"'Nick, the books you're reading are too rich for your mind. The crime de la crime should be mixed with a little pulp."
"Your fault," he said.
The first night Nick was in Gill's home during the Ripper case, he'd approached her bookcase with trepidation. The shelves were home to Shakespeare, Austen, the Brontes, Wordsworth. Dickens, Conrad. Proust, Faulkner, Maugham, and Greene, while he was reading Grisham's The Firm. Hoping they were a false front hiding her dope supply, he'd tested some of the volumes, but no such luck. Moving knock-kneed toward her CD collection, he'd found Tchaikovsky. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms. Even her taste in rock was high-end: King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Bonzo Dog, the fifties
roots. At least they had the Killer, King, and Fat Man in common. Afraid she'd quickly tire of a bimbo mind, Nick had joined the Classics Club that sent the uniform Great Works that Kidd spied in his home.
"I sense a ghost stalking me, Grtl. Someone holds me to blame for something I know nothing about. Someone who for some hidden reason set out to frame me from the start. How else do I explain the letter found in Mom's kitchen? That's my birthday and I'm an only child. Whoever it is is using the Force to try me. I'm under suspension and Special X is off the case. That leaves Kidd—my nemesis—with a free hand. She'll be even more suspicious after tonight. Mutilating Mom will look like a cover-up. As if I'm trying to link her murder to that of Jack."
"No," said Gill. "The ghoulish gutting's obviously Schreck. Not having an alibi for tonight's atrocity is bad luck. You don't think 'ghost' knew you were walking alone in the rain?"
"Who knows?" said Nick.
"There's nothing better you can do than listen to De-Clercq. He's right in suggesting you leave town soon. I booked you on a flight to Maui in the morning. Take the ashes if they're ready."
"What about her cat? I must go to Mom's home. Kidd wouldn't let me near it last night."
"That's exactly what you shouldn't do. Again it'll look like you're trying to manipulate the facts. You've suffered a trauma. You're on leave. And Hawaiian sun is waiting for you. Go, and leave the cat to me, her house till you return, and the Lab to clear your Red Serge of any taint."
Vancouver
Finished.
Alex plucked the final page from her laser printer and slapped it facedown on top of the manuscript pile. Break out the champagne, she thought, leaning back from her desk, hands behind her head. Crack a box of cigars, she thought, as rain spattered the windows and pounded on the roof.
When Alexis was young, she and her parents vaca-
tioned each summer on Oregon's coast, abandoning inland Portland where her father was a high court judge. While seagulls dipped and glided around sea-slapped Haystack Rock, foaming wave after whitecapped wave broke on the crescent shore of Cannon Beach. Mist exploded from the rock like artillery shells lobbed by the mythical cannon which named that part of the state. An early fear was toddling the beach hand in hand with Dad, the surf pounding to one side as they neared a house all shiplap and shutters weathered gray by the sea. "The Old Witch lives there," wailed her father, playing off Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which they'd recently seen. Wide-eyed, Alex stared at the gnarled tree guarding the door like a hunchbacked monster with six crooked arms and too many claws. Releasing her father's hand, she moved to the oceanside, so he was between her and the gables' evil eyes. Then donkeylike she tugged him away from the hag's abode.
Four years ago a car crash had claimed Alex's mom, followed three months later by her dad's first fit. The tumor seized him epileptically while sitting in court, and the consequent neurosurgery had carved out part of his brain. Unfortunately, the doctors could not get it all.
That's when Alex bought the Witch's House.
There, after radiation treatment, she'd nursed Dad as best she could. She fed him well, read to him, and walked him along the beach, still sharing a laugh when she used him to protect her from their house. The tumor returned with a vengeance, and treatment was out of the question, so Alex bravely watched the cancer eat him up alive, while the house became a house of horrors that soon had a room of death.
The dark side of her father's work—abnormal psychology—lured Alex like forbidden fruit. Her writings scratched the itch to know where demons spawn, so House of Horrors: The Case of H.H. Holmes began at the beginning. What Jack the Ripper was to Britain last century, H.H. Holmes was to the States. He was America's premier serial killer.
