drink I put fingertips under her chin, tilted it up, kissed her gently on the lips, and then said, 'Whatever it is, I would like to know. Okay? Like management trying to slip up on your blind side?'
She grinned. 'That I can handle, McGee. What makes you think there's a blind side?'
'If there isn't, what are you doing here?'
She frowned into her drink. 'I think P11 tell both of you. I think I could use more than one opinion.'
We went back in and she sat next to Meyer on the yellow davenport. 'What it is,' she said, 'I think something other than what is supposed to be going on out there, is going on out there.'
'Bonnie Brae is a front for something else?' I asked.
'Not really that,' she said. 'I mean, it's pretty big and elaborate. Mr. Ladwigg and Mr. Broffski borrowed a fantastic amount of money to buy the land. It's twelve hundred and eighty acres. There was a big stone-and- cypress house on it, and outbuildings. It was called the Cattrell place and was empty for years while the estate was being settled. They put a half-million dollars into renovating the house and some of the other buildings. And they put in roads and a sewage-treatment plant, water supply, and all that. And they fixed the old airstrip near the barns. They digging lakes, and building and selling houses, and selling building sites. We can accommodate twenty- four raffles in the main house at one time, feed them from the diet kitchen, and keep them busy. They pay twelve hundred a week, and there's a waiting list. And there's a waiting list for membership in the tennis club too. I mean, without knowing all the financial details, I'd say it's going very well. Mr. Ladwigg and Mr. Broffski have both built houses for themselves in the best part of the development, where the lots have to be two acres each, and Mr. Morse Slater, the manager, has a new house near theirs. There are twenty-five or thirty new houses occupied, and room for an awful lot more, of course. There are some staff quarters in the baclc of the main house, because it is sort of like a small hotel, or hospital. There is a nice flavor. I mean it's a good place to work. We have some laughs. People get along.' Her voice trailed off and she sipped and frowned.
'And now something doesn't seem right?' Meyer asked, prompting her.
She smiled and leaned back. 'Maybe I was lied to for too many years. Husband Billy was a world- champion-class liar. Brother John wasn't exactly clumsy at it.'
'What's my rating?' I asked.
The Green Ripper
'All the returns aren't in. What I'm saying, maybe I get suspicious when there's no real need.'
'We've got the whole evening, my dear,' Meyer said. 'If we're all patient, you'll probably get to the point sooner or later.'
'I guess I'm dragging my feet because it sounds so weird I hate to mention it. Last week I had a batch of fatties down by the barns in the middle of the morning, making them do exercises, when a pretty little blue airplane landed on our strip. When I went back to the office, I asked Mr. Slater who had come in and he said that it was somebody to see Mr. Ladwigg, he didn't know what about. I asked because sometimes a buyer flies in, and when they buy something, it means more paperwork for me. Now we come to the coincidence part. I woke up real early the next morning. It was brisk and clear. The model house I'm living in is about a half mile from the office. A couple of days before, I lost a pin I like very much while leading a group jogging. So I put on a heavy sweater and went out to retrace our route, thinking maybe I could find it in the grass. I was over by the airstrip, searching near a patch of palmetto, when I heard a motor. For a moment I thought it was a plane, and then I stepped out almost into the path of Herman Lad- wigg's Toyota, going cross-country. It's like a Land Rover, tall and open, with winches and things, and huge tires. It's white with red trim. Mr. Ladwigg was driving, and it startled him as much as it did me, I guess. I dodged back, and I was on the passenger side of it as it went by. So the face of the man riding with Mr. Ladwigg was not more than a yard away from me. I saw him very very clearly. And I knew in that split second I had seen him be- fore. He looked right at me, and I saw the flicker of his recognition. He knew me too. But I couldn't remember where or when. All I could remember was that it had been an unpleasant experience.'
'You can describe him?'
'Oh, sure. Big, but not fat. Big-boned. About forty, maybe a lithe less. Kind of a round face, with all his features sort of small and centered in the middle of all that face. Wispy blond hair cut quite short. No visible eyebrows or eyelashes. Lots and lots of pits and craters in his cheeks, from terrible acne when he was young. Little mouth, lithe pale eyes, girlish lithe nose. He was wearing a khaki jacket over a white turtleneck. He was holding onto the side of the passenger door because of the rough ride. His hands are very big and... well, brutallooking.'
