by Mira Gibson
“But I don’t-”
“Stop!”
His voice shuddered through her.
“Look,” he went on after a deafening silence between them had driven the tension to intolerable levels. “I’m taking over the King case. Roberta will be reassigned a foster family and in the interim returned to the care of Zhana King.”
“That’s a huge mistake-”
“Stop,” he cut in, this time quietly, but with no less affect. “It was obviously too soon to expect you back at work. You’re hereby suspended without prejudice on medical leave. I highly encourage you to return to the inpatient program under Dr. Hagstaff’s care.”
“I’ve drained my savings and you know it.”
“You’ll find a way around it, apply for medical aid, I’ll help you. But you aren’t to set foot in this office. And you won’t be overseeing the King case. No contact.”
“You’re playing right into his hand. This is what he wants. I’m the only one who has uncovered what’s really going on over there.”
“And you struggle to differentiate between Roberta King and Doris,” he supplied then qualified the statement by adding, “it was a very long phone call I had with Hagstaff.”
“So I’m just supposed to leave? Keep my mouth shut and return to the Brain Injury Center, what? Indefinitely?”
“I’ve arranged for your leave not to exceed two months-”
“Two months? That’s a death sentence-”
“After which point you’ll be reinstated, like I said, Gertrude, without prejudice. It won’t tarnish your record or history with the DCYF and that’s the best I can do.”
It wasn’t even an uphill battle. It was a losing one and she’d already lost.
“I’ll be at your cabin in a half hour to collect Roberta.”
“To drive her to the King’s?” She snorted appalled that this was his answer to the horrors unfolding in the King’s corner of the lake.
“Yes,” he stated matter-of-factly.
Resigned, she rose from her chair and tried not to gape at him.
“You’re-”
“Making a huge mistake?” he challenged. “What about you? What about your mistakes?”
When she got to her cubicle, Wendy was staring expectantly at her over the wall.
Without looking at her, Gertrude asked, “You knew?”
“Harry told me five minutes before you got in,” she explained to divert all blame. “I told him there’d be detrimental repercussions.”
What could she say to that? Wendy wasn’t at fault. And yet standing in the laser beam of her pity made the situation inescapably worse.
In a hollow tone, she said, “See you in two months,” then tore through the office with her laptop satchel in hand.
When she got out to her Audi, the sweltering summer sun was beating down on her so hard she thought she might faint. But the sun wasn't causing the feeling. She’d just suffered the most humiliating moment of her entire career in social work and it was making her dizzy.
Roberta was wrapped around Quinton like a barnacle when Gertrude stepped through the cabin door. Nestled on the couch, her long legs twining around the boy’s waist as he lay splayed over her, she made no attempt to correct the scandalous pose for Gertrude’s sake, though Quinton lifted to his knees with a healthy degree of shame.
“You’re back from work?” she asked, angling her head on the armrest and smoothing her tee shirt down her stomach with no sense of urgency to cover up.
“Bad news,” she began. She’d like to have a shred of tact, but riding the sting of having been stripped of her position, Gertrude knew that tact was well beyond her capabilities. “I lost temporary custody. You’re going back to your mother’s.”
“Fucking what?” She bolted upright then, while Quinton scrambled to grasp the magnitude, shifting his mousy face from Roberta to her and back, she advanced on Gertrude with the stealth of a jungle cat. “I can’t go back there. I don’t want to! What the fuck is going on? How did this happen?” But before Gertrude could delve into the harrowing nuts and bolts of her alleged psychosis, Roberta came up with her own plan. “We’ll just say I’m staying here like you’re my friend or something, right? Won’t that work? Can’t we get away with it?”
“I’m afraid you have to pack your things.”
“You mean Doris’ things,” she pointed out, her snide tone slicing through what calm Gertrude had managed. “This is your fault, isn’t it? You let on that you’re fucking losing it.”
