Under Cover of Darkness (45 page)

The traffic light changed. Gus pulled onto the expressway ramp. "If I'm right, she's as good as dead if I don't talk to Meredith."

Chapter
Fifty-Seven.

The old farmhouse wasquiet by day, still as death at night. Occasionally a floorboard would creak in the hall outside the bedroom door. Water could sometimes be heard rushing through old pipes in the wall. The furnace would kick on and rattle against the cold. For Beth Wheatley, those were the familiar sounds of the night.

That, and the VCR at midnight.

She lay motionless beneath the blankets. The double bed was in the corner. Her back was to the door, her face to the wall in a windowless room. The television screen provided the only light. It would last just twenty minutes. As it had every night. At the same time. For the past two weeks. This had become a silent nightly ritual--and tonight was no exception.

The lock clicked and the door opened. The room brightened just a bit with light from the hallway. Beth didn't stir. The door closed and the room returned to darkness. Heavy boots pounded the wood floor, then halted. She felt watched, as though someone were standing over her. Her heart raced, but she didn't dare move. After a long minute, she could sense her visitor back slowly away from the bed and rest in the chair facing the television.

As if on cue, it started.

For nearly twenty minutes Beth listened in the darkness
,
lying on her side, her back to the television and her nightly visitor. After fourteen nights she knew the tape by heart. Not the video. Just the audio. She had forced herself never to steal a glance at the screen. She had tried not to listen either, but that was impossible. It was some kind of taped interview. A man and a very frightened woman. The man talked like a psychiatrist, maintaining an even and professional tone as the woman's story unfolded like a nightmare, a tale of torture and a phallic knife that ended each night with the same horrible crescendo.

"What happened next?"

"He yanked the knife from my mouth. Very fast. Cut like a razor"

"What then?"

"He asked me, 'Do you like the knife?"

"Did you answer?"

"No. So he shouted again: 'Do you like the knife!" "Did you answer this time?"

"I just shook my head. Then he shouted again. Say it loud! Say you don't like the knife! So 1 did. I shouted back. Over and over he made me shout it--I don't like the knife! "

"Then what?"

"He whispered into my ear"

"What did he say?"

"'Next time, be glad it's not the knife."

Beth cringed beneath the blanket. Experience had taught her that the end of the tape only triggered the worst part. The self-indulgent groaning. The climax and release. Tonight, as on past nights, those sounds filled the room, deep and guttural. She didn't have to peer out from beneath the
. S
heets to know what was going on. The unmistakable noises sent her imagination racing as to the perverse mind in the chair beside her. One thing, however, her ears were sure of. The intruder was a man.

The television blackened. The chair squeaked. His boot
s s
huffled across the floor. The door opened and closed behind him. The lock clicked from the outside.

Again, she was alone in total darkness.

Andie hardly slept that night. She lay awake troubled by the ease with which Blechman had detected things as personal as her adoption and broken engagement. Was it possible he did have some kind of gift? She had heard of people like that, though it seemed just as likely that he had been toying with her, somehow knowing all along she was an undercover agent. Then again, virtually all of his followers were recovering from failed relationships and family trouble of some kind. An experienced palm reader might have done as well as he had.

At five A
. M
. there was a knock on the door. Felicia answered it without a word, as though she had been expecting it. A man entered. Andie's eyes slowly focused. It wasn't Blechman. It was Tom, the other lieutenant who had spoken with Felicia at Tuesday night's recruitment meeting--the man whose voice imprint had been identical to hers.

"Let's go, Willow." It took Andie a moment to realize he was talking to her. Andie a
. K. A
. Kira was now Willow.

"Where are we going?"

"Put your clothes on, and let's go."

She was wearing only a nightshirt and skimpy running shorts. Tom caught an eyeful on her way to the bathroom. It was a lecherous glare, something to be expected from one of those fifty-year-old loners who got kissed once a decade and cruised in a van with a bumper sticker tha
t r
ead, IF IT'S A' ROCKIN' DON'T COME KNOCKIN'.

You could use a little work on losing earthly desires, bucko.

They were out the door in five minutes. Felicia stayed behind.

Sunrise was more than an hour away. The ground was damp from patchy fog. Their boots made a swooshin
g s
ound as they walked through the coarse, ankle-high grass. Tom stopped and lit up a cigarette as they reached a safe distance from the house.

"They allow smoking here?" asked Andie.

"You got a problem with it?"

"It just seems like it would be one of those forbidden self-indulgences."

"Rule number one, Willow. Thou shalt not judge thy superiors."

Interesting, thought Andie. A smoker. A peeping Tom--literally. Yet his voice imprint had been virtually identical to Felicia's. He was either a believer with some weaknesses, or a nonbeliever with incredible acting skills. Either way, Andie wanted to explore.

They continued over a hill toward the chicken coop, where they were greeted by the ammonia-laden odor of fowl excrement and the incessant chirping of hundreds of week-old chicks. Like ants they climbed over each other at various feeders and waterers spaced evenly throughout the coop. Little yellow fuzzy balls, wall-to-wall cuteness. It made Andie think of Easter, till she looked more closely. A few lay dead on the ground. The weak stumbled about, too timid to make a serious charge toward the source of nourishment.

"Pick up the dead ones," said Tom. "Put them in the bucket."

Andie took the bucket and entered the coop, careful not to crush the live ones. With each step she sent clusters of chicks scattering. Every few feet she found a dead one. She felt a mixture of pity and disgust, especially for the eviscerated ones that had been cannibalized by their sisters. Each carcass weighed practically nothing, but soon her bucket was heavy. She finished in a few minutes and returned to Tom.

