Dead of Night 5

“What would your mama say if she could see the way you been carrying on? All that partying and carousing and acting like you ain’t got a lick of common sense. You waste your money on some ol’ boy and what you gonna have left when he up and leaves you? Nothing, that’s what. Now, you listen to me, Sarah June.” She shook a bony finger in Sarah’s face. “You use what’s left of your mama’s money and buy yourself a little house. That way when them ol’ boys take off like they do, you got someplace to go home to.”

It was the best advice anyone had ever given Sarah, and for once in her life, she’d had the gumption to follow it. But then, Esme had never steered her wrong. Sometimes Sarah thought Esme was the only one who had ever really cared about her.

Making another pass through the house, Sarah finally managed to convince herself that her edginess was just residue tension from her session earlier that day. She and Michael had gotten into some pretty heavy issues, and the exhumation of an old deep-rooted fear was bound to leave her feeling ragged. Sarah had never talked about that fear to anyone, not even to Michael, but Sean’s question had dug it out of a very bad place and now Sarah couldn’t ignore it.

What if Ashe Cain had only been a figment of her imagination? What if he was nothing more than an apparition she’d conjured at a time in her life when she’d desperately needed a friend—an avenger?

But if Ashe Cain wasn’t real, then who had killed Rachel?

That was the question Sarah had been dancing around in Michael’s office. Who was she trying to protect?

She glanced out the window over the sink, but she could no more determine shadow from darkness than she could separate the fantasies of her loneliness from the reality of her past. Sometimes Sarah wondered if she could trust any of her memories, if the unhappy details of her childhood had been manufactured simply to justify her bad behavior.

It was at times like these that she felt like a stranger in her own life and she realized that after all the years of searching, she still hadn’t the vaguest clue of who she really was. Might never know, because she was one of those people who would always be defined by the way others perceived her.

Getting out a bottle of wine, she poured herself a drink.

Why the hell did she keep doing this? Why did she torment herself with unanswerable questions?

If she’d learned anything about herself over the years it was that self-doubt inevitably led to self-destruction.

Already she felt herself on the verge of spiraling out of control, and she quickly lifted the glass to her lips, downing the wine in one gulp.

Ashe Cain was real. She had to believe that. She needed to believe it.

He’d been a troubled, psychotic boy who had done a very bad thing. He’d murdered Rachel in cold blood, maybe to avenge Sarah, maybe to fulfill some dark passion of his own. His motive hardly mattered now. It had been fourteen years since Rachel’s murder. If Ashe was coming back, he would have done so by now. Real or imagined, he was gone from Sarah’s life for good. She needed to believe that, too.

Pouring a second glass of wine, she washed down a Xanax, then carried her drink into the living room and checked her messages. The hang-up calls both annoyed and unsettled her. There had been a lot of them lately, and when she checked the caller ID, the numbers were all unavailable. Telemarketers, most likely.

Or someone checking to see if you’re home.

Sarah became aware of the silence again, and she switched on the television before curling up on the sofa to wait for the pill to take effect. Her muscles had just started to loosen when the phone rang, and feeling that first gentle tug of sedated relaxation, she answered without thinking.

“Hello?”

“We need to talk.”

Sarah’s gaze went to the clock in the bookshelf. Ten-fifteen.

“Sarah? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” she said on a long sigh. “But I don’t feel like talking tonight.”

“I can tell,” Sean said in exasperation. “But that’s too damn bad because there’s something I need to ask you. It’s about the crime scene the other night.”

Sarah rolled onto her back and threw a hand over her eyes. “You sound like a broken record.”

“I’m serious about this.”

“So am I. You’re killing my buzz and that’s very serious to me. Besides, I’ve already told you everything I know.”

“What about the footprints?”

She blinked in bewilderment. “What footprints?”

“You asked about prints the other night at the crime scene, remember? You wanted to know if we’d found any unusual prints around the house.”

A headache began to punch at Sarah’s brain. Shit. A moment ago, she’d been on the verge of a perfectly comfortable numbness, and now Sean was dragging her back to a dark, spooky place. She tried to resist because she really, really didn’t want to go back there. She’d already made that journey once today.

“What kind of prints were you talking about, Sarah?”

She pressed her fingertips to her temple. “What difference does it make? You didn’t find anything, did you?”

“Around the house? No.”

“Then why does it matter?”

“Because we did find them. Just not outside.”

Sarah’s mouth suddenly went dry. She reached for her drink, but her hand bumped the glass and she watched in fascination as the red stain seeped across the tabletop.

“There were bruises on the body in the shape of footprints,” Sean said. “Cloven footprints.”

Oh, Christ, not that.

“That’s what you were talking about, wasn’t it? How did you know about them, Sarah?” His voice was low and insistent. Edged with something Sarah didn’t want to name.

Her heart drummed in her chest. How had she known about those prints? “I didn’t know. How could I?”

“Then why did you specifically ask about unusual prints that night? It’s not a random question. What triggered it?”

She took a deep breath, tried to steady her voice. “It must have been the udjat you showed me. It reminded me of something.”

“What?”

She pulled in more air, drowning. “Sean, it’s late and I’m tired. Can’t we talk about this tomorrow? I just want to lie here and relax for a little while before—”

“Before what?” His voice sharpened. “Are you going out?”

