Nightshade

CHAPTER 28

HE WAS BACK in the root cellar.

The blackness was even deeper than before, the walls of the chamber so close around him that every breath was a painful struggle. The stench of death was in his nostrils, and every nerve in his body felt as if it were on fire. From somewhere in the darkness he thought he could hear the wailing of the dead.

But he’d gotten away from the root cellar! He’d stood on Becky’s shoulders and —

Suddenly he was there again, pushing up, struggling to raise the trapdoor. The wailing had stopped, and he was almost out — almost free — almost —

He grunted as the shovel crashed down on him, stunning him.

Now he was stumbling through the darkness, running down a driveway that seemed to go on forever toward gates that never appeared any nearer. Then something was behind him, some unseen menace, coming closer and closer. He struggled to run faster, but his feet seemed mired in mud, and now the gate — the gate that was his only escape from the menace closing in behind him — was farther away then ever.

The car struck him with no warning, and he moaned as a sharp pain shot through his shoulder.

He stumbled, then felt himself falling.

He tumbled through the blackness, sinking deeper and deeper into it.

A voice.

His mother’s voice.

“I’m here, Matt…” The stench of death in his nostrils gave way to the musky aroma of her perfume. “I’m here… ” The odor grew stronger, and he could feel her fingers reaching out to him, feel them begin their caresses. “I’ll never leave you… I’ll never leave you again.”

Sensing that if he let her touch him — if he submitted to her this one last time — he would be lost forever, Matt summoned the last of his strength. Ignoring the pain that tore at his body, he sucked his lungs full and opened his mouth.

* * *

HIS SCREAM WASHED away the nightmare of memories that had held him in a prison of blackness, and his eyes blinked open.

She was there!

His mother was there, next to him, staring down at him, reaching out to him.

“No!” he screamed. “No! Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

His mother’s hand froze, and for a moment her eyes met his. Once again he seemed to be caught up in the nightmare, for suddenly he was no longer looking at his mother.

He was looking at his aunt.

Another scream rose in his throat, but before it could erupt into the night he heard a man’s voice: “Talk to me, Matt. Talk to me!”

Matt tore his eyes away from the strange visage of his aunt, and saw Dan Pullman looming above him. “B-basement…” he managed.

“You don’t have to tell them,” he heard his mother say. You don’t have to say anything.” Again her fingers reached out to touch him, and again he shrank away.

“In the basement…” he said, summoning the last of his strength. “In the root cellar!” He tried to sit up, but the pain in his shoulder tore through him, draining the last of his resources, and he collapsed back down onto the stretcher.

“Okay,” Dan Pullman barked to the medics. “Take him to the clinic. Tony, come with me.” As the EMTs wheeled Matt to the ambulance, Joan Hapgood started to follow the stretcher, but Pullman stopped her. “Not yet,” he said. “First I want you to show me the root cellar he was talking about.”

Joan’s face paled. “I don’t go into the cellar.” The fear in her eyes was almost palpable. “I’m afraid of it — it’s so dark and feels so closed in, and — ”

“Show us,” Dan Pullman cut in, signaling Tony Petrocelli to follow him as he took Joan’s elbow and began steering her toward the house. When Gerry Conroe started after him, Pullman almost ordered him back, then changed his mind. Depending on what they found, it might be better to have Gerry Conroe with them.

* * *

SOMETHING ABOUT THE house had changed since Pullman had been here earlier in the day. At first he wasn’t sure what it was; perhaps it was only in his imagination, given what Matt had said a few moments before. But then he decided it was more than that. There was a dark aura about the house, and from the moment he followed Joan Hapgood inside, with Gerry Conroe and Tony Petrocelli behind him, he had a feeling of terrible foreboding.

As they moved through the mud room into the kitchen, Conroe paused and reached out to touch his shoulder. “What’s that smell?” he asked.

The tremor in Conroe’s voice told the police chief that the other man already had a pretty good idea of what the odor must be.

It was the scent of death.

Instead of answering Conroe’s question, Pullman grimly scanned the kitchen, his gaze drawn to an open door next to the refrigerator. “That lead to the basement?” he asked.

Joan stopped short. “Don’t make me go down there. Please don’t make me.”

There was a pleading, almost childish note in her voice that surprised Pullman. Now, looking at her in the bright kitchen instead of the glow of headlights that had been the only illumination in the driveway, he saw that it wasn’t only the house that had changed.

