The Resurrection of Mary Mabel McTavish (26 page)

Mr. Skinner!

W
hen
Brewster left the camp, Mary Mabel expected to see him return with Miss Bentwhistle. Instead, a stranger loped out of the woods with a shotgun.

“Hi there, Sister,” the man said, slicing her bindings with a hunting knife.

“Where’s Papa?”

“Here and there.” He yanked her to her feet and hauled her over the hill to the railroad tracks. Moments earlier, she’d heard the blasts of a train whistle and a screeching of brakes that went on forever. Now she saw the end of a caboose, slid to a stop a half-mile away. Some men were running back, yelling.

“Keep moving,” said her rescuer. They ran through a patch of woods and came out on a side road. “Coast’s clear,” he said and raced her toward the limo. It was parked on the shoulder beside an empty police cruiser.

“Where are the officers?” she asked, bewildered.

“People should mind their own business,” he muttered. He shoved her into the passenger side and told her to keep her head down. Then he jump-started the car and they drove off.

Mary Mabel took it as a good sign that he hadn’t stuck her in the trunk. On the other hand, she was concerned that he might be connected to the ministry. “Thank you for rescuing me from Papa,” she said. “But if you’re planning to take me back to WKRN, forget it.”

“Don’t worry,” he smiled. “You won’t be going there ever again.”

She breathed easier.

They turned off the side road on to Mulholland Drive and headed into the Hollywood Hills. “By the way,” she asked, “who are you? Where are we going? And why are you helping me?”

“You’re quite the one for questions.”

“Yes, and I’d like some answers.”

He grinned. “You don’t recognize me?”

She struggled to place the face, lit in starts by the street lamps. She knew she’d seen him, somewhere, but it was more like he came from a dream. “Did we meet on tour?”

“Not exactly. Though I s’pose you could say I’ve followed your career.”

She froze. These were the eyes she’d felt staring at her from behind corners and on the other side of windows. The stranger who’d stalked her nightmares. The words fell from dry lips: “Kalamazoo. I was talking to my friend in the lobby. You were the tramp across the street.”

“I seen you other places, too,” he said. “In bed. Yeah. I liked watchin’ you in bed.”

“Let me out of this car. Now.”

He kept driving. “I got into your room, you know. Lots of times. Sat on your mattress. Smelled your nightie. Felt your sheets. I coulda had you any time I wanted. But I waited till I had your pa.”

Light fell on his big red ears. The penny dropped. “Mr. Skinner.”

He tipped his head. “You were prettier when you were little. Just as scared though. I like that in my girlies.”

They drove higher into the hills. The houses had disappeared. The lights, too. “Why didn’t you kill me at the camp?” she whispered.

“Accidents are cop magnets. I’d have had to be quick.” He sucked his teeth. “And I mean to skin you slow. Skinning’s an art. You’ll be alive for most of it.” The wind whistled past the car. “There’s a cabin off the road a piece. Won’t be nobody come by. We can have some fun before we get started. Eh, Sister?”

She tried to scream, but her throat locked.

“Cat got your tongue? I was hopin’ to cut it out. Screamin’ don’t sound human without a tongue. Sounds more like cows. Hey, there’s a thought. Body parts. I can pickle your organs and sell ’em to the ministry. I hear there’s a market for relics.”

“You’re the Devil incarnate.”

“Yup.”

There was only one way to escape.

Mary Mabel raised her knees and jammed her feet hard on the accelerator. The car revved forward. Skinner kicked at her legs. She kept them rigid.

Struggling for control, he held the wheel with his left hand, grabbed her hair with his right, and snapped her out of her seat. She twisted her head and bit into his wrist. He slammed her cheek on the dash. She sunk her teeth deeper.

Then she grabbed for the clutch. The gears shredded. The limo spun like a top. The rear swung into a guard rail. The trunk buckled. The lid popped open. The bodies of two police officers bounced onto the road as the limo careened forward.

She jammed the accelerator again. The limo veered onto gravel, swerved across the pavement, hit a second rail, missed a bend, and smashed headlong into a pile of rocks.

Skinner flew through the windshield. She didn’t see where he landed. She was too busy running in the opposite direction.

The
Cat’s Meow

S
lick
shook himself out and limped back to the car. Mary Mabel had vanished. He’d better do the same before anyone saw the wreck, not to mention the dead cops. He retrieved his shotgun and jerked his way to the guard rail.

The city spread out below, a pan of twinkling lights. Slick experienced a moment of vertigo and pain, then adrenaline took over. Descending the steep incline on a zig-zag, he skittered past brush and boulders, periodically hopping across the gaps in eroded ledges. Things were going well until he hit a patch of dry clay. It crumbled under his feet.

