Ritual Sins (17 page)

There was no way Luke Bardell could even be in Alabama, much less be in the house of his worst enemy. It had all been a dream.

And then she looked down and saw the damp circle of cloth covering each breast.

Luke Bardell moved through the night like a shadow. He was hard as a rock, but he had no intention of doing anything about it just now. There was something about this particular affliction that amused him. If Rachel Connery knew just how hard she made him she’d probably freak.
Or run into the bathroom and throw up, as she had at Santa Dolores.

Ah, but when she was asleep, or drugged, it was another matter. She purred like a kitten under his touch, arching her back and offering that cool, pristine body that he found he’d become obsessed with.

He wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t stunningly beautiful, and she was too nervous to be any good in bed. None of that seemed to matter. He’d told himself it was the challenge, but he knew better. He’d seduced virgins and lesbians, women who thought they were ugly, women who thought they were frigid. He’d slept with women who hated him and women who loved him. There was no new ground to be gained with making Rachel Connery come.

But he wanted to. He couldn’t stop thinking about it. And oddly enough, it wasn’t the thought of her body that made him needy. It was that haunted look she got in her eyes, when she thought no one was looking.

Hell, he’d been in the desert too long. He knew it, and his body was reminding him of that fact. He was going to be out of there by fall, with a nice little nest egg to keep him in style for, oh, say, fifty years. He was going to disappear, make a new life for himself. No more Luke Bardell of Coffin’s Grove, Alabama. No more Luke Bardell of the Foundation of Being. No more bad boy, no
more messiah. He was going to spend the rest of his life as a man. Nothing more. Nothing less.

He paused in the darkness to light a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into his lungs. The smell of Esther’s house had his nicotine craving going full force, and he was going to indulge himself for the next few days. While Luke Bardell was on a spiritual retreat, replenishing his soul in solitude and meditation, the bad boy of Coffin’s Grove was on the prowl. And his quarry was getting restless.

He glanced up at Esther’s house. She’d kept the light on, probably spooked as hell. He couldn’t believe how heavily she’d slept, and he couldn’t resist putting his hands, his mouth on her, seeing how far he could go before she woke up screaming. If it hadn’t been for that damned bolt of lightning he probably would have gotten her panties off her.

Coltrane would be somewhere around, probably looking for him. He’d shit if he knew Luke had gone into Esther’s house. It wouldn’t serve anybody’s best interests if Esther blew a hole in him as she so wanted to do. Except, maybe, Rachel Connery.

He slipped into the darkness, whistling softly. “The Devil Came Down to Georgia” was going through his mind, he wasn’t quite sure why. He didn’t care. In the night he was invisible, no one
knew where he was, and he was free. For a short, sweet time he was free.

“You don’t look like you slept too well, girly.” Esther Blessing dumped a plate of grease in front of her. Rachel’s stomach recoiled in horror at the sight of the bright yellow eggs, the sausage, the pile of white detritus that could only be grits.

“The storm kept me awake,” she said faintly, reaching for her coffee in a vain effort to keep herself alert. She’d been awake the rest of the night, lying on the bed, staring into every corner of the fussy bedroom, waiting for her ghost to reappear. The more she looked, the more she had known that he couldn’t have been there. In a room that crammed with knickknacks he couldn’t have entered, or escaped, without knocking something over.

“Nothing could interfere with my beauty sleep,” Esther said with a smirk. “Maybe it’s the result of living with a clear conscience.”

Rachel looked at the smug old woman and sincerely doubted it. “I think I’ll be leaving today,” she said, making an effort to stir the food around on her plate. She’d managed to swallow a piece of toast, but that was about as far as her recalcitrant appetite could take her.

“You already found out what you need to know? You’re a fast worker.”

“I get the feeling I’m not wanted in this town.”

Esther cackled. “You got that right. This town makes a living off’n that spawn of Satan. They don’t want you interfering.”

“What about you? I would have thought you’d leap at the chance of my exposing your grandson for what he is.”

“Not my grandson!” Esther snapped. “No kin to me at all, thank the Lord, I already told you that. Anyway, I figure my time will come. I don’t need your help to see justice done. I’ve waited twenty years since my Jackson was killed, I can wait a few more.” She made a rough, hacking sound in the back of her throat and reached for her pack of cigarettes.

