The Devil You Know (13 page)

There was a nice little picnicking spot on the shore of Indian Mountains Lake Park. It’s far enough in that you can park and have some privacy but not too far that you get eaten alive by insects in the summer months. I sometimes went there to meditate at the edge of the water. I’m not very good at meditation; I always wind up wondering if I put my coat in the washer or if I dropped it off at the dry cleaners. I’d hoped to bring Vivian there one day soon. I’d had admittedly romantic notions about teaching her magic in the forest and making love to her down by the water, but I wasn’t sure if that was going to happen now.

I think I loved her, but I wasn’t utterly blinded by that love. I wasn’t stupid in love. And I wasn’t stupid, period. I had to get to the bottom of this mess. So I drove to my favorite spot, sat down by the water’s edge, drank my Chai tea from Starbucks, and read over Vivian’s criminal record, which was fairly extensive and read like a Stephen King novel.

My cell went off but I ignored it. I knew it was Morgana, but I wasn’t prepared to deal with her at the moment.

Vivian was adopted and had lived most of her life in White Haven. A lawyer, Stan Summers, and his barren second wife, Kathy, had adopted Vivian when she was only a baby. She had come from an orphanage in Philadelphia. Last night, while we lay in bed, Vivian had alluded to parents who had died in a car accident two years ago, but she hadn’t said she was adopted. Maybe she was too young to think of herself as adopted. Or maybe she didn’t want me knowing.

There was nothing about Mr. McCarty, her science teacher, though she was brought up on assault charges while in junior high. A janitor named Joseph Greeley had attacked Vivian, but she had managed to push him down a long flight of stairs. The janitor wound up paralyzed from the waist down. He blew his brains out the back of his skull before he could be transferred to an Administrative Minimum Security Prison for the mentally ill. Before he’d died, he’d left a note stating that he knew the name of the Antichrist and that he walked the earth as a man, seeking whom he might devour. He cited Vivian as the Whore of Babylon, the consort of the Antichrist, and stated that he wished to rid the world of her.

Overall, a standup guy. Very imaginative.

Vivian had a long list of misdemeanor charges after that—shoplifting, assault on a police officer, assault on another minor (she punched a girl at a Nirvana concert) and seven traffic violations for speeding/running a red light/failing to stop at a stop sign. The misdemeanor charges were excessive but not weird or unusual. It was pretty obvious that Vivian had a rough time growing up.

It wasn’t until she was eighteen that the big kahuna raised its head. That’s when she was charged with arson on an apartment building in downtown Bethlehem. Several people who escaped the blaze claimed they saw Vivian that night, standing
inside
the flames, untouched. The fire was found to have originated in the apartment of Vivian’s then boyfriend Mitchell. It was estimated to have burned at approximately nine hundred degrees—roughly the afterburner of a jet plane. To give you an idea of how hot that is, even bone had been incinerated. Twelve people died in the fire, including two children. The intensity of the fire had burned the building down to its plumbing in less than ten minutes. Some chemicals had been found in Mitchell’s apartment—Mitchell worked as a plumbing assistant—but nothing that could be proven to be an accelerant for a fire of that intensity. The coroner had had to identify Mitchell by a handful of molars.

Again, Vivian was not charged. Not enough evidence. The fire was blamed on an underground chemical leak. Shortly afterward, she moved out of her parents’ place and moved here to her apartment in Blackwater. Her parents, already estranged from her, refused to speak to her at all.

I lowered the printout in my hand and noticed Brownswick sitting beside me, knees bent and hand scratching at his beard in perfect imitation of me. His antlers, stretching like two huge branches in an upward direction, were full of fall leaves, shining pollen, and dandelion fluff. A yellowjacket buzzed lazily around his ears, then buzzed away. “Hello, Little Horn,” he said when I had acknowledged him. “Did you find the lost girl?”

“No,” I said, sounding surly.

