Mine

Mine Page 30

"Jesus," Bedelia Morse said as she stood looking at her wrecked kitchen.

afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows. The house was cold, and Didi saw the missing pane of glass in the back door. Dead leaves were scattered about, her antique kitchen table overthrown and two legs splintered. Someone had broken in, obviously, but the only sign of ransacking was in this room. Still, she hadn't checked the pottery workshop yet. She looked out a window, could see the padlock and chain were secure. She didn't have much of value; her stereo was still in the front room, and so was her little portable TV. She had no jewelry to speak of, just what she fashioned on the wheel. What, then, had the intruder been afteri

Terror gripped her. She walked through a short hallway into her bedroom, where her unopened suitcase lay on the bed, and she opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. It was full of old belts, socks, and a couple of pairs of well-worn bell-bottom bluejeans. Her sigh of relief was explosive. Beneath the jeans was a photo album. Didi opened it. Inside were old, yellowed newspaper stories and grainy photographs, protected by cellophane. Storm Front Shootout in N.J., said one of the headlines. FBI Hunting Escaped Terrorists, another trumpeted. Storm Fronter Killed in attica Riots, a third headline said. There were pictures of all the Storm Front members: old photographs, snapped when they were young. The picture of herself showed her beautiful and lithe, waving at the camera from astride a horse. It had been taken by her father when she was sixteen. The picture of Mary Terrell, standing tall and blond and lovely in the summer sunlight, hurt her eyes to look at, because she now knew the reality.

Didi turned carefully to the back of the album. The last few stories had to do with Mary's kidnapping of David Clayborne. But before them was the article and black-and-white picture she'd clipped from the Sierra Club's newsletter five years earlier. Citizen Group Saves Bird Sanctuary, said the headline. The article was five paragraphs long, and the picture showed a woman standing at a podium before a council meeting. Behind her were seated several other people. One of them was a man whose head was turned to the right, as if talking to the woman beside him. Or avoiding the camera, Didi had thought when she'd first seen it. The lens had captured a portion of his profile  -  hairline, forehead, and nose. The names of the "Freestone Six," as they called themselves, were Jonelle Collins, Dean Walker, Karen Ott, Nick Hudley, and Keith and Sandy Cavanaugh. all of Freestone, California, the article said.

Didi had always had an eye for faces: the curve of a nose, the width of an eyebrow, the way hair fell across a forehead. It was detail that made up a face. attention to detail was one of her strengths.

and she was almost certain that one of those men  -  Walker, Hudley, or Cavanaugh  -  used to be known as Jack Gardiner.

She put the album back in its place and closed the drawer. There was no evidence that the drawer had been tampered with or the album discovered. She went into the front room and circled the telephone. Call the policei Report a burglaryi But what, if anything, had been takeni She roamed around the house, checking closets and drawers. a metal box that held two hundred dollars in ready cash hadn't been touched. Her clothes  -  Sears and Penney's ready-to-wear  -  all remained on their hangers. Nothing was missing; even the pane of glass that had been cut from the door was lying on the kitchen's countertop. She walked from room to room in the cottage, her Rubik's Cube clicking but no solution in sight.

The telephone rang, and Didi picked it up in the front room. "Helloi"

a pause. Then: "Didii"

If her heart had been pounding before, now her stomach seemed to rise to her throat. "Who is thisi"

"It's me. Mark Treggs."

"Marki" It had been five or six months since they'd last spoken. She always called him, not the other way around. It was part of their understanding. But something was wrong; she could hear the tension thick in his voice, and she said quickly, "What is iti"

"Didi, I'm here. In ann arbor."

"ann arbor," she repeated, dazed. Click, click, click. "What're you doing herei"

"I've brought someone to see you." In his room at the Days Inn, Mark glanced at Laura, who stood nearby. "We've been waiting for you to get back from your trip."

"Mark, what's this all abouti"

She's right on the edge, Mark thought. about to jump out of her skin. "Trust me, okayi I wouldn't do anything to hurt you. Do you believe thati"

"Somebody broke in. Trashed my kitchen. Jesus, I don't know what's going on!"

