They (7 page)

He spent the rest of the day at his motel room where he napped for an hour. Then after a quick lunch at Nino’s Pizza, he headed over to the Lititz Borough Police Station. Tom Hoffman had told him to come to his office at three for the keys to his mother’s place. He picked up the keys and headed to the house.

He let himself in and stood in the dark living room, listening to the silence. Then he turned on the lights. The curtains were drawn and he moved to the kitchen, wondering where to begin.

He went to the bedroom and turned on the lights. The wall and floor were bloodstained with the remnants of death.

Something drawn on the wall in blood, on the other side of the bed, made him gasp.

Tom Hoffman told him about the atrocities performed on his mother but on his earlier trip, in the dim light, he hadn’t noticed this drawing. It was set apart from the other scribbles on the opposite wall where the bed’s headboard had rested against.

No wonder Tom Hoffman thought this was a cult related murder.

Drawn at about chest height was a horned figure. Vaguely satanic, its body was winged, its face long, eyes blazing. It was centered within a circle and a strange design that was not written in blood; rather, it appeared to be drawn with a felt tipped marker. Vince did not recognize the symbol. It wasn’t a pentagram by any means. It held to geometric lines that were similar, but there were a lot of angles, a lot of circular shapes that twisted and turned within it. Scrawled close by, also in blood, was a line of gibberish.
M’gwli acht K’tluth K’ryon Hanbi e ’ghorallth liber daemonorum
.

He turned away from what was written on the wall and looked around the room, images of the past flickering past the lenses of his mind. This room was as good as any to get started.

He got down to business, going through the closet and the chest. As he began sifting through her belongings, he thought he would stumble upon information somewhere that would reveal relatives; he knew she had a sister somewhere. And she
had
to have parents. He dimly remembered mom talking about them years ago, but she stopped talking about them after their first move to upstate New York. Now he wanted to find out everything about her, which was almost nothing.

He spent the next three hours going through the house from top to
bottom. He searched through the closet in her bedroom, the hall
closets and linen drawers, the closet in the second bedroom that had once been his room, and the drawers and cabinets in the kitchen and bureaus in the living room. All he found were clothing, shoes, old books on Christian philosophies, Bibles, a few boxes of Christmas decorations, boxes of old silverware, and an old stereo system. When he left home for college, he’d left a collection of
Circus
magazines in a cardboard box at the bottom of his closet. Now all those items were gone.
Probably burned them
, he thought.
That would have been her way of thinking. Burn the devil’s possessions and cast the beast out
.

By the time he reached the living room he was convinced he wasn’t going to find a single thing. The closest he’d come to actually finding something was a scrapbook in the bottom of the chest in her bedroom. When he opened it all he found were photos of their lives in Toronto.

When he opened the drawer in the kitchen near the silverware compartment he didn’t think he’d find anything either. Amid the scraps of paper, some pens and pencils, a pair of scissors and some clothespins, he found a worn phonebook. He pulled it out and opened it. He flipped through it slowly. Not many names. Twenty in all. All of them people he either knew growing up—people like Lillian Withers, who’d traveled with them from Canada—or their phone numbers and addresses were all local. Not an unfamiliar name in the book.

He closed the book and sighed. He had planned on starting the de
licate task of calling some long lost distant relative bearing the bad news, but it looked like that wasn’t going to happen. A small part of him that had held out hope in finding out who her relatives were shriveled up and died. He’d probably never find out where she came from, who her family—
his
family—really was.

He left the house when he was finished and headed for his motel room.

THE NEXT MORNING after breakfast and a shower, Vince Walters drove the rental car to Lillian Withers’s home in Lititz.

