There’d be a lot more tears ahead, she knew that. But they’d make it. They truly would.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
It had been a long walk back from the canyon to the edge of town where her destination lay. Amara walked on, untiring, indefatigable. The baby hung by one arm, its feet sometimes catching the grass with a whispery sound.
All the time the moon burned down, sending a silvery light through Amara’s empty eye sockets. When she turned her head in that predatory way, the copper hair swished in waves down her back.
Once a feral cat, attracted by the smell of the baby, padded up close behind her as she walked. It closed in, attracted by the faint odor of milk still clinging to the infant.
The cat slinked in closer, its eyes on the silhouette of the figure with the moon shining behind it.
The cat moved noiselessly, confident that its presence was undetected.
Closer, closer. Its nose almost brushed the head of the baby as it swung backward and forward.
The silhouette of the human moved quickly, yet with a smooth rhythmic walk. The cat’s sensitive nostrils picked up strange scents from the human. It didn’t have the same odors that it was accustomed to.
Its nose touched the head of the baby; it chanced an appraising lick.
At that moment the figure turned on the cat, the hair flaring out; an explosion of blazing copper. The human head lunged at the cat, lips curling back, baring teeth that smelt of congealing blood.
The cat screeched. Turned. Bolted into undergrowth.
Presently the mummy neared the brilliant lights of buildings. Before the track ended, it turned and walked through a broken section of fence into an overgrown field. She walked smoothly, unhindered by the vegetation.
The field ended.
She walked across the asphalt of the deserted parking lot to the building.
Once there, she scraped at the museum’s rear door. Her fingernails left score marks. She found the knob, as if by accident, and pulled. The door stayed shut.
In the distance dogs began to howl. Every animal in the neighborhood raised its snout to the moon. Soon the howling of dogs filled the air in eerie chorus.
Amara pulled at the door again, then staggering away from it, she wandered in circles. Now her movements were aimless. Weak.
She pushed her way into a thick border of geraniums. There she lay down on the dirt.
She hugged the baby to her breasts.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Virginia returned to the basement where she’d been held all these weeks. Light burned brightly. The cages were empty now. She stood for a moment breathing the scent of the place. That same smell was in her skin now. She’d smelled it as she’d walked from the house and into the canyon, trying to find her way back to the city.
For some reason she’d found herself sitting on a rocky bluff gazing at the city lights for a long time. Then she’d turned around.
Returned to her place of torture.
Now she stood in the void of the basement. Two torn corpses lay on the floor. Streams of crimson congealed on concrete.
Without even thinking it through… without thinking what she was doing or why she was doing it, she entered the cage that had once imprisoned her.
She sat down cross-legged on the foam mattress. She gazed up at the hairbrush, toothbrush, and water bottles hanging from cords tied to the cage’s roof crossbars. This was a horrible place. But somehow outside—and freedom—seemed even more horrible. Inside here, there were strict rules and order. Outside in the city, there was lawlessness and disorder.
She closed her eyes. That’s the way she stayed until she heard a faint moan.
She looked dead. She ought to be dead.
The stake was a bitch to remove as well. Ed Lake should have been proud of the barb he’d carved into the stool leg. It had worked well. The harpoon had gone in deep. It had lodged tight. Virginia had to work hard to loosen it from the woman’s throat.
An inch either way, it would have gone either through the windpipe or through the major arteries. As it was, it had lodged in soft muscle tissue.
After a great deal of work the blind woman lay on the bed, her throat wadded and bandaged. A little blood had seeped into the white crepe.
Virginia watched the blind woman sleeping on the bed. Her respiration wasn’t at all deep, but it was regular. The woman’s eyelids were black, the lips blue, and her skin white as porcelain through blood loss. But with rest, along with plenty of fluids, she’d make up the lost blood inside a few days. The wound would heal.
Virginia walked around the house. She soon saw that the woman lived alone. The one she and Ed had referred to as “the warder” was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she just dropped in on an occasional basis to help out.
Letters on a bureau soon gave Virginia her one-time captor’s name. April Vallsarra.
Knowing the name was important to Virginia. She rolled it around her mouth, repeating it as she climbed the stairs back to the bedroom. “April Vallsarra… April Vallsarra…”
When she reached April’s bedroom, she went to the woman’s bed and sat down on it.
April was beautiful. Her complexion flawless.
Then some thoughts came to her that were startling.
Virginia had never experienced such an intense relationship before as the one with April Vallsarra. What’s more, Virginia realized she didn’t care for her old home, or her day job.
“Hell, I might live to regret this,” she told herself as she gazed down at April. “But I’ve reached a decision.”
Virginia leaned forward to kiss the sleeping woman on the lips and whispered, “I’m staying with you.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
The large brown dog named George pushed through the weeds to the edge of the parking lot. He stopped on the asphalt, and sniffed the air.
Then he trotted to the rear door of the museum. He sniffed the seam at its bottom, his tail swishing.
Backing off, he sat down. He stared at the door. He barked impatiently.
A sound in the bushes caught his attention. He cocked an ear toward it, still watching the door. When the sound came again, he got up to explore.
