Mad Cow Nightmare (29 page)

“But no brain,” she said. “You don’t know what you heard.” Maggie pushed the boy into the living room where the TV was blaring away now, some actress crying, “It was you who betrayed me! You who—” And the living room door slammed.

“Good,” said Colm. “I have news. Didn’t want to talk in front of her.” He dropped into a chair and stuffed a doughnut into his mouth. “No time for breakfas’—need my honey fix,” he mumbled through the doughnut. Honey glistened at the corner of his lip.”Chief called seven o’clock, wanna—”

“It’d better be good news. Don’t tell me if it isn’t.”

“Well, not bad news anyway. Not exactly good, either, but encouraging—”

“Say it then.”

“I’m trying, Ruthie, gimme a chance to swallow.”

She waited. He swallowed. Finally it came. The cops in a town called Minesville had located Nola. A woman had brought her to the police department. “But the stupid woman left her in the car. Nola got out, ran into a mall—and damn it, they lost her.”

“How could they lose her? Probably two or three trained men and one woman in a green print dress. If she was still wearing that dress.”

“She wasn’t. Not then. Seems she got into a dress shop and stole some black pants and a shirt. And got away before the saleswoman could catch her.”

“Good for her!”

“Ruthie, do you want to find Nola or not? I thought we decided we had to. To end all this—this—” He waved his arms vaguely in the direction of the burnt trailer.

Of course she did, what was her problem? Ruth hardly knew herself these days. Nola was key to everything. Ritchie’s murder, the whole plaguish nightmare that was taking over her farm.

“Then what? Where did she go? Surely they could close her in. She must still be in that town. She didn’t have a car. Unless she got a ride . . .”

“They don’t know.” He traced a tiny cross in the sugar the doughnuts had dropped on the table. “She just disappeared. They stopped all the cars going out, alerted the whole town. Nothing. It’s like she flew into thin air. Houdini-like.” He snapped his fingers and crumbs sprayed her cheek.

Ruth leaned her elbows on the table. “Where would she go if she were still in town?”

“Ruthie, love, no one’s owned up. I mean who would take a chance on—well, not just a murderer but a woman who they
think
might be contagious with—you know.”

“Colm. We’ve got to stop talking in euphemisms. She might have the human form of Mad Cow. Might. That
is
scary.” The “mights” were killing her. Killing both Ruth and Nola. Ruth had a moment of true compassion for the woman. If she had strangled her lover it was understandable. He was a bastard, according to everyone— even the uncle. Even his half brother, Darren, who’d come east to escape him. “Poor Keeley,” she said, hearing someone in the next room call the boy’s name.

“You talked with the kid yet?” Colm asked. “Squeezed any information out of him?”

“Not much. Not really. He’s almost pathologically shy. You want to try and talk to him? Keeley might have more to say about the uncle. We haven’t written off Tormey yet in this murder. He despised Ritchie. Would have written him out of his will, I gather, but for something maybe that Ritchie had over him. And he wasn’t about to leave the farm to Nola.”

“Poor kid,” Colm said. “Such a beautiful woman. I saw the photo of her down at the station. One the hospital took—and one Maggie gave them. Of Nola and Maggie, in fact, arms around each other—schoolgirl stuff.”

“Maggie wants that back, too,” Ruth said. “She should have it, if not the cross. Get it for her, will you, Colm? They’ve surely had copies made.” He shrugged and she returned to her earlier thought. “We still haven’t addressed my question. Where would she go to find sanctuary of some kind? Let’s think.”

“Lots of places. Counseling service, a shrink. Church, of course— that’s the big one. Though no place is really safe. Remember that guy at the church down in Brattleboro? Ran in for help and the cops shot him something like eight times?”

“He’d pulled a knife. Still, it seemed like overkill. Church, yes. That cross—a Catholic church. Most towns over nine hundred will have a Catholic church. Priests are supposed to keep what you say confidential.” She scraped back her chair, ran to the phone. “What was the name of that town?”

“Minesville. You planning to contact the Catholic church?”

She put down the phone. “No, go there, I think. Don’t want to alert her in some way. Couldn’t be over five or six hours by car, could it?”

“It’s crazy, Ruthie. And who runs the farm?” He looked at his watch. “Almost milking time, isn’t it?”

As if on cue, Darren appeared in the kitchen. “Reckon I’ll head out to the barn. You coming?”

