Lie in Wait

 

Dedication

For my lovely wife, Meridith

 

Contents

 

Lie In Wait

 

PART I

 

Chapter 1

N
OVEMBER 201
0

V
ICTOR
J
ENKINS STA
RED
into the fire outside Jed King's sugar shack, praying for strength.

Lester Graves, a local, and Daryn Banks, from New Hampshire, stood across from him, both men praying silently as well. Good ­people. Godly ­people, Jenkins thought.

Each man wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans and steel-­toed work boots. Victor had bought his boots earlier that day at Payless. Though he'd rubbed the boots with dirt to dull the virgin leather's sheen, they remained too tight and gave him blisters. The other two men's boots were well trod with beaten leather toes through which a hard steel shone.

“Them toes'll put a hurt on you,” Jed King barked as he powered over to the men from out of the darkness. He clapped a big hand on Victor's shoulder, squeezed too hard, until it ached.

King polished off his can of beer, belched, crumpled the can, and lobbed it into the fire heaped with dead soldiers. He grabbed a fresh beer from a cooler, cracked it, blew foam from the top, and swigged it. Licked his handlebar mustache.

“Follow me,” he ordered.

The three men followed, Victor trailing behind.

King stalked around the back of the shack to an old woodshed. A motion-­sensor light flicked on to illuminate the side of the shed with the brightness of daytime. Victor started at the sudden, accusatory light. King took the term “king of my castle” to heart and protected his homestead with the latest technology. The motion-­sensor lights were just one example. He also had game-­trail cameras hidden along his drive and at the boundaries of his tightly posted property. The cameras took video and still pics of anyone who trespassed. Victor knew this because Victor had put the cameras out at King's behest.

At times, Victor thought King's thoroughness bordered on paranoia; but he understood it. In this day and age a man could never be too careful when performing God's work. Tonight was such a night. Jenkins was impressed with King and his commitment to an unpopular but noble cause. Jenkins prayed silently for the strength he knew was required.

King fished a mess of keys from his Dickies and unlocked the padlock on the woodshed door.

Inside the shed, propped against the back wall, lay a pile of signs stapled to tomato stakes. King grabbed a sign, picked up a hammer, and took them outside, where he pounded the stake deep into the ground, as if driving it into the heart of a vampire.

He straightened the sign and stepped back to read it:

TAKE BACK VERMONT

“Nice,” Graves said.

King crossed his arms over his chest as though studying a work of art. His animal biceps stretched his T-­shirt, and his
18:22
tattoo bulged on his forearm.

“Load 'em up,” he commanded.

Victor loaded his signs and a hammer into the backseat of his wife's rusted Cavalier, the trunk too full of sports equipment to fit the signs. Done, he loaded King's signs and hammer into the back of King's brand new Chevy Extended Cab. King did all right for himself; Victor had to admire it. King would never know what it was like when mothers wagged fingers and threatened you whenever you told them their boys weren't good enough to make the football or baseball team. King didn't know the words
career
or
salary
. He worked for himself. Took orders from nobody, save God, whom he feared and obeyed. He had a crude way about him, surely, which led to his being a widely misunderstood man by secularists and those whose interpretation of the Bible was lax.

“King'd never kowtow to those mothers,” Victor often said to Fran when faced with a mother's inevitable vitriol each sport season.

“And Jed King's twice divorced,” Fran'd say. “How is that a man of God? And not even his kids can stand him, I hear. You're more a man than he'll ever be.”

Dear, sweet Fran. Vic's true ballast. Long ago she, and the Lord, had saved him. She'd never know just how much. Bless her.

“
Vic
,” King barked from inside the shed. “Quit daydreaming and get in here.”

Victor hurried inside.

King stood at a card table, on which a large map of the town of Canaan was laid out before him.

“The end of the abominations of this state starts tonight. We can no longer permit this to stand,” King announced. He glanced at Vic. “The only thing my ex-­wives and I agree on. This erosion of morality. My first ex and I try to teach our boy what's right and he's
bullied
. Not just by students. By teachers, the principal, forcing their agenda.”

