Quiet as the Grave (25 page)

“Quigley is dead,” he said. “They killed him last night. Maybe before Richie, maybe after. The police don't seem to be sure.”

He turned to face them. His eyes were glowing in the blue light from the television. “They're going to
kill us all, you know. It used to be enough just to be silent. But we're going to be punished, because we were so weak.”

“Who?” Even Mike sounded frustrated. Suzie wondered if they should believe any of this. Phil was a little unhinged. He might have dreamed the whole thing.

But the monks were clearly real. They stood at attention, waiting for the flick of Phil's finger to set their terrible video game in motion. It was a little like going through the looking glass, she thought. You didn't know what was real and what was just the contagious insanity playing with your mind.

“Who is going to kill you?” Mike's voice was tough. “Phil, if you know who is doing these things, let's don't waste time with the video. Just tell me and—”

“I don't know. That's the problem. I don't know. But sometimes I think it might be…”

Suzie wondered if Mike was holding his breath, too.

Phil lowered his voice. “Sometimes I think it might be Justine.”

Suzie exhaled her disappointment. “Justine's dead, Phil,” she said. “If anything she was the killer's first victim.”

“I know,” he said. “I'm not crazy. It's just that sometimes I see a woman in my dreams, and she—”

Mike cut him off. “Let's finish the video. Can you identify any of the other men in the robes?”

Phil shook his head. He pointed to a tall man. “I thought that might be you. She seemed to pay special attention to him.”

“No,” Mike said dryly. “Not me. Is one of them Richie Graham?”

“Yes, but you can't see him now. He's coming in just a minute. Watch the entrance to the cave.”

He started the video rolling again, and almost immediately another hooded, robed man slid slowly through the cave's lakefront opening.

“That one. That's Richie.” Phil pointed.

Suzie gasped. The man was half carrying, half dragging something. It was a young girl. Naked and limp with either fear or drugs, the girl was crying, whimpering for him to let her go.

It was Loretta Cesswood.

Mike made a sound. Suzie had to grab the back of the leather chair in front of her. Otherwise, her legs might have given out.

She'd imagined this, of course, back when she'd first read the diary. But words couldn't capture the infinitely pitiful quality of that pale, childish body drowning in the sea of black robes.

“They had never done that before,” Phil said. “Never. You have to believe me. Before, the women had always been paid. They were professionals. They thought we were pathetic, of course, but they were glad to play the game if the price was right.”

“Yuck,” Suzie began. “What kind of—”

But Phil suddenly hissed at her.

“Listen,”
he said. “You can hear me. You can hear that I tried to stop them.”

Sure enough, the robed man he had identified as himself lurched forward, his hands extended. “No,” the man called out. “You heard her! She said no!”

The men on either side of him put out their hands, too, and brought him back into his place in line. He continued to strain forward, but he didn't speak again.

Oh, yeah
, Suzie thought.
You tried to stop them, all right
.
Big hero
.

The drama was continuing, of course, in spite of
Phil's halfhearted efforts. The man led the naked girl toward the box. She seemed to sense her danger, because she found spirit, just for a minute, and dug in her heels and screamed. But the man found her no more trouble than a kitten. He moved her forward, opened the front of the box, and placed her inside.

He stayed with her for a minute. Suzie imagined she heard the sounds of metal cuffs being locked down over fragile bones, but she couldn't have, not really. You couldn't hear any sound that small.

The man emerged again, alone, and took his place in the line.

From just out of camera range, a woman appeared. She wore robes, just like the men, but she wore no hood, as if she didn't care whether she could be identified. As if, Suzie thought, she was proud to be there.

It was Justine.

Oh, damn it. The Mulligan Club wasn't just a club Justine frequented when she got bored. It was
her
club. She had invented it, and she owned it. While they were here, she clearly owned these men, too.

Suzie tried to read Mike's face, but in the flickering light of the television it was just a jumble of meaningless shadows. His gaze was glued to the screen.

Justine paraded along the line of men, pausing for a second before each one individually, like a queen surveying her troops. Even in the video, Suzie could feel the tension, the anticipation, the tremor of sexual thrill.

Finally Justine stopped. She leaned in and kissed one of the men, the one Phil had identified as Keith Quigley. Her kiss was slow and deep. She salaciously tongued the hood's mouth hole, then nipped the fabric, and pulled it toward her slightly with her teeth.

The man stepped forward. Without haste, but with a rigidity that spoke of his excitement, he stripped off his robes. He left his hood in place. But under the robes he was naked. He was boldly aroused.

“He's been chosen,” Phil said in a voice that was, even now, strangely awestruck.