She had an important errand, she told him. “But Sharon’s on call. She’ll help. And so will Colm.”

“Wait a minute now,” Colm said. “I’ve got a five o’clock appointment. Lady wanting a condo—a sure sale if I can wangle it.”

“Are you sure she’s a ‘lady’?”

“She was wearing a skirt, wasn’t she?”

“Long or short?”

“Well, short,” he admitted with a grin. “Very short. She’ll keep. You sure you don’t want me to come with you? A cop can be a useful companion.”

She smiled. “Then pull yourself together, love. I’ll call Sharon.” She dialed East Branbury.

“Of course I’ll come back and help,” Sharon shouted over the cries of small children and a squawking goose. “And I
want
Colm to go with you. He wouldn’t be much help in the barn anyway. I mean, you’ve seen him in action. . . .” She giggled. “Darren and I can handle it.”

“Thanks, sweetie. What would I do without you?” A wave of emotion came over Ruth for her daughter. She could count on Sharon. It was worth all the struggles of childhood and adolescence. It was more than worth it. She was sorry for all the people in the world who didn’t have daughters. Or sons—thinking wistfully of Vic, who would be home next week and who, like Emily, knew nothing at all about this latest plague. They’d phone home, and she’d pretend “nothing to declare.” Good thing they never read newspapers. Or listened to the news—although sooner or later they’d find out. Someone would say, “Too bad about your mother’s cows. ...” She’d better prepare herself.

“And Mother. I forgot to tell you. I mean, I’ve been putting it off. Some agents came this morning when I was there—when you were down in the pasture. I mean, they’ve been sneaking around for days now. Surveying the place. Seeing you don’t spirit away the cows, I suppose. You can tell by the clean cars. Vermonters don’t drive clean cars. But this morning, two guys came up and talked.”

Ruth felt a stab in the belly. She couldn’t get out the question, just waited for the answer.

“They mean to come and take the cows. Just for closer surveillance, they say. ... Oh, wait—not yet. Next week sometime. They’ll give you warning, they said. They were most apologetic. There was one woman with them, she seemed really sorry. . . . Mother? Are you still there, Mother?”

Ruth wasn’t sure if she was still here or not. She thanked Sharon for filling in, hung up the phone, and poured herself a tall glass of Otter Creek Ale. She drank it in a gulp.

“Closer surveillance my foot,” she told the barn cat, who’d jumped up on her lap. “They’ve made up their minds my cows are sick. They want to kill my beautiful organic cows.” Now she’d got the cat’s fur soaking wet.

* * * *

Nola waited for the priest to come out of the confessional with a tall gaunt woman who’d looked at her oddly. But then, she was paranoid, ready to jump at every footstep. The janitor who’d brought her inside yesterday morning was a mute—the man had frightened her with his gruntings and harsh manner. Yet when she tripped on the threshold, he helped her up, looked close into her face. When the priest arrived in his office where the janitor had left her, he’d found a shaking, babbling woman who’d literally fallen at his feet. “Help me,” she’d wept, clinging to his knees, “help me.” And he had.

She’d confessed everything from recent events—the clothing she’d stolen: “Return them for me, will you, Father?” The apples and vegetables she’d taken, the mare she’d ridden off on. “But I left it in good hands, someone will return it.” The tricks she’d played on the sisters at parochial school, the envy she’d had of her cousin Maggie. And harder to talk about, she spoke of the “remorse” she felt over Ritchie: “He had a bad upbringing, I can’t tell you all of it, but he was damaged. And when he hit me I suppose he was hitting his—his abusers. But I hated him, hated him! Forgive me, Father, for that hate. Oh, forgive me, forgive me, Father—I’ve sinned badly.”

And after all that outpouring he’d offered forgiveness, though she was altogether undeserving.

For she hadn’t told everything. She’d mentioned the uncle, the hate she’d felt for him, even more than for Ritchie—but not why. She hadn’t told about the fantasy she often had—of cutting off Tormey’s penis. One summer night she’d found him asleep in a chair beside the small round swimming pool he’d set up behind the farmhouse. He was stark naked, legs wide apart—his penis huge and reddish-purple in its nest of coarse black fur. A butcher knife lay on the barbecue stand near his lounge chair. She’d picked it up. Then she heard Keeley calling for her, his voice coming closer, and she dropped the knife and ran back around the house. She heard Tormey call, “Huh? What? Who’s there?—” but she kept on running till she found Keeley and hugged him till he cried, “Stop, Ma, quit it!”

