Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

BLOOD AND SUNSHINE

BY ADAM MEYER

Most people don’t believe in pure evil, and neither did I until I met five-year-old Dylan Brewster.

Before I ever laid eyes on Dylan, I saw his nanny. She was barely older than I was, clearly much too young and pretty to be anyone’s mother. Her lush blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail, her toned arms pushing a heavy stroller. A few-months-old baby in a pink onesie was strapped inside.

“Can I help you?” I asked, trying for a mix of helpful yet suave. Not easy when your hands are covered with finger paint and you’re wearing a yellow T-shirt that says SUNSHINE SUMMER CAMP.

“Is this the Dolphin room?” she asked, turning back as if she’d lost something, or someone. About halfway down the hall I saw him: a small, dark-haired boy with his head stuck in one of the cubbies that lined the hall. “Dylan! Come over here, please.”

He did, and there’s no denying he was awfully cute. Long, straight hair cut in a neat line over his forehead, and a nose that looked like a button in a snowman’s face. He wore plaid sneakers so small I could’ve swallowed one whole.

“Hi, Dylan,” I said, kneeling down to look him in the eye. “I’m —” But he marched past me and into the classroom where the rest of the Dolphins were busy playing. This was midmorning during my third week of camp, but it was the first time Dylan had come.

“Sorry we are late,” the nanny said, and there was a precision in her words that hinted at a faint accent. “We had some trouble getting out today.”

“Trouble?”

The nanny glanced down at the baby in the pink jumper, then at Dylan. “Sometimes he acts a little” — she wriggled her fingers, searching for the word —“a little crazy.”

“That’s okay. I act a little crazy myself sometimes.”

At first I wasn’t sure she got the joke, but then she smiled. “I’m Britta.”

Before I could get my name out, Rebecca bellowed it from behind me. “Eddie! Where on earth have you — oh.” The frown on her face dissolved as soon as she saw Britta. “You must be Dylan’s caretaker.”

Britta nodded and Rebecca put on one of her biggest, phoniest smiles. She was in charge of the group and I was her assistant. She was pretty old — early thirties, at least — and a full-time kindergarten teacher, which seemed to require that she speak to virtually everyone as if they had the intelligence of a five-year-old. Especially me.

“Eddie, why don’t you go in and get the morning snack ready. Would that be all right?”

I glanced at the wall clock — it was half an hour before our usual snack time — but I didn’t argue. She clearly wanted to get rid of me, and maybe even embarrass me in front of Britta.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, saluting Rebecca. She didn’t look amused, but Britta did, and that was even better. I washed my hands, then slipped back into the room and saw the dozen boys and girls in our Dolphin group hard at play. Some had clustered in the toy kitchen, and others finger-painted at the child-size tables. The last few kids were in the corner stacking wooden blocks into what looked like a fort.

Dylan stood to one side, watching the block builders. I crouched beside him, lining up plastic cups for apple juice.

“We’re glad to have you here at camp with us,” I said. “Have you had a good summer so far?”

“I went on a trip.”

“Oh, yeah? Where’d you go?”

His eyes narrowed, his gaze still on the kids with the blocks. “Ug-land.”

At first I wasn’t sure what he meant. And then I got it: England. “Was it fun?”

He shrugged. “It’s far.”

“It sure is.”

I was from Queens and had never been farther than Newark. It burned me that kids like Dylan got to take trips overseas they didn’t appreciate while I worked all summer just to cover the cost of college textbooks. But that was how it was. Upper West Side kids like Dylan had nannies and European vacations and summer camp, and kids in Astoria didn’t.

“You want to help me pour the juice?” I asked.

“I wanna build a galley,” Dylan said.

I wasn’t sure what a galley was, but I let that go and unscrewed the top of the juice bottle. “Sure, go build whatever you want. I’m sure the other kids will let you play with them.”

“I wanna do it myself.”

