Darkness at the Edge of Town Read online

  Megan put her hand over mine. “One thing Mathias has shown me, shown us all, is that the universe makes no mistakes. Everything good, everything we perceive as bad, is just part of our journey. Everything happens for a reason. It’s all about the ripples. Without all our experiences, we’d never get to where we’re meant to be. You loved him, but he’s gone. Yet without him, without what you shared both good and bad, you wouldn’t be here. You wouldn’t be on the right path to finally meet the man you’re truly meant to spend the rest of your life with. Have children with. Carol, you just have to realize that and recognize the signposts the universe places as you continue your journey. Like you did today by following the impulse to stop here.”

  For the first time since I came to The Temple, I felt like shit for lying to that girl. She seemed to believe every word that came out of her mouth. At least in that moment she truly wanted to help me. And I couldn’t find fault with anything about her and her beliefs. I just felt…dirty. I needed a moment to collect myself. “And it was definitely a good impulse.” I rose from my chair. “I just, I need to use the bathroom again. Excuse me.”

  I kept walking, not looking at anyone until I reached the bathroom. I was on information and emotion overload. My saintly brother had cheated on his fiancée and gotten a girl he barely knew pregnant. He’d even gotten married the day before without telling a single member of his family. Not even a phone call. My brother, the lying cheater. I’d meant what I said. He wasn’t the cheating sort. The boy could never tell a lie. He’d never cheated on a test or tax return or even missed curfew. Of course I never thought I’d cheat either, but I did. But Billy? Not in a million years.

  There were two ways to assess the situation. One, my brother had undergone a complete personality and morals transplant for the worse. He’d become a cheating, selfish, cowardly man almost overnight and that was not William Michael Ballard. The other possibility was this Betsy manipulated, then trapped him with the pregnancy to get his meager savings and keep him in the New Morning fold. With either scenario, I was worried for my brother more than ever. He needed help, either from himself or from others. And I was still no closer to finding him.

  I needed last names, I needed the location of the farm, but I couldn’t get them without arousing suspicion, so I needed to remain “Carol” as long as I could. I came up with a plan and prayed I wouldn’t get caught. Party time. I fixed my makeup and hair with several sighs. I would not get caught.

  Fortunately, Megan wasn’t lying in wait when I came out this time. People sat on the stairs, though, so I couldn’t get upstairs. I settled for moving around the dining room, pretending to clear the table of red Solo cups. When I had a stack of six, I checked to make sure no one was looking before sliding them into my large purse. When people had a history of addiction, a history of crime sadly often accompanied it. I just wished the guru had been there. I moved to the kitchen and began the process again. If I could learn the type of person drawn to The Temple it could help get me a better grasp of the psychological makeup of the group. Plus some members could have warrants out on them, and I could use that as leverage.

  I’d just snuck my second batch of cups into my bag from the kitchen counter when I turned and found the handsome minstrel Paul stepping in from the backyard, that seductive smirk affixed to his face even as he sipped from his own cup. “There you are. I was beginning to worry you’d left,” he said.

  “Why?” I asked as Carol, gazing down and shrinking in on myself.

  He set down his red Solo cup. “Because you’re the most interesting person here. Not to mention the most beautiful,” he said, smirking as he moved toward me.

  As lines went it was a good one, if a gal didn’t know better. “Carol” would have eaten that shit up, so I smiled. “I-I’m not that interesting. Or beautiful.”

  “Oh, take it from me, you’re both.”

  Paul stopped mere inches from me, close enough that I could sense his body heat. I glanced up at him for a moment. Not only was he gorgeous in a sensual way, but he reminded me a little of my first love, probably because they had the same coloring and first name. Even knowing what he was doing, knowing he’d probably been told to entice a potential member and had next to no genuine interest in me, a small part of me appreciated the attention from the charismatic rogue. It was the part that hadn’t had a naked man pressed against me in over two years. Who hadn’t been kissed or caressed or told she was beautiful in that whole time. I was only human.

