All The Pretty Dead Girls (33 page)

Gayle Honeycutt’s fingers moved furiously over the keyboard of her computer. She was determined to get the story of the explosion onto the wires before anyone else.

I was there!
She was thrilled by her good fortune.
I was right there to give an eyewitness account.

“Front page,” she was murmuring to herself as she typed up her story. “And surely splashed across newspapers throughout the region…”

Her cell rang. She saw from the Caller ID it was Perry Holland. Poor guy had gone berserk watching his father’s house blow up. He kept ranting that “they” did it, that “they” didn’t want him talking to her.

“Who are
they
?” Gayle had asked.

Perry had been unable to respond. He was just wide-eyed and shocked, mumbling to himself. But an hour later, he was suitably composed—if Gayle could call it that—to call her on her cell, ranting again about “them.” From what Gayle could make out, he seemed to think some unnamed group of unknown people were plotting behind his back, and they were connected to everything from Bonnie Warner’s murder to his father’s death. “Like a cult,” Perry raved. “I think they’re like a cult.”

That was all Gayle needed to hear to tune him out. Whenever people started rambling on about “cults,” she knew they were crazy. Later, she’d talked to the fire chief, who suspected it was a gas leak. Perry Holland had dismissed that idea with his paranoid theories. Gayle had simply rolled her eyes. Now the crazy deputy was calling her again. She’d let the call go to voice mail. Sure, there might be an interesting story in this history of murders that Perry claimed had happened at Wilbourne, but she had more pressing matters first.

Her cell rang again. Caller unknown. It could be Perry calling back, blocking his number. But she’d also left messages for the fire chief to confirm a few facts. She answered.

“Gayle Honeycutt?”

“Yes,” she replied.

It was a woman’s voice, one that seemed very familiar, though Gayle couldn’t place it.

“If you think this story about the exploding house is big news,” the caller said, “I suggest you meet me for something really big.”

Gayle laughed. “Who’s this?”

“Meet me tomorrow and you’ll see.”

“I need more to go on than that.”

The caller chuckled. “You’re tired of supporting those two kids all on your own, aren’t you, Gayle? You work so hard…slaving away at some second-rate newspaper in the backwoods. You should be writing for
The New York Times,
Gayle.” A pause. “And you could be.”

“Who
is
this?” Gayle asked again, suddenly thinking she knew the voice.

But why would
Joyce Davenport
be calling
her
?

“Everything you’ve dreamed about could be yours,” the caller said. “Just listen, Gayle, and I’ll tell you how…”

During the third week of November, a cold front moved down from Canada, obliterating any lingering traces of autumn. The trees were now completely bare, and the skies were perpetually gray. Even if the official declaration of winter was still a few weeks away, it had for all intents and purposes already arrived. The residents of Lebanon reached for their thermostats, their fingers shaking from the cold. Coats, hats, gloves, and scarves were dug out from the backs of closets. Alarms were set a little earlier in order to warm up cars and scrape frost off the windshields. Children suffered from runny noses, and cold remedies began flying off the shelves at the drugstore.

And now, the week of Thanksgiving, a huge snowstorm was predicted—the earliest such storm anyone in the region could remember. Six or seven inches were possible—enough to paralyze the town, making the roads impassable. The power company sent workers out ahead of time to make sure the lines were strong enough to withstand the winds the storm might bring.

As the temperature dropped, Perry Holland sat in his rocking chair, staring out the window into the hard gray sky. The doctor had given him a pill to help him sleep without the dreams, where he saw his father’s house explode again and again.

In the days following the explosion, he’d waited impatiently for the fire department’s report on the fire. He had wandered like an aimless ghost through the devastated neighborhood, where dozens of windows on other houses had blown out, and where debris had rained down on yards, cars, and rooftops. Perry had found shards of his mother’s china and charred photographs of happier times nearly a block away.

The fire department had gotten there in a matter of minutes, and the fire—and the smaller ones started by falling, burning debris—had been contained very quickly. Gayle Honeycutt seemed not to appreciate the magnitude of the loss—all of the files about all of the Wilbourne murders and disappearances had been in that house—and instead was busy running around, jotting down notes and observations, seemingly thrilled to be an eyewitness to a local disaster.

