1990 - Mine v4 (37 page)

"Yes."

"Didi used to be pretty. She's not anymore. She had the plastic surgeon make her ugly."

"Make her
ugly
? Why?"

"She wanted to change. Didn't want to be what she was before, I guess. So when you see her, be cool."

"I'll be cool," Laura said. "I'll be damned cool."

She slowed down and turned the BMW onto the house's dirt driveway. As Laura drove up to the cottage, she saw the front door open. A plump woman wearing a dark green sweater and khaki trousers came out. She had long red hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. Laura's palms were damp, her nerves raw. Be cool, she told herself. She stopped the car and switched off the engine. The moment had arrived.

Bedelia Morse stood in the doorway, watching, as Laura and Mark got out of the car and approached her. Laura saw the woman's toadish face and crooked nose, and she wondered what kind of plastic surgeon would have consented to do such work. And what private torment had made Bedelia Morse want to wear a face that had been sculpted into ugliness?

"You shit," Didi said to Mark, her voice cold, and she went inside without waiting for them.

In the cottage's tidy front room, Didi sat in a chair where she could look out a window at the road. She didn't offer seats to Laura or Mark; she kept her gaze on him because she recalled Laura's pain-stricken face from the newscasts and looking at her was difficult. "Hello, Didi," Mark said, trying for a smile. "It's been a long time."

"How much did she pay you?" Didi asked.

Mark's fragile smile evaporated.

"She
did
pay you, right? How many silver coins bought my head on a platter?"

Laura said, "Mark's been a friend to me. He —"

"He used to be
my
friend, too." Didi glanced quickly at Laura and then away. Laura Clayborne's eyes were deep sockets, and they burned with a terrible intensity. "You screwed me, Mark. You sold me, and she bought me. Right? Well, here I am." Didi forced her head to turn, and she stared at Laura. "Mrs. Clayborne, I've killed people. I walked into a diner with three other Storm Fronters and shot four policemen who were guilty of nothing but wearing blue uniforms and badges. I helped plant a pipe bomb that blinded a fifteen-year-old girl. I cheered when Jack Gardiner cut a policeman's throat, and I helped lift up the corpse so Akitta Washington and Mary Terrell could nail his hands to a rafter. I'm the woman mothers warn their children not to grow up to be." Didi offered a chilly smile, the shadows of bare tree branches slicing her face. "Welcome to my house."

"Mark didn't want to bring me. I kept at him until he did."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better? Or safer?" She placed her fingertips together. "Mrs. Clayborne, you don't know anything about the world I live in. I've killed people, yes; that's my crime. But no judge or jury had to give me a prison sentence. Every day of my life since 1972 I've been looking over my shoulder, scared to death of what might be coming up behind. I sleep maybe three hours a night, on good nights. Sometimes I open my eyes in the dark and I've jammed myself into a closet without knowing it. I walk down the street and think a dozen people see through this face to who I used to be. And with every breath I take I know that I stole the life from fellow human beings. Snuffed them out, and celebrated their murders with hits of acid by candlelight." She nodded, her green eyes hazy with pain. "I didn't need a prison cell. I carry one around with me. So if you're going to turn me over to the police, I'll tell you this: they can't do anything to me. I'm not here. I'm dead, and I've been dead for a very long time."

"I'm not going to turn you over to the police," Laura said. "I just want to ask you some questions about Mary Terrell."

"Mary Terror," Didi corrected her. "It was" — she'd almost said
crazy
— "stupid of her to take your baby. Stupid."

"The FBI lost her after she visited her mother in Richmond. Her mother told them she was headed for Canada. Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"

Here was the question, Didi thought. She stared at her hands.

Laura glanced at Mark for support, but he shrugged and sat down on the couch. "Anything you can tell me about Mary Terrell might be important," she told Didi. "Can you think of anybody she might have gotten in touch with? Anybody from the past?"

"The
past
." Didi sneered it. "There's no such place. There's just a long damned road from there to here, and you die a little more with every mile."

"Did Mary Terrell have any friends outside the Storm Front?"

"No. The Storm Front was her life. We were her family." Didi drew a deep breath and looked out the window again, expecting a police car to pull up at any minute. If that happened, she wasn't going to fight. Her fighting days were over. She directed her attention to Laura again. "You said you saw the man who broke into my house."