Before she could lunge at Gertrude and do God only knew what, Quinton pressed his palms into her shoulders, stopping her, and surprisingly, Roberta didn’t shove him off, but wrapped him close into a tight hug, clinging on as if for dear life.
“You’re getting back at me!” She yelled from the hovel of Quinton’s shoulder, though she had to crouch to hide there. “Because that douche Jake got arrested, this is how you’re getting back at me?”
“I’m not getting back at you, Roberta. This is killing me. I had nothing to do with this decision and I’ll be fighting it, I promise you.”
“You’ve got no fight.” Jerking from Quinton’s grasp, she tore into the bedroom where the sounds of clattering ensued. It wasn’t long before she returned, her belongings heaped in a mesh laundry bag slung over her shoulder like a hobo, and looked Gertrude dead in the eye. “They’re going to kill me. You know that right? It’ll be on your head.”
“Roberta-” Rushing to her, forcing her to keep eye contact though the embrace made Roberta cringe and glance away, Gertrude demanded, “Tell me. Tell me everything now. Before they come. Please. Give me something. Anything. And I’ll get you out of there.”
“Give you what? Hard proof? They’ll just dance their way around it. Semen stained underwear? That’s perverted Roberta. Piss stained undershirts? That’s how she likes it. There’s nothing that hasn’t been said about me. Found her blood? We hear she’s into that too. What hard proof do you think will rise above that? Don’t you know what people think of me?”
“I know there’s an underground... a fucking chamber, a room? Where the rituals take place. I know they’ve killed. I believe you.”
“So what?” Her gaze flattened and her eyes went dead.
Her point, horrific and insurmountable, was glaring. The Kings, the cult, their tightknit organization would have an explanation for all of it.
“What if we bait them?” she asked desperately. “What if you could record some proof?”
“And hide the camera where, in my ass? They’d find it.”
There came a knock at the front door, and Roberta started off, resigned to an inescapable fate.
Watching her, every inch of Gertrude felt like it was vibrating with dread, but she trailed after and when Roberta reached the door, she touched her shoulder. Roberta turned, but didn’t give her a chance to express her heartbreak.
“I’m glad she’s dead.”
The words sliced through her heart and Gertrude studied her face, memorizing its every angle, the sharp curves of her cheeks, the stark line of her jaw, her muddy eyes that seemed to hold a world of sorrow, and whispered, “Why are you glad she’s dead?”
“Because it means they can't get to her.”
Harry knocked on the door again and when Gertrude opened it, he met her gaze with a crestfallen smirk. Roberta padded out towards his Chrysler. No words were exchanged during the long moment they looked at one other—Harry regretful, Gertrude ill with premonitions of an inevitable murder on the horizon—neither brave or bold or cruel enough to press their argument further than it had gone in his office.
When finally Harry started for his car, Roberta having thrown herself into the backseat and pressed her bare feet against the glass, she eased the door shut but for a crack and stared out into the blazing morning until the Chrysler disappeared beyond the trees.
“I can keep an eye on her.”
Turning she found Quinton at the mouth of the foyer. His brow knit nervously togethe
r, as his hollow gaze scanned the hardwood floors as if in deep thought.
“I live up the street. Charlie and Zhana tolerate me. She won’t die.” He spoke as though he hoped to convince himself first and foremost, and if Gertrude concurred, it would only be a bonus.
She realized she’d never spent a minute alone with him, never had him one-on-one, and never had the opportunity to probe him for what he might know about the dark family on the west side of the lake.
“She clings to you.”
Nodding and to further her point, he said, “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Roberta.”
“Did you feel the same way about Maude?”
A breathy snort escaped his nose as he said, “Roberta couldn’t stand her.”
“Why not?”