“No lives lost,” the fire chief was able to proclaim hours later. But that was small consolation to Perry. The fire inspector determined that a gas leak and faulty electrical wiring were responsible. Given the state of disrepair Dad’s house was in, it was possible. But Perry believed it as much as he believed his father had been out climbing trees on the day he died.

As long as Perry lived, he would never forget watching the house he’d grown up in blow sky-high, flaming debris raining down all around him. The explosion had rocked the car, the windshield spiderwebbing with cracks from the concussion. His ears rang from the loudness of the blast, his eyes popped wide in disbelief. He’d turned the car off, leaving it in the middle of the street, and run toward the flaming wreck of the house.

They’ve done it,
Perry thought.
They’ve kept anyone from finding out the truth.

But just who they were, Perry still didn’t know.

When he tried to tell Gayle what he suspected—that there was something, some kind of cult, at work in Lebanon—she was disinterested. No one believed him.

He was alone now, completely alone in the world. No family, no wife, no children.

The future looked incredibly bleak.

But the pills the doctor gave him helped a lot. They numbed him to the pain, the depression, the horror of it all. He was given two weeks off from the department with pay—even though already there were whispers that he had removed official documents from the archives. Perry just sat in his apartment, slipping into the fog of chemicals. He slept a lot, with the ringer on the phone turned off. Even a visit from Marjorie Peqoud had failed to rouse him. Her face had barely penetrated through the Valium fog.

All he could hear was his father’s voice.

Perry, every twenty years or so something bad happens up at the college to one of the girls. Sometimes they disappear, sometimes it’s a rape, sometimes they die, but it’s a cycle. I swear to God, there’s something going on up there. I know it doesn’t make any sense—a serial rapist-murderer who only strikes every generation? A bizarre copycat? But goddamn it, son, there’s something not right up at the college, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.

All the files his father had pulled, going back as far back as the department’s records went…

All of them went up with the house.

But Perry had
read
the damned files. He could recite them almost by memory. Yet he felt unable to speak, as if all the air had been sucked out of his lungs.

It was easier just to take his Valium and rock in his chair.

Perry, you were going to avenge my death. You were going to find out the truth!

The fire department…the state cops…everyone just wanted to move on, explain everything away. Already, Bonnie Warner’s murder had moved off the front pages. History was repeating itself.

They’re in on it. People well placed in the fire department, with the state police…they’re part of it.

Dad’s voice again.

“But that’s just crazy,” Perry said out loud, just as a soft rapping was heard at his front door.

He ignored it. Probably just Marj again with a casserole. She’d leave it on the step with a note. He couldn’t bear to see her.

How far did it go? Perry wondered. How deep? How many people were involved?

The Gregorys certainly. And there must be more up at the school. Those beady-eyed private security guards Gregory had brought in from Manhattan—they must be part of it, too.

“Now you’re going paranoid,” he said to himself.

The rapping continued on his front door.

“And crazy, too,” he said. “Sitting here talking to yourself.”

The knocking had grown more insistent.

“All right!” Perry shouted. “Hold on a minute!”

He forced himself up and out of his rocking chair. He crossed the room and pulled open the door, expecting to see Marjorie standing there with a casserole dish. Tuna probably. Boy, was he sick of tuna casserole.

But it was a teenage girl with long dark hair.

“Deputy Holland?” she asked.

He nodded, trying to place her face. He knew her, but…

“I just wanted to say I’m sorry about your father,” the girl told him, leaning up to give him a hug.

Perry put his arms around her.

“Your father was murdered,” she whispered in his ear. “You are right to suspect what you do. I just had to come over and tell you that.”

He let her go and stared down at her. “Bernadette deSalis,” he said. “That’s who you are.”

“That’s right.” She smiled kindly up at him.

“The girl who saw the Virgin Mary…”

She nodded. “It’s begun,” she told him. “But you’ll be safe. Our Lady promises you will be.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s all I can say,” Bernadette told him, turning and hurrying back down the walk to where her bicycle waited on the curb. “But you’re right in your suspicions, Deputy Holland. All of them!”

“Wait!” Perry called after her. “What do you mean?”

But she was already on her bike and pedaling down the street.

He stood there watching her as she disappeared around the block.

And then it began to rain.