I sharpened my tone. “Dylan, we all have to play together here. But if you ask nicely —”

Clearly Dylan had no intention of asking, nicely or otherwise. He was already headed right for the play area, and by the time I’d put down the apple juice and gotten over to him, it was too late. He had stomped right through there, blocks tumbling down and flying every which way.

Amber — one of the block builders — threw up her hands, showing off the Band-Aids stuck to each of her elbows. It was lucky the falling blocks had missed her because she always seemed to be getting hurt. “He knocked down our house.”

“That’s not very nice,” I said, pointing a finger at Dylan.

At first, he looked defiant, and then his face crumpled and tears appeared. “They said I couldn’t play with them.”

“Now, that’s not true,” I said. “You just went right over and —”

“Enough,” Rebecca said from behind me. I turned around. She looked sharply at me and then put on a smile, her mood changing as abruptly as Dylan’s. “It’s cleanup time, everyone.”

The kids grumbled, but then Rebecca held up a bag of sugar cookies, and that got them motivated. “Maybe you should finish pouring the juice now,” she said to me, using the same tone she had with the kids. I grabbed the juice bottle and glanced over at the doorway.

Britta was there. Her big blue eyes were aimed at me, and I smiled, but she missed it and focused on Dylan, who watched the other kids clean up while he stood by, doing nothing. Britta turned from him, her expression hard to read. It was only when she wheeled the stroller away that I recognized the emotion.

It was relief.

THE SUNSHINE SUMMER Camp was housed on the top two floors of a private elementary school on Central Park West and Seventy-Fourth Street. We had everything an urban camp for little rich kids needed: a rooftop swimming pool, an indoor playground, and classrooms chock-full of educational toys and games. A far cry from the Boys’ Club camps where I’d spent the summers of my early years, and a relatively easy way to make some cash before I headed back to Binghamton in the fall.

Or at least it had been, until Dylan showed up.

My next run-in with him happened during afternoon nap time. All the kids gathered their blankets from their cubbies and spread them out through the classroom while I stood watch. Rebecca had gone to lunch.

The kids were supposed to lie down without talking or moving, which of course isn’t easy when you’re five. Unlike Rebecca, I tried to be understanding when they began to stir. First Amber raised her Band-Aided elbow and said, “I’m thirsty.” Then Michael, who would wear only green socks, complained that Royce had kicked him. No surprise there. Royce never stopped moving, even when he was flat on a blanket half asleep.

After settling everyone down, I put on a CD, Peter and the Wolf. As the gentle music filled the room, the children seemed to relax. I did too. I pulled out my cell phone to check my e-mail — a no-no with Rebecca around, but she wasn’t there — and I saw a movement from the corner of my eye. Dylan was upright, gathering a stack of blocks from the shelf beside him.

The other children watched, wide-eyed. Royce leaped up, eager to get in on the action. “Can I play too?”

“Nobody’s playing,” I said, storming over to Dylan’s blanket.

But he didn’t seem to hear me. He continued to pile up the blocks, one after the other, making a tower as high as the table beside him. Then he added a long block and balanced it across the top, the tower threatening to topple.

I snatched away this last block and glared. “Put these back.”

“I don’t want to.” There was no anger, just a simple declaration.

“If you don’t, you’re going to have a time-out.”

This was a punishment the kids dreaded as much as losing pool time. But Dylan was unfazed. He reached out to the shelf and found another block the same length as the one I had just taken away. He added it to the top of his column of blocks to form what looked like an upside-down L.

“See, it’s a galley.”

I had no idea what he was talking about and I didn’t much care. Besides, I felt the eyes of all the other kids on me. If I didn’t establish authority over Dylan, and fast, they’d think I was a pushover.

“You need to listen to me,” I said firmly. “No playing during nap time.”

He looked up with eyes as dark as charcoal. “But my galley isn’t done.”

“Trust me, it is,” I said.

Music swelled from the boom box, the soaring violins that represented the wolf’s arrival. Dylan smiled then, as though he knew something I didn’t, and it made me so angry I started to pull my hand back. I wasn’t really going to hit him, of course, it was just my anger getting the best of me. And then I heard the door open.

