Under the Beetle's Cellar (35 page)

“Of course, Jacksonville was jumpy as a cat standing there waiting as it got lighter and lighter. A dog barked and he could see the sun. And there was some noise coming from the village. Any second the Tongs were going to discover that their prisoners had escaped.

“Then Jacksonville had a real scare. He heard someone coming. Around the pond—someone in white was coming. It was the old lady Tong who had given him the vegetable peeler. She was carrying something. It was a shopping bag. And when she got closer, he saw that it said ‘Bloomingdale’s’ on it. Now he didn’t know what—”

Walter stopped because the wooden slab was scraping away from the hole and he heard voices above.

CHAPTER

SEVENTEEN

“I have trouble believing in what I can’t see. But I have trouble not believing in it, too.”

M
OLLY
C
ATES

“So, Mom, how does it feel to lie your head off on national TV?” Jo Beth Traynor was a little breathless from doing fifty push-ups.

“It was just the local news.” Molly had stopped at twenty-five. She was stretched out watching her daughter. She’d been trying to keep up a pretense of normal life on the afternoon of the forty-ninth day, but with the news today of Josh Benderson’s death, she felt despair nibbling at her. More disaster was right around the corner. “Anyway,” she added, “it was taped.”

“Yeah, but it will get picked up nationally.”

“I suppose.”

“So how did it feel?”

“Honey, I’ve never spoken words that felt more sincere, more on the side of the angels. Those lies just rolled out of my mouth smooth as velvet. I’m sure I could have passed a lie detector test.”

“Scary.”

“Yeah.” She rested her chin on her hands and thought about trying a few more push-ups. But she couldn’t make the effort, even though the song playing was “La Bamba,” which usually energized her, and even though she knew that sweating hard was an antidote for depression, and even though there was nothing else in the world she wanted to do.

“Okay,” Michelle screamed out over the deafening beat of the music, “we’re going to work those abs now! Turn it over. Lower backs into the floor. Squeeze your glutes, pull your abs in tight. If you don’t suck in,
you’re just doing all this work to make it pouch out. So suck it in. Ready? Up, up, up!”

“Depressing,” Molly gasped. “To do something this painful, and end up with pouchy abs.”

“What if he doesn’t take the bait?” Jo Beth asked, moving her upper body up and down with ease.

“If he doesn’t call by seven-thirty, they’ll call him and ask if he wants to see her.”

“What if he doesn’t?”

Molly paused, head and shoulders up. The queasiness sit-ups always produced flooded her with a vengeance, worse than ever. “Then they’ll just go ahead with the maneuver and hope for the best.”

“Oh, Mom. All that work and it comes to this.… Poor Dad. It’s such a defeat. Losing little Josh Benderson, giving up on negotiating.”

“It’s been excruciating.”

“They could just as well have stormed the place on the first day and saved us all an ordeal.”

“Not really,” Molly said. “The theory is the longer you can stretch these things out the better. The longer a perp holds a hostage, the less likely he is to kill him. And this new development is worth trying.” She paused to catch her breath and fight down the nausea. “I think they’ve done the right things all along, honey. But it may have been impossible from the beginning.”

Jo Beth’s eyes narrowed, skeptical at twenty-four that anything was impossible. They continued their sit-ups in silence.

“How’s your dog?” Jo Beth asked, as they stretched out.

“Copper? The same demented creature. The Terminator of the canine world.”

“I hope you’re treating him like the hero he is.”

“As a matter of fact, I am. On your recommendation I went out and bought him a bag of Science Diet, and some rawhide bones. And a chew toy, which he devoured, squeaker and all, in fifty seconds flat.”

“Sounds like he’s moved in. Now how about Dad? Is he moving in, too?”

Molly stopped doing sit-ups and stretched out on her back. She lay silent, feeling frayed and jangled. This wasn’t something she wanted to talk about.

“Well?” Jo Beth said. “It’s good parental practice to be open with your children about these things. Is Dad going to move in?”

“Honey, I don’t think so.”

“Why not? He’s there most of the time anyway.”

“I know, and I love that. I love it when he comes over. I love it when
he stays the night. And I love it when he goes home. It’s unnatural and immature, I suppose, but I like that better than the continual togetherness of marriage.”

