When the Day of Evil Comes (30 page)

Nothing was out of place. Not a single thing.

Except my peace of mind. I wasn’t at peace in my own home. Peter Terry had seen to that.

I couldn’t see him, but I could sense his presence everywhere. It was as palpable as the smell. I could feel him watching me, feel him enjoy my revulsion, almost hear his laughter.

I was beginning to know him. Peter Terry was impulsive, rageful, mischievous. And cruelly calculating and deceitful. He had the whacked-out emotional capacity of a two-year-old on acid and the predatory mind of a serial killer. He had lied to my mother, seducing her into believing that he was just a fellow traveler, someone who would listen to her and who needed her advice. And he had lied to Erik Zocci, convincing the poor boy he was worthless. Nothing. That his life had no value. Now he was lying to Gavin. And he had set out, for some reason I might never understand, to destroy me.

But he was absolutely not going to succeed. Not tonight. Not on my turf. I remembered Tony DeStefano’s words once again. As a child of the King, I was entitled to protection.

I was exhausted, but there was no sleeping now. I couldn’t sleep in the house like this, and I had nowhere to go at nearly 2:00 a.m. I ran around the house, tossing out prayers as I went, throwing open all the doors and windows, airing the place out.

I vacuumed and swept and mopped and dusted until I had rid my home of every last dead fly. I emptied two cans of bug spray killing flies. I broke my flyswatter, I swatted so many. I turned all my ceiling fans onto helicopter speed, creating a wind tunnel in that house that made it impossible for anything but a jet airplane to alight in there.

By the time I was finished, the sun was coming up. The egg smell was almost gone, replaced by Pine-Sol and Windex and
Lemon Pledge. The washing machine was humming with the third load of sheets. I had decided to wash everything in the house. I’d be doing laundry for days, probably.

I was consecrating my home. Setting it apart for myself. Taking it back from the demon. He couldn’t have it. It was mine.

I fixed myself a cup of tea, took a few aspirin, and settled down on my porch swing to rest. My eyes fell on the boxes my dad had shipped to me. My mother’s estate records, which had almost broken my toe in the dark six hours earlier. I hauled the boxes inside and stacked them in the corner of my dining room. I’d go through them this afternoon if I had the energy. I’d told my dad I’d call him about them before the weekend.

All the fight went out of me as I sat back down on the porch swing and set my cup of tea on the porch railing beside me. The birds were singing their morning song, the sun heating up the day, and I was wilting. Not in defeat, but from fatigue.

I laid myself down on the swing, my back flat on the wooden slats and my foot on the porch, rocking myself.

I must have slept, and slept hard, because when I woke up, my face was sunburned and the sun was two hours higher in the sky It had to be at least nine o’clock. I went back inside and washed my teacup in the sink.

All the flies were gone, as was the smell. And I had the feeling they would not be back. Maybe taking a stand against Peter Terry had liberated me. Maybe God had just decided to win the battle for me, as long as I was willing to show up and fight. I wasn’t sure. But my radar was quiet. Peter Terry wasn’t around. I was positive. He’d packed up and gone somewhere else.

Even with all my pending legal problems, with my job hanging by a frayed piece of thread, my professional reputation on the line, and facing prosecution in the state of Illinois, I felt
safe for the first time in days. Something had happened that had granted me, for however long, a thorough sense of peace.

Once I realized I could stop moving for now, I discovered how truly exhausted I was. I felt like I could sleep for a week. I took a bath, fixed myself a peanut butter sandwich, and then snuggled myself into bed. With the drapes pulled tight, it was dark enough in my bedroom to sleep even in midday.

I made it four hours. The phone woke me up at two o’clock in the afternoon.

It was Liz Zocci.

“Did I wake you?” she asked.

“It’s okay. I was up all night.”

“I’m sorry. I have some bad news.”

I thought I’d won a reprieve from bad news.

“What is it?”