“No.”

“Then I’d like to come over.”

“No. That’s not a good idea.”

“We need to talk about this, Sarah. We need to talk about a lot of things.”

No, no, talking about this was the last thing she needed. What she needed was to push the button and make Sean’s voice go away. What she needed was to get up and go grab a towel because the wine stain on the table kept spreading.

What she did, though, was lie there with her heart pounding and her mind racing. They’d found cloven footprints on the body. How was that possible? New Orleans was such a long way from Adamant.

“You already know about the satanic symbols in the farmhouse where Rachel’s body was found,” she said finally. “When you showed me the udjat, all that came back. We talked about it the other night.”

“I understand why seeing those symbols upset you,” he said. “But it doesn’t explain how you knew about the footprints.”

“After Rachel’s murder, there was a rumor in town that something had been found near her body. Something other than the symbols. Everyone assumed it had something to do with the footprints.”

“What footprints?”

“They were a local legend. The man who lived in the farmhouse supposedly awakened one night to find his field and yard covered with cloven footprints. They were even on his roof. Some believed that all the oil drilling in the area had somehow unleashed the devil. The marks became known as the devil’s footprints because no one could come up with a more plausible explanation. Every so often, usually after a violent death, someone in town claims to have seen them.” Sarah paused. “I asked if you’d found prints at the crime scene because it was an automatic response to the udjat. My memory was triggered and I remembered that old legend. But I never really expected that you would find any.”

“So those bruises on the body are just a coincidence?”

“Is it so surprising to find something like that in a case inundated with satanic symbolism?”

“Maybe not,” Sean said, after a moment. “Actually, that’s another reason I’m calling. There’s been a new development in the case. You may have already heard about it on the news.”

Sarah could tell from his voice that it was bad. “I’ve been avoiding the news. What is it?”

“We found another body.”

She stared at the spilled wine, watched in fascination as it dripped over the edge of the table onto the wood floor. Almost laughably symbolic. “Where?”

“A vacant apartment on North Rampart. Just a few blocks from you.”

No!

Sarah got up with the phone still to her ear. “Hold on a minute, Sean.”

Heart still thumping, she made another quick search of her house. She rechecked all the doors and windows as that inexplicable disquiet crept over her again.

“Sarah?”

She jumped at the sound of her name. She’d forgotten the phone was still to her ear. “Just a second.”

Crossing the room to the window, she stared out at the street. An unfamiliar car had been parked at the curb a few houses down when she got home earlier. It was still there, only now Sarah imagined she could see someone sitting behind the wheel. Watching her house.

She stepped back from the window.

Sean’s voice cut into the silence. “What the hell is going on?”

“Nothing. I just... I needed to check on something, that’s all.”

“Are you okay?”

She inhaled and exhaled slowly. “Yeah, I’m okay.”

His voice lowered. The tension was gone now, and all she heard was a hint of familiarity, a slight whisper of intimacy that rippled through her memories.

She closed her eyes. If she asked him to come over tonight, she knew what would happen. They both did. She was vulnerable and scared, and Sean was Sean.

The moment he walked through her door, she would be in his arms, tearing at his clothes like a wildcat. Stripping her own away without a moment’s hesitation or inhibition. Because in bed, with Sean, her defenses had a way of imploding.

But she wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t let herself be that weak. She’d played a lot of roles in her life, but the other woman was not one of them.

“Sarah.” He said her name softly.

“You’re married, Sean. Or have you forgotten?”

“I haven’t forgotten. But I think we need to talk about that, too.”

“No, we don’t. Not tonight.” Maybe not ever.

“Sarah, please.”

“Don’t come over, Sean. And don’t call here again. Go home to your wife and leave me alone.”

She hung up the phone before he could say anything else and tossed it aside. Collapsing back on the couch, she tried to relax, but it was a long time before she could get Sean’s voice out of her head. She almost expected him to show up at her door in spite of her warning, and when he didn’t, the loneliness of her silent house seemed more crushing than ever.

Finally, she began to drift, and she found herself sifting through memories she hadn’t thought of in years. Unexpectedly, she thought of the bells in the cottonwood trees at the farmhouse.

When the wind blew from a certain direction, the bells chimed over the graves, and Sarah remembered being both intrigued and repulsed by the sound. Ashe had told her once that when she heard the bells, it meant that death was coming.

“I thought bells tolled after someone died.”

He smiled. “Not these bells, Sarah.”

A few nights later, she’d been awakened by that same melodic tinkle. She’d gotten out of bed and gone over to her bedroom window to look out. When she slid the sash up, the sound grew louder, and she realized that Ashe had tied bells up in the tree outside her window.

Sarah could hear those bells now, only the tolling was very distant.

She opened her eyes and lay still for a moment. She wanted to believe it was nothing more than a manifestation of her memory, but she was fully alert now and she could still hear the bells. Faint, but not imagined.

Following the sound into her bedroom, she stood at the French doors that opened into her tiny courtyard, her heart beating hard and fast against her chest.

She wouldn’t go outside to investigate. Not now. Not in the dark. She didn’t have to. She recognized the sound and she knew what it meant.