"Listen to me. Okayi Just settle down and listen. I wouldn't hurt you. We go back too far. I've brought someone who needs your help."

"Whoi What are you talking abouti"

Laura took a step forward and grasped the telephone before Mark could say anything else. "Bedeliai" she said, and she heard the other woman gasp at the unfamiliar voice speaking her name. "Don't hang up, please! Just give me a few minutes, that's all I'm asking."

Didi was silent, but her shock was palpable.

"My name is Laura Clayborne. Mark brought me here to see you." Laura sensed Didi was about to slam down the phone, the hairs stirring on the back of her neck. "I'm not working with the police or the FBI," she said. "I swear to God I'm not. I'm trying to find my baby. Do you know that Mary Terrell stole my childi"

There was no answer. Laura feared she'd already lost Bedelia Morse, that the phone would crash down and she would be long gone by the time they drove to the house.

The silence stretched, and Laura felt her nerves stretch with it.

The kernel of a scream began to form, like a small dark seed, in Laura's mind. What she didn't know was that the same seed was growing in the mind of Bedelia Morse.

Finally, it came. Not a scream, but a word born from the seed: "Yes."

Thank God, Laura thought. She had squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for Didi to hang up. Now she opened them again. "Can I come talk to youi"

another silence as Didi thought it over. "I can't help you," she said.

"are you sure about thati Do you have any idea where Mary Terrell might have gonei"

"I can't help you," Didi repeated, but she didn't hang up.

"all I want is my baby back," Laura said. "I don't care where Mary Terrell goes, or what happens to her. I've got to have my child back. I don't even know if he's still alive or not, and it's tearing me to pieces. Please. I'm begging you: can't you help me at alli"

"Look, I don't know you," Didi replied. "You could be undercover FBI for all I know. I just got home from a trip, and somebody broke into my house while I was gone. Was it youi"

"No. But I saw the man who did." and her body remembered the scuffle, too. Her right shoulder was a mass of blue-green bruises under her white blouse and cable-knit sweater, and another line of bruises ran across her right hip beneath her jeans.

"The man." Didi's voice had sharpened. "What mani"

"Let me come see you. I'll tell you when I get there."

"I don't know you!" It was almost a shout of fear and frustration.

"You're going to," Laura answered firmly. "I'm giving the phone back to Mark now. He'll tell you I can be trusted." She handed the telephone to him, and the first thing he heard from Didi was an enraged "You bastard! You betrayed me, you bastard! I ought to kill you for this!"

"Kill mei" he asked quietly. "You don't really mean that, do you, Didii"

She gave an anguished sob. "You bastard," she whispered. "You screwed me. I thought we were like a brother and sister."

"We are, and that won't change. But this woman needs help. She's clean. Let us come see you," Mark said. "I'm asking like a brother."

Laura walked away from him, opened the curtain, and looked outside at the cold blue sky. She could see her car in the parking lot, its windshield marked with the GO HOME warning. She waited in anguish, until Mark put down the receiver.

"She'll see us," he told her.

On the drive to Didi's house, Mark said, "Be cool. Don't go all to pieces or start begging. That won't help."

"Okay."

Mark touched the letters carved into the windshield. "Son of a bitch did a job on you, didn't hei I knew that guy sounded weird. Plug in his throat." He grunted. "I wonder what the hell he was after."

"I don't know, and I hope I never see him again."

Mark nodded. They were a couple of miles from the cottage. "Listen," he said, "there's something I've got to lay on you. I told you about Didi having plastic surgery, rememberi"

"Yes."

"Didi used to be pretty. She's not anymore. She had the plastic surgeon make her ugly."

"Make her uglyi Whyi"

"She wanted to change. Didn't want to be what she was before, I guess. So when you see her, be cool."

"I'll be cool," Laura said. "I'll be damned cool."

She slowed down and turned the BMW onto the house's dirt driveway. as Laura drove up to the cottage, she saw the front door open. a plump woman wearing a dark green sweater and khaki trousers came out. She had long red hair that fell in waves around her shoulders. Laura's palms were damp, her nerves raw. Be cool, she told herself. She stopped the car and switched off the engine. The moment had arrived.

