Daughter of Darkness (38 page)

    

    

    A carload of black teenagers-slightly less frightening than gang-bangers, slightly more frightening than honor-roll students-offered to give Jenny a ride and waved a bottle of cheap wine at her as an inducement.

    A white pimp, who looked at if he prayed every night to a poster of the Bee Gees-the guy was wearing an honest-to-God leisure suit-inquired if she had a "representative" and if not why not and if not, how about him?

    And finally, a wobbling, weaving drunk came up to her and said that earlier tonight he'd seen a werewolf and if she didn't believe him, she could go fuck herself because she looked like such a stuck-up bitch anyway. He then proceeded to throw up in the gutter.

    She hurried on.

    She'd had the cabbie drop her four blocks from her destination. In case he suddenly remembered who she was, he wouldn't be of much help to the cops because he didn't know where she was really headed.

    She had to smile when she saw the front of Sister Mary Agnes' homeless shelter. Jenny had been to Paris, London, and Rio many times over but no sight had ever thrilled her as much as this drab, rundown shelter in the midst of a depressed area right here in Chicago.

    She hurried. She was exhausted, for one thing. And she needed a friendly face, for another.

    Sister Mary Agnes would help her. She was sure of it.

    

    

    The first tapes Coffey screened weren't all that interesting. They consisted mostly of Priscilla Bowman hypnotizing people. Fast forward. They were then given injections in their forearms. They were then asked to talk about their lives, from earliest childhood on. Fast forward. More of same. Coffey couldn't quite see what the point was of these exercises.

    With tape five, he was ready to give up. Tape four had promised to be interesting because both Quinlan
and
Priscilla were conducting the hypnosis sessions. Still, after the initial excitement of seeing Quinlan on the tape, there was nothing. More people under hypnosis getting injections and talking about I their lives. They weren't real interesting lives.

    He was just about to shut off the whole set-up when he saw a lone tape sitting near the back of the video shelf. He'd give it a few minutes. If it didn't show him something really substantive-though showing Priscilla and Quinlan conducting the same hypnosis sessions was valuable, their "break up" being a sham-he'd shut everything down and leave.

    He put the sixth tape in, not optimistic in the least. Color bars filled the screen; the tape (not a whole hell of a lot better than home video) broke up as the heads tried to lock in a good picture; and there began another hynpotherapy session. There was nothing special to see. They were in a small room, the walls a wine red. The subject sat in a straight-back chair.

    Quinlan, in a suit and tie, stood next to Priscilla in front of the subject.

    The subject was what kept him interested. Why did she look familiar to him? She was a rather nondescript woman with short hair going to gray. She wore a white blouse and a pair of blue slacks. After her injection, she began to talk about her life. Fast forward. Many minutes later, she was still talking about her life.

    But then Quinlan stopped her. "Aren't you forgetting Alice?"

    "Alice?" said the woman.

    "Yes," Priscilla said. "Alice. That's who you really are. Alice."

    The two shrinks then began to tell her about Alice. They had a whole history ready to go. The woman listened to them patiently and was then given a second injection. All the time this was going on, Coffey kept wondering who she was, why she was familiar?

    Fast forward. The subject changed. A young boy. He, too, looked familiar. But why?

    The room. The chair. The injections.

    Quinlan: "Sean? Do you know a boy named Larry?"

    Sean: "I don't think so."

    Quinlan: "You should. He's your best friend."

    Sean: "I don't know anybody named Larry."

    Quinlan: "Think about it. Think about some of the photos we showed you the other day. Do you remember the photos?"

    Sean: "Yes."

    Priscilla: "Think about the photos, Sean. About the face in those photos."

    Sean: "All right."

    Why did this boy look so familiar, as familiar as the female subject had? Who were these people?

    Priscilla: "Are you seeing the face?"

    Sean: "Yes."

    Priscilla: "Who does the face look like?"

    Sean (hesitation): "Me."

