Allan Leverone - Mr. Midnight

Activity was virtually nonexistent, due in part to the lateness of the hour, but also to the fact that this was one of the most dangerous places in the city. The few people moving about were, like Milo himself, ghosts, wraiths skittering through the shadows, invisible and unnoticed by the rest of society.

Milo turned off the sidewalk, pulling his terrified young victim across a tiny weed-infested yard, the original lawn long dead, random tufts of crabgrass sticking up crazily in all directions, trash covering the ground. A rusted chain-link fence lurched at an angle, pulled partway to the ground by vandals before being abandoned as not worth the effort.

He released his prize just long enough to reach out with his right hand and pull a length of fencing toward them. The metal links had been cut away from the post, and Milo indicated to Rae Ann with a flourish that she should proceed through the opening.

She bent down and squeezed through the small space, and for maybe two seconds was actually free of her captor. Had she known exactly what was coming, and exactly when she would be pushed through, she might have been able to make a break for it, to sprint away across the desolate yard in a headlong dash to freedom.

But Milo knew she wouldn’t run and she didn’t. She was terrified and in shock, and long experience had taught him that by the time his victim recognized the possibility of escape, it would be too late.

He was right. He squeezed through the opening right behind her and then once again grabbed her possessively.

They turned down an alley, skirting a tenement similar in style and condition to his own, and within seconds were on the back side of the block, invisible to the other occupants of his building. At this hour, any witnesses would likely be so drunk or so wasted on meth or crack or LSD or bath salts that they wouldn’t even notice, much less remember, him bringing the girl into the building, but Milo wasn’t about to take any unnecessary chances. He had gone to a lot of trouble and risk to secure this playmate; he wasn’t going to let her slip though his grasp before he had had an opportunity to fully enjoy her.

They approached the ancient service entrance, the wooden dormer constructed over the door mostly rotted away by time and neglect. Rae Ann sobbed steadily, great silent heaves wracking her shoulders. Milo knew she was afraid that once she entered this building, she would never leave it alive.

He had to give her credit. She was a perceptive young lady.

He lifted his knife and pressed it against her throat in the identical spot he had used before. He placed just enough pressure on the razor-sharp tip to draw blood. A drop welled up like a tiny black marble and then rolled down her neck, disappearing under the collar of her sweater. “Do you remember what I said about screaming?” he whispered, his mouth caressing her ear like a wanton lover.

Rae Ann nodded, still sobbing but indicating she had not forgotten. “Good,” he said, removing the knife from her throat and licking her blood, his tongue caressing the bulge of her collarbone and up toward her ear. She shivered in fear but stood still.

He smiled. He couldn’t help it. He was just about there. Once inside his little den of iniquity, this sweet thing would be all his to enjoy in any way he wanted. Keeping her quiet while he played his games could be a problem, but Milo Cain was nothing if not creative. He would be able to handle that issue with no trouble at all.

He pushed open the service entrance door and the bizarre-looking couple disappeared into the darkness of the condemned building. The pitch-black darkness of the narrow hallway was all-encompassing, but it didn’t matter. Milo knew exactly where he was going.

The alley behind the condemned tenement was uncomfortable, garbage-strewn and rat-infested, but it had one thing going for it—it was secluded. And seclusion was exactly what Franklin Marchand was looking for when it came to sleeping off a bender.

Never one to keep a tight grip on his wallet even in the best of times, the last economic downturn had seen Franklin lose everything—his job, his self-respect and, perhaps inevitably, his family. Anna had called him a drunken, shiftless bum during their final blowout, then concluded the festivities by kicking him out of their home and screaming “And don’t ever come back!” through the closed front door.

Franklin had never gone back.

But even though he had forfeited most of his self-respect, Franklin had no desire to advertise to the rest of the world the depths to which he had plummeted, transitioning from successful banker to out-of-work banker to homeless, drunken ex-banker in just a few short months. So Franklin’s routine was to panhandle enough cash to buy a cheap bottle, get trashed in this nice, secluded alley he had found, and then pass out and sleep off his buzz on a pile of moth-eaten wool blankets he had stolen from another drunken bum a few blocks away while that guy was passed out cold.

Every once in a while that strange dude from the third floor of the tenement across the alley would pass by in the middle of the night, unaware of Franklin huddled behind the wooden latticework falling off a rusting iron fire escape in the darkest corner of the alley. When he did, often it was with a young girl in tow. A different young girl every time.

There was something wrong with the dude, Franklin could deduce that much even in his near-constant state of bleary-eyed drunkenness. The man carried a weapon—a knife—and almost always displayed it conspicuously for his female companion’s benefit while they shuffled past, causing Franklin to reach the obvious conclusion that this parade of reluctant young women was not accompanying the strange dude voluntarily.

And that bothered Franklin.

He was no prude, and certainly no shining beacon of righteousness. Franklin Marchand had done plenty of things he was not proud of, some of them before his fall from grace, while still making a living in the banking industry, and some after, as witnessed by the blanket thievery of recent vintage.

But Franklin was no rapist. He had a daughter of his own, pretty close to the approximate ages of the girls Strange Dude liked to parade past him at knifepoint. Granted, he hadn’t seen his daughter in a while—she’d sided with Anna in their parting of the ways and hadn’t even spoken to him since—but nevertheless she was still his child. His flesh and blood. And the thought of his little girl potentially falling prey to Strange Dude or someone like him gnawed at Franklin.

What else could the guy be but a rapist? Franklin had never actually seen Strange Dude rape anyone, had never heard a scream or a cry of protest floating through the thin walls of the dilapidated building across the alleyway, but, really, what else could the guy be doing in there but raping the girls? A man goes out at night and returns under cover of darkness, sneaking a reluctant companion into his condemned building via the seldom-used service entrance in the rear, and always with the aid of a knife to provide proper motivation.

Even worse, Franklin had never seen any of the girls leave the building afterward. It was a fact he had not given much thought to until recently, because Strange Dude invariably brought the girls into the building in the middle of the night, three a.m. or later, and by that time Franklin had usually finished guzzling his nightly bottle of Mad Dog and was ready to pass out on his stolen wool blankets. So it stood to reason he wouldn’t be conscious by the time the girls exited the tenement.

But then another thought occurred to Franklin. A terrifying thought. Why would Strange Dude run the risk of using his own place to rape the girls? Wouldn’t he be concerned that he might eventually grab one who possessed enough self-respect to go to the police afterward? And if she did, wouldn’t she then know exactly where to lead them?