Basically, he believed.
“You see it?”
She nodded. “I’ll describe him to Marie, but he’s going to be hard to find. He killed her yesterday. Not today.”
“Impossible,” Detweiler said, and then grinned. “All right, all right. The air conditioner, right?”
“It was freezing in here when he killed her. He turned it up so high, it might as well have been February in the middle of Central Park. It kept her fresh.” Cali hated even describing the victim as fresh. But it was true. She was surprised Detweiler hadn’t figured this out.
“So he’s been back at least once to turn off the air conditioning.”
Cali shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t know that. Someone turned it off.” Then she pointed at the closet door. She glanced over at one of the cops. “What’s in there?”
The cop smirked. (They all despise me, she thought.) “Just what you’d think would be in a closet.”
“That’s no answer,” Detweiler said, giving the cop a dismissive look.
“Sir, it has some coat hangers and shoes.”
“Locked or unlocked?” Cali asked.
“Unlocked now,” the cop said, his voice a monotone. He would ignore her and just do his job. “We forced it.”
“Mind if I look?” Cali asked.
“Be my guest,” Detweiler said.
Cali went over and curled her fingers around the glass doorknob. A light shock. She drew her hand back, and then touched it again. A brief vision flared within her mind:
A little boy of eleven or so stood before her in a darkened room. He wore a light coat and jeans and sneakers and a T-shirt with some words on it. What did the T-shirt say? She could see it well. His hair was strawberry blond, and his face was freckled. He had dark circles under her eyes.
Cali knew that the boy was already dead. This was something other than a living being. She had heard about entities, although she had never believed much in them. They were hitchhikers to some extent. They latched on and didn’t let go.
She let go of the doorknob. Without turning around, she said, “A little boy. The name I’m getting is Sam. Maybe Tim. He was about ten or eleven years old. That’s about all I know.”
And then Cali felt something else. Something forbidding. Something dark.
Do not open this door, she told herself. Do not.
She had never felt this before. She had gone into three investigations and had been frightened at times by the visions, but she had never felt this. It was taboo—that was the sense she had. She must not open the door.
She turned back to face Detweiler. She looked up at the faces of the cops. They seemed blank to her. Erased. Something was clouding over in her mind. Something was scratching at her thoughts.
“I ... I can’t open it.”
“Cali?” Detweiler asked.
“It’s unlocked,” one of the cops said.
“No,” Cali said, glancing at the rookie who’d made the comment. Then back at Det. She didn’t want him to see her like this. She was afraid she’d start crying in front of them, and she fought against the tears, because to the cops it would look like weakness and what they’d called “femaleness,” instead of what it was: rage and sadness. Hang tough, Cali. Don’t let them see you break down over this. It’s a vision. It’s an image. Like a movie. It’s not happening right now. It happened a while ago. “You don’t understand. I ... can’t... open ... it. Something ... something’s stopping me.”
And then she felt a gentle touch on her hand.
A child’s voice whispered, Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly. Something grabbing on to her. Holding on. Embracing. Just around her waist. She opened her mouth to scream, but immediately it felt as if a hand had been clapped over her mouth, silencing her.
11
Later, she and Det were having dinner at Big Chef, in Jersey City, a few blocks from her apartment. She had taken him up on his offer to drive her home, and his shyness apparently was eroding, because as soon as they’d passed through the Holland Tunnel he’d asked if she was feeling well enough for dinner, and as soon as she’d said yes, he asked her where the best Chinese restaurant was “out in the Joisey wilderness.” She glanced over at him: He was a Papa Bear, and she liked the feeling of being near him. He was too old for her (that would be what Bev would tell her), even though it was only a ten-year difference. He was too mean for her—he could bark orders to his men far too easily, and sometimes he could be cold toward her, as well. The past two weeks of his no-call streak was good enough for that.
But there was something so compelling about his presence, she could put those other things on hold.
He had this way of cocking his head to the side when he was listening to her that she found endearing, though not exactly reassuring this particular night. His head was going to the side a bit too much, as if he had no way in hell of understanding what she was trying to say.
She let him finish his egg roll before continuing. “All right, here’s what it was like. It was like being taken hostage. By something in that apartment.”
“The killer?”
“No. In fact,” she said, taking a discreet sip of the sweet and sour soup, “I would guess even he’s scared.” She paused, savoring the taste of the soup. “This soup is good. It’s different from the other restaurants around here. Want some?”
“No, thanks.” Det waved away the spoon she offered. “Wait. He’s scared of who?”
