Flesh Gothic by Edward Lee (32 page)

Westmore winced. "Hey, I haven't agreed to help you
with anything. I'm still not even sure I'm not going to call
the police and turn you in, or I still might talk to Vivica
about this."

"Don't you get it? Vivica's the one running the show
now, while Hildreth is in hiding," Clements insisted. "She's
a manipulator, and she's manipulating the shit out of you.
But you're starting to see through the stink--you're no moron. If you're not on to her by now, you really do have shit
for brains."

Westmore thought about that, hard. Something was
wrong, and he'd always been mildly suspicious of Vivica.
Clements is right, I DON'T trust her. If I did, why would I ask
Tom to run a check on her?

"Something's about to go down at that house," Clements
continued. "I don't know what, and I don't know how, but
I'm gonna find out. And I know this: it's all got something
to do with the disappearance of Debbie Rodenbaugh."

"She didn't disappear," Westmore said without much
confidence. "She's attending Oxford University right now."

"Bullshit. Connie saw her in the house less than a
month ago. Sure, she's registered at Oxford, but she never
showed up."

"I think it's pretty clear that Connie might be mistaken,"
Westmore put it as politely as he could. The girl was obviously a drug-addict-not exactly a reliable source. "And
Debbie Rodenbaugh's legal guardians-"

Clements cut him off with a snide laugh. "What? The
aunt and uncle in Jacksonville? People will say anything if
you pay them enough and Vivica Hildreth has a lot to pay."

Now Westmore wondered ... about himself. Blinded by
money that he definitely needed? The most effective loyalty.
"All right, I'm still listening. You said you want me to do
something for you. But what will you do for me?"

Clements chuckled. "In that freakshow house? Something's gonna happen there. It was Hildreth. He planned
something and it's still in the works."

Vivica had implied the same thing, hadn't she? That's why
she claims to have hired me, Westmore remembered. To find
out whatever it was Hildreth had set into motion before he killed
himself ... IF he killed himse f

"When the shit hits the fan," Clements went on, "you're
gonna need some back-up. You're a fuckin' writer." The
ex-cop lifted his shirt, showing two guns in clip-on holsters. "I can pick cherries at a hundred feet with these."

"You're expecting a shoot-out?" Westmore asked, incredulous.

"You keep forgetting where you're at. A slaughterhouse.
You know that Hildreth isn't dead-"

Westmore's eyes widened. "I don't know anything of the
sort. He committed suicide on April 3rd."

"Don't jive me, man. Vivica told you she didn't think he
was dead. I heard her tell you."

Then it dawned on him. "You heard it on the bug you've
got planted in her penthouse ..."

"That's right, brain-child. You don't believe he's dead
anymore than I do. That non-disclosure thing you signed
with Vivica doesn't mean much now, does it? I know, too. If
Hildreth really is still alive and in that house somewhere, that
might be what he's planning for the future. Another slaughter. If he and more of his psychos conic at you with meat
cleavers 'cos they want to cut your head off and drain your
blood into a fuckin' bucket, what are you gonna do? Use
big words? Throw your laptop at 'em?" Clements patted the
guns under his shirt. "Me? I'll kill the motherfuckers."

Suddenly it was a sound consideration. "What do you
want me to help you with?" Westmore finally conceded.

Clements smiled. "I knew you weren't a moron." He
turned to the girl, who was crunching onion rings. "Connie, tell him what you told me. About the door."

She looked at him with bottomless eyes. "On the side of
the house. They used it all the time, to bring us in and
out-and other people too, anyone, after dark. Hildreth
didn't want anyone coming or going through the front
door, I guess because he was afraid someone might be
watching, police, whoever."

"I'm not following you," Westmore said, but what he
didn't say was that now, for some reason, Connie was beginning to look familiar.

"There's a side road through the woods that comes up the
hill. Not the main road, but a dirt road-"

"I know where you mean," Westmore said. "I found it
the other day. Would never have known it was there if I
hadn't stumbled onto it."

The girl went on, "There's a door on the side of the
house that faces that mad."

"A door?" Westmore thought about it. "I don't think so.
I didn't see a door there."

