The Servants of Twilight

"Last night, when the police questioned her, she denied knowing you and Joey, denied the scene at South Coast Plaza.

She says she doesn't understand what you have against her, why you're trying to smear her. She said she hadn't found the Antichrist yet and didn't even think she was close. They asked her what she would do if she ever found him, and she said she'd direct prayers against him. They asked if she would try to kill him, and she pretended to be outraged by the very idea. She

said she was a woman of God, not a criminal. She said prayer would be enough. She said she'd chain the devil in prayers, bind him up with prayers, drive him back to Hell with nothing but prayer." "And of course they believed her."

"No. I talked to a detective this morning, read the report of their session with her. They think she's unbalanced, probably dangerous, and ought to be considered the primary suspect in the attempts on your lives."

She was surprised.

He said, "You see? You've got to be more positive. Things are happening. Not as fast as you'd like, no, because there are procedures the police must follow, rules of evidence, constitutional rights that must be respected-"

"Sometimes it seems like the only people who have constitutional rights are the criminals among us."

"I know. But we've got to work within the system as best we can."

They passed the Orange County Airport and got on the San Diego Freeway, heading north toward Los Angeles.

Christine glanced back at Joey. He was no longer staring out the window or petting the dog. He was slumped down in a corner of the back seat, eyes closed, mouth open, breathing softly and deeply. The motion of the car had lulled him to sleep.

To Charlie, she said, "What worries me is that while we have to work within the system, slowly and carefully, that Spivey bitch doesn't have any rules holding her back. She can move fast and be brutal. While we're treading carefully around her fights, she'll kill us all."

"She might self-destruct first," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I went to the church this morning. I met her. She's completely around the bend, Christine. Utterly irrational. Coming apart at the seams."

He told her about his meeting with the old woman, about the bloody stigmata on her hands and feet.

If he intended to reassure her by painting a picture of Grace Spivey as a babbling lunatic teetering on the edge of collapse, he failed. The intensity of the old woman's madness only made

her seem more threatening, more predictable, more relentless than ever.

"Have you reported this to the cops?" Christine asked." Have you told them that she threatened Joey to your face?"

" No. It would just be my word against hers."

He told her about his discussion with Denton Boothe, his friend the psychologist." Boo says a psychotic of this sort has surprising strength. He says we shouldn't expect her to collapse and solve this problem for us-but then he didn't see her. If he'd been there with me and Henry, in her office, when she held up her bleeding hands, he'd know she can't hold it together much longer."

"Did he have any suggestions, any ideas about how to stop her? "

"He said the best way was to kill her," Charlie said, smiling.

Christine didn't smile.

He glanced away from the rain-swept freeway long enough to gauge her reaction, then said, "Of course, Boo was joking."

"Was he really?"

"Well. no. he sort of meant it. but he knew it wasn't an option we could seriously consider."

"Maybe it is the only answer."

He looked at her again, his brow creased with worry." I hope you're joking."

She said nothing.

"Christine, if you could somehow get her with a gun, if you killed her, you'd only wind up in prison. The state would take Joey away from you.

You'd lose him anyway. Killing Grace Spivey isn't the answer."

She sighed and nodded. She didn't want to argue about it.

But she wondered.

Maybe she would end up in prison, and maybe they would take Joey away from her, but as least he would still be alive.

When Charlie pulled the Mercedes off the freeway at the Wilshire Boulevard ramp, on the west side of L.A., Joey woke and yawned noisily and wanted to know where they were.

"Westwood," Charlie said.

"I never been to Westwood," Joey said.

"Oh?" Charlie said." I thought you were a man of the world.

I thought you'd been everywhere."

"How could I have been everywhere?" the boy asked." I'm only six."

"Plenty old enough tove been everywhere," Charlie said.

"Why, by the time I was six, I'd been all the way from my home in Indiana clear to Peoria."

"Is that a dirty word?" the boy asked suspiciously.

Charlie laughed and saw that Christine was laughing, too.

"Peoria? No, that's not a dirty word; it's a place. I guess you aren't a man of the world after all. A man of the world would know Peoria as well as he'd know Paris."

"Mom, what's he talking about?"

"He's just being silly, honey."

"That's what I thought," the boy said." Lots of detectives act that way sometimes. Jim Rockford's silly like that sometimes, too."