by Nora Roberts
“What?” Jane put her fingers to her mouth. “What is it?”
Cam opened a vial, touched a wet fingertip to the powder and the powder to his tongue. “Cocaine.”
“Oh, no. My God, no. It’s a mistake.”
“Sit down. Come on, Mom, sit down.” He led her to the chair. Part of him wanted to hold her and tell her to forget all about it, to put it right out of her mind. Another part wanted to shake her and gloat. I told you what he was. I told you. He set those parts aside, the two halves of her son.
“I want you to think, tell me who used to come here. Who would come upstairs here with Biff?”
“Nobody.” She looked at the vials Cam still held in his hand, then away with a kind of horror. She didn’t understand drugs, unless they were the kind Doc Crampton gave you for the stomach flu or those twinges of arthritis. But she feared them. “He didn’t let anybody come in here. If he had a poker game, he would lock the door first. He said he didn’t want those guys poking around in his stuff. He’d just sit up here by himself.”
“Okay.” He took a chance and squeezed her hand, but got no response. “I have to keep looking.”
“What difference does it make?” she murmured. Her husband had been unfaithful to her. Not just with a woman. She could understand another woman, especially one who took money. But he had been unfaithful with those little tubes of powder. And that she would never understand.
He found a few more stashes. All small quantities, obviously for personal use. If he’d been selling, Cam thought, he hadn’t been doing it from here.
“Did you ever see Biff with a large amount of cash?”
“We never had money,” she said wearily. “You know that.”
“How did he come up with the down payment for the Caddy?”
“I don’t know. I never asked.”
He went through the paperbacks on the shelves and found a stack that dealt with Satanism, cult worship, and ritual sacrifices. Two of them were straight porn, with obviously staged photographs of naked women being tortured by men in masks. Others were serious works on devil worship.
Setting the worst of them aside, he brought the rest to the chair. “What do you know about these?”
Jane stared, with a glassy kind of horror, at the titles. Her Catholic background reared up and grabbed her by the throat. “What are they? What are they doing here? How did they get in my house?”
“They were Biff’s. I need you to tell me if you knew anything about them.”
“No.” She folded her hands on her breasts, afraid to touch them. This was much worse even than the drugs. “I’ve never seen them. I don’t want to see them. Put them away.”
“Do you see this?” He pointed to the pentagram on the cover of a book. “Did Biff have one of them?”
“What is it?”
“Did he have one?”
“I don’t know.” But she remembered the things she had found in the shed. “What does it mean?”
“It means that Biff was involved in something. It could be why he was killed.”
She pushed out her hands to ward him off but couldn’t find the strength to rise. “He was a good man,” she insisted. “He wasn’t a churchgoer, but he wouldn’t blaspheme this way. You’re trying to make him into some kind of monster.”
“Goddamn it, open your eyes.” He all but shoved the books into her face. “This was his idea of a good time. And this.” He grabbed one of the other books and tore it open to a full-color scene. “And I don’t think he just read about it. Do you understand? I don’t think he just sat up here snorting coke and looking at dirty pictures. I think he went out and practiced this stuff.”
“Stop it! Stop it! I won’t listen.”
Now he did grab her, he did shake. But he didn’t have it in him to gloat. “Why are you protecting him? He never made you happy, not one single day of your life. He was a sick, sadistic sonofabitch. He ruined this farm, he ruined you, and he did his damnedest to ruin me.”
“He took care of me.”
“He made you an old woman. A scared, beaten old woman. If I hated him for nothing else, I’d hate him for what he’s done to you.”
She stopped struggling to stare. Though her mouth worked, there were no words.
“You used to laugh.” In his desperate and angry voice, there was a trace of a plea. “Damn it, you used to care about things, about yourself. For the past twenty years, all you’ve done is work and worry. And when you went to bed at night, too tired to care anymore, he was out lighting black candles and sacrificing goats. Or worse. God help us. Or worse.”
“I don’t know what to do.” She began to croon, rocking back and forth. “I don’t know what to do.” Jane believed in Satan, deeply, superstitiously She saw him as a serpent, slithering in the Garden, as a dark angel, taunting and tempting Christ, as the king of a fiery pit. In her heart was a cold terror that he had been invited into her home.
Cam took her hands again. This time she held on. “You’re going to tell me everything you know.”
“But I don’t know.” Tears leaked out of her eyes. “Cam, I don’t. Did he … did he sell his soul?”
“If he had one to begin with.”
“How could I have lived with him for twenty years and not known?”
“Now that you do, you might start to remember things. Things you didn’t pay any attention to before. Things you didn’t want to pay attention to.”
With her lips tightly pressed together, she looked down at the book that had fallen open on the floor. She saw the naked woman, blood smeared on her breasts. A candle between her legs.
She’d been trained well, trained to be loyal, to overlook, to make excuses. But there had been an earlier training, one that surfaced now to make her fear the Wrath of God and the punishment.
“The shed,” she said weakly. “In the shed.”
“What’s in the shed?”
“I found things. I burned them.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“I had to.” Her voice skipped and shivered. “I had to burn them. I couldn’t let anyone see.…”
“See what?”