He’d been tired after the long flight and meeting with Tom Hoffman yesterday. He thought he’d be able to get some much needed rest, but upon arriving back at his motel yesterday afternoon he was met by two homicide detectives from Lancaster who wanted to question him. Vince had wearily agreed, and the three of them had spent an hour talking in his room. The detectives were friendly enough, and Vince could tell that they were doing the best they could in trying to make sense of his mother’s murder, but they appeared to spend most of their time asking Vince about her religious beliefs. He’d told them everything: about his mother’s sudden conversion to evangelical Christianity shortly after they’d moved to upstate New York from California, how it changed her, in many ways not for the best. He told them about the move to Toronto, her taking up with a small close-knit group of fellow believers and their banding into a fellowship; how they’d formed under the leadership of Reverend Hank Powell; how fire-and-brimstone they’d been. He told them how he’d fallen away from the faith, how he never really believed in much of the hardcore elements of their beliefs.

And what were their beliefs
? they’d asked.

Vince responded: “She was convinced she and her congregation were God’s chosen ones and that we would be protected from the wrath of Armageddon. She told me I was special. Because I’d accepted Christ in my heart, she and the group had a powerful weapon to wield against Satan and his demons. Really crazy stuff. I would go along with it just to appease her, but I never really believed it. I thought it was just a sack of bullshit. Especially when I saw my friends at school, friends who came from very loving families, some very traditional Christian families who espoused the same basic religious beliefs who were nowhere
near
as crazy in their beliefs as my mother and her friends were. She believed in the same basic theology, but she took it more seriously. More
personal
. She believed that she—that
we
—were chosen by God to lead the battle in Armageddon and that the time was drawing short. She believed that in order to be in God’s Army, we had to live strictly by his law. They advocated living in strict accordance of Christ’s example. To live by the ways of the world was an open rejection of God, because Satan was the ruler of earth. To live by the ways of the world, namely to go out and live a normal life, get a job, pay taxes, go to movies, read books, listen to music, go to parties, drink, smoke, engage in a sexual relationship, whatever, meant you were living in Satan’s world. It pretty much reserved a place in hell for your soul for the rest of eternity.”

The detectives had nodded at this. One of them, a dark-haired man about his own age named Harry Michaelson said, “We understand they were very quiet, kept mostly to themselves and didn’t cause much trouble. We’ve already questioned members of the congregation and people around town that knew your mother, and they’ve pretty much confirmed what you’ve told us.”

Once the detectives left, Vince found it hard to relax, much less sleep. His mind had kept drifting to the church they’d formed—the First Church of Christ—and their beliefs. He thought about their obsession with Satan, especially Armageddon and their overzealous paranoid reactions against what they saw as “the great satanic conspiracy.” According to them, some of the most respected people in government offices and business were top satanic henchmen. They were also pulling the strings behind most of the drug smuggling in this country. And, as could be expected, they routinely kidnapped people for ritual sacrifices.

They were beliefs he no longer held to, much less believed much in anyway. When you were a teenager, the last thing you wanted to be told was that your favorite rock band—in Vince’s case, Iron Maiden—were comprised of devil-worshippers.

When he woke up this morning after a fitful sleep, resolved to drive out to Lillian Withers’s place and face the music, he told himself that he was going to stay strong in his beliefs. He was an atheist now. He may have been a believer a long time ago, when he was a child, but he no longer held to those beliefs. Thanks to the group’s paranoid delusions, he saw no credence in them. He saw no reason to let their beliefs sway him now. Besides, he was hoping that Lillian Withers hadn’t changed much in the last fifteen years since he’d last seen her. Of the dozen or so church members that his mother fellowshipped with, Lillian Withers was the one he’d liked the most. She’d been the most down-to-earth.

All his worries of talking to Lillian Withers turned out to be in vain. In short, Lillian hadn’t changed at all.

She recognized him the instant she opened the door to her small home on Meadow Lane. Her light blue eyes lit up in surprise and happiness when she saw him. “Vincent! How good to see you!” She opened the screen door. “My God, just look at you! Come in! Come in!”

