Sympathy for the Devil (6 page)

"Did the tests find anything?"

"No, not a thing. So they wanted to admit her, and do even more. But once we said we had no insurance..." Another shrug.

"Tried to mortgage the place," Len Kowal rumbled. "None of the banks would give us the time of day. Mortgage crisis, they said. Nobody's lending money, nobody's buying houses." He looked away and said to the wall, "And our credit number, it maybe ain't so good, either."

"I'm not a doctor," Morris said gently. "If it really is a medical problem, I'm afraid there isn't anything I can do to help."

"We understand that, Mr. Morris," Helen Kowal said, her eyes rimmed red from crying. "But we thought at least you could tell us if it's... that other thing we talked about."

She doesn't want to say it
, Morris thought.
Can't hardly blame her for that.

He was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this trip was going to be a waste of time, but the knowledge made him more depressed than irritated. The likelihood was that the girl was suffering from some disorder of the nervous system, or worse.

Good news, Mrs. Kowal: your daughter isn't possessed by an entity from Hell, after all. The downside is, she has a brain tumor the size of a golf ball. We're giving her six months, at the outside.

"Would you at least look at her?" Helen Kowal said. "Maybe talk to her a little bit?"

It would have been cruel to refuse. Anyway, he had come all the way up from Texas, and there was always the outside chance...

"Sure, I can do that," Morris said, and stood. Helen Kowal rose also, but her husband remained seated in the worn, overstuffed armchair that had probably been 'Dad's chair' for twenty years or more. He did not look at Morris.

"Her room is upstairs," Helen Kowal said. "This way."

Two flights of threadbare, creaking stairs led to the big house's second story. At the landing between staircases, Helen Kowal paused, waiting for Morris to catch up. As he reached her, Morris said, "I guess your husband isn't coming with us?"

She shook her head. "He don't go in there anymore. The things she does... no father should see his daughter that way."

Morris nodded, as if he understood completely. But he was puzzled as he followed Helen Kowal up the remaining stairs and along a carpeted hallway.

She stopped at a door of brown wood that looked newer than the jamb that held it in place. The doorknob was surrounded by the metal plate of a heavy security lock. Helen Kowal reached into the side pocket of her housedress and produced a key ring.

"This didn't come with the house, did it?" Morris said quietly.

"No," she told him, sliding a key into the lock's thin aperture. "We had it installed after."

The door opened smoothly on oiled hinges.

The large room would have made a Spartan feel right at home. It contained a bed, a plastic commode with a roll of toilet paper on the floor next to it, and the girl, who lay in the bed, covers pulled up to her chin.

Morris had thought that Helen Kowal would perform introductions, to put the girl at ease with the stranger. Instead, she simply closed the door and stood with her back against it, arms folded as if to ward off a chill.

Morris walked slowly toward the bed.

Mrs. K. didn't relock the door. Maybe she's afraid it would stop us from getting out fast, if we need to.

Susan Kowal, age seventeen, calmly watched him approach. All he could see of her was a thin face and a mop of medium-brown hair, tangled and matted as if it hadn't been either combed or washed in quite a while. Her body was just a vague shape under the gray, stained blanket.

I don't know what's wrong with this poor kid, but keeping her in here is tantamount to child abuse. The parents don't know any better, but there's got to be a better place for her than this fucking prison cell.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and rested his hands lightly on the metal frame. "Hi, Susan," he said pleasantly. "My name's Quincey Morris."

"Hi, Mr. Morris. Are you a doctor?" Her voice was high, a natural soprano.

"No, I'm not. But I was visiting your folks, and they asked me to come up and say hello. I figured you hadn't had much company, lately."

Her mouth twitched in what Morris supposed was intended as a smile. "Not too much, no."

"How long have you been...?" Morris found himself searching for a tactful way to describe her circumstances. No point in upsetting her.

"The Prisoner of Zenda?" Her voice was mild, without bitterness. "I'm not sure. The trees are bare, aren't they? They had all their leaves when Mummy and Daddy put that big lock on the door. It was hot out, too."

Mummy and Daddy? Dear God - this kid needs a doctor, maybe a series of them. Not an exorcist.

