There was a moment of stark silence.
Miles didn’t move, just said to Reverend McCamy, his voice calm and steady, “You’re telling me that you had Sam kidnapped because you saw a video of an obviously sick, delirious little boy, who, for whatever reason, had blood on his hands?”
Katie felt as if someone had smacked her upside the head and she’d never seen it coming. When Reverend McCamy had spoken of the stigmata, she’d thought of it as another of the ravings of a fanatic, certainly nothing to do with Sam.
What was all this about stigmata? From what she’d read, which wasn’t much at all, the people who’d supposedly displayed the marks of the Cross seemed very ill, both physically and mentally. But why was there blood on Sam’s hands in the video? Was that his mother taping this? It was obvious Miles didn’t know a thing about it. Why in heaven’s name hadn’t Miles’s wife told him about this?
“This must have happened about three years ago, Reverend McCamy,” Miles said. “Why did you wait three years to take Sam?”
Reverend McCamy looked suddenly at his wife, and his eyes went even wilder. “Elsbeth, stay back! Close your robe, woman, you’re showing your body to these people, to this man!”
“I’m looking at you, Reverend, not your damned wife.”
“I’m sorry, Reverend McCamy, I’m so sorry.” Elsbeth turned away, frantically tying the sash on her silk robe again.
Reverend McCamy looked back at Miles. “Taking the boy, it should have been so simple, but I hadn’t yet seen the boy, and so how could he understand? He managed to escape. Don’t you see? God wants the boy to be with me.”
Miles said slowly, “I have never seen that tape. I never even knew about it, don’t even know who shot it. I don’t remember Sam ever being that ill. He was obviously delirious, very sick. Where did you get that tape, Reverend?”
“I won’t tell you. You’ll hurt the people who gave me the tape, and they were only doing God’s work.”
Miles rolled his eyes. “Don’t be ridiculous-”
“Very well, at least tell us what you were going to do with Sam?” Katie said. “He’s six years old, not a toddler.”
“I was willing to leave my ministry here, to take Samuel to Phoenix with us. I’ve already bought property there. It wouldn’t take me long to teach Samuel what he is and what he must do with his life.”
“Sam is to be your successor,” Katie said.
“Of course, I must go see Samuel. Now.” He was suddenly the leader of his flock, decisive, full of resolve. He stepped back from Miles and shook himself. “I am going to see Samuel. I will pray for him. I will intercede with God to save him. I will lay my hands upon him.”
And he turned to walk out of the room.
“Reverend McCamy,” Katie said quite pleasantly. “You, sir, aren’t going anywhere.”
In spite of Mr. Boone with his rifle pointed at her, Katie pulled her SIG out of her waistband. He said, “Please, Sheriff Benedict, put that gun down.”
Katie turned as she slowly lowered her SIG to her side. “Surely, Mr. Boone, you can’t think God is ordering you now to kill both me and Mr. Kettering, to go with Reverend McCamy to the hospital and try to steal Sam away again? Don’t you realize that you would be sending that innocent little boy into a life of slavery and madness? Listen, Mr. Boone, I can still help you if you don’t hurt anyone.”
“No! That’s not what the Reverend said!”
Reverend McCamy said, “Thomas, they said the boy was injured. How did that happen?”
“I was going to throw the bombs in the kitchen to get them out of the house. It’s just that the sheriff was there, and I really didn’t want to kill her like that. And then Mr. Kettering came into the kitchen and I believed they were going to fornicate right there, on the kitchen table! I watched them, but you know what? Before anything happened, she sensed something, I swear it, she knew something was wrong. Maybe she saw me, but I don’t think so. I was real careful. She yelled at Mr. Kettering to get the kids, that they were getting out of there. They got to the truck before I could grab Samuel. He drove off with Mr. Kettering, and he was fine.”
Reverend McCamy’s face turned red with rage, the pulse pounding at his temple. He shook so hard he had to hold on to the edge of the desk to keep his balance. He yelled, “God will strike you dead, Sheriff! You twisted, perverted woman. You lied!”
