Divine Evil (46 page)

The road had cut through the mountain, perhaps a half mile straight up. They'd stopped in front of a high gate. Atherton hummed along with Chopin as Mick climbed out of the car behind them and walked up to unlock the gate and swing it open.

“I've just had a thought,” Atherton said as he drove through. “You won't be using that burl now. It's a pity. I had looked forward to seeing what you would do with it.”

Clare had quietly worked the file up to her ankles. “Are you going to kill me here?”

“Why no, of course not. As Jack's daughter, you're entitled to some ceremony. I've even decided to discourage the sex rite. In honor of his memory.” He stopped in front of a small, squat cabin. “We'll make you as comfortable here as possible, until the solstice.”

“I'm going to be sick.” She slumped, keeping the file tight between her calves. When Mick opened her door, she allowed her head to loll forward. “Please, I'm going to be sick.”

“Push her head between her knees,” Atherton said as he opened his own door.

“Take it easy, Clare.” Mick unbuckled the seat belt. “I'm sorry about all of this. There's nothing else we can do.” He pushed her head down.

She gripped the file in her hands, then swung it up. Blood spurted out of his chest. He stumbled back, so her second swing only grazed his thigh. “You killed my father, you bastard!”

When he fell to his knees, gasping, she tried to struggle out of the car. Pain exploded in her head. She collapsed at Atherton's feet.

Where the hell was she? Cam walked through Clare's house for the second time that afternoon. He didn't want
to panic. She could have gone for a drive, for a visit to a friend. She could have gotten the bug to go on one of her flea-market frenzies.

Why hadn't she called?

The note he'd left on the kitchen table after dropping by the night before—and waiting two hours—was still there. Her bed was rumpled, as it always was. It was impossible to know if she'd slept in it. Her purse was there. But she often left that behind, stuffing money into her pockets and popping into the car.

Maybe he'd pushed her too hard with the sketches and she needed some time alone.

But damn it, the last time they'd been together, it had been perfect between them. He sat at the kitchen table, trying to fight off a black uneasiness, and remembering the last night they'd spent together.

Lying on the living room rug, arms and legs tangled. Bonnie Raitt playing on the stereo. A breeze, tipped with summer, had drifted in through the windows, along with the call of a whippoorwill.

“Why did you change you mind?” he'd asked her.

“About what?”

“About marrying me.”

“I didn't change it.” She'd rolled over, folding her arms on his chest and resting her chin on them. “I made it up.” He remembered how she'd smiled. Her eyes had been dark, like gold in an old painting. “My first marriage was a really dismal failure. It made me gun-shy. No—” She'd taken a breath, as if determined to be accurate. “It made me insecure. I thought I was doing everything right, but I wasn't.”

“That kind of thing is never one person's fault.”

“No, we both made mistakes. My biggest was that I didn't care enough. When things started to fall apart, I just
let it happen. Pulled in emotionally. It's been a habit of mine since my father died. It's a very elemental equation. Don't care too much equals don't hurt too much. It doesn't work with you.”

“So you're going to marry me because I messed up your equation.”

“Simply put.” She'd pressed a kiss to his throat. “I love you so much, Cam.” He'd felt her lips curve against his skin. “You'd better get to work on that garage.”

He hadn't seen her since.

Restless, he rose to walk into her garage. Her tools were there, ready to be picked up. Piles of sketches littered the worktable. Wood chips were scattered on the floor.

If she drove up now, she'd laugh at him for worrying. And she'd be right. If he wasn't so edgy, he wouldn't have given a second thought to the fact that she wasn't home. But the interview with Mona Sherman still nagged at him. He was just so damn sure he was being set up.

Mona Sherman had been lying. Or at least there had been enough lies mixed in with the truth that he was having a hard time telling one from the other. First he had to prove she was lying, then he had to find out why.

But that didn't have anything to do with Clare, he told himself. Clare was out of it. He would make sure it stayed that way.

Ernie watched Rafferty walk back to his car and drive away. Like the child he wished he could be, he climbed into bed and pulled the covers over his head.

When Clare woke, it was dark. She couldn't tell if it was night or day because the windows were all shuttered tight.
Her head throbbed, dull as a toothache. When she tried to shift, she found that her hands and feet were tied to the iron rungs of a bed.

