Hear No Evil (25 page)

“Please,” she begged. “My brother will make it worth your time. I promise.”

“I’ll pay her bill,” Drace said, reaching for his other wallet. “I doubt that she can do it herself. And there’ll be a bonus for you.” He drew out a fifty-dollar bill. He handed it to Raylene.

She pressed it into the man’s palm, holding the money there, bill against his palm, between her two hands.

He hesitated, and she leaned nearer to him.

“Nobody has to know about this,” Raylene assured him in the sweetest, most irresistible of whispers.

•  •  •

Drace and Raylene moved the van in front of unit ten and got out, leaving it unlocked. The night clerk was waiting.

Beside Drace, Raylene held her breath as the clerk thrust the key in the keyhole and turned it. As soon as she heard the lock click, she pushed herself closer to the man.

“Let my brother handle it from here,” she said softly, crowding against him. “Go back to the office—please. Please.”

“There’s a security chain on the door,” the man said, but he did not move away from her.

“My brother can handle it,” Raylene told him. “He’s police. Go back now. If we need help, I’ll come for you.”

She edged away from him. He looked her up and down, then reluctantly moved back toward the office. He reminded her of a hobbling old dog that had uselessly followed a young female too far and now had to limp home.

Drace could get into the room, she knew. The chain lock didn’t worry her. The door looked flimsy, and he had bolt cutters in the van.

Raylene could see inside. The room was mostly dark, but a dim light from the bathroom fell through its partly open door. A woman lay motionless on the narrow bed, her back to them. A half-empty jug of wine was on the table beside her. She was fully clothed and on top of the bedspread.

Raylene recognized the thin body, the flyaway hair, even in the shadows: Mimi. Hate slithered through her, cold and absolute.

You came into our house, when I didn’t want you
, Raylene thought.
You slept with my man, and I let you, I
had no choice. We shared everything with you, even our plans, when I didn’t trust you. Now you betrayed us, and I will gladly, gladly kill you
.

Moving quietly, Drace took the bolt cutters from the van. Raylene unzipped the purse that hung over her shoulder. It held handcuffs, duct tape, a knife.

Drace easily cut the chain lock and pushed the door open. The two of them stepped inside. Drace shut the door behind them and drew a small revolver from his ankle holster, a snub-nosed .38.

He nodded to Raylene. She took the handcuffs from her handbag and approached the bed. Drace switched on the overhead light.

“Hello, Mimi,” he said softly. “We came to take you hunting. For Peyton.”

Raylene thought it would be simple to take Mimi prisoner. She was probably too drunk even to wake fully. Raylene could clamp on the cuffs and gag her with the tape, and Mimi would be too groggy to struggle.

If she did awake enough to fight, Drace could subdue her in seconds with a choke hold and pressure on her carotid artery. They could hustle her into the van and take her someplace safe and isolated. There they could twist the truth out of her: where had she sent Peyton?

Drace moved to clap his hand over Mimi’s mouth in case she came to, and Raylene seized her left hand and snapped the cuff shut.

But both of them were caught by surprise when Mimi reacted both swiftly and violently. She did not scream, but kicking and flailing, she somehow sprang to her feet, wild as a cornered animal.

She shoved Raylene with her right hand so hard that Raylene was knocked off balance and hit the metal dresser, hurting her ribs.

Mimi’s left arm lashed out, and the swinging handcuff caught Drace across the wrist as he lunged for her. He swore and took an involuntary step backward.

“Get her!” he ordered Raylene.

Mimi had darted into the bathroom, slamming the door behind her.

“Shit,” Drace said angrily. He threw himself against the door, but Mimi fought from her side to keep it shut. Raylene, teeth clenched, threw her weight against the door to help him.

For a moment, Mimi’s strength to ward them off seemed unnatural, superhuman. But then the door gave way, swung inward. Raylene tumbled into the room first, and she’d meant to seize Mimi by the hair and strike her head against the sink.

But Mimi, foot raised, kicked Raylene in the stomach, knocking her backward into Drace, who kept her from falling.

Mimi had snatched up a bottle of something from the sink and unscrewed its top.

“Stop,” Drace ordered, supporting Raylene with one arm and using the other to aim the gun at Mimi. Raylene couldn’t get her breath, and she was swept with a nausea that made her half-faint. But rage kept her focused, and she glared at Mimi, wanting to kill her.

But Mimi quickly raised the bottle to her lips and drank, and as soon as she drank, she gave a strangled cry and lurched backward, throwing the bottle toward them, and falling to her knees. Then she collapsed onto her side, writhing and holding her mouth and throat.

“Christ!” Drace breathed. The bottle had missed them, bounced off the wall and spilled in a pool beneath the sink. Mimi lay twisting on the floor in agony, and the muffled sounds she made were low, but terrible to hear.

“What’s she done?” cried Raylene, clutching at Drace.

Drace pushed her away and knelt beside Mimi, pulling her hands away from her mouth. Her lips were mottled, white and bluish and raw red, and they were swollen and covered with glistening blisters.

Mimi thrashed, whipping her head back and forth, pounding it against the dirty linoleum.

“What’s she done?” Raylene repeated, watching in horror.

Drace poked at the fallen bottle cautiously with the barrel of his gun. He shook his head in disgust and dismay. “Drain cleaner,” he said. “She drank drain cleaner.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Raylene said. She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the bathroom door. She did not feel sickened by the sight of Mimi’s pain, only cheated by it, jealous that she had not inflicted it herself.

“She was trying to commit suicide, the dumb bitch,” he said. “She told me once that was the way to kill yourself if you meant it. If you made a mistake and it didn’t kill you fast, it’d kill you slow.”

