by Nora Roberts
Cam pulled over an ashtray. “Tell me, like a reporter.”
“Okay.” He settled back, steepled his hands. “I think arrogant was a good choice of words. It's a mistake to believe that they're stupid. It's not all junkies and psychopaths and rebellious teenagers in cults. Some of this stuff talks about doctors, lawyers, college professors being involved, often highly placed within the cult, too.”
Cam had gleaned that much himself but wanted to hear the logic. “How do they get involved?”
“The groups are well organized. There's networking, recruiting. Part of the appeal is the secrecy, the smugness of belonging to a group that's outside society's normal bounds.” As he talked, Blair was afraid he understood the allure all too well. “They live for pleasure, a lot of sick pleasure. Getting off with animals. Christ, with kids. And power—a lot of it comes down to power.” He spread out the sheets. “Some don't believe they can conjure up demons, but they belong for the indulgences. Sex. Drugs. The thrill of killing.” He glanced over as Cam watched him. “You can see from a couple of these articles that we aren't always talking about killing sheep and dogs. Sometimes they get in deeper. Runaways are a good target.”
Cam thought of Carly Jamison with a sick feeling of acceptance. Then of Biff. “Do they kill their own?”
“Why not? This isn't your average men's club, Cam, and some of these people believe, deeply, fervently, that Satan will give them whatever they want if they follow the path. I've got all kinds of stuff here, from what they call the dabblers right on up to the big boys. But from a couple of kids lighting a black candle and playing a record backward to La Vey—what pulls it together is power. It all comes down to power.”
“I've been reading quite a bit, too,” Cam said. “What I'm getting is that there are different type of cults. The high-profile ones are big into indulgence and ceremony but reject any kind of ritual sacrifice.”
“Sure.” Blair nodded and found himself stifling a nervous laugh. Here they were, good old friends, discussing devil worship and ritual murder over bad coffee. “But there are others. I need to do more checking, but from what I can gather, that's your most dangerous group. They take what they want from the books, from the traditions, and make their own. They go back to the ancients, when blood was the only way to appease and—and cajole the gods. They form where they please. They don't seek attention, they hide from it. But they find each other.”
“How do we find them?”
“I'm afraid,” Blair said, and he no longer had the urge to laugh, “that we may not have to look very far.” Restlessly, he dragged a hand through his hair. “But I'm a political reporter, Cam. I don't know whether that's an advantage or an obstacle.”
“I'd imagine a cult would be lousy with politics.”
“Probably.” He let out a long breath. Did one campaign for the job of high priest? he wondered. Gather votes by kissing babies and slapping palms? Jesus. “There's too much I don't know. I've got a line on a couple of people back in D.C. who'll talk to me. You know there are cops who specialize in this sort of thing?”
“We don't need a story.”
“You've got one,” Blair shot back. “But if you think I'm into this because of some fucking byline—”
“Sorry.” Cam held up a hand, palm out, then used it to soothe the headache brewing behind his eyes. “Knee-jerk. It's my town, goddammit.”
“Mine, too.” Blair managed what passed for a smile. “I didn't realize how much it was still my town until this. I want to talk to Lisa MacDonald, Cam. Then I'll do what I can from here. But before long I'm going to have to go back to D.C, do some legwork on this.”
“All right.” He had to trust someone. In the town he thought he knew so well, he was afraid there was no one else to trust. “I'll call her and clear it. Be easy with her. She's still fragile.”
“She'd be dead if it wasn't for Clare.” Carefully, a little too carefully, he set down his coffee. “I'm scared for her, Cam, I'm scared real deep. If this Ernie character belongs to a cult and he's obsessed with her—”
“He won't get near her.” The soft, controlled statement was in direct opposition with the heat in Cam's eyes. Count on it.
“I am counting on it.” Pushing the mug aside, he leaned closer. “She's the most important person in my life, and I'm trusting her to you after I go. By God, you'd better take care of her.”
* * *
Ernie's fingers trembled as he held the slip of paper. He had found it in the visor of his truck at the end of his shift at the Amoco. At last it was coming together.
The risk he'd taken out at Dopper's farm, the ugly sickness and revulsion he suffered after he'd butchered the black calves had all been worth it. He would be joining them.
May 31, 10:00. South end of Dopper's Woods. Come alone.
Tonight, was all he could think. Tonight he would see, and he would know, and he would belong. He folded the paper and slipped it into the back pocket of his jeans. When he started the truck, his hands were still trembling. His leg shook as he pushed in the clutch.