It looked as if her hands were moving under the blanket. Was she scratching herself? Bedbugs wouldn't be hard to imagine in this hellhole.

He wondered if having an itch was like yawning - one person starts and, before you know it, you're doing it too. Morris had a healed burn scar on his neck, half hidden by his collar. Given the circumstances under which he'd received it, he did his best to forget it was there. These days, he was succeeding more often than not. But sometimes it itched a little. Like right now.

"Your Mom and Dad tell me that you've been having some pretty serious problems lately. What do you think is -"

The girl threw her head back, eyes shut tight, breath coming fast between her clenched teeth.

"Susan, what's wrong?" Morris asked urgently. "Are you in pain? Should I -"

Jaw still tight she growled at him, "No,
I'm coming
! Oh, yes, yes, yesssssss..."

Quincey Morris had seen a lot of life's seamier side. If asked a minute earlier, he would have told you that he'd lost the capacity to blush. But he would have been wrong. He felt his face reddening as he averted his eyes to stare at his hands, fingers clenching the bed frame.

Morris understood now why her father had not accompanied them. If she did this all the time, it would be a Freudian nightmare for him every time he got near her.

Is that why they've locked her up? The kid's got some kind of emotional disorder prompting compulsive masturbation, and the parents are so ashamed they won't even try to deal with it?

And yet, they had invited Morris here - into their home, into the girl's room. If it was such a dirty family secret, why share it with a stranger?

Maybe they're so old-school-Polish-Catholic, they figure only the devil could make a girl be so sexual, in such a public way? Is that what the nuns taught them, forty years ago?

He could hear that the girl's breathing was returning to normal, and decided that he could look her in the face again.

"Sorry for the interruption," she said matter-of-factly. "That one kind of snuck up on me."

"You do that a lot?" He tried to match her casual tone. "Masturbate, I mean?"

"Every chance I get," she said, and winked at him. "Which, at my age, is pretty much all the time."

Morris didn't know what to say to that.

"Isn't the female body wonderful?" She might have been discussing a new shade of lipstick she'd discovered. "I can just come, and come, and come, over and over. Sometimes my poor pussy gets so swollen it's sore, and I have to take a break. But after a few hours sleep, I'm good to go again."

Morris had faced vampires, werewolves, black witches, zombies and the very fires of Hell. But a teenage girl's sexuality run wild was something he was not prepared for, by either training or experience. Where was Libby Chastain when he needed her?

"I reckon that -" Morris stopped, cleared his throat, started again. "I reckon that most girls your age must masturbate sometimes," he said. "Some, they probably do it a lot of the time. It's normal, a part of life. But I'm guessing that most of them keep it kinda private, you know? A personal thing."

"Yes, I suppose they do, the poor dears. But I can't seem to help myself, Mr. Morris." Her eyes were wide. "It's like there's something inside me, making me do it. I just can't
stop
. It's like the devil's got hold of me, or something."

So
that's where the parents got the notion she was possessed
-
the girl thought so, herself
. Morris wondered if her shame over this hypersexuality, fed by a nice big case of Catholic guilt, was so profound that she had reached a psychotic state where she felt Satan himself was inside her, controlling her, making her act so wickedly.

Morris knew more than he ever wanted to about Satan and his ways, and he was fairly certain that making teenage girls in Michigan play with themselves was pretty low on the Evil One's agenda.

"Susan, I think maybe you need -"

"Oh, gosh, Mr. Morris, he's doing it again! Look!"

With one quick jerk of her legs she kicked the covers aside, to reveal that she was naked underneath them, both hands busy, busy.

Morris wasn't able to stop himself from one quick glance toward her groin, where he saw she had what looked like the standard female equipment, even if it was being put to rather vigorous use. Embarrassed for both of them, he turned his back on her.

"Susan, why don't you put the covers back? Please?" He tried not to look at Mrs. Kowal, who was still standing at the door, head down, weeping softly. "You don't need to show yourself to me like this."

"But it's so much fun!" Her voice was mocking. "It turns you on, doesn't it? Huh? Doesn't it?" She was breathing in short gasps now, and Morris tried to banish from his mind the image of her tight, young body, and what she was doing, right behind him.