“Magazines. Ones like this.” She gestured toward the floor, then looked away.
“Is that all you burned?”
She shook her head.
“What else?”
The shame, the shame all but sickened her. “Candles. Like the ones in the picture. Black candles. And a robe with a hood. It smelled”—she tasted bile in her throat—“like blood. And there were pictures. Snapshots.”
Cam’s hand tightened on hers. “Of what?”
“Girls. Two young girls. One dark-haired, one blond. They were … they were naked and tied up, on the cot in the shed. I tore them up and burned them.”
A granite fist closed in his stomach. “You burned the pictures?”
“I had to.” Hysteria bubbled in her voice. “I had to. I didn’t know what else to do. It was so ugly. I couldn’t let people know he’d brought women here, paid them to pose for those dirty pictures.”
“If you saw the girls again, or other pictures of them, would you remember?”
“I won’t forget. I’ll never forget how they looked.”
“Okay. I’m going to call Bud. Then you’re going to take me outside and show me.”
“People will know.”
“Yes.” He let go of her hands so that she could cover her face with them and weep. “People will know.”
“What have we got, Sheriff?”
“I don’t know yet.” Cam looked back toward the house where his mother was standing on the porch wringing her hands. “You brought everything?”
“Just like you said.”
“Let’s put on the gloves and get to work.”
They snapped on thin surgical gloves and went into the shed.
She’d even burned the damn mattress, Cam thought, frowning at the iron frame of the cot. There was little left other than a few tools, lots of dust, and a few broken beer bottles. H
unkering down, Cam searched the underside of a workbench.
“Do we know what we’re looking for?” Bud asked.
“I’ll let you know if we find it.”
“Hell of a way to spend a Sunday.” But Bud whistled between his teeth. “I got me a date with Alice tonight.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Taking her to a Mexican restaurant and the movies.”
“Shooting the works, huh?”
“Well …” Bud colored a little as he ran his fingers lightly over and under the metal shelves. “She’s worth it. Maybe you ought to take Clare up to the Mexican place sometime. It’s got a real nice atmosphere. You know, pots and paper flowers and stuff. Women go for that.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Do you figure a margarita’s a woman’s drink?”
“Not according to Jimmy Buffet.”
“Who?”
“Never mind. Try a Dos Equis and keep it to one.”
“Dos Equis,” Bud repeated to himself, committing it to memory. “I wonder what—shit.”
“What?”
“Something sharp here, nearly went through the glove. One of those earrings with a pointy back.” Bud held it up, a bit uncomfortable. Everybody knew Biff had fooled around, but it was different when you were the one who found a woman’s earring in his toolshed. “I, ah, guess I should bag it.”
“Yeah. And this, too.” Cam peeled off a bag of cocaine that had been taped to the underside of the worktable.
“Holy shit, is that what I think it is?”
Bud’s eyes bulged. If Cam had held up a five-headed toad, he’d have been less amazed. “Jesus, Cam, what are you going to tell your mom?”
“Just tag it, Bud.”
“Sure. Yeah.” He took the bag, cradling it in his hands as if it were a squirming infant.
Using his flashlight, Cam crawled on his hands and knees, working every inch of the floor. Mixed with the broken beer bottles he found a thin slice of smoky glass. He held it up and peered through it. Prescription. Carly Jamison had been nearsighted. He shifted through the broken glass and found two more pieces.
When they’d finished the search, he stepped out into the sunlight. “Did you bring the Jamison girl’s picture?”
“Sure, like you said. It’s in the car.”
“You go ahead and dust for prints.”
“Sure.” Bud brightened instantly. It was something he practiced religiously and rarely got to put into use. “I’ll get right on it.”
Cam took the photograph out of the car and walked toward the house, where his mother still waited. She looked old, he thought, even older than when she had opened the door for him two hours before.
He held out the picture. “Is this the girl in the photograph you found in the shed?”
Jane licked her lips and forced herself to look. It was a pretty face, young and pretty. She had to turn away from it. “Yes.”
“Try to think back to around Eastertime. Did you ever see this girl around?”
“I never saw her.” Jane looked over his head, toward the fields. “Is she dead?”
“I’m afraid she might be.”
“You think Biff killed her.”
“He had a part in whatever happened to her. She was in that shed. Tied up, held there.”
She thought she’d cried herself out, but the tears began again, pouring from her burning eyes. “I didn’t know. I swear on my life I didn’t know.”
“Who was around here during that time? Who came out and spent time with Biff?”
“Cam, that was weeks and weeks ago. I don’t know. How would I remember? I was down with the flu before Easter. Remember, you brought me flowers.”
“I remember.”
“Biff came and went. There might have been a poker game, or that might have been after Easter.” She pushed a hand over her limp hair. “I never paid any mind to that kind of thing. He didn’t want me to. What difference does it make now? He’s in hell. He sold his soul and sent himself to hell.”
“All right.” He was beating a dead horse and knew it. “If you remember anything, you call me. I don’t want you to talk to anyone about this.”
“Who would I talk to?” she said dully. “They’ll all find out anyway. That’s the way things work.”