Bedelia Morse stood in the doorway, watching, as Laura and Mark got out of the car and approached her. Laura saw the woman's toadish face and crooked nose, and she wondered what kind of plastic surgeon would have consented to do such work. and what private torment had made Bedelia Morse want to wear a face that had been sculpted into uglinessi

"You shit," Didi said to Mark, her voice cold, and she went inside without waiting for them.

In the cottage's tidy front room, Didi sat in a chair where she could look out a window at the road. She didn't offer seats to Laura or Mark; she kept her gaze on him because she recalled Laura's pain-stricken face from the newscasts and looking at her was difficult. "Hello, Didi," Mark said, trying for a smile. "It's been a long time."

"How much did she pay youi" Didi asked.

Mark's fragile smile evaporated.

"She did pay you, righti How many silver coins bought my head on a platteri"

Laura said, "Mark's been a friend to me. He -"

"He used to be my friend, too." Didi glanced quickly at Laura and then away. Laura Clayborne's eyes were deep sockets, and they burned with a terrible intensity. "You screwed me, Mark. You sold me, and she bought me. Righti Well, here I am." Didi forced her head to turn, and she stared at Laura. "Mrs. Clayborne, I've killed people. I walked into a diner with three other Storm Fronters and shot four policemen who were guilty of nothing but wearing blue uniforms and badges. I helped plant a pipe bomb that blinded a fifteen-year-old girl. I cheered when Jack Gardiner cut a policeman's throat, and I helped lift up the corpse so akitta Washington and Mary Terrell could nail his hands to a rafter. I'm the woman mothers warn their children not to grow up to be." Didi offered a chilly smile, the shadows of bare tree branches slicing her face. "Welcome to my house."

"Mark didn't want to bring me. I kept at him until he did."

"Is that supposed to make me feel betteri Or saferi" She placed her fingertips together. "Mrs. Clayborne, you don't know anything about the world I live in. I've killed people, yes; that's my crime. But no judge or jury had to give me a prison sentence. Every day of my life since 1972 I've been looking over my shoulder, scared to death of what might be coming up behind. I sleep maybe three hours a night, on good nights. Sometimes I open my eyes in the dark and I've jammed myself into a closet without knowing it. I walk down the street and think a dozen people see through this face to who I used to be. and with every breath I take I know that I stole the life from fellow human beings. Snuffed them out, and celebrated their murders with hits of acid by candlelight." She nodded, her green eyes hazy with pain. "I didn't need a prison cell. I carry one around with me. So if you're going to turn me over to the police, I'll tell you this: they can't do anything to me. I'm not here. I'm dead, and I've been dead for a very long time."

"I'm not going to turn you over to the police," Laura said. "I just want to ask you some questions about Mary Terrell."

"Mary Terror," Didi corrected her. "It was"  -  she'd almost said crazy  -  "stupid of her to take your baby. Stupid."

"The FBI lost her after she visited her mother in Richmond. Her mother told them she was headed for Canada. Do you have any idea where she might have gonei"

Here was the question, Didi thought. She stared at her hands.

Laura glanced at Mark for support, but he shrugged and sat down on the couch. "anything you can tell me about Mary Terrell might be important," she told Didi. "Can you think of anybody she might have gotten in touch withi anybody from the pasti"

"The past." Didi sneered it. "There's no such place. There's just a long damned road from there to here, and you die a little more with every mile."

"Did Mary Terrell have any friends outside the Storm Fronti"

"No. The Storm Front was her life. We were her family." Didi drew a deep breath and looked out the window again, expecting a police car to pull up at any minute. If that happened, she wasn't going to fight. Her fighting days were over. She directed her attention to Laura again. "You said you saw the man who broke into my house."

Laura explained about the glint of the flashlight she'd seen that night. "I came in, turned on the lights in the kitchen, and there he was. His face -" She shuddered to remember it. "His face was screwed up. He was grinning; his face was scarred, and the grin was frozen on it. Dark eyes, either dark brown or black. and he had a thing in his throat like an electric socket. Right here." She showed Didi by placing her fingers against her own throat.

