Nightshade

  “You don’t know anything of the sort,” Frank growled, picking up the decanter an instant before his wife’s fingers closed on it.

  “What are you doing?” Phyllis demanded.

  “Do you really want to be drunk when Becky comes home?”

  Phyllis eyed her husband blearily. She was almost sure Becky wasn’t coming home — half an hour ago she’d had a strong feeling that came out of nowhere, and knew that something terrible had happened to her daughter. “She’s dead,” she’d wailed, her eyes tearing. “I know my baby’s dead.” Frank had only glared at her, and she could tell that he thought she was drunk. And maybe she was, but that didn’t mean her intuition wasn’t right.

  Now, as the siren faded into the darkness beyond the front window, she stood up, steadying herself against the table next to her chair. “We should go out there,” she said.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” her husband retorted. “We’re going to sit here and wait. If Dan Pullman finds anything — or even hears anything — he’ll call us.” His eyed his wife balefully. “And it would help if you were sober when that happens.”

  Phyllis seemed about to argue with him, but then turned and headed for the kitchen. “I’ll make some coffee,” she said, seeing no point in mentioning the bottle of cooking sherry she kept behind the coffee can on the next-to-the-top shelf of the pantry.

  * * *

  DAN PULLMAN PULLED through the gates of Hapgood farm right behind the ambulance. He could see Tony Petrocelli’s squad car stopped halfway to the house, its lights flashing. As he pulled his car off the drive so as not to block the ambulance when it left, he saw Tony squatting next to Matt’s body. Crouched on the other side of Matt, leaning against the Range Rover, was Joan Hapgood.

  As the paramedics took over for him, Tony Petrocelli stood up and drew his boss aside. “He’s still alive,” he said. “But I sure don’t get what’s going on.”

  “What did Joan tell you?”

  Petrocelli shrugged. “She says she can’t remember what happened.”

  Pullman’s eyes flicked toward Joan, then returned to his deputy. “Can’t remember? She was driving the car, wasn’t she?”

  Petrocelli spread his hands helplessly. “She says she doesn’t know.”

  “What the hell does she mean, she doesn’t know?”

  Holding his hand up to shield his eyes from the glare of a pair of headlights that had appeared at the foot of the driveway, Pullman shook his head impatiently. “Find out who that is, and make them go away,” he growled. “And make sure nobody else comes in here, okay?” As the deputy moved toward the car that had pulled to a stop just behind the ambulance, Pullman shifted his attention to Joan Hapgood.

  “Joan?” He took her arm and gently drew her to her feet, only seeing the blood on her clothes as she stepped into the glare of the ambulance’s headlights. “Are you hurt?”

  Joan shook her head but said nothing, her eyes fixed on Matt, who was still lying exactly as he had been when she found him a little while ago.

  “I — I don’t think so,” she stammered.

  As she finally tore her eyes away from Matt and looked at the police chief, Pullman could see the confusion in her face. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Joan shook her head.

  Pullman frowned. Was it that she didn’t know, or didn’t want to tell him? “Would you like me to call Trip Wainwright?” he asked. For a moment he didn’t think she’d heard him, but then she shook her head again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she said. Her gaze went back to Matt. “I’ve killed him, haven’t I?” she asked, her voice breaking. “I’ve killed my son.”

  Suddenly Gerry Conroe appeared at Pullman’s side. “What the hell is going on around here?” he demanded. “Tony Petrocelli just tried to order me off the — ” His eyes fell on Joan Hapgood’s bloody clothing. “Jesus! He tried to kill you too, didn’t he?”

  “We don’t know what happened, Gerry,” Pullman said before Joan could respond. “And I was the one who told Tony to keep you out of here.”

  Conroe’s face flushed with anger. “I’ve got every right to be here. My daughter is still — ”

  “Not now, Gerry,” Pullman said, deciding he’d had enough. “Stay if you want, but keep out of my way. If you don’t — ”

  “We need to get him into the ambulance,” one of the medics called out to him. “Is that okay?”

  Pullman moved to Matt and looked down at him. The shovel — no longer in his hands — lay on the driveway at his side, and in his other hand was a scrap of blood-soaked cloth.

