“You going to check up on me?” Kevin asked.
“I’ve got to, Kevin.”
He shook his head. “Jesus, man. You’ll have Mr. Kohler and Irene thinking I’m a suspect.”
“Don’t worry about it, Kevin. Before this is over, I’ll be checking on lots of people.”
Kevin Waggoner looked at him unhappily, his expression making it clear he felt he was being persecuted.
5
Hank Bergstrom set about installing the new lock on his back door as soon as he got home. The front door had a good lock on it, but the kitchen entrance just had one of those flimsy things you could open with a credit card. He assembled his tools, then started drilling a hole through the wood with a brace and bit.
As he worked, Hank kept recalling that voice that wasn’t a voice, how it had urged him to accept it, welcome it, and … and what? Had it promised to bring Ruth back? That was impossible. That he’d even heard such a voice was impossible.
And yet …
Hank Bergstrom thought about the five particularly gruesome murders that had just occurred in a place that had always been practically crime-free. And he thought about the … the whatever it was. It was evil, that thing that had communicated with him, as if Satan himself had been whispering to him, bypassing his ears and going directly to that part of the mind where evil thoughts were born. And evil lived in all of us. We were born with it. Although most of us were able to conquer the evil, suppress it, hide it away, it was still there, seething, waiting. That was what the good Reverend Pfeil had said.
Bergstrom wasn’t sure exactly what he was thinking. He had no proof that there was any connection between the murders and the seductive communication that had seemed to promise the impossible. He wasn’t even sure there had been a communication. And yet he felt cold all over. And contaminated somehow, as if he had brushed against something vile.
When he finished installing the lock, he tried it a couple of times, finding it worked perfectly. And he knew that if there was a determined evil force at work on the island, the lock would be useless. But then that was just a lonely old man’s fantasy, wasn’t it? Silliness concocted by an aged, deteriorating brain that was having trouble functioning properly.
But the coldness persisted.
As did the feeling that he had rubbed up against something unclean.
6
Before leaving the hardware store, Don checked with Larry Kohler, the owner, who confirmed that Kevin Waggoner had neither been absent from work nor had the opportunity to slip away at any time during the past few days. Not that that helped too much, since the store closed at six, after which time Kevin could have committed all five murders. Still, it seemed like something Don should nail down, so he did.
Returning to the Icicle Lounge, he talked to Sally Wolfe again, who confirmed that Kesselring had been there last night until the bar closed at midnight. Kesselring had not murdered the Gordons. But the ex-cop could still be involved. The question was, did Kesselring know things he wasn’t admitting or was he just a crackpot? Although the ex-cop didn’t seem like the typical screwball, the stuff he’d said was from out in left field somewhere. A killing sickness, as if murderousness were a communicable disease. How could a sane guy say stuff like that?
Although Don still needed to talk to Irene Waggoner, it was getting late, and he was tired, so he went back to the police station. Irene Waggoner could wait until tomorrow. Don had been at his desk about a minute when Joe Coleman came in, let himself in through the gate in the counter, and walked purposefully up to Don’s desk.
“Have a seat,” Don said. “You here as my pharmacist, the postmaster, or the mayor?”
“Mainly as a concerned citizen,” Coleman said, sitting down. “I want to know what progress you’re making on the murders.”
“At the moment, not a hell of a lot.”
“We have to stop this madman,” Coleman said. “The island’s in a panic. Everyone’s scared to death.”
Don sighed. “I know everyone’s scared. They’ve got a right to be. But there’s nothing I can do that I’m not already doing. I tried to get some help from the state, but their chopper’s down, and they’ve got no way to get here. Lieutenant Roper’s working on it. He knows the situation.” Looking over at Corrine, he asked, “Anything from the state police?”
She shook her head.
Coleman said, “Until they can get here, it’s up to you, Don. We have to find this guy before he does it again.”
“I’m doing my best,” Don said.
