Divine Evil (13 page)

“I am. Angie, you'll be pleased to know I've been working every day. Really working,” she added, scooting up on the counter, then taking another bite of the hot dog. “I've actually got one piece finished.”

“And?” Angie probed.

“I'd rather you see it for yourself. I'm too close to it.”

With the phone cocked between his ear and shoulder, Jean-Paul passed the stone from hand to hand. “How is life in the boondicks?”

“Docks,” Clare corrected. “Boondocks, and it's fine. Why don't you come see for yourself?”

“What about that, Angie? Would you like a few days in the country? We can smell the cows and make love in the hay.”

“I'll think about it.”

“A week in Emmitsboro is not like a year in the Outback.” Warming to the idea, Clare polished off the hot dog. “We don't have wild boar or mad rapists.”

“Je suis desolè, ”
Jean-Paul said, tongue in cheek. “What do you have,
chèrie?”

“Quiet, tranquility-even a comforting kind of boredom.” She thought of Ernie with his youthful restlessness and dissatisfaction. Boredom wasn't for everyone, she supposed. “After I show you the hot spots like Martha's Diner and Clyde's Tavern, we can sit on the porch, drink beer, and watch the grass grow.”

“Sounds stimulating,” Angie muttered.

“We'll see what we can shuffle in our schedule.” Jean-Paul decided on the spot. “I would like to see Clyde's.”

“Great.” Clare lifted her bottle in an absent toast. “You'll love it. Really. It's the perfect American rural town. Nothing ever happens in Emmitsboro.”

A thin spring drizzle was falling, muddying the earth in the circle. There was no fire in the pit, only the cold ash of wood and bone. Lanterns took the place of candles. Clouds choked the moon and smothered the stars.

But the decision had been made, and they would not wait. Tonight there were only five cloaked figures. The old guard. This meeting, this ritual, was secret to all but these chosen few.

“Christ, it's shitty out here tonight.” Biff Stokey cupped his beefy hand around his cigarette to protect it from the rain. Tonight there were no drugs, no candles, no chanting, no prostitute. In the twenty years he had been a member of the coven, he had come to depend on, and require, the ritual as much as the fringe benefits.

But tonight, instead of an altar, there was only an empty slab and an inverted cross. Tonight, his companions seemed edgy and watchful. No one spoke as the rain pelted down.

“What the hell's this all about?” he demanded of no one in particular. “This isn't our usual night.”

“There is business to tend to.” The leader stepped out of the group, into the center, and turned toward them. The eyes of his mask looked dark and empty. Twin pits of hell. He lifted his arms, his long fingers splayed. “We are the few. We are the first. In our hands the power shines
brighter. Our Master has given us the great gift to bring others to Him, to show them His glory.”

Like a statue he stood, an eerie mirror image of Clare's nightmare sculpture. Body bent, head lifted, arms outstretched. Behind his mask, his eyes gleamed with anticipation, with appreciation of the power he held that the others would never understand.

They had come, like well-trained dogs, at his call. They would act, as mindless as sheep, at his command. And if one or two had a portion remaining of what some might call conscience, the thirst for power would overcome it.

“Our Master is displeased. His fangs drip with vengeance. Betrayed by one of His children, by one of His chosen. The Law is defiled, and we will avenge it. Tonight, there is death.”

When he lowered his hands, one of the cloaked figures brought a baseball bat from beneath his robes. Even as Biff opened his mouth in surprise, it cracked over his skull.

When he regained consciousness, he was tied to the altar, and naked. The drizzling rain soaked and chilled his skin. But that was nothing, nothing compared to the frozen fear that squeezed his heart.

They stood around him, one at the feet, one at the head, one on each side at the hip. Four men he had known most of his life. Their eyes were the eyes of strangers. And he knew what they saw was death.

The fire had been lit, and rain splattered and sizzled on the logs. The sound was like meat frying.

“No!” He squirmed, straining his arms and legs as he writhed on the smooth slab. “Jesus Christ, no!” In his panic he called on the deity he had spent twenty years defiling. His mouth was filled with the taste of fear and the blood from where his teeth had sawed into his tongue. “You can't. You can't. I took the oath.”

The leader looked down at Biff's scarred left testicle. The sign would have to be…erased. “You are no longer one of the few. You have broken the oath. You have broken the Law.”

“Never. I never broke the Law.” The rope cut into his wrists as he strained. First blood stained the wood.

