The Devil You Know (4 page)

So I had Brad King on one side and Shelley Preston on the other. I was starting to feel like Odysseus trying to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis.

“That’s the Bergers, yeah,” Ben said, not looking at them. His attention kept coming back around to Shelley, as any red-blooded American man’s would. I wasn’t about to judge him; I just didn’t agree with his tastes in women. Shelley had that perfected Hollywood beauty that I personally find rather bland. She looked like any of a hundred popular leading actresses. Not to mention she didn’t have the natural curves I favor. Not that I’m stuck on curves. Really.

The Bergers, on the other hand, were very much natives of the northeast Pennsylvanian mountains, with ancestry dating back generations, at least. The husband, Thom Berger, was tall and stoop-shouldered and perfectly bald like someone had greased his head and shaved it clean. He wore glasses. His wife was only half as tall and had plump, baby doll arms poking out of a sleeveless white halter top that she was just a hair too old to be wearing. She too wore glasses, and her limp, standard-issue dark blond hair was tied up in a ponytail. She looked in her mid-twenties. Her husband looked closer to fifty. Not that I’m one to judge. I mean, as far as I’m concerned, as long as its legal and consensual, do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. But there’s something creepy about cradle-robbers, and as an itch started between my shoulder blades, I realized I immediately disliked Thom Berger.

I watched him gesture wildly to Shelley as he spoke, though his wife looked zonked, a blonde zombie in a halter top. I hoped the Xanax trip was being good to her.

“Can I talk to the couple?” I asked Ben rather suddenly. I was getting the same feeling off the couple as with Vivian, only inverted. Instead of empowered, I was feeling slightly weakened.

Ben looked surprised, but not really put off. If I was just a citizen, I knew he wouldn’t have allowed it. But I was a cop—ex-cop—and I was here doing him a favor. He sort of had to let me. He directed his two deputies to start assembling the search teams, then turned back to me. “Is this about going with Branson?” he asked.

I assumed Branson was Deputy Dog. “No,” I said, looking away back toward the Bergers. “I just want to talk to them, satisfy a curiosity.”

“You gonna do mojo on them?”

I smiled. Mojo wasn’t what I had in mind, and even if it was, I wasn’t sure what kind of mojo would help me find a lost child, but if Ben wanted to believe that, so be it.

In the end, he let me approach the Bergers while the search parties started bushwhacking around the back of the house. The Bergers looked at me with deer-in-the-headlights eyes as I approached. I have that effect on some folks. Ben escorted me, saying, “Mr. and Mrs. Berger, this is Nick Englebrecht. I asked him to be here today. He’s a psychic detective.”

Ben was using the soft voice you use to calm frightened horses. I tried for an approximation because normally I sound like I’m gargling razor blades. “Mr. and Mrs. Berger,” I said, shaking Mr. Berger’s hand. Despite his impressive height, my hand entirely enveloped his. Thom Berger looked at it, and I thought of that old wives’ tale—small hands and feet means equally small equipment. I have large hands and feet, just in case you’re wondering. Mrs. Berger stared at me and through me like I wasn’t there.

“You’re a real detective?” Thom Berger said. He looked me over skeptically. I guess the Dick Tracy trench coat hadn’t won him over.

“I’m retired but I do odd jobs for Ben.” Not the actual truth, but close enough to pass. “Can we go inside for a moment?”

The Bergers’ kitchen was pristine white and blue. The tile gleamed and there were spotless pots and pans hanging over an island large enough to do the Watusi down. It had a glistening magazine-layout look that suggested that the Bergers ate out a lot. That or they had a terrific maid. Thom led us to one of those breakfast nook thingies that look like they belong in a high-end restaurant and said, “I’m afraid I gave Zanita the day off. Can I get you gentlemen anything? Coffee?” His eyes flicked nervously over us and he flinched when he moved. I hate flinchy people.

“Tea, if you have it,” I said.

“I only have coffee, I’m afraid,” Thom said, indicating the coffeepot that I’m sure his underpaid Mexican housekeeper had set up earlier today. I was going into cliché overload here.

