Under the Beetle's Cellar (18 page)

“Maybe. If we can find her. Doesn’t sound like there’s much to go on.”

“I think I know how we could start, or how you could.” She waited to see how long it would take him to figure out what she had in mind.

It took two seconds. “Oh, Molly. Do you know how difficult that would be? We weren’t computerized in ’62. All those incident reports are boxed up in a warehouse in South Austin. And to find it with no one knowing what we’re looking for means I’d have to do the looking myself. Now, when I have no time as it is.”

She gave him a wide smile. “You could do it this afternoon. Or tonight.”

“Molly,” he wailed, “I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. And I haven’t spent any time with my dog.”

Molly glanced down at the dog. Copperfield’s eyes narrowed into demonic slits.

She looked back at Grady, who was grinning now. He said, “I suppose I could look for that report, if it weren’t for Copper. He’s going through a hard transition, Molly. He needs attention, and a stable home environment. The love of a good woman and a safe fenced yard.” He leaned back in his chair and waited.

With a sinking heart, Molly looked down at the drooling muzzle and the mean amber eyes. “Oh, Christ,” she said. “Not that. Anything but that.”

“Everything has its price, Molly.” Grady reached his arm around her shoulders, but when the dog began to growl he quickly withdrew it. “Take it or leave it.”

They had tried to leave the dog out in the yard, but he barked nonstop. Then they let him in the house but closed him out of the bedroom. That didn’t work because he howled and scratched on the door. So they let him in, which left them with the problem of how to touch one another without getting mauled. They solved it by pulling the covers up over their heads so he wouldn’t see them. It seemd to work.

“This is ridiculous,” Molly murmured, running her hands down Grady’s bare back. “Worse than worrying the kids will walk in on you.”

“He’ll get used to it, Molly. Give him a little time. Actually, it may be better like this, makes it feel more illicit. Reminds me of being a kid and reading under the covers with a flashlight. Best reading I ever did.”

Molly let her fingers wander all the way down the dip in his lower
back and over his buttocks, still gloriously lean at fifty-two. “And just what were you reading under the covers, Lieutenant?”

“Detective magazines. Comic books. Innocent stuff.”

“Detective magazines aren’t so innocent. Ninety percent of all serial killers read them.”

“So I guess when you grow up on them, you become either a serial killer or a cop.”

“See, not innocent at all.” She moved her hips slowly against his until he moaned.

Later on, she was sitting on his back massaging his shoulders.

“Yes,” he said, “that knot right there. Molly, my lease is up at the end of the month.”

Her hands stopped kneading. “I thought you had another year to go.”

“Well, I did, but some of the residents have been complaining, so the landlord terminated it.”

“Because of the dog?”

“They’re so fussy. He growled once or twice in the elevator.”

“Objecting to being growled at in your own elevator doesn’t sound fussy to me, Grady.”

“Well, I never really liked it there. And it’s not a good place for a dog. No yard.”

She climbed off him and stretched out next to him.

“I’ll have to move,” he said.

She closed her eyes.

“Molly, are you there or have you gone to sleep on me?”

“I’m here, Grady.”

“If I moved in with you”—he rested the back of his hand on her stomach and slowly inched it downward—“we could read under the covers all the time.”

Molly was feeling her body temperature rise, but with anxiety, not passion. She leaned over and kissed him long and warm on the lips. When they both came up for breath, she said, “I love you desperately and forever. But, Grady, I’m not cut out for domestic life. I’m a slow learner, but I do learn eventually, after three failed attempts.”

He turned onto his side and pulled her tight against him. “
This
is domestic life. Right here, in bed, talking, making love. Molly, you know I don’t expect you to be a wife. I just want to be close to you, see you every day, sleep next to you. So we can do this in the middle of the day, like this. I don’t want you to change your life in any way.”

“What’s the matter with things as they are right now?” she demanded.
“I love things this way. And we can do anything we want in the middle of the day now. Anyway, we tried it once and it didn’t work.”

“Molly, that was twenty-four years ago. We’re different people now.”

“I know, but—”

The phone rang.

Relieved, Molly threw off the blanket and reached for it. “Yes.”