“We have to find him so people can sleep at night,” Coleman said. “People here didn’t even lock their doors before this happened. Now everybody’s over at Ace Hardware buying locks.”
“And ammunition.”
“Phil Deemis over at the Shell station is organizing a civilian patrol so people will feel safe at night.”
Don nodded. “As long as they remember that they’re not vigilantes, I can use all the help I can get.”
“I understand you’re only one guy,” Coleman said. “But we have to get a handle on this thing, Don. We have to have results. We just have to.” Coleman looked Don in the eye, driving home the seriousness of the situation, and then he stood up, turned, and walked out of the office.
To Corrine, Don said, “By any chance did someone come in to confess while I was out, and just maybe you forgot to mention it?”
Corrine said no one had.
For several minutes Don just sat there, staring across the room, feeling the responsibility of being the one who had to deal with all this. It was a weight that just kept pressing down on him, getting heavier, and he wondered how long it would be before it crushed him.
For the first time since his Labrador Retriever, Rex, died nearly ten years ago, Don felt like crying.
7
Kevin Waggoner was in a rotten mood as he drove home from the hardware store that evening in his ten-year-old Plymouth. He signaled for a left turn from Island Avenue onto Lansing Street and stopped because he had to wait for an oncoming car. His Plymouth sputtered and almost died. He revved the engine, causing gray smoke to billow behind him. Irene drove a shiny new Ford Bronco with four-wheel drive. She’d nagged at him until he bought it for her. Now he had killer car payments that he could barely keep up with. And while Irene drove her snazzy red Bronco, he drove a heap.
He turned onto Lansing, passing between the park and the elementary school. In the next block were some fairly nice three- and four-bedroom houses. In the block after that were small, inexpensive houses. Two bedrooms, neither of which was large enough to hold a queen-size bed. A tiny kitchen. It was the block on which he and Irene lived. On his salary at the hardware store, it was the best he could afford.
Suddenly Kevin didn’t want to go home; he wanted to drive and think. He turned left onto Michigan Avenue. Ever since Don Farraday had talked to Mr. Kohler about him, the boss had been eyeing him suspiciously. No matter that he hadn’t done anything. The thought had been planted. What did the boss see when he looked at him? A crazed killer, dripping with his victims’ blood? Jesus.
Kevin couldn’t figure out why Farraday suspected him in the first place. The constable said he’d heard that Kevin and Paul Edley didn’t get along. Where could he have heard that? Kevin had never had any kind of relationship with Paul Edley.
And then it occurred to him that this could have just been something Farraday said because he didn’t want to admit the real reasons for his suspicions. But then what would the real reasons be? Kevin tossed that one around inside his head for a while, coming up with nothing.
He tried a new approach. What did he know about Paul Edley? Edley’s father had died a few years ago, and Paul inherited the boat rental business and the house. What else? Edley rode a motorcycle. No help. What else? Edley wasn’t much of a businessman—or at least so he’d heard. So what? It had nothing to do with him. That couldn’t be all he knew about Edley. What else did he know? What had he heard? Paul Edley was a good-loo
king guy. He had lots of girls. There were rumors that—
Kevin Waggoner jammed on the brakes, stopping in the middle of Michigan Avenue. A kid walking along the sidewalk looked at him curiously over the top of the melting snowbank, then went on his way.
Kevin had heard that Paul Edley was carrying on affairs with some married women. He tried to make the thought go away, because he didn’t like where it was leading him. But it wouldn’t go away. It kept taunting him. Hey, Kevin, betcha Irene was over there making it with Paul Edley, and that’s why Farraday thinks you might have killed him.
He saw Irene rubbing herself up against Edley, kissing him, the two of them undressing each other. You’re just guessing, he told himself. You don’t really know that Irene and Edley were getting it on. But the scene continued to unfold in his head. He saw Irene panting and puffing and moaning in pleasure—as she never did for him.
