Mystery Dance: Three Novels (46 page)

The wooden blocks had been real. But, if she closed her eyes, she could picture herself selecting them off the toy rack, paying the cashier, taking them home and arranging the letters on her table. Then forgetting so she could scare herself later.

That sounded crazy, multiple-personality loopy, and she was not ever going to be crazy. Dr. Forrest wouldn’t let her. Better to pretend that the blocks had never existed. No Creep played tricks on her except the one inside her head.

Julia would leave that part out of the journal she would start in the morning. And if she didn’t want to imagine eyes at her window, the best thing was to shut her own eyes and watch the imaginary silent movies on the backs of her eyelids.

For a moment, she longed for Mitchell’s presence in the bed beside her.
Better the devil you know.

She lulled herself into a shallow, exhausted sleep by the second reel.

CHAPTER SIX

“
How
many did you say?” Julia asked.

The manager of the animal shelter took a draw on his cigarette, exhaled, and made a futile attempt to brush cat fur from his sweater. “About thirty or so. Might not seem like much, but if you’re the pet owner….”

Thirty dogs and cats reported missing in the last two weeks. The leathery old man who’d walked her through the shelter and let her take pictures with her digital camera leaned against the fence, flicking his ash to the gravel. Five dogs pressed their noses against the chain links, only one wagging its tail. The rest looked like lifers, fur dull, ears drooping from the boredom of chronic confinement.

“We usually get about three reports a week,” the manager said, his voice rough from half a century of smoke. “Most of them are killed by cars, of course. Some just plumb run off, but a dog or a cat is a lot smarter than you think. But, just lately, a hell of a lot of them been lost, if you’ll pardon my French.”

“I don’t speak French,” Julia said. “That’s a hell of a language.”

The man laughed, coughed.

Julia wrote some notes on her pad. “Has this ever happened before?”

“Not since I been here, ten years,” he said. “I’d just as soon you leave that part out of the story. The people who did our stories before focused on what important work we do, how much we rely on donations, that sort of thing.”

“A warm and fuzzy piece?”

“Yeah.” He knocked the fire from his cigarette butt, stomped it out, and put the butt in the pocket of his coveralls. The strong smell of animal waste rose with the shifting of the wind. The man didn’t seem to notice. “We got enough problems here, as you can probably imagine.”

“Let me guess. The county funds only a tiny portion of your operation, but they impose all kinds of regulations. Not to mention all the state laws you have to follow. Then there are the outbreaks of parvo and feline leukemia and mange and fleas and heartworms. And the only thing you get out of it is, every once in a while, somebody comes by and adopts one of these guys.”

She reached her fingers through the fence and rubbed the nose of the nearest dog. It licked her fingers and gazed at her with morose, questioning eyes. She looked away before the guilt could finish its journey from her heart to her brain.

“That’s about the size of it,” the man said. “A lot of people don’t give a second thought to the way animals are treated. I just wish I could take them all home with me.”

The manager’s eyes misted a little. Julia averted her eyes and scanned the wedge of sparse woods, the river, and the Elkwood wastewater treatment plant on the neighboring property. The mountains rose in the distance, red and gold and orange with the changing of the leaves. The clouds were high and thin in the sky.

“Okay, warm and fuzzy it is,” Julia said. “Just a question. Off the record, of course. Why do you think so many animals are missing?”

The man reached into his pocket as if for another cigarette, but brought his hand away empty. “I used to live down in Austin, Texas,” he said. “One morning a few farmers on the outskirts woke up to find some of their animals dead. Dogs, cats, a few lambs, even a cow. Had their throats cut. The cops found a little mashed-out place in a mesquite thicket. Whoever done it had themselves a little party.”

“Party?”

“They made a ring of blood on the ground and poured out a star shape in the middle of it. Devil worshippers, the cops called it. Never did catch nobody.”

“Did it ever happen again?”

“Not on that big a scale. They got reports now and then, dogs mutilated and such as that. Cops said some of them devil worshippers was known to actually
drink
the blood.” The man’s face wrinkled in revulsion. “Kindly hard to believe, ain’t it?”

“Not in this crazy world,” Julia said. “Did you ever hear of any mutilations of people?”

