The Taking

with three shots even though she had never handled a gun before, though she had been shaking with terror, though three times the punishing recoil had nearly knocked her off her feet. That she had been able to stop him seemed a miracle.
        "Not far from the rose garden was an old cistern, an enormous stonewalled underground tank. They'd once had a complex rainwater-collection system that funneled runoff into the cistern to be used for maintenance of the landscaping in dry months."
        Molly had told her mother that some spirit had been with her on that awful day, an angel that could have no influence with Render but could guide her and steady her to do what must be done.
        "The cistern hadn't been used in sixty years. They left it there because the cost of tearing it out was prohibitive."
        Thalia had assured young Molly that she-and she alone-deserved the credit for her courage, for what she'd done. Angels, Thalia said, didn't work their miracles with guns.
        "Using gardening tools, I pried off the cistern lid and dropped the boy into that hole. So dark in there, and such a stench. Shallow water far below. He landed with a splash, and a chorus of rats squeaking in fright."
        In spite of her mother's well-meaning counsel, Molly believed then, and to this day, that some guiding spirit had been with her in that schoolroom.
        She felt no spirit now, however, and was inexpressibly grateful for the pistol in her hand.
        "I buried his little disposable camera at the foot of a rosebush. It was the Cardinal Mindszenty rose, so named because of its glorious robe-red color."
        Render moved, not toward her-and risk being shot-but around her, slowly circling away from the toilet stalls, in the direction of the sinks.
        "Police came looking for the boy, of course, but they took some time to find him. The rats had done their work. But better yet, the bottom of the cistern had cracked and broken out ages ago. The boy had settled into a natural limestone catacomb under the cistern. His condition, when they discovered him, didn't give the CSI techies much to work with."
        Slowly Render moved past the first sink, then past the second.
        Molly turned, tracking him with the pistol.
        "Suspicion fell on another patient. Edison Crain, his name was. A plump, sweaty little man. Ten years before, he had raped a young boy and strangled him to death-his only known act of violence."
        Second by second, the lavatory seemed less real to Molly, while simultaneously Render grew more vivid, commanding her attention, as hypnotic as a weaving cobra.
        "Crain had lived ten blameless years since then, had been a model patient, and it was thought that his cure was well advanced, that he would be eligible for medically supervised release in a year or so. But the poor troubled thing must still have been eaten with guilt over the boy he did kill, and must not have trusted his own sanity. Because when suspicion fell on him, he cracked and broke, confessed to the murder of the camera boy."
        Having circled a hundred eighty degrees of the room, Render stood with his back to the window, his feet in the puddle of rain.
        "They transferred Crain to a maximum-security hospital, and I… well, I escaped all consequences. That was fifteen years ago, but still, when I'm lying alone in bed at night, between the desire and the spasm, the memory of strangling the boy excites me no less than the first time I resorted to it for stimulation."
        Molly had been aware of a difference in him, the nature of which for a while eluded definition; but now she understood it. Render's characteristic anger was not in evidence. His hot temper had cooled.
        New to him was a self-satisfied air approaching smugness. And the intense focus of a predator. The dark amusement in his voice. A glimmer of wicked merriment in his eyes.
        Twenty years in the care of psychiatrists had resulted in the maturation of his raw anger into sociopathic contempt and psychotic glee; the wine of rage had become a more sophisticated, well-aged venom.
        "And now my questions," he said. That smile again. Almost a smirk. "Is your mother still dead?"
        Molly couldn't grasp Render's purpose in coming here. If he had meant to harm her, he could have struck her from behind instead of announcing his presence.
        "Does anyone still read the dumb slut's