He snorted, blowing pollen out of his nostrils and onto my coat. I shook it off. “You’ve mated with the female daemon,” he told me.

I had showered well this morning. The fact that he could detect that was annoying. “And this is your business . . . how?”

He touched his heart dramatically. “You wound me, Lord of Flies. Your business is my business.”

“Those names you use get annoying after a while.”

“You are being a smart ass,” he said. Except he said the word wrong, like two words. It was obvious he’d picked the slang up somewhere. “But that is your right, Willful King.”

I shuffled some papers in my hands. “Get to the point, Brownie.”

Brownswick smiled. It was, as usual, a mischievous smile. “Why did you not bring the female daemon to the woods? I desire to meet her.” He sounded cartoonishly wounded. I knew better. He just wanted to chase Vivian through the trees.

“The police have her for questioning. They think she committed a crime.”

“You certainly know how to choose a mate.”

“Is there some point to you bothering me, Brownie?”

Brownswick moved closer to me. I moved further away from him. The last thing I needed was to smell like faun. “My wives tell me the trees have seen a girl, but they do not know if it is the girl you seek. The trees do not see well.”

I sighed. Ben had seen to it that I was off this case, so I don’t know why I even cared. I had more than enough on my mind at the moment. “Do they know where she is?”

“They tell me north, in the great woods.”

“That’s not especially helpful.”

“Near a place where the bees are thick and plentiful. The trees do not know what the girl looked like. They were too busy shedding leaves.”

“The trees aren’t very helpful. I need a landmark, Brownie, not some prosaic bullshit.”

“The trees said to follow the bees. The bees know the girl.”

I wanted to facepalm, but I smiled at Brownie instead. There was no sense in pissing off the trees. I’ve seen trees
move
. Don’t think they can’t do it. “Please thank the trees for me and tell them to keep an eye out for the girl.”

“They said they would do that. The trees like children.” Then Brownswick looked at me with genuine interest. “What will you do about the female daemon?”

“Prove her innocence, of course.”

“
Is
she innocent, my Lord?”

“I just don’t know, Brownie.”

Around four, I had formulated a plan of action, so to speak. But I had to see Vivian. It was vitally important.

They were holding her at the county jail, her bail set unreasonably high. I suppose they thought she might run. A state attorney had been there already, thankfully. I went in, was relieved to see that Ben wasn’t around, and requested permission to speak to her.

The guard on duty led me into the visiting room, a cold room painted a dismal grey. It was partitioned in half by a wall, and cut into the walls were little windows barely large enough to see a person. The windows were bulletproof glass with a small slit cut in the bottom only big enough to slide your hand. There were guards on both sides, watching. I sat down in the cold metal folding chair in front of one of the windows and waited.

A few minutes later, a very large, black, female guard led Vivian out. Her name was Bunny Killborn. No, really. That’s her name. Her real name. I nodded to Bunny. Bunny nodded back, business-like. Bunny does not suffer fools gladly, probably because of the razzing she most certainly received in school because of her name. I could respect that.

“Nick,” Vivian said. Bunny led her to the window and she sat down and faced me through the glass partition. We didn’t have phones like in crime movies. Something like that was not in the micro-budget in a place like Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

“Vivian,” I said. I kept my voice neutral. “You all right?”

She looked around the room, then at me. “No. They’re holding me for some ridiculous bail money. They think I killed Brittany. Are you here to investigate what really happened?”

“Not in any official capacity. There’s really nothing I can do.” I saw her face fall. “I mean, officially. But I will help you, if I can.” I closed my eyes and gathered myself. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions. I need you to answer them for me, without qualifying them.”

She looked confused. “I guess.”

“No qualifying and no explanations. Just a simple response. This is very important, Vivian.”

“All right.” She looked at me direly through the glass.

I licked my dry lips and said, “Why didn’t you tell me you were adopted?”

“I don’t understand what this has to do with anything, Nick.”

“I need these answers from you, Vivian. Answer the question.”

