I almost left, but then, remembering that voice I’d heard on my way in, I went around the farmhouse, seeing a small, neglected barn around which dozens of pigeons were flying.
I heard someone talking in the barn, and walked over.
Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.
Pigeons started and whirled out the barn door.
There was a grimy window. I went to it, and peeked inside, seeing through the dirt sixteen-year-old Dylan Winslow standing there by a large pigeon coop, gazing off into space.
Dylan looked nothing like his father. He had his mother’s naturally dark hair, sharp nose, and the same dull brown eyes. He was borderline obese, with hardly a chin, more a draping of his cheeks that joined a wattle above his Adam’s apple.
“You need to learn your place,” he said to no one. “You need to learn to be quiet. Emotional control. It’s the key to a happy life.”
Then he turned and walked by the pigeon coop, running a hoop of keys across the metal mesh.
Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.
The sound rattled the pigeons and they battered themselves against their cages.
“Be quiet now,” Dylan said firmly. “You got to learn some control.”
Then he pivoted and started toward me, raking the cages again.
Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.
A disturbing little smile showed on the teen’s face, and there was even more upsetting delight in his eyes. I have a PhD in criminal psychology and have studied serial killers in depth. Many of them grew up torturing animals for sport.
Had Dylan’s father?
I stepped inside the barn. Gary Soneji’s son had his back to me again, walking away while raking the front of the cages.
Click-a-t-clack. Click-a-t-clack.
I took another two steps and noticed a large piece of cardboard nailed to one of the barn’s support posts.
There was a well-used paper target taped to the cardboard and six darts sticking out of it. The target featured a bull’s-eye superimposed over a man’s face. It had been used so many times that at first I didn’t know who the man was.
Then I did.
“Who the hell are you?” Dylan said, and then gaped when I faced him.
“From the looks of it,” I said, “I’m your dartboard.”
Chapter 12
Dylan Winslow pursed his lips in long-simmering anger, said, “If Mama would let me, I’d use one of her shotguns on it instead of darts.”
What do you say to the disturbed son of the disturbed criminal you shot in the face and watched burn?
“I can understand your feelings,” I said.
“No, you can’t,” he said, sneering. “This an official visit, Detective Alex Cross?”
“As a matter of fact,” I
said. “A man fitting your dead father’s description shot my partner in the head last night.”
Dylan’s sneer disappeared, replaced by widening eyes and that disturbing, delighted grin I’d seen earlier. “It’s true, then, what they’re saying.”