Billy Honeycutt lay in bed staring at the ceiling.

Why has she stopped calling me?

Sue hadn’t responded to any of his messages—phone or e-mail—in more than two weeks. Since Bonnie Warner’s body was found, a campus-wide clampdown had prevented anyone from outside the college from setting foot on college grounds without being properly authorized. Billy had been completely cut off.

And he’d really been starting to like her, too.

His mother was rapping on his door. “Just because you’re on Thanksgiving break doesn’t mean you can sleep the whole day away,” she called. “Come on, I’ve got chores for you to. Up and at ’em!”

He groaned.

“I’m making pancakes,” she called. “If you want any, you better get your ass in gear.”

“Life sucks,” Billy said aloud to no one in particular, getting up and stretching. He switched his stereo on with the remote, and headed into the bathroom.

I’ve just got to accept that it’s over,
he told himself as he started the shower.
It was fun while it lasted. I should just be glad that Heidi’s taking me back.

Mike thought Billy was well rid of Sue. “There was something odd about her,” Mike told him the other day. “Something that seemed—off somehow.”

“You’re fucked,” Billy argued. “She was a sweet, nice girl.”

“Every time I looked at her, all I saw was hate.”

Billy just repeated that his best friend was “fucked.”

Yet—it had been Sue—or the sight of her, entering the Yellow Bird—that had given Mike such a convulsion that he had landed in the hospital.

Since being released, Mike had been different. The doctors might not have found anything wrong with him, pronouncing him completely healthy, but Billy had known Mike his entire life—and Mike wasn’t the same. Before everything that happened, Mike had had a quick sense of humor. He was always laughing. He could always find something funny to say. It was why he was so popular at Lebanon High.

But now, Mike always had this remote look on his face, like he wasn’t paying attention. His mind seemed to be somewhere else—and he hardly ever smiled anymore, let alone laughed or made jokes. Billy felt he didn’t even know Mike anymore. Mike never wanted to hang out, go do things, and on weekend nights he chose now to stay home rather than join Billy and their friends. He stopped going to parties, and seemed not to care who was dating whom, or how the football team was doing, or what his schedule of classes would be like next semester.

“What’s happened to you?” Billy had finally asked him last night. “What’s different about you?”

Mike had just given him a blank stare. “Ask your girlfriend.”

Billy couldn’t understand why Mike blamed Sue for what happened. Okay, so he didn’t say that in so many words—but he called her “hateful” and “deceitful,” and Billy would never forget the look on Mike’s face that day in the diner when he saw Sue enter. Billy had dated girls before that Mike didn’t like—Heidi Swettenham for example. Mike thought she was a moron. But it had never been an issue between them before. Why Mike had taken such a violent dislike to Sue never made any sense to Billy. “She’s bad news, man,” Mike had told him last night—and at that, Billy had let the matter drop.

He let the water cascade over his hair and body.
But I liked her. I liked her a lot. What did I see in her that Mike didn’t see?

And yet, scrubbing his hair with shampoo, he thought of something else: Heidi had just seen Sue, too, right before her collapse.

What am I thinking? That Sue goes around giving people the evil eye and then they fall to pieces?

But still, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He couldn’t stop dreaming about her at night, strange fantastic dreams that faded from his memory within moments of waking up, leaving him feeling slightly disturbed…and with an aching erection.

And there was no one he could talk to about it.

Certainly not Mike. The old Mike would have made jokes and teased him about it all and made him feel a lot better—but the old Mike was gone, maybe never to return. And as for his mother—no, she was so damned happy that he wasn’t seeing “that college girl” anymore that Billy hated to even have her name came up when his mother was around. But it was weird how his mother—who’d never liked anyone he’d dated, and had always discouraged him from dating at all—was now pushing him to date other girls.

“Stop moping, she was wrong for you,” Mom said one night at the dinner table, slicing a meat loaf and not looking up. “She was too old for you, for one thing, and she’s from a different world anyway—spoiled pampered princess like those Hilton girls. That would have ended badly anyway. You’re lucky you got out of it when you did. Why don’t you ask out that sweet Brenda Harris? I saw her at the A&P the other day—such a pretty girl, and nice, too.”

“Brenda Harris is a dweeb,” Billy had replied, irritated. “And why do you care who I date anyway?”