In blind, dry-mouthed panic, she fought against the rope, pulling and twisting until the pain sliced through the fear and had her weeping into the musty pillow.

She didn't know how long it took her to gain some control. It didn't seem to matter. She was alone. At least Atherton wouldn't have the satisfaction of seeing her fall apart.

Atherton. The dutiful mayor of Emmitsboro. Her father's friend. The dedicated science teacher and faithful husband. His was the voice she had heard so many years ago, calling out demonic names. His was the hand she had seen lift the knife to slaughter.

All these years, she thought. He'd been quietly serving the town. And quietly destroying it.

Dr. Crampton. Her father's best friend, her own surrogate father. She thought of Alice with jagged despair. How would Alice ever get over it? How would she ever accept it? No one, Clare thought, understood better than she herself what it was like to lose a father.

Chuck Griffith, Mick Morgan, Biff Stokey How many more?

Ernie. She closed her eyes, grieving as she thought of his mother.

But there was still a chance for Ernie. He was afraid, and the fear was healthy. Maybe, just maybe, she could find a way to convince him to help her.

She wondered if she'd killed Mick. She prayed she had. The bitter venom of hate stirred and helped clear her head. Yes, she prayed to God she'd killed him. Atherton would have to work to explain a dead deputy.

The tears had passed and so, she was grateful, had the panic. Carefully, she turned her head to study the room.

It was no bigger than ten by twelve and smelled of stale, humid air. Occasionally, she could hear a skittering sound and tried not to think about what was making it.

There was a table and four chairs. A few cigarette butts littered the floor around them. She understood she was feeling better when she pined for a quick drag from one of the butts.

A disgusting thought but a normal one, she decided.

How the hell was she going to get out?

She twisted one way, then the other, hissing at the pain, and discovered they hadn't even left her enough mobility to sit up. Her wrists were already raw and bleeding. She had to pee.

Clare nearly succumbed to a bout of hysterical laughter and forced herself to lie still and concentrate on breathing until it passed.

The sound of a car engine broke her control again. She was screaming for help when the door opened and Dr. Crampton came in.

“You'll only hurt yourself, Clare.” He propped the door open with a rock so that the sunlight and fresh air could pour through. She blinked against it. He had his medical kit in one hand, and a McDonald's takeout bag in the other. “I've brought you some food.”

“How can you do this? Dr. Crampton, you've known me all my life. I grew up with Alice. Do you know what it's going to do to her when she finds out what you've done? What you are!”

“My family is my concern.” He set both bags on a chair, then dragged it to the bed. He hated this, despised it. Once he had wrested control from Atherton, they would go back to the pure way. There would be no more mistakes. No
more waste. “You've injured yourself.” He clucked his tongue as he examined her wrists. “You're courting infection.”

She had to laugh. “So, you make house calls to your victims. Keeping us alive for the sacrifice. You're a real humanitarian.”

“I'm a doctor,” he said stiffly.

“You're a murderer.”

He set the bags on the floor, then sat. “My religious beliefs don't infringe on my dedication to medicine.”

“This has nothing to do with religion. You're sick and sadistic. You rape and kill and enjoy it.”

“I don't expect you to understand.” In his competent way, he opened his bag and took out a fresh syringe. “If I were a murderer, I would kill you now, with an overdose.” His eyes remained patient, even kind. “You know I couldn't do that.”

“I don't know anything about you.”

“I'm what I've always been.” He took cotton to dab on antiseptic. “Like the others, I have opened myself to possibilities and renounced the so-called Christian church, which is based on hypocrisy and self-delusion.” He pushed up his glasses, then held the syringe up, squirting out a bit of the drug to test.

“Don't.” Her eyes fixed on the needle. “Please, don't.”

“I've seen great things, Clare. I know, believe me, I know that a man's salvation can't be based on self-denial, but on indulgence and vitality.” He smiled at her, but his eyes glittered with a fervor she didn't want to understand.

“This will make you feel better. Trust me. When you're calm, I'll dress your wounds and help you eat. I don't want you to be in pain or to worry. It'll all be over soon.”