  Like any good predator or con artist, he sensed this and moved even closer to me. “You have the most gorgeous eyes. They say people with green eyes are the most spiritually open. And I’ve learned there’s nothing better than a woman who is…open.”

  I had to stop an eye roll, instead looking down demurely. “I-I’ve never heard that before, ab-about the eyes. I don’t think that’s true, at least not in my case.”

  He placed his hand on mine. “I think you’re wrong. I think you don’t know half your potential. If you could only see what I do…” He moved in closer so our chests almost touched. I could sense his heartbeat. Mine was pumping double time. “A sexy, vibrant, fascinating woman just begging to come out.” He laced his fingers with mine. “I sensed her, I sensed the true you the moment I laid eyes on you. It was like the universe spoke to me in that moment, Carol. I can honestly say, and I swear this on my own life, I’ve never felt anything like it before, not even when I first met Mathias.” He lifted my chin with his finger so our eyes met. My heart felt as if it were about to seize. “I’m meant to help her come out. I’m meant to be here…with you.”

  The guy was good. Without a doubt. Damn good. Even knowing what I did, a small part of me wanted to swoon. I couldn’t even tell if he believed his own bullshit or not. He could have been so brainwashed that if Mathias or Megan had told him I was his destiny, he’d just take it as gospel and instantly believe it himself. I would have preferred it if he was in on the game, that he was aware he was the honeypot. I just couldn’t tell if he did, and that unnerved me. I looked away again.

  “I-I’m sorry. Have I freaked you out?” Paul asked with a nervous chuckle.

  “No,” I lied.

  “I have. I’m so sorry. I’ve just…never felt so immediately connected to anyone like this. I’ve never wanted to be with someone, just be around them, so fast, so deeply before. I’ve come on too strong, too fast.” He stepped back to give me breathing room. I needed it. “We have plenty of time to get to know each other, right? We’ll see each other at seminars and here and…right? You’re coming back here, right? I haven’t scared you off, have I? I couldn’t stand it if I did. That I’ll never…get to see you again. You’re coming back, right?”

  When I glanced up at him again he seemed truly pained at the prospect. He either should have been on Broadway or he actually felt worried. “I-I have every intention of coming back. I promise.”

  “Good. Awesome. Thank the universe. I’m just going to…leave before I ruin this somehow.” He pointed at the door and took a step toward it before stopping. He turned around. “Hey. What’s your favorite song?”

  “Uh, ‘No Angel’ by Gregg Allman.”

  “Beauty and great taste in music. The universe is kind. I’m gonna learn it and play it for you next time I see you.”

  “Okay. I’d like that.”

  “Awesome. Awesome.”

  With that he finally walked out the door. I knew people in the backyard were observing me through the window, so I kept my expression neutral and didn’t sigh like I was dying to. At least the Morningstars were equal-opportunity chauvinists, providing a whore for the ladies as well. But I wasn’t sure what had just happened was all an act. I thought part of him believed what he was selling. Or I was just truly desperate for male attention? Both options were just too sad to dwell on for too long. My head literally hurt and I was beyond exhausted. Hell, I was exhausted before I even arrived in Grey Mills. The moment Paul left I hit a wall. It was time to leave before I star
ted making mistakes. I felt it. So I just stuffed the remaining cups, Paul’s included, into my purse and made a beeline toward my handler.

  Megan remained by the fire pit roasting a marshmallow but perked up when she saw me. “Hi. Did Paul find you?”

  “Uh, yeah, he did.”

  She grabbed my wrist and pulled me down to her level. “The moment you left he came over and asked me a million questions about you. I think he’s like totally into you. You are so lucky. He’s gorgeous, right?”

  “He is…that. Yes. Look, I’m sorry. My stomach’s really messed up. I have to go, I’m sorry.”

  “Oh. Are you okay? I can make you some ginger tea.”

  “I don’t think it will be much help. I had dodgy Chinese for dinner. I don’t want my first impression with everyone to be so…colorful.”

