by G. M. Ford
“How’s she gonna do that?” Corso asked.
As he listened, Corso’s face moved from rapt attention to mild amusement.
“I see,” he said finally. “Thanks for calling. No. No. Yeah. I’m taking it down, don’t worry. We’ll be in touch. Yeah.” He used his thumb to break the connection. Dougherty resumed breathing and cocked an eyebrow. “She’s one of a coven of witches living way up on the peninsula,” Corso said. “We got to be careful or she’ll fly away on us. Seems she’s got this magic broom.” He pointed at the phone. “He’s personally seen her do it.”
“Where do these people come from?”
“The Jerry Springer Show,” Corso said.
The phone rang. Corso picked it up and pushed the
TALK button.
A woman’s voice. “You the one’s looking for that woman?”
“Yes.”
“I know her,” she said. “You meet me ten o’clock tonight. Downtown. Out at the back of Emerson Park. Down by the river. Bring the money.” Dial tone.
She stood with the phone in her hand, looking out through the dirty front window as Sarah and Emily walked down the half-mile driveway toward the house.
Something in the ditch had attracted Emily’s attention. She’d fallen behind her sister, who returned now and pulled the little girl upright. She watched as Sarah wagged a finger in Emily’s face and then slapped her hard; she turned away as the girls again began trudging in her direction, Sarah striding out ahead with a smile on her face, Emily wiping the tears from her cheeks.
Dougherty puckered her lips and blew on her nails. “Another loony?”
“Could have been her,” he said.
“She say something?”
“Just a feeling.”
“So?”
“She wants to meet across the street at ten tonight.”
“In the park?”
“All the way at the back, by the river.”
“I thought we were only meeting in broad daylight in public places.”
“She didn’t give me a chance.”
“We don’t have to show.”
“No…we don’t.”
“But what if it’s genuine?”
“Could be the only lead we get,” Corso mused.
“You figure that’s just a coincidence?” She waved her bright red nails. “You know, being right across the street from our motel and all.”
“What else could it be?”
“You tell me.”
Corso paced as he mulled it over. “Maybe it’s the only secluded place in the downtown area,” he offered. “Maybe it’s—”
“This place is a graveyard after dark. Besides that, why downtown? Why not somewhere out in the boonies?”
“You might be right,” he said. “We’ll get ourselves out there real early. Get the lay of the land. Make sure we’re not walking into anything we can’t handle. We see anything remotely scary, we hit the road and call Molina.”
She eyed him. “You’re really spooked, aren’t you?”
His eyes got hard. “All we’ve done so far is find out who she used to be. Her past is scary enough. Imagine who she is now.”
“I don’t want to go to Grandma’s,” Emily whined.
“Stop your sniveling,” her mother said. “Mama May will be here in just a minute to get you two.”
“I wanna stay here and see Papa.”
Her mother grabbed her by the shoulders and gave her a shake, sending the child’s head bouncing back and forth like it was on a string. The woman raised her hand but stopped short of using it when a loud bang startled her.
She turned her head. The new stove inlet pipe lay on the floor at Sarah’s feet.
“How many times do I have to tell you? Leave that damn thing alone before I bash your damn head in with it!” she yelled.
Sarah reached to pick it up, but her mother was on her before she could close her fingers around the cold metal. Sarah took a step backward and watched her mother snatch the pipe from the floor, carry it across the room, and lean it against the wall, where it would be behind the door when it opened.
“There,” she said. “It’s out of the way now.” She pointed at Sarah. “Get your coat on. Mama May’s coming to get you.”
“Where you going?” the girl wanted to know.
“I’m taking Uncle Tommie to the airport in Chicago.”
“Good.”
When her mother started across the room toward her, Sarah turned and ran up the stairs. “I’ll smack your mouth,” her mother said to her back. Emily scampered upstairs after her sister. “You get your coat on,” their mother shouted.
When the girls disappeared around the upstairs corner, she turned back toward the kitchen window just in time to see Mama May’s blue Ford Torino bouncing to a stop in the yard.