Laura explained about the glint of the flashlight she'd seen that night. "I came in, turned on the lights in the kitchen, and there he was. His face —" She shuddered to remember it. "His face was screwed up. He was grinning; his face was scarred, and the grin was frozen on it. Dark eyes, either dark brown or black. And he had a thing in his throat like an electric socket. Right here." She showed Didi by placing her fingers against her own throat.

"The dude across the road saw him, too," Mark added. "Said the guy had to plug a speaker into his throat and talk through it."

"Wait." Didi's inner alarm had reached a shriek. "The man went to see Mr. Brewer?"

"That's right. He asked where you'd gone. Said he was a friend of yours."

"He asked for me by name? Diane Daniells?" She hadn't returned the binoculars to Charles Brewer yet, so she hadn't heard this. When Mark nodded, Didi felt as if she'd taken a punch to the stomach. "My God," she said, and stood up. "My God. Somebody else knows. You bastard, somebody must've followed you!"

"Hold on a minute! Nobody followed us. Anyway, the dude was asking about you before we even got to Ann Arbor."

Didi felt her control slipping away. The man who'd broken in hadn't taken anything. He'd known her new name, and where she lived. Had asked Mr. Brewer where she'd gone. She sensed it like a noose tightening around her neck: someone else knew who she was.

"Please try to think," Laura plowed on. "Is there anyone Mary Terrell might have gone to for help?"

"
No
!" Didi's face contorted, her nerves about to snap. "I said I can't help you! Get out and leave me alone!"

"I wish I could," Laura said. "I wish Mary Terrell hadn't taken my baby. I wish I knew if my son was alive or dead. I can't leave you alone because you're my last hope."

Didi put her hands to her ears. "No! I don't want to hear it!"

She knows something
, Laura thought. She walked to Didi, grasped her wrists, and pulled her hands away from her ears. "You
will
hear it!" Laura promised, her cheeks aflame with anger. "Listen to me! If there's anything you know about Mary Terrell — anything — you've got to tell me! She's out of her mind, do you realize that? She could kill my child at any time, if she hasn't already!"

Didi shook her head. The image of Mary pressing the baby's face toward the burner was too close. "Please, just leave me alone. All I want is to be left alone."

"And all I want is what's mine," Laura said, still grasping Didi's wrists. They stared at each other, inhabitants of different worlds on a collision course. "Won't you help me save my child's life?"

"I… can't…" Didi began, but her voice faltered. She looked at Mark and then back to Laura, and she knew that if she didn't help this woman, the ghosts that feasted on her soul would grow sharper teeth. But she and Mary were sisters in arms! The Storm Front had been their family! She couldn't betray Mary!

But the Mary Terrell Didi had known long ago was gone. In her place was a savage animal who knew no cause but murder. Sooner or later Mary Terror would snap, and this woman's baby would die screaming.

Didi said, "Please let me go." Laura hesitated a few seconds, and then she released Didi's wrists. Didi walked to the window, where she stood looking out at the cold world.
Click, click
her Rubik's Cube was turning, but the answer was already in sight. "She… calls the baby Drummer," Didi said. Her heart hurt. In the electric silence that followed, Didi could hear Laura Clayborne breathing. "I saw Mary and your baby yesterday."

"Oh Jesus." It was Mark speaking in a low, stunned voice.

"He was all right," Didi went on. "She's taking good care of him. But…" She trailed off, unable to say it.

A hand like an iron pincer grasped her shoulder. Didi looked into Laura's face, and caught a glimpse of hellfire. "But
what
?" Laura demanded, barely able to speak.

"But… Mary's dangerous. Dangerous to herself, dangerous to your baby."

"What's that mean?
Tell
me!"

"Mary said… if the police find them… she'll kill the baby first" — Didi saw Laura wince as if she'd been struck — "and then she'll keep shooting until the police kill her. She's not going to give up. Never."

Tears stung Laura's eyes. They were tears of relief, at knowing David was still alive, and tears of horror at knowing that what Bedelia Morse said was true.

The rest of it had to be told. Didi steeled herself, and continued. "Mary's coming here. She and Edward Fordyce. He was part of the Storm Front, too. They're on the way now, from New York. They should get here sometime tomorrow."

"Whoa," Mark whispered, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "Far out."