Stop it! He slammed the steering wheel with the palm of his hand.
But now that the notion had crawled up from the shadows of his subconscious, it wasn’t going to be denied. If Irene was seeing Edley, and if Farraday knew about it, then everyone in town knew about it. People were probably snickering behind his back, talking about how old fat Kevin’s wife was spreading it around town and the dumb shit was too stupid to figure it out. They even had a name for a guy like that. Kevin struggled to remember it. Cockhold. Yeah, that was it. Because all a guy like that could do was stand around and hold his cock while his wife spread her legs for someone else.
Shame, hot and sticky, rushed through Kevin’s massive body. And then it changed to anger. Even though the car wasn’t moving, he was gripping the steering wheel so hard his hands hurt. He’d been staring at nothing, his mind occupied with visions of its own creation, but now he shifted his gaze to the box beside him on the seat. It was the box he’d reserved for himself by sticking it under the counter at the hardware store. He studied it for a moment, his eyes picking out a single word: remington.
Kevin Waggoner started the car, used a driveway to turn around, and headed for home. Where the little woman was waiting for him.
8
Carolyn Pfeil was beside herself.
She sat at her sewing machine in the spare bedroom, trying to make some new curtains for the kitchen. She’d bought the brown calico material a few weeks ago, thinking she could make curtains that went better with her antique kitchen table than the drab blue ones that had come with the house. At the moment she couldn’t care less about the curtains, but working on them gave her something to occupy her hands and thoughts. Especially her thoughts.
Carolyn Pfeil’s entire life had fallen apart in the space of a few days. Her husband had abruptly gone from being moody and discontented to totally weird. Her daughter’s boyfriend had been murdered, and on the day his body was discovered, Carly had disappeared. Although she was worried sick about Carly, Douglas still refused to let her contact the police.
Carolyn was certain that something awful had happened to Carly. The girl couldn’t have gotten off the island, because of the Split. Even if she was distraught over Edley’s murder, surely she wasn’t foolish enough to attempt walking across three miles of rapidly deteriorating ice. No one on the island would take her in without letting her parents know their daughter was safe. To Carolyn’s mind that left just one horrifying possibility. Carly was dead.
She had been in Edley’s house when it burned down.
Or the same person who’d killed Edley had bludgeoned Carly and left her body in the woods somewhere.
A tear spilled from Carolyn Pfeil’s eye, ran down to her chin, clung there for a moment, then dropped, making a soft spat as it hit the calico material she’d been feeding into the sewing machine. Why wouldn’t Douglas let her call the police? She’d considered doing it anyway, even getting as far as picking up the phone and starting to dial. But she’d stopped herself. And although she didn’t like to admit it, she knew why she’d been unable to make the call.
Because she was afraid of her husband.
Another tear hit the material.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. You weren’t supposed to be in a situation in which you had to balance your fear that something awful could have happened to your daughter against your fear that your husband might do something awful to you. But she had no doubt that Douglas would hurt her without hesitation. Maybe … maybe even kill her.
Part of her insisted that this wasn’t so, couldn’t be so. In all the years she’d been married to Douglas, he’d never exhibited even a trace of meanness. He’d always been reluctant to discipline Carly, which was probably one reason she was so difficult to control as a teenager. The man was so completely nonviolent that swatting a fly had always seemed out of character.
But not anymore.
Douglas had changed. And the new Douglas was mean, potentially violent. She could see it in his eyes.
He never spoke to her anymore. She’d stopped cooking for him, because he didn’t eat what she fixed. He went out all the time, even in the middle of the night. Carolyn had started sleeping here in the spare bedroom so she could avoid him, and he’d never mentioned it. She wasn’t even sure he’d noticed her absence from their bed. And some of his clothes had disappeared. They weren’t in the hamper. They weren’t in the bedroom. They weren’t anywhere. And Carolyn couldn’t figure out what had happened to them.