"The dude across the road saw him, too," Mark added. "Said the guy had to plug a speaker into his throat and talk through it."

"Wait." Didi's inner alarm had reached a shriek. "The man went to see Mr. Breweri"

"That's right. He asked where you'd gone. Said he was a friend of yours."

"He asked for me by namei Diane Daniellsi" She hadn't returned the binoculars to Charles Brewer yet, so she hadn't heard this. When Mark nodded, Didi felt as if she'd taken a punch to the stomach. "My God," she said, and stood up. "My God. Somebody else knows. You bastard, somebody must've followed you!"

"Hold on a minute! Nobody followed us. anyway, the dude was asking about you before we even got to ann arbor."

Didi felt her control slipping away. The man who'd broken in hadn't taken anything. He'd known her new name, and where she lived. Had asked Mr. Brewer where she'd gone. She sensed it like a noose tightening around her neck: someone else knew who she was.

"Please try to think," Laura plowed on. "Is there anyone Mary Terrell might have gone to for helpi"

"No!" Didi's face contorted, her nerves about to snap. "I said I can't help you! Get out and leave me alone!"

"I wish I could," Laura said. "I wish Mary Terrell hadn't taken my baby. I wish I knew if my son was alive or dead. I can't leave you alone because you're my last hope."

Didi put her hands to her ears. "No! I don't want to hear it!"

She knows something, Laura thought. She walked to Didi, grasped her wrists, and pulled her hands away from her ears. "You will hear it!" Laura promised, her cheeks aflame with anger. "Listen to me! If there's anything you know about Mary Terrell  -  anything  -  you've got to tell me! She's out of her mind, do you realize thati She could kill my child at any time, if she hasn't already!"

Didi shook her head. The image of Mary pressing the baby's face toward the burner was too close. "Please, just leave me alone. all I want is to be left alone."

"and all I want is what's mine," Laura said, still grasping Didi's wrists. They stared at each other, inhabitants of different worlds on a collision course. "Won't you help me save my child's lifei"

"I... can't..." Didi began, but her voice faltered. She looked at Mark and then back to Laura, and she knew that if she didn't help this woman, the ghosts that feasted on her soul would grow sharper teeth. But she and Mary were sisters in arms! The Storm Front had been their family! She couldn't betray Mary!

But the Mary Terrell Didi had known long ago was gone. In her place was a savage animal who knew no cause but murder. Sooner or later Mary Terror would snap, and this woman's baby would die screaming.

Didi said, "Please let me go." Laura hesitated a few seconds, and then she released Didi's wrists. Didi walked to the window, where she stood looking out at the cold world. Click, click her Rubik's Cube was turning, but the answer was already in sight. "She... calls the baby Drummer," Didi said. Her heart hurt. In the electric silence that followed, Didi could hear Laura Clayborne breathing. "I saw Mary and your baby yesterday."

"Oh Jesus." It was Mark speaking in a low, stunned voice.

"He was all right," Didi went on. "She's taking good care of him. But..." She trailed off, unable to say it.

a hand like an iron pincer grasped her shoulder. Didi looked into Laura's face, and caught a glimpse of hellfire. "But whati" Laura demanded, barely able to speak.

"But... Mary's dangerous. Dangerous to herself, dangerous to your baby."

"What's that meani Tell me!"

"Mary said... if the police find them... she'll kill the baby first"  -  Didi saw Laura wince as if she'd been struck  -  "and then she'll keep shooting until the police kill her. She's not going to give up. Never."

Tears stung Laura's eyes. They were tears of relief, at knowing David was still alive, and tears of horror at knowing that what Bedelia Morse said was true.

The rest of it had to be told. Didi steeled herself, and continued. "Mary's coming here. She and Edward Fordyce. He was part of the Storm Front, too. They're on the way now, from New York. They should get here sometime tomorrow."

"Whoa," Mark whispered, his eyes wide behind his glasses. "Far out."

Laura felt off balance, as if the room had suddenly begun to slowly spin around her. "Why are they coming herei"

It seemed to Didi that once unleashed, betrayal was like a swarm of locusts. It kept consuming until everything was gone. "I'll show you," she said, and she took her key chain from its wall peg beside the front door.