Katie even grinned as she said to Reverend McCamy, an eyebrow arched, “I’m a perverted woman? That language isn’t particularly nice, Reverend.”
“Samuel isn’t in the hospital! He wasn’t hurt. Where have you hidden him? Where is the boy?”
Miles knew he had to keep calm with that idiot still holding the rifle on Katie. He leaned back against a bookshelf, crossed his arms over his chest and said, “My son is safe in jail, Reverend McCamy. I believe four deputies are guarding him and he’s playing poker with Mort, the cleaning guy. I’m sure the sheriff will let him out when you show up in handcuffs.”
“This is the man you obeyed, Mr. Boone,” Katie said. “Take a good look.”
“Kill them, Thomas!”
It was obvious to Katie that Mr. Boone finally realized he was in way over his head. He was holding a rifle on a law enforcement officer, obviously so scared sweat was pouring off his forehead, and he looked ready to faint.
“Kill them!”
Mr. Boone started wheezing, bad. He gasped through the precious breaths he was able to draw, “No, Reverend McCamy, I can’t, sir. I can’t, sir, I know her mother!”
Everything froze for one long moment.
Then, Elsbeth McCamy grabbed the rifle from Mr. Boone’s lax hands. She whirled around and aimed it at Miles, who dropped to the floor behind the desk just as she fired. Katie was on her instantly. Elsbeth screamed, trying to wrest the rifle free, but she couldn’t. Katie slammed her fist into Elsbeth’s stomach and took a huge handful of her gorgeous hair, pulling it until Elsbeth’s head was nearly bent back over her arm. She said very quietly against her ear, “Drop the rifle, Elsbeth, or I’ll pull out all that wonderful hair of yours.”
Elsbeth moaned but kept struggling, trying to bring the rifle up. Katie turned her and kneed her hard in the chest, knocking the wind out of her.
“Leave my wife alone!”
Reverend McCamy lurched forward, grabbed the rifle from where his wife had dropped it on the floor, and ran, knocking Mr. Boone over a chair in his escape from the library.
They heard him running upstairs.
Miles said, “I want him, Katie. I’ll get him.”
She started to go with him, but then she looked at him, really looked, and knew he wouldn’t do anything stupid. He had a cop’s training and a cop’s instincts. He’d pulled out her ankle gun. The derringer looked absurd in his big hand, but up close it could stop a man, even a madman.
“Take care, Miles. I’ll get help.”
She’d picked up her SIG Sauer and motioned Mr. Boone and Elsbeth to the sofa. She pulled out her cell phone and called Wade, who had to be outside by now.
But there wasn’t time for Wade to even make it through the front door. Overhead, there was a huge explosion. The whole house shook with the shock and force of it.
Elsbeth screamed. Mr. Boone said, wheezing so hard Katie wondered how he could still breathe, “The Reverend’s thrown one of the gasoline bombs. Why would he do that?”
Elsbeth ran out of the library. Katie wasn’t about to shoot her, so there was no choice but to go after her. As for Mr. Boone, where could he go? She shouted over her shoulder, “Mr. Boone, go outside where it’s safe!”
She ran out into the hallway to see Elsbeth taking the stairs two at a time. Katie stayed right on her heels. She rounded the corner at the top of the stairs and saw Elsbeth running toward the master bedroom.
Katie heard the crackling and popping of the flames before she saw them billowing out of the master bedroom, the hallway carpet already smoking. She had to get everyone out, fast.
Katie headed a
fter Elsbeth. She saw her run into the master bedroom and yelled, “Elsbeth, don’t go in there!”
But the woman disappeared into the room.
“Miles, where are you?”
Katie ran into the huge bedroom, saw the door open to the closet, and watched Elsbeth disappear inside.
“Miles!”
She heard a gunshot, not loud, just a popping noise, and she knew it was from her derringer. She started coughing from the incredible heat and the smoke. She grabbed a pillow from a chair and clamped it against her nose.
She saw Miles, breathing hard, standing in the doorway to the sex room, her derringer dangling in his right hand. “Katie, get out of here!”
“Where are Elsbeth and Reverend McCamy? My God, what happened to your face?”