His mouth twisted, perhaps second-guessing his statement. “Sometimes I read memoirs written by war veterans,” he said thoughtfully. “And they say how the things they survived were nothing compared to knowing what their comrades had to go through. Like it's knowing they couldn’t stop their friends’ torture or death that eats them alive, even years after returning home. I think that’s how Roberta felt about Maude. She knew the torture was coming. Everything she’d suffered and survived would soon hit Maude, and knowing that, knowing she couldn’t stop it or save her, made her hate her.”
“What are you telling me?”
The boy fell silent as though she was misunderstanding him.
“I need to get going.”
Like second nature and as though it wasn’t at all strange, he rounded through the living room and climbed out the open window, his own personal entrance ever since Roberta had moved in. And once he collected his bicycle, he rode off into the hot day.
When she heard a vehicle growling up her driveway, Harry came to mind. Had he returned to apologize? Or maybe haul her off into Dr. Hagstaff’s care himself like the Gestapo apprehending a traitor?
Wasting no time to level him with curses and insults, she threw the door open and stomped across the deck, but stilled at the sight of a Dodge Ram pickup idling in her driveway.
Jake stepped out, rounding the hood and approaching her with a nervous glint in his eyes.
But seeing him, registering his look of worry, called to mind she didn't even know who he was—a member of the cult or the man she thought she'd gotten to know.
“They released me,” he said, his voice wind over reeds.
“I can see that.”
“Can we talk?”
She closed the door behind her, drawing a boundary on where she would permit him—outside and not into her heart.
“I’m out on bail,” he started.
“So you were arrested? The charges are sticking?”
“For the time being. I have a good attorney.”
“What makes you think he’ll be any better than Mike Waters’? Jimmy Dalton’s? Or even Wanda Trentwell’s?”
“I didn’t do it,” he said sharply. “Do you believe me?”
She hesitated to answer him directly, but asked, “What are they holding you on? What have they got?”
“Gerty,” he said, stepping so near her that her defenses were at risk of crumbling. “I want what we started to have a chance.”
“Don’t do that, please.”
“No, I have to. I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen. You’ve been on my mind since I first met you and I didn’t forget about you when you were in the hospital. I never stopped wondering about you and praying for you.”
She wanted to believe it sounded cheap, but Jake seemed more than sincere. He seemed tormented.
“I just need to know you believe me and that you’re on my side.”
“It boils down to sides?”
He breathed a cool exhale.
“It’s not good.” Eyes widening and their cornflower blue hue waning dark as though he couldn’t believe the week he’d just come out of, he said, “Roberta came to my house. She took her clothes off. Someone took pictures.”
“I heard.”
“Nothing happened and what did certainly wasn’t provoked by me, but it looks like I roughed her up. Look,” he exclaimed when she recoiled into the front door with her back to him. “You matter to me. I don’t know how else to say it. I’ve been framed and I need you to believe me. I need it, Gerty.”
Whipping around, she hit him hard with all she’d learned. “I spoke with Wanda. Yeah, that’s right. So forgive me if I feel like a lot of what you’re saying is familiar. I’m not exactly going to sign up for being institutionalized as a drawback of getting involved with you.”
“Wanda, all that, shouldn't have happened.”
“What did happen?” she challenged and he immediately sighed in defeat, shoulders rolling forward and gaze falling. "You were working with Peter? You were in that cult?"
"Jesus Christ! No! Is that what you think?"
"That's what she thinks."
"No, no, no," he paced away, plowing his fingers through his hair as though he were coming undone, then he stopped short in front of her. "I've been suspecting the cult for awhile now. I had a hunch about Wanda getting involved with Peter so I got close to her. And yes, she was institutionalized. It was an awful miscalculation,” he admitted with remorse then straightened, regaining a firm tone. “She accepted drugs for disposing of bodies-"
"He was blackmailing her-"
"Fine. She was still doing it. She got a good deal at Lakes Region Mental Health. She could’ve gone to Federal.”
“So you didn’t have a hand in getting her locked up?”
“I didn't know she'd get locked up, I was only trying to get information about the cult. I wasn't in the cult."