Joan Hapgood had too.

Her hair was arranged differently, pulled back from her face in a tight twist he didn’t remember seeing before. And instead of the pale lipstick that was all Joan usually wore, tonight her face was made up as if she’d been preparing to go out. The colors she’d chosen — the turquoise eye shadow and bright lip gloss — made her look as if she were wearing a mask. Something was wrong with the clothes too. They didn’t quite seem to fit her, and they looked dated, and in a style that might have appeared right on a girl in her teens, but made Joan look as if she’d dressed for a costume party.

“Jesus,” Gerry Conroe whispered, speaking softly, as if to himself. His eyes were fixed on Joan Hapgood as if he were seeing a ghost. “What the hell is going on?”

Pullman and Tony Petrocelli exchanged a glance, and the police chief made a quick decision. “Stay up here with Joan,” he told the deputy. “I’ll go down and take a look.”

“I’m coming with you,” Conroe said. When Pullman hesitated, Conroe pushed harder. “My daughter might be down there, Dan.”

Pullman reluctantly nodded. “Okay. But you do exactly as I say. And you touch nothing.”

A moment later the two men started down the stairs, moving slowly as Pullman searched for signs of blood. Wherever there were reddish smears, he alerted Conroe to avoid them. At the bottom of the stairs the smell of rotting flesh was stronger, overpowering the musty scent of mildew that they would have recognized from their own basements. Pullman paused, then saw an opening in the floor, almost hidden behind the furnace at the far end of the room. Moving closer, he saw the open trapdoor, and the ladder protruding from the three-foot-square hole. There was a large bloodstain on the floor near the ladder, and as Conroe moved toward it, Pullman held out an arm to stop him. “Stay here,” he said, his voice low but carrying a note of authority. “Let me take a look first.”

Reluctantly, Gerry complied, and Pullman stepped forward and gazed down into the dark pit beneath the basement floor.

For a moment he saw nothing, but then, protruding out of the darkness surrounding the shaft of light coming through the trapdoor, he saw a leg. Flicking on his flashlight, he probed with the beam, moving from the leg up to a white shirt.

A white shirt that was soaked with blood.

His stomach knotting, he climbed down the ladder, careful to touch as little of it as possible. At the bottom, he crouched over the crumpled body that was clad in the bloody white shirt and jeans. Though the face was badly slashed and covered with blood, he recognized Becky Adams. He reached out and touched her neck, searching for a pulse.

There was none.

Struggling against the nausea that was threatening to overwhelm him, Pullman turned the light away from Becky Adams, and a moment later was staring into the face of Emily Moore.

Or, more accurately, at what had once been her face. Her skin was torn and bruised, and dried blood was crusted around her mouth and nostrils. Pullman’s pulse quickened when he saw a movement, and then he realized that it wasn’t a movement at all, but a mass of ants that were already feeding off the old woman’s corpse.

He moved the beam again, and saw Kelly Conroe.

She too was lying still, her face bruised and bloodied, but when he reached out to feel for a pulse, she jerked away from his touch.

“No…” she whispered. “Please… no more.”

“Kelly?” Gerry Conroe cried out from above. “Oh, God! Kelly!” A moment later, ignoring Pullman’s orders, he was at the bottom of the ladder, kneeling over his daughter, reaching out to touch her, but hesitating at the last second, as if afraid he might hurt her.

Kelly was silent for a moment, and then, with a soft moan, opened one of her swollen eyes. “Daddy?” she whispered, reaching out to him.

As Conroe gathered his daughter into his arms, he looked up at Dan Pullman, his eyes glittering with rage. “I’ll kill that son of a bitch. I swear, I’ll kill him for what he did!”

Kelly’s hand closed on her father’s in a weak squeeze. “No!” she whimpered. “N-not Matt! His mother! It was his mother… ” Then, the realization that she was finally safe sinking in, she began to sob quietly.

As Gerry Conroe tried to soothe his daughter, stroking her hair and cradling her as if she were a baby, Dan Pullman used his radio to issue orders. “We’ve got a real mess out here,” he said after telling the dispatcher to get a second ambulance out to Hapgood Farm. “Make sure someone gets on the gate right away — the last thing we need is a bunch of rubberneckers up here.” Putting the radio back in its holster, his gaze shifted to Gerry Conroe. “What was that all about up there?” he asked. “When we were with Joan.”

