Cabal (17 page)

‘Not grave robbing. Not
folks
.’

‘Freaks,’ Eigerman said. ‘I seen ’em.’

‘Not the likes of these.’

‘You’re not saying any of them were at the Sweetgrass are you?’

‘No.’

‘We’ve got the man responsible right here?’

‘Yes.’

‘Under lock and key.’

‘Yes. But there are others in Midian.’

‘Murderers?’

‘Probably.’

‘You’re not sure?’

‘Just get some of your people out there.’

‘What’s the hurry?’

‘If I told you once I told you a dozen times.’

‘So tell me again.’

‘They have to be rounded up by daylight.’

‘What are they? Some kind of bloodsuckers?’ He chuckled to himself. ‘That what they are?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Decker replied.

‘Well, in a manner of speaking I gotta tell you, it’s gonna have to wait. I got people want to interview me, doctor. Can’t leave them begging. It’s not polite.’

‘Fuck polite. You’ve got deputies, haven’t you? Or is this a one cop town?’

Eigerman clearly bridled at this.

‘I’ve got deputies.’

‘Then may I suggest you dispatch some of them to Midian?’

‘To do what?’

‘Dig around.’

‘That’s probably consecrated ground, mister,’ Eigerman replied. ‘That’s holy.’

‘What’s under it isn’t,’ Decker replied, with a gravity that had Eigerman silenced. ‘You trusted me once, Irwin,’ he said. ‘And you caught a killer. Trust me again. You have to turn Midian upside down.’

There had been terrors, yes, but the old imperatives remained the same: the body had to eat, had to sleep. After leaving the Sweetgrass Inn Lori satisfied the first of these, wandering the streets until she found a suitably anonymous and busy store, then buying a collection of instant gratification foods: doughnuts, custard filled and dutch apple, chocolate milk, cheese. Then she sat in the sun and ate, her numbed mind unable to think much beyond the simple business of biting, chewing and swallowing. The food made her so sleepy she couldn’t have denied her lids falling if she’d tried. When she woke her side of the street, which had been bathed in sunshine, was in shadow. The stone step was chilly, and her body ached. But the food and the rest, however primitive, had done her some good. Her thought processes were a little more in order.

She had little cause for optimism, that was certain, but the situation had been bleaker when she’d first come through this town, on her way to find the spot where Boone had fallen. Then she’d believed the man she loved was dead; it had been a widow’s pilgrimage. Now at least he was alive, though God alone knew what horror, contracted in the tombs of Midian, possessed him. Given that fact, it was perhaps good that he was safe in the hands of the law, the slow process of which would give her time to think their problems through. Most urgent of those, a way to unmask Decker. No-one could kill so many without leaving some trace of evidence. Perhaps back at the restaurant, where he’d murdered Sheryl. She doubted he’d lead the police there as he’d led them to the Inn. It would seem too like complicity with the accused, knowing all the murder sites. He’d wait for the other corpse to be found by accident, knowing the crime would be ascribed to Boone. Which meant –
perhaps
– the site was untouched, and she might still find some clue that would incriminate him; or at very least open a crack in that pristine face of his.

Returning to where Sheryl had died, and where she’d endured Decker’s provocations, would be no picnic, but it was the only alternative to defeat she had.

She went quickly. By daylight, she had a hope of getting up the courage to step through that burnt out door. By night it would be another matter.

Decker watched as Eigerman briefed his deputies, four men who shared with their Chief the looks of bullies made good.

‘Now I trust our source,’ he said magnanimously, throwing a look back at Decker, ‘and if he tells me something bad’s going down in Midian, then I think that’s worth listening to. I want you to dig around a little. See what you can see.’

‘What exactly are we looking for?’ one of the number wanted to know. His name was Pettine. A forty-year-old with the wide, empty face of a comedian’s foil; and a voice too loud, and a belly too big.

‘Anything weird,’ Eigerman told him.

‘Like people been messing with the dead?’ the youngest of the four said.

‘Could be, Tommy,’ Eigerman said.

‘It’s more than that,’ Decker put in. ‘I believe Boone’s got friends in the cemetery.’

‘A fuckwit like that has friends?’ Pettine said. ‘Sure as shit wanna know what
they
look like.’

‘Well you bring ’em back, boys.’

‘And if they won’t come?’

‘What are you asking, Tommy?’

‘Do we use force?’

‘Do unto others, boy, before they do unto you.’

‘They’re good men,’ Eigerman told Decker, when the quartet had been dispatched. ‘If there’s anything to find there, they’ll find it.’

‘Good enough.’

‘I’m going to see the prisoner. You want to come?’

‘I’ve seen as much of Boone as I ever want to see.’

‘No problem,’ Eigerman said, and left Decker to his calculations.

He’d almost elected to go with the troopers to Midian but there was too much work to do here preparing the ground for the revelations ahead. There would
be
revelations. Though so far Boone had declined to respond to even the simplest enquiries, he’d break his silence eventually, and when he did Decker would have questions asked of him. There was no chance any of Boone’s accusations could stick – the man had been found with human meat in his mouth, bloodied from head to foot – but there were elements of recent events that confounded even Decker, and until every variable in the scenario had been pinned down and understood he would fret.

What, for instance, had happened to Boone? How had the scapegoat filled with bullets and filed as dead become the ravening monster he’d almost lost his life to the night before? Boone had even claimed he was
dead
, for Christ’s sake – and in the chill of the moment Decker had almost shared the psychosis. Now he saw more clearly. Eigerman was right. They
were
freaks, albeit stranger than the usual stuff. Things in defiance of nature, to be poked from under their stones and soaked in gasoline. He’d happily strike the match himself.