She watched impassively as the older woman struggled out of the car and limped her way up the walk toward the door. Mama May had undergone hip replacement surgery three years earlier and, even with a new ceramic joint, had never regained her normal gait.
She’d seen the pictures. Three dead husbands ago. Way back in the fifties when May and Homer had first inherited the farm from his parents. May Galindo hadn’t been attractive then, and she wasn’t attractive now. A tall, hawk-faced, wide-hipped woman whose puckered, disapproving mouth and glowering countenance spoke of a lifetime of dour disapproval.
She always entered without knocking. The house belonged to her; she didn’t want anyone to forget. Once inside, she gazed at her daughter-in-law with all the warmth of a snake. “Gordon working late again?” she asked.
“Till midnight.”
She had immovable Margaret Thatcher hair and a look of contempt strong enough to wilt flowers. “It’s good your brother’s leaving.”
She swallowed the wave of anger that flooded her. “He needs to get back.”
“The girls don’t like him. They say he touches them. They tell you that?”
She shrugged. “You know how they are. Especially that Sarah.”
“That’s no way to be talking about your own kids.”
“Why don’t you let me worry about that? I was going to be taking parenting lessons, it sure as hell wouldn’t be from you.”
The women stood a yard apart on the worn linoleum, locked in mutual loathing, until the younger woman broke away and walked over to the foot of the stairs.
“Let’s go, you two. Mama May’s here.”
“Name’s Teresa Fulbrook. Least that’s what she calls herself now.”
Dougherty held her breath. “Oh?”
“I don’t mind other people’s business. I’m not that kind.”
“Of course not,” Dougherty said.
“This is something different, though.”
Dougherty reached over and slapped Corso on his bare stomach. He sat bolt upright in bed. She pointed at the cell phone pressed to her ear, bobbed her head up and down. “This is different,” she said softly. As Corso swung his legs over the edge of the bed and got to his feet, the woman went on.
“Like I said…woman you’re looking for calls herself Teresa Fulbrook now. Got white spiky hair sticking straight up. Got a couple of little girls. Seven and fourteen. That’s who I’m worried about here…those girls.” The voice cleared its throat. “Couldn’t give a damn about that Fulbrook woman.”
Dougherty used her thumb to jack the earpiece volume all the way up. Corso leaned in close, resting his head against hers, listening to the tinny amplified voice.
“How do you know her?” Dougherty asked.
“Her oldest girl—Sarah’s her name—she’s in the same class as my son Billy. Southshore Junior High. They’re at that age…youknow…where boys start noticing girls and the other way around.” Dougherty could sense her discomfort. “Anyway,” the woman continued, “I guess this woman—I seen her there a few times before—I guess she sees Billy and her Sarah holding hands.” She hesitated, as if to keep herself under control. “To hear my Billy tell it, she c
ome running down the sidewalk like a banshee, starts screaming at the two of them, drags the girls back to the car, and drives off.”
“Really?”
“That’s not the part, though. Girl don’t come to school for a week. She gets back, and somebody’s cut all her hair off. Right down to the nubs. Sarah tells Billy it was her mama done it.”
“For holding hands?”
“What kind of woman would do a thing like that to a teenage girl? All the problems girls that age got anyway, and you cut off all their hair?”
“You know where this woman lives?”
“Out east someplace on Route 10. I gotta go,” she said suddenly. “Kids are home.”
A soft click announced the terminated connection.
“Bingo,” Dougherty said.
“The hair bit sounds about right.” He made a face. “Eyewitnesses are always dicey, though.”
“The name’s right.”
“Teresa Fulbrook?”
“Teresa Thomes. That was the other woman who died back in Avalon about the time Sissy disappeared. I never followed up on her, because I struck it rich on the Nancy Anne Goff alias. I’m betting we do a little checking, we find out she took over both identities at the same time.”
