by Ed Gorman
Some real insight as to what mattered and what did not matter.
She tugged on the shackles from above, praying again that they would magically loosen and set her free.
But that was not going to happen, she knew.
And that was what the wisdom was all about.
The horror balanced with the curious peacefulness.
Deirdre had read enough magazines to know what she was doing.
She was preparing herself for death.
5
Bobby Coughlin took a deep breath, then darted out from behind the big elm tree.
He ran in a single straight shot right up the driveway where the wealthy Evans’s kept all three of their cars.
For once, his wimpy size was going to come in handy.
Then he saw Dave coming out the side door and he knew that his plans had been spoiled.
You could smell Dave’s after-shave even from here. You could also hear his whistle.
Here was a guy who was expecting a primo night tonight.
Bobby would be happy to spoil the plans of his former friend. That had been his plan—before Dave had come out and ruined the idea.
To avoid being seen, Bobby had to dive behind some bushes. Dave would kick hell out of him for sure if he caught him. Bobby got as close to the wet earth as a worm could have. He lay there watching his fantastic plan to ruin Dave’s night go right down the dumper.
As for Dave, he just stood in the moonlit drive doing his dreamboat number with his comb.
The guy could build up his biceps, the way he wielded a comb.
Not to mention his ego.
Bobby had just started to slither backward, to forget all about his neat idea and crawl on home, when Dave proved himself to be a good friend after all.
Snapping his fingers as if he had forgotten something—probably condoms, knowing Dave—he ran back into the house.
Bobby knew he had only seconds.
He leaped up from the ground and started for the car.
True to nerd style, he tripped, falling flat-faced across the drive.
He jarred his senses hard enough that whorls of light appeared before his eyes.
Still, he knew that he couldn’t stop here.
He picked himself up and dove for the car.
He opened the door as if he were performing the most delicate kind of surgery. Then he climbed inside, into the back seat, huddled between front and back seat on the floor. He got down far enough that you’d never notice him unless you really looked.
Then Dave came back, his after-shave preceding him, his whistling bright on the pleasant night air.
The dome light went on.
Bobby froze. What if Dave saw him?
Many long seconds went by. Bobby was afraid to so much as draw a single breath.
Dave got in, hit the ignition. Rock and roll blasted through the stereo speakers. Dual exhausts made the car throb powerfully.
Dave was on his way.
Bobby had to smile to himself as the car backed out of the drive.
He was going to humiliate Dave tonight.
It had been a long time coming.
6
Richard sat on the steps outside Jake’s apartment tearing a beetle apart.
Sometimes he liked to see how things looked inside.
The trouble was, you never saw things like motors, the way you did with toys that little kids played with.
Richard, disappointed, tossed the dead insect into the darkness.
Richard huddled into himself, a bit cold.
The night was getting that way.
Richard reflected on the last few hours.
After leaving Jake’s that afternoon he had gone back to his cot in the church basement and taken a nap. When he awakened he helped the pastor unload groceries from the car and then he went in to watch the news with the cleric. But the news soon, as it always did, bored Richard, so he’d gone for a walk along the river. But that, too, bored him after a time. He decided to see Jake again. Jake never seemed to mind what time it was when Richard showed up.
Except now he was getting cold.
He thought of how terrible it was to catch a fever.
How you sweated, had nightmares.
Richard was afraid that if he sat out here too long that would happen to him.
The fever.
He stood up. He knew a way to get inside.
Deciding that Jake wouldn’t mind, Richard walked over to the window, got out his pocketknife, and pried open the frame.
He had done this once before, one day when he had felt terribly blue.
He had snuck in. Jake hadn’t been there. But just by sitting inside his friend’s apartment, Richard felt much better.
The way he always did in the presence of Jake.
His gangly body fitted itself through the window in a series of difficult motions.
Then he was inside, closing the window behind him, feeling the warmth of the little apartment.
He was going to reward himself with a cookie.
He was sure Jake wouldn’t mind.
In the refrigerator he found a plate of cookies. The light spilling from the interior bathed Richard as he reached in.
The light felt friendly, warm.
It was good to be back in the apartment.
Armed with cookies, he decided to go sit in Jake’s recliner chair.
Moonlight spilled through the window.
Somehow the light reminded him of trick-and-treat night.
Sometimes Richard dressed up.
Even though everybody knew who he was beneath the sheet, they pretended to be scared.
Richard always found this very funny.
While he sat there eating his cookies, watching the moonlight play across the various pieces of furniture, he began to notice the sticky red thing on the floor to his right.
In the silver light through the window the thing looked like it was almost alive.
It kind of shivered.
For some reason the thing scared Richard.
He wasn’t sure why.
Richard sank back in his chair.
He stopped eating.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to sneak in here after all.
He just kept staring at the thing.
By now he knew what the sticky stuff was.
Blood.
