The Unwanted

by John Saul

  It had gone on past midnight, and finally Rosemary hadn’t been able to deal with it anymore. “I think we’d better call Gene Templeton,” she’d said.

  But Keith had shaken his head. “Not tonight,” he told her. “We’ve all been through too much, and I won’t ask the kids to talk to Gene tonight.”

  Rosemary had stared at him. What was he saying? Were they all just supposed to go to bed?

  “I told Eric he could stay here tonight,” he went on. “Tomorrow we’ll talk to Gene and Paul Samuels.”

  Rosemary wanted to argue, but her exhaustion had finally overcome her. “All right,” she’d said at last. “I don’t know what’s happening anymore. I don’t know if I believe any of it or not, but I just can’t think anymore.” Her eyes had gone to Cassie. “I don’t think you should expect them to believe any of this,” she said. “Even if it’s true—”

  “Do you believe it?” Cassie had asked. Her voice was low, but her eyes were gazing steadily at Rosemary.

  “I—I don’t know,” Rosemary had replied, even though she was certain that whatever the truth was, Cassie had not yet told all of it. To try to blame it all on a cat … “And I’m not going to talk about it anymore tonight.”

  Nor had she. When Keith had tried to discuss it with her after they were in bed, she’d turned away from him and said nothing. But for hours she’d lain awake, puzzling over it.

  Did Keith seriously believe that Gene Templeton would accept Cassie’s story? It was impossible. The whole thing. And Gene wouldn’t accept it. There was no way he could. It was too strange—too bizarre.

  Keith sipped silently on his coffee, warily watching his wife.

  This morning Rosemary knew she could no longer put off dealing with it. Sighing, she turned to Jennifer, who was sitting at the table spooning sugar onto her cereal. “See if you can hurry them up, will you, honey?” she said to her daughter.

  Jennifer slid off her chair, went to the bottom of the stairs and yelled up to the second floor. When she got no response, she sighed with all the dramatic resignation an eight-year-old can summon and started up the stairs.

  “You don’t believe Cassie, do you?” Keith asked quietly when Jennifer was gone.

  “I—I don’t know,” Rosemary faltered.

  “If you’d been out there yesterday. If you’d seen—”

  “No!” Rosemary burst out. Her eyes stung with tears as she turned to face Keith. “I kept waking up all night long thinking about that story of Cassie’s, and I just can’t accept it! It’s just too—too bizarre!” She was about to say more, but abruptly stopped herself as Jennifer reappeared in the kitchen.

  “They’re not up there,” Jennifer said. “They’re gone.”

  “Gone?” Rosemary echoed blankly. “What do you mean, gone?”

  “I looked in my room, and I looked in Cassie’s room, and—”

  Rosemary brushed past her daughter and hurried up the stairs. It wasn’t possible. If they’d gotten up, wouldn’t she have heard them moving around?

  She stopped in front of the closed door to Jennifer’s room and rapped loudly. “Eric? Eric, are you awake?” There was no answer. After rapping once more, Rosemary twisted the knob and pushed the door open.

  The room looked as it always did, with Jennifer’s toys strewn around the floor and a few of her clothes piled on the chair. The bed, unmade, was empty, and there was not a trace of Eric Cavanaugh anywhere in the room.

  Frowning, Rosemary pulled the door closed then went to Cassie’s room, where she repeated the process.

  Cassie’s room, too, was empty.

  Methodically, knowing it was useless even before she started, Rosemary searched the second floor, and even went up to check the little attic tucked under the roof. When she returned to the landing, Keith was waiting for her, looking at her with questioning eyes. She shook her head.

  “They’re not here,” she whispered, her voice trembling. “But where would they have gone? Why?” Her voice began to rise, cracking dangerously as she tried to stifle a sob. “We hear everything in this house—everything! My God, you can’t even breathe without everyone hearing you. And they’re gone, Keith! We didn’t hear them, we didn’t see them. They didn’t even speak to us! Why? Why!” She felt herself crumbling, and let her husband gather her into his arms. “I don’t understand it,” she sobbed. “I just don’t understand any of it.…”

  “Shh,” Keith soothed, stroking her hair and leading her into their bedroom. He lowered her gently to the bed. “Just take it easy,” he told her. “I’ll have a look around. There’s got to be some explanation. Just take it easy.…” Then, as Rosemary’s breathing began to return to normal, he, too, searched the house.

