Chapter Forty-Four
Jane Laymon on the cell phone, with Tryon.
"Is it Lucas Conroy?"
"It's a girl," Tryon said. "No idea of identity yet. The wings around her neck. Might've been dead just a few hours. Maybe more. We can't quite tell yet."
"Where?"
"In the foothills. Your town. Within four miles of the Elise Conroy's house, and a mile from the Latimers."
"He's moving fast," Jane said.
"Too fast. And too rough. This one is all torn up, Jane. This one looks like a mountain lion got to her."
"Should we head back?"
"No, go ahead and check out the guy up there, and also go by the Moon Lake offices. They've got night staff, and maybe someone there knows one of these guys well."
"Anything pan out on Pratt?"
"Well, he's nervous. He's got good reason. Today was his delivery schedule to the Conroy's, only he says he didn't deliver because he knew they had plenty of bottles already. We'll keep him occupied. How far are you from Cobble?"
"Maybe another forty. It's slow going. The roads are getting bad up here."
Chapter Forty-Five
Duane Cobble heard it clearly, starting with a humming in its head.
Abraxas.
Coming.
Chapter Forty-Six
The Volvo continued its climb up the narrow road. Elise was careful on the curves.
Have to get him to say something definite. Something that will tell me, Trey wracked his brain trying to think fast. Get him to talk, then call the cops and get the hell back to Darden.
"Did I tell you about my wonderful childhood? I know I told Elise."
"You were raised all over southern California," Elise said, nodding.
"You lived up here," Trey said. "Big Bear?"
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves. I lived in many places, all of them white trash, state fund-grubbing, fly-traps Mentone, Barstow, Chino, Cucamonga. Other places. Sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes months, once or twice a year."
"The year you don't talk about," Trey said.
Scoleri leaned forward toward the back of Elise's neck.
Trey was ready to pull him back fast if he tried anything.
"I guess you shared my files with him, oh doctor my doctor."
"Back," Trey said.
Scoleri briefly flickered a glance at Trey, then leaned back in the seat. "I lived at one house that was more than just a house. It was a regular revival meeting. We were filthy little sinners all set to be saved. In the summer, we worked at the Bible camp for children that this family ran. Servants to children even more fortunate than we. The Papa of the house was a minister who had been thrown out of his own church somewhere further up, maybe Victorville. He'd hightailed it to this place, bought a little land with what he could steal from the little old ladies whose souls needed saving. Ran a little weekend camp in the summers where Jesus Freaks dumped their kids. But it wasn't doing so well, and Papa Bear thought maybe it was because of the little Baby Bears. Me being one of them. At one point, there had been a few other kids at this place, a regular group home without the home. Only those kids had run away or been sent elsewhere. Who knows. But I was stuck there for a year. I found out what I liked, what I enjoyed, right in that little home. Papa Bear, he was good at keeping it secret from Mama Bear. He had this place, this secret little hiding place in the rocks. He called it the Mad Place. It was the part of Hell than leaked through into Heaven, he said. and made all of us children gather 'round in it. He told us that God wanted children to suffer. It was right there in the Bible. But you see, I was smarter than my new brother and sister that spent time there with me. I knew I was Abraxas, the God of All, and that Papa Bear was just your average looney tuney. I knew, Trey, that Papa Bear had a kink, and it had something to do with the pain he inflicted on his own children. Sometimes, me, too. But his own kids, he was the worst with them. Little girl named Ruthie, she got it worse than all of us. Papa took a shine to her, I think. He didn't know I knew, but he watched her when she dressed. He didn't touch her. Not in that way. But he knew she had tempted him to terrible, sinful ways. He called her the Whore of Babylon in the Mad Place, and scourged her flesh to drive the demons out of her. He loved doing that. He loved the barbed wire slashing at her pale little back. He loved watching her squirm when he pressed cigarettes against her bare shoulder blades. Truth is, I learned a few tricks from him. And then, my brother, we were bestest friends. We did everything together. We shared our secrets. Papa Bear liked to hit him, too, liked to take little sharp knives from the kitchen and carve words into his back. I'm not even sure of his name right now, because we were supposed to call him 'it'."
"Must've been awful," Elise said.
"Not in the least. I loved it there. They were my first real family. Some weeks, we'd spend the whole time in the Mad Place. It was dark. It was wonderful. Sometimes we'd be put to the task of writing Bible verses over and over on the walls as punishment."
"For what?"
"Being who we were. Papa Bear didn't know I was God, and he didn't know God's name, but I did. And I knew that he was teaching me about Hell. That's what I needed to learn. Ruthie, she got taught that demons can't get driven out. And it, well, my brother was unfortunate enough to become his father a little too well, I guess. But he always had the Devil in him. In a cage in his mind. I taught him where to put the Devil. How to treat it. How to make it go deep into his tissues. Into a dark part of him that he could lock up for a long time if he wanted."
"Are we headed there?" Trey asked, looking forward, up the road. A sign came up.
Moon Lake, 5 mi.
Big Bear, 27 miles
"Moon Lake?" Elise said.