  “We’ve already taken pictures of everything,” the medic said as Dan crouched down next to the boy.

  Reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket, Pullman pulled out one of the Ziploc bags he always carried. Touching only a single corner of the scrap of cloth, he carefully drew it out of Matt’s hand and put it in the bag. As he was sealing the bag he noticed the monogram on the material: FAT.

  He recognized it right away, for he had been with Frank Adams the first time his friend ordered a monogram on his shirt. A monogram that had subsequently appeared on every shirt Frank Adams owned, including the ones his daughter had taken to wearing a year ago. “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, and though his words were barely audible, they caught the attention not only of the medics who were about to transfer Matt to a stretcher, but of Gerry Conroe as well.

  “What is it?” Conroe demanded. “What did you find?”

  Pullman ignored him, concentrating instead on Matthew Moore. “What did you do?” he asked the unconscious boy. “What did you do to Becky Adams?”

  With Tony Petrocelli’s help, the two EMTs lifted Matt onto the stretcher. “Careful,” one of the medics told the deputy as a low moan escaped Matt’s lips. “It looks like his shoulder might be broken.” They eased Matt onto the stretcher as gently as they could, then lifted the stretcher onto the waiting gurney. As one of the medics began strapping Matt down, he groaned again.

  “Hold it!” Pullman snapped, stepping to the head of the gurney and looking down into the boy’s face. “Talk to me, Matt!” he said, still clutching the Ziploc bag containing the scrap of material from Frank Adams’s shirt. “Tell me what happened!”

  “Take it easy, Chief,” one of the medics said. “He can’t hear you.”

  Pullman’s eyes didn’t leave the boy’s face. “Come on, Matt!” Another moan drifted from the boy’s lips, and Pullman thought he saw a twitch. “Talk to me!”

  Then Joan appeared next to the stretcher, looming over Matt. “Leave him alone,” she cried. “Just leave him alone!” Her gaze shifted from Dan Pullman to her son. “I’m here, Matt,” she whispered. “I’m here. And I’ll never leave you. I’ll never leave you again.”

  As she uttered the last words, Matthew Moore’s eyes snapped open, and a different sound erupted from his throat.

  It was not a moan. It was a scream, an anguished scream carrying so much pain that it froze everyone who had gathered around the stretcher.

  CHAPTER 28

  HE WAS BACK in the root cellar.

  The blackness was even deeper than before, the walls of the chamber so close around him that every breath was a painful struggle. The stench of death was in his nostrils, and every nerve in his body felt as if it were on fire. From somewhere in the darkness he thought he could hear the wailing of the dead.

  But he’d gotten away from the root cellar! He’d stood on Becky’s shoulders and —

  Suddenly he was there again, pushing up, struggling to raise the trapdoor. The wailing had stopped, and he was almost out — almost free — almost —

  He grunted as the shovel crashed down on him, stunning him.

  Now he was stumbling through the darkness, running down a driveway that seemed to go on forever toward gates that never appeared any nearer. Then something was behind him, some unseen menace, coming closer and closer. He struggled to run faster, but his feet seemed mired in mud, and now the gate — the gate that
was his only escape from the menace closing in behind him — was farther away then ever.

  The car struck him with no warning, and he moaned as a sharp pain shot through his shoulder.

  He stumbled, then felt himself falling.

  He tumbled through the blackness, sinking deeper and deeper into it.

  A voice.

  His mother’s voice.

  “I’m here, Matt . . .” The stench of death in his nostrils gave way to the musky aroma of her perfume. “I’m here. . . .” The odor grew stronger, and he could feel her fingers reaching out to him, feel them begin their caresses. “I’ll never leave you . . . I’ll never leave you again.”

  Sensing that if he let her touch him — if he submitted to her this one last time — he would be lost forever, Matt summoned the last of his strength. Ignoring the pain that tore at his body, he sucked his lungs full and opened his mouth.

  * * *

  HIS SCREAM WASHED away the nightmare of memories that had held him in a prison of blackness, and his eyes blinked open.

  She was there!

  His mother was there, next to him, staring down at him, reaching out to him.