“We do not show our fangs in anger. That is the Law.”

“That is the Law,” the others chanted.

“I was drunk.” His chest heaved as he began to weep, the thin, bitter tears of terror. There were faces he knew, shadowed by the hoods, hidden by masks. His eyes darted from one to the other, panicked and pleading. “Fucking Christ, I was drunk.”

“You have defiled the Law,” the leader repeated. His voice held no mercy and no passion-though the passion was rising in him, a black, boiling sea. “You have shown that you cannot hold to it. You are weak, and the weak shall be smote by the strong.” The bell was rung. Over Biff's sobs and curses, the leader lifted his voice.

“O, Lord of the Dark Flame, give us power.”

“Power for Your glory,” the others chanted.

“O, Lord of the Ages, give us strength.”

“Strength for Your Law.”

“In nomine Dei nostri Santanas Luciferi excelsi!”

“Ave
, Satan.”

He lifted a silver cup. “This is the wine of bitterness. I drink in despair for our lost brother.”

He drank long and deep, pouring the wine through the gaping mouth hole of the mask. He set the cup aside, but still he thirsted. For blood.

“For he has been tried, and he has been judged, and he has been condemned.”

“I'll kill you,” Biff shouted, tearing flesh as he struggled
against his bonds. “I'll kill you all. Please, God, don't do this.”

“The die is cast. There is no mercy in the heart of the Prince of Hell. In His name I command the Dark Forces to bestow their infernal power upon me. By all the Gods of the Pit, I command that this thing I desire shall come to pass.

“Hear the names.

“Baphomet, Loki, Hecate, Beelzebub.

“We are Your children.”

Blubbering with fear, Biff screamed, cursing them in turn, begging, threatening. The priest let Biff's terror fill him as he continued.

“The voices of my wrath smash the stillness. My vengeance is absolute. I am annihilation. I am revenge. I am infernal justice. I call upon the children of the Dark Lord to slash with grim delight our fallen brother. He has betrayed, and his shrieks of agony, his battered corpse shall serve as warning to those who would stray from the Law.”

He paused, and behind his mask, he was smiling.

“Oh, brothers of the night, those who would ride upon the hot breath of Hell, begin.”

As the first blow shattered his kneecap, Biff's scream tore through the air. They beat him mechanically. And if there was regret, it did not outweigh the need. It could not outweigh the Law.

The priest stood back, his arms lifted as he watched the slaughter. Twice before he had ordered the death of one of the brotherhood. And twice before the quick and merciless act had smothered the flickering flames of insurrection. He was well aware that some were discontented at the coven's veering away from its purer origins. Just as there were some who thirsted for more blood, more sex, more depravity.

Such things had happened before and were expected.

It was up to him to see that his children walked the line he'd created. It was up to him to be certain that those who didn't paid the price.

Biff screamed again, and the priest's pleasure soared.

They would not kill him quickly. It was not the way. With each nauseating crack of wood against bone, the priest's blood swam faster, hotter. The screaming continued, a high, keening, scarcely human sound.

A fool, the priest thought as his loins throbbed. The death of a fool was often a waste-if one discounted the sweetness of the kill. But this death would serve to warn the others of the full wrath.
His
wrath. For he had long ago come to understand that it was not Satan who ruled here, but himself.

He was the power.

The glory of the death was his.

The pleasure of the kill was his.

As the screaming faded to a wet, gurgling whimper, he stepped forward. Taking up the fourth bat, he stood over Biff. He saw that beyond the milky glaze of pain in his victim's anguished eyes, there was still fear. Even better, there was still hope.

“Please.” Blood ran from Biff's mouth, choking him. He tried to lift a hand, but his fingers were as useless as broken twigs. He was beyond pain now, impaled on a jagged threshold no man was meant to endure. “Please don't kill me. I took the oath. I took the oath.”

The priest merely watched him, knowing this moment, this triumph, was almost at an end. “He is the Judge. He is the Ruler. What we have done, we have done in His name.” His eyes glittered down at Biff's face, still unmarked. “He who dies tonight will be thrown into torture, into misery. Into the void.”

Biff's vision hazed and cleared, hazed and cleared. Blood dribbled from his mouth with each shallow breath. There would be no more screaming. He knew he was dead, and the prayers that raced through his numbed mind were mixed with incantations. To Christ. To Lucifer.