    Quinlan: "Yes. The face
does
look like you. Except it isn't you, is it?"

    Sean: "No."

    Quinlan: "Who is it, Sean?"

    Sean: "Larry."

    Priscilla: "Very good, Sean. Very good."

    She leaned over and gave him a tender kiss on the cheek.

    Coffey sat watching all this, stunned. He had finally figured out who the woman and the boy were-he now recalled their faces from a news story on WGN last week on how their respective trials were coming. They were the two who'd gone berserk and killed several other people, the woman in a mall food court, the boy in a classroom. Quinlan and Priscilla Bowman had given them the same sort of therapy they'd given Jenny Stafford.

    He had just pressed fast word again when the sound of a ringing telephone startled him. His first impulse was to look around for a phone somewhere. A screening room like this one probably had one or two phones for the convenience of clients and staff alike. But he couldn't see any phone. And the phone kept ringing. Then he realized that the phone was in his pocket-his flip phone. He dug it out and answered it.

    "Coffey? It's Sister Mary Agnes."

    "You scared me. I wasn't expecting a call here."

    "I just wanted you to know that Jenny's fine and she's with me. She's standing right here, as a matter of fact. Would you like to talk to her?"

    "Very much."

    "I sort of figured that."

    When Jenny came on the phone, Coffey said, "I have to talk low. I'm somewhere I shouldn't be."

    "They brainwashed me, Coffey. Quinlan and his people."

    "I know. That's what I'm finding out, too. Quinlan and Priscilla Bowman."

    "And I thought he was my friend."

    "She and Quinlan go a long way back."

    "Maybe it's time for me to go to the police."

    "Not yet. Not until I've had a chance to go through a few more of these tapes."

    "Tapes?"

    "I'll explain later. In the meantime, why don't you do your folks a favor and go home?"

    "That," Jenny said, "sounds like a great idea. It really does. I've had a chance to pull myself together, thanks to Sister Mary Agnes, so I won't be too freaky when I get home. I think Quinlan gave me quite a few drugs when I was at his compound."

    "I'll check in with you later at home. I need to wrap things up here. In the meantime, tell your folks to contact the lawyer they want. I'll turn these tapes over to him and then explain what they are."

    "I really appreciate this, Coffey."

    "My pleasure."

    Coffey flipped the phone off and went back to work, hurriedly running through videotapes.

    

    

    The Stafford mansion was quiet. Eileen and her husband had the night off. They'd gone to a Neil Diamond concert in the city and were staying at a posh hotel overnight. Tom was in the den, working. Molly had elected to leave him alone. Not only was he upset about Jenny, having Ted Hannigan in his home bothered him, too. She'd never realized before tonight how deeply Tom disliked Ted. Even mouthing the most rote of social pleasantries had taken a huge effort on Tom's part. Most of the evening, he looked as if he simply wanted to smack him-and then kick him out.

    Now, Molly was in the upstairs TV room watching a movie musical from the forties. Even though all the great musicals had been written and filmed long before she was born-her generation, alas, had only the melodramatic clamor of Andrew Lloyd Weber to boast of-she felt very close to them, as if they'd been the pictures of
her
childhood. She loved the Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire movies especially. It was a fantasy world she longed to escape into. Too bad you couldn't buy a time-travel ticket or an other-dimension ticket and go to the world depicted in these wonderful old films.

    The movie was ending when she saw the red light go on. This meant that somebody was at the gate. She got up and walked over to the wall with the small black communicator box. She punched a button and the blinking red light went off.

    "Yes?"

    "Mom, it's me, Jenny. I'm at the gate. In a cab again."

    Molly felt giddy. Jenny was home. Whatever else might befall them, for now, they were a family again. Jenny was home.

    She pressed the button allowing the cab through the gates, then she hurried down the stairs to the den to tell Tom.