She flinched. I was using my Interrogation Voice, which I hadn’t used since I left the force over five years ago. Peter always let me interview suspects. He liked how I was able to drag the most ridiculous shit from out of people. “I didn’t tell you because it happened so long ago, before I could even remember. Besides, my parents are dead now.”

Good enough, and what I had expected. I moved on to the next question. “Why did you hurt the janitor that attacked you in junior high?”

Vivian blanched noticeably, then immediately composed herself. “He attacked me.”

“So did Mr. McCarty.”

“No, McCarty was different. He seduced me. Greeley attacked me. He meant to hurt me. He said I was evil.”

I nodded at that. I’d heard variations on that theme all of my life. Some people could just naturally feel daemons out, I think. It made me trust people less. Next question. “Why did you attack that girl at the concert?”

“She called me a witch.”

I waited.

“She started dating my boyfriend at the time.” Vivian looked annoyed. “Both answers are true, Nick.”

Next. “Have you ever willfully committed a crime? Let’s say a misdemeanor like shoplifting.”

She looked me straight in the eye. “Yes.”

“Have you ever committed a minor felony, like boosting a car?”

“Yes.”

“Did you kill your boyfriend Mitchell?”

Bunny stood at the far end of the room. There was no way she could hear my whisper. And no way for Vivian to incriminate herself.

I waited.

Vivian blanched further. “How do you know about Mitchell?”

“Answer the question or I leave now.”

I saw the war in her face. Finally, she said, “Yes.”

“Qualify that.”

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt him. I loved him.”

“He was cheating on you?”

Vivian clasped her hands together and stared down at her chipped and bitten fingernails. “Yes.”

“How did you kill him?”

Vivian’s eyes flickered. “We were angry. Shouting. Mitchell caught fire.”

“You set him on fire?”

“No, Mitchell just caught fire. I don’t know how, but I know I caused it.”

I waited, allowing her to recover from the questions. I could see it hurt her deeply, and that gave me some reassurances. A truly evil person would not care. An evil person would have no empathy. I was starting to believe that Morgana, and the janitor who tried to hurt Vivian, were wrong. Vivian might love sex and drugs—she might even have stolen cars—but that did not make her evil.

I spoke low. “Did you and Brittany share any boyfriends?”

She looked up then, worriedly. “Yes.”

“Your last? Mark?”

“Yes.”

“Were you seeing him at all?”

“No.” She sat up straight then and pinned me with a determined look. “I wanted to see
you
, Nick. You know that. I wanted
you
, not him.”

“Did you kill Brittany, Vivian?”

“No!”

“Why were your fingerprints found in Brittany’s car?”

“I drove Brittany’s car sometimes.” She let out her breath in a near-desperate gasp. “My car is in the shop. I drove her car to school yesterday.”

“That’s all the questions I have.”

“I didn’t kill Brittany, Nick,” Vivian said. There was real pain in her eyes now. And panic. She grabbed my hand through the slit in the window. “I loved Brittany. I loved her more than that shithead she was screwing. I wouldn’t hurt her for
him
. Mark was fucking everything in the county. He’s not worth it.”

“I believe you,” I told her, holding her hand. “I believe you and I’ll find a way to prove you’re innocent. I’ll get you out of here.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“You should,” I told her. I glanced around, careful the guard wasn’t watching. “This place isn’t holy ground, Vivian. Malach could come for you at any time.”

“I don’t care, Nick. I don’t care if I die. I only care about Josh.”

I stopped and stared long and hard at her. “Josh?”

She looked desperate. “Do you have a pen and paper? They won’t let me having anything here.”

I dug out my notebook and Vivian dictated a name and an address to me. I looked at it.

Vivian said, “Josh is my brother…my adopted brother. He’s older. My dad had him with his first wife. He took care of me a lot of the time. We took care of each other after our parents died. He’s the only family I have left now. He’s a musician. He plays the Philly circuit.”