“Smart,” Corso said. “One name to leave town with. Another to settle in under. Make it doubly hard for anybody to trace you.”
“What now?”
He held out his open palm. “Molina.”
34
Teresa Fulbrook ran her fingers through her hair as she used the blow-dryer. Her platinum spikes had given way to soft curls of a deep black that, as best she could recall, approximated the natural color of her hair. She smoothed the hair, pulled a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer, and, using her reflection in the kitchen window, snipped a few minor adjustments. She patted her head in several places and then returned the scissors to the drawer.
Tommie de Groot spun the open cylinder of the Colt revolver. “Kill two birds with one stone,” he was saying. “Get these busybodies off your back, and get rid of the only two people seen me shoot that professor guy. Pretty neat if you ask me.”
Teresa opened her mouth to speak, but a movement in her peripheral vision held the words captive in her throat. She walked quickly to the window.
“Gordie’s home,” she said.
Tommie stopped fiddling with the revolver and stashed the gun in his bag.
He walked to her side. “Thought he was working tonight.”
“Maybe he’s sick,” she said. “He’s been under the weather lately.”
They stood hip to hip and watched the white Ford pickup truck roll to a stop thirty feet away. Gordie got out, heading for the side door in a crablike shuffle.
Gordon Fulbrook was fifty-six, eleven years her senior. Bald in front except for a wiry black circle that clung stubbornly to the front of his scalp. An awkward man and a lifetime bachelor, he’d succumbed easily to her tender ministrations. At the time, she’d never met Mama May and assumed that Gordie owned the farm, a misconception her prospective husband never bothered to correct. By the time Mama May returned from wintering in Florida, they’d been married for a month and a half. The fountain of carnal delights in which Gordie had been bathing dried up in a hurry when his new bride learned that all six thousand acres belonged to his shovel-faced mother, with whom she shared a mutual hatred far beyond the scope of their actual relationship.
Unlike his mother, he was small. “Small all over!” Teresa used to shout at him in moments of rage. Five foot six, same as her. Maybe a hundred fifty pounds dripping wet. Lost a couple more pounds every year.
He burst through the kitchen door. Stopped dead in his tracks.
“You done your hair.”
“Yeah.”
“I never liked that other shit anyway. Kinda thing didn’t look right on a family woman your age.”
“So you said.”
“Where’s the girls?”
“At your mama’s.”
He turned his head. Took in Tommie standing next to the two bags on the kitchen table. “Goin’ somewhere?”
“Taking Tommie to the Chicago airport.”
“That so?”
“He got a good deal on a midnight flight.”
“Good deal, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“That how come there’s no money in the bank? He got such a good deal.”
“What?”
“You heard me. I decided to go out to lunch with Perry and the boys. Didn’t have enough for lunch and the cake I promised the girls, so I stopped by the ATM for a little cash. Machine wouldn’t give me a damn thing.” He looked at the bags again. “I go inside, they tell me you closed out both accounts.”
“I made you lunch.”
He crossed the floor. “Where’s the money?” he demanded. “Twelve hundred from the checking account. Eight thousand four hundred from savings.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He looked over at Tommie. “You and your pinhead brother here think you’re gonna walk out of here with—”
She slapped him in the face. Hard. Sending him staggering backward. He touched his cheek and then folded both hands into fists. Whatever he was planning next was stopped by the push of cold steel behind his ear.
“Go ahead,” Tommie breathed. “Do somethin’ stupid.” He grabbed Gordie by the collar and forced his face down onto the kitchen counter. He looked to Teresa for encouragement but found only veiled caution in her eyes.
Face pressed against the counter, Gordie began to prattle. “Jesus, Teresa…come on now…make him put that gun away. Somebody could get hurt here.”
“Shut up,” she said.
“The money’s not a problem. If you need the money—”
“You remember Doug?” she asked.
“Doug?” Gordie stammered. “I don’t know any—”
“In Omaha?” Tommie asked.
“That’s the one,” she said.
Gordie started to blubber again. Tommie dug the barrel in harder behind his ear.