Conroe’s eyes stayed on his daughter. “It was her clothes — her hair — everything,” he replied softly, his glance flicking toward Pullman before returning to his daughter’s bloodstained face. “When I first saw her in the light, I thought I was looking at her sister. I mean, I could swear that dress was Cynthia’s, and the way she’s got her hair and her makeup…” His voice trailed off and he shook his head. “I just don’t know,” he finished. “It was almost like seeing a ghost.”

Pullman was silent for a few seconds, then rose to his feet. “Will you be okay if I leave you alone down here?”

Conroe nodded, and a moment later the police chief climbed back up out of the root cellar.

* * *

“WHY CAN’T I go to the hospital?” Joan Hapgood was seated at the kitchen table, her body tense, and when she spoke her voice was as tight as an overwound clock spring. “Why can’t I see my son?”

“Let’s just wait until Trip Wainwright gets here,” Dan Pullman said for the third time in the last five minutes.

When he’d emerged from the basement, Pullman said nothing to Joan Hapgood. He went directly to the telephone on the kitchen counter and called her attorney. “I think we’re going to need you,” he told Wainwright. “I want to talk to Joan, but I don’t want anyone saying I questioned her improperly.”

Joan, who heard him as he spoke to her lawyer, tried to protest. “Why are you calling him? I already told you — I can’t remember what happened. I just want to see my son. Can’t he meet us at the clinic?”

Pullman had said nothing. Hanging up, he sat down at the kitchen table, resisting the impulse to go through the house looking for something that might explain what had happened. What he’d found in the basement provided far more than the legal definition of “probable cause,” but he knew that without a warrant, Trip Wainwright could tie up for months whatever evidence he might find.

Better to wait a few minutes for Wainwright now than churn through paperwork for months later.

Better to do it by the book.

The attorney arrived on the heels of the ambulance that came to pick up Kelly Conroe. As the medics, followed by two state troopers, disappeared down the basement stairs, Joan Hapgood’s eyes widened in surprise.

Surprise that looked to Dan Pullman to be absolutely genuine.

“What are they doing?” she asked. “What did you find down there?”

Before Pullman replied, Trip Wainwright broke in. “Would you mind telling me exactly what’s going on here, Dan? I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t talk to either Matt or Joan without me being present.”

As briefly as he could, the police chief explained what had happened to Matt Moore. “I haven’t talked to Joan,” he said. “I just asked her to show me where the entrance to the basement was, and I didn’t need a warrant for that, given what Matt said.”

Wainwright’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “And did you find anything?”

His eyes fixed on Joan Hapgood, Pullman said, “I found Emily Moore, Becky Adams, and Kelly Conroe.”

Joan Hapgood gasped, and her hand flew reflexively up to cover her mouth. “M-Mother?” she stammered, standing up and taking a step toward the basement door. “My mother is down there?” Pullman nodded, and she uttered an unintelligible cry.

“Sit down, Joan,” Pullman said.

The gentleness in his voice caught Joan’s attention, and she froze. Then, the horror in her eyes dissolving into fear, she sank back onto her chair. Wainwright took a seat next to her, at the table.

“She’s dead, Joan,” Pullman went on, his eyes remaining on her. “So is Becky Adams. And Kelly Conroe has been beaten so badly she can barely speak.”

As the horror returned to Joan’s eyes, Wainwright slipped a protective arm around his client. “Is there any proof that Matt did it?” he asked. “I mean any real proof?”

Again Pullman’s eyes stayed on Joan as he spoke. “When we found him, there was a shovel lying next to him, smeared with bloody fingerprints that I suspect will match Matt’s. And there was a piece of the shirt Becky Adams is wearing, with her father’s monogram.”

Wainwright’s lips compressed as he digested this. “There has to be an explanation — ”

“Kelly Conroe says it wasn’t Matt.” Pullman went on, still watching Joan. “She says it was you.”

Again the look of shock on Joan’s face seemed genuine. “No!” she cried. “How could she — ”

“She did,” Pullman interrupted. “She said, ‘Not Matt. His mother. It was his mother…’ ” As he repeated the words Kelly Conroe had spoken, he saw a change come into Joan’s eyes. The horror — and the confusion — seemed to clear. She shifted position, and the dress she wore somehow seemed to fit her better. And when she spoke, her voice was calm and clear.

