They (6 page)

“And your deputy didn’t want you to react in the same way?” Vince ventured.

“Correct,” Tom Hoffman said. “But here’s where the similarities in both cases end. While the men convicted in the Arkansas case definitely had the sophistication to make the murder
appear
cult related if they wanted, there was no cult related evidence left at the scene to present such a theory. Steve Anderson, on the other hand, has no knowledge or understanding of cults, much less religion in general, and wouldn’t know a pentagram from a hole in his head.” Tom Hoffman paused, eyeing Vince gravely. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“For God’s sake, yes!” Vince exclaimed.

“
This
murder is a cult,” Tom Hoffman said.

The words hung in the air with their grave clarity. Vince looked at Tom Hoffman with a sense of puzzlement. “What do you mean?”

“You sure you won’t be squeamish?” Tom Hoffman cut off Vince’s impending question.

“No.” He was more curious now than ever before, yet he could feel his stomach grow heavy with dread.

Tom Hoffman regarded him warily. Then he turned toward the rear of the house. “Okay, follow me.”

Vince followed Tom down the short hallway toward his mother’s bedroom. The door to the bedroom was closed, and Tom paused to cast one more look at Vince as if to say,
are you ready for this? Are you sure you can handle this
? Vince’s expression told Tom that he was ready. Tom nodded, gripped the door knob with his left hand and opened the door.

Vince followed Tom into his mother’s bedroom, the crime scene where she met her untimely demise. The drapes over the windows were drawn, making the room shroud-like, the shadows the furniture cast even darker and longer. Tom reached for the light and chased the shadows away with a flick of the switch. Vince blinked and almost stepped back in horror from the scene in front of him.

The double bed his mother had kept as far back as he could remember was missing, along with the small bureaus that flanked both sides. There was a dried pool of blood on the floor where the bed would have sat, and a spray of blood on the wall where the headboard of the bed would have rested. Toward Vince’s right was a large bureau with a mirror over it. Toward his left was a small chest where he knew she kept her embroidery and crocheting equipment. There was a small closet next to the chest.

On the wall where the headboard would have rested, directly beneath the spray of blood, was a series of symbols in maroon. There were six of them, drawn in a straight line. To Vince’s eye they were archaic and meaningless.

“Homicide removed the bed and the bureaus for testing,” Tom Hoffman said, as Vince looked at the room in growing shock. “They’re still running tests on it. The rest of the room and its belongings have already been swept by homicide for evidence.”

Vince got over the initial shock and took a deep breath. For some reason he expected it to look worse than it was. While he was expecting it to be bloody, Tom Hoffman had built up such a drama around his theory that it was a cult-related murder that he was expecting something… more grotesque. Ghoulish perhaps. With the exception of the strange symbols written in what was obviously his mother’s blood on the wall above her bed, there was nothing else unusual about the scene. His mother had been stabbed to death in what was probably a home invasion robbery, and naturally there was a lot of blood. So what?

“To tell you the truth, Mr. Hoffman, those symbols mean nothing,” Vince began, choosing his words carefully and speaking softly. “Some doped up kid could have done it in emulation of something he read in a book or something.”

Tom Hoffman looked at Vince seriously. “You weren’t here when we found the body.”

“No.”

“I also didn’t tell you…everything.”

“Then perhaps you’d better.” Vince was getting tired of this beating-around-the-bush behavior.

“I will, now that you’ve pretty much proved that you can handle it.” Tom Hoffman gestured at the bloody scene in front of them. “First, tell me if you notice anything out of the ordinary about this room besides that bloody mess on the floor.”

Vince looked at the room. It had been fourteen years since he’d been home. He wouldn’t know if his mother had made slight decorations to the room. But from the placement of the furniture, and the way the room looked, it appeared that nothing much had changed. He looked at the room, trying to remember what it looked like from the last time he was here. The bed was in the same position he remembered, the bureaus, likewise, were where they’d always rested. The wall was bare now, but—

“There used to be a crucifix hanging over her bed,” he said, motioning toward the bloody wall. He remembered that clearly now. For not being Catholic, his mother sure had a fetish for graven images. “It’s not there, and I don’t see it anywhere else.”