“Molly Cates?”

“Yes.”

“Patrick Lattimore, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Yes, Mr. Lattimore. Grady is right here.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Under a blanket hiding from his dog.”

“No, it’s you I want to talk with,” said the voice on the phone. “Miss Cates, do you know a Gerald Asquith?”

Molly sat up. “No, not really. I haven’t met him. Just over the phone. We’ve talked.”

“You had an appointment with him tonight?”

Grady sat up and gestured to her to let him listen, too.

She tilted the phone and he put his cheek next to hers.

“Yes,” Molly said, “at seven.”

“Well, he’s not going to keep it. He’s dead.”

Molly’s breath caught in her throat. “How?”

“He was found by a dog-walker at Pease Park, tied upside down to a tree branch, naked. Throat cut.”

“A blood statue?” she whispered.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“How did you know I had an appointment with him?”

“Asquith’s clothes were folded neatly nearby and in his pocket was his Day-Timer with your name and number. We had an appointment with him this afternoon. When did you talk to him?”

“Last night … around nine, I think. How would the Sword Hand of God have known about him?”

“I wondered about that, too, until I heard that Asquith did a radio show last night, one of the religious stations, and preached about the ungodly heresy of Donnie Ray Grimes.” Mordecai hated being called by his old name.

“So they heard it?”

“Yeah. And Mordecai might have, too, but we’re certain he can’t communicate with anyone but us. I am most distressed by this, Miss Cates. It means the Hearth Jezreelites are actively at work
outside
, looking for victims. How did you learn about Asquith?”

“A friend of mine, Adeline Dodgin in Waco, knew about his past
disagreements with Samuel Mordecai. She told me about him. She’s the one who persuaded him to call you.”

“I see. Could you give me Mrs. Dodgin’s number, please?”

“Yes. I’ll have to find my book. I’ll give you to Grady while I look. Here.” She handed the phone to Grady.

She found her address book in the kitchen and got on the extension. She gave him the number. “I’m worried about her,” Molly said.

“We’ll check on her,” Lattimore promised.

When she got back to the bedroom, Grady was sitting up against the headboard looking worried.

Molly sat next to him and slid an arm around him. From the floor came a snarling. The dog was on his feet, poised for attack. Slowly Molly withdrew her arm. “God, I couldn’t live with that, Grady.”

Grady wasn’t paying any attention. He was staring into space. “Mordecai is lethal, he’s poison. This means anyone involved in giving information to the feds is in danger. Molly, you need to be careful.”

“I am always careful,” she said.

He turned a skeptical look on her.

“And now I’ve got a chaperone.” She looked down at the dog, who had settled himself next to the bed, but was watching with vigilant eyes. “So you can go out and find that police report from August 3, 1962.”

“We need to talk about my lease,” Grady said.

“Sure, we can talk. But let’s wait until this Jezreel thing is over.”

“Why?”

“Let’s say I can only consider one cataclysmic event at a time.”

CHAPTER

NINE

“Of course, Christianity was once a local cult which the established church leaders and the government found threatening; they saw it as extremist, subversive, and potentially violent. History has proved them to be correct.”

M
OLLY
C
ATES
, “T
EXAS
C
ULT
C
ULTURE
,”
L
ONE
S
TAR
M
ONTHLY
, D
ECEMBER
1993

The dog was sleeping on the floor outside her bedroom door. Stretched out, he was so long he blocked the entire doorway. A little pool of saliva had collected on the wood floor under his long muzzle. “Move,” she said. He didn’t even twitch, so she prodded his back with a bare foot. He exploded to his feet with such force she jumped back instinctively.

To cover her fear, she used her most authoritarian voice. “Copperfield, you are going out in the yard. Now.” She had grown up with dogs on her daddy’s ranch and had liked them well enough, but this high-strung, volatile creature was nothing like those good-natured hounds. Why on earth had she agreed to this?