"There's a door," she repeated. "It's part of the outside
wall. You can only open it from the inside."

"A hidden access," Westmore deduced.

"And what else, Connie?" Clements reminded her.
"Why's that door important?"

"Because it's not connected to the alarm system," she revealed. "I know it's not because I heard Hildreth and some
of the men mention that it wasn't."

A secret door, Westmore thought. Unmonitored. "Okay.
And you want me to find that door?"

"That's right," Clements said and lit another cigarette.

"Are there any clues you could give me?" Westmore
asked the girl. "I'll be looking for it from the inside."

"The room that the door opens to is a small library,"
Connie said. "Not the main library; it's smaller. Lots of old
books. And you get to that room through a curtain upstairs."

Instantly, then, Westmore knew. He'd found it earlier
when he'd been looking around the house. One of the passages led to it. "I know exactly where it is."

"Good," Clements said. "You find the door, you open it,
you let me in."

?"

"So I can search the house for Debbie Rodenbaugh. Is
that too much for your college-graduate brain to handle? I
believe she's still alive. I believe Hildreth's got her captive in
that house somewhere. I want to find her ... and take her
out."

Westmore stared back at him in the dark bar.

"Who else do you have to trust?" Clements asked, polished off his beer. "You can trust me, or you can trust those
whackadoo psychics."

"I'll admit, they're a weird bunch, but they're good people," Westmore said.

"Jesus Christ, they can't wipe their own asses without
having a vision or seeing a spirit. You think there's ghosts in
that house because you hear voices on some tape? Shit, I
heard one the other night off one of the discs I took out of
there. It's one of Hildreth's people-probably that Mack
fucker whispering spook noises. And that shit Nyvysk
shows you on his TV screens? Shit, any good movie lab can
do stuff like that-and Vivica has the dough to pull it off."
Clements grabbed Westmore's arm. "And do you really
think those women were raped by spirits? Gimme a break.
It's either a con job or they're having fuckin' hallucinations. Those chicks think they can talk to the dead and leave
their bodies-they're whacked out of their minds. They
spend more time on a psychiatrist's couch than they do
walking the street."

Westmore kept thinking on it. "I don't know"

"You're gonna trust them, or me? Nyvysk can fuck round
with his low-light cameras and TV's and ion shit all he
wants. I'm gonna find out what's going on the oldfashioned way. With my balls and my brains," Clements
said. "Did you ever see any ghosts?" he asked Connie.

She sat uncomfortably, pushed some hair out of her eyes.
"No, but it is a creepy place."

"Did you ever get raped by a ghost?"

Her eyes flicked down. "No, not by ghosts. .

"Hear that?"

But Westmore kept looking at her. She was familiar in
some unpleasant way ... "I know I've seen you before," he
said to her.

"I usually stroll 34th Street at night."

"No, no, not like that. I mean-" Then it hit him. The movies, he thought with a plummeting stomach. "I found a
bunch of DVD's at the mansion, and I saw you in one of
them, being raped by a bunch of men. Some of them
looked like bums. And there were-" Westmore gulped, remembering the extremity of some of the movies. "There
were other things."

The girl just nodded and looked away.

"That's the kind of thing Hildreth had people do to these
girls," Clements said. "Rape movies, animal movies-for
shit's sake. And you're working for the guy's fucking wife
who knew all about it and never did anything. And now
you're gonna trust Vivica over me?"

Westmore's moment of truth was fast approaching. If he's
wrong, IT never get the rest of the money Vivica promised, and IT
get sued for every penny she's given me so far, he realized. If he's
wrong ...

"All right. I'll help you."

"Thank God," Clements sighed. "Couple nights from
now, you leave that door open for me at a specific time." He
gave Westmore a card. "Here's my cell number. Call me tomorrow and we'll work out the details."

Westmore pocketed the card, nodding and still bewildered.
"Okay, but I need your help with something tomorrow night."

"Name it."

Westmore couldn't believe what he was about to say, but
it was something he'd been thinking about since the day
he'd entered the house. "Before I believe Hildreth might
still be alive, I need to see the proof."

"Yeah?"

"And you're right, I'm just a fuckin' writer. I'm not a
ditch digger. I need you to help me dig up his grave."

