Divine Evil

by Nora Roberts

  original thought, if he'd've thought to bring his radio with him. Then he could've drowned July's sissy voice right out.

  Anyway, he was making a little extra money. Just a little, he thought, with just a shade of resentment. Ma wouldn't let him charge Mrs. Stokey more than half the usual price. But still, with the extra he could relax some. The baby needed those damn corrective shoes. Christ, babies needed every damn thing. But he smiled, thinking of his little girl with her mama's curly hair and his eyes.

  It sure was something, being a father. After eleven and a half months, Chip felt like a veteran. He'd been through sleepless nights, roseola, teething, muddy diapers, and inoculations. Now his little girl was walking. It made him glow with pleasure and pride when she held out her arms and toddled toward him. Even if she was a bit pigeon-toed.

  His slightly foolish smile changed to a look of curiosity, then disgust.

  “What the hell is that smell?”

  “I thought you cut one,” July said and giggled.

  “Christ!” In defense, Chip began breathing through his teeth. “It's making my eyes water.”

  “Something dead.” July pulled out a bandanna and held it over his mouth. “Woo-ee. Something real dead.”

  “Sonofabitch. Stray dog or something musta crawled off and died in the hay field.” He stopped the baler. The last thing he wanted was to look for some maggoty dog, but he couldn't afford to run over it with the baler either. “Come on, July, let's find the damn thing and haul it off.”

  “Maybe it's a horse. Smells as bad as a horse. Could call the dead wagon.”

  “We ain't calling no dead wagon until we find it.”

  They hopped off the baler. Chip took a page out of July's book and tied a bandanna around his nose and mouth. The stench was worse on the ground, and he was reminded of the day he'd been playing by the railroad tracks and had come across what was left of a dog that had had the bad luck to get flattened by the freight train headed toward Brunswick. He cursed and breathed shallowly behind the cloth. It wasn't an experience he wanted to repeat.

  “Gotta be right around here,” he said and started into the uncut hay. It was unpleasant, but not difficult to follow the scent, which reared up like a big, squishy green fist.

  As it was, Chip almost tripped over it.

  “Jesus Christ Almighty.” He pressed a hand over his already covered mouth and looked at July.

  July's eyes were bulging out of his head. “Shit, oh shit, oh shit. That ain't no dog.” He turned away, coughing and gagging, then began a shambling run after Chip, who was already racing over the freshly cut hay.

  * * *

  Thirty minutes later, Cam stood at the same spot. His breath hissed out between his teeth. After ten years on the force, he thought he'd seen everything a man could see. But he'd never come across anything as bad as this.

  She was naked. Death hadn't robbed her of her gender, though it had taken nearly everything else. He judged her to be of small to medium build. Age wasn't possible to determine. She was ageless now.

  But he thought he knew. Even as he took the blanket he'd brought from the car and covered her, he thought that Carly Jamison would never party down in Fort Lauderdale.

  His face was pale, but his hands were steady, and he only thought once, fleetingly, that a shot of Jack would go down real smooth just about then. He walked across the field he'd once plowed in his youth to where Chip and July waited.

  “It was a body, just like we told you.” July was hopping from foot to foot. “I ain't never seen a dead body, 'cept my Uncle Clem, and he was laid out in his Sunday suit down to Griffith's. Chip and me, we was haying your ma's field, just like we told you, then we smelled it—”

  “Shut the fuck up, July.” Chip passed a hand over his sweaty brow. “What do you want us to do, Sheriff?”

  “I'd appreciate it if you'd go into the office and give your statements.” He took out a cigarette, hoping the taste of smoke would clean his mouth. “Did either of you touch her?”

  “No, sir. Nosirree.” July hopped again. “Shit, she was a mess, wasn't she? Did you see all them flies?”

  “Shut the fuck up, July,” Cam said without heat. “I'll call in, make sure Mick's there to take your statements. We may need to talk to you again.” He glanced toward the house. “Did you say anything to my mother?”

  “Sorry, Sheriff.” Chip shifted, shrugged. “I guess July and me weren't thinking proper when we ran into the house.”

  “It's all right. It'd be best if you gave your statements right away.”

  “We'll drive in now.”

  With a nod, Cam went up the steps and into the house, where his mother waited.

  She all but pounced. “I told them it was just a dog or some young deer,” she began, twisting her apron. Shadows haunted her eyes. “Neither one of those boys has a lick of sense.”

  “Have you got any coffee?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  He walked past her, and she followed, a sour sickness in her stomach. “It was a dog, wasn't it?”

