Lost Innocents (11 page)

“He was doing pretty well this morning,” said Maddy. “You know the hospital these days. Surgery one day, and they’re kicking you out the next. It’s the insurance companies. They don’t want to pay for it,” she said, and then she grimaced, as if a pain had shot through her.

“It was good of you to take the family in,” said Nick.

“I had to,” said Maddy, absently twisting the silver chain on her wrist. “I felt so guilty about them.”

Nick gave her a knowing smile. “Guilt,” he mused. “How would we manage without it?”

“Well, I’d like to say it was the holy spirit,” Maddy said bluntly, “but in truth, it was guilt.”

“You’re an honest person, Maddy Blake.”

Maddy shook her head. “No, that’s not it. Last night, when we got home, after I got them settled, Doug told me…that he had not paid our auto insurance premium, and that if they decided to sue us, we are not protected.”

Nick winced. Fool, he thought. He knew a lot more about the problems of day-to-day life than most of his parishioners suspected. He had seen people stay with jobs they hated just to maintain their insurance coverage. He had seen people ruined for the lack of it. Douglas Blake had let that protection lapse and left his family vulnerable. He felt his dislike of the man rise to his throat.

“It was stupid,” Maddy said fiercely.

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” he said.

She hurried on. “I was so angry at him. After all we’d just been through with Heather Cameron.” She looked up at him. “Don’t pretend you don’t know about that.”

He avoided her challenging stare. “Well, yes. We never talked about it.”

“I know,” said Maddy. “I never discussed it with anybody. But I felt…” She waved a hand hopelessly. “Never mind. I can’t go into it all now. The thing is, today the police came, just an hour ago, and took him in for questioning. About that missing baby-sitter and the baby.”

“What?” Nick cried, genuinely shocked.

Maddy looked at him pleadingly. “Nick, I don’t know what to think. I mean, Doug would never…I mean, he’s…irresponsible sometimes. Lately he’s even been cruel at times and very angry. But this…”

Nick shook his head. “I’m sure not,” he said.

“But I can’t help wondering,” she cried.

“No. No, of course you can’t.”

Amy, who was seated on the floor with her legs straight out in front of her, let out a whoop when she came to the page where a bird whistled.

Maddy reached out and ran a hand gently over her daughter’s blond head. Her delicate hand caressed Amy’s silken hair, the silver bracelet gleaming among the child’s platinum curls. Maddy lifted her hand and fingered the bracelet pensively. “You don’t really know my husband,” she said.

“No,” Nick agreed. He had a feeling that she was going to defend him, and he was not sure he wanted to hear it.

Maddy tilted her head thoughtfully and sighed. “He…Before I got to know him I thought he was just a spoiled, self-centered guy. He was handsome, and in those days he had money that he used to flash around. He used to be a professional baseball player. Did you know that?”

Nick shook his head. “I’m not much of a sports fan.”

“Well, me neither. I guess I had the usual prejudices about jocks being stupid and all. But he’s not. Doug’s really very intelligent, and he’s a good teacher. His heart is in the right place.” She hesitated.

“But…?” Nick nudged her.

Maddy shook her head. “No, I don’t mean it that way. I mean, he looks like a golden boy, but his life was nothing like that. It wasn’t easy for him, growing up. His parents…his mother is a very cold person. She never calls him. Even on his birthday. She’s never sent him so much as a birthday card. Can you imagine that? And his father is very passive. He just went about his business and let Doug fend for himself. It wasn’t easy, living like that, you know?”

Nick nodded, remembering his own warring parents, who competed for his allegiance, each one wanting him to renounce the other. “It’s amazing what children have to go through,” he said. “It’s amazing that people survive childhood traumas without irreparable damage.”

“I know,” Maddy said fervently. “I had it so easy. My parents doted on me and my brother. I don’t know what it’s like to be so neglected. So, I always think, when he’s cold or impatient, that it’s understandable. His behavior doesn’t mean he doesn’t love us, or that he would do…that he could be guilty of something terrible like the Heather thing. Or this missing girl. It’s just his way of coping.”

