Rock Spider (A New Hampshire Mystery Book 2)

by Mira Gibson

  “It’s not unheard of around here. Dig a deep enough foundation and the uranium levels increase, or so Ed tells me.”

  Gertrude’s gaze softened with a far away look in her eye.

  “It tells us that whatever bullshit they’re up to, they’re doing it underground, they’re breathing in the earth like the walls around them are just dirt.” After an excited pause, he said, “And we tested the homeless men who’d turned up in Opechee. Same toxicity. Radon. It ties their murders to the King’s house, but it doesn’t hold water. Not yet.”

  Languidly, though so far under her breath it wasn’t meant for him, she asked, “Dad was a doctor?”

  “Gerty?”

  “Hm?” She was released from the recollection, but didn’t share it.

  He touched her leg to focus her then became suddenly distracted. “Do you hear that?”

  She listened out. “No.”

  “Wait.” His ears pricked up, but the sound wasn’t there. “It sounded like the window opening.”

  On his feet, Jake listened at the door and thought he caught wind of voices murmuring deep in the living room. When he glanced over his shoulder at Gertrude, she was approaching.

  Softly, she asked, “What is it?”

  He eased the door open, keen to overhear Roberta, but it wasn’t until he crept down the hallway, Gertrude trailing tightly behind him, that he thought he heard a boy speaking in hushed tones, his voice cracking with each word.

  Peering around the corner, he spied Roberta kneeling on the couch and angling her head out the window. In shadows, a kid was standing outside, staring up at her with a pained twist in his expression that came off as desperately apologetic.

  The second he saw Jake, the kid dashed off, feet punching over leaves and brush, and Roberta whipped around, stripped of her cunning she was so surprised. But the moment was fleeting. She slipped to the couch, crossing her leg then bobbing it, mildly amused to have his company.

  “Hey,” she grinned. “What’s going on?”

  Gertrude rounded through to the kitchen, shooting Roberta an easy smile that from Jake’s perspective seemed a bit forced, as she asked, “What do you feel like? I’ve got a frozen pizza but we’d have to thaw it.”

  Roberta was staring at him and her coy grin drooped, gaze drifting downward, as though something massive was hitting her.

  “Pizza sounds good,” he said a tad delayed then shifted back to Roberta. “You okay?”

  It looked like she was about ready to say something when there came sudden and persistent knocking at the front door.

  Slumping into the couch, she sighed, “Fuck,” which only Jake caught. Gertrude, head cocked with unease, was padding over to see who it was.

  Roberta winced then her gaze snapped to meet his and in a voice so small he almost couldn’t comprehend her, she said, “I didn’t want to.”

  From the doorway, Peter King barked out, “Jake Livingston here?” Then he angled around Gertrude, who turned stunned as two police officers followed in.

  “Livingston,” he said, as the officers took Jake by the arms.

  Her tone ragged with utter confusion, Gertrude demanded, “What are you doing?”

  The stuttering surrealism of being apprehended unfolded like a bad avant-garde film—Peter sneering with satisfaction, cross-cut to the wooden floor alarmingly close to his eyeball as they hooked his arms behind his back, fade in as they yanked him up again, more dizzying choppiness: Roberta grimacing in a hunch, Gertrude gaping, officers using words he couldn’t compute like arrest and statutory rape and right to remain silent as if he had any rights, all of which compiled into a through-line narrative as shocking as ice water in his veins, while he clamored to process what was happening.

  It wasn’t until they were dragging him towards the back of a police cruiser that he regained his faculties well enough to shout “I didn’t touch her” at Gertrude who was looking on in abject horror, while from the foyer Roberta glared at him with a blood curdling mix of intrigue and remorsefulness.

  One of the officer’s pitched him forward, angling Jake into the back of the cruiser, then slammed the door and he realized his hands were cuffed tightly behind his back, which caused him to lean awkwardly in the seat.

  Then they rolled forward following a black sedan Jake assumed Peter was driving.

