Divine Evil (16 page)

Biff would've had a shit-fit, Bud thought, and shuddered, remembering what had happened to Biff.

He tried not to think too hard about that, and spent some time cursing and picking thorns out of his pant legs.
At the last minute, he remembered to use a handkerchief to open the door.

The stereo unit, complete with CD, that Biff had bragged about was gone. Neatly and skillfully removed, Bud noted. The glove box was open and empty. Most everybody knew that Biff had carried a .45 in there. The Caddy's keys were tossed on the seat. He decided against touching them.

He closed the door again. He was damn proud of himself. Only hours after the body had been discovered, and he'd come across the first clue. With a spring in his step, he walked back to his cruiser to radio in.

C
LARE DIDN'T KNOW
what had awakened her. She had no lingering image of a dream, no aftershock of fear from a nightmare. Yet she had shot from sleep to full wakefulness in the dark, every muscle tensed. In the silence she heard nothing but the roar and pump of her heartbeat.

Slowly, she pushed the top of the sleeping bag aside. Despite its cocooning warmth, her legs were icy. Shivering, she groped for the sweatpants she had peeled off before climbing in.

She realized her jaw was locked tight, her head cocked to the side. Listening. What was she listening for? She'd grown up in this house with its nighttime moans and shudders and knew better than to jump at every creak. But her skin remained chilled, her muscles rigid, her ears pricked.

Uneasy, she crept to the doorway and scanned the dark hall. There was nothing there. Of course there was nothing there. But she hit the light switch before rubbing the chill from her arms.

The light that flooded the room behind her only made her more aware that it was the middle of the night and she was awake and alone.

“What I need is a real bed.” She spoke aloud to comfort herself with her own voice. As she stepped into the hall, she massaged the heel of her hand against her breastbone as if to calm her racing heart.

A cup of tea, she decided. She would go downstairs and fix herself a cup of tea, then curl up on the sofa. She'd probably have a better chance of getting some sleep if she pretended she was just going to take a nap.

She'd turn up the heat, too, as she had forgotten to do before climbing into bed. The spring nights were cool. That was why she was cold and shaky. The heat, the radio, and more lights, she thought. Then she'd sleep like the dead.

But at the top of the stairs, she stopped. Turning, she stared at the narrow steps that led to the attic room. There were fourteen worn treads leading to a locked wooden door. It was a short trip, but she had yet to make it. Had tried to believe she didn't have to make it. Yet it had been on her mind since she stepped into the house again.

No, she admitted, it had been on her mind long before she had come back to Emmitsboro, to the house where she had spent her childhood.

Her movements were stiff and drunkenly cautious as she walked back to the bedroom to get her keys. They jangled in her unsteady hand as she started toward the stairway, her eyes on the door above.

From the shadows of the first floor, Ernie watched her. Inside his thin chest his heart sledgehammered against his ribs. She was coming to him. Coming for him. When she changed directions, then reappeared to start up to the attic, his lips curved.

She wanted him. She wanted him to follow her to that room, a room of violent death. A room of secrets and shadows. His palm left a streak of sweat on the rail as he slowly started up.

There was pain, sharp and jabbing, like an icicle lodged in the pit of her stomach. It increased with each step. By the time she reached the door, her breath was whistling out of her lungs. She fumbled with the keys, then was forced to press one hand against the wall for balance as she rattled it into the lock.

“You have to face realities, Clare,” Dr. Janowski would say. “You have to accept them for what they are and deal with your feelings. Life hurts, and death is a part of life.”

“Fuck you,” she whispered. What did he know about pain?

The metal hinges keened as the door swung open. The scent of dust and cold, stale air filled the opening. Her eyes stung. She had hoped, somehow, to find some lingering scent of her father. A wisp of the English Leather he had splashed on every morning, a sweet trace of the cherry Lifesavers he'd been addicted to. Even the hot smell of whiskey. It had all been smothered by time. Nothing was left but dust. That was the most painful reality of all. She turned on the light.

The center of the room was empty, the floor coated with the thick gray powder of time. Clare knew her mother had given the office furniture away years before. She'd been right to do so. But Clare wished, how she wished, she could run a hand over the scarred surface of her father's desk or sit in the worn, squeaky chair.

