Chain Letter (37 page)

“What did you find out?” she asked.

“Nothing from the paper. They protect the identity of anybody who places an ad, no
matter how weird. But the police might be able to go back there later and learn something.”

“What about at the record store?” she asked.

“I spoke to James’s brother. He was elusive. He knew stuff, but he wasn’t talking.
He did give me the home address of his sister-in-law.”

“James Whiting’s wife?”

“Yes. Want to go have a talk with her?”

Alison stared in the direction Tony had disappeared. He had slept with another girl.
Her Tony. It was hard to imagine. It was horrible to think about. He must have been
put under a spell.

“I want to talk to her right now,” Alison replied.

M
rs. Carol Whiting was not at home when they tried the front door of the tiny redbrick
house in Santa Monica. Or maybe she was and her brother-in-law had warned her that
he had given out her address. Alison asked Eric what story he had fed the brother-in-law,
but Eric was evasive. He just said he had his “ways.”

There was nothing to do but hang out near there until the woman came home. Eric took
her to a restaurant, but she couldn’t even eat her salad. They tried the house again,
found no one there, and then Eric took her to a sci-fi film about a future society
of humans who wanted to be robots. Alison fell asleep in the movie. She hadn’t slept
the previous night after hearing about Kipp’s death. She did sleep now through two
showings of the movie. When Eric woke her it was ten o’clock
at night. He asked if she’d been having nightmares. Apparently she had often kicked
and clawed at the air while unconscious. But she’d had no dreams that she could recall.
All she knew was that her long nap had done little to refresh her.

They went to the woman’s house once more.

She was at home and opened the door for them.

“Yes?” she said. “Can I help you?”

She was a short, plump woman with smooth dark features and a nervous twitch in her
right eye. She couldn’t have been thirty, but she had a streak of gray that split
her short hair in two. She looked tired.

“Hi,” Eric began. “My name’s Tom and this is Amy and we’re here to—”

“Talk to you about your missing husband,” Alison interrupted.

Eric stared at her in shock. He had told her ahead of time to leave everything to
him. But she was tired of deception. The woman had backed up a step.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“We know what happened to your husband,” Alison said. “We’d like to tell you the whole
story. May we come in?”

“You knew Jim?” the woman asked, uncertain.

“No,” Alison said. “But I was one of the people who helped bury him.”

The woman shuddered. “Who are you?” she asked.

Alison reached out and touched the woman’s hand. At first the woman flinched, but
as she looked into Alison’s eyes, she
seemed to relax. Maybe she could see that Alison, too, had been to hell and had yet
to come back.

“Please,” Alison said. “We mean you no harm.”

She studied them for a moment longer before opening the door wider. “Come in,” she
said.

The woman insisted that they call her Carol. Her brother-in-law had not warned her
that they were coming over. Just the same, her children were not at home. They were
at a sister’s house, which was probably a good thing. Alison figured they wouldn’t
have got inside with the kids around. Carol was making herself coffee and asked if
they would like a cup. They said sure. Carol fussed over them. She was obviously dying
to hear what they had to say, but at the same time she was doing everything to postpone
it.

There was a picture of the man on the piano. Jim.

When the three of them were seated comfortably in the living room, with Eric positioned
with his good ear toward Carol, Alison described what had happened the summer before
in the desert after the concert. She kept her story focused on that night alone. She
didn’t go into the chain letters or Neil’s madness. Sitting across from her, Eric
began to relax. As she approached the part where they buried the man, she began to
cry softly. It was no act. She couldn’t get over the fact that she was talking to
the man’s wife. Carol cried with her as she tried to explain why they hadn’t gone
to the police.

“We thought of you,” Alison said. “I mean, we didn’t know
if you even existed. But we knew the man must have family somewhere. We thought we
could send an anonymous letter to the police explaining what had happened. But we
were afraid it would be traced back to us.” Alison wiped at her face. She had shed
a lot of tears lately. One of these days they were going to dry up. But today was
not that day. Another flood burst out as she thought of covering the man with dirt.
“We didn’t mean to kill him. It was an accident. We were driving with our lights out
and then we hit him and that was that. I’m so sorry, Carol. I can’t tell you how sorry
I am. All this time you must have wondered what happened to him.”