  “No.” He poured coffee, drank it down hot and black, then picked up the phone. For a moment he hesitated, the receiver cool in his hand, the image of what he had left in the field twisting in his mind. “It wasn't a dog. Why don't you wait in the other room?”

  Her mouth worked, but the words wouldn't come. Pressing her lips together, she shook her head and sat while he called the coroner.

  Clare was downing a breakfast Twinkie and contemplating her sketches for the Betadyne Museum. She wanted to get started on the outdoor piece. It had been nudging at her for days. She could already see it, completed, glowing copper, an abstract female form, arms lifted, with the circling planets just above the fingertips.

  When the phone rang, she walked back into the kitchen and answered with a mouthful of cake and cream. “Hello?”

  “Clare? Is that you?”

  “Yeah. Angie, hi. I've got my mouth full.”

  “What else is new?”

  “You tell me.”

  “I sold your Wonderment Number Three yesterday.”

  “No kidding? Well, that's cause for a celebration.” She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a Pepsi. “How's Jean-Paul?”

  “He's fine,” Angie said, smoothly lying. Neither of them were fine since Blair was keeping them updated on all the news in Emmitsboro. “How are things there?”

  “The corn crop looks good.”

  “Well, we can all sleep easy now. Clare, when are you coming home?”

  “Actually, Angie, I'm beginning to think I am home.” Time to drop the bomb. “I'm considering selling the loft.”

  “Selling it? You can't be serious.”

  “I'm heading that way. You can't say my work has suffered because I've changed my view.”

  “No, no, it hasn't.” But it wasn't Clare's work that concerned Angie. It was Clare. “I don't want you to do anything rash. Maybe you should come up for a few weeks, think things over.”

  “I can think here. Angie, don't worry about me. I'm fine. Really.”

  Angie bit her tongue and asked a question she already had the answer to. “Has Cam got a lead on who attacked that woman?”

  “He's working on a theory.” Deliberately, she turned away from the view of the terrace. “You're not going to tell me I'd be safer in New York than here.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I'm sleeping with a cop, so relax. I mean it,” she said, anticipating an argument. “Angie, for the first time in years, I'm starting to believe I can make it work—a real relationship, a sense of place and purpose. I don't care how corny that sounds, I don't want to blow it.”

  “Then move in with him.”

  “What?”

  “Move in with him.” And then you won't be alone, in that house. “Pack up your things and set up housekeeping with him.”

  “Did I miss a step here?”

  “Why should you live in separate houses? You're already sharing a bed. And damn it, I'd
sleep better at night.”

  Clare smiled. “Tell you what, I'll give it serious consideration.”

  “Just do it.” Angie took a slow, cleansing breath. “I had a meeting with the rep for the Betadyne.”

  “And?”

  “They approved your sketches. Get to work.”

  “That's great. Angie, if you were here, I'd kiss Jean-Paul.”

  “I'll do it for you. Get started, girl.”

  She didn't waste time. By that afternoon, she'd made fair headway on the infrastructure. There were some inconveniences. The garage wasn't tall enough to handle the twenty-foot sculpture, so she had to move her work area to the driveway and bless the mild weather. Standing on a stepladder, she welded and riveted. Occasionally a crowd gathered to watch and comment, then move on. Kids parked their bikes at the curb and hunkered down on the grass to ask her questions.

  She didn't mind the interruptions or the audience. But she did have a bad moment when she saw Ernie standing in his front yard, watching her.

  At one point, she gave one of the young art connoisseurs five dollars to run to the market for cold sodas. He pedaled off while Clare took a moment to show her new students the proper way to fire a torch.

  “We saw you on TV.” One of the girls looked up at her with awe and admiration. “You looked real pretty, just like a movie star.”

  “Thanks.” Clare hitched up the strap of her overalls and grinned. That was the beauty of small towns, she thought. It was so easy to be a star.

  “Is Miz Atherton's house really all pink?”

  “Just about.”

  “How come you wear that funny hat?”

  “So my hair doesn't catch on fire.”

  “Them's men's shoes,” one of the boys put in.

  “Them's my shoes,” Clare corrected. “For safety, though I do consider them quite a fashion statement.”

  “My daddy says that women are trying to be men all the time these days. Taking over men's jobs' stead of staying home like they's supposed to.”

  “He says that, does he?” Clare wanted to ask if his daddy's knuckles scraped the ground when he walked, but she decided against it. “That's a very interesting opinion as we approach the second millennium.” After rolling her shoulders, she pulled off her skullcap and sat on the stepladder. “It's too nice a day to debate socio-sexual theories. Besides, you'll ram straight into reality soon enough. Anybody got a candy bar?”