There were boxes lined against a wall, neatly sealed with packing tape. More dust, layers of the passing years, clung softly to Clare's icy bare feet when she crossed to
them. Using the keys still clutched in her hand, she cut through the tape and pried off a lid. And there was her father.

With a sound that was half joy, half sorrow, she reached inside and drew out a gardening shirt. It had been laundered and neatly folded, but grass and earth stains remained. She could see him, the faded denim bagging over his thin torso as he whistled through his teeth and tended his flowers.

“Just look at the delphiniums, Clare.” He'd grin and run his bony, dirt-crusted fingers over the deep blue blooms as gently as a man handling a newborn. “They're going to be even bigger than last year. Nothing like a little chicken poop to give a garden the edge.”

She buried her face in the shirt, drawing breath after deep breath. And she could smell him, as clearly as if she'd been sitting beside him.

“Why did you leave me that way?” She kept the scent of him pressed hard against her skin as she rocked as if she could absorb what was left of him. And the anger came, hot waves of it that twisted tight around the smothering grief. “You had no right to leave me that way when I needed you so much. Damn you, I wanted you there. I needed you there. Daddy. Oh, Daddy, why?”

She lowered herself to the floor and let the tears come.

Ernie watched her. His body had been atremble with anticipation and power. Now the dark excitement ebbed, and a hot wave of shame, unexpected, unwanted, washed over him. He felt it burn his face and neck as her hard, wrenching sobs filled the room. As he crept away, the sounds of grief chased after him until he was running to escape them.

* * *

Dr. Loomis sat in the chair in front of Cam's desk, his hands neatly folded on his briefcase, his polished wingtips heel to heel. Cam wondered if the coroner would tap them together and whisk off to Kansas or wherever the hell home was.

“When I learned the deceased was your father-”

“Stepfather,” Cam corrected.

“Yes.” Loomis cleared his throat. “When I learned he had been your stepfather, I thought it best if I brought you my report personally.”

“I appreciate it.” Cam continued to read the autopsy report, word for grim word. “This confirms homicide.”

“There's no doubt he was murdered.” Loomis's fingers steepled up, then folded again. “The autopsy bears out my original theory. The deceased was beaten to death. From the bone fragments and the splinters of wood we found, I would say at least two clubs were used. One of natural pine and one that was stained, commercially, to an ebony color.”

“Which means we have at least two murderers.”

“Possibly. If I may?” Loomis picked up the pictures Cam had taken at the scene. After tapping their edges neatly together, he turned them as if he were about to show off family snapshots. “This blow to the base of the skull? It is the only wound on the back of the body. From the bruising and discoloration, this was delivered before death. It would be sufficient to render unconsciousness. Then you note the wrists and ankles.”

“Someone clubbed him from behind, knocking him out. Then he was tied.” Cam picked up his pack of cigarettes. “Flat on his back for the rest of it.”

“Precisely.” Pleased, Loomis nearly smiled. “From the depth of the wounds and the amount of fiber in them, he struggled violently.”

“You would agree that he wasn't killed where we found him?”

“I would, most definitely.”

Cam blew out a long stream of smoke. “We located his car. His stereo unit was removed, along with his gun and a case of beer from the trunk. The receipt for the beer was still there. He'd just bought it that afternoon.” Studying Loomis, he tapped the cigarette in an ashtray. “People have been killed for less.”

“Indeed they have.”

“How many homicides of this nature come through your office in a year?”

Loomis waited a moment. “I have never, in my eight years in this county, examined a body so viciously beaten.”

Cam nodded. It was no less than what he'd expected. “I don't think Biff Stokey was killed for a stereo and a case of Bud.”

Again Loomis steepled his hands. “I'm a pathologist, Sheriff. That makes me a detective in my way. I can give you the cause of death, the approximate time of death. I can tell you what the victim enjoyed as a last meal and if he had sex with a woman. But I can't give you motive.”

Nodding, Cam crushed out his cigarette. “I appreciate you getting back to me personally, and so soon.”

“Not at all.” Loomis rose. “The body was released to the next of kin.” Noting Cam's expression, Loomis felt a pang of sympathy. It hadn't taken long for the gossip to reach him. “Your mother requested that Griffith's Funeral Home here in Emmitsboro handle the arrangements.”

“I see.” She hadn't called him once for help, Cam thought, and stonily refused every offer he'd made. Smothering the hurt, he offered a hand. “Thank you, Dr. Loomis.”

