Rock Spider (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 2)

by Mira Gibson

  “No,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t lose what little confidence she’d sparked in him. “I work for the Division for Children Youth and Families.”

  “A social worker.” He mulled that over and Gertrude saw the light in his eyes dim out. “Yeah, I read about that girl. Shot herself, right?”

  “She died, yes.”

  “So what? You’re going to protect Roberta? She doesn’t need protection.” Another snorted laugh and he suggested, “An exorcist maybe.”

  “Tom,” she started, composing her point in her head with carefully chosen words before saying them. “I suspect you were set up and I’m trying to understand why that would be. Maybe you saw something, maybe Roberta told you something that made, I don’t know, Charlie afraid and caused him to get you out of the neighborhood.”

  She let that hang to see if he’d run with it, but he didn’t respond only scraped his teeth over his bottom lip as if debating.

  “Anything you could tell me...” she prodded.

  “You have any idea how long it took me to put two and two together?”

  After a beat, she realized he expected an answer so she shook her head.

  “Roberta didn’t have to come onto me. I didn’t even know what I saw, didn’t give it a second thought until I got locked up in here and had nothing else to think about.”

  “What did you see?”

  Leaning back in his chair as if opting out of the conversation, he said, “Nothing you can do for me.” He shrugged and clarified, “I fucked her. Whether I was set up or not, it happened.”

  She was losing him and knowing she had virtually nothing to offer him that would change his life, Gertrude flushed into a sweat, frustrated.

  “Someone came inside and vandalized my house,” she blurted out, forgetting composure and letting her words, as distressed as they sounded, tumble out of her. “They dug up my dead dog, my pet that I had buried years ago, and left him on my living room floor. There were candles and a horrid symbol, painted with blood on my wall. It looked satanic.”

  “You better watch your back,” he said in a tone that implied he knew what would come next if she didn’t heed the warning.

  “I have a map here,” she said, pulling a folded sheet from her purse and spreading it on the table. “It shows the property lines along Moulton.” Tracing her finger along the divisions, she walked him through it. “This is Winnipesaukee and along the shore here is the King’s property. North is where Mike Waters lived, and directly south is the house Jimmy Dalton was living in. Then you’re over here,” she went on, circling her finger. “And this is the field that connects the four plots.”

  “And Ray was over here,” he added to prove the geography lesson was just that. “Max was on the east end. And that shmuck reporter, where is he?” Tom found Jake’s plot on the map. “He’ll be in the cell next to mine any day now.”

  “Who owns the field?” she asked.

  “I have no idea. Might be public land that no one’s aware of.”

  Shifting in his seat, Tom leaned towards her and folded the map.

  “It was chanting.”

  She studied him, waiting for more.

  “That’s all I heard. Chanting.”

  “Coming from the field?”

  “I didn’t give a shit.” He threw his hands up at the travesty of his surroundings. “All this because sound carries through an open field.”

  “That couldn’t have been all you did to bring this on,” she argued.

  “No, all I did was go for a walk.”

  “Into the field?”

  “Down the fucking road. I had too much to drink one night. It was hot in my house. I went for a walk, heard a truck coming so I moved onto the shoulder, to let it pass.”

  “Okay,” she said, trying to grasp what Charlie might have found detrimental about it.

  “I didn’t get a plate.” He started rattling off points in favor of his innocence, as he counted on his fingers. “I didn’t see the driver. I didn’t follow the truck. I didn’t give a shit. I noticed materials in the truck bed, but I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t think anything about it.” He laughed then ran his hands down his face like he was coming undone, but when he pulled them away he was dead serious. “But then I saw the same truck at Opechee Park. Another night; a pure coincidence. Again, I didn’t see the driver.” He looked suddenly ill. “But I saw him drag something out of the bed of his truck. Left it right in the park, something wrapped in a blanket. Then he drove off.”

  Tom drew in a queasy breath like he was reliving it.

