The Hidden Man Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  SUMMER 1980

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  TWENTY-SIX YEARS LATER SEPTEMBER 2006

  Chapter 3

  ONE YEAR LATER OCTOBER 2007

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Acknowledgements

  ALSO BY DAVID ELLIS

  Eye of the Beholder

  In the Company of Liars

  Jury of One

  Life Sentence

  Line of Vision

  G . P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin

  Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada

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  24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2009 by David Ellis

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do

  not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of

  the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ellis, David, date.

  The hidden man/David Ellis.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-14021-5

  I. Title.

  PS3555.L59485H

  813’.54—dc22

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the

  author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living

  or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and

  Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author

  assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication.

  Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume

  any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my beautiful Abigail

  SUMMER 1980

  1

  ACT NORMAL, whatever that means. Normal. Like everyone else.

  Not different. Not like a freak. Just another person at the park.

  It was a beautiful day, a glorious weekend in June, so bright you had to squint, so mild you didn’t feel the air. The playground was a perfect chaos, abuzz with children’s high-pitched squeals and whining pleas, parents calling after them in scolding voices, various playground contraptions in full animation, like busy turbines propelling the jubilant park.

  Audrey. That was the name they called her. A surge of vicarious joy, watching her, her purity, her unadulterated innocence before the world turns cruel.

  I feel like you sometimes. Like a child still. A child trapped in a grown-up’s body.

  Audrey. She wore pink overalls and a bonnet with polka dots. Her tiny forehead crinkled in concentration as she gathered the sand in her hands and watched, fascinated, as it dissipated through her fingers.

  I know we have a connection, Audrey. I know we do.

  Audrey. She looked around her, up at the sky, at the other children in the sandbox, at her mother, a range of emotions crossing her tiny little face as the toddler slowly discovered the world around her.

  “Audrey.” Saying the name aloud was dangerous. Someone might hear.

  Don’t dare get close. Her mother isn’t far away. They’ll know. They’ll read it on my face, what I feel for you.

  “C’mon, sweetheart.” Her mother scooped her up in her arms. “Sammy! Jason! Jason, get Sammy. C’mon, guys.” The boys, older by a few years, were over on the swing set. They jumped off the swings and landed with a flourish. The mother led the boys, still holding Audrey—Audrey—as she walked away.

  I will follow you, Audrey. I will see you soon.

  2

  MARY CUTLER’S HEAD jerked off the pillow. A mother’s reflex. She’d been a light sleeper since Sammy was born seven years ago. Probably some shift in the pressure in the house, some break in equilibrium, had stirred her. Probably that was all.

  Her eyes drifted to the clock by the bed. It was ten past two. Frank must just be getting home, probably reeking of alcohol and cigarettes, maybe even perfume. A brief surge of rage penetrated her sleepy haze. She wondered if she would have the energy to raise the issue.

  Her eyes closed again as she surrendered to exhaustion, one maternal ear open to external sounds as her face fit into a cool, comfortable space in a pillow, as her conscious mind spiraled away—

  Her eyes popped open. Her body stiffened. Something dark and uneasy filled her chest. Her legs slid out of the bed. She stepped past her slippers and moved across the carpet in her bare feet. An unknowing feeling of dread reached her throat as she moved down the hall and pushed the bedroom door open, where her boy, Sammy, slept over the covers of his bed.

  She crossed the kitchen toward Audrey’s bedroom and felt a breeze reach her. She picked up her pace to a jog. Before she saw the empty bed, with the covers pulled back, she saw the ope
n window, a window that had been closed when she had put her daughter down hours ago.

  She didn’t hear herself scream.

  AS HE NAVIGATED the corner in his sedan, Detective Vic Carruthers groaned. A small crowd of neighbors had already gathered around a squad car that had just pulled up outside the house. Was it idle curiosity surrounding the police presence? Or had word leaked out?

  It had been five hours since two-year-old Audrey Cutler had been abducted from her home—snatched out of her bed at two in the morning. An insomniac neighbor, three doors down, had seen someone running down the street from the Cutler house. It looked like they were carrying something, the neighbor had said, with a trace of after-the-fact apology.

  The trail had gone cold. The description was next to nothing. Medium height, baseball cap—best the neighbor could do from a distance of a football field, with the lighting weak at best. Nothing telltale from the scene. No fingerprints, no shoe prints, nothing.