Meya said, ']t doesn't sound as if there could be two like that. But it's possible, of course. Maybe his change of expression was not recognition, but surprise at seeing somebody pop up like that.'
'No. He knew me. Because I remembered two nights ago, in the middle of the night, where led seen him. As soon as I remembered, I knew it was the same man. Five years ago Billy's sister, my kid
The Green Ripper sister-in-law, Mitsy, disappeared. The family was frantic. She'd been in school up near San Francisco. She had just taken her things and gone away. Billy got time off from work and went up to San Francisco and nosed around and found out she had been hanging around with some kids who were connected with a religion called... damn! It will come to me.'
'The Unification Church, the Moonies?' Meyer asked. She shook her head. 'Hare Krishna? Scientology? Children of God? The Jesus People? The Church of Armageddon?'
She stopped him and said, '`That's close, that last one. It's like Apocalypse. Wait a minute. Apocry- pha! The Church of the Apocryphal'
'Very interesting!' Meyer said
'~Vhat's an apocrypha?' I asked.
'It's plural,': he said. 'Fourteen books or chapters which are sort of an appendix to the Old Testament and are not acceptable to the establishment. Seldom printed. They are bloody, merciless, and, some say, divinely inspired. Authorship unsubstantiated. I suspect that a religion based upon them would be... severe indeed.'
'A postcard finally came from Mitsy,' Gretel said. 'It was mailed from Ukiah, California. It was to her mother, father, her two brothers, and me. All it said was, 'Remember that I will always love you, but I will never see you again in this life.' You can imagine how that hit us ale Mitsy was such a... such a merrier little gal. Pretty and bouncy and popular. Your standard cheerleader type. No steady boyfriend. She wanted to be a social worker and work with handicapped children.
'Anyway, her father hired an investigator, and he located an encampment of the Church of the Apocrypha about twenty miles southwest of Ukiah, off in the woods. He had tried to get in to find out if Mitsy was there, but he couldn't learn a thing. Just about that time, her father my father-in- law had a stroke, a severe one. His right side was totally paralyzed, and he couldn't speak or understand what anyone said. He died of pneumonia about four months later. Billy's younger brother was working in Iran. So when we could, Billy and I drove up to the encampment, using the map the investigator had marked.
'4There were little winding roads, and finally we came to the private, no-trespassing signs he had told us about, and the wire gate across the road. A young boy came out of a lean-to. He wore a direr white smock and he was trying to grow a beard. We said we wanted to visit Miriam Howard, Mitsy Howard. He nodded and walked away up the curving road beyond the wire gate, and out of sight. We waited and waited and waited. Billy got very angry. I had to keep talking him out of going over the gate. It was over an hour before that man came down the road. That same marz. He was five years younger, of course. He wore a white tunic with a
The Green Ripper
Chinese collar, and white trousers tucked into shiny black boots. He came right to the high fence and looked us over very carefully. He completely ignored the angry questions Billy was shouting at him.
'Finally he spoke to us. There was so little movement of his lips it was as if he were a ventriloquist. He had a soft little voice. I am Brother Titus. I am an elder of the Church of the Apocryphal You are inquiring about someone we now know as Sister Aquila. She has asked me to tell you that she is quite happy here and she does not wish to see you or anyone from her previous life.'
'Billy demanded to see her. He swore at Titus. It had no effect. He said it wasn't possible, not now, not ever. She was happy in her new life, he said. Billy said he was going to see his sister Mitsy, and if it took a court order for a conservatorship, he would get it. He'd gotten that information from the investigator.
'Brother Titus thought for a little while and told us to wait. In twenty minutes a little crowd of them, about nine or ten, came down to the gate. We didn't see Brother Titus again. The people ranged in age from, I would guess, sixteen to twenty-five. Three or four girls, and the rest boys. At first we thought they had come without Mitsy, and then we recognized her. It was a shock. She had become such a worn, skinny, subdued little thing. She wore a dirty white smock and she had some kind of seri ous rash on her face and throat and arms. They looked badly chapped. The smock was too big for her. All of them had exactly the same look. It's hard to describe. Sort of bland and smug and glassy.
'They stood very close to her as she stood at the gate. She said, 'Hello, Billy. Hello, GreteL I don't know how you found me, but I'm sorry you did.'