  “No!” he screamed. “No! Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

  His mother’s hand froze, and for a moment her eyes met his. Once again he seemed to be caught up in the nightmare, for suddenly he was no longer looking at his mother.

  He was looking at his aunt.

  Another scream rose in his throat, but before it could erupt into the night he heard a man’s voice: “Talk to me, Matt. Talk to me!”

  Matt tore his eyes away from the strange visage of his aunt, and saw Dan Pullman looming above him. “B-basement . . .” he managed.

  “You don’t have to tell them,” he heard his mother say. You don’t have to say anything.” Again her fingers reached out to touch him, and again he shrank away.

  “In the basement . . .” he said, summoning the last of his strength. “In the root cellar!” He tried to sit up, but the pain in his shoulder tore through him, draining the last of his resources, and he collapsed back down onto the stretcher.

  “Okay,” Dan Pullman barked to the medics. “Take him to the clinic. Tony, come with me.” As the EMTs wheeled Matt to the ambulance, Joan Hapgood started to follow the stretcher, but Pullman stopped her. “Not yet,” he said. “First I want you to show me the root cellar he was talking about.”

  Joan’s face paled. “I don’t go into the cellar.” The fear in her eyes was almost palpable. “I’m afraid of it — it’s so dark and feels so closed in, and — ”

  “Show us,” Dan Pullman cut in, signaling Tony Petrocelli to follow him as he took Joan’s elbow and began steering her toward the house. When Gerry Conroe started after him, Pullman almost ordered him back, then changed his mind. Depending on what they found, it might be better to have Gerry Conroe with them.

  * * *

  SOMETHING ABOUT THE house had changed since Pullman had been here earlier in the day. At first he wasn’t sure what it was; perhaps it was only in his imagination, given what Matt had said a few moments before. But then he decided it was more than that. There was a dark aura about the house, and from the moment he followed Joan Hapgood inside, with Gerry Conroe and Tony Petrocelli behind him, he had a feeling of terrible foreboding.

  As they moved through the mud room into the kitchen, Conroe paused and reached out to touch his shoulder. “What’s that smell?” he asked.

  The tremor in Conroe’s voice told the police chief that the other man already had a pretty good idea of what the odor must be.

  It was the scent of death.

  Instead of answering Conroe’s question, Pullman grimly scanned the kitchen, his gaze drawn to an open door next to the refrigerator. “That lead to the basement?” he asked.

  Joan stopped short. “Don’t make me go down there. Please don’t make me.”

  There was a pleading, almost childish note in her voice that surprised Pullman. Now, looking at her in the bright kitchen instead of the glow of headlights that had been the only illumination in the driveway, he saw that it wasn’t only the house that had changed.

  Joan Hapgood had too.

  Her hair was arranged differently, pulled back from her face in a tight twist he didn’t remember seeing before. And instead of the pale lipstick that was all Joan usually wore, tonight her face was made up as if she’d been preparing to go out. The colors she’d chosen — the turquoise eye shadow and bright lip gloss — made her look as if she were wearing a mask. Something was wrong with the clothes too. They didn’t quite seem to fit her, and they looked dated, and in a style that might have appeared right on a girl in her teens, but made Joan look as if she’d dressed for a costume party.

  “Jesus,” Gerry Conroe whispered, speaking softly, as if to himself. His eyes were fixed on Joan Hapgood as if he were seeing a ghost. “What the hell is going on?”

  Pullman and Tony Petrocelli exchanged a glance, and the police chief made a quick decision. “Stay up here with Joan,” he told the deputy. “I’ll go down and take a look.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Conroe said. When Pullman hesitated, Conroe pushed harder. “My daughter might be down there, Dan.”

  Pullman reluctantly nodded. “Okay. But you do exactly as I say. And you touch nothing.”

  A moment later the two men started down the stairs, moving slowly as Pullman searched for signs of blood. Wherever there were reddish smears, he alerted Conroe to avoid them. At the bottom of the stairs the smell of rotting flesh was stronger, overpowering the musty scent of mildew that they would have recognized from their own basements. Pullman paused, then saw an opening in the floor, almost hidden behind the furnace at the far end of the room. Moving closer, he saw the open trapdoor, and the ladder protruding from the three-foot-square hole. There was a large bloodstain on the floor near the ladder, and as Conroe moved toward it, Pullman held out an arm to stop him. “Stay here,” he said, his voice low but carrying a note of authority. “Let me take a look first.”