Maybe once she was done, he could persuade her to get under the blanket again. He wanted to find out more about where this idea of a demon inside her had come from.

"Why don't... you... turn around... Mr. Morris?" Morris was trying not to listen to her gasping voice, and the wet sounds that accompanied it. "Show me that... hard cock... in your pants. Take... it out and... fuck me hard! Come on!"

Okay, that's it. I'm only making it worse.

Morris began walking toward the door. He was starting to wonder if the girl was exhibiting Klüver-Bucy Syndrome. He'd have to ask Mrs. Kowal whether Susan had recently recovered from encephalitis, or received a severe head injury. Maybe he could find a local psychiatrist who would work
pro bono
and try to help this poor kid. Oddly, the scar on his neck was itching like crazy. It hadn't done that since the burn healed, months ago.

Mrs. Kowal had the door open, and had already slipped out into the hall. Morris was almost out of the room when he heard the girl's voice say, "Next time, bring Libby with you! I hear she licks pussy
reeaal
nice!"

Chapter 4

The Washington Post
had the story first; one of the crime reporters always kept a police scanner going, and Mrs. Brooks' semi-hysterical call to 911 had resulted in both an ambulance and a D.C. prowl car being dispatched to the residence. The crime reporter working the graveyard, a newbie named Miles Kincannon, had recognized the name, and alerted the night editor.

So the
Post
got the scoop, if that's what it was, then the wire services moved it twelve minutes later. But CNN was first to get it on the air.

At 6:01 a.m., the female anchor aimed her blonde good looks at the camera and said, "This is Headline News and I'm Kyra Baldwin. Thank you for joining us this morning. Our top story: the nation's capital is reeling after the reported death early this morning of Representative Ron Brooks, a Republican member of the House from New York, and one of the early front-runners in the race for his party's presidential nomination.

"For more on the story, we now go live to John Rendell in Washington."

Rendell was a thirtyish, handsome black man with short hair and a thin mustache. The camera showed him standing outdoors in a residential area, the uncertain light of approaching dawn supplemented by the news crew's own harsh illumination. The reporter's breath was visible in the cold air as he spoke into the microphone held in one gloved hand. "Kyra, I'm standing in front of the Georgetown home of Congressman Ron Brooks, who was electrocuted here early this morning, in what police are describing as a freak accident."

Then came a videotaped segment focusing on a man identified at the bottom of the screen as 'Martin Hanratty, D.C. Police Spokesman.' Hanratty was a thin man with pewter-gray hair and stooped posture. His beak of a nose and bushy eyebrows gave him a defiant look, and he glared at the forest of microphones and miniature tape recorders in front of him as if he found them a personal affront.

"District police officers were dispatched to the residence of Representative Ronald J. Brooks at 1:58 this morning, in response to a 911 emergency call placed by a woman who identified herself as Mrs. Evelyn Brooks." Hanratty referred frequently to a yellow legal pad that he held in one hand like a talisman. "An EMT unit was also dispatched at the same time. The police officers, who arrived first, found the house in darkness as the result of an apparent power failure. They were admitted to the house by Mrs. Brooks and, employing flashlights, were led upstairs to a man who was lying on the floor of a bathroom in an unresponsive state."

Hanratty paused to turn a page of his legal pad. "The EMT unit arrived a few minutes later. They attempted to resuscitate Congressman Brooks at the scene, but were not successful. Another attempt was made to resuscitate him in the ambulance while en route to Bethesda Naval Hospital. This attempt was also unsuccessful. A third attempt was made in the emergency room of Bethesda Naval Hospital, but without favorable result. Congressman Brooks was pronounced dead at the hospital at 2:44 this morning."

Hanratty stopped and let the hand holding the yellow pad fall to his side. The shouted questions began again, a trickle that threatened to quickly become a flood. Again, Hanratty ignored them. "Any inquiries concerning the medical aspects of Congressman Brooks' unfortunate demise should be directed to the appropriate personnel at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Questions concerning the investigation into his death should be directed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which assumed jurisdiction of the case at 3:35 this morning." The questions came in a torrent then. Hanratty stared at the frantic reporters impassively for a moment, then turned on his heel and walked away from the microphone without saying another word.