  “I was standing off near the recycling depository, you know, turning bottles into pocket change. And when he drove off, I got curious.” He swallowed hard and his foot started tapping beneath the table. Using his teeth he tore a piece of skin off his finger, then went on. “I shouldn’t have opened that blanket. It looked like the fucking zombie apocalypse had claimed its first victim."

  Confused, she screwed her face up trying to understand.

  “I don’t know if it was a man or a woman or a kid, but it looked like their face was eaten off and they were most definitely dead. I ran. Peeled out of that park so fucking fast you wouldn’t believe it. I guess that was what gave me away, screeching tires or some shit. They saw me. They put it together I was the guy out for a walk that night.” He pushed back in his chair and forced a long exhale. “You should talk to Mike. He saw some shit go down in that field.” Shaking his head as though the image of the faceless corpse was returning, he added, “That poor fucking woman.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t know the gender of the-”

  “No, Wanda. That homeless chick, who used to live in the park; you didn’t hear about her?”

  If Gertrude had, she didn’t remember.

  “Come on,” he gaped. “Everyone knows about Weird Wanda. Hell, after they locked me up I still keep my ear to the ground. A few more bodies like the one I saw turned up and Wanda was arrested, like she had it in her to eat someone’s face off, like that’s what homeless people do, fucking bullshit. She’s got some kind of mental illness so they institutionalized her.” Again, Tom leaned in and turned severe. “Someone in those backwoods is doing some seriously fucked up shit and the wrong people are getting locked up for it.”

  “Charlie King?”

  Tom frowned his confirmation. “And his cult.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Days passed. Gertrude went to work and kept her head down. Harold McNeil said nothing about her name being listed on the foster care application, which led her to assume he had yet to review it. Every time he filled his office door, she startled anticipating he would call her in and relaxed only a fraction when he barked out another social worker’s name. Every time he sat with her in the conference room, she turned rigid with nerves, keeping her responses brief to hasten their meeting. She sensed it was only a matter of time before he would ream her out for being a bleeding heart or worse self-serving. It wasn’t lost on her how transparent it looked—volunteering to take Roberta in. She’d seen it in Wendy’s eyes, the look that said, it won’t bring Doris back. Several times she had the impulse to march into his office, close the door, and pre-emptively confess to get it over with, but she stifled the urge.

  She was edgy enough as it was. Being alone in her cabin, especially at night, had provoked her anxiety. For two nights she’d barely slept, alert to every sound—the wind at the windows, the faint moans of the wooden floor swelling from humidity, the hum of the distant highway—as though it could be the cult ambushing her.

  At Tom Jefferson’s advice, she’d met with Mike Waters. Like Tom, he hadn’t initially made the connection between what he’d witnessed in the field and Roberta’s sudden advances. But unlike Tom, what Mike had seen in the field was undoubtedly cult activity. And it had scared him silly.

  As Mike had explained it, gnawing on hangnails and picking at his eyebrows like a nervous wreck, he’d wandered into the field late at night and spied roug
hly twelve men—figures draped in cloaks, faces concealed with hoods—gathered in a circle and chanting, an eerie torchlight glow brightening their silhouettes. He’d crept towards them through the tall grass, but never got closer than twenty yards. Mike had divulged to her that he’d been more terrified of what he hadn’t seen than what he had. He’d sensed someone had lain in the center of their circle, he could intuit their agony, though he hadn’t heard them. Watching them beat their drums and stomp, he’d felt with absolute clarity he was witnessing a murder only he didn’t know who or why. The next day, he’d returned to the field and found blood in the grass, and though the summer sun had been shining brightly, he said the field was as dark as the devil himself.

  By Thursday, Harry informed her the DCYF had received the court order to remove Roberta from 118 Moulton Street and that Gertrude was to transport Roberta back to the Division where, presumably, her foster guardians would be waiting to take her home.

  “And who would that be?” she asked, edging into his office with cautious steps.

  Seated behind a mountain of files at his desk, Harry plowed his thick fingers through the only part of him that wasn’t polished, his salt-and-pepper hair, which looked months overdue for a trim. He groaned in response, lifting and sorting through the haphazard stacks.