Carol surprised her by reaching out and hugging her, comforting her. This crazy teenager
who had destroyed her husband’s life. It made no sense to Alison until Carol spoke.

“I have always wondered what happened to Jim’s body,” Carol said gently. “I would
lie awake at night wondering where he lay. But I knew he was dead. I have always known
who killed him. Don’t be so hard on yourself, Alison. Jim was dead when you and your
friends ran over his body.”

Alison stared at her in disbelief. “Are you sure?”

Carol sat back in her seat. “Maybe I should tell you my story. It’ll put your mind
at ease.” She put her hand to her forehead. “But those are days I don’t care to remember.”

“Tell us what you feel comfortable with,” Alison said.

Carol shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to start at the beginning. Jim and I were married
eight years before he met Charlene.
We had a happy life. He had the record store and business was good. We both had the
children to play with and love. I was finishing my master’s in education at UCLA.
I remember the first night Jim mentioned Charlene to me. We were sitting in bed at
night reading. He just tossed out her name. He said she was a pretty girl who regularly
came into the store and was always asking him to order CDs of bands he’d never heard
of. Groups like Dried Blood and Black Sex—real sicko groups. I remember Jim saying
that Charlene seemed like such a nice girl to be into crap like that. I just grunted.
Jim had lots of odd customers. And that was the last I heard of Charlene for a long
time.

“Several months went by and Jim began to change in small ways. He became more impatient
with the children and snapped at me frequently. I’m not saying Jim was a saint before
this change occurred, but he had always been a nice guy. He really was, and I’m not
just saying that because I was his wife. He didn’t wish anybody any harm. But his
mood had turned sour, and I didn’t know how to shake him out of it. He began to suffer
from insomnia and took to spending longer hours at the store. It got so that he almost
never came home, even when the store was closed. You must think I was pretty stupid,
huh? I couldn’t see that he was having an affair. But at the time I was worried that
he was sick. He’d always been a bit chubby, but now he was definitely on the slim
side. I’d put a home-cooked meal in front of him and he’d just pick.

“Then I caught him snorting cocaine in our bathroom one
day. I had come home early from school. I was shocked. The music business is full
of drugs, but Jim wasn’t that kind of guy. He never put anything harmful in his body.
Finally, I thought I understood the changes that were happening in him. He told me
that he was barely into the stuff, that it was just a weekend habit. But he was obviously
an addict. I checked our bank account. I always let Jim handle the business side of
our lives. I was sick when I learned that we were broke. Jim had blown all our savings
on drugs. When I confronted him with what I’d found, he promised that he’d get help.
I went with him to several clinics, and he seemed to be ready to enter one when I
made another shocking discovery.

“I was digging in my garden when I smelled something peculiar. I dug a little deeper
and found a green trash bag filled with the remains of desecrated animals. There were
dogs and cats and even a skunk. And all of them had been beheaded and their fur shaved
with strange symbols. Not for a second did I think they had anything to do with Jim,
but when I told him about what I had found, it was all there on his face. He had done
those things to those animals! I couldn’t believe it. Was this the man I had married?
He was behaving like a psycho. I took the children and left for my sister’s.

“But Jim called me every night and begged me to come back. He told me be had gotten
involved with bad people but that he was getting away from them. He mentioned Charlene’s
name as one of them. I didn’t know who she was until he
reminded me. But the way he said her name made me suspicious. I asked him if he was
having an affair with her, and when he didn’t answer right away, I knew where I stood.
That was one thing I wouldn’t put up with—unfaithfulness. I swore I’d never see him
again and hung up on him. But two minutes later I was missing him worse than I ever
had in my life. I drove over to our house and got there just as Charlene was arriving.