The modest success of that book in 1991 led her to plan a series called Trapdoor Spiders. Her second book was to be Room of Death: The Case of Dr. Marcel Petiot, until her publisher sent a letter received the day she
decided to go to the Mystery Weekend that trapped her on Deadman's Island:
Wiseman & Long, Publishers 500 Fifth Avenue New York, NY. 10110 November 27, 1992 Alexis Hunt 423 Madrona Way Cannon Beach, Oregon 97110 Dear Alex:
Americans like to read about Americans. A Frenchman fifty years ago won't do. Besides, we've got plenty of ''trapdoor spiders" here. Write a book on Ed Gein, the Plainfield Ghoul. He inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. Or one on Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal. Either subject, and you've got a contract. Same terms as the last.
Best, Chris
Deadman's Island changed her life. That ordeal not only brought her Zinc, whom she took home to the Wuch's House to recuperate, but it also inspired her in a most horrific way. The book she'd been writing over the year since then was Deadman's Island: The Case of Skull & Crossbones. They say write about what you know, and she knew about that. Plus, enough Americans had died to get around the jinx, for publishers in New York think books set in Canada get a kiss of death.
Surprise, surprise, the advance was $200,000.
Which was now earned, for Alex had finished.
"Zinc, you awake?" she whispered from the door to the bedroom.
"Umm," he said.
'The book's done, so I have a favor to ask. Do you think DeClercq would read it and give me his opinion? I read his nonaction. It's good."
And with that request, she set them on a course to tragedy.
,
West Vancouver
Somewhere in this city, a mom grieved for her son, gunned down by a Special X mistake. Somewhere beyond, a mom pined for her daughter, kidnapped from her fifteen years ago. Walking this beach with Napoleon, DeClercq felt sick over Katt . . . sick at heart. His mind and emotions were in turmoil from this vortex of a day. It was like all the tears cried in the world rained down on him.
Midnight rain.
The police launch from Bowen Island had stopped at his dock. Tomorrow morning he would taxi to his car. Past the oceanside knoll with its driftwood chair and antique sundial, The time is later than you think etched around the face, he'd trudged up from the log-strewn beach to his home. Katt was curled up in the living room, cramming for an exam. The German shepherd was stir-crazy and wanted out. So fetching rain slicker and gumboots, Robert had ventured out again to comb the shoreline toward Lighthouse Park.
White, black, white, black . . . the revolving beacon whitened and blackened his face.
For a moment he wondered what he'd do if he alone knew the secret—say he'd dug up the cellar before he sold Luna's house, so Trytko's death and the Pi's notes were his to control—would he have destroyed the bones to keep Katt for himself? Just thinking such a thought shocked his conscience, for how could he live with himself if he foisted the gut-wrenching anguish he endured over Jane on another parent?
He knew what he had to do, and he'd do it.
Issue closed.
To loosen the knot in his gut, he focused his mind on Nick. Chan was right in saying, "You're protecting one of your men," but that's because he believed Craven innocent, not because come-hell-or-high-water he backed those in his command, Suspicion fell on Nick from the "Mother letter":
December 2, 1993 Mother —
It's taken my lifetime to uncover your whitev; ashed
secret
. Discussing it face to face on my birthday seems fitting. I'll call on the 7th.
As a tactician who depended on his squad, DeClercq vetted each Member personally. Nick and his mom had lived in Vancouver since 1957, and that he loved her and kept in touch was plain to see. Assuming he did uncover her "whitewashed secret/' why type such a letter or note if he could phone or visit?
It didn't make sense.
Unless it was a frame.
The blood on the tunic was easy to explain. He'd seen the cut on Nick's hand from crossing the rickety bridge, and if not for this rain having washed away all trace, he'd have sent a tech to the river to check each nail.
But convinced though he was of Nick's innocence, Robert was nagged by logic. If the "Mother letter" was a frame, did that not acquit Schreck of Dora's murder? And if her killer wasn't Nick or Schreck, who might it be? Most vexing of all was the disemboweling tonight at the mortuary, described to him over police radio on the launch.