“We need to get out of here. I don’t know where Elsbeth is. I had to shoot Reverend McCamy. He’s dead, I checked. Come on, I don’t want Sam or Keely to be orphans.”
But Katie had to try. “Elsbeth! Where are you? Come out or you’ll die!”
There was no answer. Katie started to run toward the sex room, but Miles grabbed her hand and dragged her from the bedroom. He was right, she thought, there was no choice. She pressed the pillow she was holding against her face and ran with him down the long hallway. She stumbled on the stairs, and Miles picked her up and pulled her against him to keep her on her feet.
They ran into the entryway where Mr. Boone and several deputies were crowded together, right inside the front door. Katie said, “I see you can breathe again, Mr. Boone. Just maybe you don’t need Reverend McCamy’s laying on of hands.”
“This is one too many burning houses, Sheriff,” Charlie Fritz, one of her deputies said. “The fire department wants us out of here right away. Let’s go.”
Elsbeth’s face flashed in Katie’s mind. Had she just given up and chosen to die with her husband? No matter what she’d been a party to, Katie didn’t want her to be dead. Too many were dead already.
When they were near the road, they looked back to see the beautiful old Victorian lit up from its bowels, turning the black sky orange, spewing flames upward. Its old wood exploded in shards everywhere. It was an incredible sight, as long as you were away from the devastation.
Katie stood next to Miles, aware that his arm was holding her close, for warmth, for comfort, to make the world real again, to right the madness. He said, “Reverend McCamy went into that sex room and pulled a bottle full of gasoline out of one of the drawers beneath that marble altar. He lit the wick and threw it at me. It hit the bed, and the flames shot up in an instant.”
“What happened to your face?”
Miles touched his fingers to the slash along the side of his face, from his temple to his jaw. “He pulled a whip off the wall and slashed me with it.”
“And you shot him?”
“I tried to grab the whip away from him, but he fought me. I could hear the fire, knew time was growing short, and then he tried to grab the gun.
“I swear to you, Katie, there was madness pouring out of him, and a frenzy that seemed to unleash all the strength inside of him. He was grinning and moaning at the same time. I felt my blood freeze.
“And then there you were with a pillow over your face.”
“You never saw Elsbeth.”
He shook his head. “I heard her voice, but no, I didn’t see her.”
“She preferred to die with that man rather than survive,” Katie said, shaking her head. She looked up at Miles and shook her head again. “I think we’re going to need a paramedic.” She began to examine the cut and changed her mind. “It doesn’t look at all deep, but no paramedics this time. I want to take you to the hospital.”
Wade was standing next to them now. “The firemen are already bitching at all this work, Sheriff. Now you want to piss off the paramedics?”
Miles laughed, he threw back his head and really laughed. He looked up at the burning house. “It’s over,” he said, “it’s finally over. It seems like it’s been going on forever-and it’s been only days. Amazing.”
Katie nodded and smiled at him. She grabbed Miles Kettering and hugged him to her.
34
A t ten o’clock Thursday morning the rain had lightened to a thick gray mist, mixing into the low-lying fog that crept up the sides of the mountains, blanketing the land.
“Do you really think it’s over?”
Keely pursed her lips, looked doubtful. “I don’t know, but I sure hope so. Last night was real scary, Sam.”
Sam sighed, thought that every night since early last Friday morning had been scary, and leaned in more closely. “Yeah, I know, but your mom and my dad, they took care of us.” He sighed again, deeply. “But since everything is over now, you know what that means, Keely.”
“Yeah, I know. You’re gonna have to leave and never come back.”
“I’ll tell Papa that I don’t want to leave, okay?”
“Do you think he’ll let you stay here and live with Mama and me?”
“I want him to stay, too,” Sam said, and pulled Minna’s soft wool blanket more closely around both him and Keely because it was getting colder.
“If your papa doesn’t want to stay, what are you going to do, Sam?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said finally and he fisted his eyes. “I’m only six. Nobody listens to me.”
“They listen to you even less when you’re five. I heard my grandma talking to Linnie just a while ago. She told Linnie that your papa and my mama should get married and that would be that.”
