Chapter 14
Marcia woke up shortly after nine, with Ken snoring softly beside her. She hadn't heard him come in. Maybe he had never gone out. The events of the early morning hours, from the arrival of the police to the appearance of the blood in the bath-water, were still entangled in her mind with scenes from feverishly vivid dreams. Maybe it had all been a dream.
She got up reluctantly and went to the bathroom. It hadn't been a dream. The tile gleamed from the frenzied scrubbing she'd given it last night, a scrubbing that had removed every trace of blood. Some sophisticated test administered by the police might still reveal a residue-but that was nonsense, and she refused to consider it. The police weren't going to come here and test her house for bloodstains. The blood had come from Lucifer himself, from some cut she hadn't been able to find under his smooth coat; or else the scratches that Melody had received from thorns and brambles had bled more than she'd thought possible.
The explanation that had come so easily to her mind last night, that Lucy had killed Ron Green, seemed utterly ridiculous by the light of day. The police had said that Ron had been killed in the same way as Peach-tree; and putting the question of the dog's temperament aside, Lucy simply wasn't big enough or strong enough to tear a man to pieces. No dog was. Ron and Peach-tree had been murdered by human beings.
She went to Melody's room. Melody slept soundly. Marcia spoke her name, but the girl didn't stir. She looked much younger, even babyish, in sleep, and the scratches and discoloration on her pretty face somehow reinforced that suggestion. Marcia didn't have the heart to wake her, and she closed the door quietly.
Possibly an innocent-though still terrifying-explanation existed for the blood on Lucifer's coat. Melody and the dog had come upon the scene of the murder. Lucifer had stumbled into a pool of blood. The shock had blotted out Melody's recollection of the incident, or perhaps she was just too scared to admit it
It seemed a reasonable theory, but it left two questions unanswered: why had Melody gone to Blackwood's Corners at that hour, and how had she gotten there? Erratic behavior in a teen-age girl could usually be traced to a teen-age boy. Melody had never shown much interest in boys. She said she found most of them childish. Maybe she'd found one she didn't consider childish-maybe it was even an older man. That, plus the fact that he was associated with the strange people at the commune, might inhibit her from talking about him.
Marcia toyed with the theory while she prepared toast and coffee for herself. Melody was in love with an over-aged hippie. Taking Lucifer for protection, she had hitched a ride to Blackwood's Corners. There she had stumbled upon Ron's body. Perhaps she had even come upon the murderers in the act.
It all boiled down to the same old wearisome phrase: she would have to have a talk with Melody. She'd certainly made a hash of her attempt last night. But she would have to try again, choosing her time carefully, catching her daughter in just the right mood. If her theory was correct, if Melody was harboring such a scary secret, it might be easy to get her to talk.
She could do nothing now on the basis of her guesswork. She would have to keep her fears under control while she attended to other things.
She went to the telephone and dialed the city room of the Banner. It was Saturday morning, but Jack Higgins often came into the office on Saturdays. He would almost certainly be there today, considering what had happened last night.
The phone rang seven times before he answered, "Banner, Higgins."
"Jack, this is Marcia. What do you want me to do about Ron Green?"
"Send him flowers," Higgins snapped. "Blake's on the story."
She flung the dead phone back into its cradle. She was on the verge of dialing again when she changed her mind. She grabbed her bag and stormed out of the house.
Marcia had long ago come to the conclusion that Jack Higgins used bad manners and a short temper to mask a morbid fear of people. Knowing this didn't make his churlish behavior any easier for her to accept, but it did give her the satisfaction of being able to pity him even while he was treating her unfairly, even cruelly.
"I told you over the phone, Blake's on the story," he muttered, not even looking up as he slashed into a piece of copy with his blue pencil. In his red blazer and Windsor-knotted tie, with his prematurely silver hair in a mod coif, he looked more like a head-waiter than a newspaper editor.
"Jack, I've been on this story since it started. I found the first body, remember? And I was working with Ron yesterday when he interviewed the hippies, the same people who probably killed him."
"Blake's been up since three o'clock on this thing," Higgins said, still reading and making corrections. "It happened on his beat. What do I tell him, Her Ladyship has finally consented to drag her ass out of bed and take over you can forget it? Go home."