On the drive home, his nervousness turned into cold, clearheaded excitement. He would no longer be an onlooker, he thought, no longer have to content himself with spying through his telescope. He would belong.
Sally saw him drive up and was out of her car before Ernie had pulled to the curb in front of his house. Her smile of greeting faded as soon as he looked at her. His eyes were dark, cold.
“Hi… I was just driving around, and I thought I'd come by.”
“I got stuff to do.”
“Oh, well, I can't stay anyway. I've got to get over to my grandmother's. Sunday dinner, you know.”
“So go.” He started toward the door.
“Ernie.” Hurt, Sally trotted after him. “I just wanted to ask you about the party again. Josh is bugging me to go with him, but I—”
“So go with him.” He shook her hand off his arm. “Stop hanging on me.”
“Why are you being like this?” Her eyes had already filled, in reflex. He watched the first tear fall and felt a stirring of remorse that he quickly smothered.
“Being like what?”
“Mean to me. I thought you liked me. More than liked me. You said—”
“I never said anything.” And that was true. “I just did what you wanted me to do.”
“I wouldn't have let you … I would never have done those things with you unless I thought you cared about me.”
“Cared about you? Why the hell should I? You're just another slut.” He watched her face go dead pale before she sat down on the lawn and sobbed. Part of him was embarrassed. Part of him was sorry. Part of him, the part he concentrated on, watched her with calculated indifference. “Get out of here, will you?”
“But I love you.”
Again something stirred, and again he squelched it. He reached down to pull her to her feet just as Cam drove up. Ernie let his hands dangle at his sides and waited.
“Problem here?”
“Not mine,” Ernie said.
After flicking a glance over the boy, Cam bent down to Sally. “Hey, honey. Did he hurt you?”
“He said he doesn't care about me. He doesn't care at all.”
“Then he's not worth crying over.” Gently he held out a hand. “Come on, now. You want me to drive you home?”
“I don't want to go home. I want to die.”
Cam glanced up and felt relieved to see Clare crossing the street. “You're too young and pretty to want to die.” He patted her shoulder.
“What's going on?” Clare looked from one face to the other. “I saw you drive by,” she said to Cam.
“Sally's pretty upset. Why don't you take her over to the house and …” He made an inadequate gesture.
“Sure. Come on, Sally.” Clare put an arm around the girl's waist to help her up. “Let's go to my house and trash men.” She shot Cam a last look and led the weeping girl across the street.
“Nice going, champ,” Cam said to Ernie.
To the surprise of them both, Ernie blushed. “Look, I didn't do anything. She was bugging me. I never asked her to come around. It's not against the law to tell some stupid girl to take a hike.”
“You're right there. Are your parents home?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to ask you some questions. You might want them around when I do.”
“I don't need them.”
“Up to you,” Cam said easily. “You want to talk in the house or out here?”
He jerked his head, a single defiant gesture that sent his hair flying back. “Here.”
“Interesting piece of jewelry.” Cam reached out to touch the pentagram, and Ernie closed a hand over it. So?
“It's a Satanic symbol.”
Ernie's lips curved in a leer. “No kidding?”
“You into devil worship, Ernie?”
Ernie kept smiling, kept stroking the pentagram. “Isn't a person's religion covered in the Bill of Rights?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it sure is. Unless the people practicing that religion break the law.”
“It's not against the law to wear a pentagram.”
At a nearby house, someone started a lawn mower. The motor coughed and died twice, then caught in a steady purr.
“Where were you last Monday night between one and four A.M.?”
His stomach jumped, but he kept his eyes steady. “Asleep in bed, like everybody else in this frigging town.”
“Ever try your hand at animal sacrifice, Ernie?”
“Can't say I have.”
“Can you tell me where you were last Tuesday night, about ten-thirty, eleven?”
“Yeah.” With a grin, Ernie glanced up at the top window of the house. “I was right up there, balling Sally Simmons. I guess we finished about eleven. She left a few minutes later, and my parents came home from the pizza parlor about eleven-thirty That should cover it.”
“You're a lousy little sonofabitch.”
“That's not against the law either.”
“No, it isn't.” Cam took a step closer so that they were eye to eye. There was a faint film of sweat on the boy's brow. Cam was gratified to see it. “You're my favorite kind of bug to squash, and I'm not that long out of practice. Make a wrong move, you little bastard, and I'll be on you like a leech, sucking you dry.”
