Oscar nodded.
“Anyway, other times I’m, like, following him around, you know? Unsure if he’s awake or dreaming or what—or if I’m seeing into his future, present or past—but I kind of float above his head, like a video camera, watching whatever he does.”
“What does he do?”
“He knows we got his photo album. He was pissed when he found out. He trashed the house and then packed up some important things and left.”
“I know,” Oscar said. “We searched his place—legally. It was a wreck. But somehow he managed to remove anything that could’ve connected him to the murders. We found a bunch of weirdo shit, sure, but nothing bespeaking murder. And if you think he was pissed, you should’ve seen the chief. I’m still in hot water over our breaking-and-entering date.”
He looked at me, perhaps expecting me to commiserate in some way, but I stayed quiet. I had gotten over the politicking of law enforcement a long time ago. I wasn’t about to get sucked into it now.
“What else?” Oscar said. “You see where he went?”
“No. A motel somewhere, I’d imagine. And I had no idea he took any of my photographs. That’s most unsettling. For me, anyway. We got his photos, and now he got mine. Like payback, eye for an eye.”
“Then he spreads them all over his kill,” Oscar said. “A message, maybe?”
“Or a ‘fuck you’. I think he wants me to feel responsible, or at least to be afraid that he will do the same to me.”
“He finds out we got him pegged, takes a hike, holes up in a motel, then commits another murder and litters the scene with clues to let us know he knows that we had him pegged. But why take that risk? Why not hightail it to Mexico?”
I shrugged. “Beats me. I do know one thing. It’s got everything to do with me.”
Just then, Oscar’s iPhone rang. He answered and spoke to someone at the other end for several minutes. I glanced down the bar and saw that Harpers had hit it off with that middle-aged brunette. They were laughing and smoking cigarettes. I stamped my own butt out in the ashtray, feeling altogether smoked out for the time being.
“Someone found her head,” Oscar said, hanging up.
I blinked. “When? Where?”
“You’ll never guess. Madison Oaks Cemetery.”
“Holy shit, that’s where this asshole snapped that photo of me which was in his perverted album.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What are we waiting for?” I jumped up from the stool suddenly and then stopped. “Wait a minute. Let me guess. The place is crawling with your so-called colleagues and so we’ve got to stay put because you’re babysitting me and I’m a goddamn suspect.”
He shook his head, smiling. “Not this time. I was smart. I put a couple of my guys on the phone lines, told them to monitor incoming calls. If they heard anything sounding like it pertained to this case, I instructed them to notify the dispatcher to take no further action, and to assure the dispatcher that they would take it from there. Taking it from there, of course, meant taking it straight to me and no one else. It was a shot in the dark. But we got lucky.”
“You can do that?”
“About as much as you can use the butt of a revolver to smash into a suspect’s house without a search warrant.”
I laughed. “Oscar, you’re a genius.”
“I know. Just don’t spread it around.”
He got up and we made to leave, but turned by the entrance to look at Harpers laughing it up with the brunette.
“Do we wanna say goodbye?” I asked.
Oscar looked at me. “Nah. This’s good for ’im.”
We headed out into the cloudy, starless night.
Chapter Fourteen
Madison Oaks Cemetery was located behind the oldest Catholic church in the city. About as far south of downtown and the legal buildings as one could get.
Oscar and I drove there in my Chevy, drinking drive-thru Starbucks as Oscar filled in the remaining details. By the time we parked in the gloom-shrouded lot of Madison Oaks, it was ten o’clock.
Dark, with no one around, not even much traffic on the adjacent street. Walls of thick oaks, elms and maples hung their branches over the pointed wrought-iron fence surrounding the graveyard. It felt almost silly, again like being in a horror movie, and I even thought I saw mist weaving over the ground.
Remembrance washed over me. “We parked here to see Aunt Sylvia buried that day,” I said. “Our group, mostly friends and distant relatives I’d never met before, entered the grounds through there.”
I pointed to a pair of gates padlocked with a chain. “Sylvia’s back there,” I said. “Buried next to Mom.”
Oscar fidgeted. I could tell he’d entered his überdetective mode, face hardening, fingers twitching toward his piece. The spooky Universal Monsters setting of the cemetery probably had something to do with that.
“Gate’s locked; we’ll need a key,” he said. “Let’s check out the church and find the priest who called it in.”
We followed a sidewalk running parallel to the empty street, beyond which several dilapidated homes stood quietly with TV screens flashing in the windows. There was an occasional abandoned building, façade doused in graffiti, windows boarded up. It was as if this neighborhood, too, had perished and was in its final resting place.
We headed up the steps and stood on the porch. The church was so old its walls appeared blackened. Here and there, noticeable repair jobs stood out. The pointed steeple hovered over our heads like a witch’s finger. The doors were closed, the lights extinguished. I remembered it looking less sinister during the daytime.
Oscar knocked three times, the booms seeming to echo down the block.
“Quasimodo isn’t home,” I joked.
The doors flew open and a thin, baby-faced man dressed in clerical clothing looked out at us. A few dim candles’ light flickered behind him among the pews. “Yes?”