When Rebecca walked in, my hands were back at my sides, and Dylan looked at her. “Eddie and I made a galley.”

“That’s very nice,” she said, but the look on her face was stern. “But Eddie knows there’s no playing during nap time.”

“Of course I know that, but —”

Rebecca gave me a sharp look that said she didn’t care what I had to say and shook her head. Disappointed. Dylan had made a fool out of me once more, and I didn’t much like it. But then, it was my own fault. I promised myself that I wouldn’t let him take advantage of me again.

DYLAN WAS ON his best behavior for the rest of that week, at least until the encounter with the ice vendor. It was a Friday, and the promise of the weekend was bright — I’d finally have some time with my old high school friends and away from camp. I stood on the hot Manhattan sidewalk, the sun crisping my skin. There were kids all around, being herded by their mothers and nannies.

A middle-aged street vendor was selling Italian ices in paper cups. I waited in line behind some of the campers and then ordered a pineapple ice. I’d just taken my first lick when I heard a familiar voice. Britta. She was calling after Dylan, who’d stormed toward the ices cart. She was a dozen feet behind him, struggling to push the stroller over a large sidewalk crack.

“Tell the man what you like,” she said, wheeling up to the cart.

“Chocolate,” Dylan said.

“No chocolate,” the vendor said in what was barely English. “You want grape?”

Dylan closed his hands into fists. “No, I want chocolate.”

The vendor looked at Britta with concern. He didn’t want to be the cause of a full-fledged tantrum in the middle of Seventy-Fourth Street. “No chocolate.”

I glanced at Britta, who looked like she was about to have a meltdown of her own, and then at Dylan. “I’ve got pineapple. It’s pretty tasty. You want to try some?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Go ahead. I think you’ll like it.”

I held out my soggy paper cup. Dylan took it and lapped up a mouthful of pineapple ice.

“It’s good,” he said, surprised. “I want one of these.” Instantly, the vendor began to scoop pineapple ice into a cup. Britta gave me a look of pure gratitude.

“Thank you.”

“Of course. Anything to help.”

“How has he been doing?” she asked quietly, adjusting the bonnet around the doughy face of Dylan’s baby sister. Dylan was a few steps away.

I shrugged, playing coy. “Pretty good, mostly. What’s he like at home?”

She shook her head sharply, which I took to mean Don’t ask. I wanted to know more, but just then Dylan inserted himself between us, still sucking on my pineapple ice. He looked sharply at Britta.

“He won’t let me make my galley.”

I smiled. “Yup, I’m Mr. Mean, all right.” I tousled Dylan’s hair and leaned in closer to Britta. She smelled of baby powder and suntan lotion and looked as beautiful as any girl I’d ever seen. “What’s this galley he keeps talking about?”

She turned away, and I couldn’t tell if she didn’t know or if she felt this wasn’t the moment to tell me. I wanted to press her further, but I didn’t have the chance. Something cold and sticky began to dribble onto my leg, and I saw that Dylan had turned over the paper cup and was pouring pineapple ice on me.

“Goddamn it, what the . . .” Glancing at Britta, I let the anger sputter out, smiling instead. “Lost your grip, huh, little guy?”

Dylan said nothing, just let the paper cup fall to the ground. He reached out to the vendor to take his own cup of ice and began to lick it with relish.

“I’m so sorry,” Britta said. “Let me buy you another one.”

“No need,” I said, and I was about to say Why don’t you make it up to me by going out with me sometime, but then the baby started to squawk. I noticed that Dylan was beside her, one hand around his ice, the other inside her stroller. He must’ve pinched her or hit her and made her cry.

You little bastard, I thought, but I kept that smile right on my lips, still sticky from pineapple ice.

“Let’s go,” Britta said, spinning the stroller away from me. As I watched them head down the sidewalk, Dylan looked back, only once, a faint smile on his lips.

EARLY THE NEXT week, a heat wave settled over the city. Temperatures soared into the high nineties, and the humidity was off the charts. The kids moved sluggishly through our barely cool classroom, and even Royce hardly stirred during nap time. No one showed any signs of energy all day until it was time to go up to the pool.

