John Saul - The Right Hand of Evil

"Honey?" Ted said. "You okay? Want me to take Molly?"

Jerked from her reverie, Janet let Ted lift Molly out of her arms, and as the little girl clung to her father's neck, Janet tried to dismiss the strange idea that had just occurred to her. Yet as Molly snuggled contentedly against her father's chest, burying her face in his shoulder exactly as she used to do with her big brother, the idea only set its roots more deeply in Janet's mind.

"Maybe I should wait outside with Molly," Kim suggested.

With the warmth of Molly's body suddenly gone, Janet felt the fall chill. It was late October, after all. She buttoned her sweater. "I don't think so," she replied. "But if you don't want to go in-"

"I was hoping the whole family would be here," Ted said.

"Then how come you didn't make Jared come?" Kim countered.

Ted smiled sympathetically at his older daughter. "I know it doesn't seem real fair, but I'd sure appreciate it if you'd come in with us. If they see the whole family, how can they turn us down?"

"If they haven't already made up their minds," Janet fretted.

"I'm sure some of them have," Ted agreed. "But as Phil Engstrom told us, we've got a better than fifty-fifty shot. You heard what he said-if they get to know all of us, he doesn't think they'll turn us down."

Then maybe it's a good thing Jared's not here, Kim thought. All through supper that night, she'd tried to ignore the argument between her father and her brother, but from the moment it began, a hard knot formed in her stomach, and she'd only been able to pick at her food. What troubled Kim most, though-even scared her-was the way she hadn't been able to pick up anything from Jared. Always before, she could glean at least some hint of his feelings, some sensed understanding of what was going on with him, almost as if she could share in his emotions, at least a little bit.

But not anymore.

Tonight, though she'd heard him getting angrier, she hadn't felt anything at all. At first she wondered if he was even really angry, or just acting. But as Jared continued to argue with their father, she could hear the fury in his voice. She could see it in his face, too. But she couldn't feel it. And when he finally left, storming away from the table and out of the house just like their father used to do, all she'd felt was relief that he was gone.

Relief!

Was that how her mother had felt all those years, when it had been so bad with her father? Relief when he left the house, and anxiety when he came back?

Just the thought of it made Kim shudder.

She heard someone calling her name. Sandy Engstrom was waving to her from across the street, showing no sign of the sickness that had seized her that morning.

"Kim!" Sandy called. "Dad says you should all sit with us!"

Abandoning any thought of skipping the meeting, Kim was about to start across the street toward the small crowd in front of Town Hall when a horn blared, startling her. As her father's hand closed on her arm to pull her back onto the sidewalk, she looked up, then froze in horror at what she saw.

It happened so fast that she knew there was nothing that could have been done to stop it. Not by her-not by anyone.

The car was coming around the corner, and the woman was already in front of it by the time anyone saw her. Time seemed to stand still as Kim gazed at the terrible scene. The woman seemed frozen to the spot, her head turned toward the car that was about to strike her, her purse clutched in her right hand, her left arm outstretched as if to fend off the vehicle.

Then she turned.

Now it seemed to Kim as if she were watching through a telescope. Though the woman was half a block away, Kim could see her face as clearly as if they were only a foot apart.

The woman's eyes were wide with terror.

Her mouth was agape, though no sound was coming out of it.

And Kim recognized her.

It was the woman she'd seen in her nightmare the night she'd imagined the rats crawling up out of the toilet.

The woman who'd been suspended upside down from the cross in the strange cathedral.

But how could that be?

Yet now, as she stared in mute horror at the woman, Kim had no idea who she might be.

Then the horrifying tableau came to life.

The car's horn blasted again. The woman screamed.

The scream was cut off by a terrible thumping sound.

The woman's body was lifted into the air, and a second later it dropped back, falling onto the hood of the car, where it glanced off the windshield and was hurled to the street.

There was a screech of brakes, nearly lost in the screams of the crowd. In an instant the woman on the street was surrounded. Kim could hear someone shouting for a doctor.

Then she saw a priest-Father MacNeill-kneel down by the woman and begin to pray.

Kim's father and mother started to move toward the fallen woman, and she moved along with them. But then something, some force, made her pause.

Jared!

She could feel him!

She could actually feel him again!

But where was he?

Stopping, Kim scanned the area and saw nothing except the quickly growing crowd around the injured woman, who was now moaning and reaching up for help.

Then she spotted him.

Her brother was standing in the square, perhaps fifty feet away. He was not looking at her. He was looking at the woman who'd just been struck by the car.

Looking at her, and smiling.

She opened her mouth to call Jared. Before his name left her lips, however, he turned and looked at her, as if she'd actually called to him.

The smile-the strange grimace of pleasure that had twisted his lips as he gazed at the accident victim-was gone.

Instead, Kim saw him glaring at her. Glaring at her angrily, as if he'd just been-

Kim stopped short, unwilling even to think the word she'd been about to use. But as she watched her brother, she knew there was no other way to describe his expression.

He looked guilty.

He looked as if he was doing something wrong, and he knew it.

He looked as if he'd just been caught.

Phil Engstrom banged the gavel to bring the meeting to order exactly one hour after it had originally been scheduled. He struck the podium again and again, but the murmur refused to die away as the crowd that had turned out for the meeting continued to whisper among themselves about the accident.

An ambulance had arrived from the fire station around the corner less than a minute after the car struck Ellie Roberts, and she was rushed to the hospital no more than five minutes after she fell to the pavement. Phil himself had seen the accident from start to finish, and in his eyes it had been quite simple: Ellie stepped out from between two cars to cross the street at exactly the same time that Clarie Van Waters turned the corner. To Phil, the accident had been an unfortunate confluence of Ellie not watching where she was going and eighty-year-old Clarie insisting on driving her ancient DeSoto years after her license should have been lifted.

Nevertheless, the rumors began flying even before Ellie was taken to the hospital. The crux of the gossip was that since Ellie had been on her way to protest the variance Ted Conway wanted, Conway therefore must have had something to do with the accident. That Ted had been nowhere near either Ellie or the car and could in no way have been responsible seemed to cut no ice whatsoever. The problem, Phil thought, was that the accident and the talk that quickly accompanied it was enough to change the whole tenor of the meeting. Where an hour ago he had sensed that the town was fairly evenly split and a vote could go either way, now he could feel support swing toward Father MacNeill's opposition to the variance. He'd toyed briefly with postponing the meeting, but quickly abandoned that idea, knowing it would be interpreted-correctly-as a stalling device. So, even as he banged the gavel to bring the meeting to order, Phil Engstrom was wondering about how he and Ted might reverse the decision later.