The Code of the Hills (25 page)

She backpedaled to avoid a fuss. “I thought you weren't coming.”

“I went to a shitload of trouble to get here tonight.” She could see his anger rising. “I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

He was so keyed up, he was scaring her. “Knew what?” she asked. She was a little muddled, but still, he wasn't making any sense.

He snatched the cup from her hand and flung it into the yard. “I knew I needed to check up on you tonight.”

Checking up on me, she thought, aghast. She nearly spat as she exclaimed, “What is your fucking problem?”

“You're drunk again. Your tongue is purple. And you're smoking, for Christ's sake. If I don't watch you like a hawk, you'll act out. You are a full-­time fucking job.”

His audacity infuriated her. She cocked her head and said, “I ain't your job, bitch.”

He grasped her upper arm and jerked her to a stand. “We're out of here,” he said, pulling her down the sidewalk.

Cursing, Elsie twisted away from him to escape his grip, but she couldn't free herself. He had dragged her most of the way to the street when Bree came tearing out of the house. She ran up to Noah and grabbed him by the collar of his shirt. “Let her go or I swear I'll kick your ass.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

Elsie quit struggling with Noah; she needed to put a stop to the madness. “Let's all settle down,” she said.

But Bree took her by the hand, trying to pull her back toward the house. “Come on back inside,” she said.

“She's going home,” Noah barked. “She's drunk. You both are.”

Bree faced him down with fury. “You get off my property before I call the cops. You're not welcome here.”

“Call the cops?” he jeered. “You're the one who's in for trouble. Drunk and disorderly. I could report a noise complaint right now and shut your shitty little party down.”

“Stop it. Stop,” Elsie entreated him. She was desperate to defuse the situation. She would let him take her home, to get him out of there. The night was ruined for her anyway. “I'll go on; I'm ready, anyhow. Just let me grab my purse. It's there on the front steps.” She hurried back to the porch and snatched up her purse, horrified to see that Stacie and her friend Scott had witnessed the whole episode.

“Everything okay?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, fine,” Elsie said, turning her back to them. She rushed back to the pair on the street, giving Bree a hug as she told her good-­night.

But Bree kept her eye trained on Noah. “I've got your number,” she said.

Without waiting for Noah to lead the way, Elsie started toward his car. “Let's head out,” she said over her shoulder.

As they drove away, she slid low in the seat, angry and humiliated. They sat without speaking for several blocks, until Noah broke the silence.

“Want to go to my place?”

Elsie looked at him with incredulity; she knew what the invitation implied. He must be crazy to think she would be willing to have sex with him after he'd manhandled her.

But she swallowed back a sharp reply and said, “Take me to my parents' house. I'm staying with them this weekend.”

He exhaled an injured breath. “So after I went to all that trouble to get off tonight, I'm just supposed to chauffeur you to your folks' house.”

Looking out the car window, she nodded. “Yeah. That's what you're going to do.”

Staring through the windshield, he clutched the steering wheel convulsively, pressing his fingers into the vinyl cover. “I'd think you'd be ashamed to let them see you like this. I would never let my folks see me drinking. Never,” he repeated with conviction.

Wearily, Elsie closed her eyes, rubbing her eyelids so hard she saw colors. She wished him a million miles away. “Well, I suppose that's because of your moral superiority.”

They came to a four-­way stop and he hit the brakes so hard that her body jerked against the seat belt. He turned to her and said, “You got a smart mouth. You know it?”

When she didn't respond, he said, “Answer me when I'm talking to you. How come you've got such a goddamn smart mouth?”

Weary of his tirade, she snapped, “It comes with the smart brain.”

He threw the car in park. Reaching over, he grasped her around the neck with one hand. With the other, he swung back and slapped her hard across the mouth.

She covered her mouth in a reflexive gesture as blood spurted through her fingers. The blow was so vicious, her front teeth cut into the soft tissue inside of her lip.

He released her neck, shaking his head at the sight of the blood dripping down her hand and onto her arm. “That's your own fault. You've been pushing me all week. That smart mouth was bound to get you in trouble.”

Reeling from pain and shock, she stared at him as he put the car back in Drive. Glancing at her again, he said, “You can't go to your parents' house looking like that. I'm taking you to my place.”

Like hell you will, she thought, unbuckling the seat belt with her bloody hands. She opened the door and shot out of the car. She stumbled as her feet met the pavement, then righted herself and ran blindly down the street into a residential neighborhood.