Nick nodded, as if he agreed, but in his heart he could not understand it. How could Doug Blake squander this gift, take for granted this love that was given to him? Even before he had become a priest, Nick had lived alone and never minded it. The silence had been a blessing after the shouting wars of his family home. Once he found his faith, he was never lonely. He felt peaceful, communing with the Lord, the silence once again a blessing after the demands of his parish life. Then he met Maddy, and he had begun to feel the longing for a particular human presence. It had ruined his peace of mind. He had begun to experience loneliness because she was not with him. He looked into her dark, worried eyes, which were waiting for his answer. “And now you want to know if you should keep on believing in him, Maddy. That’s what you’re asking me, isn’t it?”

Maddy nodded numbly.

“Well, I think you already know the answer. From what you’ve said, you still do believe in him. Right now, he needs you to stand by him.”

“I know the police chief hates him because of Heather,” said Maddy.

“People will do irrational things when they want revenge,” Nick said.

“Right,” she said. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Revenge.”

“Well, I don’t know. It could be.”

“It has nothing to do with what really happened. How could I even think such a thing of Doug?” she cried.

Nick looked straight at her, but his mind felt as if it were ricocheting around the room. It wasn’t that hard to think ill of Doug Blake. Nick didn’t trust him, and he thought he might well have been guilty of seducing Heather Cameron. He knew in his heart that he envied and resented Doug Blake, because Doug Blake was married to a woman he loved. So it was impossible for him to be fair to the man. All his judgments were suspect.

If he told her now that she should heed her worst suspicions, he might be able to drive a wedge into this marriage with just a word. That would be a sin. He had decided to choose his vocation, to leave behind his misguided passion for her. He could not be the agent of destruction in her marriage. Not if he wanted to save his own soul. “If you don’t believe in him,” Nick said slowly, “who can he turn to? He has a right to expect your loyalty.”

Maddy sighed and then smiled at him. “You’re right,” she said. “I have to keep the faith.” She stood up. “You won’t tell anyone I thought these things…” Immediately she realized how insulting that sounded. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you won’t. I came here because I knew I could trust you.”

“And you knew I was leaving,” he said, rising to his feet.

Maddy crossed the room to him and extended her hand. His face was so sad that it hurt her to look at him. He’s sad about leaving, she thought. It has nothing to do with me. As their eyes met, she knew better. She understood that it did indeed have to do with her. She felt possessed of a frightening, strangely exhilarating secret. Impulsively she embraced him. He wrapped his arms around her and breathed her in. Endearments rose to his throat, but not a murmur or a groan escaped.

Maddy sighed and then felt something inside of her threaten to give way in his arms. She told herself it was normal to hug a friend at a time of parting. But it wasn’t friendship she felt as she closed her eyes in his enfolding arms. She longed to touch his hair, to rub her cheek against his and seek his mouth. No, she told herself. It was weariness, and the comfort of his strength. It was alarming all the same. Abruptly she pushed him away.

“I’d better go,” she said, avoiding his gaze. “Maybe Doug’s home by now. Thank you…Nick. Come on, honey,” she said, bending and scooping Amy off the floor. “We won’t bother Father Nick any longer. He’s got packing to do.”

“Is he going on a vacation?” Amy asked.

Maddy looked up at him and saw a stricken look on his face. “I’m afraid he’s moving, honey.”

“Will he move back?” she asked.

“No, honey. He’s going away.”

Amy turned and waved. “Bye-bye,” she said gravely, unconvinced by her mother’s explanation. “I’ll see you when you move back.”

Maddy did not look at him as she hustled the child ahead of her out the door.

E
rnest Unger sensed, more than saw, a movement in the distant clump of trees, and he felt the familiar rush of excitement that such a movement always brought. Moving with the smooth stealth of years of practice, he pivoted, almost silently, and saw his quarry. The buck stood at a distance, quivering within range of Ernest’s rifle, his huge rack practically spanning the space between two trees.

Oh, he was handsome, Ernest thought, gazing at his prey in admiration as he planned his movements. He could picture that proud head mounted on the wall of his den. Marie didn’t allow them anywhere else in the house. Ernest mounted only the very finest ones that he landed. But this fellow—he was worthy. One he could talk about for years. Ernest felt the thrill of anticipation.

Don’t count your chickens, he warned himself. Many a shot went awry, many a fine specimen got away.