Laura and Mark followed Didi out behind the cottage, to the stone structure which was Didi's workshop. She unsnapped the padlock, drew out the chain, and opened the door. a thick, earthy aroma wafted from the chill darkness. Didi switched on the overhead lights, revealing a neatly swept workshop with two pottery wheels, shelves of glaze and paint, and various clay-shaping tools in their places on a pegboard. another shelf held examples of Didi's labors in various stages of completion: graceful vases and planters, dishware, mugs, and ashtrays. On the floor beside one of the wheels was a huge urn, its surface patterned to resemble treebark. Didi paused to turn on a space heater, and she said, "This is what I sell. Back there is what I make for myself." She nodded toward a drawn curtain at the rear of the workshop.

Didi walked to the curtain and drew it open. The cubicle behind it was covered with another series of shelves, and on them were works far different from what Didi sold under the name of Diane Daniells.

Laura saw a pottery head: the face of a young woman with long, flowing hair, her mouth open in a scream and a dozen snakes bursting from the top of her skull. She didn't recognize the face, but Mark did. It was what Didi used to look like, before the butchery. another face, this one of a man, was splitting open down the center, and a more fearsome, demonic visage was beginning to push through. There was a disembodied clay hand holding a perfectly formed clay revolver, the hand's fingernails transformed into grinning skulls. On the floor was a large work: a woman  -  again, as Mark saw, the image of the young Bedelia Morse  -  on her knees, her arms lifted upward in supplication and roaches scurrying from her mouth. Mounted on a wall were what appeared to be death masks: faces without expression, marked by stitches, zippers, or jagged scars. They looked to Laura like silent sufferers, saints of a hellish world, and she realized she was peering into the depths of Didi Morse's nightmares.

Didi picked up something that was wrapped in black plastic. She brought it out to one of the wheels, where she carefully set it down and began to remove the plastic. It took her a minute or two, her touch reverent. and when she was done she stepped back, allowing Laura and Mark a full view.

It was the life-size model of a man's head. The face was handsome and thoughtful, like that of a prince caught in repose. The clay hadn't been glazed or painted, and there was no color at all on the model, but Didi's fingers had rippled the scalp into curls of hair. The nose was an elegant curve, the forehead high and sloping, the thin-lipped and rather cruel mouth seemingly just about to open. The eyes held a regal incuriosity, as if they judged everyone else a step beneath him. It was the face, Laura thought, of a man who knew the taste of power.

Didi touched the wheel, and spun it around. The head slowly rotated. "I modeled this from part of a face I saw in a picture," she said. "I finished the part the picture showed, and then I did the rest of it. Do you know who that isi"

"No," Laura replied.

"His name is  -  was  -  Jack Gardiner. Lord Jack, we called him."

"The Storm Front's leaderi"

"That's right. He was our father, our brother, our protector. and our Satan." The wheel was stopping. Didi spun it again. "The things we did for him... are unspeakable. He played our souls like violins, and made us obey like trained animals. But he was smart, and he had eyes that you thought could see every secret you ever tried to hide. Jack Gardiner made Mary Terrell pregnant. She was going to have the baby in July 1972. Then the world crashed in on us." Didi lifted her gaze to Laura. "Mary lost the baby. Delivered it dead in a gas station bathroom. So she's taking Drummer  -  your baby  -  to Lord Jack."

"Whati" It was a gasp.

Didi told them about the message in Mother Jones, and that Mary had seen it in Rolling Stone. "She thought Jack was waiting for her. She took your baby to give him. But Edward Fordyce placed the message because he's trying to write a book about the Storm Front and he wanted to see who'd show up. So now Mary and Edward are on their way here." She had come to the secret thing again. Loyalty writhed within her, like a snake in hot ashes. But to whom was she being loyali a dead ideal of freedomi an ideal that was never really true in the first placei She felt as if she'd been on a long, grueling journey, and she'd abruptly come to a crossroads of decision. One road led the way she'd been going: straight ahead, across a land of nightmares and old griefs come a-haunting. The new road faced a wilderness, and what lay beyond it no one could know.