Elsie could hear him curse and a car door slam behind her. She knew he could outrun her, so she dodged into an unfenced yard where the house was still lit up and ­people inside were awake. Taking refuge in the bushes beside a patio door, she saw a ­couple watching television in the family room. She pulled out her phone, prepared to call for help, and decided that if he came into the yard after her, she would pound on the glass door and beg for assistance.

Her heart pounding like a kettle drum, she heard Noah call her name in the distance, but as the seconds slowly passed, the sound grew fainter, then stopped altogether. Maybe he gave up, she thought. Maybe got himself under control. He surely wouldn't want to have a bloody confrontation with his girlfriend in the public eye.

As she huddled in the bushes, pressed against the aluminum siding of some stranger's house, she pressed her shirt against her bleeding mouth and wept, wondering how she could possibly have wound up in this position.

Chapter Thirty-­Three

E
ARLY THE NEXT
morning, Elsie awoke at her apartment with a start. Looking around, she was confused to see that she was sleeping on her living room couch, tangled in a quilt. When the memory of the prior night came to her, she lay back on the cushions with a shudder.

The night before, when she finally dared to emerge from the bushes, she'd been so distraught she hardly knew where to turn. Certainly her parents would rush to her aid, but she couldn't bring herself to make the call; she couldn't let her mother and father see her in that condition.

She wouldn't go back to Bree's house, either. If she did, everyone from the courthouse would see what had happened. So she stumbled to the street corner, called a cab, and then sat on the curb under the street light and waited, pressing her shirtsleeve against her mouth to stem the flow of blood. Shivering in misery, she wished she hadn't left her coat at Bree's house.

When the cab finally came and ferried her to her apartment, she trudged to the bathroom to check the damage in the mirror. She had shed so much blood, she was afraid her mouth would need stitches, and she could not contemplate a trip to the emergency room. Lifting her lip to examine the wound, she could see where her teeth cut into the inner flesh of her mouth. To her relief, the wound was not gaping.

No stitches. She didn't want to seek medical attention unless it was absolutely necessary. She didn't want to answer questions about how it happened.

So she spent the night curled into a corner of her sofa, nursing her wound with an ice bag and reliving the fight with Noah, involuntarily experiencing the blow in her mind over and over again, even when she shut her eyes.

On the sofa on Sunday morning, something nagged at the back of her mind. She tried to shrug it off and sleep but there was something she was supposed to remember, something she couldn't quite place. When recollection struck, her mental fog cleared instantly: she had promised to go to the Westside Apostolic Church for morning ser­vices, and Ashlock was picking her up. At her parents' house.

She vaulted off the couch and flew to her phone, digging it out of her purse in a flash.
Please please please pick up,
she prayed as his cell phone rang. When he answered, she exhaled with relief.

“Elsie?” he said.

“Hey, Ash, I'm so glad I caught you. I'm not at my folks; I'm home. At my apartment,” she added, to ensure that she was totally clear about her whereabouts.

“Are you okay? You sound funny.”

She did. Her fat lip made it difficult to enunciate. “Yeah, I'm fine. Well, actually,” she amended, “I'm not feeling so hot. I think I'm coming down with something. You ought to go on without me this morning.”

She fancied she could sense his disapproval through the telephone. “That's not the deal. You need to be there, so we can put this to rest. These ­people have done you wrong, and we need to put a stop to it. Together.”

In frustration, she groaned, “Ash, I'm not up to it.”

“You were up to it—­what? Twelve hours ago? So you've either got a case of cold feet or the cocktail flu. I'll pick you up in twenty minutes. 'Bye.” And he hung up.

Elsie wanted to howl. Treading into the bathroom, she surveyed herself in the mirror again. It was as bad as she feared. She turned on the faucet and went to work.

Though she painted her face with skill, there was no hiding her swollen mouth. Awaiting Ashlock on the cold steps outside her apartment building, she pulled her scarf over her head, hoping to hide her appearance when he picked her up. But as she slipped into the passenger seat, he eyed her with shock.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Nothing. I mean, I took a tumble. Again.” She tried to make a comical face but it hurt.

He looked away from her. Staring out the window, he said, “Who did it? Noah?”

She shook her head. “Ash, don't make a dramatic thing out of this. It was an accident, really.” Her sense of shame was profound. She could not bring herself to admit to anyone that she'd been assaulted, least of all Ashlock.