When the coroner left, Cam locked the reports and
photographs in his desk drawer. He stepped outside and after a moment's debate decided against taking his car. The funeral parlor was only a few blocks away. He needed to walk.

People greeted him with nods and hellos. He knew without hearing that they whispered and murmured the moment they were out of earshot. Biff Stokey had been beaten to death. In a town that size, it wasn't possible to keep such an aberration secret. It was also no secret that Cameron Rafferty, Stokey's stepson and the town sheriff, had been the deceased's biggest enemy.

Giving a half laugh, Cam turned the corner at Main and Sunset. It was a hell of a note when the investigating officer and the chief suspect were one and the same-especially since the officer was the suspect's only alibi. He knew he'd been nursing a beer and reading a Koontz novel the night Biff had been killed. As his own witness, he could eliminate himself as a possible suspect. But there was bound to be speculation muttering around town.

He'd been in a fistfight with Biff and thrown him in jail only days before the murder. Everyone in the bar had seen just how much hate there was between them. The story had spread across town like brushfire, singeing the edges from Dopper's Woods to Gopher Hole Lane. It would have been recounted and replayed over supper tables. Out-of-town relations would have heard the news on Sunday during discounted-rate phone calls.

It made him wonder if someone had used that very convenient timing.

Biff hadn't been killed for a car stereo and some beer. But he had been killed, viciously and purposefully. However much Cam had hated him, he would find out why. He would find out who.

There was a crowd of people outside Griffith's aged
white brick building. Some were talking to each other, others were hanging back and watching. There was such a tangle of pickups and cars along the quiet street that anybody would have thought there was going to be a parade. From a half block away, Cam could see that Mick Morgan was having trouble restoring order.

“Look now, there's nothing for y'all to see here, and you're just going to upset Miz Stokey.”

“Did they bring him in the back, Mick?” someone wanted to know. “I heard he was carved up by some motorcycle gang from D.C.”

“Hell's Angels,” someone else chimed in.

“No, it was junkies from over the river.”

There was a small, vicious argument over this.

“He got drunk and picked a fight again.” This came from Oscar Roody, who shouted over the din. “Got his head bashed clean in.”

Some of the women who had poured out of Betty's House of Beauty next door added their own viewpoints.

“The man made poor Jane's life a misery.” Betty herself wrapped her arms around her own expansive bosom and nodded sagely. “Why, she'd have to save up for six months before she could come in and get herself a perm. And he wouldn't let her have so much as a rinse put on.”

“What Jane needs now is a woman's shoulder.” Min, her hair rolled up in pink plastic curlers, stared at the front window of the funeral parlor with glittery eyes. If she could get in first, she might even get a peek at the body.
That
would be worth something at the next Ladies Club meeting. She elbowed her way through the crowd and started for the door.

“Now Miz Atherton, ma'am, you can't go in there.”

“You move on aside, Mick.” She brushed at him with
the back of her chubby hand. “Why, I've been friends with Jane Stokey since before you were born.”

“Why don't you go finish having your hair done, Mrs. Atherton?” Cam stepped forward, blocking her path. At his appearance, the arguments settled down to murmurs. Eyes narrowed against the sun, he scanned the crowd. Here were friends, men he might share a beer with, women who would stop him on the street to pass the time of day. Most of them looked away now. Across the street Sarah Hewitt leaned lazily against the trunk of a tree, smoking and smiling at him.

Min patted her curlers. In the excitement she'd forgotten about them, but it couldn't be helped. “Now, Cameron, I'm not the least bit concerned about my appearance at a time like this. I only want to offer your mother my support in this difficult time.”

And you'd suck her dry, he thought, so that you can pass out her misery over manicures and on street corners. “I'll be sure to pass your sympathies along to her.” Slowly, he looked from face to face, from eye to eye. Some backed away, others studied the fading bruises on Cam's jaw, around his eye. Bruises Biff had put there only days before.

“I'm sure my mother could use your support at the funeral.” Christ, he wanted a cigarette. A
drink.
“But for now, I'd appreciate it if you left this to the family.”

They filed off, some to their pickups, others to wander down to the post office or the market where they could discuss the situation in depth.

“I'm sorry about that, Cam.” On a wheezy sigh, Mick Morgan pulled a package of Red Indian chewing tobacco from his pocket.