  “Pull it up online,” he suggested, implying that if the application approval was around here, he certainly hadn’t read it. Having given up his search, Harry leaned back in his chair and worked the tension out of his jaw. “I want you to keep a close eye on Roberta. Swing by twice a day if possible. She’s old enough and clever enough to take off if she doesn’t like the living arrangement. And she needs to be enrolled in grief counseling.”

  “Right, no problem.”

  As she turned for the door, eager to escape before her secret was discovered, Harry stopped her by barking her name.

  “It’s been a full week. How are you holding up?”

  “Good, I think. Glad to have only one case. I’m not sure I could handle more.” She smiled, but it wavered badly.

  “Do you have an idea of when you will be able to handle more?”

  The answer came fast and hard, but only in her mind—Never.

  “I really can’t say,” she stammered. “At least a month.”

  Pressing his mouth into a frown and glancing over the files on his desk, he seemed to take his workload into account based on her timeline, which didn’t seem to please him so she quickly offered, “I’ll keep you posted, though.”

  He dismissed her with a nod and turned his attention to his computer.

  After collecting her laptop satchel, purse, and printing out the necessary forms in her cubicle, Gertrude walked out into the muggy afternoon and deposited her belongings on the passenger’s seat of her Audi. When she got behind the wheel, she flipped open the manila file folder containing the court approval that granted Roberta King into her guardianship. As she stared at the document, reading her name over and over again, an incredible lightness took hold.

  In the most abstract way, she felt like she was getting her sister back and in the same breath knew that it meant she was beginning to truly unravel.

  When she got to the King’s house, Gertrude pulled off onto the grassy shoulder as always, and it occurred to her that if there really was a cult behind this—the destruction in her cabin, the five men arrested, Maude’s murder—then bringing Roberta to her house might put the peculiar girl in more danger than she already was.

  Jake’s advice about getting a gun came to mind and because of it, her stomach clenched.

  Whipping the door open and jumping out of her car as if fleeing the notion, she started up the gravelly driveway, the sweltering summer sun beating through a canopy of branches overhead and roasting the beret on her head.

  She rolled up the gray, cotton sleeves of her shirt, helping her slick skin to breathe, as she neared the King’s porch where Zhana was using a trowel to pick mud out of the tread on her sneaker. Immaculate as always wearing well-tailored khakis and a crisp white tank that hugged her with vacuum packed exactness, she straightened, rolling her shoulders back and letting the trowel slip from her fingers. It was then that she realized she wasn’t alone any more.

  “I do wish you’d call,” she said, planting her fist on her hip and lifting one corner of her mouth into a wary smile, which she quickly released.

  Apologizing, Gertrude took stock of the yard within view and hoped Roberta was inside. When she returned her gaze to Zhana, she noticed something off about the woman and gradually narrowed it down to her hair.

  Far from its usual bouffant style, her blond hair looked thin and straggly and soon Gertrude understood why. It appeared to have been falling out.

  “Can I offer you anything?” Zhana asked on a heaving sigh as though she was going through the hostess motions without a shred of enthusiasm. “A drink perhaps?”

  “No,” she said, following up quickly with, “thank you,” which these days was far from the tip of her tongue. “Is Roberta home?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.” Zhana padded down the steps and decisively rounded the side of the house where a gardening hose was coiled behind the yellowing bushes. Grunting, she yanked it loose, muscling it back around until it was taut. “Do they look better to you?”

  “The plants?”

  “Honestly, I can’t tell.” She took a restful beat to eye their lividity then began inspecting their crisp leaves until a branch accidentally broke off. “Nothing helps.”

  When Zhana ran her fingers through her hair and a chunk came loose in her hand, Gertrude couldn’t help but notice the glaring similarity between the withering woman and her dying plants.

  As Zhana drew her silken handkerchief from her back pocket and proceeded to wrap her hair, Gertrude asked, “Where does Roberta go when she isn’t here?”