The aboveground pool sat on the rooftop and was filled with just enough water to reach most kids’ chins. There was an area on the far side of the roof for those who didn’t like to swim, with a sprinkler and a sandbox. Rebecca and I switched off which of us went in the pool, and that day was my turn.

She sat on a wooden picnic bench beside a mound of towels, wiping sweat from her face. I couldn’t help but smile. Although the water only came up to my belly button, it was deliciously cool.

“Look at me,” squealed Amber, whose soggy Band-Aids hung from her elbows. “I’m going underwater.”

She ducked her face at the surface, went just deep enough to splash her nose and some of her round cheeks.

“That’s great,” I said. “Do you want to maybe try putting your whole head under?”

“No.” Amber giggled. “That’s too scary.”

“You want to see scary?” I asked, ducking underwater and sticking my elbow up like a shark fin. Amber splashed away, giggling. When I rose, Dylan tugged at my leg.

“You want to see me swim?” he asked.

Dylan was like a little duck, one of the few kids who could swim. Dutifully, I watched him churn across the pool as I tossed a beach ball back and forth with Amber and a couple of the other kids.

After a few minutes I got tired of Dylan’s swimming and turned away. “You’re not watching,” Dylan whined, and Amber threw the ball at me again but missed.

The ball drifted toward Dylan. He grabbed it and hurled it over the side of the pool, onto the roof.

Amber leaned out. “Hey, someone get the ball!” But everyone else was on the far side of the roof, out of earshot, including Rebecca.

“I’ll get it,” I said, going right for the ladder since I was closest. I didn’t even think about it, really. It wasn’t a big deal. I’d have my hands on the ball in five seconds and be right back in the pool. What could possibly happen?

My feet had barely touched the hot rubber that covered the roof when I heard a shriek from behind me. At the sandbox, Rebecca had whirled and spotted me outside the pool. Anger crossed her face.

“Who’s watching the kids?” she shrieked.

I was halfway up the ladder when I saw Dylan holding Amber’s head underwater, her hair floating like kelp. I broke the surface with a crash, landing inches from the two kids. Dylan let go of Amber instantly and swam away.

I picked her up, wiped tendrils of hair out of her face, and made sure she was breathing okay. I felt Dylan brush by my legs, circling like a piranha.

“Shhh, it’s okay,” I told Amber, leaning her against my shoulder. But she just cried, rubbing her eyes with her hands. The wet Band-Aids had fallen off her elbows.

“You are in very serious trouble,” Rebecca said, and Dylan and I both looked up at once. I didn’t know if she meant me or him.

APPARENTLY SHE’D MEANT me. “That’s goddamn unacceptable, leaving those kids in the pool alone.” I’d never heard Rebecca curse before. Of course at the moment, our kids had gone off with another group, so we were alone by the pool. “Somebody could’ve drowned in there.”

“Yeah, like Amber,” I said. “But only because Dylan was holding her underwater.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. The kids were horsing around, that’s all. Which would’ve been fine if someone were supervising.” She shook her head at me. “This is it, your last free pass. Don’t screw up again.”

I nodded and went to the bench where I’d stashed my clothes. As I started to slip on my sneakers, I noticed that one of the laces was gone. I looked around inside the sneaker and under it, but I couldn’t find the lace. Was this some trick the kids were playing on me? But I didn’t have time to dwell on it. I had only fifteen minutes until afternoon snack.

I STAYED IN the city after work that day and saw a movie, a comedy. I was glad to get some laughs, but my good mood didn’t last. Soon I was standing on the sweltering subway platform, my anger starting to resurface. Then I noticed a familiar figure at the edge of the platform. Britta.

“How’s the nanny business?” I asked.

She smiled when she saw me, and my bad mood disappeared again in an instant. “Pretty good.”

“Seems like a tough job. Dealing with Dylan, I mean.”

She opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. After a moment, she said, “He’s . . . how do you say it? Hands full?”