Tom Hoffman nodded. “What I’m going to relate to you about the state of your mother’s body when we found it is pretty graphic. I realize that your comments about those symbols are true; they could have been done by some stupid kid who was robbing the place. But the condition we found your mother’s body in is my firm conviction that this
wasn’t
just a robbery.”

“Okay,” Vince said. If this was going to be bad, let’s get it over with.

“When we found your mother’s body—or, rather I should say, when John Van Zant found your mother’s body—it was lying in a normal position, feet toward the foot of the bed, head resting on the pillow. Her eyes had been gouged out and her chest was ripped open. Whoever did it appeared to know what they were doing. The coroner said the cuts were precise and were executed with surgical skill.” He looked at Vince. “Are you okay?”

Vince nodded. He felt a little light-headed, but he was okay. “Yeah. Just…the initial shock of hearing that did me in there for a minute. I’m okay. Go on.”

“You sure now?” Tom Hoffman looked concerned.

“Yes, please.” Vince swallowed a lump in his throat, bracing himself for the rest. Laura’s death had been horrible, but this…
this
was madness.

Tom Hoffman regarded him for a moment before going on, as if checking to be sure Vince had the stamina to hear the rest. “The killer, or killers, cut out her heart and her eyeballs. We haven’t found them. Whoever killed her took them with him.” He appeared to hesitate again. “They also shoved the crucifix into her vagina.”

Vince closed his eyes, trying to cast the image away. “Jesus,” he breathed.

“Somebody bent on a simple robbery who encounters the homeowner does
not
go through the extreme…
cruelty
that your mother went through. Nor do they invest in the time it takes to do something like
this
.” Tom Hoffman spoke slowly, as if he were teaching a course on the fine arts of homicide investigation. “The coroner estimates that whoever did this tortured her first—post mortem evidence suggests your mother may have been tortured for probably fifteen minutes before she was killed. They most certainly violated her with the crucifix before she died. The coroner says she would have died eventually from those wounds, but they spared her the pain and horror of that. They slashed her throat. Then they performed the eviscerations. To perform such surgery takes time and precision. They weren’t interested in robbing your mother. They had motives far more sinister than that.”

Vince closed his eyes. He thought the details of Laura’s death were horrible, but this was worse.

“Vince? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Vince said. He looked at Tom Hoffman. His body felt hollow and empty. “You have to understand something here, Mr. Hoffman. I…lost my wife nine months ago in a car accident. I’m still trying to get over it. Was doing a pretty good job of it until I heard about this.”

“My God, I am so sorry.” Tom Hoffman looked devastated at this news, as if he were partially responsible.

“I was never very close to my mother,” Vince continued. He turned away from the cop, looking out the window into the back yard. “The last time I was really close to her was a long time ago. She…changed a lot when we moved to New York. And then we hopped around so much after that, it seemed that she changed into a different person every time we moved. By the time I was fourteen she was a completely different person than the woman who raised me. Hell, I barely
remember
that other woman. And she became downright loony the last few years I was home.” He managed a slight smile and chuckled. “Shit, she got
worse
in the years
after
I left home.”

Tom Hoffman stood quiet and listened.

“Anyway,” Vince seemed to be groping for the right words. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that…I’ve been through a lot the last nine months. I think I’m just now beginning to get over my wife’s death, even though I know I will never—
ever
—be completely over it. And to hear that my mother had been murdered…didn’t really strike a dent in me.” He looked at Tom. “Do you know what I mean?”

Tom nodded.

“I’ve talked about this already with a good friend of mine back home. I just…I don’t know…I’ve been so numbed by Laura’s death that I guess the news of Mom’s passing just hasn’t hit me yet. And to hear your theory is just…mind boggling, I guess.”

Tom laid a gentle hand on Vince’s shoulder. “I know it’s tough to understand. Hell,
I
don’t even understand how somebody could do something like this.” Tom Hoffman’s voice was low, gentle and soothing. “But if you need me during the next few days, you know where to find me.”