Suppose Schreck killed the deputies, Dora, and Jack. All had their skulls crushed, and Jack was eviscerated. The German cop had stated, "Perhaps you seek too much logic from a madman." Suppose, instead of gutting a skeleton, Schreck was slashing Jack's uniform. If so, why did he break in to gut Dora's corpse, when one: she was a civilian, not Bone Polizei, and two: he could have disemboweled her in her home?
The answer was to capture and question Schreck.
The path from the beach up to his house served the Greenhouse door, then skirted left around the residence to the front entrance. Pausing outside to gaze at Katt framed by the inner door to the room beyond, Robert faced his double on the Greenhouse glass. Fiftysome-thing, with dark and wavy hair graying at the temples, an aquiline nose hinting arrogance he didn't have, a shadow of beard showing through the skin of his narrow jaw, the light behind his brooding image haloed the teenager in the chair, until reaching out, finished her studies for the night, Katt—unaware she was being observed— flicked off the lamp and darkened the inner man.
i
Coquitlam
Like flashbulbs popping in his brain, white skulls probed his mind, appearing suddenly in his dark matter to snatch one of his thoughts, accessing consciousness to drag his plans to the fortress of the Knochenpolizei to dissect, revealing his innermost secrets to the Bone Police. They must be using an electromagnetic device to penetrate his electromagnetic field, transmitting their skulls as hot bursts of light through the screen of his mind, inducing electroshock dread and terrifying shifts in mood to frighten him into exposing himself to their torture patrols.
Poooff! Another skull flashed and faded within his head.
Since shortly after yesterday's escape from Colony Farm, Schreck had been in this hideaway near the Indian Reserve, upstream from Mary Hill by the one-lane bridge across the Coquitlam River. He'd kicked the nuts of the man who answered the door up to his chin, then caved in his head and hauled him down to the root cellar to rot, where, as luck would have it, he'd chanced upon a cache of cocaine and a gun.
A .357 Colt Python.
Now tucked in Schreck's waistband.
When late last night the first torture patrol came sniffing around—the Redcoats trying to trick him by wearing brown uniforms—he'd aimed the gun through the crack of the root cellar door at each skull that peered in the windows by the rattled locks, checking for signs of forced entry into the empty home.
Going door to door, eventually the skeletons moved on.
The keys to the car in the cluttered yard hung on a hook in the kitchen, a mess of dirty dishes from five take-out meals. The sleek black car was an old Corvette waiting for Schreck to drive it to his rendezvous with death, after a blitzkrieg Gotterdammerung with the Bone Police.
Hours ago, he'd feared the thump at the door was a torture patrol, but it was just a paperboy flinging the Coquitlam free edition.
Schreck could read English. He understood the print.
And the map on the front page showing the route of tomorrow's Red Serge funeral parade.
WHITE GHOST
West Vancouver
Thursday, December 9, 1993
Nick awoke to an insistent rapping on the door. At first he didn't recognize where he was y for this wasn't Gill's bedroom where he thought he fell asleep, then he heard whispers along the hall from the living room, Mom and his aunt discussing something he could not discern, and Nick knew he was in Medicine Hat in the house where he was born.
Rap! Rap! Rap! . . .
Psss. Psss. Psss . . .
Someone answer the door.
Nick threw back the covers, swung out of bed, and pulled on his robe. On tiptoes, he crept to the bedroom door and turned down the hail, the flames of the hearth in the parlor casting shadows on the wall, one his aunt on a stool leaning toward his mother, the other his mom on a straight-back chair breast-feeding two babies, both infants sucking hard as if in competition, Nick sensing intuitively one of the newborns was him.
Rap! Rap! Rap! . . .
Psss. Psss. "Twins . . ."
Someone answer the door.
The shadows vanished from the wall as Nick glanced into the parlor, where the stool and nursing chair sat empty by the fire, while Rap! Rap! Rap! the knocking on the door grew more insistent, as someone outside cried, "See what you've done!"
Nick marched over, pulled the bolt, and yanked tne door open.
The cold y cruel world without was white with snow, swirling, whirling, clouding, and shrouding the man on the porch, caking him like a snowman while Nick's eyes teared, the wind so icy he stepped back toward the warm womb of the hearth, while the white ghost framed in the doorway raised an arm, the motion shedding the crust of snow to bare a gun, a Smith & Wesson .38 issued to the Force, hammer cocked as the muzzle locked against the ghost's temple, the blast blowing blood out the other side of his head, staining the snow tumbling there the color of Red Serge.