He walked along, nose to the asphalt, sides heaving as he sniffed. Sometimes a snorting sound escaped his mouth as the scent grew stronger.
Near the geranium border, he began to growl. A thick strip of fur bristled upright on the nape of his neck. The growl rumbling deep in his throat, he sprang into the bushes.
For a few seconds, the night’s quiet was broken by the clamor of the dog: his barks, snarls, his yelps of pain. The flowers swished, petals flew.
Then he backed out of the bushes, tail down. He swung round and ran across the parking lot, favoring his left foreleg. Halfway across the lot, he stopped and looked back as if to check that he wasn’t being followed.
Then he broke into a run again, dragging the baby by its leg.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
“What do you make of it, Miss Connors?”
Susan shook her head, frowning at Vasquez. “I don’t know what to think. Officer Kraus’s description does seem to fit the mummy. Apparently there’s also some evidence that Amara was involved in the museum deaths.”
“Do you honestly believe… no, I can’t even ask. It’s too…” He fished for the appropriate word. “Outlandish. The fact is, though, that unless Kraus has completely lost his marbles, our suspect has a physical appearance similar to your missing… artifact. Do you have photos of the thing?”
“At the museum.”
“All right. I’d like you to go over there and get them. We’ll run them by Kraus and see what he has to say. If he gives us a positive make, we’ll want to run off duplicates for my men.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “We’ll be here another half hour or so wrapping things up. Can you get back here by then?”
“No problem. We can make it in ten, fifteen minutes.”
“Excellent.”
As they left the house, Lenny Fa
rrel of Eyewitness News rushed across the yard. “Mrs. Connors! A few questions, Mrs. Connors!”
“We’re in a hurry,” she called back.
He kept coming. Tag pointed at his face. Farrel stopped and stood motionless as if frozen in place. Only when Tag lowered his arm did the newsman move. He turned away, muttering to his cameraman.
“Persistent bastard,” Tag said.
“It’s his job.”
“He can have it.”
Tag opened the car door for Susan and she climbed in. He pushed it gently until it latched. At his own side, he took the same care to make as little noise as possible. He leaned across the seat to look at Geoffrey. Susan uncovered the baby’s face.
“Still asleep,” she said.
“That kid’ll sleep through anything.”
“Pretty near. Once he’s zonked out, he’s out for the night. Till daybreak at least.”
Tag started the car.
“Nothing wakes him up but his stomach.”
“I’m the same way,” Tag said, pulling away from the curb.
With the night still warm, they drove with the convertible’s top locked back. Tag took it nice and steady so as not to disturb the baby despite what Susan had told him about the way the baby slept. The warm slipstream feathered their hair.
Susan reached under her seat and picked up the journal. “Wish I had time to read all this.”
“Plenty of time later.”
“Later might be too late.” She opened the journal to the page where she had left off, and used Tag’s flashlight to continue reading above the gentle rush of air through the open-top car. “ ‘She is of the dead who lives,’” she read aloud.
“Great.”
“ ‘The banished god Set, slayer of Osiris, he came in the night to Amara… gave her the seed of his loins, that she might bear him a son. In return for her favors, he promised Amara the gift of eternal life.’”
Tag shook his head. Concentrated on the road in front of him.
Susan read on in silence.
Then they reached the museum driveway. The car’s lights shone on the pair of mock-Egyptian columns that flanked it.
“Go on to the back. We’ll take the rear stairs. It’ll be quicker.”
“What about the guards?”
“Aren’t any. Blumgard decided against it after what happened last night. I think he feels responsible for those poor guys. Doesn’t want any more killings on his conscience.”
Tag drove around the side of the building to the deserted parking lot in the rear. He pulled up to the back door of the museum and shut off the engine.
They climbed from the car into the moonlit lot.
“Look,” Tag said.
In the field beyond them were the distant, sweeping beams of half-a-dozen flashlights. Far across it, Susan saw the spinning lights of patrol cars.
“Hang on a second,” Tag muttered. He opened the trunk of this car. “Somewhere in all this junk… in case Amara’s returned to her lair…”
Standing beside Tag, Susan watched him push aside a sleeping bag, a coil of rope, a pack of road flares, a first-aid box, tools, hiking boots, odds and ends of clothing. He pulled out a hatchet. “Bullets might not stop her, but I bet this will. This was my grandfather’s; he’d keep it as sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel.” He touched the keen edge. “I try my best to keep it as old Grandpa would have wanted.” Shooting her a smile, he tossed its leather sheath into the trunk, then closed the lid.
“Want me to get your keys?” he asked.
She nodded. Tag opened the purse that hung from her shoulder as she held Geoffrey in her arms. The kid didn’t peep. He slept the sleep of the innocent.
Tag looked in the purse. “Phew. A lot of junk in here.”
“Not as bad as your trunk.”
“Ah.” He pulled out the key ring and held it in front of her eyes.
“Third from the left… no, your left.”
“Got it.”
He pinched it away from the others and led the way to the door.