“Mariann is dead.”

I was wide awake now.

“Oh, Liz. What happened?”

“She was dead in her hotel room this morning. In her bed. She had a plastic bag tied over her head.”

“Liz, I’m so sorry.”

I listened as she choked back tears. “She had a hard life,” she said at last.

“I know.”

She pulled herself back together. “Mariann called the police after you left last night. Detective Thornton. Who seems like a really good guy. He’ll probably be calling you today.”

“Okay.”

“She told him everything. She told him about all the years of abuse from Joe. How he’d beaten her and the kids. She gave him Erik’s journal. I guess you’d given it to her.”

“Yeah. I found it in his dorm room.”

“She read it. I think it made an impression on her. I think that’s what motivated her to call the detective. To stand up to Joe at last. Erik’s words. From the grave, I guess.”

“You talked to Thornton, then?”

“I spent the morning with him. I was the one who found her.”

I pictured Liz walking into the room and finding her mother-in-law, still bruised from that beating, blue-faced underneath a collapsed plastic bag.

“Was her pill bottle still beside her bed?” I asked.

“Yes. It was about half full. I told him you had seen it there the night before.”

“It had at least twenty pills in it when I left. Maybe she took them to get up the nerve to …” I let my voice trail off.

“Thornton doesn’t think it’s suicide,” Liz said.

“What else could it be?”

“Joe’s been arrested.”

“They think Joe killed her?”

“And maybe Erik too.”

I was too stunned to respond.

“You’d asked me about Erik’s autopsy,” Liz was saying. “No one in the family ever saw it, it turns out. Maybe Joe had it suppressed or something. He’s so powerful. Who knows? But it was inconclusive. Erik died of trauma to the head and massive internal injuries. They never determined whether the head injuries were a result of his fall. Now they’re thinking Joe might have hit him. And then tossed him over the rail to cover it up. Thornton told me he thinks that could be why Joe was trying to blame Erik’s death on you.”

“But why?”

“In a scuffle, maybe. Joe is a violent man. Maybe Erik confronted him. Everyone else was afraid to.”

My mind went back to the journal, to Erik’s agony over his mother’s passivity His musings that he might eventually need to do what she would not.

Liz continued. “Since the police didn’t know about Joe’s history they never suspected foul play. But with Mariann telling her story to Thornton last night, and then turning up dead, he arrested Joe and charged him with her assault. They haven’t charged him yet with murder. And Erik’s case has been reopened.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

“So Joe’s in jail?”

“I’m sure he won’t be for long. He’ll buy his way out of this. He’ll hire the best attorneys money can buy. Probably already has. And he’ll win. He always does.”

“So Thornton’s not coming after me? I’m the one they charged with her assault. And I was with her the night she died.”

“Mariann exonerated you of the assault charge. She gave Thornton dates going back three decades of doctor’s visits and hospitalizations and everything else and signed releases for all her medical records. And all the kids have come forward to confirm her accounts. She gave him more than enough evidence to convince him that Joe was the one who had beaten her, not you. The charges against you have been dropped.”

“How’s Andy?”

“Relieved, in an odd way. Mariann’s been gone a long time. She was such a shell of a woman. Maybe she’s at peace now. And maybe Joe will get what he deserves.”

“I’m really sorry, Liz.”

“I know Me too.”

“When’s the funeral?”

“Monday or Tuesday. After the autopsy.”

“Your family’s had a lot of loss.”

“Too much,” she said.

“How’s Christine?”

“She’s sad. But she told me this morning before I left for the Four Seasons that Earl came by last night to tell her that Grandma says good-bye. I didn’t know what she meant until I got to the hotel.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Wow.”

We sat silently for a minute, neither of us knowing what to say.

“Can you come for the funeral?” she asked. “I think Mariann would want you there.”

“Sure,” I said, wondering where I was going to get the money.

“Andy and I would like to fly you up. We have free passes on Eagle Wing.”