“The Conroe girl said I did it?” she demanded. “That’s ridiculous.”

Trip Wainwright put a restraining hand on her arm. “You don’t have to say anything at all,” he cautioned, but she brushed his hand aside and gave him a withering look.

“I hardly think I need your help,” she said, then turned back to Pullman. “It was Joan,” she said. “It was always Joan.”

Wainwright was about to say something, and Pullman silenced him with a gesture. “And who are you?” he asked softly, though he was certain he already knew the answer.

“I’m Matt’s mother,” the woman sitting at the kitchen table said. “I’m Cynthia Moore.”

The color drained from Trip Wainwright’s face, and his eyes flicked between Dan Pullman and the woman he knew as Joan Hapgood. Pullman broke the silence that had fallen over the room. “Do you know why she did it?” he asked.

“He was going to take Matt away,” Cynthia said.

Pullman frowned. “Who? Who was going to take Matt away?”

“His father,” Cynthia replied. “Bill Hapgood.”

“I thought Bill Hapgood wasn’t his father — ” Pullman began, but Cynthia Moore, her nostrils flaring angrily, cut him short.

“Don’t you think I know who the father of my own son is?” she asked, her voice turning bitter. “Let me show you something.”

She stood up, and Wainwright was suddenly on his feet too. “Joan, I don’t think this is a good idea. Before you show him anything, or say anything else, we have to talk.”

Cynthia ignored him. Slipping her arm through Dan Pullman’s, she drew him with her as she moved toward the dining room. Turning on the chandelier that hung over the table, she glanced around the room, her eyes lingering on the glass-fronted cabinet that held the half-dozen sets of fine china the Hapgood family had amassed over the generations, along with dozens of crystal goblets in different sizes and patterns. “All this should have been mine, you know,” she said to Pullman. “He never loved Joan — not like he loved me.”

They moved on, passing through the entry hall and into the living room. It was Trip Wainwright who first noticed the photographs on the piano. There were three, of Bill and Joan Hapgood.

Except that Joan’s image was gone, replaced by Cynthia’s.

“I’m going to call Dr. Henderson,” Wainwright said softly as Cynthia led them into the den and his eyes moved from one picture to another, each one altered in the same manner as the ones on the piano in the living room.

Pullman nodded in silent agreement as Cynthia went to the desk, picked up a file folder, and handed it to him. He opened it and saw a letter from a laboratory in New York City. It confirmed that DNA tests on samples of both Matthew Moore’s tissue and William Hapgood’s established the relationship of the man and the boy.

“He was going to take him away,” Cynthia said as Pullman read through the file. “I couldn’t let that happen. Don’t you see? That’s why I had to make Joan kill him. Otherwise he was going to take Matt away from me.”

Pullman looked at her uncertainly. “You ‘made’ Joan kill Bill? But it was Matt who — ”

“He was there,” Cynthia told him. “But it was Joan who made him pull the trigger.” Her eyes took on a faraway look. “She stood behind him, with her arms around him. She loved to hold him, you know. She loved to go into his room at night, to watch him sleep.” Her voice grew husky. “And touch him. She loved to feel his skin against hers, his body…” Her voice trailed off, then she looked anxiously into Pullman’s eyes. “They both loved me,” she whispered. “Bill and Matt both loved me. But she took them away.”

Tony Petrocelli appeared at the door. “Dan?” he said. “We’re ready to bring them up.”

Pullman signaled curtly, but before Petrocelli left the room, Cynthia said, “Mama? Is he talking about Mama?” Before anyone could answer, she turned back to Dan Pullman and spoke to him with a pleading tone. “I want to see her. Please? Can’t I see my mama?”

Wainwright had returned to the room, and Pullman’s eyes met his, an unspoken message passing between them. The lawyer nodded. “I don’t have any objection.”

They got back to the kitchen as two state troopers emerged from the basement, carrying a stretcher. Pullman asked if they were carrying Emily Moore, and, after the trooper nodded, the police chief eased the sheet off the old woman’s face so her daughter could look down at it.

“It was Joan,” Cynthia Moore said, as she always had when she’d done something wrong. “It wasn’t my fault, Mama. It was Joan… it was always Joan… ”