  Until they had run a check on prior offenders. Griffin Perlini, age twenty-eight, lived a quarter mile from the Cutler home. He had a kiddie sheet. And not just minors: He liked them young.

  The arrests had been for sexual contact, but one had been dropped, the other convicted on the lesser charge of indecent exposure. Griffin Perlini had lured a four-year-old into the woods by a playground in a downstate town. The state had apparently decided it couldn’t prove the sexual touching, but they convicted on eyewitness testimony that Perlini had been seen pulling up his pants as the witness approached him.

  “Got a feeling about this,” Carruthers told his partner, Joe Gooden.

  They got out at the curb. Carruthers nodded at the uniform who followed in step behind the senior officers. Carruthers did a once-over. It was a ranch, like many of the places on the block. Old place with vinyl siding. Cobblestone steps leading from the driveway to the small porch. The lawn had seen better times. No vehicle in the driveway. A one-car attached garage.

  Only seven in the morning, but already sticky-hot. Gooden had a sheen across his forehead.

  Carruthers rang the doorbell and stepped back, keeping an angle that allowed him to look for movement near the windows. It came quickly, a stirring of a curtain on the east side front.

  “He’s got five seconds,” Carruthers said. If his gut was right on this, he wasn’t going to give Perlini time to dispose of evidence—or a little girl.

  He heard a small pop at the door—the deadbolt releasing—then a face that resembled a mug shot he’d recently seen, staring at him through a torn screen door.

  “Mr. Perlini?”

  The man didn’t answer.

  “Detective Carruthers. This is Detective Gooden.”

  Carruthers stopped there. Curious about the response he’d get.

  Perlini’s eyes dropped. Pedophiles were like that. Wouldn’t look adults in the eye.

  “Yeah?” Perlini said.

  “We’re looking for a little girl, Mr. Perlini. She wandered off from her house. We think she walked this way, and we were wondering if anyone took her in. Y’know, to take care of her, until her parents showed.”

  The first order of business here was to get that little girl back home safe. Didn’t matter how. He was giving Perlini an out, the opportunity to pretend that the child had simply wandered off, that Perlini had done what any good citizen might do. From Perlini’s perspective, it was a way to stop this right now, with the possibility of avoiding a criminal charge.

  Perlini didn’t answer.

  “She’s real young,” Carruthers elaborated. “Probably too young to even say her name. So we figured, maybe someone was hanging on to her. To be safe.”

  It was going to work now or never. The suspect couldn’t hesitate on the answer. Either he had her or he didn’t. If he had her, and he was going to buy this out Carruthers was offering, he’d have to purchase that ticket now.

  “I was just sleepin’.” Perlini scratched his head, gathered a bunch of his thick red hair in his hand.

  Well, you answered the door pretty damn fast for being asleep.

  “How ’bout we step inside and talk a minute.” Carruthers wasn’t asking.

  Perlini scratched his head again and looked back over his shoulder. He had a small frame. He was skinny and below-average height. The neighbor’s description wasn’t much, but it generally fit this guy.

  “What do ya say, Griffin? A quick talk.”

  “Um—well—my lawyer is Reggie Lionel.”

  His lawyer. Carruthers felt a rush.

  Perlini pointed behind him. “I could call him, but it’s early—”

  “Your lawyer needs his beauty sleep, Griffin.” Carruthers grabbed the handle to the screen door, but it wouldn’t move.

  Perlini’s eyes moved up to the detective’s, reading pure fear.

  “You’ll need to unlock this door, Griffin. Right now. Right now.”

  “O—okay. Okay.” He pushed the door open.

  Carruthers took the door handle. “Take two steps back, please.”

  Carruthers, Gooden, and the uniform stepped in. Perlini suddenly looked lost in his own house, unsure of what to do, where to stand or where to go. Carruthers thought he’d let Perlini make the call. Surely, Perlini would try to direct them away from anything telltale.

  The detective’s pulse was racing. She might be here in the house. She might still be alive. Behind him, Detective Gooden was strolling casually beyond the foyer, looking for anything in plain view.

  “Is anyone else in this house, Griffin?”

  Perlini shook his head, no.