Oscar showed his badge and ID. “I’m Detective Patterson and this is my associate, Jack Evens. We’re here about the call.”
The priest tensed. “You do mean…” his voice dropped, “…the head, don’t you?”
Oscar flashed me a glance, then nodded. “That’s right.”
The priest blew a breath of anxiety. “Good. Oh God, good. That’s good to hear.”
His eyes flicked to me. “You look familiar.”
“We’ve met before,” I said. “My mother, Alice Steinman, and her sister, Sylvia Steinman, are buried over in the cemetery. My aunt only a month or so ago.”
He scrutinized me before raising a hand and snapping fingers. “Now I remember. Good to see you again. Please wait here. Church is closed, you know.”
He disappeared inside, closing the doors and leaving us on the porch.
Oscar looked at me again, shrugging his shoulders, raising his eyebrows humorously. “Steinman? What happened to Evens?”
“Mom went back to her maiden name after Dad died. I don’t think it was anything personal, just a way of reconnecting with her sister, I’d imagine. She let me keep his name, of course. In commemoration.”
The priest returned and joined us, locking the doors behind him. He introduced himself as Father Winterby, shook our hands and asked us to follow him into the cemetery. He flipped on a flashlight and took the lead.
“We keep it locked at night,” he said, as he opened the gate I had pointed out to Oscar. “We’ve had trouble with vagrants getting in, desecrating graves. The gates, fences and locks are relatively new, but they are supposed to keep them out. They usually work like a charm. There have been no campsites, no more fires or defecation stains, no discarded syringes, beer cans or pornography.”
Father Winterby led us along a well-worn path between the cloistered, silent trees. The branches stood out garishly against the fanning beam of his flashlight. I abruptly felt oppressed by the ab
undance of foliage, as if we were being collapsed and shrunken, forced down into the earth. It was a bizarre sensation, and just when I thought I could stand it no longer, we emerged into the meandering graves.
“I fear now,” the priest continued, “with the grisly discovery this evening, that even all of our precautions are no longer enough. We will be forced to use more of the church’s money, of which there is little these days, in order to find a better way of keeping out the riffraff.”
“Have you thought of upgrading to a modern security system?” I asked. “Closed-circuit television, video surveillance, that sort of thing?”
“Of course. But that technology isn’t cheap. We had hoped to avoid having to spend that kind of money. I think now it’s unavoidable. I remember when I was growing up; the thought of paying for surveillance to keep watch over our church never would’ve crossed our minds. Things were different back then. We didn’t even lock our doors.”
“How about asking some of the relatives who have family members buried here?” I said. “I’d donate. I had no idea you had such a problem. I don’t want my mom’s headstone being used as a jerk-off stool.”
Oscar growled under his breath. “Christ,” he whispered.
The priest gave me a slightly concerned glance over his shoulder. “Yes, that is one idea,” he said.
Oscar followed his look, frowning, shaking his head. I mouthed him a What? But he only shook harder. My statement had left an awkward breach among the three of us, but Oscar quickly recovered.
“So you found the remains, right, Father?” he said.
“Yes. I was making my rounds this evening and came across it.”
“How’d you find it?”
“I smelled it. I was patrolling for vagrants, wasn’t finding any, but when I noticed that smell I thought surely some had gotten in. A vile odor, the smell of death—hard to describe. I’ve been here for so long that I’ve mostly become immune to it. Unless it’s fresh. One never grows immune to fresh death.”
He paused, indicating a tiny, wood-fastened crucifix erected by an aging oak tree. “That’s where we buried my cat last winter,” he said suddenly, growing wistful. “His name was Al. He was pure white. We found him under one of the church buildings one morning.”
“How did he die?” I asked.
Winterby looked at me and shrugged. I could see tears trying to well in his eyes. “We still don’t know.”
He started walking again. We passed through a zigzagging column of headstones so old I could hardly discern the names and dates. Several boasted medium-sized angels, lambs and crucifixes. The coming autumn had scattered leaves over the graves, obscuring all of the flat markers. I was trying to locate the section where my mom and aunt were buried, but wasn’t having much luck. The cemetery proved disorienting in the dark.
“I was convinced one of the vagrants had died on the grounds,” the priest went on. “That happened once before, years back. Poor fellow overdosed on heroin and died under an elm. The men who cleaned him up made a joke about simply digging a spot right there and tossing him in. I told them that wasn’t possible.”
We entered a newer—or wealthier—section of the cemetery, where impressive polished marble shouted names at us from the past. It was interesting to observe the change from modest, almost-nondescript burials, to the lavishly adorned tombs and mausoleums, and I brooded on the inevitable egoity of mankind. And I’d started to smell the stench he was describing, or else I was imagining it just by him talking about it.
“I searched for a body,” the priest said, “and tracked the smell here—to the rear perimeter fence. I was about to give up and come back with help when I saw it. But there wasn’t any body.” He stopped.
I definitely smelled it now. A sick, syrupy putrescence. I looked at Oscar and saw he was covering his mouth.
Father Winterby trained his flashlight toward the cluster of ferns growing up around the wrought-iron fence. Beyond lay a dark street devoid of lights and traffic.