I waved my hand. “Pass.”

Ben took a coffee and I got out the notebook I normally use to mark down incoming shipments to the shop. On his way back to us with Ben’s coffee, Thom said, again sounding flinchy, “You sure you don’t want a coffee, Mr. Englebrecht? I thought that was all cops drank?”

“I used to drink it,” I told him.

“What happened?”

“I saw my partner killed in front of me. I can’t stomach the stuff anymore.”

Thom looked at me blankly. He had no idea what to say to that. Good.

I said, “Can you tell me in detail what happened to little Cassandra?”

Thom looked at his wife, sitting on the edge of the booth and staring fixedly at her fingers where her nail polish was rubbing off. “I’ve been over all this with Sheriff Oswell already.”

“But not me,” I said.

He looked over at Ben, who nodded. “Tell him, Thom. He does know his stuff . . . even if he is a little spooky looking.”

Thom locked eyes with me and we shared a moment of profound dislike between us. Then he told me pretty much the same story that Ben had told me earlier. When we got to Cassandra’s disability, I interrupted. “How do you spell that?” I asked, and dutifully wrote down
Tay-Sachs Disease
in the notebook for later Googling. I had never heard of it before.

“It’s a neurological disorder that prevents Cassandra from walking or speaking,” Thom explained. “She has to be hand fed, bathed and carried.”

“She’s five years old?”

“That’s correct.”

“So there’s no chance she wandered off? Crawled off, maybe?”

“Cassie can’t crawl,” the mother, Rebecca Berger said, suddenly coming alive. Her voice was soft but focused. “She can’t do anything without help. I know someone took her, I just know it!” She glared at me as if this were somehow my fault.

“Rebecca,” Thom said softly. “He’s trying to help.”

“Then why isn’t he out there helping?” she barked.

I ignored her outburst. I wasn’t about to take a mother who had just lost her only child to task. I looked down at my notes instead. “Cassie requires almost constant care?”

“Yes,” Thom Berger answered, though his voice was more guarded now.

“Do you have any enemies, Mr. Berger? Anyone who might want to do you or Mrs. Berger harm?”

Thom Berger looked angry. “I run a True Value, Mr. Englebrecht. You don’t make many enemies selling weather seal.”

“Is there anyone in your past who might want to harm you or your wife?” I repeated.

“No one.”

“Have you noticed anyone new in the neighborhood? Anyone—anything—suspicious or out of the ordinary?”

“Nothing,” he answered, his voice cold and dead. I could tell that Thom Berger didn’t think much of psychic detectives.

Ten minutes later, I was standing in the backyard, looking over the area where Cassie Berger used to sit and play. A privacy fence ran the whole backyard. There was a swing set and a sandbox and a safe plastic slide. There were toys scattered around, some Barbies, and a plastic bucket and shovel for the sandbox. One of the Barbies was lying in the sandbox, half buried. I picked it up. It was a holiday angel Barbie. I moved to the swing set. It was sturdy, built to last for generations like the ones in the orphanages where I’d grown up. Everything in the backyard had been dusted down for fingerprints. Only Cassie and her parents’ had been found. I sat down on the seat of the swing and looked out toward the far side of the backyard, the Barbie in my lap.

A few minutes later, Ben appeared beside me. “Good questions,” he said. Up on the mountain, someone shot off a shotgun and he sighed and shook his head. The natives were restless and ready to play. “What were you digging for?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes the way they answer is more important than the answer itself.” I thought about that. “Does Thom Berger regularly dope his wife, or is this just a special occasion?”

“She takes Zoloft for anxiety and depression.”

“Ah.

“You think she did her own kid in?”

I shrugged. “There’s a theory.” I stood up and walked to the gate. Like everything else, it had been dusted already. There was a latch on it, not exactly childproof, but far enough up that I was pretty certain a five-year-old couldn’t reach it, even if she’d been able to crawl the length of the backyard. Something more was going on. Something bad.

I stepped out into the woods with the doll under my arm.

Two years ago,
I hadn’t found the lost
hiker
alone.
Brownswick had helped me.

