Divine Evil

held out a hand. “Come on, now. You want me to drive you home?”
    “I don't want to go home. I want to die.”
    Cam glanced up and felt relieved to see Clare crossing the street. “You're too young and pretty to want to die.” He patted her shoulder.
    “What's going on?” Clare looked from one face to the other. “I saw you drive by,” she said to Cam.
    “Sally's pretty upset. Why don't you take her over to the house and …” He made an inadequate gesture.
    “Sure. Come on, Sally.” Clare put an arm around the girl's waist to help her up. “Let's go to my house and trash men.” She shot Cam a last look and led the weeping girl across the street.
    “Nice going, champ,” Cam said to Ernie.
    To the surprise of them both, Ernie blushed. “Look, I didn't do anything. She was bugging me. I never asked her to come around. It's not against the law to tell some stupid girl to take a hike.”
    “You're right there. Are your parents home?”
    “Why?”
    “Because I want to ask you some questions. You might want them around when I do.”
    “I don't need them.”
    “Up to you,” Cam said easily. “You want to talk in the house or out here?”
    He jerked his head, a single defiant gesture that sent his hair flying back. “Here.”
    “Interesting piece of jewelry.” Cam reached out to touch the pentagram, and Ernie closed a hand over it. So?
    “It's a Satanic symbol.”
    Ernie's lips curved in a leer. “No kidding?”
    “You into devil worship, Ernie?”
    Ernie kept smiling, kept stroking the pentagram. “Isn't a person's religion covered in the Bill of Rights?”
    “Yeah. Yeah, it sure is. Unless the people practicing that religion break the law.”
    “It's not against the law to wear a pentagram.”
    At a nearby house, someone started a lawn mower. Themotor coughed and died twice, then caught in a steady purr.
    “Where were you last Monday night between one and four A.M.?”
    His stomach jumped, but he kept his eyes steady. “Asleep in bed, like everybody else in this frigging town.”
    “Ever try your hand at animal sacrifice, Ernie?”
    “Can't say I have.”
    “Can you tell me where you were last Tuesday night, about ten-thirty, eleven?”
    “Yeah.” With a grin, Ernie glanced up at the top window of the house. “I was right up there, balling Sally Simmons. I guess we finished about eleven. She left a few minutes later, and my parents came home from the pizza parlor about eleven-thirty That should cover it.”
    “You're a lousy little sonofabitch.”
    “That's not against the law either.”
    “No, it isn't.” Cam took a step closer so that they were eye to eye. There was a faint film of sweat on the boy's brow. Cam was gratified to see it. “You're my favorite kind of bug to squash, and I'm not that long out of practice. Make a wrong move, you little bastard, and I'll be on you like a leech, sucking you dry.”
    “Is that a threat?”
    “That's a fact. If your alibi doesn't check out by even five minutes, we're taking this down to the office. You'd better dig one up for Monday night, too.” He closed his hand over Ernie's pentagram. “Stay away from Clare, stay far away. If you don't, there isn't a god in heaven or hell who'll protect you from me.”
    With his hands clenched into fists, Ernie watched Cam walk away. He'd have more than that, he thought. After tonight, he'd have whatever he needed.
    * * *
    “I thought he loved me.” Sally hiccuped into the soft drink Clare had poured her. “But he didn't care at all. He never cared, he only … He said such awful things to me.”
    “Sometimes people say awful things when they're fighting that they're sorry about later.”
    “It wasn't like that.” Sally took another tissue and blew her nose. “We weren't fighting. He wasn't even mad, just cold. He looked at me like—like I'd crawled out of a hole. He said—he said I was a slut.”
    “Oh, baby.” She closed a hand over Sally's and thought about what she would say to Ernie at the first opportunity. “I know that hurts.”
    “I guess I am, too, because I did it with him.” She covered her face with the tattered tissue. “He was the first one. The very first one.”
    “I'm sorry.” Near tears herself, Clare put her arms around the girl. “I wish I could tell you that what he said doesn't matter, but it does to you. And it will for a while yet. But being intimate with Ernie doesn't make you a slut. It only makes you human.”
    “I loved him.”
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