"No, I won't go home!" Marcia said, raising her voice. "It's my story, Jack. I covered the first murder, and I was working on the commune story. They all tie in with Ron's death."
Higgins flung the copy into his Out basket, then leaned back to glare at her.
"All right then, it was your story, but I've taken it away from you. You aren't right for it. If you don't like that, quit."
Marcia felt herself beginning to shake, but it was anger, not fear, that produced the reaction. She was so angry that she no longer even pitied Higgins for his insecurity. "What, because I'm a woman?" she shouted. "Do you really have the nerve, in this day and age, to sit there-"
"Don't give me that 'woman' crap!" Higgins barked. "I wouldn't let Richard Harding Davis cover the story if his own daughter was picked up by the police at the scene of the crime. The cops aren't going to talk to you. We'll be lucky if they open up with anybody on the paper while you're working for us. So get mad and quit, that'll save us all a lot of trouble."
"Goddamn it, Jack, she isn't a suspect! That was a coincidence. What I and my kids do on our own time has nothing to do with my work," she said, but she couldn't inject much force into her words. The surprising fact that Higgins knew about Melody's escapade had shaken her.
"Maybe that's true, in some ideal world where everybody understands all and forgives all, but you're stuck here in the shit with the rest of us. These hick cops aren't going to see you as a newspaperwoman. They're going to see you as the lady whose crazy daughter runs around naked in the woods at night. Suspect or not, they think she's some kind of loony. Since you're her mother, they think you're some kind of loony, too."
Marcia saw his point clearly. She knew the local police as well as he did. They would undoubtedly view her with distrust after last night's incident. But to admit the truth of this would be to admit that something was really wrong with her daughter, and that her own professional status had been compromised.
"The police aren't the only source for this story, Jack," she said, much more subdued. "I was able to develop a certain rapport yesterday with the people-"
"Yeah, Ron told me how crazy you are about hippies," Higgins sneered, "and that we don't need, either. You ain't working for the underground press, kiddo. This is a respectable, middle-class newspaper, and our readers couldn't care less about the viewpoint of a bunch of dope-fiends and sex-freaks. So forget about murders and communes and go interview this guy. He sounds nutty enough to interest you, but there's an even chance he won't chop you up in little pieces and spread you around the countryside, which is what the hippies would probably do to you, rapport and all."
She didn't know which irked her more, his sneering dismissal of her reasonable suggestion or his callous attitude toward Ron's fate. But she took the piece of paper he handed her and looked at the name without really reading it.
"What's this all about?"
"Some priest who says the end of the world is coming because they don't say the mass in Latin anymore," he said in a milder tone. "Or at least he says he's a priest, or used to be. You better get that point straight before you do the story. Anyway, he's opened up a store-front church, or mission, where he's preaching the one, true religion as revealed to him personally. Keep it kind of objective, you know, don't make fun of him too obviously."
She looked again at the paper in her hand. Father Jerome Collins, with an address on Richmond Street, a blighted section of town not far from the office. Perhaps this was the Higginsian version of an apology, changing the subject before she could deal directly with his invitation to quit. She supposed she could take it that way. If she returned to the other matter, she was sure he would repeat his ultimatum.
"All right," she said, "but-"
"The other story is Blake's. Period."
She decided to keep her mouth shut and do as she was told. Later, she would volunteer her services as a photographer for Blake and get a foot in the door that way. Blake was a dull, unimaginative man who had been covering police news for the Banner for the past twenty years. He was out of his depth with a story like this, and Higgins would eventually have to admit it.
"Do you want pictures of this Father Collins?"
"Yeah, what the hell. Whether we use them or not, that depends on what kind of story you get."
She left the office and got her camera from the trunk of her car. It was supposed to be her day off, and there was nothing urgent about the assignment, but she had to do something-something besides go home and face the unpleasant prospect of a confrontation with her husband. She was surprised to discover that she didn't particularly care where he'd been last night. She was glad that he hadn't been around to witness Melody's arrival in the police car. With luck, he might not find out about it.
Some people who might have been friends of Hopkins-no, his name was Hamilton, of course; that was an odd slip-were strolling by as she walked out into the street. They stared at her. She ignored them. They grinned, as if they knew far more about her than they possibly could.