  “Is it really your stomach or did Paul do something—”

  “No! He was lovely. I was in the bathroom for an hour before I got here and took Pepto. I just…didn’t want to let you down. Is it all right if I pop by tomorrow so we can talk more?”

  “Of course. Are you—”

  I clutched my stomach and grimaced. “I’m sorry. I-I have to go. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I half-smiled before rising and turning toward the door. I glanced at Paul, who was of course staring at me with that smirk of his. I smiled nervously back before hustling out of the party. Yeah, I had to find that fucking farm. Fast. I didn’t know how much more positive reinforcement and love-bombing I could take. I’d never worked undercover before, but I’d heard it was easy to lose yourself in the pantomime. That even when embedded with white supremacists you’d find something to like about them and even find some logic in their rhetoric.

  Thank God I never did undercover work before, because I’d spent less than an hour with them and could feel their pull. My poor brother didn’t stand a chance. Beautiful women telling him he’s better than George Clooney, that he’s special, that he can find true happiness in three easy steps? I was certain he’d gone through the looking glass like Alice. And I was barely a month sober. My whole life had changed. Again. I was a doctor of psychology; I knew better than most how precarious this time of my sobriety was. I was so fragile my psyche may as well have been glass. But Billy needed me. Mom needed me. I needed to do this to start righting my many wrongs against my family. I just prayed I wouldn’t lose my common sense or my morals in the process.

  Once in a lifetime was more than enough.

  Chapter 5

  Memory Fucking Lane. As I jogged through the streets of Grey Mills, the déjà vu hit me down every street and around every corner. Mrs. Cramer’s lawn that Billy and I mowed and pruned for a year for pocket money when we were eight. Cheney Street, where my boyfriend Paul and I had our first make-out session in his BMW. The small park where everyone in the neighborhood gathered once a year for the block party. The swings Billy and I played on when we were kids. The house where my friend Sadie lived with her parents and sister.

  I stopped for a second to stare at that now abandoned, rotting shell that had been decaying for almost twenty-five years. The roof had caved in, the paint chipped to nothing, all the windows smashed. Why they didn’t tear it down I hadn’t a clue. Even when it was pristine, nobody wanted to move into a house where a man murdered his wife and two daughters before running off with his stripper girlfriend to Las Vegas. It took the FBI two weeks to catch him. It took one meeting with them to irrevocably change the course of my life.

  Most people aren’t aware when a life-changing moment happens to them until time passes. The moments that form a person, define him or her, when everything changes. I always knew my moments almost right when they happened. The first time Hayden smiled at me. The first time Luke fought back in a verbal sparring match. The moment I pulled the trigger and blew Meriwether’s brains out. But the moment that set me on the path to all those other moments came when Special Agents Samantha Hutchins and Joshua Van Den Berg walked into my house to interview me about my best friend Sadie Armstrong’s murder.

  The murders of Cindy, Sadie, and Molly Armstrong rocked Grey Mills down to its bedrock. There had always been a fair share of husbands killing wives through the ages, but that triple homicide was a first, and I prayed a last. Once the Grey County Sheriff’s Department realized Mr. Armstrong fled the state on the third day, they called in reinforcements. The FBI.

  I was in shock by the time the agents came to town. Sheriff Hancock the First had already interviewed me once, but that interview was only ten minutes long, and all he’d asked me was if I’d seen Mr. Armstrong be abusive or if Sadie had ever told me she’d been hit by her father. I answered truthfully: no.

  What I didn’t tell him, because in my terrified, traumatized ten-year-old brain the sheriff hadn’t asked me, was that a few days before the murders a blonde showed up on the Armstrong doorstep, kissing Mr. Armstrong as Molly and I came downstairs. Mr. Armstrong went from Dr. Jekyll to Mr. Hyde in point-five seconds flat. He yanked the blonde inside, who I would later learn was named Stephanie Ridley, a stripper in Pittsburgh, and stepped toward us girls with an expression I’d never seen before. Pure fury and menace. The first monster I’d ever encountered. He grabbed Molly by the forearms, squeezing so tight she shed tears, and said if she ever told her mother what she’d just seen, he’d kill her cat Josie Pussycat. He then turned his gaze to me, and I stopped breathing. He didn’t touch me. He didn’t have to. He just said he’d burn my house down with me and my family still inside if I told anyone. I absolutely believed him.