Both roads were treacherous. Both roads glistened with blood, under a darkening sky. The question was: which road might lead to the saving of that infant's lifei

Didi stared at the clay face of the man she had once adored, in her youth, and grown to hate in her ancient days. She decided on the road to take. "I... think Jack Gardiner is in California. That's where Mary and Edward'll be going after they leave here." The snake within her crunched itself into a tight coil, and expired with a final shudder in the embers. Didi almost cried, but she did not; yesterday was gone, and no tears could revive its clock of hours. "That's it," Didi said. "What nowi are you going to call the policei"

"No. I'm going to meet Mary when she gets here."

Mark's jaw would have dropped to the floor had it not been jointed to his face. "Uh-uh!" he said. "No way!"

"I'm not going to just let her breeze through here!" Laura snapped. "I don't want the police in this. If Mary Terror sees the police, my baby is as good as dead. So what choice do I havei"

"She'll kill you," Didi said. "She's packing at least two pistols, and maybe something else I haven't seen. She won't hesitate for a second before she blows you away."

"I'll have to take that chance."

"You won't get a chance. Don't you understandi You can't take her on!"

"You don't understand," Laura said firmly. "There's no other way."

Didi was about to protest again, but what could she sayi The woman was right. She would be killed in a face-to-face encounter with Mary Terror, of that Didi had no doubt. But what other chance would she havei "You're crazy," Didi said.

"Yes, I am," Laura answered. "I wouldn't be standing here if I weren't. If I have to be as crazy as Mary Terror, then so be it."

"Sure." Mark grunted. "The only difference is, you've never killed anybody."

Laura ignored him, and kept her attention on Bedelia Morse. There was no retreating now, no calling for Doug to help her or the police to bring their eager snipers. Her mouth was dry at the prospect of impending violence, and the thought that the violence could easily catch David in its storm. "I've got to ask you for one more thing. That you'll let me know when Mary gets here."

"I don't want your blood on my walls."

"How about my child's blood on your handsi Do you want thati"

Didi drew a long breath and let it out. "No. I don't."

"Then you'll let me knowi"

"I won't be able to stop her from killing you," Didi said.

"Okay. You won't have to cry at my funeral. Will you let me knowi"

Didi hesitated. She had murdered people who didn't want to die. Now she was going to be helping murder someone who was begging for death. But once Mary left for California, any chance  -  however slim  -  of getting the baby back alive would be gone. Didi kept her gaze downcast, but she could feel the hot intensity of Laura's eyes on her. "They're supposed to call me when they get to ann arbor," she said at last. "I told Mary I'd give her directions to the house. God help me... but I'll call you when I hear from them."

"We're at the Days Inn. I'm in Room 119 and Mark's in Room 112. I'll be waiting by the phone."

"You mean waiting by your gravestone, don't youi"

"Maybe. But don't shovel the dirt on me yet."

Didi lifted her gaze and looked at Laura. She knew faces, and faces intrigued her. This woman's features said she'd lived a soft, pampered life, a life of comparative wealth and ease. But the pain she'd endured was showing, in the dark hollows under her eyes, the lines on her forehead, and at the comers of her grim-lipped mouth. There was something else in her face, too, something that was newly born: it might be called hope. Didi recognized Laura as a fighter, a survivor who wasn't afraid of overwhelming odds. That was how Didi herself used to be, a long time ago before the Storm Front had twisted and shaped her into a vessel of agony. Didi said, "I'll let you know." Four words: how easily a death warrant was signed.

They walked around the cottage to Laura's car, and Didi saw the Go home carved into the windshield's glass. She was going to take the binoculars back to Mr. Brewer, and get a full description of the man who'd been asking for her. That was the kind of thing that five years ago would have made her instantly pack a suitcase and hit the road. Now, though, she knew the truth: there was nowhere to hide forever, and old debts always came due.

Mark, muttering his discontent, got into the car. Before Laura did, she fixed Didi with a hard stare. "My son's name is David," she said. "Not Drummer." and then she got into the BMW, started the engine, and drove away, leaving Bedelia Morse standing alone in the lengthening shadows.