He also knew what the thing itself was. A rubber apron like they wore in the butcher plant.
What would it be doing in Jake’s apartment?
That was when he heard the noise. Instantly he froze.
The bathroom.
That’s where the noise had come from.
He shouldn’t have come here.
Richard got up from the chair just as the bathroom door started to creak open.
He didn’t know what to do.
To run or to try to hide.
Then the door opened very quickly and all Richard could really see was the knife.
And how it glinted in the moonlight.
And how the body of his assailant seemed to be everywhere at once.
All Richard could think of was—I shouldn’t have come here.
But now, the knife tearing through the flesh of his chest to his heart, now it didn’t matter what he thought.
Not at all.
7
“Whew.”
“C’mon now.”
“Just ... touch me. Once.”
“Afterwards ... that’s our deal, remember?”
“C’mon, Angie. Just put your hand down there. Just once ... ok?”
Bobby Coughlin lay on the floor, only inches away from the mad, passionate love being made in the front seat.
Or not being made.
Dave Evans had driven maybe a block from Angie’s house and whipped into the curb.
The boy definitely had a gonad problem.
Now he was begging the girl.
Fucking begging her.
Just for a little touch of his cock.
&
nbsp; Disgusting, thought Bobby Coughlin.
He wished Dave would start the car again and head to the Foster mansion.
It was going to be so much fun tonight.
So much fun.
8
Minerva had listened on the extension to the conversation between Adam Carnes and Ruth Foster.
It seemed Minerva wasn’t alone in thinking that something strange was going on. The girl disappearing last night. Reverend Heath killing himself this morning. The odd noises coming up from the basement. And the curious goings-on tonight—her room being locked from the outside—then, after a time, unlocked.
Then, too, there had been glass shattering earlier this evening. Unable to stay in her room and not know what was going on, Minerva had snuck downstairs in the shadows.
The gun case had been broken into in the den. Mr. Foster had always kept his hunting rifles there.
Sometimes the casing stuck.
Apparently impatient, Ruth had smashed the glass.
One of the rifles was missing.
Minerva had gone back upstairs, trying to decide what to do.
A premonition of something terrible filled her.
Ruth was no longer her friend.
Indeed, Ruth sounded genuinely crazy.
Once again, she crept to the door and peeked out.
She saw nothing in the darkness.
She looked both ways.
The rifle that touched her cheek was a total surprise.
Ruth walked into the half-light thrown by the moon.
“Get back in your room, Minerva. Lock the door and stay there.”
“Ruth, you’re scarin’ me, you really are.”
“Something’s going on. I don’t want you hurt.”
“I’m your friend.”
“Minerva, it’s because I’m your friend that I’m doing this.”
She waved the rifle at Minerva.
“Now you get in there and bolt the door and you stay in there no matter what you hear in any part of the house.”
“What’s going on, Ruth? Please tell me. Maybe I can help you.”
“Nobody can help me, Minerva. Nobody.”
“But what’s it all about, something with the basement?”
Even in the shadows she could see her friend wince.
Ruth waved the rifle at Minerva again.
“It’s about the basement, isn’t it?”
Ruth nodded slowly. “A long time ago, I made a mistake, a terrible mistake.”
Minerva started to say something.
Ruth forced her inside, back across the threshold.
Then she pulled the door shut.
Minerva was in darkness.
Chapter Thirteen
1
The seven men sat around the long tables in the cabin as they had sat around the town council tables in the mayor’s office for years.
They were seven of the most prosperous and popular men not only in their community but in this part of the state.
In the center of the room sat a pudgy man named Lou Bascomb who always wore bow ties and smelled of barber shop hair oil. Bascomb had been the mayor of Burton for nearly twenty years. He was most famous for having gone to Washington, D.C. eighteen years ago and single-handedly bringing back a grant that resulted in the new Burton High School.
From that time on, he had been a revered figure in the affairs of the town.
At present, he did not look like a man who could claim such authority. His pudgy face ran with sweat and he daubed at his jowls with a handkerchief.
Sitting next to him, Sheriff Wayman had taken out a pipe and was puffing on it. Close scrutiny of Wayman’s hands revealed that the man was trembling.
The other council members sat in equally disarrayed states.
Depression seemed to be the theme of the meeting.
In the center of the cabin, just in front of the wide fireplace, Deputy Vince Reeves and his wife Donna were lashed and gagged. They appeared to be waiting execution by firing squad.
Wayman raised his eyes to the couple, looked quickly away.
They knew what lay ahead of them.
Wayman felt ashamed.
It was one thing to have to kill Reverend Heath, as Laumer had done this morning. Heath, in all his years in the community, had never quite become a friend, even though he had shared the secret.
But the Reeves ... they were good people ... people Wayman felt close to.
The mayor produced a gavel. He always carried it with him. Everywhere. By now it was a part of his legend, a part people laughed at affectionately.
