The Hellfire Club

'Did she look like Natalie?' Nora asked.

Fenn ignored the question. 'The woman more or less begged to be taken to the police station. She was insistent on getting away from the old nursery. When LeDonne helped her into the patrol car, he saw a resemblance to the photographs he had seen of Mrs Weil, and asked her if she was Natalie Weil. The woman responded that she was. He brought her here, and she was taken to the station commander's office, where she almost instantly fell asleep. We called her doctor, but all we got was his service, which said that he'd call us back. We'll take her to the hospital this morning, but in the meantime she's still asleep on the station commander's couch.'

'She didn't explain anything about what happened to her? She just passed out?'

'She was asleep on her feet from the second she came into the station. I should mention this. LeDonne never met Mrs Weil. I never met Mrs Weil. Neither did the station commander. None of us knows what she looks like in person. So it seems as if the two of you can help us out again, if you don't mind.'

'I hope it is Natalie,' Nora said. 'Can we see her?'

Holly Fenn came around the side of his desk with a half smile visible beneath his mustache. 'Let's take a little walk.'

'Hey, when Dick Dart was spilling his guts to Popsie and the policemen at her house, what did he say about Natalie?' Davey followed Nora and the detective toward the door.

'Said he never went near her.'

'He never went near her?' Nora still had not quite separated Natalie's bloody disappearance from the fate of the other women.

'You believe him?' Davey stopped moving and let Fenn walk past him to get to the door.

'Sure.' Fenn opened the door and turned toward them. 'Dart admitted everything else to Popsie. Why would he lie about one more victim? But the real reason I believe him is that Natalie Weil didn't use Dart, Morris.'

'He only killed his father's clients,' said Davey, with a fresh recognition of this fact.

'Makes you think, doesn't it?' Fenn motioned them through the door.

Out in the hall he led them past dull green walls, bulletin boards, doors open upon rooms crowded with desks. They were approaching a

metal door which stood open behind a uniformed policeman. Through the door a row of barred cells was visible. It struck Nora that the cells looked exactly the way they did in movies, but until you actually saw them you would not guess that they were frightening. 'Your friend Dart is back there,' said Fenn. 'He'll stay until we move him to the county lockup. Leo Morris is with him, so it might be a while. We still have to take his picture and print him.'

Nora imagined the languid, smirking man from the bar at Gilhoolie's penned up in one of these horrors. The image filled her with dread. Then she took another step, and the entire row of cells came into view. In the last of them, one man sat bowed over on the end of the cot and another, his face obscured by a row of bars, stood. They were not speaking. Nora could not look away.

Davey and Holly Fenn moved past the open door. Nora looked at the man hunched at the end of the cot, then took in his curly gray hair and realized that he was Leo Morris. Involuntarily she glanced at the man standing beside the lawyer, and at that second the man moved sideways and became Dick Dart, his face brightening with recognition. She felt an electric shock in the pit of her stomach. Dick Dart remembered her.

Dart looked relaxed and utterly unworried. His eyes locked on hers. He derived some unimaginable pleasure from the sight of her. He winked, and she pushed herself forward, telling herself that it was ridiculous to be frightened by a wink.

Farther down the hallway was a door marked STATION COMMANDER. Nora forced herself to stop seeing the mental picture of Dick Dart winking at her and took a long, deep breath.

'Let's see what's happening.' Fenn cracked open the door and peered in. A wide young woman in a police uniform immediately slipped out. Fenn said, 'Folks, this is Barbara Widdoes. She's our station commander, and a good one, too. Barbara, these are the Chancels, friends of Mrs Weil's.'

'Holly gave me this job.' Barbara Widdoes held out her hand and gave them each a firm shake. 'He has to say I'm good at it. How do you do?' She was attractive in a hearty, well-scrubbed way, with friendly brown eyes and short, dark hair as fine as a baby's. Nora had misjudged her age by at least five years. The woman before her was in her late thirties but looked younger because her face was almost completely unlined. 'Actually, all I do is keep everybody else out of this old bear's way. And rent my couch out to exhausted strays.'

'Can we look in on her?' Fenn asked.

Barbara Widdoes glanced inside. She nodded and allowed Nora, Davey, and Holly Fenn to enter her office.

Covered to her neck by a blanket, a small old woman lay on a short, functional couch against the side wall of the dark office. Her eyes were deep in their sockets, and her cheeks were sunken. Nora turned to Holly Fenn and shook her head. 'I'm sorry. It's someone else.'

'Move a little closer,' Fenn whispered.

When Davey and Nora took two steps nearer the woman on the couch, her face came into sharper focus. Now Nora could see why LeDonne had mistaken her for Natalie. There was a slight resemblance in the shape of the forehead, the cut of the nose, even the set of the mouth. Nora shook her head again. 'Too bad.'

Davey said, 'It's Natalie.'

Nora shook her head. He was blind.

'Look,' Davey said, and instantly the woman opened her eyes and sat up, as if she had trained herself to spring out of sleep. She wore a filthy blue suit, and her bare feet were black with grime. Nora saw that this old woman was Natalie Weil after all, staring directly at her, her eyes wide with terror.

'No!' Natalie shrieked. 'Get her away!'

Appalled, Nora stepped back.

Natalie screeched, and Nora turned openmouthed to Holly Fenn. Davey was already backing toward the door. Natalie pulled up her legs, wrapped her arms around them, and lowered her head, as if trying to roll herself up into a ball.

Fenn said, 'Barbara?'

'I'll deal with her,' said the policewoman, and moved across the room to put her arms around Natalie. Nora followed Fenn through the door.

'Sorry you had to go through that,' said Fenn. 'Do you both agree that she's Natalie Weil?'

'That's Natalie, but what happened to her?' Nora said. 'She's so-'

'Why would Natalie react to you like that?' Davey asked.

'You think I know?'

'We'll get Mrs Weil to the hospital,' said Fenn, 'and I'll be in touch with you as soon as I can make some sense out of all this. Can you think of any reason Mrs Weil might be afraid of you?'

'No, none at all. We were friends.'

Looking as perplexed as Nora felt, Fenn took them down the corridor, not back toward the entrance but in the same direction they had been going. 'Can I ask you to stay home most of the afternoon? I might want to chew the fat later.'

'Sure,' Davey said.

Fenn opened a door at the back of the station, and the Chancels stepped outside into bright, hot light.

Davey said nothing on the way to the car and did not speak as he got in and turned on the ignition. 'Davey?' she said.

He sped behind the station and into the little road that curved away from the empty field and the river. It would take them longer to get home this way, but Nora supposed that he wanted to avoid the crowds and reporters at the front of the station. 'Davey, come on.'

'What?'

Something unexpected leaped into her mind, and she heard herself ask, 'Don't you ever wonder what happened to all those people from Shorelands? Merrick Favor and the others, the ones that girl told you about?'

He shook his head, almost too angry to speak, but too contemptuous to be silent. 'Do you think I care about