently. He had heard one of them call to the other in that language and receive a quick answer in the same. The young men were having drinks now, carrying on a low-voiced conversation. He thought they were probably in their early twenties. Not young enough to suit his fancy.

Majors would tell anyone who asked that he felt no desire whatsoever for sexual relations with adult males. The occasional fantasies about men were never as frequent or exciting as the ones he had about boys. His adult sexual partners had always been women, and he was, in fact, still legally married, although Regina had filed for divorce.

The problem, if you believed it was a problem-and he no longer did-was that every so often he felt an irresistible hunger come upon him, an appetite that had to be satisfied, he believed, or the appetite itself would eat away at him, would demand his attention until he could think of nothing else, do nothing else.

At first, it was a desire for sexual encounters with male children of a certain age, boys of not more than nine or less than six. As risky as that was, he had managed it. He was self-employed, and in a not-so-exciting line of work-an installer and repairer of commercial heating and air-conditioning systems who offered his services especially cheaply to low-income school districts, orphanages, and the like. He traveled for business purposes and was careful to ensure he never did anything that would make those closer to home suspect his proclivities.

The use of roofies-Rohypnol illegally obtained on occasional trips to Mexico-was a little dangerous with boys of this age, but the drug made them unsure of what had occurred and definitely prevented Majors from being identified. The actual encounter with the boys took place away from the schools. For a time he even made up employees for himself. “We’ll send Mr. Brown there on Tuesday.” If there were any questions, he would say Mr. Brown had quit without notice. But there were never any questions, so he had stopped bothering. Now the false IDs came in handy, though.

Before the trouble started, when he was experimenting in new and different ways, he realized true fulfillment was not going to come from a young zombie who had little idea what was happening to him. Acts of violence became a necessary component. The pleasure evolved and demanded greater sacrifices-first, he needed only to consider the idea. Then, he had to plan it, and the planning and anticipation were enough. Later, he needed to see their fear. Eventually, it was just better all the way around when they made the ultimate sacrifice-he found nothing could make him feel as complete as the moment of their death. It cleansed them, really, and it cleansed him, too. It allowed him to function-for a time.

Thanks to the Internet, he discovered that all along the spectrum of what he considered to be his own evolution, there were others, most of whom lacked his determination and courage. He made videotapes, and later DVDs, and sold them to carefully vetted customers. He thought of himself as a priest who performed the ritual for his special congregation-those who lacked his courage would pay to see the recordings he made of his activities, and feel pleasure. Some might find the courage to try to seek their own fulfillment because of him. This added a whole new dimension to his own pleasure.

He was a star. And he was rich. Richer than he’d ever been making rooms turn cool in summer and warm in winter. The market for his video recordings was small, but the suppliers were fewer.

For his victims, he felt not the slightest concern. Most were impoverished children, whose single parents could not afford help to find them, living in places where police were unlikely to have the means to chase him as far as he would go to commit his crimes. He was only sparing these children a future of poverty and abuse. He thought of all the children he had seen living in poverty in Mexico. He could stay in Oaxaca for a long time.

He continued to watch the German men below. If they had been wiser, the young men would have sought the shade, as he did, or taken a siesta, which would have been wiser still-if one could afford to sleep.

Majors wore only a pair of swimming trunks, but he was feeling the warmth of the day. He ran a thick, damp palm from his nipples to his navel, drying his hand on the mat of hairs that covered his chest and slightly rounded belly.

The temperature must have been nearly ninety, he thought. Warm for this mountainous part of Oaxaca. Oddly, these Germans didn’t seem to mind the heat. Their tanned and muscular bodies were nearly perfect. One of them, though, the dark-haired one, bore scars on his wrists and ankles-thin, white lines that encircled each in crisscrossed bands. Majors wondered who had restrained the boy. And with what had it been done-handcuffs? Rope? No-wire, he thought. Too thin for anything else.

Being in his line of business-his new business-one had to be wary. Every encounter with others raised questions in his mind, and he especially questioned the purposes of those who came into his orbit at this particular time in his life.

Even with his vigilance, he had been betrayed. While on a trip for his furnace company, which more and more served merely as a cover, his wife, Regina, had become convinced that he was cheating on her with another woman. She broke into his office, managed to guess the password on his computer-his reward for being a good provider and loving husband for twenty years was a wife who could do such a thing-and saw photographs that (she later told him) made her physically ill. She was too stupid to ask him about all the other things she saw, of course.

The bitch went straight to the police with the hard drive. He had missed being arrested by mere minutes. Fortunately, he had planned for making a quick escape if need be. His soon-to-be-ex wife wouldn’t get her hands on much of his money, which was hidden away in offshore accounts. Slick andP.T. were among those whose help had been invaluable. Both had too much to lose to betray him.