Rachel kept herself from voicing the obvious. It might be a neck-and-neck race, who would die first, Esther from her cancer sticks or Luke from long overdue justice.

“If you say so. I don’t suppose you have any old pictures of Luke, any stories from his childhood that you’d want to share?” It was highly unlikely, but she couldn’t leave without asking.

To her surprise Esther pulled out a chair and sat down. “There weren’t many pictures, and I burned ‘em all,” she said. “As for stories, I could tell you things that would make your skin crawl. The way he used to stare at me, out of those crazy eyes of his, like I was the evil one and not him.
He never made a sound when I whupped him, neither. Not even when he was four years old and I took his daddy’s belt to him. That boy was so black and blue he could barely walk, but he never said a word. It weren’t natural.”

Rachel’s stomach lurched. “Four years old?” she echoed faintly.

“Yeah, he was a wicked child from the very beginning. Nothing could change him, not beatings, not locking him up in the closet for a night. Nothing would make him show any weakness. The only time I ever saw him cry was when they buried his mama, and he was to blame for that as well.”

“Why? Do you think he killed her?”

Esther shot her a glance of withering scorn. “His mama was the only thing he cared about. She was a silly little tramp, with no more sense than a baby. Even when Luke was four years old he seemed smarter.”

“So why was he to blame?”

“His existence, girly! He never should have been born. If Marijo had been the good girl she was supposed to be, then my boy would have respected her. But she gave him a bastard and he never forgave her. He tried to beat the badness out of both of them, but it never did any good. So finally Marijo did the only thing she could do to make
things right. She hung herself out in Jackson’s barn.”

“So she should have had an abortion and never told Jackson she was pregnant, is that it?”

“Abortion is a sin. I don’t hold with harming an unborn child,” Esther said righteously. “She shoulda kept herself pure until Jackson was ready for her.”

“Foolish Marijo,” Rachel said lightly.

“She learned her lesson in the end, I guess. She’s roasting in hell now.”

“Why do you say that?”

“She killed herself. You think that’s going to put her into heaven? Mealy-mouthed little creature, always looking like she was scared to death of me and my boy. God knows neither of us would hurt a fly.”

Rachel looked at Esther’s strong, gnarled hands, the hands that had whipped a four-year-old till he couldn’t walk, and she shuddered.

“He found her, you know,” Esther continued in a chatty vein. “It was Thanksgiving, she’d put the food on the table and just walked out. Jackson made Luke sit and eat his meal, and he didn’t find her until four hours later. Too late to do anything about it. Sure put a damper on the holidays that year, let me tell you.”

“I can imagine,” Rachel said faintly.

“That was when he changed. He was always a
quiet little boy before that, downright eerie. After he found his ma and cut her down he got even stranger. Defiant, sly. The teachers were afraid of him. Hell, even I was afraid of him, an eight-year-old. But I didn’t know how much wickedness truly resided in his heart. Jackson tried to beat it out of him, but it was no use. Jackson had been a father to the little bastard, even though he had no responsibility to him once Marijo died, and what did that boy do? Took his father’s gun and blew his head off.”

“I thought the police said it was another suicide.”

“My boy thought too highly of hisself to end his life. Besides, I brought him up to believe it was a sin. And he sure as hell didn’t want to spend eternity at Marijo’s side—their six years of marriage was suffering enough.”

“I thought you said Luke was eight when she died?”

“He was. Jackson married Marijo when Luke was two.”

The woman’s logic was appalling. “So what happened to this spawn of the devil after your son died?”

“After Luke murdered him? The boy just took off, and good riddance. He knew that Jackson had a lot of friends around here, and not one of them had been partial to that scrawny little changeling
except a few bleeding-heart teachers. And why they bothered, when he never showed up for school, was beyond me. But Luke lit out from here after the inquest. Didn’t even stop by to see me.”

“What would you have done if he had?”

“Kilt him,” Esther said flatly. “He must have figgered that out.”

“Must have,” Rachel echoed. “And you never heard from him again?”

