Speak of the Devil

by Shari Shattuck

  “It represented danger,” Greer explained. “Being caught in a web of danger.”

  “And who, if I may ask, is in danger?” Sheridan had stopped even the pretense of examining his pad.

  Greer smiled beatifically, first at the detective and then at her son, whose eyes she held as she answered.

  “Me,” she said, her voice betraying no fear. “It was me.”

  From the recesses of fabric came the muted sound of a cell phone ring. Detective Sheridan thrust a hand into his pocket. “Excuse me,” he said, and extracting the phone, he stood and walked out into the hallway.

  “What are you talking about?” Joshua asked his mother, alarmed.

  “I’ll explain later. Does it mean anything to you?”

  Joshua hesitated and then said, “Yes . . . maybe.”

  Detective Sheridan was back. “I’m sorry, but I had to take that. I’m afraid I have to go. We’ve located Mr. Farrad’s next of kin.”

  “Oh,” Greer said softly, and standing, she laid a hand on Sheridan’s arm empathetically. “I’m so sorry. That must be very difficult for you.”

  For a fraction of a second, the big, granite face looked genuinely shocked. Joshua guessed it was possibly the first time that anyone had ever offered him sympathy instead of the family of the victim.

  “It’s part of the job,” he said gruffly.

  “Still, it must be very hard. I’m sorry.”

  Sheridan felt his breath catch. This woman was something rather amazing; it was as though she had sensed his carefully suppressed despondency. He started into the hallway. “I’ll be in touch,” he said.

  And he was out the door before Joshua had to make the choice to betray his new friend’s trust in him, or lie to an officer of the law.

  Chapter 35

  Joshua fixed a plate with a ham sandwich and a pile of Doritos and took it up to his room. Opening the door carefully, he saw that Simon was still unconscious on the bed as he had been throughout the afternoon, though now he was snoring softly. Setting the plate down on the desk in Simon’s view if he woke, he stood for a moment wondering how long it had been since Simon had had a decent night’s rest. It was unlikely that he’d slept very soundly at the fire camp, and it sounded as though things had not gone too smoothly for him since he’d been released.

  Joshua tiptoed out and back down to the kitchen. Sterling had come in and was making a pot of coffee. The heat of the late afternoon made Joshua feel lethargic, and though the sweltering temperature seemed a vote against a hot beverage, the very smell of the brewing caffeine prodded his sluggish brain into activity. His mother was seated at the table, and she gestured to the chair next to her.

  Sterling brought the pot to the table and poured for all three of them. Then they each went through their separate yet distinctive rituals of personalizing their coffees. Adding just the right dollop of milk, stirring in half a teaspoon of honey, watching for the perfect shade of caramel, tasting for that slight hint of smoothing sweetness or the tang of strong bitterness.

  Without sounding at all judgmental or fatherly, a trick that Sterling had somehow mastered, he said, “So, your mom told me you’re harboring a criminal suspect in your bedroom.” There was enough of smile in his eyes to let Joshua know that the words portrayed merely the outward appearance of the situation and not a definition of it.

  “We don’t know that.” Joshua could hear how defensive he sounded.

  “No. We don’t. But if the police are looking for him, and you’re not telling them that he is directly overhead, that could be interpreted as aiding and abetting.” Sterling looked completely unconcerned by his own statement as he raised his cup to his lips and took a cautious sip.

  Guardedly, Joshua asked, “Mom, what were you saying about seeing a spider?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Greer answered firmly. “I didn’t see a spider. But when Detective Sheridan asked if a spider meant anything to us, I remembered seeing a web, and one seems to suggest the other.” She looked intently at her son. “Have you seen anything like that?”

  Sterling answered for him. “We saw a spider carved into the oak tree that burned at the site.”

  “So it’s probably the same person who, at least, set the fires at the site and the store?” Greer asked.

  “Could be,” Sterling mused. “But if Sheridan thinks that Simon was out for revenge on Mr. Farrad, it doesn’t follow that he would start a fire at the development. I mean, why would he?”