  “Griffin, you know a girl named Audrey Cutler?”

  Perlini’s eyes were once again downcast, in anticipation of unwanted questioning, like a child expecting a scolding. On mention of the girl’s name, his eyes froze. His posture stiffened.

  The answer was yes.

  “No,” Perlini said.

  “Griffin,” Gooden called out, “you don’t mind I look around a little?”

  He did mind; it was all over his face. But pedophiles, they didn’t have a spine, not with adults. It wasn’t exactly textbook consent, but Perlini hadn’t said no. Carruthers was pretty sure he’d be able to reflect back on this moment and remember Perlini nodding his head.

  “Eyes up, Griffin. Look at me.” Carruthers gestured to his own eyes, his fingers forked in a peace sign.

  Perlini did the best he could, his eyes sweeping back and forth past Carruthers like a searchlight.

  “If there was a misunderstanding here, Griffin—if maybe you thought about doing something but changed your mind—hey, let’s get that girl back home. No harm, no foul—”

  “No. No.” Perlini shook his head, the insolent child, and gripped his tomato-red hair in two fists.

  Carruthers heard a noise outside. A voice, yelling. He looked through the door and saw a man pointing at the house, talking to a gathering crowd. Something about a child molester.

  The detective turned back to Perlini, who was beginning to dissolve. He was shaking his head with a childlike fury, tears forming in his eyes.

  “This won’t get any better, Griffin,” Carruthers told him. “Every minute you stiff-arm me, it gets worse.”

  “Vic!”

  Gooden’s voice sounded distant.

  “Take that seat over there, Griffin.” He pointed to a small living room, a beat-up love seat with a torn cushion. He nodded to the officer, who clearly understood his direction to keep an eye on the suspect.

  Carruthers moved quickly down a small tiled hallway, turned into a carpeted room with a television and fireplace, and found the back door to the place ajar. He stepped outside, into a yard of neglected grass and some old lawn furniture.

  “Vic!”

  His partner was calling from the detached garage behind the house. No—it wasn’t a garage at all, just a small coach house within the fenced property.

  “I’m here,” Carruthers said, opening the door. “Jesus Christ.”

  The room was filled wi
th black-and-white photos on the walls and hung from clotheslines. Children. Toddlers. Dozens of them, looked to be ages two or three at best. Some of them were taken indoors—maybe a shopping mall, probably the one a couple miles away. Most of them were photos from a park.

  Gooden walked along one of the clotheslines and fingered a series of photos taken of a small girl in a sandbox. Carruthers had seen the face very recently. For confirmation he did not need, he removed the photograph of Audrey Cutler from his jacket pocket, her innocent serenity lighting a deepening rage within him.

  He marched into the main house, his body on fire, his hands balled in fists. He thought of Mary Cutler, hours ago, clutching her seven-year-old son Sammy in her arms, bursting out words breathlessly as she gave a physical description of Audrey.

  He thought of that little boy, Sammy Cutler, the confused expression on his tiny face, not comprehending the situation entirely but understanding, on some level, that something bad had happened to his baby sister.

  Griffin Perlini sat motionless in the chair, his head in his hands. The officer snapped to attention when he saw Carruthers, the officer’s expression confirming the look on Carruthers’s face.

  Carruthers brushed past the officer. He grabbed Griffin Perlini by the shoulders and pushed him hard against the back cushion.

  “You tell me where she is,” he said in a controlled whisper, “before I rip your throat out.”

  TWENTY-SIX YEARS LATER SEPTEMBER 2006

  3

  PACK A MARLBORO LIGHTS, box. Make it two.” Sammy Cutler fished a crumpled twenty out of his pocket. He threw a container of Tic-Tacs onto the conveyer as well, joining a couple of frozen dinners. The grocery store clerk, a young Latina woman with soft skin and hair as dark as coal, looked as bored and tired as Sammy felt. Sammy had just finished a double shift on the new highway being built. He figured he had another month, tops, of good weather before the construction trade shut down for the long winter. He didn’t have a backup plan at the moment. Employers weren’t knocking down the door for ex-cons.

  He slipped one pack of cigarettes into the pocket of his flannel shirt, the other in his leather jacket. He noticed his hands, big and rough and hairy and swollen from another day of manual labor.