He coughed once, violently, and nearly passed out.

“I'll see you in hell,” he managed.

The priest leaned over close, so that only Biff could hear. “This is hell.” With shuddering delight, he delivered the coup de grace. His seed spilled hot on the ground.

While they burned the bats in the sacred pits, blood soaked into the muddy earth.

C
AM STOOD BY
the fence bordering the east end of Matthew Dopper's cornfield. Dopper, his cap pulled down to shade his face and a chaw swelling his cheek, stayed on the tractor and kept it idling. Its motor putted smoothly, thanks to his oldest son, who preferred diddling with engines to plowing fields.

His plaid shirt was already streaked with sweat, though it was barely ten. Two fingers of his left hand were shaved off at the first knuckle, the result of a tangle with a combine. The impairment didn't affect his farming or his bowling average in his Wednesday night league. It had instilled a cautious respect for machinery.

The whites of his eyes were permanently red-streaked from fifty-odd years of wind and hay dust. He had a stubborn, closed-in look on his lined hangdog face.

He'd been born on the farm and had taken it over when his old man finally kicked off. Since his brother, the unlucky Junior, had blasted himself to hell in the adjoining woods, Matthew Dopper had inherited every sonofabitching stone on the eighty-five-acre farm. He'd lived there,
worked there, and would die there. He didn't need Cameron Rafferty to come flashing his badge and telling him how to handle his business.

“Matt, it's the third complaint this month.”

In answer, Dopper spat over the side of the tractor. “Them goddamn flatlanders move in, planting their goddamn houses on Hawbaker land, then they try to push me out. I ain't budging. This here's my land.”

Cam set a boot on the bottom rung of the fence and prayed for patience. The ripe scent of fertilizer was making his nostrils quiver. “Nobody's trying to run you out, Matt. You've just got to chain up those dogs.”

“Been dogs on this farm for a hundred years.” He spat again. “Never been chained.”

“Things change.” Cam looked out over the field to where he could see the boxy modular homes in the distance. Once there had been only fields, meadows, pastures. If you'd driven by at dawn or at dusk, like as not you'd have seen deer grazing. Now people were putting up satellite dishes and planting ceramic deer in their front yards.

Was it any wonder his sympathies were with Matt? he thought. But sympathies aside, he had a job to do.

“Your dogs aren't staying on the farm, Matt. That's the problem.”

Matt grinned. “They always liked to shit on Hawbaker land.”

Cam couldn't help but smile back. There had been a running feud between the Doppers and the Hawbakers for three generations. It had kept them all happy. Lighting a cigarette, he leaned companionably on the fence.

“I miss seeing old man Hawbaker riding his hay baler.”

Dopper pursed his lips. The fact was, he missed Haw-baker, too. Deeply. “I reckon he did what he thought he
had to do. And made a pretty profit.” He took out a dingy bandanna and blew his nose heartily. “But I'm staying put. As long as I'm breathing, I'm farming.”

“I used to sneak over here and steal your corn.”

“I know.” The resentment faded a bit as Dopper remembered. “I grow the best Silver Queen in the county. Always did, always will.”

“Can't argue with that. We'd camp out in the woods over there and roast it over the fire.” He grinned up at Matt as he remembered the taste, sweet as sugar. “We thought we were putting one over on you.”

“I know what goes on on my land.” He adjusted his cap. For a moment, the eyes that shifted to the far, deep woods were wary. “Never minded you pinching a few ears. ′Round here we take care of our own.”

“I'll remember that come July.” He sighed a little. “Listen, Matt, there are kids over in the development. Lots of kids. Your three German shepherds are big bastards.”

Dopper's jaw set again. “Ain't never bit nobody.”

“Not yet.” Cam blew out a breath. He knew he could bring up the county leash law until his tongue fell off. Nobody paid much attention to it. But as much as he felt empathy with Dopper, he wouldn't risk having one of the dogs turn and bite some kid. “Matt, I know you don't want anyone hurt.” He held up a hand before Matt could protest. “I know, they're regular lapdogs. With you, maybe. But nobody can predict how they might react to strangers. If anything happens, your dogs go down, and your ass gets sued. Make it easy on everybody. Chain them up, build them a run, fence in part of your yard.”

Dopper squinted at Cam, then spat. He had reasons for owning three big dogs. Good reasons. A man needed to protect himself and his family from …His gaze drifted
toward the woods again, then away. From whatever they needed protection against.