It was said that before the mayor and his wife made love, the man pounded the gavel and brought the session to order.
In the night, shot as it was with crickets and baying dogs and hoot owls, the gavel sounded almost ludicrous.
“I guess we know what kind of decision we’ve got to make tonight,” the mayor said.
“Where’s Laumer,” one of the other members said. “He should be here.”
Four of the council members had earlier expressed concern that neither the mayor nor Sheriff Wayman had the balls required to do what had to be done.
They looked on Laumer’s murder of Reverend Heath with a kind of pride and relish.
Laumer was their kind of man.
He got things done.
Sheriff Wayman and the mayor however ...
Sheriff Wayman watched as the debate began. He was well aware that four of the members wanted Carl Laumer to take over at this point. But Laumer scared Wayman.
You never knew what Laumer was going to do. Wayman had seen Laumer beat a hunting dog once, a dog who had not done as he was told. Witnessing that, the sheriff knew that here was a man capable of absolutely anything.
It was important that Mayor Bascomb stay in control. Even if it meant ...
Wayman had had the thought several times today.
Even if it meant ... confessing their secret to the authorities... stopping what had been going on since back in 1953.
Surely it would mean prison for them all ... but more violence seemed an even worse fate than prison.
“Many years ago we made a decision,” the mayor was saying. “We made it for ‘the greater good.’ I believed that then and I believe that now. If we hadn’t made that decision, Burton as we know it would have died, virtually become a ghost town. At the time we felt we couldn’t let that happen, so we found ourselves agreeing to something that—well, something maybe we shouldn’t have.”
A voice down the table said, “We didn’t have any choice, Mayor.”
Mayor Bascomb sighed. “At least, that’s what we told ourselves.”
“Look around the town, Mayor. Look at all the good things that’ve happened to our community since we made that decision.”
“Yes, but was it worth it?” the mayor asked.
“Guilt isn’t going to get us anywhere.”
In the middle of the room, the Reeveses struggled against their restraints.
Their eyes were wide with fear.
“So now we’ve got to make another decision,” the mayor said.
“And I say let’s get on with it,” the belligerent man said. His name was Hoskins. He owned a farm implement store.
“You really think it’s going to be that easy?” the mayor said, sounding irritated. “To make a decision on what happens to these people?”
He nodded to the Reeveses in the center of the floor.
“‘For the greater good,’ Mayor, remember,” Hoskins said.
Sheriff Wayman spoke up. “At least that’s what we tell ourselves. But now, I don’t think so, I think we can dress up our motives all we want, but what we’re really doing now is saving our own skins.”
Hoskins snapped, “You want to go to prison, Sheriff? You’d have a really good time in there. You know how convicts like lawmen.”
There was a harsh laugh as one of the others agreed with Hoskins.
The mayor gaveled for silence. “You know it’s going
to go on and on, of course. I think in the back of our minds we knew years ago that eventually our secret would come out. Well, more and more people are going to learn it, and there’s no way we can keep silencing them without attracting suspicion to ourselves. No way in hell.”
“Who else knows besides the Reeveses?”
“That man Carnes, and Beth Daye,” the mayor said.
“Well, we’ll take care of them,” Hoskins said. “That isn’t such a big deal.”
“No, I guess it’s not a big deal, unless you stop to think that we’re committing murder.”
“People do what they have to to survive,” Hoskins said. “That’s what Laumer always says, and I agree with him.”
Laumer, thought Sheriff Wayman. One way or the other, Laumer was going to have his way.
Wayman glanced over at the Reeveses again. Vince Reeves was staring at him. Just staring. There was accusation in his eyes.
Why in God’s name had Reeves had to drive out here a few weeks ago and overhear the conversation in which their ugly little secret was discussed?
Hoskins nodded to the Reeveses. “I vote we get to the issue at hand. All this talk is doing no good.”
The mayor sighed. “You don’t think two people’s lives are worth a little more discussion?”
“We don’t have time for discussion, Mayor. As soon as we’re done with the Reeveses, then we’re going to have to find this Carnes and Beth Daye. Then things will be safe again.”
“You’re a hell of a man,” the mayor said sarcastically.
“Do you want me to tell you what kind of a ‘man’ you are?” Hoskins shot back. “If Laumer was here, we’d have gotten all this over with.”
The mayor looked around at the faces before him.
He was looking for somebody, besides Sheriff Wayman, who could be counted on to vote their way.
But he knew better.
These men were frightened. Prison loomed as a real possibility. Nobody was going to vote to put himself in prison. Nobody.
The mayor glanced at Sheriff Wayman and frowned.
Wayman returned the frown.
Both men knew there was no hope of talking sense to these people.
The mayor said, “Is everybody here in agreement that we should vote?”
Everybody said yes.
“Very well, then,” the mayor said.
