The Spider's Web (27 page)

She bolted the door before she went into her office and dropped her bag and briefcase on the table behind her desk. Then she picked up the phone and dialed the house in Casper where Annie and her kids and Roger were staying. Hiding out from a crazy man who may have just driven down the street. The ringing seemed to go on forever. Just when she was about to hang up, Annie’s voice said, “Vicky? Everything okay?”

“Is everything okay with you?” Vicky said.

“The same. The police haven’t found him yet.”

Vicky could feel the icy claws moving over her. Robin was in the pickup, she was sure of it. Looking for Annie, watching the office. Wanting her to know that he could come for her whenever he wanted.

“Maybe he’s left the county,” Annie said, “and that’s why the police haven’t picked him up. I keep thinking about the office and the work needing to be done. Roger’s been working on his laptop, but it’s not the same as being in the office. I think we should come back.”

“That’s not a good idea.”

“If Robin’s still around, he’ll show up soon as he knows I’m back and the police’ll pick him up. I can draw him out of whatever hole he’s hiding in.”

“Give it another day, please, Annie.” Across the office, past the front window, Vicky could see the large, dark figures of two men coming up the walk. She walked through the reception room and peered past the edge of the window, half-listening to Annie saying that Roger couldn’t stand another day of sitting around the house. Outside on the porch, wearing jeans and dark shirts and cowboy hats, were Larry Morrison and his body guard, the man called Angelo Crispie. “Hang on,” Vicky said, fumbling with the bolt. She pulled the door open, beckoned the men inside and, tipping her head toward the phone, said, “I’ll be with you in just a minute.” Then she went back to her own office, aware of the men shuffling across the reception room, breathing hard as if they had just climbed a mountain, finally dropping onto the side chairs. She closed the beveled-glass doors. “Larry Morrison’s here,” she told Annie. “I’ll have to call you back.”

“Everything all right with his daughter?” Annie said, and in her voice Vicky could hear the hunger of someone who knew that food was spread on the table, but she no longer had a chair.

“I’ll fill you in later.” Nothing was right, Vicky was thinking. She hit the end key.

The noise sounded as if a truck had crashed through the front door, sudden and sharp, reverberating through the floorboards, rattling the blinds at the window. Vicky stared through the beveled-glass doors at the blurred figure of Robin Bosey, the clublike arms, the clenched fists, the murderous rage in the way he stomped toward her office. She dropped the phone. She had the sense that she should be moving, flinging open the doors and shouting at him to get out, but her feet were frozen to the floor, her legs numb as if they belonged to someone else.

Then, on the other side of the beveled glass, Larry Morrison and the man called Angelo, burly with broad shoulders, loomed like a wall in front of Robin Bosey. “What do you want here!” Morrison shouted, his voice hard and full of authority. “Who are you?” The bodyguard moved in closer, and Vicky watched the blurred shape of Robin Bosey swing about and dart out the door, head thrust forward as of he were running a race.

Vicky found her breath, picked up the phone again, and tapped out 911. Pressing the phone against her ear, she opened the doors, ran past the two men, and looked outside. The tan pickup jolted away from the curb out into the lane and shot around the corner.

“What is your emergency,” a woman’s voice said in her ear.

Vicky gave her name and said that Robin Bosey had just broken into her office. “He’s looking for his ex-wife, my secretary,” she said. “There’s a restraining order against him. He had no right to come here. He’s heading toward Main right now. For godssakes, stop him. Stop him before he kills someone.”

There was more information the operator required: make of vehicle, license number. What was his name again? You say there’s a restraining order. “He’s on Main Street by now,” Vicky shouted. “Please, send some cars.”

She pressed the off key and sank against the hard edge of Annie’s uncluttered, vacant desk, aware of the weakness crawling over her and the two men still stationed in the middle of the reception area, the beveled-glass doors open behind them.

“Client of yours?” Morrison said.

