The Taint (17 page)

SIXTY

“Hey, look.”

The light was fading as the sun set but in the shadows they could see the small cabin.

“I didn’t know this was back here,” Jon said, walking toward the building.

“You couldn’t get up here by car,” someone pointed out.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Jon agreed, then put his finger to his lips to call for silence. It had been a long day for all of them, with nothing to show for it, and he was looking forward to a few hours of sleep. Still, it looked promising.

He was careful to step lightly on the boards of the small porch, not knowing if they’d creak. He put his hand on the door handle and twisted slowly, feeling the catch release. The door opened.

In the fading light he could see through the front room and into the bedroom, where something lay on the floor. White flesh.

“Nobody move,” he said and walked just inside the bedroom, squatting by the body. It was very clear there was no help for this one, the head was almost decapitated.

He went back to the door.

“There’s a body in there,” he said to the silent faces. “A young girl. I want somebody to stand guard at this door while I go get my truck.” He held his radio to his mouth, depressing the talk button. “This is Scott to dispatch,” he said, and waited for a reply.

Fifteen minutes later Earl arrived, grim-faced and silent. They worked, taking photographs, drawing rough sketches of the building layout and taking measurements to be used in determining the probable positions of killer and victim.

“I saw this girl earlier today,” Jon said after the lights were hung, bringing her face out of the shadows.

“It’s Melissa Davis,” Earl said. “Summer people.”

“She was with another girl, about the same age, not as pretty, and a guy, maybe twenty, twenty-one.”

“What do you think? It could be the guy?”

“Never can tell. But I think we’d better search around here in case the other girl was attacked too.”

Earl straightened. “I’ll get someone on it.”

Jon nodded and continued examining the room. The thin layer of dirt showed no prints but he still had to dust the other surfaces. There was no weapon in sight, naturally, but at least this one was inside where there was a better chance of getting physical evidence.

They loaded the girl’s body into the back of someone’s station wagon. It was now completely dark and most of the search party members had drifted away, shaking their heads and looking wide-eyed at each other.

Jon sealed the bedroom door with tape. They had lifted several prints off the door frame and one off the bedpost, but that was it. What they needed to do was to get a top-rate crime scene team in to vacuum for fibers and hairs and whatever else might be evading their notice. He had done what he could do with the limited equipment available but it didn’t feel like it was enough.

“You going over to the hospital?” Earl asked, hitching up his gunbelt.

“I’ve got to go tell the mother,” he said.

He knocked at the door of the Davis house. After a moment, when he didn’t hear anything, he pushed the bell, hearing the chimes ring. The clatter of heels.

The door swung open and a pleasant-looking woman in her thirties looked at him, a glass in her hand.

“Oh,” she said. “I thought you were my husband.”

“Mrs. Davis . . .”

“It’s Mrs. Buono. Mrs. Tony Buono. Davis was my . . . other husband.”

“You have a daughter, Melissa?”

The glass tilted and splattered martini on the tile floor.

“Yeah, Melissa. What’s she done now?”

He hesitated. “When did you last see your daughter?”

“What time is it now?” She narrowed her eyes to look at a diamond-encrusted watch on her wrist. “Hm. She’s late from school again.” The glass made it to her lips, and her eyes settled on his badge. The color faded from her face. “What . . .”

“I’m very sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m afraid Melissa is dead.”

The glass splintered on the tiles.

“Where the hell is Tony?” the woman cried.

When he got back into the Bronco he heard Sally’s voice over the radio, calling him.

“We’ve got a missing child,” Sally informed him. “Mr. and Mrs. Stanley Rogers, their daughter, Jennifer. That glass house out on the ridge road.”

Mrs. Rogers handed him a picture of Jennifer. “This is last year’s, but she’s the same, her hair might be a little longer.”

It was the girl he’d seen with Melissa Davis. He had known that it would be, but it took him a moment before he could take his eyes from the photograph and look at her parents.