“Is that a threat?”
“That's a fact. If your alibi doesn't check out by even five minutes, we're taking this down to the office. You'd better dig one up for Monday night, too.” He closed his hand over Ernie's pentagram. “Stay away from Clare, stay far away. If you don't, there isn't a god in heaven or hell who'll protect you from me.”
With his hands clenched into fists, Ernie watched Cam walk away. He'd have more than that, he thought. After tonight, he'd have whatever he needed.
* * *
“I thought he loved me.” Sally hiccuped into the soft drink Clare had poured her. “But he didn't care at all. He never cared, he only … He said such awful things to me.”
“Sometimes people say awful things when they're fighting that they're sorry about later.”
“It wasn't like that.” Sally took another tissue and blew her nose. “We weren't fighting. He wasn't even mad, just cold. He looked at me like—like I'd crawled out of a hole. He said—he said I was a slut.”
“Oh, baby.” She closed a hand over Sally's and thought about what she would say to Ernie at the first opportunity. “I know that hurts.”
“I guess I am, too, because I did it with him.” She covered her face with the tattered tissue. “He was the first one. The very first one.”
“I'm sorry.” Near tears herself, Clare put her arms around the girl. “I wish I could tell you that what he said doesn't matter, but it does to you. And it will for a while yet. But being intimate with Ernie doesn't make you a slut. It only makes you human.”
“I loved him.”
Already past tense, Clare thought, grateful for the resilience of a teenage heart. “I know you thought you did. When you really fall in love, you'll see the difference.”
Sally shook her head, hair swinging. “I don't ever want to care about another boy. I don't want anybody to be able to hurt me like this ever again.”
“I know what you mean.” Every woman did, she thought. “The problem is you will care.” She took Sally by the shoulders, drew her back. The girl's face was blotched from weeping. Her eyes were swollen and red. And so young, Clare thought. She took a fresh tissue and gently dabbed at the tears. “There's something I'd better tell you, though. Something every woman should know about men.”
Sally sniffed. “What?”
“They're all assholes.”
With a watery chuckle, Sally wiped her eyes.
“They are,” Clare insisted. “They get older and become older assholes. The trick is to avoid coming in contact with the one guy who will make you fall in love with him despite it. Otherwise, you'll end up married for fifty or sixty years before you realize you've been fooled.”
Sally laughed just as Angie walked through the kitchen door. “Oh, I'm sorry.” Angie noted the girl's tear-streaked face and started to back up.
“No, that's all right.” Clare motioned her in. “Angie, this is Sally, and she and I were just discussing why the world would be a better place without men.”
“That goes without saying. Except for sex and killing roaches, they really have no purpose.”
“Parallel parking,” Clare put in, pleased that Sally had laughed again.
“Auto repairs.” Sally rubbed her cheeks dry with her hands. “My dad's really good at auto repairs.”
“That's true.” Clare considered a moment. “But a woman can always buy a manual.”
Sally sighed and ran a fingertip down her glass. “I feel pretty stupid, acting the way I did.”
“You have no reason to.”
She swallowed and stared down at the table. “I can't tell my mother about the things Ernie and I did.”
“Do you think she'd be angry?” Clare asked.
Sally shook her head. “I don't know. She's really great to talk to. We've had all the discussions. You know. It's not like she expected I'd stay a virgin forever, but … I can't tell her what I did with Ernie.”
“I guess it's for you to decide.” She heard Cam pull up in the drive. “Here comes Sheriff Rafferty”
“Oh.” Sally covered her face. “I hate for him to see me like this. I look awful.”
“Why don't I show you where to wash your face?” Angie suggested. “A little lipstick and eye drops should do the trick.”
“Thanks.” On impulse she hugged Clare. “Thanks a lot, both of you.”
She hurried out just as Cam walked in. “Where's Sally?”
“Tidying up so you wouldn't see her with red eyes and a runny nose. You talked to Ernie?”
“Yes, I talked to him.”
“I don't know what got into him, saying things like that to Sally, but I've got a good mind to have a few words with him myself.”
“Stay away from him.” He cupped a hand under her chin. “I mean it.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“No. I'm not asking you, I'm telling you. Until I'm sure he's clean, you keep away from him.”
“Clean? What are you talking about?”
“Why the hell didn't you tell me about the cat?”
“Cat?” She edged back a little. “What does that have to do with