“Nope. Not until I read about him in one of those newspapers they have by the checkout counter at the Piggly Wiggly. Heard he’d killed another man, and ended up in jail for it. Which is where he belonged. But now he’s got thousands of fool people handing him their money, thinking he’s Jesus Christ or something. For the sin of blasphemy he oughtta be destroyed, if not for all his other sins.”

Esther looked like the woman to do it.

Even the coffee was churning in Rachel’s stomach. She plastered her best social smile on her face, the one Stella had taught her to present to the world, no matter what. “I’m sure he’ll meet his just rewards,” she said in a soothing tone.

“Is that what you are, missy? Are you going to right the wrong that was done to my son so many years ago?”

Rachel just looked at her. “I think I’ll leave that up to you,” she said.

Esther cackled. “You may think so, girly, but my money’s on you. I think you’re going to be the death of him, whether you want to be or not.”

“I don’t want to be the death of anyone,” she said in a faint voice.

“You don’t always get what you want,” Esther said. “You’ll end up killing him. Destroying him. One way or another.”

Rachel never thought she would be grateful for the sweltering, smothering heat that folded around her when she stepped from Esther’s house. It felt as if Spanish moss was growing in her lungs, but she didn’t care. Being away from the fetid air that wicked old woman breathed was relief enough.

She didn’t really want to be anyone’s destruction after all, not even Luke Bardell’s. He’d had a tough, tortured childhood. So what? Most of the people she knew had miserable families. So he’d killed, maybe more than once.

Maybe he killed Stella, she reminded herself. Maybe he learned the taste for it and couldn’t let go.

She couldn’t let go herself. Much as she wanted to drive out of Coffin’s Grove, away from Luke Bardell’s childhood and any pity she might have felt, she wasn’t ready to do it. Even knowing he was far beyond the need for pity, and that he wouldn’t thank her for it.

Besides, she tended to reserve any stray pity for herself, she thought with a grim smile. Poor, pitiful Rachel.

She didn’t want to drive back through the town and risk running into any of Luke’s protectors or detractors. She shouldn’t have come here in the first place—it only made her doubt her determination.

There must be a roundabout way back to the highway. There was a pale gray line on the map, signaling a gravel road. She’d go that way, and circle back around the outskirts of the town.

Esther was nowhere in sight when she left the house. Without thinking, Rachel stole a handful of tightly budded white roses, pricking her fingers as she did so, and dumped them on the front seat of the car. The streets were still, hot, and deserted as she drove away, and she took a deep breath of the artificially chilled air inside her car, hoping for the smell of roses to fill the air. Esther’s flowers had no scent.

She had never been terribly good at following maps—Stella had always told her she was geographically dyslexic—and she hadn’t realized she’d be on the same road that ran by the graveyard. On instinct she stopped, scooping up the thorny flowers and taking them with her.

She made it to Marijo’s headstone when she looked down at the flowers in her arms. They
were crawling with tiny worms, eating their way through the pristine, satiny flesh of the scentless roses.

She threw them away from her with a cry of disgust, away from the sweet simple wildflowers that adorned the plaque. Fresh flowers. Someone had visited the grave since last night.

She looked around, at the dark, swampy woods that lay beyond the neat little graveyard. There was no one to be seen, no one was watching her. She would be driving through that swampy forest, assuming she’d read the road map right. Maybe she’d find the ghost of whatever had haunted her last night.

She climbed back in the car and locked all the doors. She turned the air-conditioning on max, turned up the radio, and started to drive. It was some Christian rock station, with someone howling about the devil getting you in his clutches, and she snapped it off again with a shudder. She didn’t believe in the devil, or in God either, she supposed. She believed in evil, and evil lay in Coffin’s Grove, in the house of Esther Blessing. And it lived in Luke Bardell’s damaged soul.

It was dark midday with the pine forest looming up around her. She could smell the dampness of the swamp, the sickness and decay, even through the air-conditioning. The road narrowed, and she could see stagnant pools of standing
water glistening behind the trees. She wondered if they had alligators in there.

Maybe she should turn back. Stella had been right, at least in that one area—Rachel had a lousy sense of direction. Maybe this narrow road was a dead end that would stop in a bog, and the car would sink down, taking her with it, disappearing without a trace.