  “It’s not him,” Joshua said earnestly, relieved that his mother’s vision was only vaguely related. “I just know it’s not him. He needs to sleep for a little while and then I’ll talk to him. I’m sure he’ll be glad to answer Detective Sheridan’s questions.”

  Greer had not spoken yet, but now she asked softly, “Why don’t you think that Simon has anything to do with this? I mean, I understand having that kind of feeling, but all this does sound a little damning.”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Joshua muttered into his cup, but the lovingly ironic look in his mother’s eyes made him realize how banal that was. If his psychic mother couldn’t understand a nonverbal impression, then no one could. He sighed and gave it a shot. “Okay, here’s the deal,” he said. He explained again about seeing the man who he felt sure was Simon’s father and shared his new knowledge that his father had killed the dog while it was trying to protect Simon. Both Sterling and Greer shook their heads at the harsh reality of Simon’s youth, but other than that, they listened without comment. When he had finished, Joshua waited a moment and then asked, “What do you think?”

  “So, you’re saying that you think the father is making Simon do bad things, or that he’s making bad things happen to Simon?”

  “The second,” Joshua said. “He wants to hurt him.” Greer had turned to look at Sterling. “Why would the father want to hurt Simon now?”

  Sterling shrugged. “Pissed off that the kid is alive and he isn’t?” he suggested flatly. “Listen, I know that both of you are tuned into a channel that the rest of us can’t hear, and I definitely bow to your expertise in that area. But frankly, in Simon’s case, I’m more worried about what’s likely to influence him on this side of the veil.” His eyebrows arched knowingly as he gave each of the other two a pointed look.

  “What do you mean?” Joshua asked, but he remembered Simon’s tough-looking friends, and he wondered if his primitive tattoo was a rite of passage into a gang. He also knew that being marked with ink was not the only requirement for membership in that kind of club.

  “I mean,” began Sterling, “that I’ve been in Simon’s situation, maybe not as bad, but my father was a mean drunk, and my mother spent her life chain-smoking and collecting dole. There was nobody to turn to, except the other bad boys my age with nobody to teach them anything either. They were the only ones who were there for me when nobody else was, but the price of having them on my side was huge. When kids have no adult influence that is worth respecting, there are no rules but the ones they make, and let’s face it—left to themselves, adolescents and teenagers aren’t really known for their exemplary behavioral choices.” He nodded at Joshua. “Present company excluded.”

  Joshua half snorted. “I didn’t exactly grow up alone in the inner city.”

  Greer stroked her son’s arm with a smile, then reached out to rest her hand on Sterling’s. “How did you get out?” she asked, and couldn’t resist adding, “You came out magnificently, if you don’t mind my saying.”

  Sterling lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “No, I don’t mind at all. Thank you. The fact is that I lucked into a brutally tough teacher in seventh grade—an ex-rugby player with a lopsided face to prove it named Mr. Norman—who recognized that I had a brain that was being neglected, and with a little, uh, persuasion, he helped me turn my life around. But, I still had to make the choice to do that for myself, and that choice involved giving up the protection of the only family I knew. It wasn’t easy.”

  “S
o what made you?” Joshua asked.

  “Fear. My friends started dying, for stupid reasons. Fights, shot by the police, drug overdoses, and I knew my turn would come soon enough.” He shrugged again and looked almost embarrassed. “The truth is, I was scared.” His face hardened as he added, “And I was right to be. As far as I know, only two of the old gang are still breathing. One’s doing life for turning someone’s skull inside out with a crowbar, and the other one is me.”

  Joshua was gazing at Sterling with a newfound admiration. What must it be like to drag yourself up out of a life like that? He found himself thinking that living a decent life was hard enough with all the advantages.