“Jesus,” Graves said, softly, with reverence.

“Jesus has got nothing to do with their devil's handiwork,” King said. “My boy brings in a book on deer hunting for show-­and-­tell and the teachers scream ‘cruelty to animals!' But they push
their
books about two dads down my son's throat, and I can't say squat. I have to
tolerate
it. You wanna sin in your bedroom, you wanna warp your own kid at home? I can't stop you. But don't go making it part of the school I help fund, then take away the stuff's that's been there forever, like celebrating Christmas.”

“It's the same in New Hampshire,” Banks said.

Victor nodded. “My son got scolded for
getting
Valentines, because other kids' feelings got hurt. Being popular isn't allowed these days. Kids can't pass Valentines out anymore.”

“How is your boy?” Graves asked.

“Blessed,” Victor beamed. “But he works hard for that blessing. Home alone now, nose buried in his playbook so—­”

“We all know all about your golden boy,” King said. He jabbed a finger on the map, chugged beer and tossed the can in the trash. “Let's get this done.”

“I'd like to pray first,” Victor said and bowed his head and prayed again, openly this time, for the resolve needed to carry each man through the test before him.

 

Chapter 2

T
HE BABY WAS
finally asleep and Jessica Cumber, forever restless and in need of busying herself, decided to wash a load of laundry before the Merryfields returned home. They wouldn't be long. Mr. Merryfield had been sick with the bug going around, and tonight was his first night out in a week.

Jessica worshipped Mr. Merryfield. Secretly, of course. He was so mature. Jessica found maturity very attractive. Plus, Mr. Merryfield was a
star
. He was on TV practically all the time because of The Case.

Kids at school,
teachers
even
, pressed Jessica every day for info on the Merryfields and The Case. Jessica didn't know thing one about it and, would never ever betray Mr. Merryfield even if she did. Though sometimes, she had to admit, she enjoyed the attention and would give the impression she had some insight into The Case.

As she climbed the creamery's elegant staircase, her stomach bubbled. She hoped she wasn't getting the bug. In a town as small as Canaan, sickness spread swiftly.

Jessica stood atop the stairs, clutched the mahogany post to steady herself and peer over the banister. She was positively mad about the wooden staircase, its graceful curvature stretching toward the palatial foyer below. Light from the full moon outside lit the entrance door's windows and pooled on the marble floor, the marble quarried by young local men now a hundred years dead. Iron radiators clanked and hissed. Jessica shivered. She imagined the plumbing as the creamery's circulatory system, the coursing water its hot foaming blood.

Jessica slipped off her sneakers and padded shoeless down the hallway, trailing her arms out to the side, fingernails rattling on the wainscoting.

At the master bedroom's doorway, she drummed her fingernails on the doorjamb, then, with a dramatic flourish, flipped the light switch. Ta-­da! Each time she did this, she couldn't help but marvel at the
enormity
of the room. Her mother's entire trailer would fit inside this one bedroom. The ceiling, which rose so high you'd need a ladder just to change a lightbulb, still had its original pressed ornamental tin and was trimmed with a white crown molding so glossy you'd think the paint was still wet. Decades' worth of paint had been stripped from the wainscoting to reveal mahogany beneath. Jessica knew these details because Mrs. Merryfield had made Jessica privy to them the first time she'd given Jessica the tour and interviewed her for the job; the whole time Jessica had been praying and praying she'd get the chance to babysit in
this
house. For this man and his family.

Now, here she was.

A dream come true.

When Jessica had told her mother about the grand old home, her mother had said, “I wouldn't know how to live in such a place.”

“I'd
learn
,” Jessica had proclaimed.

Jessica tiptoed over to the sleigh bed, the carpet's lush pile squashing beneath her bare toes, cool and cushiony as a fresh bed of moss. The edge of the mattress rose to her rib cage. The frame was carved from the same wood as the wainscoting—­manly, though the bedding, the duvet, was fluffy and flowery:
trés feminine
. Recently, Jessica had become taken with all things provincial. One day she would go to Provence. She was saving her babysitting money for it, and for college, of course. And veterinary school after that.