"I believe you," she said, but immediately stopped him when he looked relieved. "But you used Wanda. I'm not going to let you use me, too."
"I'm not using you. Please, Gerty, you know I'm not using you."
She searched his eyes, but said nothing, as a ray of hope took hold.
"I was set up. These charges are serious. We’re up against something monstrous. I can’t fight this if I don’t have you.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Then I don’t want to.”
Before she could say another word against him, Jake caught her face gently between his hands and kissed her. It was her undoing, her fingers fumbling for the doorknob, both of them spilling across the threshold, clamoring towards the bedroom, stripping clothing as they went, her beret falling as soundlessly as his shirt, hers next, as he tore at her jeans, the button coming undone, the zipper lowering between his fingers.
A quiet voice in the back of her mind screamed this was a bad idea, but she ignored it, as they fell to her bed, stripped of everything but her panties, his boxers, so much skin and so little time, urgency propelling them into the height of sex with no pretense.
And it felt so good.
Merging with him as he thrust hungrily inside of her; her fingers plowing through his dark hair, her hands clamping his biceps though she couldn’t recall grabbing them, his arms hooked under her shoulders in perfect alignment, she gazed up at him with round, tearing eyes, committing each moment to memory so she'd never forget.
“How do you want it?” he whispered into her ear.
Breathlessly, she managed to say, “This. Perfect. You’re perfect.”
In the afterglow, Jake cradling her, Gertrude drifting into warm sleep, she heard faint buzzing coming from the nightstand where she’d set her cell phone.
“Hmm?” he groaned, as she lifted, twisting to reach it.
“Someone’s calling,” she said with a raspy voice that surprised her.
The LCD flashed a number she didn’t recognize except for its 603 area code, but she swiped the screen, answering.
“This is Ed Cohn,” he said after she confirmed her name. “I have the test results if now is a good time.”
“Yes, yes of course.” Shifting up so that she was resting against the headboard, prompted Jake to do the same.
He trained his attention on her and the baritone voice belting through the receiver.
“In terms of the radon levels, there were none that I could detect in Maude King,” he began, speaking clinically. “However, Doris Inman had high levels. But that’s not why I’m calling.” After pausing to shuffle paperwork, he continued. “I found a rash on Doris’ back. I thought to retest her blood and found a complex collection of enzymes.”
“Meaning what?” Jake asked for the both of them.
“Well, the rash appeared to be a hemoglobin, a symptom of hemolysis.”
“Meaning what exactly?” Gertrude demanded impatiently.
“Meaning she’d been bitten, several times in fact, by a venomous spider. Now, I pulled up Roberta King’s medical file, as well as Zhana King’s and they were both treated on several occasions for spider bites to neutralize the toxicity.”
Her heart rate stuttered into a clipped beat. The doctor’s visits; Doris had gone again and again. She’d received shot after shot. Had those treatments also been for spider bites? But though she fought to convince herself those visits could’ve been innocent, she was blinded with the glaring possibility that Doris had been down in the King’s underground chamber.
“Spiders are everywhere, Ed,” said Jake.
“There are too many correlations to brush over this,” he countered. “The bites, the uranium levels in Inman’s lung tissue,” he went on, “were staggering, as though she’d breathed toxic air in the months or days leading up to her death.”
Impossible. Doris had been living with Gertrude, and yet she asked, “Could this type of venom cause hair loss? Could an infestation of spiders kill a crop of plants?”
It sounded like Ed was reading through paperwork and mumbling to himself. Then he said, “Hair loss could be a symptom. Regarding the crop, it would depend on the specific plant and the extent of the infestation.” He waited for her response, but when it didn’t come, he asked, “Are you there?”
“Yes, yes, I’m listening.”
“Interestingly, I found DNA on Inman that matched one of the soiled pairs of underpants.”
She was too afraid to ask, but Jake tipped the phone to his ear and asked for her.
“Yeah, what DNA?”