A voice behind whispered, 'He shot himself because of me, brother."
But when Nick turned, there was no one there.
He awoke to an insistent rapping on the window, as a tapping twig was battered by rain. Nick turned like in the dream and saw Gill asleep on the pillow beside him.
UMNYAMA
Rorke's Drift, Africa Wednesday, January 22, 1879
The fighting was at its fiercest.
Fourteen patients who'd escaped from the hospital were now behind the biscuit-box barricade. The shrunken position in front of the storehouse offered far greater security than the extended perimeter. The storehouse at back effectively protected those manning the mealie bag ramparts around the front yard from Zulu snipers firing down from Shiyane Hill. The reduced defense works meant Chard could deploy his men in tighter concentration. In front of the store, Commissary Dunne labored to convert two large piles of mealie bags dragged out earlier into a round castlelike redoubt. Tall he was, but Dunne had to stand on top of the bags to raise the fort to eight feet while bullets and assegais whistled past. If Zulus overran the perimeter, the last
stand of the 24th would be at the redoubt. Wounded huddled by their feet, a firing line of riflemen would climb onto a step inside and aim overtop. Those defending the ramparts would retreat and form two lines outside, one kneeling, one standing with backs to the fort. First Chard, then Bromhead should he fall, would call out, "Fire one . . . Fire two . . . Fire three . . . Fire one . . . Fire two . . . Fire three . . ." to blast an unceasing hail of coordinated lead at the Zulus until the last Redcoat died.
But that was if . . .
Darkness had closed in around Rorke's Drift, which should have marked the Redcoats' end, but in a twist of fate the hospital's flaming roof lit the battlefield as bright as day. Every Zulu in no-man's-land between here and the blaze was a backlit silhouette gunned down long before he could reach the barricade. Several times the enemy tried to torch the storehouse, but firing through loopholes along the rear wall, a lieutenant and corporal with the Army Service Corps blasted them back. From the makeshift surgery on the storehouse
veranda came the screams of conscious wounded operated on by the doctor. This was an ordnance depot, so ammunition was in plentiful supply. As chaplain, Reverend Smith made his rounds of the barricades in a long black coat, faded green, to pass out cartridges with the Word of God. One soldier was cursing and swearing with every shot.
"My good man, stop that cussing," implored Smith. "We may shortly have to answer for our sins."
"All right, Mister," came the cowed reply. "You do the praying, and I'll send the black Bs to Hell as fast as I can."
With the death of the Induna Craven impaled on his lunger, Prince Dabulamanzi himself had ridden down from Shiyane Hill, and now exhorted his warriors from behind the garden wall. By flouting King Cetshwayo's decree not to enter Natal or attack fortified places, he could only justify his actions with victory. The more anxious he became, the more recklessly he ordered suicide runs. Zulus stamped the ground with one foot while clashing their spears on their shields, then yelling the war cry "uSuthu!" courageous lion hunters rushed the walls again.
The recoil of the Martini-Henry was notorious. The thump, thump, thump with each shot became more and more pronounced as chamber and barrel fouled. Shoulders were now so bruised from four hours of battle that Redcoats alternated sides to fire, or held their rifles at arm's length. Barrels grew so hot that fingers and palms were scorched, so soldiers held them with rags or picked up the weapons of their dead comrades. Heat softened brass casings to jam them in chambers, requiring frantic work with ramrods in the press of attack. Bayonets broke or bent from overuse. Hands were splintered while fumbling for shells in ammunition boxes. Uniforms were tattered and begrimed. Faces were dirty and splashed with blood. The sick and wounded cried out for water, with fighting men seized by that burning thirst the psychic stress of combat afflicts. Some tried to get at the rum cask, but their sergeant would have none of that during duty, and threatened to shoot anyone who swigged. Soon Hook found the cries unbearable, so leaping over the biscuit boxes and sprinting across the yard, he made a sortie to drag back the water cart abandoned near the hospital. Lucky sod, he survived.
Evil Eye Page 16