Divine Evil

He probably didn't even know what it was. How would he know?”
    He set the bag aside and continued to search. Inside the hollowed-out stand for the stuffed squirrel he found two vials of cocaine.
    “What?” Jane put her fingers to her mouth. “What is it?”
    Cam opened a vial, touched a wet fingertip to the powder and the powder to his tongue. “Cocaine.”
    “Oh, no. My God, no. It's a mistake.”
    “Sit down. Come on, Mom, sit down.” He led her to the chair. Part of him wanted to hold her and tell her to forget all about it, to put it right out of her mind. Another part wanted to shake her and gloat.
I told you what he was. I told you.
He set those parts aside, the two halves of her son.
    “I want you to think, tell me who used to come here. Who would come upstairs here with Biff?”
    “Nobody.” She looked at the vials Cam still held in his hand, then away with a kind of horror. She didn't understand drugs, unless they were the kind Doc Crampton gave you for the stomach flu or those twinges of arthritis. But she feared them. “He didn't let anybody come in here. If he had a poker game, he would lock the door first. He said he didn't want those guys poking around in his stuff. He'd just sit up here by himself.”
    “Okay.” He took a chance and squeezed her hand, but got no response. “I have to keep looking.”
    “What difference does it make?” she murmured. Her husband had been unfaithful to her. Not just with a woman. She could understand another woman, especially one who took money. But he had been unfaithful with those little tubes of powder. And
that
she would never understand.
    He found a few more stashes. All small quantities, obviously for personal use. If he'd been selling, Cam thought, he hadn't been doing it from here.
    “Did you ever see Biff with a large amount of cash?”
    “We never had money,” she said wearily. “You know that.”
    “How did he come up with the down payment for the Caddy?”
    “I don't know. I never asked.”
    He went through the paperbacks on the shelves and found a stack that dealt with Satanism, cult worship, andritual sacrifices. Two of them were straight porn, with obviously staged photographs of naked women being tortured by men in masks. Others were serious works on devil worship.
    Setting the worst of them aside, he brought the rest to the chair. “What do you know about these?”
    Jane stared, with a glassy kind of horror, at the titles. Her Catholic background reared up and grabbed her by the throat. “What are they? What are they doing here? How did they get in my house?”
    “They were Biff's. I need you to tell me if you knew anything about them.”
    “No.” She folded her hands on her breasts, afraid to touch them. This was much worse even than the drugs. “I've never seen them. I don't want to see them. Put them away.”
    “Do you see this?” He pointed to the pentagram on the cover of a book. “Did Biff have one of them?”
    “What is it?”
    “Did he have one?”
    “I don't know.” But she remembered the things she had found in the shed. “What does it mean?”
    “It means that Biff was involved in something. It could be why he was killed.”
    She pushed out her hands to ward him off but couldn't find the strength to rise. “He was a good man,” she insisted. “He wasn't a churchgoer, but he wouldn't blaspheme this way. You're trying to make him into some kind of monster.”
    “Goddamn it, open your eyes.” He all but shoved the books into her face. “This was his idea of a good time. And this.” He grabbed one of the other books and tore it open to a full-color scene. “And I don't think he just read about it. Do you understand? I don't think he just sat uphere snorting coke and looking at dirty pictures. I think he went out and practiced this stuff.”
    “Stop it! Stop it! I won't listen.”
    Now he did grab her, he did shake. But he didn't have it in him to gloat. “Why are you protecting him? He never made you happy, not one single day of your life. He was a sick, sadistic sonofabitch. He ruined this farm, he ruined you, and he did his damnedest to ruin me.”
    “He took care of me.”
    “He made you an old woman. A scared, beaten old woman. If I hated him for nothing else, I'd hate him for what he's done to you.”
    She stopped struggling to stare. Though her mouth worked, there were no words.
    “You used to laugh.” In his desperate and angry voice, there was a trace of a plea. “Damn it, you used to