Divine Evil (47 page)

“I figure he moved it, all right. That's about all he had the brains for. The rest is shit. Now tell me who paid you to talk to me.”

“I came to you on my own. I wanted to help is all.”

“You wanted to help.” He stood back, then kicked over the table. The lamp crashed to the floor. “You wanted to help,” he repeated, shoving her back when she tried to dart out of the chair. “They didn't tell you about me, did they? About this problem I have. I was a cop down in D.C. for a long time. Had to give it up for a nice quiet job in a small town. Know why?”

She shook her head. He didn't look like a cop now. He just looked mean.

“Well, I have this control problem. When someone starts lying to me, it makes me crazy.” He picked up a nearly empty bottle of Jim Beam and threw it against the wall. Glass exploded and released the ripe scent of liquor. “I just start breaking things. And if the lying keeps up, I lose it. One time I threw a suspect out a window.” He glanced over at the window behind her convertible sofa. “We're on the third floor here, aren't we?”

“That's bull. I'm going to call my lawyer.” She scrambled up to grab for the phone. “You're crazy, that's all. I don't have to take this crap.”

“Right and wrong.” He clamped a hand over her wrist. “I'm crazy, all right. But you're going to take it. Let's see how far you can fly.” He dragged her toward the window while she struggled and shouted. She managed to grab the sill and fall to her knees. “I don't know who it was. I don't.”

“Not good enough.” He hooked an arm around her waist.

“I don't. I swear. He just called. He told me what to say and mailed me the money. Cash.”

Cam hunkered down beside her. “I want a name.”

“Biff's the only name I knew. He was a customer, just like I said.” She inched away until her back was to the
wall. “Couple years back, he told me about this, well, kind of club or something. Said they'd pay me two hundred for the night. So I went.”

“Where?”

“I don't know.” Eyes wide, she tumbled down to one elbow. “I swear I don't. I was blindfolded. It was kind of kinky, you know? Biff picked me up, and we drove out of town, into the country. Then he stopped and blindfolded me, and we drove some more. After a while we had to walk. In the woods or something. He didn't take the blindfold off until we got to this place. They did rites and stuff there. You know, Satanism. But mostly it was just a bunch of guys who wanted some ass and thrills.”

“I want descriptions.”

“They wore masks. The whole time. I never knew none of them but Biff. It was weird, sure, but the pay was good. I went back every couple of months.”

“Okay, Mona.” He helped her up, though she cringed back. “Let's sit down. You're going to tell me all about it.”

A
LICE LICE TIDIED UP
the kitchen for lack of anything better to do. Behind her Blair paced back and forth. It had been a long week, she thought, for everyone. No one believed that Clare had just lit out. That was fine for someone like Sarah Hewitt, but not Clare. It didn't make sense.

The big sculpture she'd been working on was still standing out in the drive. Like a sign. People walked by it and stopped and traded speculations on a daily basis. Min Atherton had even taken Polaroid pictures of it and showed them off at Betty's.

The mayor had called a special town meeting, offering a reward. It had been a moving speech, too, Alice remembered. All about taking care of your own and looking out for your neighbor. The mayor could talk as good as a tent evangelist. There'd hardly been a dry eye in the town hall.

Except for the sheriff. He'd been dry-eyed. And haggard, she thought now. It was clear that he hadn't been doing much sleeping or eating in the six days since Clare had disappeared. He'd gotten up at the end of the meeting to answer questions from the townspeople and the reporters
who had crowded the small auditorium. Not just local people either, Alice reflected, but big-city reporters from D.C., New York, and Philadelphia.

She ran the dishcloth under the water, then wrung it out to wipe off the counters. The air was hot and still, the temperature more suited to August dog days than June. But no one had thought to turn on the air conditioner. Clare's mother and her new husband were staying at the house, and so were the LeBeaus. Nobody complained about the heat.

She glanced over at Blair and felt a kinship that had already replaced the longtime crush.

“I could fix you something to eat,” she offered. “A sandwich maybe, or some soup.”

“Thanks. Later maybe. I thought Angie and Jean-Paul would be back by now.”

“They'll be along.” She spread the cloth over the lip of the sink. It was a helpless feeling, not being able to offer more than ham on rye or Campbell's chicken and rice. “It doesn't do any good not to eat. I could fix something up. The others'll be hungry when they get back.”

He started to snap but stopped himself. Alice was as hollow-eyed and jumpy as the rest of them. “Fine. That's fine.” They both rushed into the garage at the sound of a motorcycle. Before Cam could climb off, Blair was beside him.

“Anything?”

“No.” Cam rubbed his gritty eyes, then swung his rubbery legs off the cycle. He'd been riding most of the day, down back roads, over old logging trails, covering ground that had already been covered and covered again.

“I'm making sandwiches,” Alice said. “You come in and have one before you go again. I mean it, Cam. You need fuel just like that machine of yours.”

Cam sat down on the cycle again as Alice hurried back in. “How's your mother?” Cam asked Blair.

