Dead Right (Stillwater Trilogy #3)(33)
Author: Brenda Novak

“Did this belong to your mother?”

She nodded. She had a few of Eliza’s journals, mostly from the early years. As Madeline grew older and her mother’s depression worsened, Eliza destroyed more and more of what she wrote. The notebook she’d been using at the end had barely twenty pages left in it, most of them taken up with anecdotes about “Little Maddy,” and poems that were increasingly desperatesounding and difficult to understand.

Hunter flipped slowly through the pages, perusing the contents. Madeline had separated this journal from the others several months ago because she’d been planning to read it. She thought it might bring her some peace to see the world as Eliza must’ve viewed it. But she’d never been able to overcome the resentment she felt over her mother’s final act. Or the irrational fear that she’d somehow “catch” her mother’s disorder.

It wasn’t easy to see Hunter sifting through the pages of that binder. Madeline bit her cuticles as he read, fidgeting until he looked up. “It’s okay,” he assured her.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

“Some pretty bleak poetry.”

“I told you she was depressed.”

He pursed his lips and didn’t comment. “Mind if I cart a few of her journals to the guesthouse, along with your father’s sermons? I’d like to take my time reading them.”

“Why?” she asked impatiently. “My mother had nothing to do with my father’s disappearance. She’d been dead for six years by then.”

“People are complex beings,” he said. “Sometimes the roots of an event run very deep.”

“No one else has looked this deep.”

“Maybe that’s the problem.” He held up the notebook, a questioning expression on his face.

“Fine. Take it,” she said.

“Where are the others?”

She sorted through what was left and pulled out several more as he searched his own box. “Don’t tell me this was hers, too,” he said, holding up a soft plastic Disney journal with a picture of Cinderella on the front.

“Oh.” Madeline’s hand automatically came up to cover her mouth.

“What?” he said.

She took a shaky breath. “That was my journal. My mother bought it for me. So I could write when she did.”

His voice softened. “Okay if I read it?”

“How could something I wrote as a ten-year-old possibly help you?”

“It probably won’t,” he admitted. “But there’s always that small chance. You might’ve recorded something significant without knowing it.”

Madeline couldn’t imagine that she’d written anything too private at such a young age. She had yet to discover boys, so there’d be no childish fantasies or girlish longing. She couldn’t even remember what she might’ve considered important enough to warrant a few words. Miscellaneous scribblings about her parents? School? Her friends? The animals on the farm? The farm itself?

“I guess,” she said. “I’m afraid you won’t find it very interesting, though.”

“I’m not sure about that. Meeting you as a little girl might be more interesting than you think.” He tried to open the journal, but it was locked. “You got a key for this?”

“No. I can’t believe I even have the book. I haven’t seen it for years.” She hadn’t become fanatical about saving things until later, after her father had disappeared. “Go ahead and break the lock.”

“You don’t mind?”

She shook her head—but regretted that decision the moment the journal fell open.

Ray sat alone in his mobile home. The TV squawked in front of him, but he wasn’t really watching it. There was too much going on in his mind, too many memories floating around. Memories of the keenest excitement he’d ever known—and memories of the deepest fear.

He got up and began to pace the well-worn carpet, stopping to peer through the curtains when he heard a car pull into the trailer park.

It was a beat-up truck that stopped at Ronnie Oates’s place down the way.

Dropping the curtain, Ray went into his small kitchen, intending to distract himself by fixing something to eat. But there wasn’t anything in his cupboards. He needed to go shopping, but he didn’t dare leave his house.

They’d found the reverend’s dildo! He still couldn’t believe it.

Had they found the pictures, as well?

“Must not’ve,” he mumbled for probably the millionth time. If they’d discovered the pictures, the police would’ve been knocking on his door long before now. Katie and Rose Lee were in a lot of them. Ray had burned the ones the reverend had given him—years ago. After it was over, he didn’t like seeing what he’d done. And he wasn’t stupid enough to keep any proof of his actions. But the preacher was never satisfied. His excitement fed off those pictures. Ray had sometimes wondered if he had one stuck in his Bible when he was preaching on Sundays, so he could look down and see it.

There were certainly plenty to choose from. Hell, Ray had even taken a few of them. One he’d snapped right there in the reverend’s study at the church, with Katie tied spread-eagled on the floor and the reverend pretending to be some kind of  p**n  star.

The reverend liked it when Ray made a show of it, too. So they’d watch each other, trade off, get even more creative with what they’d do to the girls. One time, Barker put a collar on Rose Lee and dragged her to the pulpit. He loved that because it showed how powerful he was. The reverend believed he could get away with anything. And Ray had started to buy into that belief. He remembered taking a picture of Barker making Katie bend over one of the pews while he rode her doggie-style, yanking back on that collar if she so much as whimpered.

That was the day Barker had demanded Ray use the dildo on his own daughter. The reverend’s eyes had gleamed feverishly as he coaxed, bribed and encouraged Ray, who’d gotten so caught up in it all that he’d finally crossed the line the preacher had been begging him to cross for months and had sex with his own daughter.

Rubbing his hands nervously over his pants, Ray cursed. How was it that those memories made him hard even while they made him sick?

Because he’d do it again if he could. He’d just never had the opportunity. Without the money and cover provided by the preacher, he wouldn’t have done it in the first place. He would’ve been too scared. Since then, he’d paid a few underage prostitutes in Jackson. And he liked the kiddie  p**n  he viewed on the Internet so much, he knew he’d go hungry if he had to choose between his ISP and the grocery bill. He’d already stolen his mother’s diamond ring and her real silver and hocked them to buy the computer equipment he wanted. But the  p**n ography, along with his fantasies and his toys, were enough for him these days. With his surrogate devices, there was little fear of punishment. Just play; just pleasure.