Through her horror, Suzie analyzed the shape of the man's body. Phil wasn't crazy on this count, she realized. It
was
Quigley. She recognized that barrel chest, those just slightly bowed knees, that roll of the shoulders that gave him a toadlike hunch.

He entered the box.

The girl cried out in terror. There was a terrible silence, and then softly, she began to cry, and then to scream. She must have been struggling, because the box shifted on its base.

“Only one man a night is picked,” Phil was explaining, as if he didn't even see the unspeakable crime being played out on the screen. “I guess that's why they brought a girl like this, a young one who would be afraid. I think Quigley likes pain. We all do, of course, either giving it or receiving it. But Quigley—it was different with him. He needed more.”

“Turn it off,” Mike said suddenly. He was looking at Suzie. She wondered if she had made a noise. Then she realized that she had almost sunk to her knees. She still clutched the edge of the chair.

“No, not yet. Here's where I try again—” Phil pointed excitedly at the television. His robed figure shook off the hands that held him in place and rushed forward. “Someone has to help her,” the Phil on the screen cried.

But Justine stepped smoothly forward and blocked his way. He subsided instantly. With a smile on her
face, she reached out and touched his cheek through his hood. She murmured something to him, something too soft to hear.

The two men moved forward, as well. They each grabbed one of Phil's arms. But Justine waved them away, and they stepped back obediently. She knew she didn't need them.

She reached down and found a slit in the front of Phil's robe. She slid her hand into it and began to move her hand in a gentle, unvarying rhythm.

Phil groaned, and then he let his head fall back as Justine worked on him.

Meanwhile, the girl in the box went on weeping, softer now. She called for her mother.

Suzie tasted bile in the back of her throat. She looked at Phil, and saw that he was sobbing, too, watching himself be humiliated, brought to climax in spite of his determination to resist. Even in spite of his fear.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry.”

Mike took the remote control out of his hand and turned off the television.

The library fell into its silent gloom.

And a shot rang out in the darkness.

M
IKE HAD HIS GUN OUT
,
and he'd already begun to move toward Suzie when he heard a firm voice speak into the darkness.

“Stay where you are, Mike. I've got her, and I'll shoot her if I have to.”

His mind, already struggling to process the complex and chilling implications of the video, and then the horrifying sound of a gunshot, at first couldn't comprehend what he was hearing.

Could that really be Judy Stott? He knew that Phil, who had been standing by the television, had slumped to the floor. What the hell had happened here? Had Judy shot her own husband?

The dusky twilight in this shrouded room, especially after his eyes had become accustomed to staring at the television, had left him virtually blind for a few seconds.

But his vision was returning slowly, and he could see that there was a woman standing right behind Suzie.

It was Judy.

“Mike.” Suzie's voice sounded angry, which he knew meant she was scared. She hated being scared and would do anything to hide it. “Mike, she's got a gun shoved in my back. At least it feels like a gun, and, by the way, Mrs. Stott, that hurts.”

Mike's heart stumbled. “Suzie,” he said as clearly and slowly as possible. “Do
not
do anything dumb. Do you hear me?”

She snorted. “I'll promise not to do anything dumb
on purpose
. But you know me.”

At a different moment, he might have laughed. Yes, he did know her. He adored her. He had never believed he was capable of killing anyone, but if Judy Stott harmed a hair on Suzie's head, he thought he might tear her limb from limb.

“Mike,” Judy said. “I want you to put your gun down slowly. I want you to kick it toward me.”

He hesitated. Behind him, Phil's breath was coming raggedly.

“Right now, Mike. I will shoot her. Two bodies aren't any harder to explain than one.”

He put his gun on the floor carefully, holding it by the barrel. Then he stood, and nudged it with his toe. It slid across the hardwood floor and came to rest right beside Judy's foot, like a successful toss in a deadly game of horseshoes.

She bent slightly—never taking the gun from Suzie's back—and lifted the gun. She slid it in the pocket of her jacket.

“Good decision,” she said. “Now, I want you to check on Phil. I need to know whether he's dead.”

“Why?” Suzie's voice was tart. “Do you hope he is or he isn't?”

Smart, smart lady
, he thought, sending her a mental thank-you. He'd just been wondering which answer Judy was looking for.

“It doesn't matter to me,” Judy said calmly. “If he's not dead yet, I have plenty of bullets.”

Okay, then, the right answer was yes. Mike bent
down and felt Phil's pulse. He had been shot squarely in the back, and there was blood all over his shirt. His pulse was weak—so weak that Mike might be able to say yes truthfully very soon.

“I don't feel a pulse,” he said. “I think he's gone.” He stood. “What the hell is going on here, Judy?”

