Right Hand of Evil (28 page)

There was a screech of brakes, nearly lost in the screams of the crowd. In an instant the woman on the street was surrounded. Kim could hear someone shouting for a doctor.

Then she saw a priest-Father MacNeill-kneel down by the woman and begin to pray.

Kim's father and mother started to move toward the fallen woman, and she moved along with them. But then something, some force, made her pause.

Jared!

She could feel him!

She could actually feel him again!

But where was he?

Stopping, Kim scanned the area and saw nothing except the quickly growing crowd around the injured woman, who was now moaning and reaching up for help.

Then she spotted him.

Her brother was standing in the square, perhaps fifty feet away. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the woman who'd just been struck by the car.

Looking at her, and smiling.

She opened her mouth to call Jared. Before his name left her lips, however, he turned and looked at her, as if she'd actually called to him.

The smile-the strange grimace of pleasure that had twisted his lips as he gazed at the accident victim-was gone.

Instead, Kim saw him glaring at her. Glaring at her angrily, as if he'd just been-

Kim stopped short, unwilling even to think the word she'd been about to use. But as she watched her brother, she knew there was no other way to describe his expression.

He looked guilty.

He looked as if he was doing something wrong, and he knew it.

He looked as if he'd just been caught.

Phil Engstrom banged the gavel to bring the meeting to order exactly one hour after it had originally been scheduled. He struck the podium again and again, but the murmur refused to die away as the crowd that had turned out for the meeting continued to whisper among themselves about the accident.

An ambulance had arrived from the fire station around the corner less than a minute after the car struck Ellie Roberts, and she was rushed to the hospital no more than five minutes after she fell to the pavement. Phil himself had seen the accident from start to finish, and in his eyes it had been quite simple: Ellie stepped out from between two cars to cross the street at exactly the same time that Clarie Van Waters turned the corner. To Phil, the accident had been an unfortunate confluence of Ellie not watching where she was going and eighty-year-old Clarie insisting on driving her ancient DeSoto years after her license should have been lifted.

Nevertheless, the rumors began flying even before Ellie was taken to the hospital. The crux of the gossip was that since Ellie had been on her way to protest the variance Ted Conway wanted, Conway therefore must have had something to do with the accident. That Ted had been nowhere near either Ellie or the car and could in no way have been responsible seemed to cut no ice whatsoever. The problem, Phil thought, was that the accident and the talk that quickly accompanied it was enough to change the whole tenor of the meeting. Where an hour ago he had sensed that the town was fairly evenly split and a vote could go either way, now he could feel support swing toward Father MacNeill's opposition to the variance. He'd toyed briefly with postponing the meeting, but quickly abandoned that idea, knowing it would be interpreted-correctly-as a stalling device. So, even as he banged the gavel to bring the meeting to order, Phil Engstrom was wondering about how he and Ted might reverse the decision later.

"All right, everyone," he said. "If we don't want to be here all night, we better get started." He droned through the legalisms and rules of procedure, then decided to let Father MacNeill have his say first. Better to let Ted see what he was up against, he thought, and then decide how to handle it.

Father MacNeill moved to the podium slowly, his head bowed as if he were just now thinking about what he wanted to say. Even when he faced the crowd, he said nothing, fingers tented beneath his chin as if he were still deep in thought, or perhaps even seeking divine guidance. But when he finally spoke, he never mentioned God or the Church. The Catholics in the room, Phil Engstrom knew, were mostly already convinced. Instead, Father MacNeill talked about the history of the town, about its stability, about its continuity. Phil Engstrom didn't even need to look at the approving nods coming from every part of the room to sense which way the wind was blowing.

"Here in St. Albans," the priest said, moving into his summation, "there has always been a place for everything, and everything has always been in its place. Certainly, none of us can have any objection to a new inn opening in our town. I, for one, would support it. But the Conway house stands in a residential area-a
family
area-and to invite strangers into the very heart of our neighborhood strikes me as folly." His eyes moved from face to face. "The place for strangers-and whatever pleasures they might seek-does not lie in the area in which our children play." A murmur of approval rippled over the room, and Phil Engstrom knew it was all over. The priest's invocation of the specter of child molestation-although he hadn't quite said it-would be enough.

As Father MacNeill moved back to his seat, pausing every few steps to accept the murmured praise of his parishioners, Phil turned the podium over to Ted Conway. "Good luck," he muttered under the rustle of the audience readjusting themselves on the hard benches, though he didn't see how Ted was going to turn this around. Right now, he didn't think Conway would get more than ten votes out of the whole lot of them.

