Piercing the Darkness (69 page)

Perhaps it was the current lawsuit causing all the stir in Bacon’s Corner that made her think Bardine might be an attorney; perhaps it was the fact that the Nation seemed to have no ordinary, blue-collar
people in its membership, but only bankers, businessmen, educators, attorneys, and statesmen—purveyors of power.

Whatever the case, she was now narrowing her search in the “B” section of the Bar Association directory, and getting closer.

Barcliff . . . Barclyde . . . Barden . . . Bardetti . . . Bardine. James Everett Bardine.

Bingo. This guy was an attorney. The listing was current, published this year. Bardine was working for a big law firm in Chicago: Evans, Santinelli, Farnsworth, and McCutcheon. They were members of the American Citizens’ Freedom Association.

Sally had to sit back and think about that.
James Bardine is a member of the ACFA . . . The ACFA is bringing the lawsuit against the school . . . The killer was wearing Bardine’s ring.

Did this mean a connection between the ACFA and Sally’s would-be killer? Sally thought so. She would be looking up more names, that was certain. She couldn’t wait to write to Tom and tell him.

But who in the world was that fiendish woman in black?

FRIDAY MORNING, PASTOR
Mark Howard found his way through the noisy, busy, bustling Bergen Door Company, protective eyewear and earplugs in place, dodging the forklift, ducking around the doors being stacked, being sanded, being moved. He engaged a clipboard-carrying foreman in a brief, shouting conversation, and got directions to the small cubicle office of Donna Hemphile, Finish Supervisor. Mark could see Donna through the glass enclosure. He stepped up and tapped on the door.

“Yeah, come in!”

Mark stepped inside.

Donna Hemphile swiveled around in her desk chair and stuck out her hand. “Hey, Mark! What a surprise! What brings you here?”

Mark had no time for sweet-and-easy, beat-around-the-bush phrases. “Some pretty serious matters, Donna.”

Donna looked at the clock. “Well, you know, I have to be out of here by—”

“I already talked to Mr. Bergen. He has someone else handling that new band saw. He said I could have an hour with you.”

Donna had to digest that for a moment, and then relaxed back in her chair. “Okay. Have a seat.”

Mark wheeled the only other chair around and sat facing Donna. “I’ve been running all around town since Wednesday night trying to nail some things down, and I haven’t slept much. You know the kind of trouble we’ve been having in the church since this lawsuit came up. I’ve felt like a seaman trying to patch the leaks in a sinking ship before it goes down completely.”

Donna nodded. “Yeah, it’s been rough.”

“Anyway, I finally got three families together for a conference: the Warings, the Jessups, and the Walroths. It was a pretty good meeting, I guess. Ed and Judy Waring are still disgruntled, but the Jessups and Walroths might be coming around.” Mark paused. He was going to change directions. “But I wanted to ask you about something they all told me, and you know, I never thought about it before this. You’re on the prayer chain, and your name comes before the Jessups, the Walroths, and the Warings.”

“Mm-hm.” Donna just sat there listening.

Mark plunged in. “So, let me ask you point-blank: Did you tell June Walroth that Tom Harris beats his daughter Ruth, and that’s why he puts long sleeves on her so often?”

Donna chuckled at that. “No.”

“Did you tell Judy Waring that Cathy and I are having marital problems because I was unfaithful and had an affair a few years ago?”

Donna smiled and shook her head. “No.”

“Did you tell Ed Waring that the school was in bad debt because Tom and Mrs. Fields were stealing the school’s money?”

“No.”

“Did you tell Andrea Jessup that Tom’s had some real problems with sexual deviancy ever since Cindy died?”

“No.”

Mark was finding Donna’s extremely brief answers a bit jarring. “You don’t have any other comment about all this?”

Donna smiled and shook her head in seeming incredulity. “Why should I say anything, Mark? Those people are gossip-hounds. This is the kind of thing they’d come up with.”

“Why do you suppose they all came up with the same source for
their information?”

She tossed up her hands. “Beats me. They must have something against me, I don’t know. So what else do you have on the list?”

“Well . . . somebody who doesn’t even go to our church. Kyle Krantz, the kid who got fired on Tuesday for having marijuana in his locker.”

At that, Donna rolled her eyes. “Oh, brother!”

“Well, he has an interesting story to tell, and you know, a lot of what he has to say checks out. I guess you know his side of the story, right? That someone planted that bag of pot in his locker to set him up?”

“Oh yeah, I’ve heard it, all right. He could have come up with something more original. All the kids use that line.”

“I’ve heard it before myself, from Ben Cole. Somebody planted some confiscated marijuana in his locker at the police station, and Mulligan fired him. Of course, it was Mulligan, according to Kyle, who came down to the plant here and struck a deal with Kyle and didn’t book him for possession, isn’t that right?”

“That part of it wasn’t my concern. I just fired him according to company policy.”

Mark slowed down a little for emphasis. “Kyle says Mulligan told him he’d let it go if Kyle kept his mouth shut about some things he knew.”

Donna got just a little tense. “Well, listen, Mark, what goes on in this plant is my business, and none of your concern.”

Mark didn’t back off, but kept going. “Somebody killed Kyle’s dog too; they cut it open and left it on the front seat of his car. Maybe they were trying to give him a little reminder to watch himself.”

Donna leaned her elbow on her desk, propped her hand under her cheek, and gave every appearance of patiently humoring a childish, assuming, overimaginative minister.

Mark kept going. “That was weird enough in itself, and I don’t know if I would have believed Kyle if something similar hadn’t happened to us, right at the church. Monday morning, somebody splashed goat’s blood on the front door and left two goat legs crossed on the porch. It was some kind of curse, or maybe it was a warning, I don’t know. But just the day before, on Sunday morning, Ben Cole went
out to the Potter place to investigate the killing of a goat that used to belong to Sally Roe. All the blood had been drained out, and the legs cut off.