  An eternity passed before they reached the Laconia Police Station—Jake shifting uncomfortably in his seat, catching glimpses of his reflection in the side window, jarred by the sight of his haggard eyes, his ill grimace, the face of a stranger he didn’t recognize. He managed to gaze out at the dark forest, but it soon disappeared, the dull lights of Laconia, its gas stations and fast food joints wilting in a summer sweat, taking its place.

  When they arrived at the precinct, a depressed one-story brick building that looked more like a weathered cardboard box than it did adequate law enforcement quarters, Peter opened the cruiser door and jerked Jake to his feet, thrusting him towards the entrance with a sense of victory on par with having singlehandedly taken down ISIS.

  Beating them to it, one of the officers held the door open, while the other brought up the rear, shoving Jake from behind as though doing so was at all necessary.

  After roughly depositing him in a chair, closing the interrogation room door, and switching the surveillance camera off for (in his words) a chat, Peter flipped open a manila folder and began demonstratively placing photos across the table as if it would provoke Jake into explaining.

  “I want my lawyer,” he said, refusing to look at the photos.

  “You don’t need one,” Peter said, acting friendly in a way that set his teeth on edge. “This conversation’s off the record.”

  “I’ve been arrested. Everything’s on the record.”

  “I don’t like how you handled my granddaughter,” he stated, invading Jake’s personal space, as he sat on the table and pressed his thick forefinger against a photo of Roberta—naked as sin and falling, distressed torment in her wide eyes, Jake mid-shove and appearing in a rage. Jake wished he hadn’t glanced at it.

  Staring up at Peter was no better. Old as he was, he looked strong as an ox and the way he was holding his mouth taut, gaze lingering on Roberta’s splayed breasts in the glossy print, gave Jake the worst intuition. Peter wasn’t disgusted with the encounter. He was interested in it.

  “Do you think it’s okay to treat women like this?” he pressed, leaning in, his sour breath blowing in Jake’s ear. “Roberta told me what you did to her.”

  “You know I didn’t do anything to her. This is a joke.”

  “Oh, you think this is funny?”

  “You seriously believe the courts aren’t going to catch on to this? What you’re doing? Locking up innocent men year after year who were trapped in identical scenarios with Roberta is going to come crashing down on you sooner or later.”

  Working his way around the table until he settled into the chair across from him, Peter said, “Evidence doesn’t lie. Those men weren’t innocent.”

  He nodded at the prints. “You call that evidence?”

  “What would you call it?”

  “She threw herself at me.”

  Laughter erupted out of Peter and when it waned, he said, “You think I’m bad. Wait ‘til I tell the feminists around here. They’ll skin you alive.”

  “I want my lawyer.”

  “You’ll get your phone call. Settle down. I’ve a right to question you.”

  Pondering the sewage Peter had to have poured into his brain that would cause him to believe his statement even remotely resembled police procedure, was enough to make Jake’s head spin.

  Going on the offensive, Jake asked, “Why’d you do it?”

  He just stared at him, tilting his head back with an edge of curiosity.

  “You killed her, you’re granddaughter,” he pressed. “Why?”

  “No one killed Maude, but Maude. And it’s a damn shame. It’s a tragedy I thought I’d never see.”

 
“And brainwashing Roberta isn’t tragic?” he countered. “Using her. Making her seduce and entrap adult men isn’t tragic? Terrorizing her under the guise of your cult-”

  “Cult?”

  Peter had meant to turn the tables, imply Jake was out of his mind, but a glimmer of worry leapt through his expression.

  “Did you make her dig up Gerty’s dead dog? Are you that sick?”

  “Now you listen here,” he said, turning to stone as he angled across the table, his dark eyes sharp and ugly. “This can all go away.” He indicated the photos. “I can let you walk out of here. If you leave.”

  “Leave? Leave Laconia?”

  “The state.”

  It was as close to a confession as he had ever come, but it was happening in a vacuum, and the frustration building in his chest realizing no one would ever know or believe this conversation took place was enough to fry his gumption, but Jake wouldn’t give up.