    

    

    There was a back way into the commune. This was the way Priscilla always used. She had a remote device that allowed her instant entrance. She parked and then walked amidst the dark buildings. My brave new world, Quinlan had always called it sarcastically. He was right. Thanks to a combination of hypnotherapy and drug therapy, and thanks to various predispositions that left them in need of a guru-type leader, the souls who lived in the commune followed orders without fail. They were already in bed, for instance, the four dormitory-style red brick buildings dark against the frosty night sky. There was great prairie quiet here, too, a rushing distant train and her footsteps across the damp grass being the loudest sounds.

    She felt relief and fear-relief that she felt that she and Quinlan would be leaving the country together within the next eighteen hours; fear that something would go wrong. Despite all the "optimistic" speeches she was always giving her clients, she was a profoundly pessimistic person. Anything she'd ever really wanted-certain men, positions, awards, the favor of certain powerful people on the psychiatric governance board-she'd never been able to have. She would never love anyone as she loved Quinlan. Would their escape together fail, too?

    She hurried on to his building. Even from here she could see that the light was on in his nicely-appointed apartment.

    

    

    Gretchen would never have seen her if the drier had been working properly.

    Each dormitory had its own washer-drier set up in the basement. After returning from the tunnel, and from Jenny's departure, Gretchen had felt confident enough about her relationship with Quinlan to let him go. She'd go about her business, he'd go about his. Later tonight sometime, she'd said, drawing him to her, they'd get together. She'd sleep with him all night.

    But first she had some things she needed to get done, laundry chief among them.

    So, of course, the drier stopped working, which was the fourth time in two weeks it had stopped working, which was why she'd argued with McGivern, the man who always bought supplies, about buying things at Sears. Their stuff just wasn't what it used to be, Gretchen had argued. (She'd heard that on TV on a consumer complaints show and it had stuck in her mind. Not what it used to be.)

    So, of course, here she was lugging her laundry basket across to the next dormitory, the one where Quinlan had his apartment, and that's when she saw her.

    Priscilla Bowman. Ever sleek in one of her Armani suits. Coldly beautiful and regal in the way of a statue. Far more poised, intelligent, erotic and mercenary than Gretchen would ever be. A woman who no doubt got everything she wanted.

    Gretchen had a Thought. In her mind, there were thoughts and then there were Thoughts. This definitely belonged in the latter category. She'd been so paranoid about Jenny-Jenny this, Jenny that, Jenny Jenny Jenny-that she'd failed to identify her
real
competition for Quinlan's heart and soul… Priscilla Bowman. Wasn't Priscilla always sneaking out here late at night? Didn't Quinlan spend a lot of time talking to Priscilla on the phone? Wasn't Priscilla exactly the kind of woman a handsome, powerful man like Quinlan would
want
?

    She ducked behind the corner of a building, watching Priscilla make her way to Quinlan's dorm. Her mind exploded with sexual images-images of Priscilla and Quinlan in the most intimate of moments. She couldn't let this happen. Not after all the work she'd put into getting rid of Jenny. And it wasn't fair. What chance did a young woman like Gretchen stand against a wily older woman like Priscilla? The type of woman who could convince Quinlan that she was the right woman for him?

    Gretchen set down her laundry basket. A great and terrible frenzy overcame her. These were her most painful moments, when the panic took control. At such times, she always saw control slipping away from her. She was at the mercy of forces that overwhelmed her, like the huge forest trees that night she'd run away as fourteen-year-old, and gotten lost in the woods, rain and lightning lashing the big trees and turning them into looming, stalking giants who planned to snatch up little girls and eat them.

    Well, this time, she wouldn't let herself be at the mercy of overwhelming forces. She could be strong, too, couldn't she? She could fight back, too, couldn't she? Of course, she could.

    She picked up her laundry basket. Might as well take it back to her room. That's where she needed to go, anyway. There was something in her bottom drawer she needed to get.

    No, she wasn't going to be her usual helpless self. Not this time. She truly loved Quinlan and she believed that, whether he wanted to admit it or not, he loved her, too.