Garth shrugged his broad shoulders. "There's also the question of how he found out she lives in Cairn."
"Mary Tree may not be listed in the phone book, but you are, and it's no big secret that Mary Tree lives in Rockland County, or that she's married to you. Garth, you think Mary still carries a torch for this guy? Is that what this is all about?"
"I don't know how she feels about him romantically; I only know she's afraid of him. She doesn't think he's dead."
"Assuming he didn't land the wrong way and break his neck, and that he's a good swimmer, he could have stayed underwater after you threw him in the river, swum up under the overhang out of your line of sight, and then split before you got down there. The question is, why would he do it? And, once out of the water, why not just get in his car and drive away, or at least come back for it later? It seems silly to disappear and let his car sit out on the street collecting tickets. What would be the point?"
Still with his back to me, Garth began rummaging around among his suits, then began rearranging the ties he had just put on the rack. "I don't know," he said at last. "Mary said something about it being his way of trying to do a number on our heads. She called it a magical attack. It didn't mean anything to me, and, like I said, Mary hasn't been very good at explaining things."
I felt a tightening in my throat. The words meant something to me, not only as a result of the time I had spent with the decidedly good witch, April, but as the legacy of a deadly confrontation, many years before, with a decidedly evil band of self-described super-witches, so-called ceremonial magicians, in New York.
"Mary ever into the occult?" I asked quietly, watching my brother's back.
"You know she's heavily involved with her church."
"I'm not talking about Christianity. I'm talking about witchcraft, voodoo, astrology, that sort of thing."
My brother grunted. "When did you start making such fine distinctions between beliefs in the supernatural?"
"I'm making them for purposes of this discussion. What about it? Was Mary ever into witchcraft?"
"What's your point, Mongo?"
"You said she used the words 'magical attack' to describe Sacra Silver's disappearing act. That's a wicca concept and term. One difference between wicca and the big-time religions is that wicca isn't centered around one deity. Witches don't pray to get what they want, they manipulate; they do things, for good or bad. They try to shape events by, in one way or another, enforcing their will on others. To wit, Silver tried to get Mary away from you, and you out of her lite, through sheer intimidation. That didn't work; you threw him out the window. So what does he do? Give up? No. Disappearing like that could be his way of making sure that he remains the focus of your lives, that he stays between you. You have to be able to think like a witch. Going away like he did could be his means of not going away. It's a very witchy thing to do."
"You're putting me on, right, Mongo?"
"He hasn't really gone away, has he? You went away, which is all Sacra Silver wanted from the beginning."
Garth's reply was a halfhearted shrug.
"Right now Mary presumably believes in Holy Trinities, virgin births, messiahs, life after death, and various other tenets of Christianity. What notions do you suppose she had thirteen years ago, when she became involved with Silver?"
"I don't know, Mongo," Garth said wearily. "When you get right down to it, I just don't really know all that much about my wife's background, outside of her music and career. She doesn't talk about her past, except for the things everybody knows. I didn't-don't-care who she was with, or what she did, before we met. I just loved her. As far as I was concerned, everything important in our lives together started on the day you brought me those tapes she'd given you to give to me."
"Garth," I sighed, "I have to say something. And then I have to ask you a question."
"Mongo, I guess maybe I wish you wouldn't do either."
"By your own admission, Mary's very disturbed about Sacra Silver, dead or alive. In your own words, she's damn well afraid of him. If you'd found them in bed together, or if she'd tossed you out because she said she wanted to go back with her old boyfriend, that would be one thing. But that's not what happened. She's so upset, so afraid, that she can't even bring herself to talk about who he is, or what it is about him that so terrifies her. Your wife's in a lot of trouble, Garth. My question is, what are you and your damn suitcase doing here?"
Garth remained unmoving and silent for what seemed to me to be a very long time, but probably wasn't. It would be understandable if he was offended, considering what I had just said, but I'd felt I'd had to tell him what was on my mind. Then he slowly turned around to face me, and I could see that he wasn't offended; he was crying. Garth didn't cry like other people; there was no sobbing, no facial distortion, no strangled speech, virtually nothing changed in his speech or appearance, except for the tears that welled in his bloodshot eyes and streamed down his cheeks.
"I can't help her, Mongo," he said evenly as he walked back across the room and sat down on the bed.
"Who says?"
"She won't let me. I guess you may be right about his disappearing the way he did being his way of making sure he wouldn't go away. Like you pointed out, it sure as hell worked. These last three days have been hell, with him right there between us whenever we looked at each other, or when I tried to get her to talk about it. I'll tell you something I do know, Mongo. She's afraid, all right, but she's not afraid for herself; she never was. She's afraid for me. She really does seem to believe that this creep is some kind of sorcerer who's sold his soul to the devil in exchange for special powers over people; she believes he can hurt me in some terrible way if he chooses to, and that he can't be stopped."
"I thought you said she couldn't talk about him."
"Put together enough incomplete sentences and sometimes you'll get a whole thought or two."
"Witchcraft and Satanism are two different things, brother, and Silver could be into either, or both. The principle is the same: you work on people's heads. I'd say Mr. Silver has worked on Mary's head real good in the past, because he certainly has power over her. All he has to do is show up after thirteen years, and she falls to pieces. But I still don't understand why the hell you're here, and not there."
"My being there only makes matters worse. That night and the next morning, it was only her past and Sacra Silver that Mary couldn't talk about. By yesterday morning, she didn't seem to be able to talk about anything at all. You could see the strain just continuing to build up in her. And then she said something that. . bothered me. She told me he wouldn't hurt her, but that he would hurt me, and you, and everybody else she and I care about until he got what he wanted, namely her. She said she would never go back with him, but that I should maybe go away. Mongo, she wanted me to run away from a man who's probably dead. That's how little faith she has in my ability to handle this thing. Can you understand how small that made me feel? That's when I felt myself slipping back to the. . nothing I felt inside myself when I was poisoned with the NPD. Just by walking into our house, this man took away Mary's faith in me, and maybe my own in myself."
I stood and stared at my brother, feeling very uncomfortable. His alluding to the emptiness he had felt when he'd been poisoned sounded alarm bells. Years before, when Garth had still been a New York cop, somebody had slipped him a dose of a mysterious and potent chemical called nitrophenyldienal, "spy dust," the properties of which were still classified top secret by the government. He had not only nearly "lost" himself, but I'd thought I'd lost him. He'd survived, but the experience had changed him forever. However, none of the changes he'd undergone had made him weaker, less strong-willed. Quite the contrary.