“Hands full is right,” I said, and we both laughed. “How long have you worked for his family?”

“Three months. My friend worked there before me. She told me not to take the job, but . . .” She shrugged. “I need the money.”

“Tell me about it.” I looked down at the end of the platform, then back at her. I wanted to find out more about Britta, who she was and where she came from, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Dylan. I was still haunted by that image of him holding Amber’s head underwater. “Have you ever wondered if he might be . . . dangerous?”

I thought about a case we’d studied in criminal justice during spring semester, involving two seven-year-old boys who had murdered a toddler. We discussed whether they should be punished as severely as teenagers, or even as adults, despite their age. Their attorney had argued they were too young to know what they had done and should be released, but the court disagreed. The boys were sentenced to juvenile detention until the age of twenty-one, which some of my classmates thought was extreme.

Not me. I believed they were stone-cold killers. They wouldn’t stop. As soon as they got out, they’d just do it again.

“Dangerous? No, not little Dylan.” Britta shook her head emphatically, but there was uncertainty in her eyes.

A train rumbled at the edge of the tunnel, its headlights blasting through the dark. I turned to Britta.

“So I was thinking . . . do you want to get together sometime? For coffee? We could even talk about something besides Dylan.”

She smiled, beaming at me. “Yes. I would certainly like that.”

AFTER THE POOL episode, Dylan was on his best behavior for the next two days, and I started to think that maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad kid, and I had just overreacted.

And then there was the incident with the Star Wars figures.

Kids weren’t supposed to bring their own toys to camp, but I didn’t see it as any big deal. He’d brought them out of his cubby during afternoon playtime, and since Rebecca hadn’t noticed, I didn’t say anything.

“This is me,” he said, holding out an Anakin Skywalker figure. “And this is you.”

Apparently I was Darth Vader.

When I reached for the figure, Dylan pulled it away. “Huh-uh,” he said with a fake babyish voice. “It’s mine.”

He sat at one of the tables and moved the figures across an imaginary starscape. Ignoring him, I let myself get drawn into the kitchen area by Amber, who served me an imaginary breakfast of pancakes and ice cream. “Delicious,” I said, spooning it up.

And then I heard Dylan call my name. “Eddie! Eddie!”

I looked over but all I saw was Royce jabbing his paintbrush furiously at the easel, creating a splotchy mess, and Michael painting a picture of a dog the exact same shade of green as his socks.

“Eddie!” I heard for the third time, and when I finally saw him, I was shocked.

Dylan had built his favorite shape, the tall tower with a single long block on top, only this time he had added something else to it. My missing shoelace. Dylan had tied one end of it along that top block and the other end of the lace hung down, forming a makeshift noose around the Darth Vader action figure.

“You’re on my galley,” he said, smiling.

And I thought: gallows. He’s been saying gallows. He must have learned about them on his family vacation to England, during a visit to some medieval castle or other. Now instead of a fort or a spaceship or anything a normal kid would create, the little son of a bitch was making a gallows, just so he could threaten me.

I charged across the room, my arm pulled back, and Dylan flinched as though he thought I might hit him. I didn’t. Instead, I swatted the blocks aside, watched them scatter across the floor. A couple of the pieces flew toward the easel and landed at Royce’s feet. He stared at me in utter shock. Rebecca whirled and stared at me. But I ignored her and looked right at Dylan.

“You knocked down my galley,” he said, his lower lip starting to quiver.

“Yeah, well, fuck you and your goddamn galley.”

I was about to say more when Rebecca stomped over, kicking aside one of the fallen blocks. “Eddie, get your stuff and go.” That was all she said, that I was fired.

When I got down to the lobby, I went into the bathroom and splashed cold water on my face and then ducked into a stall, where I tried to throw up. But I couldn’t. I was angry and confused. I went through it all, trying to imagine what I should have done differently, but I knew that things had had to end like this. Dylan had made sure of it.