He positioned himself silently; the buck did not stir. Now, if only that dim-witted son-in-law of his would just stay, wherever it was he had hunkered down. Ernest hated taking Dan along on these trips. Although Marie and Susie had outfitted him with all the latest gear, and Dan professed a willingness to learn, he didn’t know the first thing about hunting. He was clumsy and noisy and had spoiled any number of opportunities when Ernest was so close he could taste it. He knew he was supposed to be bonding with the boy—that’s what they called it. Bonding. Ernest missed the good old days when guys just went out together for the hell of it, and all this touchy-feely stuff was left to the girls. Hunting was a man’s sport. One of the few activities that a man could still do and not find a bunch of women there trying to join in. Having Dan along was almost as bad as taking the ladies with you.

To tell the truth, Ernest suspected that Dan was a tiny bit squeamish and that he wasn’t really trying to learn how to hunt at all. He wasn’t a bad shot. Ernest had seen him hit a target with a pretty fair accuracy. It was the blood that seemed to get to him. Susie had grown up around hunters, and she had tried to explain to Dan how it was an ecological thing—keeping the deer population down—and how they could eat venison all winter after hunting season was over. Dan paid lip service to it, but when Marie cooked up venison steak, Ernest had seen him pushing it around on his plate. Well, Ernest wasn’t going to be the one to call it off. If Dan wasn’t up to it, he’d just have to speak up. Meanwhile he was a positive handicap on a hunting trip.

The buck raised his head and sniffed the air warily, his muscles taut. Likewise, Ernest tightened every sinew and fiber of his compact body, carefully, slowly, lifting his gun and taking aim. For a moment they were as one, hunter and hunted, bound together as if by destiny. Ernest curved his finger softly around the trigger and began to pull.

A terrible shout rent the air. Ernest, poised for the kill, started to fire and nearly fell backward. The buck swung round his magnificent rack, met Ernest’s gaze, and leapt away, crashing through the brittle branches at a gallop.

Son of a bitch, Ernest thought. That does it. I don’t care if they beg me. I am never taking that ignorant, no-good…He recognized Danny’s voice, shouting his name in a loud, hoarse cry. Ernest shouldered his gun, his face aflame with rage. He always considered himself a peaceable, sensible man who would never use a weapon in anger or frustration, but for one moment, as he trudged through the underbrush in his camouflage fatigues, he understood how things sometimes got out of hand between people with guns.

“What in the hell is it?” said Ernest as he approached his son-in-law. Dan was leaning against a tree, his face as gray as a pigeon’s belly.

“Dad,” he whispered in a voice so childlike, so full of dread, that Ernest felt his rage disappear, his paternal instinct rose up in him fierce as a bear on its hind legs.

“Look,” said Dan, pointing into a copse of scraggly trees with a shaking hand.

Ernest walked up beside him and looked. “Oh, God,” he breathed. “Oh, my God.”

Beside him, Dan bent over and retched. Ernest stared in horror at the bruised, mottled body of the girl, her shirt ripped open, her pants yanked down. Bugs and worms had already begun to inhabit this strange being in their midst. Her eyes were open, and unseeing.

Ernest did not speak. Never taking his eyes from her face, he reached out and patted Dan absently on the back. Then he rested his gun against a tree trunk, removed his jacket, and walked slowly to where she lay. Kneeling beside her, he placed the jacket over her and arranged it around her gently, like a father in the night come to cover his sleeping child.

Half an hour later the silent woods had been transformed into a ghoulish fairground. Police, photographers, and newspeople trampled through the brush, videocams rolled from behind the bright yellow police tape encircling the actual spot where the body was found. Radios squawked, and the assistant DA conferred with police and his office on a cellular phone.

Ernest Unger, now gray in the face, sat on an overturned spackle bucket Dan had found in his car and was sipping on a flat Coke his son-in-law had located and poured into a Thermos cup. Dan stood beside the old man, his hand resting protectively on his shoulder as they patiently repeated, to the several officers who asked, how they had come to stumble over the corpse.

Frank Cameron looked away from the pathetic sight of Rebecca Starnes’s body as men from the coroner’s office carefully covered it and placed it on a stretcher to remove it from its resting place on the forest floor. He turned to the county coroner, Dr. Simon Tillis, who was replacing his medical instruments in his bag.