The Servants of Twilight (28 page)
“On the contrary. Provided she understood the risks of her actions and had a firm grip on all the potential consequences, or at least as long as she convinced the examining doctor that she had a firm grip, the mere fact that she wanted to give everything to God’s work would not be sufficient to declare her mentally incompetent. We have religious liberty in this country, you know. It’s an important constitutional freedom, and the law steps respectfully around it in cases like this.”
“You’ve got to help me, Boo,” Charlie said. “Tell me how this woman thinks. Give me a handle on her. Show me how to turn her off, how to make her change her mind about Joey Scavello.”
“This kind of psychopathic personality is
not
frightened, shaky, about to collapse. Just the opposite. With a cause she believes in, supported by delusions of grandeur that are intensely religious in nature . . . well, despite appearances to the contrary, she’s a rock, utterly resistant to pressure and stress. She lives in a reality that she made for herself, and she’s made it so well that there’s probably no way you can shake it or pull it apart or cause her to lose faith in it.”
not
frightened, shaky, about to collapse. Just the opposite. With a cause she believes in, supported by delusions of grandeur that are intensely religious in nature . . . well, despite appearances to the contrary, she’s a rock, utterly resistant to pressure and stress. She lives in a reality that she made for herself, and she’s made it so well that there’s probably no way you can shake it or pull it apart or cause her to lose faith in it.”
“Are you saying I can’t change her mind?”
“I would think it’s impossible.”
“Then how do I make her back off? She’s a flake; there must be an easy way to handle her.”
“You’re not listening—or you don’t want to hear what I’m telling you. You mustn’t make the mistake of assuming that, just because she’s psychotic, she’s vulnerable. This sort of mental problem carries with it a peculiar strength, an ability to withstand rejection, failure, and all forms of stress. You see, Grace evolved her psychotic fantasy for the sole purpose of protecting herself from those things. It’s a way of armoring herself against the cruelties and disappointments of life, and it’s damned good armor.”
Charlie said, “Are you telling me she has no weaknesses?”
“Everyone has weaknesses. I’m just telling you that, in Grace’s case, finding them won’t be easy. I’ll have to look over my file on her, think about it awhile . . . Give me a day at least.”
“Think fast,” Charlie said, getting to his feet, “I’ve got a few hundred homicidal religious fanatics breathing down my neck.”
At the door, as they were leaving his office, Boo said, “Charlie, I know you put quite a lot of faith in me sometimes—”
“Yeah, I’ve got a Messiah complex about you.”
Ignoring the joke, still unusually somber, Boo said, “I just don’t want you to pin a lot of hope on what I might be able to come up with. In fact, I might not be able to come up with anything. Right now, I’d say there’s only one answer, one way to deal with Grace if you want to save your clients.”
“What’s that?”
“Kill her,” Boo said without a smile.
“You certainly aren’t one of those bleeding-heart psychiatrists who always want to give mass murderers a second chance at life. Where’d you get your degree—Attila the Hun School of Head-Shrinking?”
He very much wanted Boo to joke with him. The psychiatrist’s grim reaction to the story of his meeting with Grace this morning was so out of character that it unsettled Charlie. He needed a laugh. He needed to be told there was a silver lining somewhere. Boo’s gray-faced sobriety was almost scarier than Grace Spivey’s flamboyant ranting.
But Boo said, “Charlie, you know me. You know I can find something humorous in
anything
. I chuckle at dementia praecox in certain situations. I am amused by certain aspects of death, taxes, leprosy, American politics, and cancer. I’ve even been known to smile at reruns of
Laverne & Shirley
when my grandchildren have insisted I watch with them. But I see nothing to laugh at here. You are a dear friend, Charlie. I’m frightened for you.”
anything
. I chuckle at dementia praecox in certain situations. I am amused by certain aspects of death, taxes, leprosy, American politics, and cancer. I’ve even been known to smile at reruns of
Laverne & Shirley
when my grandchildren have insisted I watch with them. But I see nothing to laugh at here. You are a dear friend, Charlie. I’m frightened for you.”
“You don’t really mean I should kill her.”
“I know you couldn’t commit cold-blooded murder,” Boothe said. “But I’m afraid Grace’s death is the only thing that might redirect these cultists’ attention away from your clients.”
“So it’d be helpful if I
was
capable of cold-blooded murder.”
was
capable of cold-blooded murder.”