Jessica had lain on the sumptuous duvet just once. Briefly, and against her better judgment, with her beau.

Beau.

Oh. She liked the sound of that! So refined. So mature. Even if her beau, in reality, wasn't either of those things.

When she'd lain in the bed that one time she'd felt like Goldilocks who'd found the bed that was
just right.
She hadn't wanted to ever get up.

Jessica started across the room to retrieve the Merryfields' laundry in the master bath. As she paused to view herself in the dressing mirror, she heard what sounded like the entrance door opening and clicking shut in the foyer.

Hot water gurgled in the radiators.

Jessica cocked her head.

Silence throbbed in her ears.

She stepped into the hallway and looked over the rail.

The radiators clanked.

The front door was unlocked, as was every front door in Canaan. This was Vermont after all.

The radiators quieted. The old creamery fell as still as a monastery.

“Hello,” Jessica said, her voice echoing in the marble foyer.

The house did not answer.

The
baby
, Jessica suddenly thought, panicked. Something's wrong. Jessica felt it, queasiness rising from her belly to burst acidic in her throat.

She raced down the hall to the baby's room and stood at the doorway, breathless. Her heart fluttered behind her tiny ribs.

Not a peep came from the room.

Jessica tiptoed to the crib, frightened, not bothering with the light switch.

At the crib, she drew a deep breath and looked down.

The crib lay empty. The baby was gone. She knew it. As her eyes adjusted to the blackness, she saw, there in the low light, in the crib, beneath a mobile of prancing antelope, baby Jon, perfectly still, and breathing. Sleeping.

“Oh,” Jessica said and sagged with relief against the crib. “Oh. Thank you. God.” Jessica kissed her fingertips and touched them to baby Jon's hot forehead. She returned to the top of the stairs and stared at the unlocked front door.

“No one's here,” she whispered to the empty house. She remembered her mother saying, “You can't make an old place like that new again. No matter how you pretty it up. It's always going to be drafty. Moaning all night. Haunted.”

Jessica returned to the master bedroom.

A cold draft edged along the floor. Jessica shivered, wishing now for her shoes. With the new coldness, the duvet seemed all the more inviting. She could take a nice doze and neaten it afterward, she reasoned. Who would know? She sank her hand into the duvet and hoisted herself onto the bed. As she lay down, something dug into her side. She felt around the comforter and pulled out a hard plastic object. A woman's aid. She dropped it as if stung by a wasp, and sat up.

A month ago, her beau had shown her a Web site on Mr. Merryfield's laptop. The site sold all shapes and sizes of women's aids. When Jessica had used this term and told her beau to get out of the site, he'd called her a prude. “You're naïve,” he'd said. “But I'll corrupt you yet. I bet the Merryfields have sex toys stashed all over the place.”

“I hate that term ‘toy,' ” she'd said. “And the Merryfields aren't like that.”

“We're all like that,” he'd said.

She'd wanted to protest, but he was more versed in these things. That was part of his draw, wasn't it? His age? His experience? And the secrecy because of it.

For a moment, Jessica wondered if the noise she'd heard earlier had been him, slipping in the house. Had he waited for her to check the baby, then planted the aid in the bed and sneaked out, just to prove a point? He was always pulling pranks like that. He
always
had to be
right
. It was like a sickness with him. And he liked to scare ­people. Jessica, especially. He had a weird side to him that way. He got a real kick from it. Scaring her. Who did stuff like that? No one liked to be scared. But, the more scared she was, the harder he laughed. Sometimes, she realized, age did not equate to maturity; especially when it came to the male gender. Still, she loved him.

How she loved him.

Jessica had pushed him away that night, though, made him shut down Mr. Merryfield's laptop. She wasn't supposed to use it. And soon he'd been kissing her. Whenever there was any silence between them, any downtime, he swooped in and kissed her, as if her silence were permission.