Suddenly, Slick found himself on his ass, tumbling straight down. A scrub tree on a narrow footpath stopped his fall. The trunk snapped. So did his back. His rifle flew out of his hands and clattered away. Silence.

Slick was relieved to be alive, until he realized he couldn’t feel anything below the waist. Still, no time for self pity. He had a hunter’s instinct. And that instinct told him he was being watched. By whom? Mary Mabel? McTavish’s friends? The cops? Passersby? All he knew for sure was that he was exposed.

A few yards away, the foot path widened into a small plateau covered in brush. Perfect camouflage. He dragged himself over and paused. He was still being watched.

Slick determined not to panic. He pulled himself another three yards. He tried to pull himself further, but encountered a peculiar resistance. It fact, it was more than resistance. He was being pulled backwards. Perplexed, Slick looked over his shoulder. He froze. A mountain lion had his knee in its mouth.

Slick would have screamed, but the cat leapt on his ribcage, driving the air from his lungs. It stretched itself luxuriously along his back, its front paws crimping his shoulders, its hind legs braced in the dirt on either side of his thighs. It nuzzled his neck. Licked its hot, wet tongue over his cheek and ears. Slick had the unsettling sensation the beast was aroused.
Dammit
, he thought,
I’m about to get buggered!

He wriggled onto his back. “Get yer goddamn paws off me!” he wheezed and landed an uppercut to the lion’s chops.

The lion was delighted to find its toy so playful. It reared up and gave Slick a love tap across the stomach.
That
, Slick could feel. He scrabbled backwards fifteen feet on his elbows. The cat didn’t move. Slick was flushed with pride. He’d shown the critter who was boss. He confidently retreated another five feet. And another five feet.

It was then that he noticed a peculiar grey rope glistening in the moonlight. The rope ran in a straight line between himself and the lion. In horror, Slick understood why the cat wasn’t moving. Its front paws were firmly planted on the end of his large intestine. As he’d retreated, his insides had been unravelling. The lion sucked them back like a string of spaghetti.

As the beast eyed his liver, Slick sighed. It was all over but the dung beetles.

Truth
and
Consequences

T
he
discovery of a second trashed limo belonging to the Baroness of Bentwhistle set off a sensation. The fingerprints in the trunk matched the bodies of the dead cops on Mulholland Drive; the same cops who were missing from the cruiser by the site where the Santa Fe express had collided with that pair of rutting hoboes. There was little physical evidence to identify the tramps, aside from some skid marks and miscellaneous flesh. However, when investigators found a set of dentures inscribed with the Baroness Bentwhistle’s name, the tabloids had a field day.

The limo yielded two other sets of unexpected prints:

One was traced to a skeleton found a hundred yards downhill from the car; forensics made the identification based on a partial thumb print. This print matched that of a Mr. Slick Skinner, a Canadian businessman lately released from Bellevue. When his wife was contacted, the phone line crackled with whoops of glee.

The second set of prints, tragically, belonged to Sister Mary Mabel McTavish. Police also found a bow from her Match Girl costume, which had snagged on the limo’s clutch.

T
he discovery of Mary Mabel’s prints established conclusively that Brother Percy Brubacher hadn’t murdered the evangelist. Not only were his prints nowhere to be found, but he’d been incarcerated before the replacement limo had even been bought. In any event, police had been growing suspicious of his confession. Brubacher had given them a dozen false leads regarding the whereabouts of the murder weapon, and he barely had the mechanical smarts to flip a light switch much less operate a wood chipper.

Brother Percy was furious to have his guilt challenged. This was another example of the conspiracy to deny him his place in history. Fortunately for Percy, the public didn’t care about the truth. With his wild eyes and mangled jaw, he made a perfect villain. His face became a popular Halloween mask, and at Fourth of July fireworks “The Little Red Schoolhouse” became “Percy’s Little Red Chapel.” A lawyer for the state also licensed his name for use in Hollywood shorts, the most famous of which was
Hell’s Bells
starring the Three Stooges. In this flick, a look-alike Brother Percy chases the Stooges through a haunted house while hammers and cement blocks are bounced off his head.

Alas, fame didn’t bring happiness. Brother Percy was plagued by nightmares about the wood chipper and hellfire. Claiming that Satan was a fly who’d betrayed him, he begged God’s forgiveness and swallowed a bottle of insect repellent.

