Darling - K. Ancrum Page 0,67

of years, roughly until they turn eighteen, then he gives them a choice: to leave the city permanently or … to leave the city permanently.”

Detective Hook set down the photographs he was holding and fanned them out so Wendy could see them all at once. They were candids of street kids, all roughly seventeen or eighteen, ranging from blurry shots of grunge-kids in band T-shirts, all the way up to crisper digital pictures that couldn’t have been from more than five years ago. Wendy didn’t recognize any of the boys she’d already met, and the names at the bottom of the images weren’t any that had been mentioned tonight, either.

“These are his victims. We originally thought disappear- ances correlated with convenience as a motive, but thanks to Trevor, or well … ‘Curly’—” Detective Hook took a moment to do air quotes disrespectfully, “—we now know that it actually corresponds with their ages. He rarely takes in two older kids around the same age. Brian—‘Nibs’—would have been next to go. His eighteenth birthday is in four months.”

“Peter…,” Wendy said helplessly.

“Murders his foster children when they get old enough to figure out what he is, or properly challenge his authority,” Detective Hook finished. “The first one happened in 2002, which is why we have the mug shot of your mother, Mary Moira, now Mary Darling, one of the original witnesses. We don’t think he had a track record from before that incident, but it definitely escalated after that point.”

Wendy stared at the images silently.

“Trevor found out a lot earlier than most of Peter’s victims do. He witnessed something and passed the information on to Brian. They sat on it for a while before coming down to the precinct, but I’m sure those boys were terrified. I’d already been picking at a different cold case for fifteen years when they dropped this into my lap. A lot of kids go missing without any connection to a serial killer, so it’s hard to make a case for these victims individually. You guys get upset, run away, things like that. And even if you all get murdered, who’s to say it was the same guy? But I knew I had something with this one.”

Wendy looked at Detective Hook as he bragged about catching on to Peter instead of being concerned about the lost and missing children, and learned to hate him.

“I’d seen Peter with my own two eyes, once when he was seventeen and again when he was probably in his mid-twenties, looking like barely a week had passed. He had the nerve to smile at me and wave, just like he did tonight, that son of a bitch.” He paused as if to wait for Wendy to say something, but she just stared at him blankly.

He straightened his collar and leaned close to her. “Look, kid. I know this has been a rough seven hours for you, but it’s been a rough fifteen years for me. Do you know what it’s like to know someone’s out there killing boys? To have everyone around you keep ignoring your warnings until he straight up smashes off your hand? I know this whole thing is ‘a lot for you,’ and I respect that, believe me I do, but, sweetie: You’re not actually the victim here.

“We’ve been trying to bust open this case and bring him home to roost for months now.” He shoved the pictures of the dead boys into their folder, then opened up another. “Curly and his friends are the first lead into this group that we’ve ever had. Peter was completely untouchable for fifteen years, then out of nowhere he starts acting out, getting sloppy. Maybe he could see the difference between his families that he creates and a real solid group of good kids, and it made him lose it a bit. I don’t really know; I’ll send you a copy when we write the book on this one. But something shifted, and all of a sudden it was easier.

“Those kids down there are putting themselves on the line every day with that murderous son of a bitch, because they get it. They know what needs to be done to make this stop, and they’re the only ones who can do it.”

He pushed the folder over to Wendy. It was a stack of printouts of digital records. She scanned them quickly. Tinkerbelle was only sixteen years old. Ominotago was seventeen, and her parents had signed for her permission to help the investigation. Fyodor’s