The Devil's Cradle

by Sylvia Nobel

  It was an incredible leap of logic, but could there be any other explanation? If I was right, Rita Morgan’s cryptic letter, plus her plea for Audrey’s forgiveness and Dr. Orcutt’s zealous refusal to discuss Dayln Morgan all made sense.

  In the thickening dusk, I switched on my headlights and frantically searched for any signs of Audrey’s car. I burst into the clearing and saw a dim light burning in the window of the mobile home office. After practically standing my Volvo on its grill, I left the engine running and stormed inside. A frenzied search revealed no one. It wasn’t surprising the night watchman wasn’t on duty. Of course not. Of course not. Heart lodged in my throat, I rushed back outside and searched the gloomy equipment yard. Nothing.

  Cursing aloud, I jumped back in the car and raced up the narrow gravel road that led to the mine. I was on the right track all right. The metal gate, closed and locked on my last trip, stood open. I rounded the final curve and was heading towards the mine entrance when out of the corner of my eye I saw movement at the bottom of the hill. I jammed on the brakes, leapt from the car and raced to the edge of the road.

  I could hardly believe my own eyes. Eerily illuminated in the cool blue light of the full moon, I could see the big car lying half-submerged in the leach pond and nearby was the spectacle of two figures struggling in waist-deep water.

  “Stop!” I shouted, charging down the rocky hillside. “Don’t hurt her.” The thongs afforded me zero traction, and I ended up sliding and tumbling down the slippery embankment before landing in a heap at the bottom. A fiery pain shot through my injured shoulder and for long seconds, I lay there dizzy and disoriented until the sounds of thrashing and Audrey’s choked pleas for help propelled me to my feet. I plunged into the pond. “Stop it, let her go!”

  I fought my way through the stagnant water, arriving on the scene in time to see the murderous expression on D.J.’s face as Audrey’s head was pushed beneath the murky surface. Stiff-armed, I lunged forward hard enough to send D.J. toppling backwards with a shout of outrage. “You meddling bitch! This time, you’re dead.”

  I hauled a choking, gagging Audrey to the surface, pulled her next to me and turned to face D.J. once more, gasping out, “You’re never going to get away with this.”

  “Watch me.”

  I said, “Look, I know why you think Audrey is an imposter but...”

  “Shut the hell up,” D.J. growled, advancing again, fists clenched, teeth bared.

  “Listen to me,” I implored. “You might be able to pull off having it look like she had a car accident and then drown but how are you going to explain me? Huh? Think about that.”

  D.J.’s demonic smile was chilling. “I’ve come way too far to let you stop me now.”

  Whimpering, Audrey shrank close to my side as I fervently prayed that my hypothesis was correct. It had better be or we were both in deep shit. It seemed beyond cruel for Audrey to have to find out the repulsive truth in this way, but what choice did I have? “You’re making a terrible mistake. Let’s all try to calm down so we can talk...”

  “Get the hell out of my way.”

  I put up a warning hand. “No! No, I won’t. I know who you are and if you go through with this...you’ll be murdering your own daughter.”

  All movement came to an abrupt halt and after a few seconds of breathless silence Audrey gasped, “What? You...you’re my father?”

  “No,” I answered quietly, looking across the moon-dappled water at the pinched, white face. “D.J. is your mother.”

  Chapter 29

  By late Monday afternoon I decided to delay my scheduled departure for home until the following morning for several reasons, one being that I was totally whipped. It had been one hell of a weekend, but it had been worth the loss of sleep to be front row center during the gut-wrenching confessions of Dayln Morgan, Miles Orcutt and Bitsy Bigelow.

  Half-listening to the muted chirping of birds outside, I stood amid the bright shafts of sunlight blanching the hardwood floor and stared in dismay at the flurry of notes spread out on my bed, dresser, and on the floor next to my half-packed suitcase. Having talked to Ginger less than an hour ago, I knew Tugg would most likely be returning my phone call any minute. Somehow I had to get this avalanche of material into some kind of logical sequence and even then, this incredibly convoluted tale was likely to sound more like fiction than fact.