And then, there was nothing he could tell them, except that their daughter had been seen with Melissa in the morning, and now Melissa was dead. And there was no sign of their child.

The mother sat on the couch, crying into her house-dress, mumbling something about keeping her off the streets.

By the time he was able to check out and go home, it was nine p.m. and he had been on duty for twenty-seven hours. Earl agreed to work until three and then Andy was going to cover from three to ten a.m. the next day.

He unlocked his front door and went straight to his bed, not even bothering to turn on the lights. He undressed and slipped beneath the covers, letting his exhaustion take over.

It had been a long time since he’d slept during the dark hours. He preferred to work the night shift, and when he actually managed a day off, he usually kept to his schedule, staying up at night so it would be easier to sleep.

Now, though, he was so tired that nothing else made any difference.

But even as his eyes closed and he sought sleep, the savage wound on the girl’s neck haunted him. Human flesh, and the fine edge of cold steel.

Her laughter echoed in his dreams.

SIXTY-ONE

She had seen him.

Nora huddled in the small basement under the cabin, listening for the return of the footsteps, but they did not come. There was nothing.

She lit a kerosene lamp, keeping the wick small so that it wouldn’t throw too much light, and went to the shelves on the wall. Some canned food, and jars she’d put up of jelly and fruit. Small tins of evaporated milk.

She took a can of hash and a jar of peaches and sat down on the bottom step to open them.

Years ago, during the bomb scare, she’d dug this small shelter, working feverishly, feeling the hot breath of destruction at her back. It was only eight feet by six feet, and could be entered only through the bedroom closet floor.

She’d used the dark dirt in her garden on her other property, and she’d never told anyone. The cabin was secluded and, she thought, a better place to wait out the end of the world.

So she’d dug, and put up the first brick walls, with another layer of dirt between the first wall and the heavy concrete blocks she’d bought down the hill. Then she’d fitted one wall with shelves and stocked it with food, constantly replacing cans and jars as they became outdated, waiting for the flash of brilliant light.

Time passed, and the light did not come, but she was hiding from something just as deadly. If only she could know for sure that he wouldn’t find her place.

She finished the cold hash and loosened the seal on the jar of peaches. The air in the small room was getting sour and she knew that she would have to use the manual air pump, but she wanted to finish eating first. She speared a peach half with her fork and bit into it, juice running down her chin. It was salvation.

When she finished the peaches she drank their juice, the liquid soothing her dry throat. She still had enough food for another three weeks but she’d gone through the canteens of water much faster than anticipated. She could sneak out and fill them from the water pump in the kitchen but she did not feel that it was safe.

She crossed to the hand-cranked air filter and firmly grasped the handle, setting to it with determination.

Her watch said it was three a.m. and she had not heard a single sound in hours. She gathered up the canteens and climbed the short staircase, reaching with her free hand to dislodge the door bolts.

The door opened easily enough, hitting with a thud against the closet wall, and she climbed up. The closet door was closed and it was very dark but she had kept the light so dim in the basement that she was able to see fairly well.

She pushed the closet door open and stood looking into the bedroom. An outline in chalk on the floor and blood stains. She stepped cautiously into the room.

The presence of evil was so strong that it made her reel. It hung in the air like layers of smoke and stung her lungs with its acrid taste. It swirled at her feet, cold and wet, drawing energy from the drying pools of blood on the floor.

She shuddered and turned her glance inward, unable to control the rapid, violent images that it threw at her eyes. She placed her fingertips on her temples and blocked with all of her might.

It recoiled and she moved quickly to the closed door, turning it and shoving, but something held it back and she saw in her mind the hands as they had taped the door closed, thick reinforced tape.

If she pushed through, they would know. They might not think to look beyond the obvious places, but she could not take that chance. She was only safe here. She would have to take a chance that they would remove the tape soon and until then drink the thick milk and fruit juice. She had no choice.