“I just hate seeing you waste your time on girls who are wrong for you.”

“I wasn’t going to marry Sue.” he’d snapped. “And it’s my life, isn’t it?”

She looked up from what she was doing and gave him the smug look he hated. “As long as you’re under my roof, mister, no, it’s not.”

He stepped out of the shower and towel-dried himself. Brushing his teeth, he stared at himself in the mirror.

“I’ve never been dumped before,” he said to his reflection. “I guess that’s what it is.”

He’d had a steady string of girlfriends since the eighth grade, moving from one effortlessly to the next. Yes, he broke a few hearts along the way, but he’d never felt about any of them the way he felt about Sue. He’d moved on from his other girls without a second thought—but this, this was
different

In the kitchen, he ate his pancakes without talking, his mother on one side and his younger sister Meghan on the other. “Now, Billy, I want you to take down all the lawn furniture today. We’re going to get walloped with a snowstorm tonight, and I want the grill and the tables and chairs all safely put in the basement.
Comprende?”

“Yes,” he sighed.

“I’m heading to the office because I have a deadline I just have to meet.” She smiled over at him, then at Meghan. “It’s all going to change now for us. I won’t have to work so hard. We can buy a nice house, a new car…”

“You getting a raise?” Meghan asked.

“Better than that.” Gayle only smiled enigmatically. “I’m getting a new job.”

“When?”

“Soon. It’s been promised to me. By some very important people.”

Billy just sighed. Mom was always coming up with crazy schemes that were supposedly going to make them rich. They never did.

“Okay, enough jibber-jabbering,” Gayle announced, standing up. “Clean off these breakfast dishes. And Billy, get to work right away out back. It could be snowing by noon.”

He sighed again and mopped up the last of his syrup with a piece of sausage.

In a few minutes, his mother’s car was backing out of the garage and Billy trudged out onto the back porch. He hoped to be finished with his little task quickly and then he’d call Mike—or maybe another one of his friends. Mike probably wasn’t interested in hanging out.

“He might be,” came a voice.

Billy spun around. There, in the driveway, on her bike, was Bernadette deSalis.

“What?” Billy asked. “Who might be what?”

“Mike,” Bernadette replied. “Mike might be interested in hanging out.”

Billy approached her, dumbstruck. “You just read my mind…”

She smiled. “Don’t worry about Mike. He’s just adjusting. He saw a lot of things in his coma he can’t really talk about yet. There just aren’t words. But he’ll come around.”

Billy stared down at her. “How the fuck did you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Read my mind!”

The girl smiled. “Oh, I guess I was just lucky.”

“No,” Billy said. “It’s the Virgin Mary stuff, isn’t it? Ever since then, you and Mike…”

“One can’t be in the presence of the divine and remain unchanged,” Bernadette said.

“So you believe it really happened.”

“Of course it did.” Bernadette lifted her eyes to the gray sky. “I know it’s been difficult for Mike. I keep praying that he will find his way.”

Billy said nothing, just looked down at her. Finally, he tapped the side of her head gently. “Are you okay in there, Bernie?”

“Right as rain.” She smiled at him for a moment, but then her face darkened. She was looking over his shoulder, and he turned slightly to see what she was looking at. There was nothing behind him.

“What is it?” Billy asked.

“She’s here,” the girl said quietly.

“Who’s here?” Billy had to admit to himself that Bernadette was really creeping him out.

“The one you think about constantly.”

Billy felt his face flush.

“Beware her, Billy,” Bernadette warned.

It began to rain, a cold icy downpour all at once. A prelude to the storm that was to come.

“I have to get back home,” Bernadette said, pushing off on her bike. “Billy, when I said to beware her, I meant it very sincerely. But still—you’ve got to find a way to see her.”

“Who?” Billy said, the rain pouring down over his face.

“You know very well who I mean. You’ve got to find a way. You and she—it’s not a part of their plan, you know.”

The girl was pedaling away down the street as the rain fell even harder.

“Why do I have to beware her?” Billy called after her.

“Just whatever you do,” Bernadette called back, “don’t tell your mother!”

And then the rain was so hard and so fierce, Billy could scarcely see. He hurried back inside. Within an hour, the temperature had dropped, and the rain had turned to snow.