“Worried sick. She and Jerry are driving around.” He looked helplessly at the sculpture that towered behind them. “Like everyone. Christ, Cam, it's been almost a week.”

He knew exactly how long it had been, to the hour. “We're doing a house-to-house, search and interviews. Now that Mick's on his feet again, it'll go easier.”

“You don't really believe someone's holding her in town.”

“I believe anything.” He looked across the street, to the Buttses′ house. That one he would search personally.

“She could already be—”

“No.” Cam's head whipped around. His eyes, shadowed and weary, sharpened. “No, she's not. We start here, and we spread out, and we go over every inch of these hills.” Cam looked down at the ground. “I didn't take care ofher.”

When Blair didn't respond, Cam understood his friend thought the same thing.

Blair stood where he was, struggling to be calm as Cam lighted a cigarette. His research had gone well. Too well. He knew much too much about what could be happening to his sister. What might have happened already. He couldn't afford to break down now. “I'd like to go out on the next search. I know you've got experienced men, but I know the woods around here.”

“We can use everyone. Have to use everyone,” Cam corrected. “I just don't know who I can trust.” He looked up at the sun. It was straight up noon. “Do you know what today is?” He turned his head again and looked at Blair. “It's the summer solstice. I didn't realize it until I heard it on the radio.”

“I know.”

“They'll meet tonight,” he murmured. “Somewhere.”

“Would they take a risk like that, with the search and the press?”

“Yeah. Because they want to. Maybe they need to.” He swung onto the bike again. “There's somebody I've got to see.”

“I'll go with you.”

“It's better that I go alone. It's a long shot.” He kicked the engine. “I'll let you know.”

“It's outrageous. Absolutely outrageous.”

“I'm sorry, Miz Atherton.” Bud had his cap in his hands, running the brim through his fingers. “It's procedure, is all.”

“It's insulting, that's what it is. Why, the very idea of your coming into my home and searching all over it, as if I were a common criminal.” She planted herself in the doorway, floral bosom trembling. “Do you think I've got Clare Kimball tied up in the basement?”

“No, ma'am. No ma'am. And I sure do apologize for the inconvenience. It's just that we're looking through every house in town.” He gave a little sigh of relief as the mayor came down the hall.

“What's all this?”

“An outrage. Why, James, you won't believe what this boy wants to do.”

“We're conducting a house-to-house search, Mr. Atherton, sir.” He flushed. “I got the proper warrants.”

“Warrants!” Min plumped up like a broody hen. “Did you hear that, James? Warrants. The very idea.”

“Now, Min.” He put a soothing hand on her shoulder.
“This has to do with Clare Kimball's disappearance, doesn't it, Deputy Hewitt?”

“Yes, sir, Mayor.” Bud always preened a bit when Atherton called him Deputy Hewitt. “It's nothing personal, and I'll be in and out in just a few minutes. Just have to take a look around and ask you some questions.”

“You step a foot inside this house, I'll take a broom to your behind, Bud Hewitt.”

“Min.” Atherton gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze. “The man's only doing his job. If we don't cooperate with the law, who will? You come right on in, Deputy, go through from attic to cellar. No one in town wants to get to the bottom of what happened to Clare more than my wife and myself.”

He gestured Bud inside, and the deputy took a strategic step so that the mayor was between him and Min. “I appreciate it, Mr. Atherton.”

“Our civic duty.” His eyes and voice were grave. “Can you tell me how things are going?”

“We ain't found a trace. I'll tell you, Mr. Atherton, the sheriff's worried sick. Don't think he's slept more'n an hour at a stretch since it started.”

“It must be a dreadful strain on him.”

“I don't know what he'll do if we don't find her. They were talking marriage, you know. Why, he'd even called up an architect about building Clare a studio over to his house.”

“Is that so?” Min's gossip glands went into overdrive. “Could be the girl got cold feet and ran off.”

“Min—”

“After all, James, she already failed at one marriage. It wouldn't be the first time a woman just up and took off when the pressure built up.”

“No …” Atherton stroked his bottom lip gravely. “No,
I suppose you're right.” He waved the thought away, hoping it had taken root. “We're holding up Deputy Hewitt. Start anywhere you like. We have nothing to hide.”

Annie wasn't in her trailer. Nor could Cam find her in any of her usual haunts around town. The best he could do was have a neighbor promise to see that she stayed put when she got back.

He was running in circles, he thought as he headed back to town. Chasing his tail just like they wanted him to. He knew more than they realized. He knew that the passbook with Kimball's and Biff's names had been a plant. What he didn't know was whether Bob Meese had found it or had merely been following orders.

He knew that rituals were held on a regular basis. At least monthly, from what Mona had finally told him. But he didn't know where.

He knew there were thirteen men involved, from Clare's sketch and Mona's corroboration. But he didn't know who.

So when you added it all up, he thought as he pulled up in front of Ernie's house, you still got zero.

The worst was that he couldn't afford to share what he did know with anyone, not even Bud or Mick. Even in a town as small as Emmitsboro, thirteen men could hide easily.

He hoped Ernie would answer the door. He was in the mood to choke some answers out of the boy. But it was Joleen Butts who answered.