“THE LORD HAS blessed us with love, the most powerful force in the world.” Larry Morrison planted himself in the corner of Vicky’s private office, hands clasped in front as if he were delivering a sermon to millions seated in front of their TVs. Vicky had dropped onto the edge of her chair. Through the closed beveled-glass doors, she could see the bodyguard stationed in the center of the reception area, facing the front door. “Love can cause us to act at our most unselfish best,” Morrison droned on. “Through the love the Lord God has placed in our hearts, we are able to share in his power to create miracles.” He paused, giving Vicky a profile view of the serene and wise expression on his face. “Unfortunately,” he said, reluctance in his voice now as he seemed to contemplate truths too painful to express, “love can be perverted into anger, hate, and lust for revenge. Ugly emotions that dishonor us and destroy all the good we may have done.”

He faced the desk and locked eyes with Vicky. “Will you pray with me?”

“What are we praying for?” she said.

“The man who burst into your office. You said he was looking for his ex-wife. We must assume he once loved her, but now, in the anger that consumes him, we see the perversion of that love. Lord God Almighty,” he said, bowing his head, fingertips pressed together in a little tipi, “we ask you to remove the perversion from this man’s heart and restore the calm beauty of love. Amen.”

“Amen,” Vicky heard herself say. Robin Bosey could be on the reservation by now. The man was uncanny, a chameleon melting into the vast, impenetrable landscape of the plains. He could hide for weeks, crashing with a cousin or a cousin of a cousin, or some other distant relative, fitting in with everyone else.

“We have to talk about your daughter,” she said, forcing her thoughts back to the reason the man was standing in her office, hands still pitched in prayer, after spending half the night negotiating airports and flying here from Oklahoma.

“Oh, yes. Marcy.” Morrison sat down on the side chair that rolled back a half foot with his weight.

“She’s still missing,” Vicky said. “She didn’t return to Jackson. Last night, the men she accused of murdering Ned were found shot to death. They had been dead almost twenty-four hours, from about the time Marcy left the mission. Agent Gianelli wants to talk to her in connection with the murders. I can’t arrange for the interview because I have no idea where she is.” She studied the man across from her. Nothing she said had changed the calm, fixed expression on his face. Not the murders or the implication that his daughter was a suspect. She wondered if he had heard anything.

Finally Morrison drew in a breath and held on to it for a couple of seconds before he exhaled. “I’m afraid Marcy may be an example of the perversion I’ve mentioned,” he said. “She’s capable of great love, but such people can also be capable of great hatred. Two sides of the same large coin.”

Vicky clasped her hands on top of the desk and leaned forward. “I’m not sure you understand,” she said. “Marcy is under suspicion in a double homicide.”

The man slapped his hands on the armrests, bolted out of the chair, and started striding about, head thrust forward. “She is a troubled girl,” he said. “I’m sure you’ve recognized that by now. She spent several years in treatment.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I believed the Lord had blessed her by returning her to herself. She was a sweet, wonderful girl until that terrible time ...”

“When her mother left.”

He stood still. “As God is my witness, I share the blame. It was not her mother’s fault that she could no longer cope. Now I realize she was a delicate human being, fragile, like our daughter. So much happened so fast in our lives. The congregation doubled, redoubled, tripled. We couldn’t keep up.” He lifted both hands overhead. “I have asked the Lord God to forgive me and not burden the child with the consequences of her parents’ sins.” Lowering his hands at his side, he swung toward Vicky. “The Lord has blessed us with prosperity, a sign of his forgiveness, you see. Naturally, I believed Marcy would no longer be troubled, but I see now that I was lying to myself. It is a deadly sin to lie to oneself. When she left—”

Vicky interrupted. “When she left Oklahoma?” The girl seemed always to be leaving someplace.

“We had a terrible argument. She had been home from the clinic less than a month. She and my wife, LuAnn, began arguing over something so trivial, so meaningless that it makes me cringe to think about it. Whether Marcy had put her laundry away! What difference did it make? We have servants to handle such matters, but LuAnn believes children should be responsible for chores. The next morning, Marcy was gone. Her bed was made, the room tidied up. It looked as if she had never been there, except for the clothes she left in the closet and bureau. She just drove away in the pickup that our landscaper used.”

Morrison sank back into the chair. “Do you have any idea what it is to lose your child?” He hesitated. “And not regret it? You see, there was peace in our home again, like the peace we had enjoyed while she was in the clinic.”