“Hell, that was Texas,” he said. “People would throw down on each other with knives over which model of pickup was best. Sometimes they’d whittle a fellow right down to the bone.”

“Do you think somebody in Elkwood is killing animals?”

He shook his head. “It can’t happen here. Not in a town like this. They’re good, God-fearing folks who live by the Bible.”

“That’s what they say everywhere,” said Julia.

“Excepting Los Angeles. And maybe New York.”

Julia smiled and nodded. “Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Cole. Look for the story next week. It’ll be the piece that’s so warm and fuzzy that fluff will drift off the pages.”

“I sure appreciate it, ma’am.”

He called after her as she headed for her car. “Sure you don’t want to take one home with you?”

She paused with the car door open. She scanned the entire shelter, the tiny shack that served as the office, a larger shed that housed the cats, the cinder block-and-wire kennels for the dogs. The dogs by the fence were sitting now, except for the little white dog with the furry butt. Its tail whipped back and forth, the dark eyes shining in some secret game.

Don’t make me feel guilty
, she mentally commanded the dog.
That’s all I need is another thing to worry about. I’ve got enough on my mind. Like my own selfishness. That takes up ALL my time, you little Fido or Fidette.

“I don’t think my lease allows it,” she said to the manager.

“Well, you think about it.” He waved.

“I will,” she said, getting in the car.
I most definitely will.

As she drove back to town, she thought of what she’d written in her journal this morning, wondered if it was the kind of thing Dr. Forrest wanted. She’d awakened on the first brittle cry of the alarm, the clock having kept time through the night. Even before going to the bathroom and brushing her teeth, she opened a notebook and wrote down her dream.

The same dream.

The one of the bones hidden under the floor.

The floor wasn’t the one in her house, or of any house she had lived in. It was of long wooden planks, tongue-in-groove hardwood. For some strange dream-reason, she had to keep the secret of the buried bones from others. She was pretty sure she hadn’t buried the bones, hadn’t killed anyone, but that part of the dream wasn’t very clear.

Maybe Dr. Forrest would know what it meant. Dr. Forrest had helped her decipher an earlier dream, one where Julia was pregnant and a snake was trying to take her baby. According to the Freudian interpretation, the snake was her father, and the fetus was herself as a small child. Therefore, Julia’s father had stolen her childhood, and was the one to blame for Julia’s current disorder.

She was still thinking about her father when she pulled into the parking lot of the
Courier-Times
office. The afternoon sun was behind her, and she saw her reflection coming to meet her in the glass of the front door. Did she look like her father? She could scarcely remember his true face, only the one she had fashioned out of dim memory. Was he alive? Why had he left her? How much of him still lived on in her? How much should she hate him?

She shivered, even though the day was warm, and went inside. Rick was waiting in the chair beside her desk.

“Hey there,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine, thanks. And thanks for last night. I really needed to get out.”

“Yeah, I could tell. Maybe you need to get out more?” He leaned toward her, smiling, as she sat.

“Are you asking me?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“You know I’m engaged, right?”

He waved his hands as if brushing aside a cobweb. “You’ve been here four months, and I’ve not seen any sign of this knight in shining armor. He can’t be too big a part of your life.”

Julia booted up her computer. Rick finally decided she wasn’t going to take the bait. “So, what did you think of my Satanic murder theory?”

“Pretty creative,” she said. “I guess you’re going to need a little evidence before you run it. Or even get editorial approval to stick with the chase.”

Rick sat back and put his hands behind his head, sprawling in the chair, casually accepting her rebuff. “The
Independent
is all over this case. Sometimes I hate being a weekly. They beat us on almost everything. Except they aren’t working the Satanic angle.”

“They don’t have time for the depth of coverage that we get, either.”

“The cops identified the victim.”

Julia nodded, half-listening, clicking her way through her files. “Poor guy.”

“Charles Edward Williams. Age 39. Last known address, Memphis, Tennessee.”

Julia froze over her keyboard. “Memphis?”

“Your old stomping grounds. Is it known as a hotbed of Satanism?”

“Well, aside from Elvis selling his soul to the devil and Richard Nixon…and we all know how
that
turned out.”