He was much happier after the lobotomy. He’d sit quietly in a corner of the ward, blessing the white-robed angels who brought him meals and pills, and nodding his head in time to the beautiful piped music. Percy had secretly feared that Heaven would be filled with cherubs singing hymns with little soprano voices and harps. What a pleasant surprise that God preferred recordings of Cole Porter.

M
eanwhile at the Heavenly Dwellings, Floyd had assumed that Miss Pigeon’s hysteria was connected to the death of her old friend. However, when Wells Fargo announced that it would search for the baroness’s will in the strongbox containing her jewels, she came to him and confessed. The collateral for his Ponzi empire was two hundred pounds of bricks and a handful of pennies and pins.

“What should I do?” Miss Pigeon wept.

“You should pray, Dolly,” Floyd said, as he stuffed an overnight bag. “You should pray very, very hard.”

Miss Pigeon’s prayers were soon answered. She escaped the cage by singing like a canary. She knew nothing about Doyle, but her full-throated warbling on the subject of Hollywood parties made an instant bestseller of her subsequent autobiography,
Baptist in Babylon
.

T
he F.B.I., in concert with the R.C.M.P., followed up on Miss Pigeon’s remark that Floyd liked to stay at the Twins Bed & Breakfast in London, Ontario.

The Twins entertained the detectives over homemade rhubarb pie and tea.

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Cruickshank stayed with us frequently over the years,” sniffed Miss Millie, “but he was a no-account scoundrel who never paid his bills.”

“He took advantage of poor spinster girls,” Miss Tillie confided.

“That he did,” Miss Millie agreed. “So, when he showed up on our doorstep a few nights back, we sent him on his way for good.”

The detectives nodded sympathetically. “Any idea where he is now?”

“Hell,” said Miss Millie.

“At least we hope so,” her sister added.

The detectives accepted a second piece of pie and a tour of the garden. “Good luck with that new rose patch.”

“Thank you,” said Miss Millie. “We were up all night digging.”

“Oh yes.” Miss Tillie beamed. “And laying in the fertilizer.”

Several years later, the Twins’ rose patch spawned a prize-winning cultivar. They dubbed it “The Floyd.”

“It’s a rambler,” Miss Tillie told the press. “If it tries to take over your garden, just take a good stiff shovel to it.”

•
• • •

W
hile much was unknown, this much was clear: Sister Mary Mabel McTavish had undoubtedly met a terrible end. Police believed her body was probably buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the vicinity of Barclay Side Road or the Hollywood Hills. Whether it would ever be found would depend on luck: a sickening discovery by bird watchers, hikers, or area wildlife.

There was national mourning. Sensing the mood of its readers, the press syndicates devoted special sections to the Miracle Maid, so tragically taken in the prime of her youth. Sins of the Holy Redemption Ministry were laid at the feet of “financial advisors who abused an innocent’s trust.” None were foolish enough to question the public myth-making.

What with the general bloodfest, Hearst’s plans for a musical biopic seemed somewhat tasteless. The project was shelved. This was a killer as Gable was signed to play the reporter. With typical Hollywood “can-do,” however, screenwriters rewrote the vehicle as a comedy about a showgirl and a boxer called
Cain and Mabel
. It was the second-last film of Miss Davies’s career.

D
oyle didn’t care about the hoopla. He was off the beat, numb with grief. In this, nothing upset him more than his mother’s good intentions. She was a believer in things turning out for the best, even though experience proved the opposite.

“They haven’t found the body,” she’d say.

“They haven’t found God, either,” he’d reply.

One day she went too far. He’d stepped out to get them groceries. When he got back, she was at the door without her walker.

“K.O.,” she exclaimed, “I’ve just received a message from Mary Mabel. She wants me to tell you she’s fine.”

“Please, Ma.” There were lots of these kind of reports circulating in the papers and on the radio. Supernatural visitations and dreams in which Sister would comfort the bereaved. Surely his mother had better sense than to give in to mass hypnosis.

“I’ve seen her, too,” she said, trembling. “Wearing her Match Girl outfit. Oh, and smiling. Radiant as an angel.”

This is it
, he thought.
It’s time for the home
.

“I can tell you don’t believe me,” she scolded. “Here. See for yourself.”

She handed him the photograph and letter that had come with the morning mail.

Dear Mrs. Rinker,

Please give this to K.O. so he won’t worry.

Yours,

Mary Mabel

Dear K.O.,

Sorry it’s taken so long to get in touch. I’ve had my reasons. Don’t ask. Just know I’m fine.

I send this in care of your mother in case anyone screens your mail. I plan to stay dead. Please don’t betray my trust. I know you won’t. If you think hard, you’ll know where to find me.

All my love,

M.M.