The Hellfire Club

He grinned. 'You probably know where the bedroom is.'15

Through the open door Nora saw a rising arc of brown spots sprayed across an ivory wall. Beneath the spray, the visible corner of the bed looked as if rust colored paint had been poured over the sheets.

Fenn spoke behind her. 'You don't have to go in there if you don't feel like it. But you might want to reconsider the idea that she isn't dead.'

'Maybe it isn't her blood,' she said, and fumed at Davey for having made her say such a thing.

'Oh?'

She made herself walk into the room. Dried blood lay across the bed, and stripes and splashes of blood blotted the carpet beside it. The sheets and pillows had been slashed. Stiff flaps of cotton folded back over clumps of rigid foam that looked like the entrails of small animals. It all looked sordid and sad. The sadness was not a surprise, but the sense of wretchedness gripped her heart.

Slumped in the far corner beside Officer LeDonne, Davey glanced up at her and shook his head.

She turned to Fenn, who raised his eyebrows. 'Did you find a camera? Did Natalie have a camera?'

'We didn't find one, but Slim and Slam say all the pictures in there were taken with the same camera. One of those little Ph.D. jobs.'

'Ph.D.?'

'Push here, dummy. An auto-focus. Like a little Olympus or a Canon. With a zoom feature.'

In other words, Natalie's camera was exactly like theirs, not to mention most of the other cameras in Westerholm. The bedroom felt airless- hot, despairing. A lunatic who liked to dress women up like sex toys had finally taken his fantasies to their logical conclusion and used Natalie Weil's bed as an operating table. Nora wondered if he had been seeing all five women at the same time.

She was glad she wasn't a cop. There was too much to think about, and half of what you had to think about made no sense. But the worst part of standing here was standing here. .

She had to say something. What came out of her mouth was 'Were there pictures in the other houses? Like the ones in the kitchen?' She barely heard the detective's negative answer; she had barely heard her own question. Somehow she had walked across several yards of unspattered tan carpet to stand in front of four long bookshelves. Two feet away, Davey gave her the look of an animal in a cage. Nora fled into the safety of book titles, but she found no safety. In the living room Fenn had said something about Natalie's affection for horror novels and here was the proof in alphabetical order by authors name. These books had titles like The Rats and Vampire Junction and The Silver Skull. Here were They Thirst, Hell House, The Books of Blood, and The Brains of Rats. Natalie had owned more Dean Koontz novels than Nora had known existed, she had every Stephen King novel from Carrie to Dolores Clayborne, all of Anne Rice and Clive Barker and Whitley Stieber.

Nora moved along the shelves as if in a trance. Here was a Natalie Weil who entertained herself with stories of vampires, dismemberment; monsters with tentacles and bad breath, cannibalism, psychotic killers, degrading random death. This person waited fear, but creepy, safe fear. She had been like a roller coaster aficionado for whom tame county fair roller coasters were as good as the ones that spun you upside down and dropped you so fast your eyes turned red. It was all just a ride.

At the end of the bottom shelf her eyes met the names Marietta Teatime and Clyde Morning above a sullen- looking crow, the familiar logo of Blackbird Books, Chancel House's small, soon-to-be-discontinued horror line. Alden had expected steady, automatic profits from these writers, but they had failed him. Gaudy with severed heads and mutilated dolls, the covers of their books came back from the distributors within days of publication. Davey had argued to keep the line, which managed to make a small amount of money every season, in part because Teatime and Morning never got more than two thousand dollars per book. (Davey sometimes frivolously suggested that they were actually the same person.) Alden dismissed Davey's argument that he had condemned the books by refusing to promote or publicize them; the beauty of horror was that it sold itself. Davey said that his father treated the books like orphaned children, and Alden said damn right, like orphaned children, they had to pull their own weight.

'Mrs Chancel?' said Holly Fenn.

Another title shouted at her from the bottom shelf. Night Journey protruded at a hasty, awkward angle from between two Stephen King encyclopedias as if Natalie had crammed it in anywhere before running to the door.

'Mr Chancel?'

She looked at the D's, but Natalie had owned no other Driver novels.

'Sorry I wasn't more helpful.' Davey's voice sounded as if it came from the bottom of a well.

'No harm in trying.' Fenn stepped out of the doorway.

Davey shot Nora another anguished glance and moved toward the door. Nora followed, and LeDonne came along behind. The four of them moved in single file toward the living room, where Slim and Slam faced forward, automatically shedding any signs of individuality. Davey said, 'Excuse me, I have to go back.'

Fenn flattened his bulk against the wall to let Davey get by. Nora and the two policemen watched him go down the corridor and swerve into the bedroom. LeDonne quizzed Fenn with a look, and Fenn shook his head. After a couple of seconds, Davey emerged, more distressed than ever.

'Forget something?' Fenn asked.

'I thought I saw something - couldn't even tell you what it was. But-' He spread his hands, shaking his head.

'That happens,' Fenn paid. 'If it comes back to you, don't be shy about giving me a call.'

When they turned to go down the stairs, the two FBI men split apart and looked away..16

'What did you think you saw?'

'Nothing.'

'You went back in the bedroom. You had something on your mind. What was it?'

'Nothing.' He looked sideways at her, so shaken he was white. 'It was a dumb idea. I should have just gone home.'

'Why didn't you?'

'I wanted to see that house.' He paused. 'And I wanted you to see it.'

'Why?'

He waited a second Before answering. 'I thought if you looked at it, you might stop having nightmares.'

'Pretty strange idea,' Nora said.

'Okay, it was a rotten idea.' His voice grew louder. 'It was the worst idea in the history of the world. In fact, every single idea I've ever had in my life was really terrible. Are we in agreement now? Good. Then we can forget about it.'

'Davey.'

'What?

'Do you remember when I asked if you were upset?'

'No.' He hesitated, then sighed again, and his glance suggested the arrival of a confession. 'Why would I be upset?'

Nora gathered herself. 'You must have been surprised by what your father said about Hugo Driver.'

He looked at her as if trying to recall Alden's words. 'He said he was a great writer.'

'You said he was a great writer.' After a second of silence she said, 'What I mean is his attitude.'

'Yeah,' Davey said. 'You're right. That was a surprise. He sort of jolted me, I guess.'

For Nora the next few seconds filled with a hopeful tension.

'I've got something on my mind, I guess I was worked up… I don't want to fight, Nora.'

'So you're not mad at me anymore.'

'I wasn't mad at you. I just feel confused.'

Two hours with his parents had turned him back into Pippin Little. If he needed a Green Knight, she volunteered on the spot. She had asked for a job, and here one was sitting next to her. She could help Davey become his successful adult self. She would help him get the position he deserved at Chancel House. Her other plans, befriending Daisy and moving to New York, were merely elements of this larger, truer occupation.