Twice Dead - Catherine Coulter [216]
She was silent, her forehead creased in a frown, then she shook her head, said slowly, “I think I love her; I’m supposed to since she’s my cousin, but she scares me. I never know what she’s going to do. I think she’d kill me, laugh while she rubbed my blood all over the only hand she’s got left, if she was in the mood, you know?”
“Yes, I know.”
“She’s going to kill you.”
“She might try, you told me. How do you think she contacts the Ghouls?” Savich ignored Dr. Hicks, who didn’t have a clue who or what the Ghouls were. He shook his head and repeated the question. “Marilyn?”
“I’ve thought about that, Mr. Savich. I know they were there when she killed that little boy. Maybe, from what she said, she thinks about them and they come. Or maybe they follow her around and she says that to prove how powerful she is. Do you know what the Ghouls are?”
“No, I don’t have any idea, Marilyn. You don’t either, do you?”
She shook her head. She was sitting in a comfortable chair, her head leaning back against the cushion, her eyes closed. She’d been staying in a room at the Jefferson dormitory at the FBI complex, watched over by female agents. She’d washed her hair, and they’d given her a clean skirt and sweater. Even hypnotized, she looked pale and frightened, her fingers continually twitching and jerking. He wondered what would happen to her. She had no other family, no education to speak of, and there was Tammy, in the Caribbean, who’d scared her all of her life. He hoped the FBI would find her soon and Marilyn wouldn’t have to be scared of her anymore.
He said, “Has Tammy been to the Caribbean before?”
“Yeah. She and Tommy visited the Bahamas a couple years ago. In the spring, I think.”
“Did they take the Ghouls with them?”
Marilyn frowned and shook her head.
“You don’t know if they killed anyone while they were there?”
“I asked Tommy, and he laughed and laughed. That was right before he got me pregnant.”
Savich made a note to check to see if there’d been any particularly vicious, unsolved killings during their stay.
“Has Tammy ever talked about the Caribbean, other than the Bahamas? Any islands she’d like to visit?”
She shook her head.
“Think, Marilyn. That’s right, just relax, lean your head back, and think about that. Remember back over the times you’ve seen her.”
There was a long silence, and then Marilyn said, “She said once—it was Halloween and she was dressed like a vampire—that she wanted to go to Barbados and scare the crap out of the kids there. Then she laughed. I never liked that laugh, Mr. Savich. It was the same kind of laugh that Tommy had after the Bahamas.”
“Did she ever talk about what the Ghouls did to those kids?”
“Once, when she was being Timmy, she said they just gobbled them right up.”
“But the Ghouls don’t just gobble them up, do they? They maybe take an arm, a leg?”
“Oh, Mr. Savich, they only do that when they’re full and aren’t interested in anything but a taste. But I can’t be sure because both Tommy and Tammy never really told me.”
Savich felt sick. Did she really mean what he thought she meant? That there were young boys who’d simply disappeared and would never be found because the Tuttles had eaten them? Were they cannibals? He unconsciously rubbed his arms at a sudden chill.
He looked at Dr. Hicks. His face was red, and he looked ready to be ill himself.
Savich lightly touched her forearm. “Thank you, Marilyn, you’ve been a big help. If you could choose right now, what would you like to do with your life?”
She didn’t hesitate for a second. “I want to be a carpenter. We lived for about five years in this one place and the neighbor was a carpenter. He built desks and tables and chairs, all sorts of stuff. He spent lots of time with me, taught me everything. ’Course I paid him like he wanted, and he liked that a lot. In high school they told me I was a girl and girls couldn’t do that, and then Tommy got me pregnant and killed the baby.”
“One more question. Was Tammy planning to contact you from the Caribbean?” He’d asked her this