Wednesday

SIXTY-TWO

Rachel woke, feeling warm, and pushed the covers aside, her eyes still closed. The house was silent and the alarm had not rung, and she ached. She did not want to get up, did not want to move, in case the queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach was a warning.

After a few minutes she realized that there was no avoiding it and she opened her eyes, sitting up carefully and feeling the increased pressure behind her eyes.

She was sick.

“Oh no.” She put a hand on her stomach and the other to her head and eased back down on the bed.

It had been a long time; she couldn’t remember the last time she’d been ill. She had an unusually high resistance to colds and all types of flu, not unlike most health professionals. She’d been exposed to so many contagious diseases that her natural immunity had grown.

But the throbbing in her head and her aching stomach were witnesses to her downfall. If she lay very still . . .

She was almost asleep again when Nathan came to her door, tapping lightly and when she didn’t respond, looking in. Through half-opened eyes she saw his concern.

“Got it, don’t you?” He came to the bedside and put his hand on her forehead and face.

“Aspirin,” she said, feeling the word rebound inside her skull.

“Yes, aspirin, and you’re staying in bed today.” He took her wrist.

“No,” she tried to lift her head from the pillow.

“Bed here or bed at the hospital,” he said firmly. “You know yourself that it’s fairly quick to pass. And I can’t have you contaminating the patients.”

“But . . . they have it.”

“You’re staying home, in bed. Any further arguments and I’ll be forced to find my dullest needle for an injection of antibiotic.”

She tried to smile but her face felt tight.

He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with a tray. “I’ve got aspirin, water in a pitcher, orange juice . . .” he read her look, “for later, and Amoxicillin.” He shook a couple of aspirin out of the bottle and two antibiotic tablets, offering them to her.

She had to sit up to take them, swallowing with as little water as possible to avoid upsetting her stomach any further.

“Now don’t forget to take more later on. I want you to rest, and call me if you need anything. I’ll try to get by early this afternoon.” He leaned down and kissed her. “Take care.”

Nathan lowered the shades, blocking the morning light. He closed the door behind him, leaving her in the silence.

It was so much like her memories. Nathan gone, the house still, the marvelous novelty of spending daylight hours in bed. She missed that, strangely, as an adult.

Theoretically, she could choose to stay home as she pleased. In practice, once in college she had been compelled to stay well. And on the infrequent occasions when she had stayed home, cutting class, there were always things that did not respect her ill health. Trips to the post office, the bank, buying groceries, even just answering the phone.

Just staying in bed, cushioned from the world, was a luxury. Even feeling so bad.

She tried to ignore the aching discomfort of her body by thinking of more pleasant things. The last year, spent in Africa.

There they’d risen early, often four a.m., to work by the glow of lanterns, before the unbearable heat of the day. As doctor for the group she had tended sunburn and insect bites, scrapes, and the like. Not challenging but the fascination of the dig was enough to make up for the tedium of her practice.

In the afternoons, they worked with their discoveries, often just shards and fragments, under canvas canopies. It was all incredibly detailed work, and every piece had to be cataloged and precisely described. Often it was like putting together a large jigsaw puzzle.

By the end of the year she had been spending a great deal of her time working with them, re-building the past. The thought that the pieces of stone were remnants of a crude weapon, or that a blackened bone was from a human leg made her more aware than ever before of her own mortality.

She felt for the covers, beginning to feel chilled, and in a few minutes she fell asleep.

The second time she awoke, she was covered in sweat, her mouth dry and her throat aching.

She sat up slowly and reached for the water pitcher, pouring with an unsteady hand. Her headache had subsided a little and she took two more aspirin from the bottle. This time when she swallowed them and the antibiotic tablets she drank the full glass of water.

When her stomach was quiescent she drank the orange juice.

Maybe she wasn’t as sick as she thought.

She got out of bed a little while later and walked down the quiet hall to the bathroom. Since she was feeling better, she decided to enjoy the best of it, and ran hot, scented water into the tub.