“I should have killed him two years ago,” she said. “It would have saved me a lot of trouble.” She looked at the lump on the floor, without the slightest evidence of pity. “He was such a weakling. He was the perfect prey for your predatory wife.”

Mike knew what she meant. He'd thought the same thing himself, as they watched Justine subdue poor Phil with nothing but a cold smile and the promise of a hand job from the queen.

“I take it you saw the video, too. How long had you been standing there, watching?”

“Long enough,” she said. “I didn't kill your wife deliberately, Mike. It was an accident. But I think if I had seen this video two years ago, I might have. God knows, the bitch deserved to die.”

Mike felt a strange surge of an emotion so complex he couldn't put a name to it. Was it possible he was finally going to learn the truth? He'd lived so long with the questions, the doubts, the dread. Asking himself about every friend, every neighbor, every strange man on the street…
Did you kill my wife
?
Do you know where her body is
?

His mind had supplied so many nightmare scenarios. He'd learned to live with that. Oddly, he suddenly wasn't sure he could handle the finality of
knowing.

And yet, of course, he had to know.

“How did it happen, Judy? Did you find her walking home that day? Did you give her a ride?”

“I tried to. But she was in a snit, because of some snafu at the play that day with Gavin.”

Mike remembered. Justine had thought the other mothers, in collaboration with Judy, had conspired to steal Gavin's starring role. God, when Mike thought back on that day now, he couldn't believe how petty it all had been. The last day of her life, and she wasted it being upset over something so trivial.

“Anyhow,” Judy went on. “She refused to get in the car. So I got out. I'd just found out that she'd brought Phil into her disgusting club, and I wanted to tell her I knew.”

“You already knew about the Mulligan Club? How did you find out?”

“I'm not a fool. I know when my husband is lying. I followed him the first night. I saw enough.”

Mike could only imagine how furious she'd been.

“So I told her she'd made a mistake. That my husband might be a fool, but I wasn't. I told her it was going to have to stop.”

“What did she say?”

“She laughed. She really was the most arrogant woman I've ever met. She said she had no intention of closing her club, but that I could join, too, if I wanted. She said they really needed some women.”

Oh, Justine
. How insulted Judy must have been. Justine always went too far, way too far. When she was young, that had been one of her charms, that over-the-top, brazen sexuality and the certainty that the world was her plaything.

But in a grown woman, it was clearly a personality disorder. A sociopathic inability to recognize the humanity of others.

“She didn't mean it, Judy. She was just trying to embarrass you.”

“I wasn't embarrassed,” Judy said haughtily. “I don't embarrass that easily. I was
furious
. I slapped her. Hard. We were standing on the grass, near the tree line. I went to slap her again, and she couldn't take it. She darted away. She had on those stupid heels, and I think she must have tripped on something, because suddenly she was going down. She hit her head on a rock. She died instantly.”

Mike saw it like another video in his head. Justine falling. Her blond hair matted with blood, her eyes open, staring, caught with a look of disbelief that her beautiful, intense flame could be extinguished so easily, just like any mortal.

“Why didn't you just call the police?” Suzie sounded skeptical. “If it really was an accident, why couldn't you report it?”

“With my handprint still on her face? Who would have believed my story? Do you understand how important your reputation is, in the kind of work I do? I would have lost everything.”

“So in the end, you're not all that different from Justine, are you?” Suzie tilted her head to glare at Judy. “In the end, it's all about you.”

“Suzie.” Mike tried to send a warning in his voice. This woman had already shot one person. Now was not the time to let her temper have free rein.

“Let her rant, Mike,” Judy said. “I've killed three men in the past twenty-four hours. Do you think I give a damn what this little twit thinks of me?”

“No.” Mike had to be careful. He wanted to keep her talking, but he couldn't risk inflaming her temper. “No. I don't think you care. Why would you? You killed Richie, then?”

“Yes,” she said. “He'd been blackmailing me for
two years. He saw me burying the body. He sent me a tape, too. It was dark, so you couldn't see much. But you could see enough.”

“Oh, my God.” Suzie sounded sick. “I knew that guy was a creep.”

“So why now?” Mike tried to take the focus from Suzie, who was just too damn close to that gun. “Were you suddenly sick of paying?”

“Of course I was sick of paying. But that's not why I killed him. I killed him because I couldn't trust him anymore. Keith Quigley had been up there, and he was trying to cut a deal.”

“So Quigley was being blackmailed, too?”

“Of course. But he was a fool, too. He actually believed he'd been in love with Justine, and he was getting ready to spill everything to the cops. The Mulligan Club, Phil, everything. Some romantic notion that he owed it to her memory to make sure her murderer was found.”