“Yeah, I guess you would, wouldn’t you? I’d really appreciate that.”

We agreed to talk later.

I cried after I hung up the phone. Cried mostly, I think, for the wreckage of the Zocci family. Two children dead and now their mother gone, after a lifetime of violence and secrets. And now the family patriarch jailed, accused of murdering his wife and son.

It was a cruel end to a terrible story. I was relieved on my own behalf, of course. And many of my questions still remained. I’d probably never get answers to most of them. But the answers themselves had lost meaning in the face of such catastrophic loss.

It wasn’t a puzzle anymore. It was a massacre.

T
HE REST OF THE AFTERNOON
passed quietly for me. I cried for the Zoccis and prayed for them. I prayed for myself. I prayed for Gavin. And I cried for my mother, whose involvement in this entire affair still mystified me. But it didn’t matter, really. I missed her. I put her wedding ring on my finger, tucked myself back into bed, and slept until evening.

At six o’clock, I roused myself, ate a quick supper, and then went to visit Gavin at Green Oaks. I found him sitting with Tony DeStefano on a stone bench in the tree-shaded courtyard, the bucolic setting belying the true nature of the facility If you didn’t know to look for the locked gates and the medical charts and to listen for the misery, you’d think you were in a park somewhere. And that the boy sitting on the park bench was happy and free. Like a twenty-year-old should be.

“Hey, Gavin,” I said as I walked up.

“Dr. Foster,” he said. “I’m glad you came.”

“I’ll give you guys a minute,” Tony said. He stood and walked into the cafeteria. I saw him fix himself a cup of coffee and find another spot in the courtyard. It was a nice evening to sit outside.

“How’re you doing?” I said to Gavin.

“Better.”

“You look good.”

And he did. His eyes were clear. He was alert. He seemed lucid and fairly lively, considering what he’d been through.

“Tough week, huh?” I said.

“I heard yours wasn’t too good either.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” I could almost laugh about it now. “Tony doesn’t even know this yet. I ended up in jail in Chicago.”

“For what?”

“Something I didn’t do. It’s all over now. I’ll tell you the whole story sometime. Maybe after you graduate.”

“If they let me. I’ve missed a week.”

“I think we can work that out, Gavin. When are you getting out? Have they said?”

“My shrink said tomorrow. Maybe the day after. They want to make sure I’m not going to jump off a bridge or something.”

“Are you?”

“What?”

“Going to jump off a bridge or something?”

“No,” he said, his face becoming somber.

“What was that about, Gavin? Why did you try to kill yourself?”

“I wish I could explain it,” he said. “It’s like I was in this hole. This dark, horrible, scary place. And somehow I’d convinced myself there was no getting out of it. That I was going to be in there forever. And the only way out was to die. I convinced myself it was the only option. The only solution.”

“It sounds awful.”

“It was. And then it was like I couldn’t find myself anymore. Like I was gone. I couldn’t seem to get myself out of this fog. I
was seeing things. Hearing things.”

“You said Peter Terry was your roommate.”

“He was. I swear. That was real. He lived in that bed next to me for three days.”

“The nurse told me you didn’t have a roommate.”

“She told me the same thing. Diane. She’s nice. She’s a good nurse.”

“So what do you think? About Peter Terry?”

“I think I believe in demons.”

“I think you do too.”

“Tony says as a child of the King, I’m entitled to protection.”

“He’s right about that,” I said.

“Good. Because that Peter Terry dude is bad news.”

I laughed. What an understatement. “You are right about that.”

A psych tech was gathering patients for evening group. I said good-bye to Gavin and walked over and sat next to Tony. We sat there for a while without saying anything, listening to the birds sing and to the occasional plane fly overhead.

“I wonder what else is flying around this courtyard?” I asked.

“More than either of us wants to know, I think,” Tony said. “Sometimes I wonder what it would be like. To see them all.”