Jo Beth kept on moving up and down. “Mom, you’re such a bad example.”

Molly felt the familiar rush of parental guilt. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“How am I ever going to get married and have babies when I have in front of me a mother who’s so happy on her own?”

“Honey, that’s just my idiosyncrasy. It’s not healthy. You are healthy. And when the time is right for you and the man is right, you will get married and have babies. It’s a wonderful way for most people to live, the best, the most satisfying. Having you was the best thing I ever did. I wish I could do the rest of it. But I’ve tried three times and each time I’ve been miserable, just waiting for them to go home.”

“But I know you love Dad.”

“Yes, I do. Your father’s the love of my life. But I already tried living with him.”

“But that was when you were too young. It would be totally different now.”

Molly felt hot fear welling up in her chest. She felt cornered, pressured. “I really don’t want to talk about this now, Jo Beth.”

“Mom, this is so perverse.”

“I know.” She found herself tensing.

“I think you should rethink this. Dad is—”

“Jo Beth, stop it.” She couldn’t keep her voice from rising. “You’re pushing me. I try not to do that to you and I don’t think you should do it to me. I’m scared, really scared about this. You need to back off.”

Jo Beth went silent.

In the front of the room, Michelle was demonstrating crunches in which she pulled her knees in to touch her elbows while doing sit-ups. Molly and Jo Beth followed suit.

After a while, Molly said. “I’m sorry I shouted. I’ll let you know when we decide something on this, but it’s best for you not to ask for a while. Okay?”

“Okay,” Jo Beth muttered.

“How’s work, honey?”

“Fine, but it’s pretty much all there is. When you work fourteen hours a day, there’s not much time for anything else.”

“No, there isn’t. This firm seems to demand a lot.”

“Yeah, but it’s a family tradition, anyway—workaholism.”

“I think it’s a choice, baby. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

They finished their sit-ups in silence.

As they were walking down to the dressing room, Jo Beth said, “You aren’t going out to Jezreel tonight?”

“No. Wasn’t invited. My part’s finished, thank God.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Tonight? First I’m going to get rid of Officer Valdez, an unfortunate young man who was born with no smile muscles. He’s enough to make me yearn for Bryan Holihan. Then I’m going to wash my hair, read a little, go to bed early.”

“Oh, sure,” Jo Beth said. “I know what you’re going to do. You’re going to sit in the dark and stare at the window all night. I see it coming. God, that used to scare me when I was a kid. Why don’t we go to a movie? We’ll take Officer Valdez along. I bet I could make him smile.”

“Thanks, honey, but I promised Lattimore I’d stay close to the phone. And I wouldn’t know what to do with the dog. I’ve got to pick him up. Poor Jake’s been stuck with him all day.”

There were two empty cans neatly aligned at the foot of Jake’s wheelchair; he held another in his hand. The dog was sprawled nearby chewing on the nublike remains of what this morning had been an enormous rawhide bone.

Molly got out of the police car she’d been driven around in all day. Copper jumped up and greeted her with a swaying tail. She leaned down to pat him.

“He’s glad to see you,” Jake said, “and you look glad to see him.”

“Do I? Well, there is a tendency to feel grateful to someone who saves your life.”

“Is there?” Jake said. “It depends on the circumstances, I think.”

Molly dragged a chair over and sat down. “What are the circumstances in which you wouldn’t feel grateful?”

Jake shrugged and looked down into his beer can.

“You told Lattimore about it yesterday, didn’t you?” Molly asked.

“I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because there was more to the Granny Duc story than what you heard. It didn’t end there, and I wanted to be sure we interpreted Walter’s message right.”

Molly leaned down to pat the dog, who’d settled at her feet. He’d gotten some sticker burrs in his ears; she should buy a brush. “So what happened to Granny Duc?”

“Walter killed her with his bare hands.” He said it in the same tone he would have used to say, “She’s living in Cincinnati with her son.”

It was like a hammer blow to the chest. Molly felt she’d come to know Walter Demming over the past three days and this didn’t fit. “Why?”

“I told you when you first came here that I wasn’t going to talk about it, and I’m not. I told Lattimore because I had to. Anyway, he was there. He has the context for hearing it.”