Raylene opened her eyes and stared down at the twitching body, the contorted face with its burned mouth. “Is she going to die?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how much she drank.”

He hauled Mimi to her feet and thrust her face under the sink faucet, turned the water on full force. “Open your mouth, you dumb bitch. Clean it out.”

Mimi’s legs buckled beneath her, her body convulsed, but Drace held her face in the rushing water, trying to pry open her mouth.

“Don’t burn your hands,” Raylene warned Drace.

He swore and wrenched Mimi’s jaws apart, but when he did so, she convulsed again and fainted.

For a long time, he kept her jaw forced open and the water flooding over her, but finally he let her slip back to the floor again, fighting hoarsely for breath.

Raylene stared down at her. “Well, this is a fine turn of events,” she said bitterly. “How’s she going to tell us anything
now?
”

“We’ll see,” Drace said. He knelt and frisked Mimi, even as she spasmed and clutched unconsciously at her mouth and throat. He drew out the wad of crumpled money. He drew out the worn wallet.

He rose. The wallet contained no identification, no photos, no credit cards, only one tattered scrap of newsprint. On the floor, Mimi moaned and gurgled.

“Shut her up, gag her,” Drace told Raylene, almost absently.

Reluctantly, fearful of burning her hands, Raylene knelt by Mimi, cut off a piece of the duct tape and plastered it over the raw and blistered lips. She seized Mimi’s right hand and fastened the other cuff on it. Mimi groaned, her eyelids fluttered half-open, but her bloodshot gaze seemed trained on nothing.

“Well,” Drace said with ironic satisfaction, “look at this. She’s told us something, after all.”

He handed Raylene the scrap of paper. It was an ad that looked as if it had been torn from a newspaper. It said:

Raylene was stunned, half with fright, half with pleasure. “Jessie of Endor—you found her.”

“Check the receipt for the room,” Drace said from between his teeth. “There were long-distance calls on it. Are they the same?”

Raylene dug the receipt out of the pocket of her slacks. The phone numbers were listed on the printout. There were three:

A psychic
, she thought numbly.
She’s talking to a bloody psychic. What’s she said? What’s she told? Christ, she could betray us all
.

“They’re the same,” she breathed, voice choked with apprehension. “But why? Why send the kid to a psychic, for God’s sake?”

“I don’t know,” Drace said. He looked down at Mimi, his face impassive. He knelt and dug his thumb into the tape where it covered the corner of her blistered mouth. Her body knotted in pain.

“This Jessie in Endor,” he asked, leaning over her. “Is she ‘your people’? Your ‘blood kin’? Shake your head yes or no, or I’ll pour the damn drain cleaner in your eyes.”

But Mimi only struck her head against the floor again in a frenzy. She arched her back and made an agonized gargling sound deep in her chest. Then once more she went limp and still.

“Is she dead?” Raylene asked, half hoping she was.

“No,” Drace said. “She’s still breathing.”

“Will she die?”

Drace looked at her, something almost like amusement in his eyes. “Eventually, of course.”

“I want her to last,” Raylene said bitterly. “I want her to suffer. I want her to see Peyton die.”

Drace gazed down at the still woman. Blood was seeping from beneath the tape, and her breathing was labored, cracked and irregular. “So do I,” he said.

T
HE PHONE RINGING BESIDE
J
ESSIE’S BED WOKE
O
WEN
. H
E
groaned and glanced at the curtained window. The narrow ribbon of light at its edges was dim; morning had barely dawned.

Next to the telephone, Jessie’s clock radio showed the time in red letters: 5:14. The phone shrilled again. He swore, groaned, and answered it, hoping it hadn’t awakened the kid.

“Buddress residence. Owen Charteris speaking.” “Charteris, this is Mulcahy. We got more on Louise Brodnik. Her oldest daughter got in this morning from Germany.”

Owen rubbed his hand across his grainy eyes. “Yes?”

“She talked long-distance to her mother last Friday.

She said her mother had agreed to help some woman
with a kid. She thought the woman was mixed up with a bunch of hippies or paramilitaries or a cult or something on a farm outside of Sedonia.”

Owen sat up straight, suddenly awake. “Hippies? Cult?
Paramilitary?
”

Mulcahy said, “A young guy named Yount took over a farmhouse and some land here for an uncle who went into a nursing home. He lives there with four or five other people. Louise Brodnik thought the woman was one of them.”

“Was she?”

“We don’t know,” said Mulcahy. “The next shift’ll check it out. I’m sorry to call so early. I thought you’d want to know as soon as possible.”

“I appreciate it,” Owen said. “But what’s this paramilitary business?”

“We don’t have much on it. People complain about hearing explosions. But there’s a small quarry on the land. They could be blasting rocks. But who knows? They keep to themselves. The guy who took over the farm, Yount, came here driving a car with Michigan plates.”

The back of Owen’s neck prickled. “Mimi Storey came from Michigan. The kid was born there.”

“I know. How’s the kid? Can you ask her about this Yount? Maybe I should come down there and question her.”

“The kid won’t talk. She’s scared to. You have anything concrete on these people?”

“Nothing. They’ve broken no laws. We can question them about Mimi Storey, but it’s only hearsay she was with them.”

“You still don’t know where Louise Brodnik was Sunday and Monday night?”

“We’ve got no idea.”

Owen frowned. “Can you get a warrant to search that farmhouse?”

“Not without probable cause. No judge would grant it. We could if the kid confirmed she was there.”

The kid won’t confirm anything
, Owen thought in frustration.
We wouldn’t have a problem if the kid would talk
.

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“Right,” said Mulcahy. “If you find out anything else, let me know.”

“Done.” Owen hung up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Where in hell were his clothes? He’d torn them off and flung them out of the way, desperate to have his body naked next to Eden’s.