85
“J
oe, are you all right?”
Foley was sitting shirtless on the floor, leaning against the wall, his left hand gripping his right shoulder, trying to contain the bleeding.
“I blacked out,” he told Aggie, who squatted beside him. “I'd be dead if Liz hadn't knocked Hoffman off stride just as she was firing.”
He looked out into the room. The storm's second round hadn't lasted as long as the first. The winds were already fading away and the occasional ray of sunlight was piercing the rain and the haze to slip into the room. But what the sun illuminated was grisly. Dominique's brains were splattered all over the floor and the bed. Police photographers were snapping pictures of her body. Two different sets of detectives were interviewing Liz and David Huntington separately.
“Mrs. Delacorte broke down in the garage,” Aggie was telling Joe. “She confirmed Mrs. Martinez's account.”
“So they really were witches,” Joe said in amazement.
“Playacting at being witches, I suspect,” Aggie replied. “The Haitian woman taught them vodou, and Mrs. Hoffman became convinced that the blood of the living could restore her precious Dominique.”
“Who didn't die on the yacht, apparently.”
Aggie shrugged. “Not if those are her brains all over the floor.” She smirked. “Either that, or she
did
die, and they raised her from the watery depths with their magic. Vodou can make the dead walk, you know. Or haven't you seen any zombie movies?”
Joe shook his head. “What a deluded bunch of fools.” He grimaced as a medic wrapped his shoulder in gauze. “So David didn't kill Rita, or any of them.”
“It was his brother and Mrs. Hoffman who wielded the knives, according to the confessions we've gotten. We've found some corpses down the hall that had been drained of blood.” Aggie gave him a sad look. “I think they're your missing girls.'
“I wish I hadn't been right about that,” Joe said.
“It's all so ghoulish.” Aggie shivered. “It'll take some sorting out to determine who killed who, but it appears that David was being set up to take the fall, at least for Rita.”
“But Rita wasn't killed for her blood. Neither was Jamison.” As the medic pinned the gauze in place, Joe winced again. “I suspect they were both killed because they knew too much, or threatened to expose the cult.”
“Coven,” Aggie corrected him.
“So many questions still to be answered,” Joe said, as the medic helped him to his feet. He waved away a stretcher that was offered to him. “I can walk,” he said.
Joe looked over at Liz. She seemed in shock, sitting on a chair, wrapped in a blanket, her eyes glassy, barely responding to the detectives interviewing her.
“Poor kid,” Foley said. “I suspect she'll never be the same.”
Aggie helped him down the stairs. Outside an ambulance awaited.
The great shining parlor below had been destroyed. Walls caved in. Parts of the roof destroyed. Trees thrust through windows. The crystal chandelier shattered on the marble floor.
Joe looked up as he passed the portrait of Dominique on the staircase.
It had survived the maelstrom, still hanging evenly in its frame.
But the beautiful face was now a skull.
86
L
iz sat staring out of the window into her little backyard in Trenton, New Jersey. The swing set she used to play on as a kid still stood out there, rusted and bent. Her mother had planted some tomatoes in a small square garden, and from the window could see the red fruit ripening in the sun. It was as if she'd gone back in time, and was a little girl again.
Except she no was no little girl, sitting there in Mom's kitchen, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea.
Mom was standing over her.
“Sweetheart, you know he's sent more roses. They're filling up the living room.”
“Give them away if they get to be too much,” Liz told her.
“You're going to have to see him eventually.”
Liz looked out the window again. “I don't have to do anything, Mom.”
“But he's here again.”
Liz sighed. “Again?”
“He's in the other room.”
“Send him away.”
Mom placed her hand on Liz's shoulder. “My sweet baby girl. I wouldn't suggest that you see him if I thought it would be bad for you, honey. Believe me. I only have your best interests at heart. Those trials were horrible. I understand why you needed to get away from all that.”
They had all been tried and convicted. Liz's testimony had sent the whole perverse bunch of them to prison.
“But Liz, you need to make peace with all that.”
“I'm scared to see him, Mom.”
“I know, baby. But you once took good care of me when I was pretty low, and I promise you I won't let anything happen to you now.”
“I appreciate that, Mom,” Liz said, reaching up and patting her hand.
“It's just that, after talking with him, I think he really loves you.” Mom sighed. “He's been here three days in a row now, asking to see you. He's staying at a local hotel. Says he won't leave until you see him.”