“Eternal life on a hundred thousand collector plates and black velvet paintings, but in exchange, he had to die drugged out on the porcelain altar.”

“You are so delicate, Rick.”

“Yep. Journalism hardens your heart, and that explains everything,” he said, shifting into a mocking tone. “How long did you say you’ve been a reporter?”

“Very funny. Do the police have any new leads?”

“No. They’ve shipped the body off to the state medical examiner’s office. Should be able to tell if the guy was drugged when he died. If the Brotherhood used him as a sacrifice, they probably had to drug him pretty heavily.”

“Unless the sacrifice was voluntary. What’s this ‘Brotherhood’ business?”

“One of the names Satanists use for their group.”

“Boy, even Satanists are sexist. What’s the world coming to?”

Rick’s face grew serious. “Are you religious?”

“More spiritual than religious,” she said, expecting Rick to ask which church she attended. She considered telling him she was a Scientologist or Moonie, something offbeat that might throw him off the scent. “I believe in a higher power. I just don’t think you need an escort to get you there, and you don’t have to kiss the Pope’s ring, the Buddha’s feet, or Pat Robertson’s ass.”

Rick nodded and smiled. “Sorry to put you on the spot. Some people get touchy about things like that.”

Julia almost asked Rick about his spiritual beliefs, but decided against it. What if he’d only taken her out to dinner to try to convert her? She liked the idea of being desirable company better than that of looking like a lost soul. Too many people lately had seemed hell-bent on saving her. “Well, for the sake of intellectual argument, I don’t think Satan exists, but I’m willing to believe that other people do, and that they might perform all kinds of crazy acts in the delusion of devotion.”

“One thing’s strange. There’s a case a couple of years ago that never got solved. A little girl was stabbed to death. They found her body out in the woods.”

“That’s sickening.” Julia’s heart clenched. “Any suspects?”

“A few names were kicked around. Deacon Hartley’s came up the most often.”

“Hartley? That’s a common local name, isn’t it?”

“There’s a few dozen of them, been here since the buffalo walked these mountains.”

“Any rumors of Satanism with that murder?”

“No. But that’s the kind of thing the police like to keep quiet. Especially when they can’t solve it. Maybe my series will be called ‘The New Satanism.’ Catchy, huh?”

“Better get some more evidence first. Otherwise, you’ll come off as preachy. Besides, even the Baptists have pretty much given up the idea of Satan.”

“If I were the devil, Elkwood would make a fine place to get started on that Armageddon thing. Go where people are the most complacent in their faith.”

“You’re just stirring up controversy for the sake of that journalism creed, ‘If it bleeds, it leads.’”

“It wins press awards,” Rick said. “Satanism’s got everything you want in a story. Murder, drugs, bondage, orgies, and the ultimate in good versus evil.”

She thought about sharing her tidbit of the disappearing animals, but if he was going to go ahead and run his stories on nothing but rumor, theory, and a handful of spotty research, she wanted to distance herself as much as possible. If Rick would let her. “Well, good luck, but don’t take it personally if I hope your story is a dead end. I’d better get back to work. Deadline. You know.”

“Yeah.” Rick stood and adjusted his glasses. He paused at the door to her tiny office. “Mind if I call you later?”

Whether he was a Christian soldier hell-bent on recruitment or a chronic womanizer, he sure didn’t know when to give up. His cheeks wrinkled when he smiled, like a young Robert Redford in “All The President’s Men.” He’d probably practiced it in the mirror. “I’m pretty busy,” she said. “Maybe some other time?”

“Sure. After you’re married, maybe.”

“It won’t be your problem.” She smiled at him, hoping he didn’t take it as a sign that she was ready to roll back her sheets and let him slide his lithe, fitness-club physique onto her mattress. She wondered if his moral compass allowed him to seduce another man’s fiancee, and decided most men only followed one compass, and it was the pointy one in their pants. “Thanks for last night.”

Rick straightened up, seeing something in her eyes, the old cockiness back on his face. “We’ll do it again sometime. Real soon.”

After he left, Julia finished her article, downloaded her digital photographs, and drove home. By the time she’d put away her camera and satchel, dusk was still an hour away. She decided to take a walk down the little trail that ran through the woods behind the house.