He didn't like compromises. But he knew if he didn't make one, some snotty pissant from the ASPCA was going to come nosing around. Or some asshole flatlander was going to take him to court. He couldn't afford any shit-hole lawyer's fees.

“I'll think about it.”

In six weeks of trying, it was the closest Cam had nudged him to an agreement. He smoked in silence as he measured the man on the tractor. The dogs would be chained, he thought, because old Matt wouldn't risk them, or his farm.

“How's the family?” Cam asked, wanting to end the interview on a friendly note.

“Good enough.” Dopper relaxed in turn. “Sue Ellen done divorced that worthless car salesman she married.” He grinned at Cam. “You missed the boat with her first time around. Might be she'd take a look at you now that you got some money and a steady job.”

Unoffended, Cam grinned back. “How many kids does she have now?”

“Four. Fucker knocked her up every time she sneezed. Got herself a job, though. Clerking up to JC Penney's at that sonofabitching shopping center. Nancy's watching the youngest.” He glanced in the direction of the house, where his wife was busy with their youngest grandchild.

He talked for a few minutes more, about his oldest boy, who should have been back from the feed and grain an hour ago, and his youngest, who was in college.

“Imagine that boy figuring he had to go to school to learn how to farm.” Dopper spat again contemplatively. “Guess things do change, whether you want them to or not. Got to get back to work.”

“They got chains in the hardware,” Cam said and pitched his cigarette. “Be seeing you, Matt.”

Dopper watched him walk back toward his car, then shifted his gaze toward the huddle of houses in the distance. Fucking flatlanders, he thought, and revved up his tractor.

Cam turned his car around, spewing up dust and gravel. He drove by the edge of Dopper's Woods, where the leaves were thick and green. A part of his mind swung back to childhood, to adolescence.

He could see himself, a bundle of Dopper's corn in his arms, a couple of beer bottles clanging in the sack along with a pack of Marlboros and wooden matches. He might have been alone, running off to lick the wounds his stepfather so gleefully handed out. Or he might have been with Blair Kimball, Bud Hewitt, Jesse Hawbaker, or one of the others he'd hung out with during those long gone days.

They would have sat by the fire, with the smell of roasting corn and hot dogs, guzzling beer, lying about girls, telling Junior Dopper stories designed to make the skin crawl.

Funny how often they'd gone there, even though the hairs on the back of their necks stood up. Probably because of it, he thought. It had been their place, haunted and eerie.

And sometimes, they had been sure that something walked through those deep and silent woods with them.

The involuntary shudder had him chuckling to himself. Some things don't change, he thought, grinning. Junior Dopper's faceless ghost could still bring a chill to the base of the spine.

He swung away from the woods, deciding to run by the development and assure the latest angry resident that Matt Dopper's dogs would be chained. The car purred up the
slope, around the winding curves, making him think of his recent bike ride with Clare.

It had been fun, easy, an unexpected taste of childhood. Sitting with her by the stream, lazily talking, had been a homecoming.

Kissing her hadn't been like coming home at all. It hadn't been comforting or friendly or sweet. It had been like getting scorched by a lightning bolt. He wondered how in the hell he'd missed Clare Kimball the first time around. He didn't intend to let her slip by again.

When he was done here, he thought, he would just swing by her house-hoping she was welding-and see if she was interested in a meal and a movie in Hagerstown. If he had any luck, and his assessment of her reaction to him was anywhere close to target, he'd see about talking her into coming back to his house. Then they'd play it by ear.

She didn't want to be rushed, he reminded himself. It was too bad that patience had never been one of his strong suits.

Around the last curve, he spotted a couple of kids with bicycles. Hooking school, he thought, and had to appreciate the spirit of it on such a terrific May morning. It was with regret that he pulled over and prepared to give them the routine. He got out of the car and walked toward the boys.

He recognized both of them-the curse or blessing of small towns. Cy Abbot-younger brother of Josh, from the cemetery disturbance-and Brian Knight, Min Atherton's nephew. Though a part of Cam wanted to wink and grin and wish them well, he strode forward, sober-eyed. They were both a little green around the gills, he noted, and wondered if it was being caught by the law that had shaken them up or if they'd been practicing chewing tobacco.

“Well, now.” Cam put a hand on the handlebars of the dirt bike the Abbot boy was straddling. “Little late for school this morning, aren't you?”

