Darkness (20 page)

Mary nodded miserably. “But she’s not my little girl, is she?” she asked brokenly. “She’s a stranger who lives with me, and I hardly know her. And it’s always been that way. Always.”

Two hours later, as he and Ted were inspecting one of the houses in Villejeune Links Estates, Carl paused halfway up the temporary stairs to the second floor and found himself panting. Ted, already on the landing above, looked down at him. “Dad? You okay?”

Carl took a deep breath, nodded, and continued on upward. But his legs felt heavy, and by the time he reached the top, he needed to sit down. “Getting old,” he said. “Just give me a minute, and I’ll be okay.”

Ted eyed his father carefully. Carl’s face had gone pale, and wrinkles Ted had never noticed before were etched around his eyes. “You don’t look so good,” he said. “I think maybe we’d better get you over to the clinic. Does your chest hurt?”

Carl glanced up at his son and chuckled hollowly. “Thinkin’ maybe your old man’s going to have a heart attack?” he asked. “Well, don’t get your hopes up. I don’t have any plans for dying.”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Ted said quickly. “But at your age—”

“At my age, I’m in better shape than most men twenty years younger’n me!” He struggled to his feet, but his legs still felt rubbery. “Huh,” he muttered. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go see Warren Phillips.”

Allowing Ted to steady him, Carl made his way carefully down the stairs. As he came to the bottom and started toward the front door, his vision began to blur slightly, and suddenly he knew what was wrong. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath.

Ted, still holding the older man’s arm, tightened his grip. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothin’,” Carl replied. “I just need to go see Phillips today, that’s all. I’m feeling puny ‘cause I’m due for a shot.”

Ted said nothing until they were in the truck and heading toward Villejeune. He glanced over at his father. Though Carl was sitting straight up in the seat next to him, he looked even worse than he had a few minutes before. “What’s wrong, Dad?” he asked.

Carl’s head swung around, and his eyes, suddenly looking dull, fixed vacantly on Ted. “Huh?” he grunted.

“You said you need a shot, Dad,” Ted went on, trying not to betray the concern he was feeling. “What shot? What’s wrong with you?”

Carl made a dismissive gesture. “It’s nothing. Just a vitamin shot Warren Phillips gives me.”

Ted frowned. Whatever was wrong with his father, it didn’t look like a vitamin shot would take care of it. Indeed, Carl seemed to be getting worse by the minute. His breath was rasping now, and he was beginning to cough every few seconds. Ted pressed his foot on the accelerator, and the truck shot forward. When they came to the clinic, Ted ignored the parking lot, pulling up to
the emergency entrance and hurrying around to help his father out of the truck.

“I can make it,” Carl complained, brushing Ted’s hand away as he struggled to get out of the truck. He felt his limbs stiffening, as if his arthritis were flaring up again. Clenching his jaw against the pain, he walked into the clinic, Ted beside him.

Jolene Mayhew looked up from her computer terminal, a welcoming smile on her face, which faded into a look of concern when she saw Carl Anderson. “Carl! What’s— My goodness, let me call Dr. Phillips.” She picked up the phone, punched two digits into it, then spoke rapidly. A moment later she hurried out of her cubicle and took Carl’s left arm. “Let’s get you right in.”

Carl irritably shook the girl off. “Leave me alone, will you?” he rasped, his voice querulous. “I’m not dying, young lady.”

Jolene fixed him with an exaggerated glare. “Well, you couldn’t tell by me,” she said. “You look gray as a ghost. If I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you were having a heart attack.”

“Well, I’m not!” Carl snapped, moving toward the corridor that led to Warren Phillips’s office. “Ted, you stay here. I don’t need you fussing while I’m talking to Warren.”

Ted, ignoring his father’s words, started after the older man, but Jolene stopped him. “I wouldn’t, if I were you,” she said. “I’ve seen your pa like this before, and he’ll bite your head right off if you cross him. Just sit down. He won’t be but a few minutes.”

Ted looked at the nurse curiously. “This has happened before?” he asked.

Jolene shrugged. “Not often. Your pa’s real good about making his appointments.”

Ted felt a twinge of foreboding. “How often does he come?”

Jolene shrugged. “Every other week, regular as clockwork. And don’t you worry. Dr. P will fix him right up.”

Ted sank into a chair, his mind spinning. What was going on? His father had never been sick—in fact, as far as Ted knew, he was in perfect health. But if he was taking shots every other week …

He sat numbly, waiting for his father—or the doctor—to reappear.

Fifteen minutes later Carl walked back into the waiting room, smiling now, his color back to normal. “See?” he teased Jolene Mayhew. “Fit as a fiddle. Even had Warren give me an EKG, just to prove to you that I was right. Probably cost me fifty bucks, but what the hell?” He turned to Ted. “Come on, boy. Let’s not waste the day sittin’ around here waiting for people to die. There’s work to be done.”

Ted stared at his father, stunned. It was as if the incident had never happened. Carl’s breathing was back to normal, there was a spring to his step again, and he was once more the man he’d been early this morning.

As they left the hospital and returned to the truck, Ted had the uncomfortable certainty that he knew why. “Dad,” he said as he started back to the construction site, “about those shots …”

Carl chuckled. “I know what you’re going to say,” he interrupted. “You think Warren Phillips is a Dr. Feelgood, and your old man’s hooked on drugs, right? Well, forget it—he’s not!”

Ted pursed his lips. “Whose word do you have on that?” he asked. “Seems to me that if Phillips was shooting you up with something, he’d be the last person to tell you.”