  “You know, it’s interesting how similar those influences are to the kind that Joshua is sensing,” Greer was saying. “It can be very helpful to have someone recognize the negative forces, even to put energy into exorcising them, but it cannot be done solely from the outside. The person himself has to make a strong choice that will change the energy.” She tilted her head to one side and looked across the room at nothing in particular, trying to find the words to describe it. “It’s as though, their whole lives, they’ve had a melody playing inside them, and it’s been discordant, out of tune, but it’s what they are—not what they are made of, but what they’ve been made into—and they have to change the tune, if that makes any sense.”

  “But you change things sometimes,” Joshua said, watching her eagerly, hoping for a clue that would teach him how to help the sleeping boy upstairs, how to dispel Simon’s houseguest from hell. “When you make charms and, uh, stuff, you can give energy, right? Like when you made that bracelet for Joy.”

  But Greer was shaking her head. “No, I can only open a door. The truth is, what other people call magic is only a lending of strength or energy. It can’t be created, it has to be taken from somewhere before it can go somewhere else. I couldn’t change Joy, I could only connect myself to her.” She stopped and laughed slightly. “And anyway, it didn’t work the way I intended, did it?” She smiled at her son, who looked self-consciously away.

  “No,” Joshua agreed. “It connected me to her, so that means that I can do it too?”

  “It’s very dangerous to take on someone else’s darkness, and it’s useless if they don’t want to let it go.” Greer spoke softly but with intensity.

  “Why the hell wouldn’t they?” Joshua asked, as though that was a no-brainer.

  He was surprised to see the sad smiles that his question produced on the faces of his mom and Sterling. They looked at each other, sighed together, and then turned their attention back to him.

  “Because,” Sterling said, and his eyes went distant and unfocused as he visited a place in the past that was as gray and sad as it was out of his reach, “they don’t know they have a choice.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Joshua spurted out, frustrated.

  “It means that they have always believed that things will go badly, will go wrong. More importantly they have no reason to believe that they are anything but bad and wrong; and so they are,” Sterling told him.

  “Well, that sucks,” mumbled Joshua.

  Sterling laughed, and the solemnity of the moment was shattered with the almost-tropical feel of his warmth. Then he leaned on his elbows and looked directly at Joshua. “But there are the Mr. Normans in the world. The kick-ass, take-no-shit-from-any-punk-kid teachers are out there. And there are the Joshua Sandses. The kid-out-of-the-blue-who-just-believes-you-can-do-better, who does better himself and so proves that it must be possible.” He smiled gently; Joshua was speechless.

  “But,” Sterling went on, “it comes to this: If Simon has anything to do with—or knows anything about—these fires or this murder, he’s going to have to pay the piper. And so will you. For now, that means you have to convince him to go in and talk to Detective Sheridan on his own steam. That will make a big difference if he’s innocent.”

  Joshua thought of the spider inked into Simon’s skin and felt a sting in his own midsection. Very quietly he asked, “And what if he’s guilty?”

  “Then he has to face that music too.”

  With a long, hot exhalation, Joshua rose from his seat and left the kitchen without looking back. He went up the stairs and down the hall. Hesitating for only a moment, he turned the knob and went into the room.

  But the bed was empty. Glancing frantically around, Joshua could find no sign of Simon. With a rapidly sinking feeling, Joshua went down the hall, checking all the other rooms and ending back in his own room in case he had somehow overlooked a five-foot-eight human being, but he knew it was no use; Simon had snuck away. He crossed to his desk and leaned against it, looking down at the plate he had brought up. The sandwich was gone.

  And so was his notebook.

  Chapter 36

  Loc drove with his head tilted to the left, to catch the wind from the open window. His car was old and the air-conditioning had ceased working long before he had bought it. He ran his hand along the rim of the door, feeling the smoothness of the paint job that he and his brother had done themselves. Unlike so many of his friends, he’d chosen something subtle, white with some flame detailing along the fenders. It wasn’t that he hadn’t liked the louder colors, but he was smart, and as much as he might have enjoyed the attention, he also knew that drawing it could be a very bad thing.

  He could sense Tic’s impatience from the seat next to him. The younger man twisted constantly in his seat and lit another cigarette.