Molly wanted to shake him. He was so stubborn. Eventually he was going to tell her—why didn’t he just get it over with? She looked at her watch. “It’s almost six, Jake. I’m going to be on the news in two minutes. Do you have a TV we could watch?”

“Yeah. All the amenities chez Jake. I’ve even got cable.” He looked toward Officer Valdez in the car. “What about him?”

“He’ll wait out here. I think he prefers it.”

“Come on in.” Jake wheeled to the trailer and situated his chair on the lift. The dog bounded up the steps and Molly followed.

The trailer was orderly and compact, with bookcases and a soft-looking sofa. Jake switched the little TV on with a remote.

Copper went to a dish on the floor and started to drink. He seemed right at home.

“Channel 33,” Molly said.

Jake got the channel. “A beer? It’s Shiner, much better than that sissy stuff you drink.”

“Sure. Thanks.”

He navigated the tiny kitchen with efficiency, using one hand to turn his chair, the other to work. He grabbed a can out of the fridge, popped the top, and handed it to her. “Want a glass?”

“No.” The news was starting. Ellen Sussman, the stiff-haired blond anchorwoman, began: “Today, two new developments in the forty-nine-day-old terrorist standoff in Jezreel, where the lives of twelve hostages have been threatened by an extremist religious cult. In a tragic turn of events, negotiators learned today that eleven-year-old Joshua Benderson has died in captivity.” A photograph of the plump, blond boy flashed on the screen. “According to FBI spokesman Patrick Lattimore, authorities had been especially worried about the boy because of his chronic asthma, which required regular medication. News of the boy’s death was given to negotiators in a phone call from Walter Demming, the bus driver who was taken hostage with the children. Demming told negotiators Joshua had died of breathing problems during an asthma attack sometime last night. The boy’s body, wrapped in a plastic sheet, was carried out of the compound by two cult members and laid at a point midway between the
cult compound and the gate. Two television news reporters were allowed to enter the property to pick up the body. Here is that scene at Jezreel at two o’clock this afternoon.”

Footage aired of the two newsmen entering with their hands in the air. They picked up the small bundle. They carried it out through the gates and put it into the back of a waiting ambulance.

The camera returned to Ellen Susman in the studio. “In another development, Molly Cates, associate editor of
Lone Star Monthly
magazine here in Austin, says she has learned that Hearth Jezreelite leader Samuel Mordecai was abandoned as an infant and later adopted by Evelyn Grimes. Cates says she’s found the birth mother who abandoned him. In a taped interview earlier today Miss Cates talks about her search.”

Molly, looking earnest and worried in a black pants suit and prim white blouse, sat in a chair facing Ellen Sussman. The newswoman asked the questions that had been scripted for her and Molly answered, also as scripted. “Yes,” Molly said at the end, “there’s no question the woman I talked to in Houston is his birth mother—his real mother. And she wants very much to see him, talk to him.” Molly supposed that Sussman and her bosses at the station didn’t know the story was a fabrication. Lattimore had set it up, faxed KTAX the questions, and Molly had merely arrived as scheduled and done the interview.

The news report then went into a summary of the long history of the standoff and ran a few seconds of the previous evening’s briefing with Pat Lattimore. It ended with photographs of the remaining ten children and Walter Demming.

Molly picked up her beer and took a long cold swallow.

Eyes on the screen, Jake said, “You’re one hell of a good liar.”

“I know.”

“If I thought it would help Walter,” he said, using the remote to turn off the television, “I would sell my soul.”

“Because Walter saved your life?”

“Walter didn’t save my life. He made a mistake that ended up getting me injured. Then he forced me to survive as a freak.”

Molly felt the tears creeping down her cheeks before she even knew she was crying. Then it came over her full force—the torrent of grief and sorrow she’d been holding at bay. Now it simply surged up from her chest, where it seemed to reside, and pushed through her eyes. “The beer was a mistake. It lowered my resistance. I don’t know,” she said to Jake through the tears. “You’d think at my age I’d know something for sure, but I don’t. Maybe the world
is
ending, dying around us, and we just don’t know it. Have you noticed how everything’s speeding up? Samuel Mordecai sure is right about that.”