The Judas Child by Carol O'Connell

defensive again. “You’re the expert, Ali. Pedophilia is a disease of seduction, is it not?”
    “Sometimes.” Though Ali spoke to William, her eyes were on her uncle. “But it’s a one-sided affair. The child is revolted by the molestation. Isn’t that right, Uncle Mortimer?”
    He wondered what his niece was playing at, and what was the precise meaning of her unspoken subtext. He chose his words with care. “Sometimes young children exhibit seductive behavior, most often quite innocent. But I suppose one might speculate on the child’s awareness of this behavior.”
    “Maybe your patients are coloring your logic, Uncle Mortimer. One patient in particular?”
    Mortimer ignored her question and sipped his wine with real thirst. “William is right. The priest had a fair trial.”
    William Penny edged his chair closer to Ali’s. “Tell me you’re not on some fanciful mission. You don’t want to get that animal out of jail, do you?”
    “I don’t believe the animal ever went to jail,” she said.
    Two more red drops fell from Mortimer’s glass to stain the white linen, and he regarded them with a little terror, as though they had come from his own body, and he had been caught in the distasteful act of dying in public.
    “I think the monster is still out there, still killing.” She delivered this line with just a shade of anger. “I’ve got data on a lot of children. It always happens just before the holidays.” And now she stared at the wine stains on the white cloth, as though they had just reminded her of another matter. “Uncle Mortimer? I have to lecture the task force tomorrow. Any theories on the missing girls?”
    The psychiatrist only shook his head, and she went on. “No? Well, I’m guessing this pedophile doesn’t have a police record. Too smart and too knowledgeable to get caught.”
    “Most of them are never caught. Even the ones with quite ordinary brains get away with it for years—forever.” He now recalled that this had been the main thrust of Ali’s Ph.D. dissertation, and she was hardly going to forget it. Was she setting him up for—
    “True,” she said. “But this one’s far from the ordinary pervert. There’s a strong element of sadism extending beyond the victims. And he doesn’t go for the most vulnerable child—that’s another departure. He goes for the challenge—takes the girls in broad daylight. I think he likes the risk, or maybe there’s more to it. Uncle Mortimer, wouldn’t you say he was almost begging to get caught? Sound like any local man you know? Perhaps in a professional—”
    “You know better than to ask about my patients, Ali.”
    “So you are treating a pedophile.”
    “I’m not so easy to entrap.” He hastily smiled an apology to William, who had been entirely too easy.
    “Well, she made a good guess.” Myles turned to Ali. “So your man is sadistic? He’d never miss an opportunity for torture, would he? Imagine what his confession would do to the shrink he unloaded on. What fun for a sadist.”
    “A priest would be safer,” said Mortimer. “Under certain circumstances, the law can compel a psychiatrist to testify.”
    Myles shook his head. “Only a psychiatrist could really appreciate the details.”
    Mortimer kept his silence, disinclined to engage Myles, the more clever of the brothers, though less successful in his medical practice. And this was yet another bit of evidence that the world had come loose from its rational moorings. The ordinary minds excelled, and the extraordinary lagged behind. The Kendall boy once had the promise of a brilliant future, but he had become a common policeman. Ali should have been an anonymous file clerk, not a college professor with a Ph.D. And that damned priest should have grown old in obscurity. Mortimer wondered if he might spend his remaining days writing a paper on the universe pulled inside out, the reversal of reason, the death of logical progression.
    And where is the winter? He turned