  Aside from that, I had no intention of leaving without a conclusion to this remarkable story. In what I suspect had turned into a pivotal meeting at the mine office, Audrey, Duncan, Haston, and Jesse Pickrell had already been sequestered for nearly three hours. Whatever settlement was hashed out would no doubt seal the fate of Morgan’s Folly. I was dying to hear the outcome, but then, I couldn’t be in two places at once. It had been equally critical for me to meet with Orville Kemp and file formal charges of attempted rape and murder against the now-missing Archie Lawton. He’d probably hotfooted it across the border by now and grim reality set in. Even if he was apprehended a conviction was a long-shot at best and if the case ever got to court I could easily imagine the defense attorney’s plea ‘...and so your Honor, Ms. O’Dell admits she never saw her alleged assailant, so how can she positively identify my client… blah, blah, blah…’ And he or she would be right. It would be my word against Archie’s.

  But, more importantly, there was no way on earth I could leave until I knew how Audrey planned to resolve the extraordinary situation pertaining to the anguished soul who was both her mother and her half-sister. Considering what we now knew concerning the dreadful circumstances surrounding her life, could Audrey find it in her heart to file charges of attempted murder? And if she refused, what should my next move be?

  I thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t in her unenviable position as I settled myself cross-legged on the floor and picked up my legal pad. Might as well start with last Friday night. It had been high drama at its best.

  By the time sheriff’s deputies arrived at the mine, Audrey, still reeling from the astonishing turn of events, had made a landmark decision. For the time being, until we’d sorted through the appalling details contained in D.J.’s faltering confession delivered a mere half hour earlier, we would say nothing to the authorities concerning her true identity. Weeping copious tears, Audrey begged me to corroborate her hastily contrived story that she had indeed suffered a seizure and run the car off the road.

  Cognizant of her fragile emotional state, I reluctantly agreed. It was not lost on me what a momentous occasion I had just witnessed in the wake of my shocking declaration. The two dripping wet women had confronted one another, surveying each other with equal doses of horror and disbelief before Audrey suddenly lunged forward and began pummeling D.J.’s chest. “What kind of a monster are you?” she screamed. “Why would you want to kill your own child? How could you? How could you?”

  Ashen-faced, D.J. stood still as a marble statue offering no defense to Audrey’s flailing fists.

  “Audrey, stop it.” I wrestled the sobbing young woman away as Dayln murmured trance-like, “But, Dr. Orcutt said my baby died. How could I know?”

  “How about we take this conversation to dry land,” I said, motioning for Dayln to assist me with Audrey whose teeth-chattering, glassy-eyed expression convinced me she might convulse at any second. Once on shore, I hiked back uphill and returned with a car blanket, which I wrapped around her trembling shoulders. Then, as the three of us sat facing each other on the moonlit bank of the leach pond, Dayln began to recount the story of her tragic life, beginning with the sexual abuse by her father at the tender age of six. Cowering under threats that her confession could cause the death of her chronically ill mother, Dayln kept the ugly secret to herself. Adding to her misery was the burgeoning suspicion that there was something else terribly wrong. With each passing day, she became increasingly convinced she was a prisoner of the wrong sex trapped in her female body. The abuse, combined with Grady’s thinly-veiled disappointment that she would never be the son he so desperately yearned fo
r, nor the male heir her grandmother Hannah had craved, generated feelings of self-loathing so acute that she contemplated suicide shortly after her mother’s death. It wasn’t until she was thirteen, and terrified that she was pregnant, did she finally gather the courage to divulge the abuse to her stepmother, Rita Barnes. When confronted by his horrified wife, Grady vehemently denied the charge and instead cited Dayln’s wild reputation and propensity for lying. He pointed the finger of paternity to the boy she’d supposedly stolen from Bitsy Bigelow—none other than the totally revolting Archie Lawton.

