Read Daddy Love for Free Online Page B

the past. To move through life
invisible at will
you had to create distractions that drew the attention of ordinary individuals.
    The ordinary individual, Daddy Love had discovered, was not so very different from a child in his perceptions and expectations.
    Hunting his prey, for instance, Daddy Love rendered himself close to
invisible
. He wore the clothing of an ordinary man, exactly what an ordinary man might wear to the mall on a weekday afternoon, to buy a few items at Sears, Home Depot.
    A nylon jacket, unzipped. T-shirt, jeans or work-trousers. Not-new and not-expensive running shoes.
    On his head, a baseball cap. But not a team cap. No discernible color, maybe gray, or beige.
    The whiskers were conspicuous, that was a fact. But the whiskers were of a pale powdery-gray color they had not been at the Libertyville Mall and the tinted glasses hiding the eyes rendered the eyes invisible and unidentifiable.
    (He’d heard, on the van radio turned low, the bulletin-news. Child-abduction-news out of Ypsilanti, Michigan. “Breaking news” it was breathlessly called. Had to laugh to hear a witness report how, in the mall, a few minutes before the child was taken, the witness hadn’t seen anyone watching the mother and child—
no one suspicious
.)
    Witnesses never get it right. Witnesses see only what their eyes see, not what is
invisible
.
    Once. Daddy Love had wrapped white gauze and tape around his (left, bare) leg to the knee and hobbled most convincingly ona crutch. An old ruse of Ted Bundy’s and immediately recognizable to an enlightened eye but the foolish trusting eye of a young mother who’d brought her eight-year-old to a playground—in Carbondale, Illinois—hadn’t recognized it.
Excuse me ma’am could you help me—I’m having trouble getting this trunk open—damn crutch gets in the way
…
    Hunting his prey at the Libertyville Mall, Ypsilanti. Here was the Midwest. He’d never have risked Ann Arbor which was where the university was, and not really the Midwest for everyone there was from somewhere else or was bound for somewhere else. But Ypsilanti was the very heart of the Midwest: a
nothing-place.
    He’d hunted his prey at the mall for several days in succession. He’d had a premonition, one of his
boys
was being prepared for him, soon.
    Both inside the mall, and outside, he’d hunted. And inside again. Mixing easily with other Daddy-shoppers for he was in no hurry.
    Kindly Daddy Love held open doors for young-mother shoppers with children. They were grateful murmuring
Thank you! Nice of you.
    Scarcely a glance at Daddy Love, as they passed through the entrance. Some of them pushing strollers and others gripping children’s hands.
    They moved on. Not a backward glance.
    Of every one hundred children perhaps one interested Daddy Love in the depths of his soul. Of every two hundred children perhaps one excited him.
    Of every thousand children perhaps one
very much excited him.
    Daddy Love trusted to the higher power that streamed through him, to allow him to
see
.
    He would be immediately alerted: a child destined to be
one of his.
    A child who required, for the salvation of his soul, not the merely adequate birth-parent, but a parent like Daddy Love.
    The hunt was thrilling. The hunt was ceaseless. The hunt was one in which Daddy Love participated,
invisible
.
    In public places: malls, city squares, amusement parks, camping sites and hiking trails, beaches. Rarely near schools, for such territories were dangerous.
    And rarely playgrounds of course. (With a few exceptions over the course of twenty-five years.)
    The best time for the hunt was late afternoon shading into dusk. Before lights came on. Before the eye quite adjusted to the fading light.
    People were tired then. Young mothers, their shoulders sagging.
    Daddy Love was quietly thrilled by the hunt. Daddy Love was not ever impatient or agitated but passed among ordinary individuals as if he were one of them.
    Except Daddy Love was not one