“She was pretty. I could see that from where I was sitting in my car up the block.
They didn’t see me. I watched as she dragged Jim out of the house and into her car.
She was laughing all the time like a teenager. They drove away and I followed. They
got off the freeway in a section of town where the gangs are very active. I knew I
was risking my life just to go there. They parked outside a shabby warehouse, and
the girl dragged Jim inside. I keep using the word
dragged.
It was obvious Jim didn’t want to go. I’m not saying that to protect him, either.
I assumed Charlene was into drugs and that she was taking my husband to meet her connection.

“I sat outside that old warehouse for hours, well into the night. But they never reappeared,
and the characters walking by on the street really scared me. Finally I had to go
back to my sister’s. But I noted exactly where the warehouse was, and the next day
I returned there with the police.”

“The police let you go inside the warehouse with them?” Eric broke in, surprised.

“Not at first. Two of them checked out the warehouse while
I waited in the patrol car. When they came back outside, their faces were white. One
of them had to run into the alley and vomit against the wall. They told me there was
nobody inside, and that I didn’t want to see what was in there. But, of course, I
did want to see. My husband was involved here. I jumped out of the car and ran inside
before they could stop me.”

“It was a meeting place for a satanic cult?” Eric said.

Carol raised an eyebrow. “How did you know?”

“It fits the pattern,” Eric said. “Please go on.”

Carol’s face showed extreme revulsion. “It stank in there beyond belief. There was
dried blood everywhere, and blood that was not so dry. Animal entrails and skins lay
everywhere. The walls and floor were covered with bizarre symbols. Many had been painted
in blood. There were half-burnt black candles on the floor, as if someone had been
celebrating a black mass. I could only stay in there a few seconds before I became
hysterical. When I got outside, the officers tried to comfort me. They thought what
I had seen had upset me, and it had. But it was more the thought of what Jim had gotten
himself into that tore me apart. These weren’t bad people he was seeing. They were
evil. And I knew they must want something from him, but I didn’t know what.” Carol
looked over at Eric. “Do you know what it was?”

Eric shifted, uncomfortable. “I can guess.”

“Go ahead,” Carol said. “It’s already happened. It’s done with.”

“The girl Charlene needed your husband to be her victim in a ritual murder,” Eric
said.

“That can’t be true,” Alison blurted out. “Things like that don’t happen now.”

Carol shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid your friend is right. Charlene was an apprentice.
She wanted to be a full-fledged witch. To be one she had to murder an innocent. Someone
who loved her.” Carol lowered her head, and a bitter tear trickled over her cheek.
“That girl murdered my husband. She did it so that she could live forever.”

“But how do you know that for sure?” Alison protested. “Did you talk to her? Did you
see your husband again?”

Carol chewed on her lower lip, and her eyes were focused far away. “I didn’t see him
again, but I spoke to him once more on the phone. He called me at our house a couple
of days later in the middle of the night. I had gone back to living there, by myself.
The children stayed at my sister’s. I hoped he’d come back. He sounded scared as he
told me he was going to try to come home soon, but that he had some business to finish
up first. He apologized for getting involved with Charlene. I asked him if he was
in love with her, and he was silent for a long time and never did answer the question.
Someone came into the room where he was, so he hung up. That was the last I heard
from him.”

“And did you ever speak to Charlene?” Alison repeated.

“No,” Carol said. “But I spoke to her parents.”

“Where?” Eric asked. “When?”

“At the morgue, when they came to identify Charlene’s body.”

“She’s dead?” Alison asked.

Carol nodded grimly. “I hate to say it but I’m glad. But let me back up and tell you
what happened in the order it happened. The police set up a stakeout on the warehouse.
But the cult must have got wind of it because they never went back there. I told the
police about Charlene, but that’s all I had—a first name and an incomplete description.”

“Excuse me,” Alison interrupted. “What color was Charlene’s hair?”

“Blond,” Carol said.