Liberty or Death (25 page)

"I suppose you can't just tell me about it?"

"Look," she said, and her usually cheerful voice was grim, "you've been dumping on me tonight because I'm such a wimp. And I know you were thinking the same thing earlier, after those guys in the dining room did... did whatever they did. Well, before you go around accusing people of being cowards, you ought to know what you're talking about. You can't know unless you see this."

Okay
, I thought.
I asked for it, I had to face the music.
Except I already knew I wasn't going to like the tune they were playing. But it was my duty to go and see what she wanted to show me, and I was a slave of duty. I reached for the handle and opened the door, ignoring the protests from my weary feet as they hit the ground. "Just tell me this," I said, not knowing why I thought it might help to know. "Is it bad?"

"It'll be the worst thing you've ever seen."

Oh, God. My stomach lurched like I was on a roller-coaster. I had seen some pretty awful things. I longed for some nice cool air—cool air makes me feel better when I'm queasy—but the night was like a steambath. A steambath with air still as death and void of any sounds except the wild wail of passionate insects, a shrill, high-pitched sound like mourners keening. I snapped on the flashlight and illuminated the rough path across the weedy lot to the trailer, following Kalyn up the steps to the door.

As she reached for the handle, I said, "Wait. Someday the police are going to be coming here. You don't want to leave your fingerprints."

"You watch too much TV," she said. "I already left 'em when I came here looking for Mindy."

"She lived with Paulette? They were friends?"

"Roommates," she corrected. "Mindy needed a place to stay, Paulette had a spare room, and needed the money."

"Mindy could have lived at the restaurant."

"Like you? And have Theresa watching her comings and goings? Theresa and everybody else in town? Never able to get away from the job? Mindy was too smart for that." Kalyn sighed. "Sorry. You didn't know what you were getting into. Didn't know anybody. But Mindy did."

She grabbed the handle and opened the door, and a wave of hot, stale, foul-smelling air rushed past us and escaped into the night. I gagged and put my hand over my mouth, stalled in my tracks, unwilling to go any farther.

"Come on," she said. "You've come this far. It's no worse inside... the smell, I mean."

She stepped into the room, reached over to the wall beside the door, and flicked a switch. A bare overhead bulb came on. We were standing in what must once have been a living room. At least, the chunks of demolished furniture looked like pieces of a sofa and chairs, cut into chunks with fluffy bits of stuffing protruding. The squashed lampshade was still recognizable as a lampshade. There were deep gashes in the walls. The curtains were shredded. There wasn't a thing in the room, other than the lightbulb, that hadn't been destroyed.

Kalyn looked around as if surprised to see it again, and said in an unsteady voice, "Chain saw, I think. That's..." Her voice failed. She swallowed, cleared her throat, and tried again. "That's what I think..." She pointed a shaky hand toward the kitchen, "Come this way."

There are days when I regret having inherited my mother's powerful will and self-discipline. Any sensible person would have turned at that point and fled. So far, all I'd had to face was the destruction of things. I knew I was heading for worse. But I pushed myself forward, up two steps, past a flattened table and smashed chair, into the kitchen. The room looked like it had been savaged by a madman.

Cupboard doors were shattered, hanging in splinters from their hinges. Glass jars and cans and cereal boxes were smashed, their contents a Jackson Pollock smear that spilled down the shelves, onto the counters, and onto the floor. Cheerios mingled with soup and spaghetti sauce and jam. Countertops had been gouged with what must have been an ax. The stovetop had deep dents, the glass in the oven door was smashed, the refrigerator stood open, hanging by one hinge, the shelves inside collapsed. Everywhere there wasn't food, there were streaks and splashes of reddish brown and blackish red. Clear handprints. Smudged handprints. Handprints vanishing in streaks down the wall. Large pools of dried blood on the floor.

Signs that something terrible had happened here. My eyes, like a camera recording this for posterity, swiveled around the room, taking it in. I tried breathing through my mouth, but that made me feel sicker. There was so much blood. Blood everywhere. Splatters of blood on the ceiling and at the tops of the walls, flung there as the blade rose and fell. Rose and fell. Deep cut-marks in the floor. Huge patches and smears of blood on the walls, floor, and counter as the victim staggered and fell, staggered and fell. And fell and was hacked to pieces.

"Paulette?" I gasped, my voice strangled. I turned and headed for the door, knowing I was going to be sick. Hoping I could make it. Kalyn started after me, ended up ahead of me, dashing out the door, down the steps, and stopping there, retching, not one whit less ill for having seen it before. I pushed past her, found my own clear spot, and bent, sick until nothing more could come up.

I staggered back to the car, the taste nasty in my mouth, and fumbled around until I found a water bottle. The contents were hot but I didn't care. I rinsed my mouth, drank deeply, and handed it to Kalyn. When she finally handed it back, her eyes still tearing and her face ghastly white, I repeated my question, "Paulette?"

She nodded.

"How do you know?"

"Mindy..." She gulped and reached for the bottle in my hand. "Mindy heard them coming, so she ran out the back door and hid under the trailer. They didn't even bother to look for her. They just did what they'd come for. Took care of Paulette and left. The whole time, Mindy was hiding under the trailer, scared out of her mind, listening to the whole thing."

"A lot of people know about this?"

She nodded. "Now you understand why we're scared?"

I did and I didn't. Yes, it was terrifying. It was hard to think of an uglier death than someone coming after you with an ax and a chain saw. But if people put their heads down the first time it happened, instead of calling in the police, then the bullies knew it was working. Knew intimidation and violence worked. Knew they could get away with it. The horror of it threatened to overwhelm me. I had to keep talking, keep doing. Not let my mind skip to what people like this might do to Andre.

