Excerpt: Der Reiter

Harold Mumford had an ideal life. Every morning he kissed his wife Joanne before hopping into his Volvo and heading to work, leaving her the minivan in case she needed to cart the kids somewhere. He loved his job, loved his suburban life, loved the year of paid family leave he got when his wife went into labor back in August of last year.

That leave had run out in more ways than one but he was ready to go back to the office now. His wife could handle their seven children for one day before the nurse arrived tomorrow to start caring for them—a nurse hired by Harold's company and paid for by raising the cost of all merchandise the company sold by a penny. The buying public had no hesitation about paying the microscopically higher price after all the television coverage of the birth; on the contrary, the company was selling more products than ever before. Joanne was revered as some kind of maternal paragon after refusing to permit the doctors to remove any of the six fetuses she'd carried in hopes of guaranteeing better health for the remainder. Three of the children had been born with severe birth defects as a result of her decision, but the swooning tv audience could only admire her for accepting the responsibility of raising three kids with cerebral palsy and mental retardation—a responsibility soon to be shifted to a hired nurse.

Harold's wife had only conceived after their doctor recommended fertility drugs to compensate for Harold's blocked epididymis. They'd already had one child—a beautiful little girl—but one child wasn't enough for the loving couple. At first Harold had been concerned when the doctor informed them they'd be having sextuplets, but decided to place it in God's hands. God didn't fail him. A number of donations poured in as the feel-good story attracted the attention of the media—donations both from manufacturers of baby supplies as well as from individual whitebread Americans who firmly believed there could never be too many white babies in the world. There was, of course, the expected outcry from the black community since Pampers, Gerber's and K-mart hadn't offered any perks to a black welfare mother who'd recently given birth to quintuplets conceived without the help of any fertility drugs.

Justice came from another quarter, however, as 'Jack' had little interest in the welfare mom and set his sights on Joanne instead, waiting for her husband to leave in his Volvo like always. The killer was familiar with the area and was hoping to move into the neighborhood soon. Rumor had it there was a cop living somewhere on this street, and Jack loved to tempt fate. With all the media attention the Mumfords received it was an easy thing to case the place and learn their routines. One more bystander waiting around for a glimpse of the happy family had barely been noticed.

All the children were home, but the oldest was only three years old. The others were barely a year and four months, and in any case children made poor witnesses so the killer wasn't particularly concerned. After Harold went to work, Joanne played with the children in the nursery. The room had been well-designed for kids, with thick wall-to-wall carpeting to prevent injuries from falls as well as safety covers on all the electrical sockets, a child safety fence blocking the doorway and many other common sense features. The wide screen tv in the bookcase was playing a Disney DVD when Joanne was suddenly startled by a loud noise in the master bedroom.

"Honey, did you forget something?" she yelled from the nursery, reluctant to leave the children alone while she checked it out. Strange, Harold's car hadn't made a sound when he'd pulled back into the driveway. There was quiet in the house for a few minutes, and then another loud crash made her jump. "Courtney, why don't you go see what Daddy's doing, will you, Sweetie?" Joanne lifted the three-year-old over the little safety barrier spanning the doorway so the child could run down the hall.

"K, Mommy!"

When the little girl hadn't returned close to ten minutes later, Joanne began calling her name over the sound of Piglet bemoaning some missing hunny. "Courtney? What's Daddy looking for?" The only response was the sound of breaking glass, like a vase crashing to the floor. Perhaps a figurine. She'd have to clean it up before Courtney cut her feet; Harold needed to get to work and he wouldn't have time. Joanne placed the sextuplets in their specially designed, oversized playpen before stepping over the safety barrier and heading for the master bedroom.

"Harold? Courtney?" It was odd that neither of them could hear her, but she wasn't alarmed until she stepped into the bedroom. A trail of blood spatters led from just inside the door into the bathroom where the killer had unceremoniously dumped the child's body in the tub after slitting her throat soon after the little girl had skipped into the room. Joanne would never know that, however. Joanne's first thought was that Courtney had stepped on the broken glass and cut her feet, and then Harold had taken her into the bathroom to bandage them. She was about to follow the blood trail into the bathroom to find out what had happened when she was grabbed from behind by someone wielding a chloroform soaked rag. The killer had deliberately shattered some of her glassware hoping to lure her into the bedroom, but she'd never know that now either.

When the story broke the next day, Harold would be the most pitied man on the planet and the donations would include a new house and a free college education for each of his remaining children. Joanne and Courtney Mumford would be immortalized as the first victims of a horrific new serial murderer—at least until the press discovered the previous victims. The police would be criticized for sitting on the story instead of informing the public that a maniac was loose, and Edison would get a severe chewing out for not preventing a murder in his own backyard.

He would also be getting a new neighbor.

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