Page 106 of You'll Be Sorry

“Locate the journal…You broke into the house?” Mandy could not believe what she was hearing.

Four pairs of eyes locked on Mason, who had the decency to squirm.

“The back door was unlocked. I removed my muddy shoes and socks. Tiptoed in for a quick look around. Stepped on a…a…a damn toy! One of those metal bits for some building system.”

The Erector set the kids had started on the dining room table. Mandy’s gaze dropped to the man’s approximately size ten to eleven feet. “You cut your foot. You’re the source of the larger bloody footprints in the kitchen and dining room. Blood type?”

“O-positive. I understand you have new and improved DNA results? You might as well know I’m a match.”

“You contaminated the scene.And never said a word?”

“I had broken and entered—”

“An entire family had vanished. You don’t think that mattered more?”

“Which I knew nothing about. Not to mention, I had no reason to suspect foul play. The other bloody footprints weren’t present when I was there. Some dirty dishes were scattered about, but lack of attentive housekeeping hardly speaks to more nefarious happenings.”

“The bloody footprints—the other bloody footprints—weren’t there? You’re certain about that?”

“I’ve seen photos of the crime scene. Trust me, I would’ve noticed. For all I knew, the family had gone to the grocery store, or off to the diner for breakfast. Power had yet to be restored. Plenty of reasons for people to be out and about.”

Mandy frowned. Except if the Dixons had simply headed into town, where were the eyewitnesses? Let alone their vehicle had never been captured on any of the ensuing video camera searches.

Meaning they’d gone somewhere else? Maybe…up to the cave? Where whatever happened had happened. And then…

A female had run around the house with bloody feet. Or her father had stamped the floor with the imprint of a woman’s foot, transferring his own DNA in the process?

Nothing about this made any sense.

“You never found the journal.” Raquel spoke up, having been quiet thus far. “And Janet never mentioned anything about encoded messages?”

“Encoded messages? The missing chest of currency! I knew it!”

“No lost treasure,” Raquel stated flatly. “Just local women complaining of disturbing nightmares involving dancing demons and flickering flames. Five accounts, each belonging to a mother whose infant died within twenty-four hours. The same births we couldn’t match with existing records.”

“In each case,” Betty supplied, “the women claimed their babies weren’t their own, but children of Satan.”

“I don’t understand,” Mason began.

“Satanic cult,” Theo stated. “What if the men in the town, maybe, say, men of power and prestige, were drugging and raping these women? Except then the women started remembering and talking. Then something had to be done.”

“But…but…surely that’s preposterous!”

Mandy gave the historian a look. “Satanic cult might be a stretch. But organized sex trafficking? Among the elite? Sound familiar to anyone? Though I still don’t completely understand. For starters, we’re really thinking men? As in plural? Because that’s pretty involved. And why target wives, versus, say, young women, who’d be more vulnerable?”

“I think men,” Raquel spoke up, “because all the entries are plural. Demons. Devils.What the women report is consistent along those lines, plus the images they relate. Flames dancing upon walls, a dark stone. Sounds ritualistic in nature, maybe taking place in a basement, or a cave?”

“As for the choice of victims,” Betty offered, “young girls would be too risky. An unmarried woman who was suddenly pregnant would be subject to a great deal of scrutiny, and while one poor female could be shamed into silence, five unmarried daughters? That would create panic, not to mention a demand for justice, if not vengeance. Married women on the other hand wouldn’t call any attention. And, well, based on other major cases we’ve seen in the news recently, it’s possible their husbands were in on it as well. Apparently drugging one’s wife for another man’s pleasure can be a seriously disturbed fetish for some.”

“And the babies?” Theo asked roughly.

No one had an immediate answer for that, though Mandy already had several ideas on the subject, from the distressed mothers seeking to distance themselves from the evidence of their victimization,to the knowing husbands not wanting to raise another man’s child. Though Theo’s comment was also stuck uncomfortably in her head.

“In one of the last entries,” Raquel murmured now, “the midwife said she was going to consult with Samuel Dixon. She seemed to think he’d know what to do.”

Mason almost immediately harrumphed. “Please. If something that…distasteful…was happening, Samuel Dixon was almost certainly part of it. Based on all accounts, the man was quite ruthless. One doesn’t clear these lands and survive these winters without a great deal of merciless determination. Add to that, the remains were found in a well on Dixon lands…”

“Oh dear.” Betty appeared genuinely distressed. “That poor woman. She tried to seek help, and probably sealed her fate instead. Poor, poor Rita Louise Light.”