  The boy popped up. “I could go get some. If you got some money.”

  “We'll settle for Twinkles. There's a box in the kitchen, on the table. Go on through the garage.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” He was off like a shot.

  “What in the wide world is that, Clare?”

  Clare glanced down and waved at Doc Crampton. He was carrying his black bag, obviously going to or coming from a house call in the neighborhood.

  “We can call it a skeleton.” Chuckling, she got down from the ladder and walked over to kiss his cheek. “Who's sick?”

  “The little Waverly girl has the chicken pox.” Still baffled, he studied the maze of metal. “I guess I pictured you whittling wood or patting clay.”

  “That, too, sometimes.”

  He turned to her, put on his doctor's face. “You didn't make that appointment.”

  “I'm fine. Really fine. I just wasn't at my best that night.”

  “It was a shock for you. Lisa tells me you visit her often.”

  “I can say the same about you. You don't change, Doc.”

  “Too old to change.” He sighed a little, hating to admit that age was slowing him some. “You're doing proud with Jack's flowers.”

  “It makes me feel closer to him when I garden.” She followed his gaze back to the lawn, where the annuals and perennials flashed out of green grass. “You were right before, about my having to forgive him. I'm coming closer to it, being here.” She worried her lip for a moment.

  “What is it, Clare?”

  She checked her audience and noted the boys were involved in wrestling and devouring Twinkles. “I'd really like to talk with you about it, about some things I found out. Not here,” she said. Not here with her father's delphiniums waving behind her. “Once I think it through a little more, can I come see you?”

  “You can always come to me.”

  “Thanks.” Just knowing it relieved her. “Listen, I know you've probably got to go stick a hypodermic in somebody. I'll call you.”

  “See that you do.” He shifted his bag. “Jack would have been proud of you.”

  “I hope so.” She started back to her ladder. “Hey. Tell Alice I'm up for another pizza bash.” With a last wave, she started back to work.

  Clare was just lighting a cigarette when the boy on the bike—Tim, Tom, no, Todd, she remembered—came racing down the street, a carton of soft drinks strapped to the back of the seat.

  “You made good time,” she commented, climbing down.

  “I heard about it at the market.” Todd's voice was breathless with excitement and exercise. “July Crampton came in. He came right in and told us.”

  “Told you what?”

  “About the body. Him and Chip Dopper found a dead body over in the Stokeys′ hay field. They was baling hay, you see? Baling it for Mrs. Stokey ′cause she's widowed and all. July Crampton said they nearly ran right over it.”

  The rest of the kids gathered around him, shouting out questions and adding to his sense of importance. Clare sat on the grass.

  She was still there thirty minutes later when Blair drove up. He got out of the car and walked over to sit beside her.

  “I guess you've heard.”

  “The afternoon bulletin.” She plucked a blade of grass. “Have they identified the body?”

  “No. Apparently whoever— Well, she'd been dead awhile.”

  The tender blade bent in her fist. “She?”

  “Yeah. Cam seems to think it might be the body of a young runaway who passed through here back in April.”

  Clare closed her eyes. “Carly Jamison.”

  “He didn't mention a name. The coroner's doing an autopsy Cam's already sent Mick Morgan up to Harrisburg for dental records.”

  Clare watched the shadow of a bird circling overhead. “It just won't stop, will it? A little while ago, I was working out here, and there were a bunch of kids around. The boy down the street was out washing his car and playing the radio. I give a kid a few bucks to go get sodas, and he comes back and tells me there's a dead body in the Stokeys′ hay field.” She watched as a bee hovered over her impatiens. “It's like looking at two pictures, and one got imposed over the other. A darkroom mistake.”

  “I know it's bad, Clare. The way it looks, Biff picked the girl up, killed her, and dumped her body in the field. Maybe he meant to take care of it later, maybe he was just plain crazy.”

  “Either way, he's dead, too.”

  “Yeah, he's dead, too. But it looks as if this murder is going to be laid right at his door. In a way, that might be a blessing.”

  The bird settled in a weeping cherry and began to sing. “How?”

  “Because it would have to mean he acted on his own. If there had been a group, a cult, as Cam was thinking, they wouldn't have left the body on the property like that. It's not the way they operate. Groups like that cover their tracks.”

  It made sense. She wished she could have left it there. “That doesn't explain who killed Biff.”

  “He was obviously into drugs. Maybe he didn't pay his supplier, screwed up a deal. There's not much forgiveness in that line.” With