Cy opened his mouth, but only a wheeze came out. Turning a paler shade of green, he leaned over the side of the bike and vomited weakly.

“Oh, shit,” Cam muttered, and put two hands on the bike to steady it. “What the hell have you two been up to?” He looked over at Brian since Cy was busy gagging.

“We were just fooling around. And we-we-” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth, hard, and Cam noticed there were tears welling in his eyes.

“Okay.” He softened his tone and put an arm around the now shuddering Cy. “What happened?”

“We just found it.” Brian swallowed deeply, and his spit tasted foul. “We were going to pull our bikes down and go wading in the creek, that's all. Then we saw it.”

“What did you see?”

“The body.” Despite the humiliation of being seen blubbering, Cy began to sob. “It was awful, Sheriff. Awful.

All the blood.”

“Okay, why don't you guys sit in the back of the car? I'll go take a look. Come on, we'll put your bikes in the trunk.” He led the two shaking boys to the rear of the car. Probably a deer, maybe a dog, he told himself. But his hands were icy-a symptom he recognized. “Relax.” He opened the back door of the car and tried to lighten the mood. “You're not going to be sick all over the carpet, are you?”

Cy continued to weep as Brian shook his head. He gave his friend a little punch on the arm for comfort.

Beyond the gravelly shoulder of the road, the ground tapered down, carpeted with dead leaves from the previous autumns. With a last glance at the two white faces in
the back of the car, Cam started down, sliding a bit on the ground, still slippery after the night of rain.

He could smell damp earth, damp leaves. There were deep skid marks where the boys had hustled down, and marks where they had scrambled back up again. He saw, as they must have, the smearing trail of blood. And he smelled it. Death.

An animal, he told himself as he regained his footing. Hit by a car, then crawled off to die. Sweet Jesus, there was a lot of blood. He had to stop a moment, shake off the image that rushed into his brain.

The walls of a tenement, splattered with red. The stench of it. The screams that wouldn't stop.

He began to breathe through his mouth and curse himself.

That was over, goddamn it. That was done.

When he saw the body, his stomach didn't revolt as the boy's had. He had seen bodies before. Too many of them. What he felt first, vividly, was fury in finding one here. In his town. In his sanctuary.

Then came disgust and pity. Whoever this broken heap of flesh and bones had been, he had died horribly. Then regret, that two young boys had hooked school on a warm spring morning only to stumble across something they couldn't understand and would never forget.

He didn't understand it-after all the years on the force, all the senseless and small cruelties, he didn't understand it.

Carefully, not wanting to disturb the scene, he crouched down beside the body. Wet leaves clung to the naked flesh. It lay outflung, its broken arms and legs at impossible angles, its face buried in the dirt and wet leaves.

As he studied what was left, his eyes narrowed. Through the bruises and the blood, he made out a tattoo.
His mouth dried. And he knew, before he cautiously lifted the battered head, before he looked into the ruined face. Rising, he swore over what was left of Biff Stokey.

“Jesus, Cam.” Bud felt bile rise up hot in his throat and choked it down. “Holy Jesus.” He stared down at the body at his feet. With the sleeve of his shirt, he swiped at his mouth as sweat popped out on his face and ran cool and fast from his armpits. “Jesus, Jesus,” he said hopelessly, then turned, stumbling away to be sick in the brush.

Calmer now, Cam stood where he was, waiting for Bud to get his system under control. From somewhere on the other side of the creek, a thrush began to trill. Squirrels scurried in the trees.

“Sorry,” Bud managed, running a clammy palm over his clammy face. “I just couldn't-I've never seen-”

“Nothing to be sorry about. You going to be okay now?”

“Yeah.” But Bud kept his gaze several inches above what lay on the leafy ground. “You think he got hit by a car? I guess he could've been hit by a car, then rolled on down here. People are always taking these turns too fast.” He wiped his mouth again. “Too damn fast.”

“No, I don't think he got hit by a car. Can't see a car breaking nearly every bone in his body.” Eyes narrowed, Cam thought out loud. “Where are the skid marks? How the hell did he get out here? Where's his car? Where the hell are his clothes?”

“Well, I guess… I guess maybe, maybe he was shit-faced again. Could be we'll find his car, and his clothes, too, just down the road. And he was walking along, drunk, and a car came by and…” But he knew it was stupid even as he said it. Stupid and weak.