“But you found her, didn’t you?”

“She was still my child. I had to make sure she was all right. I hired the best detectives. But she had made her escape very well. She finally called me. She was in Denver, living on the streets. She had to beg coins for the phone. Naturally I flew there immediately, bought a condominium and got her settled. I set up a bank account and credit cards so that she would have the money she needs. I could not have my daughter living on the streets.”

Vicky took a moment before she said, “Perhaps she needs more treatment.”

Morrison didn’t say anything, and Vicky pushed on. “What are we dealing with here? Is it possible Marcy could have shot those two men?”

“She never forgave me for putting her in the psychiatric hospital. When she came home, her love had turned to hatred. I saw it in her eyes. She wanted revenge, wanted to hurt me—destroy me—the way she felt I had hurt and destroyed her. She deliberately picked fights with me and LuAnn. She tried to pit us against each other. She was always looking for sympathy—she would hurt herself, bang her head against the wall. Knocked herself unconscious once. But things were going well at the ministry, so well that I made myself look away from the discord Marcy was sowing. Surely our prosperity was a sign of God’s grace, that all was well. When Marcy left, I told myself it was God’s will. I felt relieved. About a week later, I discovered, quite by accident, that the pistol I kept in my closet for security...” He let the thought trail off and tilted his head toward the bodyguard on the other side of the beveled-glass doors. “Angelo can’t be around every minute, and sometimes folks become very angry when God has not blessed them immediately with prosperity. Anyway, the pistol was missing. It had been a while since I had checked on it. I wasn’t sure how long it had been missing. I suspected Marcy, I admit. LuAnn went through her room, the bureau, the closets, all her things. There was no gun. Later we found where she had hidden it. She’s a clever girl. She knew we would search her things, so she had taken precautions. A tile behind the toilet in her bathroom fell out while the maid was cleaning. Marcy had carved out the wallboard behind the tile. The box in which I had kept the gun was still inside the wall, but the gun was gone. I knew the truth then. It was as though the Lord God had spoken to my heart. If Marcy had stayed, she would have killed LuAnn and me.”

“Are you saying she might have taken revenge on Hawk and Lookingglass for killing Ned?”

“I believe she loved that young man and that love could have turned to hatred toward the men who took him from her.”

Vicky leaned into the back of the chair. She had agreed to take on a client, a white girl, traumatized by the murder of her fiancé. She had agreed to look out for her interests, make certain blame for the murder didn’t shift to her client, the outsider. And now she could be defending a murderer.

“What kind of gun?” Vicky said.

“SIG P232. A .380 caliber.”

Vicky had to look away. Ned had been shot with a .380, but the gun hadn’t been found. It wasn’t in the house. The words drummed in her ears.
It wasn’t in the house.
“We have to find Marcy,” she said, turning back to Morrison. She could sense that the man had never taken his eyes from her. “Where would she go?”

“My daughter will find me,” he said. “It is only a question of time. The minute I cancel her credit cards and close the bank account, she will call. You see, Marcy has a great love for prosperity and comfort and a great hatred for life on the streets. She will not return to that. She will call me.” He stood up. “As to where she has gone, I don’t know. Frankly, I’m surprised she wasn’t in Jackson. Marcy likes the familiar. She settles in, you see. The familiar is her true love, and when that is yanked from under her, the hatred takes over. Should you hear anything, you can reach me on my cell”—he had turned part way around and was moving toward the beveled-glass doors—“I’ll be at a house outside Lander until tomorrow. Members of my ministry were kind enough to make it available.”

Morrison flung open the doors, and the bodyguard stepped to the side, giving the pastor a clear shot to the front door. “I suggest you lock up behind us,” Morrison said, glancing back.

 

 

BERTA’S HOUSE LOOKED the same as the night of the party, Roseanne thought. The dirt yard still littered. All that was missing was the loud thump of music and the shadowy figures moving through the dark night. Mervin was at the side of the house, bent under the opened hood of a green pickup. She recognized the skinny stovepipe legs inside the blue jeans, the sweat-smeared back of his shirt.