Carl laughed out loud. “Well, I guess we know whose son you are, anyway! First time he gave me one of those shots, way back when my arthritis first hit, I got suspicious. Never thought I’d say this, but I felt too damned good. So the next time, soon as I was done with him, I hied myself up to Orlando and got a blood test. Didn’t name any names—just told them I’d been given a shot and wanted to know what was in it.” He chuckled softly. “Figured it was amphetamines, at least, and probably a
whole lot else. Well, score one for Warren Phillips. All they found was cortisone, along with some traces of hormones.”

Ted stared at him incredulously. “Hormones?” he repeated. “What kind?”

“How the hell would I know?” Carl boomed. “I don’t know shit from hormones, and don’t want to. Probably some kind of sheep’s balls or something, like that guy in Switzerland used to use on the movie stars. All I know is, it keeps me feeling good and looking good, and the doctor in Orlando said there was nothing wrong with it. And there damned well shouldn’t be, considering the price Phillips gets for it.” He grinned at Ted. “Who knows? If I can afford it, maybe I can live forever.”

Ted said nothing more, but his father’s words didn’t sound right. If the shots were nothing more than hormones, how could they have made his father rebound so quickly? And why did they cost so much? From what his father had said, the shots didn’t sound like they should be that expensive.

But drugs were.

And only drugs, as far as he knew, could affect anyone the way Dr. Phillips’s shot had affected his father.

“How the hell do you know where you are?” Tim Kitteridge asked Judd Duval.

He was sitting in the prow of Judd’s boat. For the last hour he had been certain they were going in circles. Everywhere, the tangle of moss-laden cypress and bushy mangroves looked the same. Half the time, the foliage had closed in so tightly around the boat that the mangrove roots scraped against its sides as they passed. Every now and then Tim had spotted snakes—thick, green constrictors—draped over the tree limbs under which they’d passed. He’d shuddered as he imagined one of them dropping down on him, coiling itself around
his body, slowly crushing him. In addition, alligators lay in the water, their yellow eyes staring greedily as they passed.

“Lived here all my life,” Judd replied. “When you grow up in a place, you get to know it real well. Just have t’know what t’look for.” He chuckled, an ugly, cackling sound. “ ’Course, they say us swamp rats have some extra senses, too,” he added. “There’s them’s as think we can see in the dark.”

“Well, I’d just as soon not find out,” Kitteridge observed. “Not today, anyway. You sure you know where this Lambert woman lives?”

Judd’s chuckle rumbled up from his throat again. “Less’n she’s moved, I know the place, and she ain’t likely to move till the day she dies. If she ever dies.”

Kitteridge glanced back at the deputy. “How old is she?”

“Who knows? Been here as long as I have, and she was an old lady back then.” He grinned wickedly at the chief. “Lots of folks say she’s a witch. Or maybe a voodoo princess.”

Kitteridge wondered, not for the first time, if he wasn’t just wasting the morning. Still, if he could get a line on Jonas Cox, it would be worthwhile. He’d asked Judd about Jonas first thing that morning, as soon as Judd had reported for the day’s duty.

“Kid’s half cracked,” Judd had told him. “Lives out in the swamp somewhere, and nobody hardly ever sees him. Just as well, if you ask me. Mean as shit, and twice as dumb.”

“According to Amelie Coulton, he and George both have something to do with this person she called the Dark Man.”

Judd had rolled his eyes. “Amelie’s almost as dumb as Jonas. Anyway, that sure warn’t George we found out there.”

“Amelie thinks it was,” Kitteridge replied.

A dark look flashed across Judd’s face, then disappeared. “Well, there ain’t no such person as the Dark
Man. You cain’t hardly believe nothin’ a swamp rat says. They’ll tell you anythin’ you want, then shoot you in the back.”

Kitteridge had stared pointedly at Duval. “Not much of a recommendation for you, is it?”

The comment had not been lost on the deputy, but he’d merely shrugged. “You’re the boss. You want to see Clarey Lambert, it’s my job to get you there. But the onliest way we’ll find Jonas is if we stumble onto him.”

Now, as they rounded yet another of the myriad tiny islands, a house came into view. Kitteridge had become accustomed to the shacks the swamp rats lived in, and this one seemed no different from any of the others. Propped up out of the mire on stilts, it was built of cypress, patched here and there with bits of corrugated tin. On the porch, a woman sat in a rocker, her hands busy with some mending. “That’s her,” Judd said from behind him. “Settin’ in her chair, just like always.”

As the boat drew near, Clarey Lambert’s fingers stopped working and her eyes fixed on the two men. She knew Judd Duval—had known him for years. The other one she’d never seen before, but recognized anyway.

“Mrs. Lambert?” Kitteridge asked as the boat came to a stop a few feet out from the porch and Judd cut the engine.

Clarey nodded, but said nothing.

“I’m Tim Kitteridge. I’m the police chief in—”

“I knows who you be,” Clarey said, her eyes dropping back to the work in her lap.

“I want to talk to you.”

Clarey shrugged.

“I heard a story about some people who live out here.”

Clarey’s head tilted disinterestedly.

“Amelie Coulton said I should talk to you about them.”

Clarey remained silent.

“Do you know Jonas Cox?”

Clarey nodded.

“Do you know where he is?”

Clarey shook her head.

As Kitteridge’s eyes fixed on the old woman, she returned his stare, unblinking, and he knew he was going to get no information out of her at all. He had no idea how old she might be, but her eyes were almost hidden in the deep wrinkles of her skin, and her hair, thin and wispy, barely covered her scalp. “Amelie said her husband and Jonas Cox were the Dark Man’s children.” He watched the old woman carefully as he spoke, but if she’d reacted to his words, she gave no sign at all. He hesitated, then went on, “She said they were dead, Mrs. Lambert. And she said I should ask you about them.”