“It’s there,” he said, playing the beam on the bushes.
“You didn’t touch it, did you?” Oscar said.
“No. When I saw it, I turned around and went back to call the police. I have to warn you, it is not a pretty sight. There’s something…carved into the forehead.”
“Carved?” I said.
He glanced at me. “I believe so. A word, or maybe a symbol. I couldn’t make it out and I didn’t stick around to try.”
I nodded, rubbing my hands together. Breathing normally had suddenly become difficult. My head throbbed with a burgeoning migraine. I focused on the sensation of heat in my hands to stay focused.
“Can I borrow your flashlight, Father?” Oscar said.
“Of course.”
He handed it over, and Oscar approached the clump of ferns, keeping the beam in front of him. When he reached the foliage he got down on his knees and continued ahead. He disappeared into the bushes.
A moment later: “Jack? Could you come here, please?”
I glanced at the priest, who regarded me impassively, and then walked closer to the ferns on legs made of jelly. I could see Oscar’s bulky hindquarters poking out through the bushes, and I got down on all fours, crawling in next to him.
“Fancy meeting you here,” I said.
He eyed me soberly. Then he nodded farther into the foliage.
What I saw sent the sharpest dagger of dread into my stomach.
A slumping severed head of a young blonde rested in the dirt. It appeared rather lumpish around the edges, reminding me of a discarded pumpkin that had gone to rot. Even the skin color had taken on an orangey tinge.
I stared at the head. The cheeks were puffy but clearly hardened around bloated lips, the jaws slightly parted, teeth visible, tongue protruding. The nose appeared mashed and bruised, as if the woman had endured a fierce beating before she died. Her blue eyes had noticeable scarring damage directly on the pupils. They were aimed toward each other and down, giving the slight appearance of a moronic hillbilly.
In the center of her forehead, screaming out like some grotesque billboard advertisement, was my name carved in the flesh. The letters were remarkably well drawn and legible, given the materials he had to work with.
“Party never stops,” I said.
Oscar reached out and dug his fingers between the woman’s lips, prying the jaws open.
I did my best not to vomit, but I did feel my stomach go topsy-turvy. The smell was so intense and clear here that I was breathing predominately through the mouth.
“There’s something there,” Oscar said.
“What happened to not touching anything?”
He gave me cold silence as he gently extracted a piece of what I took to be folded card stock from the dead mouth. Once he had it, he turned to me and nodded back the way we’d come, and we crawled out of the ferns.
Still holding the flashlight, Oscar unfolded the card stock and revealed its true nature as a Polaroid photograph. I spotted some writing on the back, but he turned it over before I could read what it said.
The image was very familiar to me: Jean and me on our wedding day, in full dress and tux at the reception. It suddenly occurred to me that Jean’s mother had taken the shot. I tried just as hurriedly to forget it.
On seeing the image, I got a mental flash of holding Jean in my arms some night or other and what it felt like, how she smelled, tasted—how we’d once been in love. It left me feeling cold and unsettled.
This was followed by another impression, a feeling of doom, gloom and terror rising up from the depths of my soul. I saw the man from my dreams, the one perching over my open grave, looking down at me like a divine judge in heaven. The killer of God knows how many women. The one through whom powers of darkness worked their way into this world.
As I saw him, there arose a sense of unequivocal knowing that this
demonic individual was in the cemetery with us—at that very moment—that he had devised the whole situation to get us here, like this, just so he could put an end to us. The realization nearly made me lose my bladder.
“He’s here,” I said, blurting the words when I had meant to whisper them.
Oscar rigidified. “What? Where?”
“In the cemetery. That’s all I know. I’m positive.”
He nodded. Once, like a soldier. Recalling his military youth, most likely.
“Turn the photo over,” I said.
He did. We both stared at the sequence of seven numbers, hyphenated toward the middle, and the single word underneath: Call.
“I’ll be damned,” Oscar said.
We both seemed to remember Father Winterby at the same moment and swung our heads to where he had stood…but found the place vacant.
“Father?” Oscar called. “Yo…Father?”
“Maybe he went back to the church,” I said.
“Maybe. But without his flashlight?”
“I imagine he knows the way.”
Oscar handed the light to me and drew his piece, what looked like a full-size Beretta 9 mm.
“There’s something fine,” I said.
He grinned at me. “You still got that .45?”
I nodded, pulling back my coat flap and unholstering the hefty weapon. The leaded weight felt good in my hands.
Oscar looked at it and nodded. “Better have it ready.”
“What’s the plan? Do we call the number?”
Oscar frowned thoughtfully. “You say he’s here?”
“He’s here.”
“Let’s make our way back to the church then. I don’t like this darkness and all these trees and tombs. Too much cover. He could be anywhere. You be the light man, Jack.”
I shined the priest’s light into the darkness and started us on our way.
Chapter Fifteen
Within ten minutes I’d gotten us basically lost. I’d thought I was following gravestones which I recognized, but I’d forgotten to take into account the fact that all the headstones pretty much looked alike. The abundance of trees and other plant life didn’t help, either.
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