He took the bucket and handed her another. "Now get the weak ones."

"In a bucket?"

"Yeah. Like this." He grabbed a chick that was stumbling around the fringe. It chirped pathetically in his hand. With one quick jerk he silenced it, then tossed it in the bucket.

Andie had seen much worse in her career, but Tom seemed to expect some revulsion from Willow. He somehow seemed to think he was impressing her. She played along. "I can't kill an innocent little chick."

"Yeah, you can."

"But I don't want to."

"It's your job, Willow."

"But you do it so well."

"And with a little practice, you'll be every bit as good." He winked:

It wasn't easy to flirt with an obvious loser like Tom, but it seemed like a way to open the door. "I would think picking up chicks comes pretty naturally to a guy like you."

"That was my other life," he said with a smile.

"Quite the heartbreaker, were you?"

"Hmmmm, I had my fair share."

"And now you're . . . celibate?"

He quickly deflated. "Felicia will talk to you about that."

"I just assumed that was part of the deal. All this talk about weaning oneself of earthly desires. Sex has to be right up there with cable TV and ice cream."

He was obviously uncomfortable. Andie asked, "Am I making you nervous?"

"Just, men and women aren't supposed to have this discussion. Felicia will talk to you."

"I'm sorry. Somehow I just felt at ease talking to you." That seemed to please him. "Really?"

"Yeah. You know how you just get a good feeling about a person?"

"Uh, yeah."

"But hey, if you're uncomfortable, let's just go back to killing baby chickens."

"No, I wasn't rejecting you."

"I hope not," said Andie. "It would be nice to have a friend."

"I don't think there's anything in the rules against that." She glanced at his cigarette. "Not that the rules are written in stone."

"Smoking is a minor infraction:' he said defensively. "More serious stuff can get you kicked out."

"Like what?"

"Like . . . sex."

"Why is that so bad?"

"Because it not only depletes your energy, but it takes you further away from the source. That's the whole problem with satisfying your worldly urges."

"So this entire belief system is based on abstinence?" "No. It's based on fulfillment. But it comes in ways you've never experienced before."

"If it's so fulfilling, why do you still enjoy things like smoking?"

"Because I'm still human. To be honest with you, I don't really enjoy smoking all that much. I just do it. That's the way it is with everything that binds us to this world. That's the cornerstone of Mr. Blechman's philosophy. He teaches us that our emotions, our impulses, our desires--they're like an echo."

"An echo?"

"Yeah. Any experience is most intense and gratifying the first time. Each subsequent experience is mere repetition, growing weaker and weaker, like an echo, until we are totally disconnected from the source of energy that inspired us to try something new in the first place."

"I don't want you to think I have a one-track mind, but I wouldn't say the best sex I ever had was the first time I had it."

"Get beyond sex, will you, please? Think of the first time you saw the ocean. The first time you rode a bicycle. The first time you flew on an airplane."

"The first time you killed?"

He was taken aback.

"Like a baby chick, I mean," said Andie.

"That works too. Anything that makes you feel a rush of energy and changes your level of vibration. After a while we simply become numb to it. But we keep doing it, hoping we can get some glimpse of the thrill we experienced the first time."

"You get a thrill from killing?"

"I didn't say thrill."

"I'm sorry. I thought you did."

He was nervous again, drawing on his cigarette though it had burned to the filter. "All I'm saying is that we shouldn't be wasting our energy through repetition. We should be redirecting our energy."

"Toward the source?" said Andie.

"Yes." He crushed out his cigarette. "But you and I shouldn't be having this discussion. I'm getting way ahead on your program. You know a lot more than someone is supposed to know at your level."

Much more, she thought.

A band of clouds broke on the horizon. Golden rays of morning light pierced the coop's slatted walls. As Tom glanced toward the rising sun, Andie studied his profile. She couldn't quite place it, but he looked strangely familiar. He caught her staring, and she quickly looked away.

Andie picked up her bucket and returned to her task, watching out of the corner of her eye as Tom methodically moved about the flock and culled out the weak.

Chapter
Fifty-Eight.

It wasn'tyet sunrise, and Gus was in Beth's side of their master bedroom closet. Ever since he'd uncovered the fruits of her shoplifting, he'd wondered what other clues to Beth's whereabouts might be hiding in there. Over the past two weeks he'd examined jewelry, photographs, memorabilia, and thousands of other little things that had found their way into the drawers and boxes that lined the walls of their oversized closet. Having sifted through some items for the third or fourth time, he realized this was becoming less a hunt for clues than a way, to reconnect with Beth. It was his sanity in another sleepless night.

Tonight he had more focus. Something about that letter from Martha Goldstein yesterday had gnawed at his memory. It was more the paper itself than the message she had written on it. The unusually high linen content of her personal stationery lent the distinctive fuchsia blend a marble-like appearance. Somewhere he had seen it before. It had taken several hours of lying awake in bed to realiie where.

Beth had kept a junk drawer of things related to his law firm. He had blown past it quickly in nights past, figuring it couldn't possibly contain anything important. As he thumbed through the drawer this time, however, his opinion quickly changed. Tucked behind some old programs from past firm banquets was a fuchsia envelope. The postmark told him it was more than a year old. Neither the envelope nor the stationery inside bore a return address. It had been written anonymously on one of those blank extra sheets that come with each box of personal engraved stationery. It was an unsigned letter to Beth--penned in the same handwriting and on the same fuchsia stationery Gus had seen yesterday in the letter from Martha Goldstein.