But the fantasies kept on, and turned into cruel dreams.

“Are you sure you’ve told me everything?” he’d said again.

But no, she hadn’t confessed everything.

The priest was coming back into his office now, a short, plump, twinkly-faced man with eyes the shade of the blue stole he wore, and best of all, an Irish name: Hannigan. She’d been lucky for once. He made her sit down, though her knees were rigid from the fright and the running and not knowing what would happen next, or where. She’d slept the past two nights on a cot in his mother’s house. The mother had been nice enough, but she was the talkative kind who loved the sound of her own voice and didn’t listen to you at all—though that was okay with Nola. Nola did hear her  complain once about the “strays” he brought in. But the priest called it “a safe house” and she had to trust him. He’d introduced her simply as “one of the homeless—and we must help.” He’d given her rosary beads to replace the missing ones. She’d grabbed them gratefully from him, like a starved puppy, and sat down at once to say the rosary. For a time she was happy—in the sanctuary with its lit candles and the fragrance of incense.

Her knees buckled under and she sat down. He had news she might be interested in, he said, something his mother had read in yesterday’s paper—”but hidden back on page six, many won’t have read it.”

He handed her the paper and she read it, though her eyes would hardly focus. The one fact she could gather was that Uncle was now in Branbury, Vermont, on the Willmarth farm, and he had Keeley with him. She sat there a moment, breathing heavily, and then jumped up. The priest grabbed her hand as though he thought she might run out the door, do something rash. When she just had to stand, try to digest the news, what it meant. Where she’d have to go now. What she’d have to do.

She remembered the letter from her neighbor, Penny. She’d read it, horrified, then stashed it away in her box—the box she’d given Maggie for safekeeping. Something Penny suspected, and          confronted Keeley with, and the boy burst into tears. Penny was like a surrogate mother to him.

“This is bad news, my girl?” Father didn’t ask about the uncle: who and what he was to her. She’d merely told him she was on her way to find her son on the farm where they’d lived. The article had outlined Nola’s escape from the Minesville police, and in the last paragraph the fact that the Willmarth cows, like Tormey Leary’s, were to be removed “for the good of all.”

She was sorry for the cows. But it was the fact that Uncle had Keeley with him that set her in motion: heart, nerves, feet, hands— all in a quiver.

“I got to make a phone call,” she said. “I’ve no money—I’ll have to send it to you.”

He indicated the telephone on his desk. “To Vermont?” he said.

She shook her head and dialed the Tonawanda number. She had it by heart. Penny was her lifeline to Keeley. She needed to know— things. She looked up at the priest and he nodded and left the room. She was thankful for that.

Penny was there, thank God. Penny had read about Nola, had been expecting her, praying she’d make it safe to Tonawanda. “But now Keeley’s gone to Vermont,” Penny said, in her high sweet quavery voice that sounded an alarm inside Nola. “And you’d better get him away from Tormey.”

She explained why—and Nola already knew, but felt her body turn inside out.

“I got to be on my way,” Nola told Father Hannigan when he returned, and she headed for the door. He didn’t try to stop her. He just said, “If you walk out now, they’ll take you to prison. You’d better think through what you’ll do.”

She turned back to him. “What would you do, huh, Father, in my case? With the whole world thinking you’re a thief and a murderer ready to spread disease through the whole wide world?” She heard her voice shrill at the end—hardly her own voice.

She promised the priest she would turn herself in for testing. But she had to rescue Keeley first. Had to! How long had he been alone already with Tormey Leary? And worse even, Tormey not knowing who Keeley was.

“Give yourself in. Now,” the priest said. “I’ll go with you, if you like. It will go better for you, my girl.” He took her hand, looked penetratingly into her eyes. He wasn’t impervious to her looks, she knew that—priest or no priest. It was a curse, this face and body. She’d gained five pounds at least from the mother’s starchy cooking, she looked healthier.

“I will, Father, but not yet.” She was suddenly suspicious of his motives. They were all alike, these men—the priests, the Ritchies, the Uncles of the world. This man wasn’t going to help her. He was just toeing the party line. If he really cared about her welfare he’d have offered to drive her out of town, set her on her way. But he only wanted her to give herself up.