He sat in grim silence for a minute. “You need to report it.”

“Nothing to report,” she said adamantly.

Ashlock put the car in gear. “Son of a bitch,” he spat.

As he drove across town, neither of them spoke. When she ventured a glance his way, the fury in his countenance was almost frightening; his eyes were narrowed and the muscle in his jaw twitched repeatedly.

Turning away, she stared out the window. They had entered a neighborhood of aging strip centers serving residential blocks of ranch-­style houses. Most of the homes suffered neglect, with buckled exterior siding and crooked plastic miniblinds hanging askew inside the windows.

One such house had been converted to a church. A hand-­stenciled sign stood in the front yard, pronouncing it the Westside Apostolic Pentecostal Church. Next to the sign, a large cross was rooted in the yard. It was painted white except for three bright splashes of red, placed where large nails symbolized the crucifixion.

“That's just creepy,” Elsie observed, taking in the bloody cross.

Ashlock didn't acknowledge the comment. Without looking at her, he said, “I'm going to kick his ass.”

Facing him with a jerk of the head, she almost repeated her denial of Noah's involvement. Thinking better of it, she asked, “Who? Martin Webster or the preacher?”

Ashlock put the car in Park and said, “Well, we're here.” He looked out the windshield for a long moment, then shook his head. “Let's get in there and turn these folks around. Ready?”

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “Let's beard the lion in his den.”

They entered a converted garage that served as the church sanctuary. With only a few portable area heaters evident, the temperature inside was frigid. Congregants sat on the four rows of folding chairs set on the concrete floor, with a center aisle dividing them into two sections. Ashlock led Elsie to two empty seats in the back.

Settling in her chair, she felt the shock that her arrival created and grew unnerved as the congregants turned to stare. Her presence, especially as she was sporting a battered face, provoked gawking and whispering. Martin Webster and the Earthly Fathers were present, sitting front and center. Pointing at Elsie and Ashlock, a ­couple of men got up to consult with Webster. She recognized a man who came in carrying a stack of collection plates as the white-­haired man who had called her Jezebel, wearing a leather bolo tie with a rodeo clasp. Upon closer inspection, she saw that he was younger than she had originally thought, maybe in his late forties; the shock of white hair was deceptive. And he was big as a mountain, at least as tall as Noah Strong. She looked around for the young protester who had called her a dirty leg slut, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Fortunately, the preacher appeared quickly. He walked up to Ashlock and offered his hand. “I'll take a shot and guess you're an Ashlock,” the pastor said.

“Yessir, pastor.”

“You and your cousin Frank look enough alike to be brothers.”

“Oh, don't be telling him that. He'll say it's an insult.”

The pastor laughed, a booming sound that rang in the confined space. Martin Webster approached, grasped the preacher's arm and began to speak. The preacher silenced him with a look. Rebuffed, Martin returned to the front row.

“We're ready to begin the ser­vice. Welcome to the house of the Lord,” the preacher said, and proceeded down the aisle.

Men with pressed shirtsleeves passed out worn maroon hymnbooks as the preacher lifted a wooden lectern and set it on a folding table. The chairs and table made up the only furnishings in the makeshift church, apart from a large galvanized metal tub, the kind that farm supply stores sold for watering cattle. Elsie knew without being told that it was used as a baptistery. She craned her neck to see whether it held any water but couldn't tell. A terrible thought intruded; it occurred to her that the tub was deep enough to drown her. Ashlock won't let it happen, she thought, and scooted her chair a little closer to his.

The congregation stood as a woman pushed a button on a small CD player located next to the lectern, then they all began to sing “Onward Chris­tian Soldiers” in harmony with the recorded music. When the last chorus was sung, the pastor pushed the Stop button on the CD player and launched into an exhortation, inviting the Spirit to enter.

“But first,” the preacher said, “let us begin by embracing the stranger in our midst. Are there any visitors present today?”

Elsie and Ashlock looked at one another. Ashlock paused for a beat, then raised a hand.

“Welcome, brother,” the preacher said heartily. “Introduce yourself.”

“I'm Bob,” Ashlock began, but the preacher interrupted him, encouraging him to stand. Ashlock set his hymnbook on the floor and stood. “My name is Bob Ashlock, and I'm a visitor here. I brought a friend of mine with me.” Elsie gave a tentative wave from her seat. Ashlock tugged on her arm and she stood beside him. “Her name is Elsie. Elsie Arnold.”