‘Decker?’

He turned from his thoughts to find Eigerman closing the door on the babble of journalists outside. All trace of his former confidence had fled. He was sweating profusely.

‘OK. What the fuck’s going on?’

‘Do we have a problem, Irwin?’

‘Shit alive, do we have a problem.’

‘Boone?’

‘Of course Boone.’

‘What?’

‘The doctors have just looked him over. That’s procedure.’

‘And?’

‘How many times did you shoot him? Three, four?’

‘Yeah, maybe.’

‘Well the bullets are still in him.’

‘I’m not that surprised,’ Decker said. ‘I told you we’re not dealing with ordinary people here. What are the doctors saying? He should be dead?’

‘He
is
dead.’

‘When?’

‘I don’t mean lying down dead, shithead,’ Eigerman said. ‘I mean sitting in my fucking cell dead. I mean his heart isn’t beating,’

That’s impossible.’

‘I’ve got two fuckers telling me the man is walking dead, and inviting me to listen for myself. You wanna tell me about that,
doctor?’

L
ori stood across the street from the burnt out restaurant, and watched it for five minutes, to see if there was any sign of activity. There was none. Only now, in the full light of day, did she realize just how run down this neighbourhood was. Decker had chosen well. The chance of anyone having seen him enter or leave the place the night before was most likely zero. Even in the middle of the afternoon no pedestrian passed along the street in either direction, and the few vehicles that used the thoroughfare were speeding on their way to somewhere more promising.

Something about the scene – perhaps the heat of the sun, in contrast to Sheryl’s unmarked grave – brought her solitary adventure in Midian back to her; or more particularly, her encounter with Babette. It wasn’t just her mind’s eye which conjured the girl. It seemed her whole body was reliving their first meeting. She could feel the weight of the beast she’d picked up from beneath the tree against her breast. Its laboured breathing was in her ears, its bitter sweetness pricked her nostrils.

The sensations came with such force they almost constituted a
summoning
: past jeopardy signalling present. She seemed to
see
the child looking up at her from her arms, though she’d never carried Babette in human form. The child’s mouth was opening and closing, forming an appeal Lori could not read from lips alone.

Then, like a cinema screen blanked out in mid-movie, the images disappeared, and she was left with only one set of sensations: the street, the sun, the burnt out building ahead.

There was no purpose in putting off the evil moment any longer. She crossed the street, mounted the sidewalk, and without allowing herself to slow her step by a beat stepped through the carbonized door frame into the murk beyond. So quickly dark! So quickly cold! One step out of the sunlight, and she was in another world. Her pace slowed a little now, as she negotiated the maze of debris that lay between front door and the kitchen. Fixed clearly in her mind was her sole intention: to turn up some shred of evidence that would convict Decker. She had to keep all other thoughts at bay: revulsion, grief, fear. She had to be cool and calm. Play Decker’s game.

Girding herself, she stepped through the archway.

Not into the kitchen, however: into
Midian
.

She knew the moment it happened where she was – the chill and the dark of the tombs was unmistakable. The kitchen had simply vanished: every tile.

Across the chamber from her stood Rachel, looking up at the roof, distress on her face. For a moment she glanced at Lori, registering no surprise at her presence. Then she returned to watching and listening.

‘What’s wrong?’ Lori said.

‘Hush,’ Rachel said sharply, then seemed to regret her harshness and opened her arms. ‘Come to me, child,’ she said.

Child
. So that was it. She wasn’t in Midian, she was in Babette, seeing with the child’s eyes. The memories she’d felt so strongly on the street had been a prelude to a union of minds.

‘Is this real?’ she said.

‘Real?’ Rachel whispered. ‘Of course it’s real …’

Her words faltered, and she looked at her daughter with enquiry on her face.

‘Babette?’ she said.

‘No …’ Lori replied.

‘Babette. What have you done?’

She moved towards the child, who backed away from her. Her view through these stolen eyes brought a taste of the past back. Rachel seemed impossibly tall, her approach ungainly.

‘What have you done?’ she asked a second time.

‘I’ve brought her,’ the girl said. ‘To see.’

Rachel’s face became furious. She snatched at her daughter’s arm. But the child was too quick for her. Before she could be caught she’d scooted away, out of Rachel’s reach. Lori’s mind’s eye went with her, dizzied by the ride.

‘Come back here,’ Rachel whispered.

Babette ignored the instructions, and took to the tunnels, ducking round corner after corner with the ease of one who knew the labyrinth back to front. The route took runner and passenger off the main thoroughfares and into darker, narrower passages, until Babette was certain she was not being pursued. They had come to an opening in the wall, too small to allow adult passage. Babette clambered through, and into a space no larger than a refrigerator, and as cold, which was the child’s hideaway. Here she sat to draw breath, her sensitive eyes able to pierce the total darkness. Her few treasures were gathered around her. A doll made of grasses, and crowned with spring flowers; two bird skulls, a small collection of stones. For all her otherness Babette was in this like any child: sensitive, ritualistic. Here was her world. That she’d let Lori see it was no small compliment.

But she hadn’t brought Lori here simply to see her hoard. There were voices overhead, close enough to be heard clearly.

‘
Who-ee
! Will you look at this shit? You could hide a fuckin’ army here.’

‘Don’t say it, Cas.’

‘Shittin’ your pants, Tommy?’

‘Nope.’

‘Sure smells like it.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘Shut up, the both of you. We’ve got work to do.’

‘Where do we start?’

‘We look for any signs of disturbance.’

‘There’s people here. I feel ’em. Decker was right.’