  It didn’t take him long to figure out what had happened. The window in Cassie’s room was wide open and the screen hung loose. Obviously both the kids had gone out the window and down the tree outside. Yet that didn’t explain where they might have gone, nor why they felt it necessary to sneak out. He went back to the master bedroom and found Rosemary sitting up, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.

  “I’m all right,” she said. “I just … fell apart for a minute, I guess. But I’m all right now.” She listened in silence as he told her what he thought had happened, then numbly followed him back down to the kitchen, slowly and deliberately pouring herself a fresh cup of coffee before she spoke again. At last she turned to face her husband. “I can’t stand any more of this,” she said quietly. “I know you love Cassie, and I want to love her too. But I can’t keep on with this, Keith. How can I be expected to believe what she says when none of it makes sense to me, and she pulls stunts like this? Whatever the truth of all this is, I will not let her destroy my family. I—”

  Keith’s eyes widened in shock. “Destroy your—Honey, all she’s done is take off again!”

  But Rosemary shook her head. “She didn’t take off, Keith. That’s what she did yesterday, after a fight. I saw her go. I heard her go. I even knew why she went. But this morning she just disappeared. Both of them did.” Her voice began quavering again, and she could feel her self-control slipping away once more. “I feel like I’m going crazy, Keith. I don’t know what’s happening, and I don’t understand any of it, and … and …” Her eyes welled with tears, and she cradled her head in her hands as her sobs once more overtook her.

  Keith watched helplessly, wishing he knew what to say. But he didn’t. All he could do was go out once more and search for his daughter.

  “I’m going out,” he said tightly. “And when I find her, this time I’ll wait till I have her home before I ask her what’s going on. This time we’ll listen to her together.”

  Rosemary looked at him beseechingly. “Not now,” she pleaded. “Not right now—please. Just stay with me for a little while.”

  Keith hesitated, then nodded. “Go next door,” he told Jennifer. “Get Mrs. Cavanaugh and ask her to come over. Can you do that?”

  Jennifer, her eyes wide as saucers, nodded and started toward the door.

  “No!” Rosemary suddenly screeched, grabbing Jennifer by the shoulders and pulling her back. “She’s not going over there! If Ed came back—”

  Keith took a deep breath and nodded. “All right. I’ll get Laura myself. Be right back.”

  He strode across the driveway and knocked loudly at the back door of the Cavanaughs’ house. When there was no answer, he pulled the door open and went inside. “Laura? Where are you?”

  There was still no answer, and he moved quickly through the kitchen and hall until he was at the bottom of the stairs. Calling out once more, he started up.

  He paused to listen when he reached the landing on the second floor, and glanced around. Three bedrooms and a bath opened off the landing. Two of the bedroom doors stood open, as did the bathroom door.

  The last door was almost closed, and as he approached it, Keith felt an icy chill of foreboding.

  Bracing himself, he pushed the door open with his left foot.

  Hangi
ng from the tarnished brass chandelier above the bed, a sheet knotted around her neck, was Laura Cavanaugh. Her head was cocked at an unnatural angle, and her legs hung down nearly to the floor. Her face had turned a mottled bluish black, and her tongue, swollen and discolored, protruded from the rictus of her lips.

  Her cheeks—both of them—bore angry red claw marks.

  Keith felt his gorge rise and quickly turned his face away, trying to block the hideous sight from his memory, though he already knew he would remember it as long as he lived. Gagging, and clutching a handkerchief to his mouth in a futile effort to control his retching, he bolted down the stairs and out of the house. Falling to his knees, he vomited onto the back lawn, his stomach contracting violently long after it had emptied itself of its contents. At last, panting and gasping for breath, Keith managed to get to his feet and stagger back toward his own house.

  Rosemary looked up at him as he lurched through the back door, and her face turned ashen as she saw the look of horror in his eyes.