An angry buzz sounded in the garage, but the pastor's voice projected over it. “Welcome to you; it's a privilege to welcome all children of God into the Lord's house. Be sure to stop in the kitchen for coffee and refreshments after the ser­vice. Now, do we have any prayer requests?”

As petitions were offered on behalf of the sick and the infirm, Elsie relaxed a little. Maybe she wouldn't be tarred and feathered by the angry mob. She thanked her stars for the benevolent protection of the preacher. When other heads bowed in prayer, she didn't have to fake a prayerful attitude. She offered up a fervent plea:
Dear God, please let us get out of here alive.
After a moment's thought, she added,
And please let Kris Taney be convicted and sentenced to the maximum penalty under law.
And don't let his conviction be overturned on appeal.
There, she thought with satisfaction. Good prayer.

A second hymn was sung, invoking hand clapping and arm waving from the congregation. Elsie tried not to stare as a man took to the aisle and engaged in an uneven jig, stomping and dancing to a rhythm all his own. Others in the church were nonplussed, and the preacher applauded him, announcing that while sinners danced in nightclubs and bars, Chris­tians danced for joy in the house of the Lord.

A long sermon followed, in which the pastor exhorted his flock to avoid specific temptations: the evils of strong drink and lusts of the flesh. Then he began telling them to resist conformity to the secular world, but soon zeroed in on the particular sin he wanted to focus on: violation of the Seventh Commandment. He roundly condemned adultery and those who engaged in it; even the contemplation, he reminded them, was sin. The preacher built momentum as he called for their consensus.

“Did David sin when he lay with Bathsheba?”

“Yes he did,” a man in the first row shouted, and arms lifted in agreement.

“Did Amnon sin when he lay with his sister Tamar?”

“Yes!” rang out the voices in the church.

The pastor's face was red and sweat dripped from his brow as he called out, “Did Noah sin when he lay with his daughters?”

“Yes!”

The pastor leaned over the lectern and roared, “Did that man, Taney—­the one at the county jail—­sin when he lay with
his
daughters?”

One or two voices said “Yes,” but the response was patchy; ­people looked about in confusion.

Martin Webster raised his hand. “Pastor, I'd like to speak to that, if you don't mind.”

“Speak to that?” Pastor Tom's sweat made a wet ring around the collar of his shirt. “Speak to
what
? Are you arguing with the book of Genesis? Second Samuel? The Seventh Commandment? Will you speak to whether a man laying with his daughter is a sin and an abomination?”

“Pastor, the government, the prosecutor, they trump up charges, they make up lies about ­people, to take their kids away. Like in Texas,” he added feebly.

“You mean those Texas Mormons?”

“Well, Fundamentalist LDS, yes, pastor.”

“Is this Taney a Mormon?”

“No. A Mormon? Land, no.”

“Well, what is he?”

Webster's voice was defensive as he said, “He's my kin. And the head of his household.”

Clearing his throat, the preacher pointed at Webster. “Cut that Taney away like a cancer. I'll tell you what Taney is. He's worse than a pagan. He has sacrificed his little children on the altar of his own evil lust!”

The congregation recoiled as the preacher recited a litany of Taney's crimes. Elsie had to credit Pastor Tom for his thorough account. His blow-­by-­blow description of the crimes committed by Taney were more detailed than the police reports and media coverage, and more vivid than the courtroom testimony. One by one the congregation seemed to be swayed by the preacher's account; men shook their heads in disgust, while women covered their mouths with their hands. Only Martin Webster and a few other stalwarts remained unmoved, sitting very straight in their chairs, showing no sign of sympathy or remorse.

Ashlock stole a glance at Elsie and gave her the barest wink. She took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. A blissful feeling washed over her as she realized that her courtroom critics' corner had been dispelled.

After the benediction, Elsie desperately wanted to make a quick getaway, but Ashlock led her into the kitchen, where they were serving pink grapefruit juice and some hard gingersnap cookies. The men made pleasant conversation with Bob, but Elsie was generally ignored.

Crunching the cookie, she was surreptitiously seeking a trash can to dump the uneaten portion when a young woman approached. She leaned in close to Elsie and whispered, “Your dress is pretty.”

Surprised by the contact, Elsie surveyed the girl. She was a remarkably pretty woman of about twenty, with a scrubbed face, arched eyebrows, and a long braid of shiny brown hair. But when she smiled, she revealed prominent front teeth.