She twisted, screaming, but he clamped a hand on her arm and slid the needle gently under her skin.

* * *

Time drifted, misty and dreamlike. Docile with the drug, she sat unresisting while Crampton cleaned and dressed her wrists and ankles. She even thanked him, with a blank, polite smile, when he fed her the hamburger.

In her mind she was a child again, sick with the flu, dressed in her nightgown with the dancing kittens on it. She went with him, floating, when he took her outside to urinate. He tucked her back into bed and told her to sleep. Obediently, Clare closed her eyes. She didn't feel him tie her again.

She dreamed of her father. He was crying. Sitting at the kitchen table, crying. Nothing she could do or say seemed to comfort him.

She dreamed of Cam, of making love to him on the kitchen floor, aching with need, stunned with pleasure. Her body was slick with sweat and naked as it slid over his.

Then she was tied to a slab, no longer hot with needs but cold with fears. And it was Ernie who mounted her.

When she woke, she was chilled with drying sweat. Nauseated from the drug, she turned her face into the pillow. But she was too weak even to pray

“She hasn't been seen since yesterday morning.” Cam rubbed a hand over his face as he talked to the state police. “Her house was unlocked, nothing was taken. Her clothes, her jewelry, her tools, all her I.D. are still there.” He paused to drag smoke into his already raw throat. “I've contacted her brother, her friends. No one's heard from her.” He fought against a sickness in his gut as he detailed her description. “White female, aged twenty-eight. Five ten, about a hundred fifteen pounds. Red hair, medium
short, with bangs. Amber eyes. No, not brown. Amber. No scars. She could be driving a new model Nissan three hundred, red. New York license number Baker Baker Adam four-four-five-one.”

He made the trooper repeat everything. When he hung up, Bud Hewitt was standing by the doorway. “Half the town's out looking.” Feeling inadequate, Bud glanced at the coffeepot. “Want some?”

Cam figured his blood was already ninety percent caffeine. “No, thanks.”

“You call the press?”

“Yeah. They'll be running her picture.” He rubbed his hands over his face again. “Fuck.”

“You ought to get some sleep. You've been at this for better than twenty-four hours.” Bud slipped his hands in his pockets. “I know how you feel.”

Cam looked up then. “I know you do. I'm going to drive around some more. You man the desk?”

“Sure. Hell of a time for Mick to get sick. We could use him.”

Cam only nodded. “I'll be in radio contact.” The phone rang, and he pounced on it. After a brief conversation, he hung up. “The warrant came through to check Mona Sherman's bank records.”

“Want me to take it?”

“No. I've got to do something. I'll check in about a half hour from now.”

In double that, he was pounding on the door of Mona's apartment.

“All right… Christ. Wait a goddamn minute.” She opened the door, sleepy-eyed, still tying a thin, flowered robe around her waist. Before she could speak, Cam shoved the door open and slammed it behind him.

“We're going to talk.”

“I already told you what I know.” She dragged a hand through her tousled hair. “You got no right busting in here.”

“Fuck my rights.” He pushed her into a chair.

“Hey. One call to my lawyer, pal, and you can lose that tin badge of yours.”

“You go ahead and call him. You might want to mention accessory to murder.”

Watching him warily, she pulled the robe back over her shoulder. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Ever done real time, Mona?” He put his hands on the arms of the chair and leaned toward her. “I'm not talking about a night or two in county. I mean the real thing. Ten to twenty in Jessup.”

“I ain't done nothing.”

“You made a couple of hefty deposits. Smart thinking to lock them into CD's. You're a real financial wizard.”

“So?” Her tongue slid out over her lips. “Business has been good.”

“The first one was made the day before you talked to me. The second one, the day after. Hell of a coincidence.”

“Yeah.” She reached for the pack of cigarettes beside her. “So?”

“Where'd you get it?”

“Like I said—” She choked off the words when he slid a hand around her throat and squeezed.

“I'm a busy man, Mona, so let's not waste time. Why don't I tell you how it went? Somebody paid you to throw a new scent in my path. All that bullshit about some Haitian doing Biff because he'd queered a drug deal.”

“Biff was a mule, just like I told you.”