  Reluctantly, Gerry complied, and Pullman stepped forward and gazed down into the dark pit beneath the basement floor.

  For a moment he saw nothing, but then, protruding out of the darkness surrounding the shaft of light coming through the trapdoor, he saw a leg. Flicking on his flashlight, he probed with the beam, moving from the leg up to a white shirt.

  A white shirt that was soaked with blood.

  His stomach knotting, he climbed down the ladder, careful to touch as little of it as possible. At the bottom, he crouched over the crumpled body that was clad in the bloody white shirt and jeans. Though the face was badly slashed and covered with blood, he recognized Becky Adams. He reached out and touched her neck, searching for a pulse.

  There was none.

  Struggling against the nausea that was threatening to overwhelm him, Pullman turned the light away from Becky Adams, and a moment later was staring into the face of Emily Moore.

  Or, more accurately, at what had once been her face. Her skin was torn and bruised, and dried blood was crusted around her mouth and nostrils. Pullman’s pulse quickened when he saw a movement, and then he realized that it wasn’t a movement at all, but a mass of ants that were already feeding off the old woman’s corpse.

  He moved the beam again, and saw Kelly Conroe.

  She too was lying still, her face bruised and bloodied, but when he reached out to feel for a pulse, she jerked away from his touch.

  “No . . .” she whispered. “Please . . . no more.”

  “Kelly?” Gerry Conroe cried out from above. “Oh, God! Kelly!” A moment later, ignoring Pullman’s orders, he was at the bottom of the ladder, kneeling over his daughter, reaching out to touch her, but hesitating at the last second, as if afraid he might hurt her.

  Kelly was silent for a moment, and then, with a soft moan, opened one of her swollen eyes. “Daddy?” she whispered, reaching out to him.

  As Conroe gathered his daughter into his arms, he l
ooked up at Dan Pullman, his eyes glittering with rage. “I’ll kill that son of a bitch. I swear, I’ll kill him for what he did!”

  Kelly’s hand closed on her father’s in a weak squeeze. “No!” she whimpered. “N-not Matt! His mother! It was his mother. . . .” Then, the realization that she was finally safe sinking in, she began to sob quietly.

  As Gerry Conroe tried to soothe his daughter, stroking her hair and cradling her as if she were a baby, Dan Pullman used his radio to issue orders. “We’ve got a real mess out here,” he said after telling the dispatcher to get a second ambulance out to Hapgood Farm. “Make sure someone gets on the gate right away — the last thing we need is a bunch of rubberneckers up here.” Putting the radio back in its holster, his gaze shifted to Gerry Conroe. “What was that all about up there?” he asked. “When we were with Joan.”

  Conroe’s eyes stayed on his daughter. “It was her clothes — her hair — everything,” he replied softly, his glance flicking toward Pullman before returning to his daughter’s bloodstained face. “When I first saw her in the light, I thought I was looking at her sister. I mean, I could swear that dress was Cynthia’s, and the way she’s got her hair and her makeup . . .” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “I just don’t know,” he finished. “It was almost like seeing a ghost.”

  Pullman was silent for a few seconds, then rose to his feet. “Will you be okay if I leave you alone down here?”

  Conroe nodded, and a moment later the police chief climbed back up out of the root cellar.

  * * *

  “WHY CAN’T I go to the hospital?” Joan Hapgood was seated at the kitchen table, her body tense, and when she spoke her voice was as tight as an overwound clock spring. “Why can’t I see my son?”

  “Let’s just wait until Trip Wainwright gets here,” Dan Pullman said for the third time in the last five minutes.

  When he’d emerged from the basement, Pullman said nothing to Joan Hapgood. He went directly to the telephone on the kitchen counter and called her attorney. “I think we’re going to need you,” he told Wainwright. “I want to talk to Joan, but I don’t want anyone saying I questioned her improperly.”