"I'm not telling. Not yet. Just keep driving. I love this old road. Look, see how there's a kind of embankment to the left, and to the right, just a little roll space into the woods, and then, down the mountainside? It's so beautiful here. It's not like the main highway. This is where old-timers used to go up. This is how I knew the route when I was little because when the social worker finally took me out, noticing how I had cigarette burns on my stomach, this is the road she took. And I thought: this is just so beautiful. So secret. Why would anyone take 18 when they could take this lovely loopy road?"
"There was no investigation," Trey said. "A social worker got you out of there. But there was no investigation."
"Why should there be?" Scoleri said. "Papa Bear killed himself a few years later. I never talked. I never squealed on people who were good to me. You work at a state hospital for crazy killers. But if you had other jobs, you might understand. Not all social workers are the good kind. Some have problems of their own. This one, the one who really adored me and was worried about me, he was a good family man, he was a good upright man from San Pascal. Probably someone who lives not far from you, Elise. Maybe down the block for all I know. But he liked the unfortunate little boys who understood him. He got off on our sad little tales. But he didn't like to write them up. He didn't like to take action. Maybe because he had more to hide than anyone knew. I don't know. I never got to know him all that well. But do you know the saddest thing about this sad, sad story of Ruthie and my Devil brother?"
Trey hated to admit it, but Scoleri's story fascinated him. "What?"
"Ruthie got buried alive in the Mad Place. She never made it out of there. I used to hear her sometimes. Just screaming. Screaming. Then, she got real quiet. So quiet it was as if she had never existed at all."
Chapter Forty-Seven
1
Snow slanted as it fell. Laymon could feel the pressure of the wind on the car in a gentle tugging.
Fasteau was silent all the rest of the way up the mountain, and she enjoyed it, but by not thinking about what a creep Fasteau could be, she started to think about the victims. She wondered who the child was who had just been found. She thought about Elise Conroy, about having met her briefly in a meeting that Tryon had with her on Friday, soon after the first victim ha
d been found. About the coincidence of a consulting psychiatrist being someone whose child would be kidnapped. Wondered how Conroy might hook up to the Red Angel — why her son? Why that morning? Why just a few days after the first victim? Had someone seen her? Had the killer known that she was consulting? How was she connected to the other parents? She wasn't, really. She was just another unknown neighbor in the nicer parts of San Pascal. If the water delivery theory was right, she was just another unfortunate customer of the Moon Lake Pure Spring Water company of Moon Lake, California.
How many were there in San Pascal? A thousand households that took Moon Lake Water? Some had to take Arrowhead or one of the other competitors. How many children were potential targets for this guy just because they got that particular brand of bottled water?
She closed her eyes for just a moment, the images of the children's faces going through her mind.
Speak to me.
Tell me what you know.
She felt ridiculous for thinking it. Something in her mind wanted to relax, wanted to listen to the dead children.
Tell me what you saw. Who he is. Where he is.
Is he a friend? Did he grab you? Did he force you? Did he take your hand? Does your mother know him? Were you frightened?
She almost didn't want to know the answers to the question.
2
Laymon and Fasteau arrived in Moon Lake by dark, and the snow continued to fall. It was not a fierce storm, nor was it a blizzard by any measure, but the snow had begun piling up on the roadside, drifts rose along the fir-lined drive up to Moon Lake itself, and the police car slide now and then on patches of black ice on the pockmarked road up to the small town center.
"Some town," Fasteau said. "Reminds me of Deliverance. Squeal like a peeg."
"I think it's cute," she said. "Want a cup of coffee?"
Chapter Forty-Eight
"Ruthie died," Trey said. "Were you sad?"
"You're not in my head yet, Trey," Scoleri said. He looked a Trey with a strangely sympathetic expression. If Trey didn't know his record, he would've thought that Scoleri was actually warm-blooded. He really believes he's Abraxas. Some god of the universe. Some great omnipotent power. Like out of a comic book: the arch-villain. Not the God of Bibles and Korans and Torahs. Not the deities of other religions. He is some kind of amalgam of religious belief and comic books. He had made up his sense of who he was from childhood things: the religion he'd been tortured with, and a child's sense of power over others.
"I'd like to get into your head more," Trey said.
"Cool, as they say."
"Help me do that."
Trey side-glanced at Elise. She was listening carefully, but having to be equally careful about the turns in the road. It zigzagged as it followed the mountain too closely, and the Volvo bounced as it went over one of several bumps in the old road.
"The easiest way to get in my head is for me to read your mind."
"Feel free."
"You don't believe I can do it. That I can hear what people are thinking. What they're about."
"I do believe," Trey said.
"Liar," Scoleri laughed. "That was a half-assed effort to get into my pants, Trey. How do you think I know what our Red Angel is up to?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's because you're Abraxas. God of All."
"Maybe," Scoleri smiled.
"What is he up to right now?"
"This minute?"
"Yes."