I wondered if he would help me find Cassie Berger, assuming she was still in the woods. Then again, I’d left him pissed off the last time I’d seen him. Maybe he would just kick me in the nuts and stomp off. He wouldn’t be the first. I know Morgana wanted to kick me after I got her out of bed to watch the shop this morning. Over the years, I’ve developed a rather long kicking list among both my allies and enemies. I’m just lucky that way.

Brownswick is my animal familiar. Every witch has at least one. Morgana has crows, the most populous creature in this part of the state. They’re beautiful and scary, and she can even see through their eyes. They don’t talk, or talk back. I have fauns and satyrs, who do. No, really. I definitely got the short straw, in my opinion.

I didn’t go looking for Brownswick this time, either. Brownswick came to me. I had only hiked perhaps three-quarters of the way into the woods, up a steep incline and through enough blue firs to cover my coat in needles, when I noticed him. You don’t
see
fauns; you notice them. Or rather, they
let
you notice them. Brownswick was seated in the boughs of one of the aforementioned blue firs, eating a honeycomb while a swarm of angry honeybees surrounded him. They were likely stinging him, though Brownswick didn’t notice, or else didn’t care, though he did scratch at one of his ears with a foreleg before glancing down at me. “Hello, my Lord, have you returned to pay the piper?”

“I don’t have to pay you for your services, Brownie,” I reminded him. “You live to serve me, remember?”

“I serve you now. But one day I will serve my Lord’s purposes no longer.” He smiled down at me, a secret smile full of wisdom and sadness, perhaps malice. It’s hard to tell with fauns. “What need have you with me when you will one day have the world at your feet?”

“The world is overrated. I shall always need my Brownie.”

“You have a sweet tongue, Little Horn. Perhaps you will lend it to me. I should like to suck it like a honeycomb.” He landed almost soundlessly on his hooves, without even disturbing the bough of the tree he’d been perched in. He glared at me, challenging me to run. Faun 101: It’s very important you
never
run from a faun after one reveals itself to you. Fauns love a good chase through the woods. It whets their appetite.

Brownswick is huge and lank. He towers over even me, which is saying a lot. He has thick, muscular elken legs and hooves sharp enough to rip human flesh from bone. I found myself staring at his chest rather than his face, where some Greek pipes hung from a rope of rose vines twined around his neck. His face is young and beautiful, deceptively innocent, the face of a stud on the front cover of a romance novel. The last time I had seen him, he had been in velvet, with short, blunt antlers. Those had grown into an enormous, sprawling rack of sharp, ebony antlers big enough to lift a whole man into the air. More rose vines were entangled in them, with some bees and butterflies flitting about. Very prosaic until you saw the size of his wang. Let’s just say, fauns represent the dark side of nature. Deer found ripped apart in these woods are not always the victim of flesh-eating predators. His fur was darker, courser, and his musk was enough to give me a migraine headache. I was fairly certain he was in full stag.

I lit a cigarette to cut the smell and to keep him at bay with the smoke. A faun in stag is not the safest thing to be around. They will rut with literally
anything
. Thankfully, they also hate all things manmade, cigarettes being on the top of their list. See, smoking does have its benefits.

“The son of perdition seeks the son of the forest.” Brownswick made a tutting noise of disapproval. He pissed against the side of the tree I was leaning on. “Yet you do not visit me in idleness. This makes me sad, my Lord.”

I shifted away from the faun piss, checking to make certain Brownie hadn’t gotten any on my coat. “I’m wondering if you’ve seen a girl in the forest. I’m looking for her.”

“Is she beautiful, this maiden you’ve lost?”

I uncrumpled the map I’d stuck in my coat pocket. On the backside the police department had photocopied a picture of Cassandra Berger for the search party. Underneath the picture were her stats. I showed Brownswick the picture. “She’s five years old. Have you seen her?”

Brownswick looked the picture over with very little interest, then turned his head and
whuffed
like a horse at my clothes. He smiled. “My Lord, you have been with a female of your own kind!” he announced with enormous satisfaction. “Will you be rutting with her?”