“And he wanted Richie to corroborate?”

“I'm not sure what the details were. I think he was trying to get Richie to promise to keep his name out of it, in exchange for some kind of immunity. Richie said he'd think about it, then he made the mistake of trying to tease me with it, hinting about the deal. I knew what that meant. He was going to turn me in, to save his own hide. So I killed him. I killed them both.”

“When you saw him dying on the beach, I thought—” He tried to summon up the expression he'd glimpsed on her face. “I thought you might have cared about him.”

She laughed. “And men call women sentimental! I cared about him
dying
, that's all. I had been afraid that
you might have spoiled everything, with your idiotic heroics. I was extremely relieved that you hadn't.”

He wasn't sure he bought that entirely. He wondered whether, along the twisted way, Judy and Richie might have become lovers. Not real love—just sex. But Judy might have become a tiger in the hands of a man like Richie. It might have pleased her to punish her husband for being such a weakling by taking a strong man to her bed.

“What about Rutledge?” He was trying to find all the pieces, but he wasn't sure how much longer he could keep her talking. She was starting to look restless. And Suzie, of course, could only be kept quiescent for so long. “Was he being blackmailed, too?”

“Of course, but not because of the club. He never got into the club. I found his tape at his apartment, just now, when I was helping Debra pack. She was glad to get the help.” She smiled unpleasantly. “I'm a very good friend.”

“What had Rutledge done, then, to attract Richie's interest?”

“He'd been having some pretty violent sex with Justine. I suppose Richie convinced him that it looked suspicious to be roughing up a woman just days before she went missing.” She made a disgusted sound. “Your wife was a nasty woman, Mike. I've always felt kind of sorry for you.”

“Sorry enough,” Suzie broke in wryly, “to let him walk out of here alive?”

Judy laughed. “No,” she said. “Not that sorry, I'm afraid.”

She looked at Mike. “Okay, enough chat. I want you to walk slowly over to that television and take out the videotape.”

“And if I won't?”

“Then I shoot her. I'd rather do it later. I have a scenario in mind that will make a plausible cover story when I have to talk to the police. But I can do it here, if you make me.”

Mike went over to the console and ejected the tape. “Now what?”

“Now go over to the window, slowly, and lift up the edge of the carpet. Suzie and I will be right behind you.”

Mike did as he was told. He kept playing ideas through in his head, but none of them got him to the gun fast enough. If she intended to pull that trigger, it would take only one wrong move from him, and Suzie would be dead.

He kneeled down and lifted the edge of the carpet. To his surprise, he saw a small notch in the wood, and a metal trigger that seemed to operate a latch of some kind.

He looked up. “What is this?”

“You didn't know it was there, did you?” Judy shook her head. “You may have lived here, but your heart wasn't ever really in it. Maybe it's a kind of justice that you should take the blame for all this. Maybe it really is your fault. A woman can't live without any love at all.”

Suzie groaned. “What a crock. Justine Millner loved herself so much she didn't need anyone else.”

“What is this, Judy?” Mike touched the metal trigger. It was cold. “A trapdoor? Where does it lead? To the cave?”

“Yes,” she said. “It's a part of the whole cave system, actually. The old owners had blocked it off. But Justine opened it up and put in the trapdoor. I
suppose discovering the tunnel was what gave her the idea of the Mulligan Club.”

“Hey.” Suzie looked at Mike. “A tunnel? I wonder if Gavin stumbled onto it somehow? I wonder if that's where he saw Quigley? He may have been on his way to or from a Mulligan meeting.”

Mike nodded. “Maybe.” It made his blood run cold to think of his son brushing that close to something so sick and twisted.

“Open it, Mike,” Judy said. “I want to get this over with.”

He crooked the knuckle of his index finger into the latch and lifted. The hinges were rusty—they obviously hadn't been opened for more than two years—but not frozen. The trap came free neatly, exposing three downward steps and then a surprisingly wide tunnel that sloped gently toward the lake. It seemed to be tall enough for a man to stand in.

“Now what?” He looked at Judy, who had come closer, but not close enough.

“Now I want you to get in. Stay a few steps ahead of us. I'll have the gun against her head. If you so much as stumble, or look behind you, I'll shoot her. It's all the same to me, Mike. She can die now or she can die later.”

“Umm, if I have a vote, I say later,” Suzie said. She looked over at Mike and tried to smile.

He kept thinking through the options. Surely the tunnel would provide more possibilities. Down there, both he and Judy would be hampered, but at least it would force the pieces to move on the chessboard. If they were in motion, there was always the possibility Judy would make a mistake.

“All right,” he said. “I'm not going to do anything funny, so relax. Are we going to the cave?”