Nightmare Child (17 page)

They started to smile, obviously happy that the Chief had taken the trouble to convince them of his sanity.

"On the other hand," Clark said, "I don't disbelieve it, either."

"Huh?" Maloney said.

"In other words, it's possible. You mean you don't even think it's possible?"

Maloney looked at Steinberg. "You think it's possible?"

Steinberg looked at Maloney. "You go first, Maloney. Do you think it's possible?"

"Well…uh…I…uh…"

Clark smiled. "You don't have to commit yourself, Maloney, don't worry."

Maloney seemed relieved.

"Maybe I'm just trying to expand my horizons a little," Clark said. He purposely kept the good-natured tone in his voice. It was his blue gaze that was troubled. He patted the book. "So if you two don't mind, I guess I'll get back to my reading."

Maloney said, "Oh, we don't mind, Chief. Do we, Steinberg?"

"No, Chief, we don't mind at all."

But before they left they gave each other worried looks. Whatever happened to the Chief Clark whose main concern was how the Red Sox were doing?

Clark spent the rest of the afternoon in his office, except for two trips to the bathroom and one trip to the pop machine.

On the other side of the wire mesh that covered his office windows, afternoon gave way to purple dusk and purple dusk to velvety black night. Shifts had changed, pizza and burgers and submarines had been delivered and devoured, and the more officious proceedings of the day had shifted to the more rowdy business of the night: drunks, derelicts, and drug addicts.

All this time, Clark read. He could not recall ever reading a book with so much intensity, except perhaps for
Kiss Me Deadly
by Mickey Spillane, a copy of said novel having been given him at age thirteen by an older cousin who had kindly underlined all the good parts.

By the time he had finished
The Supernatural Explained,
he had a headache, an empty stomach, a full bladder, and a singular desire to talk to Diane, even before he dealt with that full bladder.

Gazing at the spray of stars across the nighttime sky, he dialed her number. She picked up on the second ring. "Hello."

"Possession."

"What?"

"Possession."

"Is this Robert?"

"Who else?"

"You're certainly in a lot better mood than you were at lunch."

"I'm sorry."

She sighed. "So am I. I've been miserable ever since."

"Me, too."

"So what's this about possession?"

"That's her problem. Jenny's. Listen to this, all right?"

"Give me a minute. She's running a bath upstairs and I want to make sure she's got fresh towels."

"You really love that girl."

An uncomfortable pause. "She's my…daughter. Now, Robert. I hope you can…understand that."

"I think I can."

"It doesn't have to be a choice between you and Jenny. It really doesn't."

"I hope not." His bladder was starting to hurt. "So is it all right if I stop over?"

"Now?"

"Maybe an hour, hour and a half."

"Make it an hour and a half. I can have Jenny in bed by then. Just…" She hesitated. "Just don't try to take her away from me, Robert. No more talk about the university or parapsychology or any of that. You promise?"

"I promise."

"Now, what were you going to tell me about possession?"

"Just listen to these two paragraphs." So he read to her from
The Supernatural Explained
. Finished, he said, "Sound familiar?"

"I hate to say it," she said. "But it does sound like some of the things Jenny's been going through."

Hearing this, he felt exultant. Hearing this, he knew that everything was going to work out. There would be a marriage, after all.

"See you in about, an hour and a half, honey," he said.

"Just please understand that I don't want to talk about…any of this…until I'm sure she's asleep. All right?"

"Fine," he said.

For ten minutes after Robert's call, Diane allowed herself to feel as if things would straighten themselves out. Jenny and Robert, each of whom disliked and greatly distrusted the other, would get along, and somehow Diane and Robert would be married, and the three of them would live in the big, beautiful house there in
Stoneridge
Estates, and they would be a real family.

She thought about all this as she went down into the basement and took clean towels from the drier—liking the aroma of fabric softener—and as she climbed the stairs to the second floor bathroom.

Jenny, submerged in huge bubbles, thanks to the bubble bath Diane had bought her, glanced up when Diane came into the bathroom.

"Fresh towels," Diane said, putting the terry cloth to her nose and smelling, then hanging the towels on the rack nearest the pink bathtub.

Jenny continued to stare at her. "Didn't I hear the phone, Aunt Diane?"

"Why, yes."

"Oh," Jenny said.

Diane knew Jenny wanted her to tell her who had called, but Diane didn't want to spoil this moment of bliss.

Deciding she was being silly, Diane said, "It was Robert."

"That's what I figured."

"Please don't take that tone."

"What tone?"

"Oh…hurt…I suppose you'd call it."

"I'm not hurt."

"Well, disappointed, then."

"I may be disappointed, Aunt Diane, but that's not the same thing as hurt."

"No, I suppose it isn't."

"If you want to like him—and trust him—as a friend, that's up to you."

Diane sat on the closed toilet seat. "I hope all three of us become friends, Jenny. I hope we become…a family."

"I see."

"You see what?"

"A family. That means you're expecting to marry him."

"Well, not right away. But someday, maybe."

"'Maybe. Sure."

"I'm sorry if this is painful for you."

"I just kept remembering the way he looked at me the night Mindy and Jeff died." She dropped her gaze, seemed to be staring into the impenetrable wall of soapsuds. "He thought I killed them, didn't he?"

She had to be careful there, Diane thought. She said, "He was just confused about what went on."