  “She runs around with her little boyfriend,” she said easily. “There’s a field out back they like to disappear in and Quinton lives up the road so they go there sometimes.”

  Recalling the scrawny teenager she’d seen heading towards the house the other day when she’d been walking to her car, she said, “I didn’t realize Roberta had a boyfriend.”

  “Oh, well,” she laughed, breathy and amused. “He’s not really her boyfriend, but you know, he’s not a girl so I tease. Quinton’s better than most of the characters she gets tangled up with, I’ll say that. But she’s too strong willed for him. She rubs off on him more than he rubs off on her.” She shrugged then fiddled with the spray nozzle on the hose as though it were as complicated as navigating Windows 10 after an automatic update. She took to shaking it like it would help jostle the thing into spraying. Surprisingly, it worked, only the pressure was uncontrollable and the hose whipped out of her hands, soaking her. “Oh for Christ’s sake!”

  “Zhana, we need to talk.”

  The woman kicked at the hose then stomped away from it up the porch steps where she paced in a circle, shaking her head. “I don’t see what we have to talk about,” she complained. “Haven’t you talked to us enough? I told you I don’t know where Roberta is. If only you’d call, you wouldn’t miss everyone so frequently.”

  Holding Zhana’s gaze was enough pressure to drive her into the house. She held the screen door open for Gertrude then glided through the living room and into the kitchen where she wasted no time plucking a bottle of Grey Goose out of the freezer.

  “Why do I have a feeling I’ll need one of these?” she chortled over her shoulder, though the sound she made was strained.

  Clutching the manila folder, Gertrude eyed the dining room table, but couldn’t bring herself to sit. Getting comfortable for a confrontation would only make this more difficult.

  Zhana slapped a tin cap on her tumbler and vigorously shook the martini, ice clanking noisily inside, then poured the chilled alcohol into a long stem glass and swayed her way into the living room.

  “Let’s get this over with. I’ve had a hell of a day and the soon
er I have time to myself, the better.”

  She eased onto the couch then drew her drink to her pursed mouth and ingested the entire glass in one, long gulp. It was alarming.

  Settling into the adjacent lounge chair, awkward swells flaring in her chest, Gertrude realized she was holding her folder so tightly she’d bent it.

  “Zhana, I need to ask you...” she trailed off, her mind going blank then producing phrases and fragments that seemed all wrong. She winced sharply with embarrassment then stumbled through her point. “Some... information has been brought to my attention...” It wasn’t quite what she meant to say.

  Zhana was perched like a dove on the edge of the couch, not at all concerned. “Regarding?”

  “Have you noticed, over the past few years...” Gertrude scrambled for a term other than satanic, “gatherings in the field behind your house? Gatherings at night?”

  “I’m not sure what you’re referring to,” she said, though her eyes went dead. “But if there have been noise complaints, I’ll address the issue with Roberta directly.”

  “No, not noise complaints.” She was being too delicate. She needed to come out with it even if it provoked a side of Zhana she hadn’t thought was there. “I mean... a cult.”

  With a big smile, tipping her head back, she let out a cackle so loud it set Gertrude’s teeth on edge. When her laughter subsided, she snapped her bright green eyes on Gertrude, her expression knotting up like a ball of yarn, the fine lines in her face becoming deeply creased. “My dear, what in God’s name are you talking about?”

  Zhana tried to keep her laughter going, but it was dried up, and the way she abruptly hopped up to refill her glass told Gertrude the woman knew something and was deflecting.

  Speaking up so that Zhana’s performance of making her cocktail more important than this conversation wouldn’t deter her, Gertrude said, “There have been accounts from a number of residents. Some have heard chanting out in the field, and others claimed to have seen criminal acts.”

  “Claimed being the operative word, wouldn’t you agree?” Zhana turned her back, as she pulverized her martini, shaking it violently and releasing her outrage. Pouring her drink, she asked, “I fail to see what this has to do with either of my daughters.”