I sat in the stall for an hour, maybe more, and tried to calm myself down. Dylan was dangerous. He was sick, truly sick. At least I wouldn’t have to see him again, but what about Britta? What if he tried to hurt her to get back at me? Or one of the kids I really cared about, like Amber?

I couldn’t allow that. I wouldn’t.

I slipped out of the bathroom, but instead of going for the exit, I ducked into the shadows of the sprawling lobby. Behind me, the basement door had been propped open and I stepped inside the stairwell and peered out from there. I heard the murmur of restless adults waiting for the elevators to come down. Through the faint noise, I soon heard the voices of eager campers, including some of mine: Amber and Michael, Royce and Cory.

I stepped out from the shadows and saw Britta leaning wearily on the baby stroller and talking to Rebecca. I wanted to wait for Rebecca to go away so that I could explain to Britta what had really happened with Dylan. I felt sure that she would understand.

In the stroller, Dylan’s sister opened her mouth in a wide O and began to wail. Britta fumbled around in the stroller, opening and closing zippers, muttering. Finally, she found a bottle and stuffed it in the baby’s mouth.

“Let’s go,” Dylan said, tugging at Britta’s hand. “I want an ice.”

“Just one minute,” she said, turning back to Rebecca.

Dylan began to push his sister’s stroller in circles around the lobby. Britta watched casually, listening to Rebecca, nodding. I wondered what kind of lies my former boss was telling her. Would Britta even want to go out with me after what she’d heard?

Dylan wheeled closer to me. It was almost as if he knew I was there. But no, he must not have, because he jumped when I put a hand on his shoulder.

“You think you’re so smart, don’t you, you little shit.”

Dylan was as solemn and obedient as if he were standing in a church pew.

“I am smart,” he said.

“Not as smart as me.”

I hadn’t thought about what I would do next, not really. It just happened. I grabbed the stroller from Dylan and started walking, looking down at the baby cocooned inside, sucking on her bottle, swinging her tiny fists, Dylan must have looked like that once too, I thought, so helpless and small. No one ever would’ve suspected what he would someday become.

“Where we going?” Dylan asked in surprise as I wheeled the stroller through the basement door.

“You’re going away, my little friend,” I said, and then the baby dropped her bottle. It rolled into the corner of the stairwell and she started to scream, but only for a moment. I had no choice but to act, so I did. I pushed. The whole thing took maybe three or four seconds and then the baby was quiet, the sound of Dylan’s tears filling the void.

I don’t know what happened next. I was already gone, out the service door, then walking calmly down the sidewalk. But I imagine that Britta and Rebecca ran over, and so did everyone else who was there, and they all covered their mouths in horror. I see the baby lying at the bottom of the basement stairs, covered in blood, head cracked open like a coconut. Dylan must’ve stared down at her in disbelief as Britta shook him by the front of his shirt and said, Why did you do this?

No, it was him.

It was who? Rebecca would have asked.

Eddie did it. Eddie, not me! He pushed her, he hates me, he did it! But as everyone knew, I had left camp at least an hour earlier. The police interviewed me several times, but they weren’t suspicious. Dylan was the guilty party. Of course, no charges were filed, since Dylan was only five and no one could — or wanted to — prove that he had purposely pushed the baby down the stairs. It was probably just an accident. Some blamed the janitor who’d left the basement door propped open, while others blamed Britta for not watching the kids more closely.

I went back to college that fall and I met a girl, one even prettier than Britta, and joined a fraternity. I had a lot of friends and a good life and whenever I thought about Dylan, I felt a little sadness mixed with relief.

Dylan’s story got lots of coverage in the papers. I read that he was hospitalized for a while and faced a barrage of psychiatric tests and behavioral evaluations. They must have prescribed him tons of pills. Someone who saw Dylan on the street three or four years later told me he was like a walking zombie, so drugged up that he wasn’t capable of hurting anyone. Not even himself.

I also heard that no matter how many times Dylan was asked, he wouldn’t admit to pushing his sister down the stairs. That’s too bad, because, as I’m sure someone must have told him, confession is good for the soul.