  “When Rita bought his bogus story, I just snapped,” Dayln confessed in a hollow voice, admitting that it had been her intention to kill her father and how that act had prompted her subsequent removal to the psychiatric facility in Coolidge. “I remember some things pretty clear in the beginning, but later on they kept me so zonked on drugs, sometimes it’s hard for me to remember what was real and what wasn’t except for...” she paused, swallowed hard and continued hoarsely, “except the night of the fire.”

  Two blinking squad cars screeching to a halt on the road above aborted the remainder of her story until we had given the officers our fictional version of the incident. By the time we arrived back at the house, my shoulder was throbbing and I was so exhausted I could barely see straight. But after soaking in the most glorious bath of my life and consuming a sizeable late-night snack, I’d felt revitalized enough to stay awake until the wee hours to hear the continuation of Dayln’s unfortunate tale before falling into a restless sleep.

  Then, armed with an arsenal of new information, I rose early and made a beeline for the doctor’s house. A dispirited-looking Fran Orcutt answered my request to speak with her husband with an obviously lame account of his sudden inability to come to the door. Sure. A likely story. Judging by her look of watchful anxiety, I had a feeling he was standing just of sight. Coward.

  She was in the process of executing the door-closing bit when I caught her eye. “I’ve been to Weaverville,” I said softly. “Tell him the secrets of the dead are out of the bag.”

  With a look of angst flitting across her sallow features, she motioned for me to wait. Less than a minute later an apparently rejuvenated, yet sour-faced Dr. Orcutt appeared in the doorway. “Ms. O’Dell, I told you there’d be no further discussion on...”

  “Cool it, Doc. Dayln Morgan is alive.”

  Mouth agape, his eyes bulged like two bloodshot golf balls. “That’s...that’s simply not possible.”

  “Oh, but it is.”

  My unwavering rejoinder apparently convinced him. He shot a panicked look over his shoulder, signaled for me to remain silent, then hustled me into his study and closed the door.

  As I confronted him with the damning details of D.J.’s confession, he collapsed into a chair and appeared to shrink before my eyes. When I concluded, he cast me a beseeching look. “As God is my witness, I never intended to harm anyone. Please don’t judge me too harshly until you’ve heard my side of the story.”

  “That’s why I’m here.” I switched on my tape recorder and sat down opposite him. The first surprise came when I learned that the bond connecting him to Grady was not friendship, but fear. One warm summer night in 1966, Grady had chanced upon the doctor and Rita Barnes leaving a Bisbee motel room. Horrified, Dr. Orcutt pleaded with his lifelong friend to safeguard their secret and amazingly he had—until payoff time arrived.

  “So Grady threatened to expose your affair if you didn’t go along with the commitment scheme which was really just a ploy to hide his daughter’s pregnancy.”

  The last bit of color seeped from his face. “When I arrived at the house late that night, Dayln was hysterical, out of control. I finally sedated her because I felt she might be a danger to Grady or herself.”

  “So you didn’t accept her claim that Grady was the father of her child. Why?”

  A tortured sigh. “Frankly, I didn’t know which one of them to believe. You have to remember that from childhood, Dayln had a history of concocting odd tales. Now I understand her strange behavior, but at the time, I had no knowledge of her situation. So, just to be on the safe side, I didn’t see any harm in placing her temporarily in a protective situation until she could be evaluated.”

  “Whose idea was it to pass Dayln’s baby off as Rita’s?”

  “It was...mine.”

  I shook my head in wonder. “As a physician, why on earth would you agree to take part in something so...unethical?”

  He bowed his head and great wracking sobs filled the wood-paneled room. At that moment, I couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for this man whose wrong-headed decisions had affected so many lives.

  Minutes passed before he regained his composure. Watery-eyed, he reached for a tissue box and blew his nose before continuing. “I fully intended to take this secret to the grave with me. Because of...what I did it seemed to be the best solution for everyone.”

