Divine Evil

care about things, about yourself. For the past twenty years, all you've done is work and worry. And when you went to bed at night, too tired to care anymore, he was out lighting black candles and sacrificing goats. Or worse. God help us. Or worse.”
    “I don't know what to do.” She began to croon, rocking back and forth. “I don't know what to do.” Jane believed in Satan, deeply, superstitiously She saw him as a serpent, slithering in the Garden, as a dark angel, taunting and tempting Christ, as the king of a fiery pit. In her heart was a cold terror that he had been invited into her home.
    Cam took her hands again. This time she held on. “You're going to tell me everything you know.”
    “But I don't know.” Tears leaked out of her eyes. “Cam, I don't. Did he … did he sell his soul?”
    “If he had one to begin with.”
    “How could I have lived with him for twenty years and not known?”
    “Now that you do, you might start to remember things. Things you didn't pay any attention to before. Things you didn't want to pay attention to.”
    With her lips tightly pressed together, she looked down at the book that had fallen open on the floor. She saw the naked woman, blood smeared on her breasts. A candle between her legs.
    She'd been trained well, trained to be loyal, to overlook, to make excuses. But there had been an earlier training, one that surfaced now to make her fear the Wrath of God and the punishment.
    “The shed,” she said weakly. “In the shed.”
    “What's in the shed?”
    “I found things. I burned them.”
    “Oh, Christ.”
    “I had to.” Her voice skipped and shivered. “I had to burn them. I couldn't let anyone see. …”
    “See what?”
    “Magazines. Ones like this.” She gestured toward the floor, then looked away.
    “Is that all you burned?”
    She shook her head.
    “What else?”
    The shame, the shame all but sickened her. “Candles. Like the ones in the picture. Black candles. And a robe with a hood. It smelled”—she tasted bile in her throat— “like blood. And there were pictures. Snapshots.”
    Cam's hand tightened on hers. “Of what?”
    “Girls. Two young girls. One dark-haired, one blond. They were … they were naked and tied up, on the cot in the shed. I tore them up and burned them.”
    A granite fist closed in his stomach. “You burned the pictures?”
    “I had to.” Hysteria bubbled in her voice. “I had to. Ididn't know what else to do. It was so ugly. I couldn't let people know he'd brought women here, paid them to pose for those dirty pictures.”
    “If you saw the girls again, or other pictures of them, would you remember?”
    “I won't forget. I'll never forget how they looked.”
    “Okay. I'm going to call Bud. Then you're going to take me outside and show me.”
    “People will know.”
    “Yes.” He let go of her hands so that she could cover her face with them and weep. “People will know.”
    “What have we got, Sheriff?”
    “I don't know yet.” Cam looked back toward the house where his mother was standing on the porch wringing her hands. “You brought everything?”
    “Just like you said.”
    “Let's put on the gloves and get to work.”
    They snapped on thin surgical gloves and went into the shed.
    She'd even burned the damn mattress, Cam thought, frowning at the iron frame of the cot. There was little left other than a few tools, lots of dust, and a few broken beer bottles. Hunkering down, Cam searched the underside of a workbench.
    “Do we know what we're looking for?” Bud asked.
    “I'll let you know if we find it.”
    “Hell of a way to spend a Sunday.” But Bud whistled between his teeth. “I got me a date with Alice tonight.”
    “Oh, yeah?”
    “Taking her to a Mexican restaurant and the movies.”
    “Shooting the works, huh?”
    “Well…” Bud colored a little as he ran his fingerslightly over and under the metal shelves. “She's worth it. Maybe you ought to take Clare up to the Mexican place sometime. It's got a real nice atmosphere. You know, pots and paper flowers and stuff. Women go for that.”
    “I'll keep it in mind.”
    “Do you figure a margarita's a woman's drink?”
    “Not according to Jimmy Buffet.”
    “Who?”
    “Never mind. Try a Dos Equis and keep it to one.”
    “Dos Equis,” Bud repeated to himself, committing it to memory. “I wonder what—shit.”
    “What?”
    “Something sharp here, nearly went through the glove. One of those earrings with a pointy back.” Bud