He let out a sigh. “Do you want to come and stay with me until … for a while?”
Surprise registered first. Then shame. “No, I’ll be fine here, but it’s kind of you.”
“Damn it, you’re my mother. It’s not kind. I love you.”
She could barely see him for the tears blurring her eyes. But he looked as she remembered him as a boy. Tall and straight and defiant. Angry, she thought. It seemed that he’d been angry with her since the day his daddy had died.
“I’ll stay just the same. It’s my home for a little while longer.” She started to walk into the house, then stopped. It took the rest of the courage she had left just to turn and face her son again. “When you were five, you got ahold of my good red nail polish. You wrote ‘I love you Mom’ in big, block letters on the bathroom tile. I guess nothing before or since ever meant so much to me.” She looked at him helplessly, hopelessly. “I wish I’d told you that before.”
She went inside, alone, and closed the door quietly behind her.
Clare was waiting for him when he got home. She met him at the door, took one look, and put her arms around him.
“We don’t have to talk about it.” She tightened her grip when he laid his cheek against her hair. “I picked up some pizza. If you’d rather be alone, I’ll head home. You can just warm it up when you get around to it.”
He lowered his mouth to hers. “Stay.”
“All right. Angie and Jean-Paul left about an hour ago. They had to get back to the gallery and said to tell you good-bye.”
“Blair?”
“He’s decided to hang around for a couple of days.” She eased back to study him. “Rafferty, you look like hell. Why don’t you go up, have a soak in that magic tub of yours? I’ll heat up the pizza and fix you a beer.”
“Slim.” He closed her hand into a fist and brought it to his lips. “You’re going to have to marry me.”
“I’m what?”
He didn’t really mind the shock in her eyes. “I like the idea of you meeting me at the door and heating up pizza.”
She smiled even as she eased away. “Boy, do one good deed, and the guy expects a lifetime.”
“Right now I’d settle for company in the tub.”
Her smile became more relaxed. “So I can wash your back, I suppose.”
“You wash mine, I’ll wash yours.”
“Deal.” She hoisted herself up and wrapped her legs around his waist. “What do you say we heat up the pizza later?”
“I say good thinking.”
They went upstairs as the sun began to lower.
Others waited, restless, for sundown.
Chapter 22
At nine-thirty, Rocco’s was hopping. Joleen Butts had given up on the idea of closing early when the Hobbs family walked in, all seven of them. The youngest howled around the bottle in his mouth while the other four kids made beelines for the arcade games, their quarters ready. Joleen took the order for three large pizzas, loaded, then went back to sprinkling diced mushrooms on top of shredded mozzarella to the tune of the beeps and buzzes of Super Donkey Kong.
Now all four booths were packed with bodies and pizza in varying degrees of annihilation. Balled-up paper napkins littered the tabletop. Their part-time delivery boy had just taken four extra cheese with pepperoni over to the fire hall. She noted that the youngest of the Hobbs troop was on the loose and was pressing gooey fingers on the glass of the display case as he peered at the soft drinks and candy bars.
So much for a ten o’clock closing, she thought.
In another couple of weeks, after school was out for the summer, they would keep the parlor open until midnight. Kids liked to hang out there, munching on pizza in the w
ooden booths, popping quarters in Dragon Master. Except her kid, she thought, and slid the pizza into the oven.
He’d rather sit home alone and listen to his music.
She smiled at her husband as he carried two cardboard boxes to the cash register. “Busy night,” he murmured and winked at her.
Most were, she thought and began to build a submarine. They had made a success out of this place, just as they had dreamed they would. Since she and Will had been teenagers themselves, they had worked toward this. A place of their own, in a nice, small town where their children would be safe and happy. Their child, she corrected. Two miscarriages after Ernie had drawn the curtain on the notion of a big family.
But they had everything else.
She worried sometimes, but Will was probably right. Ernie was just going through a stage. Seventeen-year-olds weren’t supposed to like their parents or want to spend time with them. When she was seventeen, her major goal in life had been to get out of the house. It was a lucky thing that Will had been out there waiting, just as eager.
She knew they were the exceptions. Teenage marriages were almost always a mistake. But at thirty-six, with eighteen years of marriage under her belt, Joleen felt smug and secure and safe.
Not that she wasn’t glad that Ernie didn’t seem to be serious about any particular girl. Maybe she and Will had been ready at a tender age to take the big leap, but Ernie wasn’t. In some ways, he was still just a child. In others …
Joleen pushed back her long brown braid. In others she didn’t understand him at all. He seemed older than his father and tougher than nails. He needed to find his balance before he could be serious about a girl, or anything else.
She liked Sally Simmons, though. The fresh face, the polite manners, the neat clothes. Sally could be a good influence on Ernie, bring him out of himself a little bit. That was all he needed.
He was a good boy really. She wrapped the sub and rang it up, with a six-pack of Mountain Dew, for Deputy Morgan. “Working tonight?”
“Nope.” Mick Morgan grinned at her. “Just hungry. Nobody makes a sub like you, Miz Butts.”
“I doubled the onions.”