“Nobody knows nothin’ about that one but us,” she said. “This one gotta be just like that. Nice and clean.”
Tommie nodded his understanding. He put more pressure on the back of Gordie’s neck. “Don’t you move, you son of a bitch. I’ll blow your brains all over the damn wall, don’t you think I won’t.”
Teresa walked quickly to the refrigerator; she got up on tiptoe to reach into the cabinet above. Came out with a white plastic bag. Meijer’s Markets. Brought it to her mouth and blew inside, checking that it was airtight, then pulled the duct tape from her bag and walked over to the counter, where Gordie was still mumbling. “Ain’t no need for any of this, Reecee,” he was saying. “You want the money, it’s yours. Ain’t no need to go and do something—”
With one hand, Tommie grabbed Gordie by the back of the hair and jerked him upright. He used the other to stuff the revolver into his own back pocket before looping his arms around Gordie, pinning the smaller man’s arms against his sides.
When Teresa slipped the Meijer’s bag over his head, Gordie went wild, thrashing so violently he sent both Tommie and himself crashing to the floor, where they rolled about in a frenzy of straining limbs until Tommie finally got his legs around Gordie and rolled him chest-up. Teresa dropped quickly, landing on Gordie’s sternum with her knees, driving the air from his lungs with a whoosh. As he fought for breath, she ripped off a piece of tape and wound it tight along the lower edge of the bag, sealing the plastic around his throat. And then another. Then a third. Two deep breaths and he was out of air. The white plastic was plastered against his face now. Drawn into his nose and mouth cavities by his desperate attempts to breathe, the plastic welded itself to the contours of his face, making it possible to watch his final moments of bug-eyed agony through the thin plastic veneer.
Another futile breath, and his nervous system went on automatic pilot. Flopping across the floor like a fish on a riv
erbank, Tommie welded to his back, Teresa riding his heaving chest like a bronc rider, until finally he stiffened and, with a sound not unlike a rueful sigh, suddenly lay still. Above their labored breathing, the refrigerator clicked on, scaring the hell out of both of them. Took a minute before anybody breathed.
Tommie unlocked his ankles and dropped his feet to the floor. She looked down into Gordie’s purple, contorted face. He’d vomited all over the inside of the bag.
“Might have been better if you’d just ate that lunch I packed,” she said.
“What do you mean it’s not enough?”
“He says it’s too tenuous. Thinks we need to see the woman for ourselves before he starts sending agents our way.”
Corso set the phone on the nightstand. He checked the clock. Nine minutes after eight. It had taken an hour and a half to get themselves patched through to Special Agent Molina’s pager. He’d called back immediately. He’d been in Nyack, New York, attending a retirement dinner with his wife and, thus interrupted, had been somewhat less than enthused by Corso’s information. “Nothing I can do with that,” he’d said. “Not even the same name. It’s too much of a stretch. Plane flights coming out of my budget, you’re going to have to do better than that.” When Corso began to protest, Molina interrupted him. “I’m not careful, I end up with a credibility problem, like some people who shall remain nameless.” Nothing much Corso could say to that, so he mumbled an apology and broke the connection.
Corso breathed a sigh. He looked over at Dougherty. “So we try to get a peek at whoever shows up in the park tonight.”
“Be best if we got there first,” Dougherty said.
Corso retrieved his jeans from the floor and buckled them around his waist.
“No contact,” he said. “We’re just going to look.”
“Absolutely.”
“Dress warm. We’re going to be out there for a while.”
“I don’t like it.”
“Me neither.”
35
The sky was a blanket of gray. The air fifteen degrees warmer than the night before. The change in temperature must have been what sent the fog rolling in from Lake Huron, forming a moving carpet above the river and wrapping the town in gauze. Beneath the muted glow of the streetlights, Main Street, Midland, Michigan, was little more than a series of glowing pools, strung along the river like pearls, winding south with the fog and the water for as far as the eye could penetrate.