He'd ended up on top of her, then taken her downstairs to the couch. Again. His weight pressing. Her scent rising. She'd opened to him. Afterward, she'd felt guilty, as usual, like she'd let herself down, risked her whole future, veterinary school, a career working in equine breeding, her vacation home in
Provence
, all for a stupid selfish moment.

When the Merryfields' Land Rover had pulled up outside that night, the headlights swooping through the parlor, her beau had escaped out the side door just in time, the sensation of him still pulsing inside her when Mr. Merryfield strolled in the front door and asked, “Any trouble tonight?”

Jessica sighed now and extracted herself from the bed.

In the bathroom, she scrubbed her hands. She grabbed a load of laundry from the hamper and dumped it into a basket and lugged it out of the room.

As a precaution, hamper in tow, she called out over the stairway: “I'm coming down to do laundry! If you're down there and jump out at me, I swear to God, I
will
kill you.”

Downstairs, she ducked low to avoid knocking her head on the beam above her as she managed the cellar steps, each stair creaking as if the nails would pull free and the treads collapse below her.

The old door behind her started to close, as it always did.

At the bottom, she had to stoop beneath beams and hurry to the corner before she lost light from above. She pulled a string that lit a lone ceiling bulb. The bulb oozed a sick yellow light that was quickly swallowed by the dark, windowless cellar. The stone foundation sweated and seemed to pulse in the dimness. The air was close and greasy and smelled of mold. The stone and dirt floor was slimy and cold on her bare feet. She saw a mouse, dead in a trap, bloated, its neck broken, eyes popped out of its skull. Jessica's mother was right: There was no way to make a place like this new again. Jessica ducked beneath support beams. Cobwebs caught in her hair. The Merryfields had had plans to turn the kitchen pantry into the laundry room, until plumbing problems had arisen.

It was no wonder the Merryfields preferred Jessica not bother with laundry down here, where you could see the crumbling stone foundation, cramped and damp as a grave, on which the glamorous house stood.

The washing machine and dryer sat at the center of the lightbulb's pathetic yellow stain. On the crooked wooden shelf above them sat an old radio. Jessica turned it on, cranking the knob to find an upbeat pop tune from a Montreal station.

A heap of dirty men's clothing sat on the dryer. She picked up a pair of Mr. Merryfield's dress pants from the pile, checked the pockets for change and pens. With care, she sprayed stain remover on chocolate smeared on the front of the pants until it was saturated properly, according to the directions on the can. She liked doing Mr. Merryfield's laundry. She liked to defeat stubborn stains. The more stubborn the stain, the sweeter the victory. She picked up one of Mr. Merryfield's shirts and brought it to her nose, closing her eyes as she inhaled.

The shirt smelled of his aftershave and of his cigar smoke, yes.

But of him, too.

His body.

“Jon,” she whispered.

She loved the sound of his name on her tongue.

Jon.

Her spine tingled to say it.

Jon.

She stuffed his pants and shirt into the machine, dumped in a precisely measured cup of detergent, shut the lid and started the machine on COLD.

She checked the dryer. The load in it was damp. She turned the dryer on to finish the load.

As she folded a shirt on the machine, she thought she heard a stair creak. Thought she saw a slice of light from above, as if the door to the upstairs had been opened. But it was hard to tell. She could see so little beyond her weak cone of light. The washing machine thumped. She returned to folding the shirt.

The noise came again. Jessica squinted into the darkness. Her blood felt hot. “Hello?” No reply came. “If that's you, say something. Don't scare me like this!”

Another noise came. The clearing of a throat?

Then. Nothing.

Her heart seized.

She needed to get out. Now.

Some animal instinct told her this: Get out of the house. Now. Run.

But to where? There was no escape up the stairs.

The bulkhead
, her mind screamed.

As she moved swiftly toward the darkness where the bulkhead was, she smashed her forehead against a timber joist. A shattering of stars bloomed in her head. A hand grabbed her. She shrieked. She was spun around. A bright light shone in her eyes. She could not see beyond it. She looked down and tried to catch her breath as she saw the hammer held in the hand.