“Then, according to Kyle, on that Sunday night he and a friend were out at the Benson farm and saw a witch coven holding a ritual in the barn, and wouldn’t you know it—the witches, or Satanists, whatever they were, were drinking goat’s blood and were standing in a circle around two more goat legs, calling for the defeat of the Christians and for the death of Sally Roe.”

That finally evoked at least a small comment from Donna Hemphile. “Heh. Pretty bizarre.”

Mark hit her squarely with the next sentence. “And Kyle says
you
were there, that you were part of that group holding the ritual, along with Sergeant Mulligan, Claire Johanson, and Jon Schmidt—probably Tom Harris’s, and our church’s, worst enemies right now.”

Donna said nothing. She just leaned back in her chair and kept listening, surprisingly detached.

“We also checked with Kyle’s friend and gave him quite a thorough testing with some photographs Marshall had of the people Kyle claimed were there, as well as some photographs of people who were not there, and some phony information we claimed Kyle had told us. The friend checked out on every detail. I’m convinced we have two reliable witnesses.”

“And a pretty wild story,” Donna reminded him.

“Well . . . after all we’ve been through, and everything we’ve seen and learned, it isn’t that wild. It’s disgusting, it’s tragic, it’s bizarre, but at this point I find it incontrovertible, especially since Mulligan—and perhaps yourself—have stooped to such terror and intimidation tactics to keep the boys quiet about it.” Donna didn’t look like she had any comment to that, but Mark didn’t wait for one. “Donna, you said that what happens here at the plant is your business and none of my concern. Well, what happens to my church is my concern, so let me just get down to the direct question: Were you there at the Benson farm on Sunday night?”

“No,” she said simply.

“Are you involved in witchcraft or occultism?”

“No.”

“Are you trying to destroy my church with gossip and division?”

She chuckled, and the chuckle had a note of mockery in it. “Of course not. Hey, you’re going through difficult times. If you don’t all stick together, you won’t make it.”

“What about Sally Roe?”

“Never heard of her.”

An unplanned question occurred to Mark. “What about the social worker for the CPD that took Tom’s kids, Irene Bledsoe? Is she purposely working against us, trying to destroy Tom’s reputation?”

Donna laughed. “Hey, as far as I know, she’s just doing her job. If you ask me, Tom’s a sick man, and I think she can see that.”

“What about that time you saw Ben Cole first visiting Abby Grayson here at the plant? Did you report that to Sergeant Mulligan?”

“You mean, did I snitch?”

“Whatever.”

“I don’t really know Mulligan. Why would I go out of my way to tell him about one of his own cops?”

Mark looked at Donna, and Donna returned his gaze. There was no question remaining between them.

“Donna . . . you don’t lie very well.”

She smiled that same subtle, mocking smile. “On the contrary, Mark—you did approve my application for church membership.”

Mark nodded. “So I did. So I did.” He’d heard enough. “Well, I could go through the Biblical pattern and come back with some witnesses to go through all this again with you, but . . . what do you think? That probably isn’t worth the trouble, is it?”

Donna just kept smiling. “No need, really.”

The phone rang. Donna picked it up. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be right there.” She hung up. “Well, sorry, that was Mr. Bergen. He wants to meet with me right away.”

“I know,” said Mark, rising from his chair. He let himself out the door, and walked down the aisle. Donna was not far behind him.

Mr. Bergen’s office was about halfway down the floor. Mark looked through the window; Abby Grayson, Kyle Krantz, Kyle’s friend Billy, and Marshall Hogan had already been there quite a while. Mr. Bergen, a stern-looking man in his sixties, was pacing about the office, waiting impatiently, visibly angry.

Mark cracked the door open and stuck his head in long enough to catch Mr. Bergen’s eye. Bergen looked his way immediately; he was expected.

“It’s all true,” said Mark.

Then he closed the door and went on his way, pausing just long enough to look back and see Donna Hemphile go into the office of her boss.

CHAPTER 37

LUCY BRANDON COULD
feel her scalp crawling and her stomach twisting into a knot. This was her second such phone call today, interrupting her work at the Post Office and scaring her to death.

“Don’t talk to Hogan,” said her once-kind friend Claire Johanson. “Don’t say a word to him, or to any of those people! It could go very bad for you if you don’t protect any knowledge you have!”

Lucy tried to keep her voice down so Debbie wouldn’t overhear. “Claire, what’s happened?”

“Nothing has happened!”

“I got a call from Gordon Jefferson just like yours. He wasn’t kind at all. He kept telling me I’d be in legal trouble if anything leaked, and I didn’t even know what he was talking about . . .”

Claire didn’t answer right away. She was working on a reply that was safe—or downright deceiving. “The hearing before the federal Court of Appeals is coming up soon, and things are getting critical, that’s all. I think it has all of us on edge.”

“So why come down on me?”

“It’s not just you. We’re clamping down on everyone, even ourselves. Too much information is getting out, and it could ruin our case. We have to be careful. I’m sure you understand that.”

“This all seems so sudden.”

“Well, it just seems that way. Don’t worry about it. Just keep quiet,
and keep things to yourself from now on. I have to go.”

Click.

I’m going to explode,
Lucy thought.
I’m just going to go crazy, stark raving mad. I can’t take this anymore!

Ding!

A patron was at the counter.
No, I can’t see anyone, I can’t talk to anyone. I just want to get out of here. But where could I go? How would I explain my daughter? What about the trouble I’ve gotten myself into?

Ding!

Oh, where’s Debbie?
Lucy looked at the clock.
Oh, wonderful! She’s on break, probably across the street buying some sugarless gum or something.