The dog looked up at Molly, trembling. She walked across the living room to the sliding-glass door and pulled it open. She stood aside and said, “Out you go.” The dog just stood where he was. “I said out,” she said louder. He lowered his head and his tail. “Dammit. Copper, come.” Very slowly the dog started toward her, one paw in front of the other, as if he were trudging through quicksand. He walked with his big head hanging. When he reached the door he stopped. Molly took hold of his choke collar and pulled him outside. As she slid the door shut, he turned and stared up at her through the glass.

Before she reached the bedroom door again, he started barking. His barks were sharp and insistent. She whirled around. “No!” she called across the room. In answer, the dog gave one loud, abrupt bark that seemed to echo her word. “No,” she shouted again. Again he barked his
imitation. She turned and stomped back to the bedroom to find her shoes. Even from inside her closet the barking was deafening; it was continuous now, and intensifying. Damnation. If he went on like that, it would drive her neighbors crazy.

She slid her feet into her shoes and stalked back to the door. The dog had made a large cloudy smudge on the glass. The barking was incredibly loud and annoying. She certainly couldn’t leave him outside to do that. Her neighbors in this sedate town-house complex wouldn’t tolerate it. But she couldn’t leave him inside either. Grady had said when left alone he tended to go on a chewing rampage. Damn.

She looked at her watch. Ten to four. She was due to pick up Jake Alesky at four, and she didn’t want to keep him waiting. She looked at the dog hard, trying to stare him down. But he kept up his barking, never even drawing a breath.

Molly opened the door and the dog surged in. Tongue lolling, he ran around Molly in circles. “What am I going to do with you?” she said. The dog ran to the front door and sat staring at the door. “Well,” she said, “maybe we’ll try it. But don’t make me sorry.” She picked up his worn leather leash off the kitchen counter and slung her bag over her shoulder. “We’re going out to the country, Copper. Maybe you’ll run off and get lost, go feral.”

Outside in the driveway, she lowered the tailgate on her pickup. Without being told to, the dog leapt up into the truck bed. He looked excited, she thought, happy even, holding his tail higher than she’d ever seen it. “Okay,” she told him grudgingly. “But remember, buddy, this is an experiment. I’m watching you.”

As she drove south on MoPac she checked the rearview mirror to see what he was doing. He stood with his head raised into the wind and his eyes closed. When she pulled into Piney Haven, three small children were playing behind the office. She watched the dog apprehensively. He could easily leap out and attack them, but he showed no signs of doing that. She drove back to Jake’s trailer. He was sitting in his wheelchair under the green awning. He wore a clean white short-sleeved shirt, ironed and crisp, and aviator sunglasses.

Molly got out of the truck, eyeing the dog uneasily. “Sorry about the dog, Jake. I’m taking care of him for a friend and I couldn’t leave him at home, so …”

Jake wheeled himself to the back of the truck and looked the dog over. “What happened to you, fellow?” he asked in a low voice.

“Oh, the ear? He’s retired from the APD canine unit,” Molly said. “He got beat up pretty bad, bludgeoned, actually, with a tire iron. He’s a little psycho.”

Jake kept studying the dog. “Well, who wouldn’t be after that?” he said more to the dog than to Molly. He wheeled closer and held a hand up toward Copperfield. “Hey, fellow.” The dog leaned over the side and sniffed his hand. “What’s his name?”

“Copper. Short for Copperfield.”

“Hey, Copper. What a good old boy you are.” The dog stretched his head down and Jake scratched behind the one good ear.

“Are you ready to go?” Molly asked.

Jake gave the big dog a final pat. “All set.” He rolled to the passenger door. “If you’ll help with the chair, I can get myself in. A truck’s a little harder because it’s high, but the running board’s a big help.” He reached up and opened the door, wheeling backward to let it swing open.

Molly came around, feeling awkward and uncertain about how to help. He maneuvered his chair right up to the side and said, “You just hold tight to the chair so it doesn’t move. And stand right there so I can brace myself against you if I need to.” He gripped the arms of the wheelchair and pushed himself up so he was balanced on his stumps. “Okay, now hold tight.” The veins in his arms stood out with the effort of shifting himself to the running board. Then, with one hand on the seat and another on the running board he boosted himself up, off the running board, and onto the seat. It was a lot more difficult to do than he let on. Molly wondered how you built the upper-body strength to do that.