  “Gimme one,” Loc ordered, and pulled one from the offered pack. He lit it and increased his speed. They were past the streetlights, and darkness spilled away on either side of them. One of the headlights, weak and in need of an adjustment, illuminated the road ahead, and the other spilled light crazily off the left. Loc breathed in the nicotine and held it for a moment before letting it slide heavily out his nostrils. The smoke tasted good to his stoned senses, the speed exhilarated him, but he was careful, always careful, not to attract too much attention, not to offer an excuse to any police officers who might be randomly cruising the deserted road.

  Suddenly, a figure several feet from the road flashed quickly into view as they passed. Loc sat forward and braked. Without the wayward light, he would have missed him. “Shit, there’s that motherfucker,” he muttered. Pulling onto a wide section of the shoulder, he made a U-turn and doubled back, coming up alongside the lone pedestrian.

  “Yo, Sy, where you been?” Loc’s voice was controlled, as always, but he was pressed to keep the anger out of it.

  Simon approached the car almost reluctantly and leaned down. “Workin’.”

  “Get in,” Loc told him. He took another long drag on the cigarette and then tossed it out the window. It bounced, sending out tiny coral-colored sparks before it came to rest just past Simon’s feet. He absently watched the small, glowing torch, smoking on the dry ground as he waited for Simon to climb into the backseat. Then he turned and fixed his steely brown eyes on the younger boy’s shape, silhouetted in red by the taillights. “You ain’t been working,” he said coldly.

  He expected no response and he got none.

  Loc pressed the accelerator and felt the gas burn through the engine as the tires spun and then caught. A thrill passed through him, the thrill of motion, of power.

  Chapter 37

  This was going to be the hottest, driest Columbus Day on record. Jenny got to the coffee shop before six a.m. and started setting up. She had quite a few customers already waiting, mostly parade volunteers who were eager for a refill as their to-go cups from home had proved severely deficient for such an early Monday, and a holiday to boot.

  Once the initial rush was over, Jenny started to move her operation outside. The parade would come right down her little section of the high street, and already people had begun to set up lawn chairs or wagons, staking out their view spots. Jenny brought out several large coolers that she had purchased for the occasion and then went to her car to get the bags of ice that she had pi
cked up at the twenty-four-hour grocery store on her way in.

  She had bought the smaller size so they wouldn’t be too heavy and there would be no danger in her lifting them, even as pregnant as she was, and their chilly plastic exteriors felt good against her shoulder and neck, where she balanced them awkwardly on the trip from the parking lot to the coolers. She looked up at the mercilessly clear sky and shook her head. Six a.m. and it was already hot. It was going to be a brutal day.

  “Can I help you with that?”

  Jenny turned as quickly as the precariously balanced bags would allow and saw Reading standing outside the door of her cafe’.

  “Uh, yeah, actually that would be great. I’ve got these two, but there are six more in the trunk of my car.” She gestured with a nod of her head to where the trunk stood open.

  Reading strode over, heaved out all six bags effortlessly. He came back, three in each hand, and held them up as though they were balloon bouquets. “You want them in here?” he asked.

  “Yes, please, two in each cooler,” Jenny said. In one swift, continuous movement, he set down the bags, ripped them open, and emptied the frosty, rounded pellets into the coolers. Then he straightened up, wadding the excess plastic into a small ball in his massive hands.

  “Anything else?” He waited for her response unblinkingly.

  “Well, I could use some help carrying out the sodas. My help seems to be running late. Tell you what, coffee’s on me, okay?”

  “Good deal.” Reading followed her into the shop, and they went behind the counter into the back room.

  It wasn’t until they were in the small, dark room that Jenny felt the many tiny, scurrying claws of discomfort crawling up her spine. On the street with the open space around them, her proximity to a powerful man had not seemed important, but in the cramped, darkened storeroom, it suddenly alarmed her. She pressed her back against the stacked cases of teas and coffees and avoided making eye contact with him. What was it about this man that gave her the creeps? She ventured a glance up at him and found him watching her intently. That was it, she decided; he just plain looked at her too long.