"He's trying to keep the Devil in him at bay. He's got him in a chapel of the damned, with an angel and a virgin and me, his God. But it's got bad stuff in it, too. It's the heart of the Mad Place. It's a place in the earth where Papa Bear kept us. Down, down, down. When the world ends, it's the safest place to be. That's what Papa Bear thought. That's what he believed. Some nut had built it before Papa Bear ever owned it. It was a bomb shelter. Under the house, but you couldn't get there from the house anymore. You had to go down this little path to it. We lived down there almost all the time. When Papa Bear got his feeling about the end of the world. Just the kids. He thought we should stay there when the world ended. But it's a place between heaven and hell, and Lucas is there. Sweet pure Lucas. The Devil wants to stop little Lucas' breath. He wants to baptize the boy. To sanctify him so that the Devil can't get to him. You see, he hasn't been killing them because he is evil. That's the good in him. He wants to baptize them and then put them to sleep. A gentle sleep. He wants them to go to heaven. Before the Devil in him can come out and devour them whole. The Devil is getting stronger in him. He can't control it anymore. But he wants to change, you see. That's why he's giving me his little angels. He wants me to know. He wants forgiveness."
Without wanting to, Trey let down his guard. He felt as if something was wrong. Something terrible within himself. As if, just staring at Scoleri, he'd begun thinking like him. Imagining some shadow man baptizing Lucas Conroy, wet fingers on the boy's forehead.
Scoleri looked out the window suddenly, as if in the darkness, which had deepened with each minute, he'd see something there. Something on the roadside.
Trey saw it, too. A light in the woods, on a rocky overhang.
So close to Moon Lake. That's where he is. He lives in Moon Lake.
Trey had been through it once or twice growing up. Didn't know it well, other than it was a redneck outpost of the San Bernardino mountains. Friendly, quiet, but not particularly charming. He drank the Moon Lake Spring water, sometimes, too.
When Scoleri turned to look at him again, Trey's mind flashed on the gun.
Scoleri's face had changed, somehow.
He's a chameleon.
It had gone from that boyish innocent look, to something that seemed, in the shadowy light of the car, like a vampire from a horror movie. He had a smile on his face, but it was too broad. Too knowing. His eyes did that trick — of blurred, rapid movement, as if he were not entirely human.
And then, faster than Trey realized, Scoleri's entire face became a blur as it moved too rapidly toward his own.
Chapter Forty-Nine
1
Scoleri slammed his head as hard as he could into Trey Campbell's forehead.
Campbell flailed backward, the back of his scalp hitting the window of the car door.
In the front seat, Elise Conroy cried out, and Scoleri moved so swiftly that it seemed to Elise that no human being could do that.
One thought shot through her mind: what have I done?
She felt his teeth tearing at the nape of her neck.
Twisted the steering wheel.
Reached for the glove compartment to the right, but had to get her hand back on the wheel.
The road seemed to shoot out in the opposite direction.
The car spun on the ice and slush.
2
From the road, if you were watching, you'd see a the Volvo spin on the narrow road, barely missing going to the right, downward along the mountainside. Instead, it spun to the left, and into the embankment, and then slide down into the woods, along a stream that ran just beneath the next curve of the road above it.
The sound of airbags popping.
No sound at all for a very long time.
The snow is soft and deep along the embankment. It seems to add a cushion of quiet to the night around it.
3
After several minutes, a man kicking the door open with his feet, which are cuffed. His forehead and scalp are bloody.
He moved his bends his knees, arching his spine as he lays across the backseat. His legs seem to twist back on themselves like they're made of rubber. He moves his arms down, so far that they seem to dislocate from the shoulder. His spine continues to arch, and it is as if he will bend over backwards from the lying down position.
And then, swiftly, his arms rise up in front of him. Cuffs remain on.
He slides forward. Gets out of the car.
He goes around to the driver's side door. Opens it with some difficulty.
A woman is frantically try
ing to undo her shoulder harness. Her legs are trapped.
The man with the cuffs on his feet and on his hands, leans into her.
Over her face.
Whispers something.
For the barest second, there is a scream, a woman's, but it is muffled, just as the sounds of the forest and mountain are muffled with the heavy coat of snow.
The man appears to be going to work with his bare hands on the woman's face.
Chapter Fifty
Trey Campbell lies like a broken doll, in the backseat. An enormous bruise on his forehead, and blood all along his scalp and running along his ears, down his neck.
His eyes are closed, but he is breathing.
In the front seat, Elise Conroy squirms as Michael Scoleri holds her down using his body weight, holding his hands over her nose and mouth until she is very, very still.
Rummaging through her purse, flung on the other side of the Volvo, he finds a small pair of fingernails scissors.
He returns to the dead woman in the driver's seat.
He wants something to remember her by.
Chapter Fifty-One
1
When they checked in with the local deputy at the trailer just at the beginning of town, Jane let Fasteau ask all the questions about Duane Cobble because she knew Fasteau's masculinity and ego needed some stroking after her complaints about his driving on the way up the mountain. The cop on duty had nothing but nice things to say about Duane, although one comment stuck in Jane's mind after she and Fasteau went back to their car. "The Cobbles always kept to themselves since Duane's dad died." By itself, it was not a very damning comment, but given the nature of the visit, it planted a warning in Jane's head.
Criminally Insane: The Series (Bad Karma, Red Angel, Night Cage Omnibus) (The Criminally Insane Series) Page 36