  “Gene,” Keith gasped. “Call Gene. It’s Laura …” His voice trailed off, and he moved through the kitchen to the little half bathroom lucked under the stairs. As Rosemary fumbled with the telephone she could hear Keith vomiting once more.

  “Cut her down,” Templeton said grimly.

  Photographs had already been taken, and one of his deputies was dusting the room for fingerprints, but Templeton didn’t think it would make any difference unless they turned up prints that didn’t belong to Ed, Laura, or Eric. Besides, from what he’d seen, Gene was almost certain about what happened.

  It had to have been Ed.

  He could almost picture it.

  Ed drunk, coming home and starting one more fight with his wife. Only this time the beating had gotten out of hand.

  As he stared at the carnage that had been Laura’s face, Gene hoped she’d already lost consciousness by the time Ed started cutting at her cheeks. If she hadn’t—

  He winced just thinking about the pain she would have had to endure, and put the thought out of his mind.

  Had Ed hanged her before she was dead, or not until he’d discovered he’d actually killed her this time? Not that it made any difference, really, for whether he’d beaten her to death, strangled her, or hanged her, she was still dead, and Ed was still guilty of murder, despite his drunken attempt to make it look as if some kind of animal had attacked her. But animals didn’t hang people. If Laura Cavanaugh weren’t dead, Templeton would have found the clumsy gesture almost laughable.

  The medics cut the twisted sheet and gently lowered Laura’s corpse onto a stretcher, covered it, and carried it out of the room. Glancing out the window, Gene saw the knot of people gathered on the front lawn of the Cavanaughs’ house. More were drifting down the sidewalk, and Gene could almost hear them murmuring among themselves, passing the rumors from one ear to the next.

  “Go pick up Ed,” Gene told the deputy who had finished dusting the room. “Unless I miss my guess, he’s down on his boat, dead drunk.”

  The deputy—Tony Vittorio—frowned and shook his head. “Don’t think so, Gene. I saw the Big Ed goin’ out yesterday morning, and it hasn’t been back. Slip was still empty when I came up this morning.”

  “You sure?” Gene asked, though he already knew the answer. Tony lived alone on a sailboat he kept in the last slip of the marina, and made a few extra dollars each month by keeping an eye on things. His heart sank. If it hadn’t been Ed then—

  Eric?

  It was the only other possibility that came readily to mind, but the very idea of it made Gene feel sick. Still, he had to face up to it. “Okay,” he sighed. “Cruise around and see if you can spot Eric anywhere, and see if you can get hold of Ed on the radio. I’ll go next door and talk to Keith. They must have heard something.”

  And yet even as he crossed the driveway and let himself into the Winslows’ house, Gene had a sinking feeling that no one in the house next door had heard anything the night before.

  Chapter 27

  Ed Cavanaugh woke up with his head throbbing and his nostrils filled with the familiar odor of stale vomit. For a moment he refused to open his eyes, certain that if he did, he would once more see the gray walls of the False Harbor jail closing in on him. But then the gentle rocking of the boat reassured him, and he let his right eye open a crack to take in the familiar mess of the cabin of the Big Ed. Slowly, the previous night came back to him. He’d sat in a bar in Hyannis, putting away boilermakers until finally the bartender had thrown him out. Then a couple of his friends—whose names would come back to him in a minute—helped him back to the boat, and they’d polished off a fifth of bourbon that he’d found tucked away down in the engine room just in case of such an emergency as this. He could even remember when he’d gotten sick, but hadn’t bothered to go out on the deck to throw up. After that …

  He rolled over, pulling the greasy blanket up over his head in a vain effort to shut out the sour smell. No point getting up until his head stopped pounding.

  The radio suddenly came to life, and he heard an urgent voice calling to him. He tried to ignore it, but after a few minutes of silence it started in again. Swearing under his breath, he kicked the blanket aside and stumbled out of the bunk to scramble up the companionway to the pilothouse. He fumbled with the microphone for a moment, dropped it, then found the transmit button.

  “This is the Big Ed.” The words were slurred, and his tongue felt thick and cottony.