And then there was this revival he was organizing. The whole business made no sense. Douglas was no Bible-thumping fundamentalist. Carolyn doubted he’d ever so much as seen a revival.
Pat. Pat. Pat. Three more tears hit the calico.
Why was he so indifferent to Carly’s disappearance? Why was he so adamant about not letting her call the police?
Suddenly, surprising herself, Carolyn Pfeil reached deep within herself and found a reserve of maternal protectiveness that was great enough to overwhelm her fear of Douglas. Pushing her chair away from the sewing table, she stood up, and then she walked out of the room, a few steps down the upstairs hall, and into the master bedroom. Douglas was out; she’d heard him leave. Carolyn sat down on the bed, picked up the phone, which stood on a small table. She had to tell the authorities about Carly. She just had to.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she hung up the phone and lay back on the bed, floating on the dreamy mellowness that had just come over her. She closed her eyes, feeling weightless, narcotized. And she recalled that calling the police would have been all wrong. The thing for her to do was go to the revival.
That part of her from which she’d drawn the sudden burst of maternal protectiveness fought this abrupt change that had come over her. Call the police, it urged. Think of Carly. Think of your daughter. The name swam around in Carolyn’s foggy consciousness. Carly … Carly … Carly …
But she didn’t call.
Going to the revival was all that mattered.
9
Kevin Waggoner had walked into the house without saying a word. He was sitting on the bed, cleaning his .45 automatic, when Irene walked in and stood there, hands on hips, looking at him.
“So what’s your problem?” she asked.
He didn’t answer her. He just kept sliding the cleaning tool in and out of the barrel, in and out, in and out. Just like Edley had done to her. He wondered whether she saw the symbolism.
“You’re not talking today?” she asked.
He looked up at her. He wondered what Edley had seen in her. She was too thin and damn near flat-chested. Her face was ordinary at best, with a nose that was too big. Her legs weren’t too bad, and her dark hair was thick and shiny, but those things were about all she had going for her. So if Edley was so damned good with women, why didn’t he pick someone better looking? But the answer was obvious, wasn’t it? She’d gone after him, thrown herself at him.
“Hey,” Irene said. “Don’t put that filthy thing on the bedspread. What’s the matter with you today?”
She was referring to the cleaning tool, which he’d ju
st put down beside him. He’d done it on purpose. The bedspread was a blue and white frilly thing that he’d always hated. It matched the curtains, which he also hated. Along with the wallpaper that had little flowers all over it. Irene was always making him buy things he didn’t like. Never asking if they could afford it. Never asking him what he liked. He shoved the loaded magazine into the pistol, thinking, How’d you like one of these bullets, bitch?
Irene was saying, “Dammit, Kevin, I told you not to put that—”
“Don Farraday came into the store today,” he said, cutting her off. “Wanted to know whether I knew Paul Edley.”
She studied him, said nothing.
“Said he’d heard that Edley and me didn’t get along. Why do you think he might have said a thing like that, since I hardly even knew Edley?”
Irene was looking just a little bit nervous. She hadn’t been paying much attention to the gun; now she kept glancing at it.
“Could it have been because he knew something I didn’t, something that would have given me a reason to kill Edley?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Irene said. She looked a little pale.
“That right?”
“Yeah, that’s right,” Irene said. She was trying to put some feeling into it, but the words seemed limp.
He pulled the slide back and let it go, jacking a cartridge into the chamber. “Why is it I get the distinct impression you’re lying to me, Irene?”
“Why would I lie? I’ve got nothing to lie about.”
“How about you and Edley?”
“Me and—Jesus, Kevin, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.” She was looking confused and hurt. Kevin didn’t believe it for a minute.
He sprang up, catching her by surprise. Despite his flabbiness and general poor physical condition, he was stronger than Irene. Grabbing her, he spun her around and threw her on the bed, falling on top of her. She stared up at him with terror-filled eyes.
“Kevin,” she said. “Please—”
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