It was Carla Schreier, and she did not have any pamphlets with her, she had a shotgun. Maybe she was scared of bears, too. She killed the engine and hopped off the ATV.
“Hi, Carla,” I said. “What’s up?” I stepped towards her. Had Samson flipped out and tried to attack her? Did she need help?
“This is loaded,” she said. Her baby-doll voice had an edge to it, like a toy made of razor-blades. Up close, her smile, which had seemed friendly, pulled into focus. This was the grin of someone about to do murder. Mad. Totally, frothing mad. I almost wet myself. The dull gray of the gun barrel indicated that it could easily have been the one I saw in John’s truck, but I didn’t think it would be smart to ask.
“Loaded? I see,” I said, careful not to startle her.
“You know, Pauline, walking around in the bush this time of year can be very dangerous. Especially if you’re not wearing protective orange. There are a lot of crazy hunters around.”
“Gosh, you’re right. Maybe I’ll just slip home and grab my jacket.”
“No need for that. No need.” She seemed to be enjoying herself. Then she raised the gun and pointed it at my chest.
“Carla, I don’t know what your problem is, here. If you need to talk to me about something, that’s fine. But I’m in a bit of a hurry. George is expecting me at any moment.”
“No, he’s not,” she said. “He phoned us from that faggot antique dealer’s a little while ago, asking where you were. I said you told us that you were tired and had decided to go straight home. You see, just before that, we received a very interesting little call from the Pastor.”
“Oh,” I said. Her language shocked me. I wouldn’t have thought that “faggot” was in her vocabulary.
“I believe you have something of mine, Pauline. I want it back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. My cross. I want it back.”
“But an hour ago you denied ever having worn one.”
She grinned, looking quite lovely for a moment. “I lied,” she said. “Now, you can either give it to me now, which will give you a few minutes more, or I can blast a hole in you first and search you afterwards.”
“Nice choice,” I said, starting to cry. Don’t get me wrong—I wasn’t begging her yet. But I was awfully scared, she was obviously intending to kill me, and I wasn’t ready to die. She started to take careful aim.
“Wait! For Chrissakes, wait a second, will you? You don’t want to get blood on your dress, do you? That would complicate things, don’t you think?” She was still wearing her funeral dress. Pale pink with little spriggy flowers on it. Very becoming, if you were twenty.
She lowered the gun. “Well, yes. Getting bloody would be a shame,” she said. “How thoughtful. But you know, when I shot John, I didn’t get a spot on me. Not a spot.”
“Good for you,” I said. “Why?”
“I wore an apron, you see. I burned it. Wasn’t that smart?” she said.
“I mean, why did you shoot him?” I figured that if I was going to die, I might as well take the truth with me. Maybe I could explain it to John, when I got there. Except that I was reasonably certain that there was no “there”, which was why I was crying.
“Oh. Well, there was a good reason. You know that God tells someone to execute abortionists so they won’t keep on killing babies? It was like that. I was just defending my baby.”
“Who? Eddie?”
“No, silly. This.” She pointed to her belly, which was swollen with the new life inside her. “He told me I had to get rid of it. If I didn’t, he’d tell Samson and then where would I be?” She giggled. “Silly boy. He should have known God wouldn’t allow it. Anyway, this baby is a miracle and John Travers had nothing to do with it at all.”
“He was the father, though, right?”
“He was the messenger, Pauline. Samson’s impotent, but he has a lot of faith. In the Lord. In me. I couldn’t have that destroyed now, could I?”
“I see,” I said. So that was what the four hundred bucks was for. A nice little Toronto abortion. Even John Travers would know that a government-funded, Laingford Memorial procedure was out of the question. That would also explain why he’d stashed it in Lug-nut’s food bag. He’d got the money together, but the person for whom it was intended wouldn’t take it.
“Tell me, Carla. Did Samson think Eddie was a miracle baby too?”
She didn’t like my tone. “Samson knew all about Eddie right from the beginning,” she said. “Don’t mock me. He married me knowing that I was carrying Freddy Einarson’s child. It was after that I found the Lord. I haven’t looked back since.” There was a fundamental flaw in her logic, but I wasn’t about to point it out to her.
“So you and John Travers were having an affair, I take it,” I said.
“It wasn’t an affair. It was the Lord’s work. We prayed before and after.” The image was nauseating.
“Did Francy know about it?”
“That little scatterbrain? You must be joking. Too busy picking weeds with her witch-friend and fooling around with my Eddie, who is turning out to be just as sinful as his father, Freddy Einarson. I wouldn’t be surprised if that Beth wasn’t my granddaughter. That’s a sick little thought, isn’t it? No. John married Francine because she was pure, and when she dirtied up, he turned to me. She was too wrapped up in her baby to notice.”
My head hurt, but I had stopped crying. Now, I was just ragingly angry.
“Carla, what’s all the fuss about the crucifix? After all, nobody knows about it but me. You Holy Lambers don’t even like crucifixes. Nobody thinks it’s important at all.” Dumb thing to say. But I was thinking out loud.
“Exactly,” she said, glad that I had pointed out why she had to kill me.
“But the cops—I mean, I could show it to the cops, say that I found it and gave it to Francy, tell them that Samson put it in the coffin, but what would that prove? You could easily say you lost it somewhere, or you could deny ever knowing anything about it.”
“I could, but then they’d start wondering about me, wouldn’t they? I don’t want that. Can you give it to me now, please?” She said it quite sweetly, holding out her hand.
“Before I do, could you tell me why you killed my best friend? I just need to know.”
She told me. It made a weird kind of sense, if your brain worked the way Carla’s obviously did. It was ugly, though, and stupid. A stupid reason. Just like the stupid reason she had for killing me.
“Now, I think it’s time to stage a little accident. Just toss me the cross, would you?” I did. I was numb with fright, and I had a hideous vision of her cold hands rooting around in my clothing after I was dead. She caught it deftly.
“This won’t take long, Pauline,” she said kindly. “You won’t feel a thing. Just don’t move around.”
I lost it. I fell to my knees and gibbered. I used all sorts of God-words which hadn’t passed my lips since my parents died. I even started saying the Lord’s prayer. I closed my eyes, heard a heavy rustling in the bush off the trail and knew all at once that my power-animal the bear had come to take me to the other side. I yelled, there was an enormous noise and my heart exploded.
Thirty