Vince grinned sheepishly and stepped into Lillian’s home. Lillian was wearing a red plaid dress, her auburn hair tied behind her head in a bun. Unlike many of the old order Amish and Mennonite people who lived in the area, the women in Reverend Powell’s sect did not wear prayer caps, but they did dress modestly, mostly in dresses and occasionally jeans. Lillian had aged gracefully; Vince had always pegged Lillian to be close to his mother’s age, give or take a few years. The last time he saw his mother, she’d looked at least ten years older than her forty-one years. Fourteen years later Lillian, who was probably in her early fifties now, didn’t look older than forty. She was positively radiant.

She swept Vince up in a hug. “Oh, it’s so good to see you, Vincent!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Vince murmured.

“I’m so sorry about Maggie.” Lillian’s voice cracked slightly and Vince held her. She sniffled once. “I’m so sorry about what happened.”

What exactly did happen
? He almost asked. Lillian looked up at him, her eyes misty with tears. “Well,” she said. “Why don’t you come in? I’ve got some tea if you want.”

“Thanks,” Vince said. Lillian disappeared into the kitchen and Vince took a quick glance around the house. A small living room leading to an even smaller kitchen, a hallway at the far end of the living room led to the two bedrooms and the one bathroom. The living room was furnished nicely and modestly with a couch, two easy chairs, and an oak coffee table. An entertainment center contained a small receiver, a tape deck, and a twenty-five inch television. There was a framed picture of Jesus Christ over the sofa, His gaze cast to the heavens. Another framed picture hung on the wall near the kitchen, this one a work of embroidery with a religious slogan from the Book of Mark.

“How long have you been in town?” Lillian asked from the kitchen.

“I got in yesterday,” Vince said. He sat down on the couch and leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees. The coffee table was positioned in front of the couch. There was a
TV Guide
on one side of it. On the other side was a King James Bible and a prayer book. “I talked to Chief Hoffman and a couple of detectives from Lancaster.”

“Michaelson and Harvey?” Lillian came out of the kitchen bearing two tall glasses of iced tea. She handed Vince one, who took it gratefully.

“Yes,” he said, sipping the iced tea. It was delicious.

“They talked to everybody here, too,” Lillian said. “Well, everybody in the group. They were all pretty upset.”

“About talking to the detectives?” Vince asked.

“No,” Lillian said. She sat down in the easy chair closest to the couch, on Vince’s right. The curtains were open, basking the room in light. “About what happened. How somebody could…do something so horrible to Maggie.”

“I know what you mean,” Vince said. He took another sip of the iced tea. “I’ve been wondering that myself.”

“It’s just so shocking,” Lillian said, clutching her glass. “The press has been hounding us, too. What’s happened has become the talk of all of Lancaster County. More so than the Lambert case from seven years or so back. You think things like that only happen in places like this once in a lifetime, but to have another happen within the space of a decade…” She shook her head and took a sip of tea. “I saw Maggie the afternoon she died. We’d done some shopping on Main Street and had been talking about going to the Green Dragon. We went there every Friday, you know.” Vince nodded. The Green Dragon was an open-air flea market that was held every Friday in nearby Reamstown. “We were both planning on making dishes for the pot luck at the church, and there was a recipe book your mother saw there the week before. Anyway, I dropped your mother off at the house and she told me she was going to spend the rest of the day and evening making her stew. We planned on meeting at the church. John Van Zant was going to pick her up in the morning and bring her to church, so I didn’t think I’d see her until the next day.” Her features became stony as she remembered. “I got to church that day with my casserole, Mary Rossington baked one of her apple cobblers that she’s famous for. Reverend Powell baked some of that honey wheat bread that he loves. We were planning on just breaking bread together and fellowshipping, real down home talking and sharing in the Lord. We were all sitting in the den of Reverend Powell’s home when Tom Hoffman came. He…” Her voice faltered. “He didn’t look so good. John was with him and he looked pale. We went out to meet them on the porch, and the minute John saw us he just burst into tears.”

Vince listened quietly, nodding every now and then. Lillian looked at him and tried to muster a smile. “Poor Tom. I don’t think that man was ever used to delivering bad news, especially in these parts. But he was just beside himself that day. He almost cried himself when he told us.”

“Did Tom come out right then and tell you exactly what happened?” Vince asked.