“Yes.”
“Helpful if I had just a
little
killer in me.”
little
killer in me.”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
“A difficult state of affairs,” Boo agreed.
35
The house had
no garage, just a carport, which meant they had to expose themselves while getting in the green Chevy. Sandy didn’t like it, but there was no other choice except to stay in the house until reinforcements arrived, and his gut instinct told him that would be a mistake.
no garage, just a carport, which meant they had to expose themselves while getting in the green Chevy. Sandy didn’t like it, but there was no other choice except to stay in the house until reinforcements arrived, and his gut instinct told him that would be a mistake.
He left the house first, by the side door, stepping directly into the open carport. The roof kept the rain from falling straight down on him, and latticework covered with climbing honeysuckle kept it from slanting in through the long side of the stall, but the chilly wind drove sheets of rain through the open end of the structure and threw it in his face.
Before giving the all-clear signal for Christine and Joey to come outside, he went to the end of the carport, into the driveway, because he wanted to make sure no one was lurking in front of the house. He wore a coat but went without an umbrella in order to keep his hands free, and the rain beat on his bare head, stung his face, trickled under his collar. No one was at the front door or along the walk or crouching by the shrubbery, so he called back to the woman to get into the car with the boy.
He took a few more steps along the driveway in order to have a look up and down the street, and he saw the blue Dodge van. It was parked a block and a half up the hill, on the other side of the street, facing down toward the house. Even as he spotted it, the van swung away from the curb and headed toward him.
Sandy glanced back and saw that Christine, lugging two suitcases and accompanied by the dog, had just reached the car, where the boy had opened the rear door for her. “Wait!” he shouted to them.
He looked back at the street. The van was coming fast now. Too damned fast.
“Into the house!” Sandy shouted.
The woman must have been wound up tight because she didn’t even hesitate, didn’t ask what was wrong, just dropped the suitcases, grabbed her son, and headed back the way she’d come, toward the open door in which Max now stood.
The rest of it happened in a few seconds, but terror distorted Sandy Breckenstein’s time sense, so that it seemed as though minutes passed in an unbearably extended panic.
First, the van surprised him by angling all the way across the street and entering the driveway of the house that was two doors uphill from this one. But it wasn’t stopping there. It swung out of that driveway almost as soon as it entered, not back into the street but onto the grass. It roared across the lawn in front of that house, coming this way, tearing up grass, casting mud and chunks of sod in its wake, squashing flowers, knocking over a birdbath, engine screaming, tires spinning for a moment but then biting in again, surging forward with maniacal intent.
What the hell
—
—
The passenger door of the van flew open, and the man on that side threw himself out, struck the lawn, and rolled.
Sandy thought of rats deserting a doomed ship.
The van plowed through the picket fence between the lawn and the next property.
Behind Sandy, Max yelled, “What’s happening?”
Now only one house separated the Dodge from this property.
Chewbacca was barking furiously.
The driver gave the van more gas. It was coming fast, like an express train, like a rocket.
The intent was clear. Crazy as it seemed, the van was going to ram the house in which they’d been hiding.
“Get out!” Sandy shouted back toward Christine and Joey and Max. “Out of the house, away from here,
fast
!”
fast
!”
Max plunged out of the house, and the three of them—and the dog—fled toward the backyard, which was the only way they could go.
Uphill, the Dodge swerved to avoid a jacaranda in the neighboring yard and struck the fence between this property and that one.
Sandy had already turned away from the van. He was already running back along the side of the house.
Behind him, the picket fence gave way with a sound like cracking bones.
Sandy raced through the carport, past the car, leaping over the abandoned suitcases, yelling at the others to hurry, for God’s sake
hurry
, screaming at them to get out of the way, urging them into the rear lawn, and then toward the back fence, beyond which lay a narrow alley.
hurry
, screaming at them to get out of the way, urging them into the rear lawn, and then toward the back fence, beyond which lay a narrow alley.
But they didn’t get all the way to the rear of the small lot before the van rammed into the house with a tremendous crash. A split second later, an ear-pulverizing explosion shook the rain-choked day, and for a moment it sounded as if the sky itself was falling, and the earth rose violently, fell.
The van had been packed full of explosives!
