The Bad Place (60 page)

ALTHOUGH SHE HAD released the owl as the storm drew near, Violet still inhabited Darkle and Zitha, taking their fear away from them when the lightning flared and the thunder boomed. Even as she stood before Candy, at the door to his room, she was listening to Fogarty tell the Dakotas about her brother’s deformity. She knew about it already, of course, for within the family their mother had referred to it as God’s sign that Candy was the most special of all of them. Likewise, and in some way Violet had been aware that this deformity was related to the great wildness in Candy, the thing that made him so powerfully attractive.

Now she stood before him, wanting to touch his huge arms, feel the sculpted muscles, but she restrained herself. “He’s at Fogarty’s house.”

That surprised him. “Mother said Fogarty was an instrument of God. He brought us into the world, four virgin births. Why would he harbor Frank? Frank’s on the dark side now.”

“That’s where he is,” Violet said. “And a couple. His name’s Bobby. Hers is Julie.”

“Dakota,” he whispered.

“At Fogarty’s. Make him pay for Samantha, Candy. Bring him back here after you’ve killed him, and let us feed him to the cats. He hated the cats, and he’ll hate being part of them forever.”

JULIE’S TEMPER, not always easily controlled, was dangerously near the flashpoint. As lightning shocked the night outside and thunder again protested, she counseled herself about the necessity for diplomacy.

Nevertheless, she said, “You’ve known all these years that Candy is a vicious killer, and you’ve done nothing to alert anyone to the danger?”

“Why should I?” Fogarty asked.

“Haven’t you ever heard of social responsibility?”

“It’s a nice phrase, but meaningless.”

“People have been brutally murdered because you let that man—”

“People will always and forever be brutally murdered. History is full of brutal murder. Hitler murdered millions. Stalin, many millions more. Mao Tse-tung, more millions than anyone. They’re all considered monsters now, but they had their admirers in their time, didn’t they? And there’re people even now who’ll tell you Hitler and Stalin only did what they had to do, that Mao was just keeping the public order, disposing of ruffians. So many people
admire
those murderers who are bold about it and who cloak their bloodlust in noble causes like brotherhood and political reform and justice—and social responsibility. We’re all meat, just meat, and in our hearts we know it, so we secretly applaud the men bold enough to treat us as, what we are. Meat.”

By now she knew that he was a sociopath, with no conscience, no capacity for love, and no ability to empathize with other people. Not all of them were street hoodlums—or even high-class, high-tech thieves like Tom Rasmussen, who had tried to kill Bobby last week. Some got to be doctors—or lawyers, TV ministers, politicians. None of them could be reasoned with, for they had no normal human feelings.

He said, “Why should I tell anyone about Candy Pollard? I’m safe from him because his mother always called me God’s instrument, told her wretched spawn I was to be respected. It’s none of my business. He’s covered his mother’s murder to avoid having the police tramping through the house, told people she moved to a nice oceanside condo near San Diego. I don’t think anybody believes that crazy bitch would suddenly lighten up and become a beach bunny, but nobody questions it because nobody wants to get involved. Everybody feels it’s none of their business. Same with me. Whatever outrages Candy adds to the world’s pain are negligible. At least, given his peculiar psychology and physiology, his outrages will be more imaginative than most.

“Besides, when Candy was about eight, Roselle came to thank me for bringing her four into the world, and for keeping my own counsel, so that Satan was unaware of their blessed presence on earth. That’s exactly how she put it! And as a token of her appreciation, she gave me a suitcase full of money, enough to make early retirement possible. I couldn’t figure where she’d gotten it. The money that Deeter and Elizabeth piled up in the thirties had long ago dwindled away. So she told me a little bit about Candy’s ability, not much, but enough to explain that she’d never want for cash. That was the first time I realized there was a genetic boon tied to the genetic disaster.”

Fogarty raised his glass of bourbon in a toast that they did not return. “To God’s mysterious ways.”

LIKE THE ARCHANGEL come to declare the end of the world in the Book of the Apocalypse, Candy arrived just as the heavens sundered and the rain began to fall in earnest, although this was not black rain as would be the deluge of Armageddon, nor was it a storm of fire. Not yet. Not yet.

He materialized in the darkness between two widely spaced streetlamps, almost a block from the doctor’s house, to be sure that the soft trumpets that unfailingly announced his arrival would not be audible to anyone in Fogarty’s library. As he walked toward the house through the hammering rain, he believed that his power, provided by God, had now grown so enormous that nothing could prevent him from taking or achieving anything he desired.

“IN SIXTY-SIX, the twins were born, and physically they were as normal as Frank,” Fogarty said as rain suddenly splattered noisily against the window. “No fun in that. I couldn’t believe it, really. Three out of four of the kids, perfectly healthy. I’d been expecting all sorts of cute twists—harelips at the very least, misshapen skulls, cleft faces, withered limbs, or extra heads!”

Bobby took Julie’s hand. He needed the contact.

He wanted to get out of there. He felt burnt out. Hadn’t they heard enough?

But that was the problem: he didn’t know what was left to hear, or how much of it might be crucial to finding a way of dealing with the Pollards.

“Of course, when Roselle brought me that suitcase full of money, I began to learn that the children
were
all freaks, mentally if not physically. And seven years ago, when Frank killed her, he came to me, as if I owed him something—understanding, shelter. He told me more about them than I wanted to know, too much. For the next two years, he’d periodically return here, just appear like a ghost that wanted to haunt
me
instead of a place. But he finally understood there was nothing for him here, and for five years he stayed out of my life. Until today, tonight.”

In his wingback chair, Frank moved. He shifted his body and tipped his head from the right to the left. Otherwise, he was no more alert than he had been since they had entered the room. The old man had said that Frank had come around a few times and had been talkative, but it couldn’t be proved by his behavior during the past hour or so.

Julie, who was the closest to Frank, frowned and leaned toward him, peering at the right side of his head.

“Oh, my God.”

She spoke those three words in a bleak tone of voice that was as effective a refrigerant as anything used in an air conditioner.

With a chill skittering up his spine, Bobby slid along the sofa, crowding her against the other end, and looked past her at the side of Frank’s head. Wished he had not. Tried to look away. Couldn’t.

When Frank’s head had been tilted to his right, almost lying against his shoulder, they had not been able to see that temple. After leaving Bobby at the office, still out of control, traveling against his will, Frank evidently had returned to one of those craters where the engineered insects shat out their diamonds. His flesh was lumpy all the way along his temple to his jaw, and in some places the rough gemstones that were the cause of the lumpiness poked through, gleaming, intimately melded with his tissue. For whatever reason, he had scooped up a handful to bring with him, but when reconstituting himself he had made a mistake.

Bobby wondered what treasures might be buried in the soft gray matter within Frank’s skull.

“I saw that too,” Fogarty said. “And look at the palm of his right hand.”

Although Julie protested, Bobby pinched the sleeve of Frank’s jacket and pulled until he twisted the man’s arm off the chair and revealed his palm. He had found the partial roach that had once been welded into his own shoe. At least it appeared to be the same one. It was sprouting from the meaty part of Frank’s hand, carapace gleaming, dead eyes staring up toward Frank’s index finger.

CANDY CIRCLED the house in the rain, passing a black cat on a windowsill. It turned its head to glance at him, then put its face to the windowpane again.

At the rear of the house, he stepped quietly onto the porch and tried the back door. It was locked.

Vague blue light pulsed from his hand as he gripped the knob. The lock slipped, the door opened, and he stepped inside.