Liz didn't reply.
“Okay, baby,” Mom said. “I'll send him away.”
“No,” Liz said, turning to her. “All right. I'll see him. Just so he'll stop coming by and bothering us.”
Liz's mother gave her a small smile, and headed out into the living room.
Liz returned her eyes to the backyard. How simple life had been when she was very little, before Dad went away, before Mom started drinking, before the whole world seemed to fall down around Liz's shoulders. How simple life had been then, before she had seen all the horrors of the world.
David stood over her.
“Hello, Liz,” he said.
“Hello, David. Why have you come?”
“I've come to ask you to go away with me.”
She didn't look up at him. “And why should I do that?”
“Because you're my wife.”
Liz moved her eyes up to him. How haggard he looked. How pale.
“I'm not your wife,” she said. “Legally, our marriage isn't valid. Your first wife was still alive when we got married. That's the law, David.”
“But you're still my wife in my heart.”
She gave him a small laugh. “That's not the answer that would convince me to go away with you.”
“I love you, Liz.”
She looked away. “I don't know what that means.”
“You have to believe that they had placed me under some sort of spell. I didn't know Dominique was alive. I didn't know what I was doing when they sent me away. I know it sounds crazyâ”
Liz laughed. “After everything I've seen, everything I've been through, that hardly sounds crazy. That sounds utterly reasonable and logical. Of
course
you were under a spell.”
He sat down at the table opposite her. “I was compelled to leave . . . you know the police are calling it a posthypnotic suggestion.”
“But you're calling it witchcraft,” she said. “Or vodou.”
“I don't know what to call it,” he said. “But I do know that I can't blame it all on Hoffman and Dominique. I have to take part of the blame myself, for the way I walked off and left you in that house of horrors.”
Liz fixed him with her eyes.
“I was afraid,” he said. “My entire life has been spent trying to please my father. So if they somehow enchanted me into doing what they wanted me to do, it would have been a relatively easy spell to cast. It wasn't really going that far against my will to push me out of that house.”
“I saw what they were capable of,” Liz said. “Even if the police scoffed at my statements about the witchcraft, I saw the way Hoffman made the gun burn in Roger's hands. I saw how she froze me into place and nearly choked me to death with that vodou doll.”
“So you know that I acted against my will in leaving you . . .” He hesitated. “But for whatever part of that came from my own nature, I apologize, Liz. I had no idea when I married you that Dominique was alive . . . or that the witchcraft that she and Variola and Hoffman practiced was still going on. You must believe that.”
“I do. But you should have told me so much more than what you did.”
“Yes, I should have.” He looked as if he might cry. In fact, it looked as if he had been crying for days. “And so I've come to say that I'm sorry.”
Liz managed a very small smile. “I appreciate that, David. And I accept your apology.”
“So will you go away with me? Can we go somewhere and start over?”
“I don't know,” she replied, looking away again.
“But Liz, Huntington Enterprises is no more. The company didn't survive all that scandal. I can go anywhere you want to go, do anything you want . . .”
She just shook her head. “David, I told you that I don't know. That's all I can say for now. That's going to have to be enough for you for now.” She looked back out the window. “You see, David, my whole life has been spent trying to find someone who can make me happy, who can fill up the scared, empty space inside me. I was looking for someone else to take care of me, because I was tired of taking care of other people. But you, see that's not what I really wanted.”
He just looked at her, not knowing what to say.
Liz took a sip of tea before her eyes flickered back up to look at him. “I had found myself finally, before marrying you. I had set out and discovered I had dreams, ambitions, plans. I gave them up when I married you, David, because I was still thinking I wasn't any good, that I couldn't survive on my own, because I still blamed myself for my father leaving all those years ago.” She gave him another small smile. “But see, that wasn't true. That wasn't what I wanted. If I come back to you, David, it has to be because I want to, and because it fits with all the other dreams and goals that I haveânot because I'm looking for someone to take care of me. Look what happened when I thought like that.”
Still David said nothing. He just sat there looking at her. Did he understand her? Liz wasn't sure.
“Thank you for coming, David,” she finally said.
He hesitated a moment, then stood. “Whenever you want to talk, I'mâ”
Liz nodded sharply, cutting him off.
He kissed the top of her head, then headed out of the room.
In a few moments, Liz's mother had returned. She sat down beside Liz and took her daughter's hand in hers. Together they looked out into the bright sunny afternoon.