Clements shrugged. "Piece of cake. What time tomorrow night?"

"Midnight. If I find this hidden door of yours, I'll leave
the mansion at midnight and walk straight to the dirt road.
Meet me there. Bring a couple of shovels."

"You got it."

"And if I'm not there, that means I didn't find the door."
Westmore paused. "Or I changed my mind."

"You won't change your mind," Clements assured. "You
ain't stupid. You and me, Westmore. We'll find out what's
really going on in that freakshow mansion. At least we already have an idea."

"What's that?" Westmore asked.

"You know." Clements pulled a bag out of his pocket,
dropped it in front of Westmore.

"I don't believe in the devil, but I believe that Hildreth
does. That's the whole show he's got going in there."

Westmore picked something out of the bag. a small, black
inverted cross on a silver ring. The image rang a bell. Didn't
I read something in the autopsy reports ...

"Hildreth's party favors," Clements said. "That's some
madhouse, ain't it? All the female victims were wearing
those things when they were butchered on the night of
April 3rd, all this weirdo body-piercing shit. The girls had
those things on their nipples, cuts, and bellybuttons."

"Where'd you get these?"

"The county deputy medical examiner is my best friend
from the Navy. He did the autopsies."

Westmore shook his head. "Is there anybody in a position
of power around here that isn't either a relative or your best
friend? You probably know the county executive."

Clements laughed. "You kidding me? I play cards with
him every Friday night. I was best man at his fuckin' wedding. I also went to the police academy with the first responder to the mansion. He saw the bodies in place. All of Hildreth's porn girls were wearing those." He tapped the
bag of crosses. "Upside-down crosses are a sign of the devil.
That's what Hildreth was pushing: full-tilt, to-the-max satanism. He was like one of those cult leaders you read
about, gets a bunch of kids all fucked up on drugs and orgies, and brainwashes them." He put the bag back in his
pocket. "And that's what April 3rd was all about-a satanic
sacrifice. The asshole thought he was summoning the
devil."

Not the devil, Westmore thought. Belarius.

Westmore followed Clements and Connie to the parking lot.
Clements had his arm around the girl; they were obviously
more than just friends. "So we're on for tomorrow night,"
Clements verified. "I'll be at the access road at midnight."

"All right." Westmore looked out on the water, thinking.
"You know more about the house and Hildreth than I do.
What else should I know?"

"Be careful around that Mack fucker, and the girl,
what'shername, the ex-porn star who drinks more than a
platoon of fuckin' Russian sailors."

"Karen"

"Yeah. Don't trust either of them."

"I'm pretty sure I trust Karen. She's harmless."

"She was under Hildreth's thumb, and she works for Vivica.
Don't trust her. She's a mouthpiece to the queen witch:'

Westmore squinted a confusion. "What if you're wrong
about all this? What if Vivica didn't know anything? Maybe
she's just a lonely middle-aged woman investigating her
husband's death."

"Yeah, and what if I had a square asshole? Could I shit a
television? Don't trust anybody. Whatever happened there
on April 3rd is still happening. Everything's moving toward something, something that's gonna happen soon. That place
is about to boil over, and if we're in it when it does, we
want to be ready. The more information we have, the
stronger we are. Oh, one other thing. You know about Faye
Mullins, right?"

The name jogged his memory. The owvu sghtgid in the Hd-
lou'een DVD ... "Karen mentioned her. The groundskeeper
or something. A janitor."

"She's the only survivor of April 3rd," Clements specified. "She was in the house when it all went down."

" What?"

"You heard me right. I guess the only reason Hildreth
didn't kill her was he must not have known she was there. I
tried talking to her but she's a headcase now You might
have better luck."

Westmore was mildly alarmed. "Vivica never told me
there was a survivor that night."

"There's probably a whole lot Vivica didn't tell you. Faye
Mullins is the only living witness."

"Where is she?"

"The Danelleton Clinic, about a half hour from here. It's
one of those $20,000-per-week private psych clinics. Go
talk to her."

Westmore was doubtful. "A private-care clinic like that?
They won't let anybody in there except next-of-kin."