  “That you, Ed?” the voice crackled back.

  “Who wants to know?”

  “This is Tony Vittorio, Ed. We got a problem, and we need you back here as soon as you can get here.”

  Ed frowned blearily. “What kinda problem? A man’s gotta earn a living, ya know. Can’t do that runnin’ home all the time.”

  There was a long silence this time, then the radio crackled to life again. “It’s Laura, Ed. She’s dead.”

  Cavanaugh stared at the radio dumbly. What the hell was the deputy talking about? Dead? Laura couldn’t be dead—anyway, she hadn’t been the last time he’d seen her. His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Don’t you bastards try to blame it on me, Tony. I maybe hit her a few times, but I never killed her.”

  In the police station Tony Vittorio felt a knot of cold anger form in his belly. Didn’t the son of a bitch even care that his wife had died? Taking a deep breath to steady himself, he pressed the key on his own microphone. “We’re not saying you did, Ed. But we thought you ought to know. Where are you?”

  “Hyannis. Been here all night, and I can prove it.”

  “Great,” Tony Vittorio replied, his eyes rolling upward. “So when can you get back here?”

  Ed shrugged in the pilothouse. “Three, maybe four hours.”

  “You need any help?”

  “What for?” Ed spat. “A little hangover never kept me in port before.”

  “Yeah,” Tony replied. “We’ll look for you around noon, then. But if you don’t show up, we’ll come looking for you. Got that?”

  “I got it,” Ed whined, and shoved the microphone back onto its bracket without bothering to sign off. “And fuck you too.” Snotty bastard. Just like all the rest of them. But this time they didn’t have anything on him. Anything at all.

  His brain still throbbing, his mind still foggy, he started the engine warming and put a pot of coffee on the propane stove.

  Numbly, his mind began to accept the fact that Laura was dead. A strange emotion began to seize him, and at first he couldn’t even identify it. Then, dimly, he began to recognize it as grief.

  He’d never considered the possibility that Laura might die, never even considered the idea that she might leave him. But now she was gone. She was gone, and he was alone.

  What was he supposed to do now? Slowly his grief began to dissolve into a more familiar emotion.

  Anger.

  “I want to go away,” Rosemary said after Templeton had left. He hadn’t believed it, hadn’t believed any of it. And
why should he? She didn’t believe it herself, not anymore. “I want to take Jennifer and get away from here.” She watched Keith’s face, looking for a reaction—any kind of reaction—but for a long time there was none. Then, finally, his head swung around and his haunted eyes met her own.

  “I can’t go away,” he said softly. “She’s my daughter, honey. I can’t just abandon her.”

  Rosemary’s knuckles whitened as she clenched her hands into fists. “She’s crazy! And if she’s responsible for what you saw next door, then she’s—she’s some kind of monster!”

  “Yesterday—”

  “Things were different yesterday!” Rosemary flared. “Yesterday I wanted to believe her. I didn’t want to believe she could have done all this. But this is today, and Laura’s dead, and … and …” Her voice trailed off, but she refused to give in to the sobbing that threatened to overcome her.

  “And you believe Cassie did it. Isn’t that what you’re thinking?”

  Rosemary shook her head violently, though his words were true. “I don’t know what I’m thinking. I’m trying to be rational, and it isn’t working. I just—Keith, I’m scared! I keep telling myself that none of this is true, that there’s a reasonable explanation for what’s happening. But I can’t. All I can think about is that something’s going to happen to you next. Or to Jennifer.” She looked at him with beseeching eyes. “Why can’t we just go away somewhere, and stay away until it’s all over?”

  Keith’s eyes flickered dully around the room. “Just go away,” he repeated, as if the words had no meaning. But then he shook his head. “I can’t do that, Rosemary. Whatever this is all about, it’s partly my fault. Whatever Cassie is—or isn’t—she’s my daughter. I can’t just walk away from that. I have to stay. I have to.”

  Rosemary’s jaw tightened, her lips thinned down to an angry line, and her eyes flashed dangerously. “All right,” she said, her voice grating. “We’ll stay. But for how long? How long do you want us to stay, Keith? Until we’re all dead?”