  Mom and Grandpa wondered why I suddenly became “sick” after I ran home that day. I stayed up all night and faked an illness to miss school just so I could look out the window for Mr. Armstrong. I was awake on sentinel duty the night he was supposedly on a business trip and his whole family died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

  Like most criminals, Mr. Armstrong wasn’t nearly as smart as he believed. It took the local constabulary with their extremely limited homicide experience half a minute to notice the gas line on the boiler had been tampered with and that every vent, save for the ones in the bedrooms, was shut. But what he lacked in intelligence Mr. Armstrong made up for in luck. He was in his mistress’s hotel room celebrating his freedom biblically when the Philadelphia police came to question him. His work colleague later told Mr. Armstrong he’d been interviewed, questioned about alibis and marital trouble, and that the police were looking for him. Mr. Armstrong saw the writing on the wall, emptied his bank account, grabbed his mistress, and fled to stay with her friends in Las Vegas as they worked on a plan to get fake documentation and start a new life in Mexico.

  Not that I, or anyone else, knew that at the time. All ten-year-old me knew was that my friends were dead and the man who’d threatened me was out there watching my every move and waiting until I blabbed so he could do to my family what he did to his. The adults knew there was something wrong with me, but I just kept telling them I was just sad my friends died.

  Then on that third day, a man and a woman in dark suits knocked on our door.

  I knew from the TV shows Grandpa liked to watch that the FBI were like the police, but Hutchins and Van Den Berg seemed so much more serious, more self-assured than the sheriff. They scared the crap out of me. Grandpa was home and sat beside me as the female agent, Hutchins, began asking me about Sadie and Molly under the pretext of getting to know them better. For the first ten minutes, I told her about their love of animals and all things New Kids on the Block. They often fought over who would get to marry Joey.

  It was subtle how she switched gears toward their family life. She made sure not to mention Mr. Armstrong’s name or call him their father. The only time she did, I tensed up so much at just the words “Mr. Armstrong” that I gave away my fear. She kept asking questions without mentioning him again for several more minutes, but when she did it again, even claiming she knew I’d been threatened, I almost threw up.

  Van Den Berg took over then. I’d been prim
ed by the motherly agent; it was now Father’s turn to assure me I’d be safe. He told me I should be angry at what happened to my friends, to me. That he knew I could be strong and help my friends get justice. That I could be brave because my friends and family needed me to be. That Mr. Armstrong would win, he would get away with his crimes, if I didn’t help.

  After I joined the FBI, I tracked down Van Den Berg at the Dallas field office. I asked how he knew to play to my sense of duty and feeling of helplessness. He told me he’d looked into my eyes and that mixed with the terror he found confusion. Determination. And fury. He knew deep down I was pissed that bastard hurt my friends, pissed he’d turned me into a scared little girl. Armstrong had taken my strength. I’d never been afraid of anything in my life before. Not horror movies, not the Boogeyman, not even Wayne Malick, the neighborhood bully. I’d kicked that creep’s ass when I was nine. Got my nose broken but he left Billy, Sadie, and me alone afterward. But Armstrong had murdered my friends. He made me scared to leave my own home. He took my power away from me. Not that I knew all this at the time. My ten-year-old self just wanted to stop being afraid and believed the agents when they said they could protect us. So I told them about the woman he’d called Stephanie and what he’d threatened. I instantly felt freer than I had in days.

  They brought me into the station to look at mugshot books, and I found Stephanie Ridley within minutes. Prostitution and drug bust. When I pointed her out, everyone sprang into action, except for Van Den Berg. He drove Grandpa and me home. As I was about to get out of his car, I knew it was my last chance to ask the question that had plagued me since the man threatened me: “Why did this happen? Why did Mr. Armstrong do this to us? To them? He took us to Hershey Park last year. How could we not know he was evil?”