“What would be that?”
“Well, I guess it means that if you leave, I get to leave with you.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good.”
“Your father would be my steppapa.”
“Yeah, and Katie would be my stepmama. That’s weird.”
“We could fight and stuff and no one could say anything about it.” Keely punched his arm, gave him a huge grin, then settled her head on his shoulder.
They were sitting in Minna’s porch swing. Since Sam’s legs weren’t long enough to reach the porch, he’d taken a walking stick out of the umbrella stand that had belonged to Keely’s grandfather. Every few minutes, he shoved the stick against the wooden floor to make the swing go back and forth.
“I don’t want you to go away, Sam.”
“I know and I’ve been thinking, Keely. Papa isn’t stupid. He’ll marry your mom.”
Keely said, “You’re six years old. You don’t know if your dad’s stupid or not. My mama says this is the most beautiful place in the world. Even if your dad was stupid, he could be happy here. I know, tell him we’ll take him rafting on the Big Pigeon River. That’s in the Smokies.”
“Papa’s been rafting before. I’ll tell him, but you know, Keely, he’s got that big helicopter business in Virginia. Since those bad men took me he hasn’t gotten much work done.”
Keely pondered this for a while. “I know, tell him that Mama is the best rafter in Tennessee and she’ll teach him. Oh, and tell him that Sam Houston taught in a log schoolhouse when he was eighteen. I’ll bet your dad will be impressed. Tell him we’ll take him there. Tell him he can e-mail to his business.”
“Keely, if my papa and your mama got married, what would your name be?”
Keely didn’t have an answer to that. Sam shoved the walking stick against the porch floor and the swing swung out widely. They laughed and hung on.
Children’s laughter, Katie thought, there was nothing like it. She and Miles were standing just inside the screened door. Neither said a word and they didn’t look at each other. So this was why her mom suggested they take a look at the beautiful hazy fog that was climbing the sides of the mountains.
Miles said quietly as he stepped back, “They look like a Norman Rockwell painting.”
It was true, with their heads pressed together, the swing gently going back and forth, but any words Katie would have said stuck in her throat. She nodded and looked toward the mountains, blurred and soften
ed by the fog, like fine smoke. Her mom had told her that looking at the mountains on a morning like this was like reading without reading glasses.
“Even in the winter, when it’s so cold your toes are curling under and the mountains look weighted down with snow, they’re still so beautiful it makes you want to cry just looking at them. And down at Gatlinburg-”
“Katie, what the kids were talking about…”
She turned to face him then. The emergency room doctor hadn’t stitched Miles’s face, just pressed the skin together using Steri-strips. She’d told him to rub on vitamin E and there wouldn’t be a scar on his handsome face, unless he wanted to look dangerous, and she’d waggled her eyebrows at him. Katie said, “I guess this means you don’t want me to tell you about the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.”
“Not right this minute, no.”
“Okay. You mean us getting married?”
“Yes,” he said. “Maybe we should give it some thought.”
Katie had firmly believed, up until, say, just four minutes ago, that she’d rather be incontinent than get married again. But now?
“Katie? Miles? I brought some cinnamon nut bread for the kids.”
Her mother had excellent timing, Katie thought. She always had, particularly when there’d been horny boys around during high school. She’d given them enough time to overhear the kids talking, enough time to think about it, even say it out loud. They were both smiling when they turned to see Minna coming with a platter that smelled delicious from twenty feet away.
“I’m starving,” Miles said, surprised. “I hadn’t realized.”
“Glad I had some clothes for you, Miles. Katie’s dad was tall like you, so at least your ankles aren’t showing. Sweetie, those jeans are nearly white they’ve been washed so many times, but you look just fine. Now, I’m going to take these goodies to the kids. They’re having a hard time, you know.”
“Can we have some first, Mom?”
“Sure. Take as many slices as you want. You two just go into the living room and I’ll take care of the kids.”
Minna waltzed back into the living room a few minutes later, and announced, “Sam and Keely aren’t happy campers. I don’t envy you having to separate them.”
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