“Mrs. Butts.”

“Sheriff?” Her eyes darted behind him. “Is something wrong?”

“We're conducting a house-to-house search.”

“Oh, yes. I heard.” She twisted her beads. “I guess you can get started. Excuse the mess. I haven't had a chance to pick up.”

“Don't worry about it. Your husband's been a big help with the search party.”

“Will's always the first to volunteer, the last to leave. I guess you'll want to begin upstairs.” She started to lead him up, then stopped. “Sheriff, I know you've got a lot on your mind, and I don't want to sound like an overanxious mother, but Ernie … he didn't come home last night. The therapist says it's a very common behavior pattern, given the way Ernie feels right now about himself and his father and me. But I'm afraid. I'm afraid something might have happened to him. Like Clare.” She rested her hand on the banister. “What should I do?”

Cam was on his way back out of town when he passed Bud's cruiser. He signaled, then stood, straddling his bike as Bud backed up and leaned out the window.

“Where's Mick?”

“Supervising the search on the other side of Gossard Creek.” Bud wiped his sweaty forehead with a bandanna. “I had radio contact about twenty minutes ago.”

“Did you finish the house-to-house?”

“Yeah. I'm sorry, Cam.”

Cam looked out, over a field of corn. There was a haze of heat hovering like fog. Above, the sky was the color of drywall. “You know that kid, Ernie Butts?”

Sure.

“The truck he drives?” “Red Toyota pickup. Why?” Cam looked back at Bud, steadily. He had to trust
someone. “I want you to cruise around, keep your eye out for him.”

“Did he do something?”

“I don't know. If you spot him, don't stop him. See what he's up to, but don't stop him. Just contact me. Just me, Bud.”

“Sure, Sheriff.”

“I've got another stop to make.” He checked the sky again. It was the longest day of the year, but even that didn't last forever.

As Cam parked in front of Annie's trailer, Clare tried to claw her way out of the sticky mists the drug coated over her mind. She recited poetry in her head, old Beatles lyrics, nursery rhymes. It was so hot, so airless in the room. Like a coffin. But you were cold in a coffin, she reminded herself. And she'd already soaked through the sheets that day.

She wasn't certain how much longer she could take lying in the dark. How much time had passed? A day, a week, a month?

Why didn't someone come?

They would be looking. Cam, her friends, her family. They wouldn't forget her. She'd seen no one but Doc Crampton since the night she'd been brought there. And even then she wasn't certain how many times he had sat beside the bed and popped a drug in her veins.

She was afraid, not only for her life but for her sanity. She knew now that she was too weak to fight them, whatever they did to her. But she was desperately afraid she would go mad first.

Alone. In the dark.

In her more lucid moments, she plotted ways to escape,
then expose them all and clear her father. But then the hours would pass in that terrible, dark silence, and her plans would turn into incoherent prayers for someone, anyone, to come and help her.

In the end, it was Atherton who came. When she looked up and saw him, she knew she wouldn't spend another night lying in the dark. It was the shortest night of the year, for everyone.

“It's time,” he said gently. “We have preparations to make.”

It was his last hope. Cam stood in front of the empty trailer. His last hope centered on the chance that Crazy Annie knew something. And if she knew, she would remember.

It was a crap shoot, and he wouldn't even have the chance to roll and come up seven if she didn't get home.

It came down to this, him and a sixty-year-old woman with an eight-year-old's mind. They weren't getting a hell of a lot of outside help. He hadn't been able to prove conspiracy or ritual slayings. All he had proven was that Carly Jamison had been held in a shed, murdered, buried, and exhumed to be placed in a shallow grave in a hay field. The fact that a dead man had had an accomplice didn't prove cult killings—not as far as the State boys or Feds were concerned. They'd helped in the search for Clare, adding men and helicopters. But even with them, he'd turned up nothing.

Time was running out. He knew it. The lower the sun dipped in the sky, the colder he became, until he wondered if by nightfall his bones would be brittle as ice.

He couldn't lose her. And he was afraid because the thought of it was so abhorrent that he had rushed and
fumbled in his search for her and made one tiny miscalculation that could cost Clare her life.

Three steps behind, he thought, and falling through.

He hadn't forgotten how to pray, but he'd taken little time for it since his first decade, when there had been CCD classes and mass on Sunday, monthly confessions with strings of Our Fathers and Hail Marys to cleanse his youthful soul of sin.

He prayed now, simply and desperately as the first streaks of red stained the western horizon.

“ ‘Beyond the sunset, O blissful morning,’” Annie sang happily as she toiled over the hill. “‘When with our Savior heav'n is begun. Earth's toiling ended, O glorious dawning; Beyond the sunset when day is done.’”

She dragged her bag behind her and looked up, startled, when Cam raced the last yards toward her. “Annie, I've been waiting for you.”

“I've just been walking. Gosh Almighty, it's a hot one. Hottest day I remember.” Sweat had stained her checkered dress from neck to hem. “I found two nickels and a quarter and a little green bottle. Do you want to see?”