"When I saw it before..." Her voice had a strangled quality, "...last time, when I came looking for Mindy, she was... Paulette was... that is, what was left of her was still there."

I couldn't imagine it. When I spoke again, my own voice was almost as shaky as hers. "You know where Mindy is now?" She nodded. "Does she know who did it?"

"Some of them."

"Where is she?"

She shook her head vehemently. "That's something I'm not telling you. You or anyone else. And don't you dare say anything about it, either. Nobody knows I know and I plan to keep it that way."

"Why Paulette?"

"I told you. Because she was the dumbest person in the history of the world."

"Yeah. You said. But what did she do to deserve this?" It was a dumb question, putting me right in the Paulette category. No one could ever do anything bad enough to deserve what had happened in there. Never.

Her voice was almost a whisper. "She called the cops."

"The cops? You mean, that trooper who was shot?" My mind reviewed what I knew about that. Not much. Gary Pelletier had gotten an anonymous call from a woman who said she had some information about a planned militia raid on a national guard facility. He'd responded, leaving no phone number, address, or other information behind other than that he was going up to Merchantville to check out a tip. Maybe he'd had no other information. Pelletier had turned up a few days later, way across the state, in a blueberry field in Washington County. He'd been shot nine times at close range.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't know anything about that."

That wasn't true. What was true was that her bravado was wearing off. The enormity of what she knew was getting to her. And she was realizing that, in an effort to make a point, maybe she'd just told a stranger way too much. I could have made an effort to bring her back, regain her confidence, coax more information out of her, but it would have taken a lot of work and a lot of time. And it was late. Incredibly late. I'd be lucky to drop her off and still be on time for my meeting with Jack. If I didn't show, who knew what he'd do? Comb the place, looking for me? Blowing my cover, just when I had my nose under the tent? I couldn't risk it. Besides, I had a lot to tell him.

"We'd better get going," I said. "Seems like morning comes earlier every day. You working tomorrow?"

"Not me," she said. "I told Theresa I needed a day off. Cathy's coming in."

"What's up with Cathy, anyway? What does she do when she's not working?"

"Beats me," Kalyn said. "She's got the two kids, but half the time, they're with sitters. I've never been able to get anywhere with her. We been working together the better part of two years, and she still acts like I'm the help and she's the boss's daughter. Kind of burns my ass, if you know what I mean. Theresa's not like that. But Cathy's always been stuck-up. Thinks she's too good for Clyde when he's obviously eating his heart out."

I got in the car, slammed the door, and started the engine. "I don't get Clyde, either. He's too nice to be one of them."

"I know," she said. "But he is. And much as I like him, I don't guess you can trust any of them, no matter how nice they act. You know? Look..." Now that she'd shown me this, she was having second thoughts. I didn't blame her. Who knew whom you could trust? "Look, you can't tell anyone about this. About anything that's happened tonight. I lied about people knowing. They know something's happened, but they don't know all this. Most people don't... didn't know where Paulette lived. You promise?"

I promised, hating to lie to her, knowing that I would have to tell Jack. I dropped her at her house, exercising amazing self-control, stomping down firmly on my almost uncontrollable desire to grab her and shake her until she told me everything she knew. Who had killed Paulette, if Mindy had told her that, plus where it was that Mindy herself could be found. Because whoever killed Paulette had almost certainly killed Pelletier. And probably knew where Andre was. But I did control it. Because lack of impulse control, and yielding to the urge to bully smaller, weaker creatures, was what made them what they were. And that was something I didn't want to become, no matter how desperate I was. If I was patient, she'd tell me more. She obviously hated living with it and was dying to tell. It was only a matter of time.

The second she was out the door, I gunned the engine and backed out of her yard, using speed and impatience as surrogates for curiosity and frustration. I drove like the proverbial bat out of hell until I reached the outskirts of town, then I slowed way down. The last thing I wanted to do was attract attention to myself. Especially given the kind of attention that was dished out around here. I drove down the main street with all the alacrity of a doddering grandmother. Once I reached the end of the settled area, I checked my rearview mirror. I was all alone. I put my foot down and blasted off into the night.

 

 

 

Chapter 17

 

What Kalyn had shown me had broken down the barrier I kept between my day-to-day existence and all the awful what-ifs. What if Andre never came home? What if I had to raise our child alone? How would I even know what to call it, when he'd picked out the names? I'd survive, just as I had when my husband David died. But it would be a hollow, workaholic existence and I never wanted to go there again. A wave of despair washed over me, tears blurring my eyes until I couldn't see the road. I felt that giant hand clenching my heart. But what could I do except soldier on, as I imagined he was doing? I had to believe, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that this would end well and Andre would come home. I dashed away my tears and focused on the now—what I would say and do when I met Jack.

Because living in Merchantville was enough to make anyone paranoid and because I'd been trained in the Andre Lemieux school of preparation, before my first meeting with Norah Kavanaugh, I had checked out alternative routes. Andre loved to make me read maps. He actually found it amusing and delightful to be involved with a woman who was both decorative and competent, though it seemed to me he spent a lot of his time making me more competent. Sometimes I worried that he'd get bored with me when there wasn't anything left to teach. But maybe by then he'd be busy teaching the kids to read maps and navigate overland.

I was driving down the road with the window down and the night air blowing in my face. At this speed, it actually felt cool. I had the radio on. No tape player, but at least this thing had a radio. Music was blaring in my ears. Bob Seeger was singing "Roll Me Away." Driving music. Songs for summer nights. I stomped down on the accelerator and felt, for a brief time, like any other young woman in a powerful car who liked to drive too fast on warm nights. The good feeling lasted only as long as the song and as long as it took me to realize that there was a car behind me. A car following awfully closely, considering how fast I was going.