  “Like the deal you cut with Kevin Robinson, is that it? I keep my mouth shut. You let me ride off into the sunset, except I won’t get far, will I? Where are you keeping him? Where’s your underground chamber? And what the hell are you doing down there that you have to kill them to keep them silent?”

  Peter leaned back in his chair, studying him, his eyes glazing over in the effort, until eventually he asked, “What happened to us, Jake? Weird Wanda was some good times, I thought.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Statutory rape?” She kept her tone even, tempering the outrage that was bursting within her on a cellular level, as she steadied her gaze on Roberta.

  The girl was leafing through a bloodstained book she’d plucked off the shelf as if finding it interesting could put the whole ordeal behind her. She did, however, afford Gertrude the courtesy of a returned glance, but it was short lived.

  “He came onto me,” she said in a tone matching her repose—curled in a childlike ball, head nuzzled in the armrest, legs tucked fetal against her chest like this was a typical teenaged night.

  “Coming onto you,” she began, though stating as much knotted her stomach, “is a world away from statutory rape. Why does you’re grandfather think Jake raped you?”

  Sharpening her tone and sitting up with shoulders squared, Roberta’s expression pinched with antagonism. “I spelled it out for you. In my front yard that night when it was dark, I literally broke it down. Did you think I was crying wolf?”

  Gertrude couldn’t deny she had, but she'd been naive enough, apparently, to assume Roberta wouldn’t make the grand leap into actually going through with it. “So you gave a statement to the police?” she asked in disbelief.

  Roberta stiffened, gaze falling to the floor where her toes were clutching at the wood.

  “You can recant.”

  “There are photos,” she said in a shamed voice then quickly added, “for the record I didn’t give them to Peter. Quinton fucked up. The second I got here I told myself no more bullshit. I’m on your side. I’m not going to fuck this up.”

  “Things are so fucked up right now, Roberta, I can’t even...” trailing off with no words to frame what was going through her head, Gertrude was vaguely aware the phrasing made her sound more teenaged than the temptress on her couch. “You seduced him?”

  She didn’t actually want to know the answer or whether or not Jake had succumbed to the girl’s seduction, but the question had flown out of her and already Roberta was formulating a response.

  “If he went to prison,” she started, speaking frankly in a way that was jarring, “it would make sense.”

  “Did he rape you?”

  “No.”

  “Did you have intercourse?” She couldn’t believe she was going there, but the larger part of her needed to know.

  Fluttering her eyes as though looking back on the incident, Roberta appeared to be deciding her response rather than making an honest effort to recall the facts.

  It didn’t bode well with Gertrude.

  “Not actually, no.”

  “Well, what? Tell me. Were you involved?”

  Again her face pinched, as she seemed to decide, which gave Gertrude the impression she was doing math on an equation that wouldn't add up.

  Then a sly grin pulled her mouth into a crooked arch, as she asked, “You jealous?”

  Taken aback with sobering clarity that Roberta could be scheming even now, it suddenly dawned on her Jake had been right. Was Roberta crafty enough to pick up on an emotion even she hadn’t figured out?

  She stammered to say something, while the deepest recess of her fast working mind offered up possible motives for why Roberta might lure her into thinking the worst of Jake. But every notion that surfaced seemed so outlandish, she reasoned against it.

  “You have a thing for him,” Roberta determined. “I’d nip it in the bud if I were you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of what happened to Wanda Trentwell.”

  Gertrude was skeptical enough that her question registered like a statement. “The homeless woman.”

  “He’s doing the same thing to you, you know. Or maybe you can’t see it.”

  “What did he do to Wanda?”

  “Come on, brainiac. It’s in there,” she smirked as if addressing a younger sibling. “You can remember if you try.”

  “Stop fucking around, Roberta.”

  “The real truth would’ve made headlines if Jake hadn’t been controlling the paper.”

  Gertrude raised her brows, daring her to keep tossing breadcrumbs.

  “He set her up,” she said, determined to cast intrigue before being straight with her. "He put her in that mental institution."