He turned the key in the lock and pulled. The door opened noiselessly, releasing a wave of cooler air from within.
He held the door open for Susan.
She entered, the baby held securely in her arms. Her eyes immediately lowered to the concrete floor where the guard named Beckerman had been found. In the light of the new bulb overhead, she saw that the area had been cleaned. A shaded area remained on the concrete, though—it would probably always be there.
She climbed the stairs behind Tag. They reached the first landing. Where Gonzalez had died. His blood was no longer visible on the green paint on the wall, but it lent a rust tint to the porous concrete at her feet.
Turning, she followed Tag up the next flight of stairs. Hatchet in hand, shirttail half untucked, he might have been a maniac in a horror film. Even the shadow he cast became a menacing doppelganger.
Nicholson in The Shining, she thought.
Come and take your punishment, Susan.
Gonna crack your head good and hard, girl.
Gonna feel your entrails tonight…
Damn, imagination. Slippery as I don’t know what.
Every shadow seemed to harbor some waiting demon.
Now she couldn’t look at her lover without seeing him as some homicidal maniac with his grandpa’s hatchet.
Why isn’t Tag saying anything?
What’s gotten into him?
The spirit of a dead murderer. Redrum, Susan, redrum…
She hugged Geoffrey more tightly to her chest, ready to take the hatchet blows to her own back rather than allow them to fall on her son’s unprotected head.
No.
Just her stupid imagination.
Tag’s probably nervous too.
Not like him to be so quiet.
“Tag?”
“Huh?”
“You okay?”
“Just hoping the goddamn thing doesn’t come charging down at us.”
“Lovely thought.”
“Isn’t it, though.”
“Just give the gal forty whacks.”
“Sure.”
“I don’t think she can be in here. She hasn’t got keys.”
“If a four-thousand-year-old mummy can walk around biting people, maybe she doesn’t need keys.”
“Walks through walls?”
“Why not?”
“Yeah.”
“Wish we hadn’t brought Geoffrey,” he told her.
“Wish you hadn’t said that.”
“If…”
“What?”
“If something does happen, take him and run. Don’t look back. Don’t stick around to see how things turn out. Okay?”
She clutched her baby more tightly. Just hearing the words made her skin crawl. “Okay.”
He reached the upstairs door, opened it.
Peered out.
“Looks all right.”
Susan was glad to get out of the stairwell. Just for a moment back there, the walls seemed to be closing in on her. Her heartbeat was so loud, she thought the noise would wake Geoffrey snuggled against her breast.
She hurried along the corridor, staying close to Tag’s side. At the door to her office, she pointed out the correct key. Tag slid it into the lock. Opened the door. He turned on the lights and they entered.
Tag held the baby, supporting its head in the crook of his elbow, while Susan went through the file cabinet. She flipped through the folders, found one bearing Amara’s name, and slid it out. She checked it. The photographs of the mummy were inside. “Okay. Let’s go.”
She took back her sleeping baby. Switching off the lights, they left the office.
“Wait here a second,” Tag said. “I want to take another look at the coffin.”
“What for?”
“See if she’s there.”
“Oh, Tag.”
“The old bird might have come home to roost.”
“The museum door was locked. She couldn’t—”
“I’ll go with you then.”
They walked further up the corridor. Tag shined his flashlight into the Callahan Room. “Wait here,” he said, and stepped over the rope cordon.
She watched him cross the room, the beam of his light sweeping its corners, illuminating faces of statues—animals, men, gods… demons—the painted eyes stared back. Finally he aimed the beam down into the open coffin.
Suddenly feeling a chill on her back, she whirled around. She gazed down the dark hall, but saw nothing.
Nothing but shadows. Nothing but gloomy doorways. Moonlight glinted through window glass.
Far away, just on the edge of her hearing, she heard a dog howl.
Stepping to the rail, she looked down at the gallery below. There were figures down there, but they were all carved from stone. Nothing moved.
Tag climbed over the cordon.
“Nobody’s home,” he told her. “Coffin’s empty.”
“Now can we go?” Susan asked.
“Sure.”
“Let’s take the front way. I don’t think my nerves can handle the stairwell again.”
“Fine.” He shot her a reassuring smile.
They walked silently down the carpeted corridor, and down the sweeping main stairs. She chose a key for Tag once again, and soon they were exiting through one of the broad glass doors. Susan breathed deeply of the warm night air. “Feels good to get out here,” she murmured.
“It’ll feel even better getting home.”
They walked down the concrete steps. She missed one, tumbled forward. Tag reached out for her.
Missed her.
She turned in midair, determined not to fall on Geoffrey. As she went down, the walkway pounded her shoulder, her hip. Her neck muscles took a savage yank. She rolled onto her back. Geoffrey squawled.
“You okay?” Tag asked, concerned. He crouched over her, helping her.
“I think so. Christ, what a klutz.”
He helped her to her feet.
She cradled Geoffrey, patted his back. “It’s all right, honey,” she whispered. “It’s all right. There, there…” To Tag she said, “Scared the hell out of the little guy.”
TO WAKE THE DEAD Page 34