“If I don’t shoot you dead right this minute, I guess you’ll tell me.”
Katie stayed as still and small as she could. “I don’t think Sam suffered any holy stigmata. I think it was some sort of rash or exanthem, something brought on by his illness. I don’t think it was blood on his palms.”
“His mother believed it was blood. For God’s sake, she videotaped it! She could probably smell the blood. You can, you know. Smell blood, that is.” She shook her head, bringing herself back from some memory. “She gave the tape to a senile old priest whose sister recognized its value and knew a member of the Reverend’s congregation. That’s how it came to Reverend McCamy. Who are you to question any of this? You’re just some hick sheriff.”
“Let me ask you this, Elsbeth. Was Sam the only child like that Reverend McCamy had ever heard about, had ever tracked down?”
Slowly, Elsbeth nodded her head. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean anything.”
“I suppose it doesn’t. I’m surprised and pleased that you managed to escape the fire, Elsbeth.”
“I doubt you’ll be pleased much longer. If I’d burned to a crisp with Reverend McCamy, you wouldn’t be looking death in the eye.”
“How did you get out?”
Elsbeth McCamy shrugged. “We had a little . . . playroom at the back of the closet. There’s a door that leads down from there and out of the mud room. Reverend McCamy was dead, I knew it, and I didn’t want to die with him, and so I got out of there really fast.”
“That little playroom, I saw it once.”
“That’s impossible. No one ever saw it.”
“Well, yes, I did. Agent Sherlock and I looked around your house once because we thought Clancy was there. I can understand why Reverend McCamy wouldn’t want servants hanging around to find it by accident. I’ll admit I was really surprised that Reverend McCamy was the sort of man who tied his wife down and whipped her.”
Elsbeth McCamy looked blank a moment, then she threw back her head and let out a high wild laugh, and that laugh blended in with the crashing water and sent puffs of cold breath into the air. Katie was ready, only an instant from jumping at her, when Elsbeth’s head came back down, her laughter cut off like water from a spigot, and she whispered, “I want to kill you anyway, Sheriff, so please, come at me, please.”
“Why did you laugh?”
“Because you’re so wrong about us,” she said. “Just like his damned aunt Elizabeth. I know that she snuck in there when we were building the room, looking, poking about. She believed Reverend McCamy was crazy, that he abused me and that I loved it, that I was a pathetic victim. But you’re all wrong. Before I shoved that old busybody down the stairs, I told her what we were going to use that room for. I told her why Reverend McCamy was having it built, and how much he needed it. He gave himself over to me when we were in that room, and he forgave himself for his faults for a few moments at least, when he was strapped down on his belly over that fur-covered block of wood and I whipped him, whipped him until sometimes the whip cut through and brought blood. And I could smell it. He dedicated that blood to God, and prayed that God would reward him with the return of the sacred stigmata.”
“Those vials in that cabinet. What did you use those for?”
“Reverend McCamy used them to help him mortify his flesh, help him transcend the pain of giving himself over to God, pain that was both corporeal and spiritual. He cried in that room, not from the pain, but from how exalted he felt in those moments when the whip split his flesh and his blood flowed off his body onto that beautiful marble altar.
“But you ruined our life, Sheriff, destroyed everything. I’ve thought of nothing else but killing you since my husband died.”
Now! Katie dived and rolled, hoping that Roosevelt’s sculpted cloak covered her, and jerked her derringer out of its ankle holster the instant she stopped rolling. It was nearly worthless at any distance at all, that little gun, but if you got close enough, it could kill.
Elsbeth fired, one shot, then another and another, all three of them striking the sculpture, ricocheting off, sending stone shards flying. Katie stayed down, protecting her face.
Elsbeth yelled, “Come out of there, Katie Benedict! You deserve to die for what you did! That statue won’t help you!”
Katie stuffed herself tighter against the sculpture. “Don’t come any closer, Elsbeth, I have a gun. Do you hear me? I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if you force me to. Give it up. Toss the gun over here. There are bodyguards here, two of them, FBI agents. They heard the shots. You don’t have a prayer, just give it up!”