  Gertrude held her ground, dulling her eyes, neutralizing her expression as if unaffected.

  “Wanda was turning tricks out in the park," she went on. "Didn’t even want cash, like cash was a middleman that took to long. Her whole deal was direct transactions. Bring meth, or bring crack, anything you’ve got. Peter knew she'd do anything to get high. But after a few jobs, Wanda wanted out.”

  Evidently, her disclosure required no encumbrances, because she unfastened her bra and after a juggling act beneath her shirt, she worked the lacy garment free through her left sleeve and tossed it on the floor.

  “The next thing she knows, Jake moves in on her, acts like he's interested,” she said, hooking one foot onto the couch and stretching the other, her gaze firing wild to be holding court. “He gets her cleaned up, she moves in with him, they're boyfriend and girlfriend. And you know she’s fucking out of her mind, psychotic or whatever her deal is. And of course she's still doing things for Peter because she still needs crack and shit. And then when Wanda tries to cut ties with Peter for good, because she thinks she's finally turned her life around and doesn't need his drugs and won't do any more dark shit for him, Peter makes a deal that he'll let her go if she does one last thing.”

  Gertrude was reeling.

  “And she agreed. She did one last thing, and Jake was there,” she went on, a wide grin spreading across her sanguine face. “That's when I knew Jake was working for him.”

  Gertrude thought she might throw up, but she asked anyway, "Working for Peter?"

  “Next day, Jake drops her off at Opechee and she’s arrested.” Roberta let that hang for a beat then drew the conclusion in case Gertrude had missed it. “Without Jake, Wanda wouldn’t have gotten locked up.”

  As gradually as oil rising through water, Gertrude recalled why she’d turned Jake down when he’d asked her on a date at the farmer’s market. She’d known about Weird Wanda and the circulating rumors. She’d heard about Jake’s presumed coercion of the street person, his sordid involvement, the shameful result, his tarnished reputation that followed. When he’d met her gaze over hand-bound books, she hadn’t trusted those cornflower eyes, as blue as heaven itself. The endless gossip had shrouded him, colored her perception, and she hadn’t been able to get away fast enough. At the time she hadn’t known for sure whether or not the rumors were true
, but she’d believed every word. So who now should she trust, the old Gertrude or the new?

  Pointedly, she asked, “If Jake was working with Peter, what was he doing?”

  “Look," she said, turning flippant. "I only know so much, and it's not like Peter tells me. I just happen to be close to the situation."

  "So you don't know for sure?"

  "Gerty," she snorted a laugh. "If you trust him, you're more brain damaged than I thought."

  "What did Peter want with Wanda?”

  Darkening, Roberta tucked her knees to her chin, perching on the couch like a sun-startled bat. “Wanda was getting rid of the bodies,” she said coolly.

  Taking that much in was equivalent to threading a watermelon through a water pipe—it just wouldn’t pass. But Roberta had opened up and because of it, Gertrude had an in.

  “What is the cult’s mission? Why do they operate?”

  “It’s just sex.”

  Cautious though she was, she sat on the couch, angling her shoulders towards Roberta, who seemed to be mulling over the consequences of having divulged all that she had.

  When Roberta met her gaze, her eyes darkened into a soulless abyss, repelling and also magnetizing Gertrude.

  “And Maude wouldn’t go along?”

  “I’ll be straight with you. I don’t have a fucking clue what went wrong with Maude. But if they killed her, she didn’t die like the rest.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Roberta's account that Jake had willingly been in cahoots with Peter King to protect the cult was mind-bending. Wanda Trentwell had been exiled to a life in a padded room and Roberta was convinced Gertrude would suffer the same fate if she trusted Jake. Fathoming this was more than enough to keep Gertrude up all night, lifting in and out of fitful dreams where the lines between her own life and Wanda’s blurred, where the difference between Roberta and her own sister failed to exist, where Jake’s face interchanged with Peter’s so seamlessly that her skin broke out with a cold sweat in response, as she shifted and tossed on the lumpy couch.