Ted stood at the podium, gazing out at the sea of faces that filled the auditorium. Throughout the priest's speech, he had felt the mood of the room harden, sensed that what little support he'd had left when the meeting opened was washing away under the cleric's river of words.

But Ted had also noticed that as Father MacNeill scanned the audience, addressing himself first to one person, then to another, meeting the eyes of nearly everyone in the room, he'd never looked at him.

Not once.

Now, Ted's own eyes sought out the priest, who was sitting next to Father Bernard with his head bowed while his fingers manipulated his rosary beads. Ted willed him to look up, to meet his gaze.

Though Father MacNeill continued to pray, Ted was certain he saw the line of the priest's jaw harden.

He can feel me,
Ted thought.
He knows I want him to look at me, and he won't do it.
His eyes shifted away from Father MacNeill, and once more he scanned the room.

A month ago he would have been feeling the thirst for a drink-indeed, he wouldn't have come to the meeting at all without at least a couple of belts of scotch to bolster his courage. But not tonight. Tonight, as he gazed out at the hostile eyes fixed on him, he felt no desire for a drink.

Nor any fear that he would fail.

Ted picked a man in the fourth row whose eyes were already smoldering, although he had yet to utter a word.

"My family has been in St. Albans as long as St. Albans has existed," he said. "I know it. You know it." He focused on the angry-looking man. "We've all heard the stories, and I'm not going to deny them." The man frowned, looking less certain. "But I'm not going to talk about those old stories. Instead, I'm going to talk about myself, and my wife, and my three children, and the dream I have."

The audience stirred once again, and Ted saw that it wasn't only the man in the fourth row who now looked uncertain; he saw hostility dissolving into curiosity throughout the room. When he resumed speaking, his voice was as low as Father MacNeill's had been, but commanded every bit as much attention as the priest's. Slowly, his eyes moving from one face to another, he told the story of how he had come to bring his family to St. Albans.

It's not possible,
Janet thought. Though she couldn't see the audience from her place in the front row, she could sense the change in the atmosphere of the room. Even Molly, who wriggled in her lap all through Father MacNeill's speech, had settled down, as if the sound of her father's voice was enough to calm her. Where did he learn to do this? Janet wondered as she watched Ted speak to the crowd. Soon after he began to speak, his eyes met her own for a moment. In that instant, as he talked about what their life had been like only a few weeks ago, she felt a sense of empathy so great-a certainty that he not only understood exactly how she had felt, but that there was nothing he wouldn't do to make up for it-that tears came to her eyes. His gaze shifted from her, releasing her from the grip of his own emotions just as she was on the verge of crying. "It's going to be okay, Mom," she heard Kim whisper. "Daddy's going to make it all right." Janet could only nod, not trusting herself to speak.

He's all right,
Beau Simmons found himself thinking in his seat in the fourth row. Maybe Father MacNeill just didn't know him very well. And the Church never wanted anything to change. Jeez, if he and Sue Ellen had listened to him, he'd be trying to support ten kids by now! And if he hadn't paid attention to what Father MacNeill said about birth control, why should he listen to what he thought about Ted Conway? The hostility he'd initially felt toward Ted Conway melting away, Beau Simmons sat back on the bench and listened intently to every word Ted spoke.

Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death…

Father MacNeill's fingers tightened on the beads. He'd gone through the rosary twice already, concentrating only on the words he silently spoke to God, shutting out the ones Ted Conway was addressing to the townspeople around him. But no matter how hard he concentrated, he could feel the change in the room.

The mood of the crowd-the mood that he himself had created so carefully over the last few weeks-was rapidly changing.

The Devil take him!
the priest silently cursed, then instantly begged forgiveness for his blasphemy. But what was he going to do? Should he rise to his feet once again, as soon as Conway was done, and try to undo the damage?

No.

The man would only take a second turn himself, spinning out the same silken net that was falling over the crowd right now.

Better to ignore it and seek guidance from a higher source.

Once again closing his ears to the sound of Ted Conway's voice, Father MacNeill returned to his prayers.

For as long as St. Albans has existed, my family has been here," Ted Conway finished a little over an hour later. His voice, showing no sign of strain after the long speech, reached out across the room, touching everyone there. "All I'm asking is that you let me and my family be part of this community. I promise you'll never regret it." As the audience gazed silently at him, Ted left the podium, shook Phil Engstrom's hand, and returned to his seat.