Laura felt off balance, as if the room had suddenly begun to slowly spin around her. "Why are they coming here?"

It seemed to Didi that once unleashed, betrayal was like a swarm of locusts. It kept consuming until everything was gone. "I'll show you," she said, and she took her key chain from its wall peg beside the front door.

Laura and Mark followed Did! out behind the cottage, to the stone structure which was Didi's workshop. She unsnapped the padlock, drew out the chain, and opened the door. A thick, earthy aroma wafted from the chill darkness. Didi switched on the overhead lights, revealing a neatly swept workshop with two pottery wheels, shelves of glaze and paint, and various clay-shaping tools in their places on a pegboard. Another shelf held examples of Didi's labors in various stages of completion: graceful vases and planters, dishware, mugs, and ashtrays. On the floor beside one of the wheels was a huge urn, its surface patterned to resemble treebark. Didi paused to turn on a space heater, and she said, "This is what I sell. Back there is what I make for myself." She nodded toward a drawn curtain at the rear of the workshop.

Didi walked to the curtain and drew it open. The cubicle behind it was covered with another series of shelves, and on them were works far different from what Didi sold under the name of Diane Daniells.

Laura saw a pottery head: the face of a young woman with long, flowing hair, her mouth open in a scream and a dozen snakes bursting from the top of her skull. She didn't recognize the face, but Mark did. It was what Didi used to look like, before the butchery. Another face, this one of a man, was splitting open down the center, and a more fearsome, demonic visage was beginning to push through. There was a disembodied clay hand holding a perfectly formed clay revolver, the hand's fingernails transformed into grinning skulls. On the floor was a large work: a woman — again, as Mark saw, the image of the young Bedelia Morse — on her knees, her arms lifted upward in supplication and roaches scurrying from her mouth. Mounted on a wall were what appeared to be death masks: faces without expression, marked by stitches, zippers, or jagged scars. They looked to Laura like silent sufferers, saints of a hellish world, and she realized she was peering into the depths of Didi Morse's nightmares.

Didi picked up something that was wrapped in black plastic. She brought it out to one of the wheels, where she carefully set it down and began to remove the plastic. It took her a minute or two, her touch reverent. And when she was done she stepped back, allowing Laura and Mark a full view.

It was the life-size model of a man's head. The face was handsome and thoughtful, like that of a prince caught in repose. The clay hadn't been glazed or painted, and there was no color at all on the model, but Didi's fingers had rippled the scalp into curls of hair. The nose was an elegant curve, the forehead high and sloping, the thin-lipped and rather cruel mouth seemingly just about to open. The eyes held a regal incuriosity, as if they judged everyone else a step beneath him. It was the face, Laura thought, of a man who knew the taste of power.

Didi touched the wheel, and spun it around. The head slowly rotated. "I modeled this from part of a face I saw in a picture," she said. "I finished the part the picture showed, and then I did the rest of it. Do you know who that is?"

"No," Laura replied.

"His name is — was — Jack Gardiner. Lord Jack, we called him."

"The Storm Front's leader?"

"That's right. He was our father, our brother, our protector. And our Satan." The wheel was stopping. Didi spun it again. "The things we did for him… are unspeakable. He played our souls like violins, and made us obey like trained animals. But he was smart, and he had eyes that you thought could see every secret you ever tried to hide. Jack Gardiner made Mary Terrell pregnant. She was going to have the baby in July 1972. Then the world crashed in on us." Didi lifted her gaze to Laura. "Mary lost the baby. Delivered it dead in a gas station bathroom. So she's taking Drummer — your baby — to Lord Jack."

"
What
?" It was a gasp.

Didi told them about the message in
Mother Jones
, and that Mary had seen it in
Rolling Stone
. "She thought Jack was waiting for her. She took your baby to give him. But Edward Fordyce placed the message because he's trying to write a book about the Storm Front and he wanted to see who'd show up. So now Mary and Edward are on their way here." She had come to the secret thing again. Loyalty writhed within her, like a snake in hot ashes. But to whom was she being loyal? A dead ideal of freedom? An ideal that was never really true in the first place? She felt as if she'd been on a long, grueling journey, and she'd abruptly come to a crossroads of decision. One road led the way she'd been going: straight ahead, across a land of nightmares and old griefs come a-haunting. The new road faced a wilderness, and what lay beyond it no one could know.