Vince nodded. He looked away from the bloodstained hardwood floor at Tom Hoffman’s weathered face. “Yeah.”

“Good.” Tom motioned toward the room. “I’ve got a team of detectives from Lancaster coming today to question some of the neighbors and perform another sweep of the property. If you’d like, come back later this afternoon and I’ll give you a key. You can collect what you need then.”

“Thanks.” He turned and walked out of the bedroom. Tom Hoffman followed him. He really wanted to spend time in the house and poke around, look to see what she’d been up to. Find out
about
her. For the first time since his childhood, he realized he really didn’t know very much about his mother or her family.
Why is that
? He thought.
Every time I tried to bring the subject up as a kid she would find some way to avoid it. She refused to talk about it. I stopped asking as I grew up
. But now that he was an adult he realized it was the one enigma about his life that he always knew was beckoning: who am I? Where did I come from? Who are my people?

“Listen, I’ve got to get back to the station.” Tom Hoffman glanced at his watch. “The local PTA wants to meet with me to discuss the fall school semester’s extracurricular activities. And since I’m on the local PTA board, well, that sorta lends to my duties as well.”

Vince and Tom Hoffman walked outside together. Tom locked the front door, and as they walked to their cars Vince asked him one last question, one that had been in the back of his mind since he heard about the grisly circumstances of his mother’s death. “Mr. Hoffman, did my mother or any of her friends talk about anything…well, anything about their past to you?”

“Their past?” Tom Hoffman stopped at his cruiser and eyed Vince curiously. “What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know, the way people make offhand remarks about their pasts. Reminiscing. That sort of thing.”

Tom Hoffman shook his head. “I’m afraid not. At least not to me. Your mother and her bunch were quiet. Kept to themselves mostly. Despite the fact that they’re church going folks, I imagine everybody has a past. Why?”

Figments of the dream drifted in his mind, like tendrils of fog along a dark moor. “Oh…just something I’ve been wondering about.”

IT WAS ANOTHER five hours before he could get back into the house again. This time alone.

He’d spent the rest of the day driving his rented Toyota around Lititz and the surrounding countryside. Remembering. How he and his mother, Lillian Withers and some of the others from Mom’s congregation had moved out here from Toronto, Canada where they’d spent the previous eight years. He’d been sixteen going on seventeen then, and the move had been especially hard on him. He’d been taken out of the middle of the semester, away from his friends, and driven across the snowy country to the Pennsylvania Dutch Country with no conveniences of the modern city life he had grown accustomed to in Toronto. He’d been dating a pretty cheerleader when they moved, and his sixteen-year old heart had especially ached over that. For a while, he thought his relationship with Anna was the reason for the sudden move. Mom became increasingly angry with Vince during the last year or so of their residence in Toronto. He’d started on the rocky road to adolescence and wasn’t going to church with her as often—he claimed his paper route duties kept him from worship, and in turn, mother began spending more time away from home. When Vince came home from school he usually sat down to supper in an empty house. To fill in the emotional gaps, he began inviting his friends over after school for water-bong parties. When he had his first girlfriend, a cute brunette named Marion, they lost their virginity to each other on a night his mother was at a church service.

He always wondered if his mother was praying for his soul that night.

He drove around Lancaster County, remembering the year-and-a-half he lived there. He drove by the local high school. He drove by the homes of the friends he’d made in the year or so he lived in the area, wondering where they were now, or what became of them. He almost stopped at the house of a friend he’d hung out with, a guy named Judd Campbell, when he saw that the Campbell family vehicle was parked in the driveway. The vehicle was a beat-up Ford station wagon that had seen better days in the 1970s. Judd had called it the Campbell hearse because his grandmother was the prime driver of the vehicle and she was eighty-seven years old. Grandma was probably dead now.

Vince pulled the Toyota over to the side of the road and looked at the Campbell house. There were two other cars parked in the driveway beside the wagon, a Jeep Cherokee and a Subaru. He could make out movement in the house, but couldn’t tell who it was. The temptation to walk to the front door, knock and ask for Judd was great, but in the end he suppressed it. Today was not the day to go chasing after nostalgia.