"Well," the mayor said, gazing out over the room and reading the shift in its mood as clearly as Father MacNeill and everyone else who had heard Ted speak, "I think we might as well take the vote." He read the variance one more time, then looked at the crowd. "All those in favor?"

For a moment no one moved, and Phil wondered if he'd completely misgauged the effect of Ted Conway's speech. But then there was a stir of movement in the fourth row as Beau Simmons raised his hand. A moment later three more hands went up, then another dozen, and soon Phil Engstrom was gazing out at a sea of waving hands. "Contra-minded?" he asked, making no effort to hide his pleased smile as he saw the scope of the victory.

Father MacNeill, Father Bernard, Sister Clarence, and two other nuns raised their hands.

"Well, then I think that's that," the mayor announced. "Congratulations, Ted. You have your variance."

A smattering of applause was interrupted when a figure rose at the back of the room.

"The work of the Devil!" Jake Cumberland proclaimed, his arm raised, his shaking finger pointing directly at Ted Conway. "I'm tellin' you, this is the work of the Devil!"

The townspeople turned to the source of the outburst. "Oh, for God's sake," Beau Simmons hooted when he recognized Jake. "Who let you in?"

The tension broken, a wave of laughter broke over the room, and suddenly they were all on their feet, crowding around Ted and Janet, offering congratulations. As the crowd pressed in, Molly began to cry, and Kim took her from her mother's hands and quickly moved through the crowd and outside.

Standing on the steps in the cool and quiet of the night, Kim could see Father MacNeill and Father Bernard, together with the three nuns who had accompanied them, making their way across the square. She also saw Jake Cumberland. He stood beneath a streetlight, staring at her, and for a moment her eyes met his. Then he turned away, shaking his head as he started down the street. But even as he retreated, she heard him talking to himself, and the words rang in Kim's ears and made her hold Molly close.

"The Devil's work," he said once again. "It's all the Devil's work."

She's been like this since a little after she arrived." Sue Ellen Simmons nervously twisted one of the buttons on the blouse of her nurse's uniform as she looked down at Ellie Roberts's face. Her complexion was ashen, and her eyes seemed to be focused on something off in the distance, as if she were gazing at something far beyond the unadorned wall six feet beyond the end of the hospital bed in which she lay. Her right arm was in a cast, and there were a few abrasions on her face, but other than that, she was uninjured. "I just don't understand it," Sue Ellen fretted. "She was in shock when she came in, of course, but who wouldn't be? And she was talking-asking about Luke, asking where he was. But when we asked what happened-just whatever she remembered, you know?-she got this look on her face and she hasn't said a word since. Not one word."

"What does the doctor say?" Father MacNeill asked.

"When she first came in, I figured she'd be on her way home within an hour," Sue Ellen replied. "But Doctor might keep her overnight."

The meeting at Town Hall had ended half an hour ago. Father MacNeill hadn't even taken the time to stop at the rectory before coming to the hospital to see Ellie, and when he'd told Sue Ellen that even her husband had voted for Ted Conway, she'd clucked her tongue.

"Something's going on," she'd said. "Beau told me himself there was no way he was voting for that variance. He said everyone knows Ted Conway's an alcoholic, and there's nothing Beau hates worse than a drunk." She shook her head sadly. "His pa used to beat him, you know."

"I'd like to talk to her alone," Father MacNeill said now. "If you don't mind?"

"That might be the best thing for her," Sue Ellen replied. "If you need anything, I'll be right down the hall."

He waited until the nurse was gone, then pulled a chair close to Ellie Roberts's bed. Taking her left hand in his, he patted it gently. "Ellie? Ellie, it's Father MacNeill. Can you hear me?"

For nearly a minute there was no reaction from Ellie. Just as Father MacNeill was about to speak again, he felt a slight pressure on his hand and saw a flicker of movement in Ellie's eyes. Then he heard her voice, so faint it was all but inaudible.

"Father, forgive me," she whispered, her lips barely moving, "for I have sinned…" She trailed off into silence. Father MacNeill waited. When Ellie said nothing more, he reached out and gently stroked her forehead.

"I don't believe that, Ellie," he said. "Whatever happened, it was only an accident. You didn't sin, and you weren't being punished."

Another long silence fell over the room. Ellie didn't seem to react to his words, but Father MacNeill sensed that she'd heard them.

He waited.