  He looked like he was going to lose it again, but then he took a few deep breaths before explaining how he and Rita had become lovers only months after her husband’s death in the tragic Defiance mining accident. The same accident also claimed Grady’s brother, Oliver who had stepped in to take his irresponsible brother’s shift that fateful day. Afterwards, consumed with guilt and castigated by his family, Grady had begun a downward spiral into alcoholism and madness.

  Dr. Orcutt detailed his panic when Rita confessed to him that she was four months pregnant. “I loved her with all my heart, but I had a wife and children and a reputation to protect, for God’s sake, so I...I convinced her to let me terminate the pregnancy.”

  I did a quick mental calculation. Unreal. Not only had this man aborted his own child, he’d risked having his medical license revoked by performing what was at the time an illegal procedure. I tried to imagine the all-consuming desperation that would have provoked such a decision. “But something went wrong,” he said. “Because of my mistake, Rita was never able to carry a child to term.”

  “So, you made it up to her by giving her Dayln’s baby.”

  Nodding, he stared at me with red-rimmed eyes.

  “Dr. Orcutt, your wife suspects the affair with Rita continued even after she married Grady. I think she also believes that Audrey is your child. Don’t you think she deserves to know the truth?”

  He flashed me a bitter look. “Everyone in the world will know after you leave here today, won’t they?”

  The tone of censure in his remark exemplified the struggle I was having with my own conscience. I’d damned well earned the right to print this piece, but was acutely aware that its publication would destroy the lives of each person involved. I masked my uneasiness behind another question. “I still don’t understand why Rita married a scoundrel like Grady Morgan?”

  He studied his fingertips before answering. “Who knows? Spite. Panic. Maybe both. Even though we took precautions, she got pregnant again. She pleaded with me to divorce Fran and marry her and when I refused she vowed she’d find someone to be a father to our child.”

  “But why him?”

  “I told you. When he wasn’t drinking, he could charm the spots off a leopard.”

  But Rita had lost that baby too and the next but was still carrying the one now buried beneath the last tiny marker at the old Weaverville cemetery when the explosive situation with her stepdaughter erupted. After Dayln’s two unsuccessful suicide attempts at the asylum, Dr. Orcutt had made the difficult decision to sedate her and take Audrey two months early. The rest was history.

  The shock of a cold wet nose on my arm pulled me back to the present and I looked up from my notes to see Princess sitting beside me, gold eyes aglitter. I stroked the cat’s soft fur. “Hey, girl, did you come to say goodbye?”

  I was beginning to wonder why Tugg hadn’t returned my call when the phone jangled. Notebook in hand, I jumped to my feet and hurried to answer the parlor phone. I grabbed up the receiver and listened to Tugg’s vociferous complaints of how difficult it was trying to condu
ct business in the midst of the remodeling chaos. “I can’t even find my goddamned desk,” he grumbled.

  I felt a fleeting twinge of guilt. “Sorry I left you with such a mess, Tugg, but when you hear this I think you’ll agree the trip was worthwhile.”

  During the time it took to fill him in on the events since our last conversation, Tugg whistled surprise, marveling, “Are you shitting me?”

  “No.”

  “So, this D.J. fella, er...whatever, is not only the girl’s half-sister and biological mother, but gay too?”

  “That’s not what I said. Dayln Morgan is a transsexual.”

  “Oh, man. I thought you said Bitsy was his...her girlfriend. Are you telling me she doesn’t know D.J. is a woman? How is that possible?”

  I didn’t blame him one bit for sounding bewildered. It had taken an hour of explanation by Dr. Orcutt, plus reading several articles he’d given me on the subject of gender dysphoria before I had developed a clearer understanding of Dayln’s seemingly bizarre behavior.

  “Think of it this way. Since childhood, Dayln has believed she’s actually male, so her feelings for Bitsy, while appearing homosexual on the surface, are actually heterosexual. She’s been able to avoid sex because she invented a clever story about suffering from a rare physical problem that would soon be corrected with surgery.”