"Jeff killed Mindy and then killed himself. That's what the police report said."

"I know what the police report said. Robert wrote the police report and he…he wrote down some of the things I asked him to."

"Then you think I killed them?"

"I didn't say that, Jenny."

Tears glistened in her eyes. "Do you happen to remember that they tried to kill me?"

"I remember that, Jenny. Please don't let yourself get so upset."

"Oh, there's no reason to be upset, Aunt Diane. Just because the person I love most in the world thinks I'm a murderer—or worse."

Diane stood up, crossed over to the tub, knelt down. Taking Jenny's small, pretty face in her hands, Diane kissed the girl on the forehead, right where a splotch of bubbles lay. "I love you, Jenny. Don't you understand that?"

The girl calmed visibly. "I'm sorry, Aunt Diane."

"We're always going to be together," Diane said.

And then Jenny reached up through the soapsuds and grasped Diane's slender wrist. "Do you mean that, Aunt Diane?"

"Of course I do, honey. Of course I do."

Twenty minutes later, Diane tucked Jenny into bed, pulling the covers up high so they would reach her neck. Jenny yawned, kissed Diane good-night, and fell asleep almost immediately in the silver moonlight.

"Cream?"

"Please," Robert said. This was forty-five minutes later.

They were in the kitchen, which still smelled of dinner: meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and pumpkin pie. They were at the butcher-block table, drinking
Sanka
from large gray-ceramic cups.

Robert nodded toward the upstairs. "She asleep?"

"Yes."

"Good. Then we can talk."

She reached across and touched his hand. "I want to talk, Robert, but not about Jenny."

"But I thought—"

"Don't you see? It's been pushing us apart, talking about her. Can't the three of us just learn to love one another and forget the past?"

Robert frowned. "I wish it was that easy, Diane."

"Can't it be that easy, Robert?"

He shook his head. "She needs help. At least a few sessions with a shrink. This book I told you about—"

"I don't care about the book, Robert. I don't care at all. Can't you see that? I just want peace and quiet and for the three of us—"

He drew his hand away from hers. "On the way out here, I made up my mind about something, Diane."

"About what?"

From his suit coat pocket, he took a single cigarette, set it in his mouth; and lighted it.

"You told me you'd quit," she said.

"Tonight I started again."

"Oh, Robert," she said, and in that terrible instant she knew it was not going to work for them. He would always be suspicious. Always remember that night.

"I'm going to the city council tomorrow morning and tell them I falsified that report." He exhaled heavily.

"You'll lose your job."

"If I don't tell them the truth, I'll lose my self-respect. Losing that's a lot worse than losing a job, Diane. You should know that."

"Don't talk down to me, Robert."

He had some more of his cigarette. "When I first met you, you were the most warm, caring, honest person I'd ever met. I loved you so deeply. But now—"

He shook his head.

"Now what, Robert?"

He looked up sorrowfully at her. "Now, Diane, you've given yourself over to that little girl entirely. You lie, evade, cover up—and it doesn't seem to bother you at all."

She had started crying. Softly, nothing dramatic, but deeply. "I wish you'd leave."

He stood up and put his hand on her shoulder. "All the way out here, I kept hoping it would work, hoping I could figure out some way that I wouldn't have to do my duty." Now he sounded as if he wanted to cry. "But I've got to tell people what happened. After I read that book I realized for sure that Jenny isn't a normal little girl. She's—" He sighed. "Well, you know what she is, Diane. I don't have to tell you. You know what she is and that's why you're so protective of her."

Now Diane's gentle tears had started to turn into sobbing. She touched the hand he'd put on her shoulder. "Please leave, Robert. Please."

"She's got you trapped, Diane, and you don't see that. Escape while you still can."

She put her head down on the table, shaking with her tears.

Robert left.

He had driven six miles along the icy road on his way back to town when he heard a noise in the backseat.

He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her there. "I expected you," he said, and took out his service revolver.

Staring at him in the rearview mirror, she said, "You know what I am. You should know a gun won't help you."

Jenny leaned over in the seat. He didn't have time to fire a single shot.

In the spring they took a trip together. Jenny didn't tell Diane that the cabin in which they stayed was near the site where Mindy and Jeff had buried the little girl. She didn't want to ruin their vacation.

For three days and nights they swam and rode horses and played tennis and listened to campfire songs and slept in late, each in one of the comfortable single beds that the vacation ground provided.

On the fourth night, Jenny, curious, drifted into the woods and found the place where she'd been buried.

In the moonlit darkness, she sat on a rock and stared and stared at the slight incline of earth where her crude burial mound had been.

After a time, floating through the night air and the chill scent of pines, she heard Aunt Diane calling for her. Aunt Diane sounded upset, even terrified.

"Jenny!" she cried.

"Over here!" Jenny said.

Aunt Diane, seeing her, swept down upon her with relief and warm hands. "I was so frightened! I couldn't find you anywhere!"

She sat next to the quiet little girl, her breath coming in spasms.

She saw that Jenny's eyes were fixed on the swell of earth.

"What's so interesting?" Aunt Diane asked.

"This place."

"Why?"

"It's where they buried me. Mindy and Jeff."

Aunt Diane hugged her. "Oh, honey, I thought we agreed to not talk about the past anymore."

"They killed me."

"Now, honey, you know they didn't kill you. If they had, you wouldn't be alive today."