The blast picked Sandy up and pitched him, and he felt a wave of hot air smash over him, and then he was tumbling across the lawn, through a row of azaleas, into the board fence by the alleyway, jarring his right shoulder, and he saw fire where the house had been, fire and smoke, shooting up in a dazzling column, and there was flying debris, a lot of it—chunks of masonry, splintered boards, roofing shingles, lath and plaster, glass, the padded back of an armchair that was leaking stuffing, the cracked lid of a toilet seat, sofa cushions, a piece of carpeting—and he tucked his head down and prayed that he wouldn’t be struck by anything heavy or sharp.
As debris pummeled him, he wondered if the driver of the van had leaped out as the man on the passenger’s side had done. Had he jumped free at the last moment—or had he been so committed to murdering Joey Scavello that he had remained behind the wheel, piloting the Dodge all the way into the house? Maybe he was now sitting in the rubble, flesh stripped from his bones, his skeletal hands still clutching the fire-blackened steering wheel.
The explosion was
like a giant hand that slammed Christine in the back. Briefly deafened by the blast, she was thrown away from Joey, knocked down. In a temporary but eerie silence, she rolled through a muddy flower bed, crushing dense clusters of bright red and purple impatiens, aware of billowing waves of superheated air that seemed to vaporize the falling rain for a moment. She cracked a knee painfully against the low brick edging that ringed the planting area, tasted dirt, and came to rest against the side of the arbor, which was thickly entwined with bougainvillaea. Still in silence, cedar shingles and shattered pieces of stucco and unidentifiable rubble fell on her and on the garden around her. Then her hearing began to return when the toaster, which she had so recently used when making breakfast, clanged onto the grass and noisily hopped along for some distance, as if it were a living thing, trailing its cord like a tail. An enormously heavy object, perhaps a roof beam or a large chunk of masonry, slammed down into the roof of the ten-foot-long, tunnel-like arbor, collapsing it. The wall against which she was leaning sagged inward, and torn bougainvillaea runners drooped over her, and she realized how close she had come to being killed.
like a giant hand that slammed Christine in the back. Briefly deafened by the blast, she was thrown away from Joey, knocked down. In a temporary but eerie silence, she rolled through a muddy flower bed, crushing dense clusters of bright red and purple impatiens, aware of billowing waves of superheated air that seemed to vaporize the falling rain for a moment. She cracked a knee painfully against the low brick edging that ringed the planting area, tasted dirt, and came to rest against the side of the arbor, which was thickly entwined with bougainvillaea. Still in silence, cedar shingles and shattered pieces of stucco and unidentifiable rubble fell on her and on the garden around her. Then her hearing began to return when the toaster, which she had so recently used when making breakfast, clanged onto the grass and noisily hopped along for some distance, as if it were a living thing, trailing its cord like a tail. An enormously heavy object, perhaps a roof beam or a large chunk of masonry, slammed down into the roof of the ten-foot-long, tunnel-like arbor, collapsing it. The wall against which she was leaning sagged inward, and torn bougainvillaea runners drooped over her, and she realized how close she had come to being killed.
“Joey!” she shouted.
He didn’t answer.
She pushed away from the ruined arbor, onto her hands and knees, then staggered to her feet, swaying.
“Joey!”
No answer.
Foul-smelling smoke poured across the lawn from the demolished house; combined with the lingering fog and the wind-whipped rain, it reduced visibility to a few feet. She couldn’t see her boy, and she didn’t know where to look, so she struck off blindly to her left, finding it difficult to breathe because of the acrid smoke and because of her own panic, which was like a vise squeezing her chest. She came upon the scorched and mangled door of the refrigerator, forced her way between two miniature orange trees, one of which was draped in a tangled bed sheet, and walked across the rear door of the house, which was lying flat on the grass, thirty feet from the frame in which it had once stood. She saw Max Steck. He was alive, trying to extricate himself from the thorny trailers of several rose bushes, among which he had been tossed. She moved past him, still calling Joey, still getting no answer, and then, among all the other rubble, her gaze settled on a strangely unnerving object. It was Joey’s E.T. doll, one of his favorite toys, which had been left behind in the house. The blast had torn off both of the doll’s legs and one of its arms. Its face was scorched. Its round little belly was ripped open, and stuffing bulged out of the rent. It was only a doll, but somehow it seemed like a harbinger of death, a warning of what she would find when she finally located Joey. She began to run, keeping the fence in sight, circling the property, frantically searching for her son, tripping, falling, pushing up again, praying that she would find him whole, alive.
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