“The kid. I’m pretty sure it’s him, although I didn’t see him beyond my initial vision. Maybe our killer killed this boy. Or maybe not. I wish I could be more precise ... but it’s not like that. I want to be careful not to add anything other than what I actually felt.”
“Wait. Gloria Franco didn’t have any kids.”
“Yes, she did.”
“No,” Det said, reaching across the table.
If he touches my hand in condescending sympathy, I’m going to throw soup at him, she thought.
Very lightly, Det touched the ends of her fingers. “She really didn’t. She lived alone. There are no records of her having a kid.”
“So say the neighbors.”
“So says the city of New York.”
“And it’s wrong,” Cali said, bringing her hands into her lap. “She had a baby. Maybe she didn’t acknowledge the boy. Maybe someone else raised him.”
Det nodded. “Okay. So someone else raised it. Or something.”
“A little boy, Det. Not an it. A boy. And thanks for the vote of confidence.”
“Hey, I got all the confidence in the world in yon. You know that.”
“All right, so here’s my guess: He was raised in that apartment. Gloria Franco raised him, and he lived in that closet. Sam. Or Tim.”
“That little ... it’s practically a crawlspace.”
“I’m sure it’s happened at least once in human history,” Cali said. This was one of her favorite phrases to volley back at Det whenever he became incredulous.
“Okay.”
“So this kid is raised practically in secret.”
“Tell me why.”
Cali shrugged. “Who knows? Mama’s crazy. Something’s wrong with the whole picture we have, right? Gloria is murdered. Nothing is taken from the apartment. It’s a fancy—if tacky—apartment, and some of that junk in there would bring in some solid cash. Including all that jewelry she had. As far as we know, it’s a motiveless crime.”
‘There’s always a motive. Even if it’s not apparent. We catch the killer, we know the motive.”
“Maybe. But I have to tell you, I think something else went on in that room that day of the murder.”
“And what’s that?”
Cali held her breath a second before saying it.
Then, “An entity was there. The boy.”
“His ghost?” Det cracked a smile.
“No,” Cali said. “An entity. A being that looked like the boy. Something else. Something I ... well, I don’t understand. I just have heard that they
exist like this. That they don’t let go of something. Or someone.”
12
They made love that night with an intensity that nearly drove her mad. Cali was not one to take lovemaking lightly, and she had only slept with him twice since they’d been working together (fooling herself that it might be love, but she knew it might just be loneliness and lack of planning), but there was an energy she and Det seemed to be creating, in working together. She couldn’t control it, and her heat for him erupted in his sedan that night.
She had told him to pull over, which he did, bewildered though he’d been. She’d wrapped her arms around his waist and leaned into him for what should’ve been a chaste kiss—but it felt like lightning going through her when their lips touched, and she wasn’t sure what was happening or why she felt the steam in her thighs and the thirst in her throat for his love, but she did, and she let it go. She straddled him in the car, neither one drawing their clothing off, but the kisses burned and she felt an animal run loose within her; she saw his eagerness in his eyes and in his returned passion; and her mind seemed to have closed down. Somehow they made it to her apartment, and she raced up the stairs with Det following behind, huffing and puffing a bit because he wasn’t used to running up three flights of a brownstone after a woman. They made it as far as the kitchen table, and she drew him against her, whispering obscenities in his ears, words that she had never dared say aloud—
And somewhere in there, somewhere between raising her hips over his face, between the grunting and groaning and vile whispers, she knew that it was not Cali doing this, it was Gloria Franco, the dead woman. This was her passion, her passion with the man she loved, the man who would kill her. Cali could not control it. Det matched her every move, and turned as she turned, and held tight to her when she bucked backwards against his erection; and the wildness continued like the beat of a heart racing toward attack.
Cali felt drugged and was nearly watching herself ride Det’s body, even the pain she felt, the sharp pains along her wrists and ankles, as if someone was holding her down; even those caused a pleasurable sensation. She closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, the other man—not Det—was inside her, and she looked at her porcelain white arms and her small breasts and the way her hips undulated against him. She turned to him (Cali did, but knew she was Gloria; she had somehow gotten infected with Gloria’s memory in that room of death) and the dark-haired man with the blue piercing eyes reached up and covered her mouth with his large hand, and then the first stab of death came into her.
13
This was not the first time she had felt this strange form of possession by the dead. It had happened early in her career as a psychic, when she held a scarf that had belonged to an elderly man who had gone missing; his essence came into her briefly, and she walked to the end of a pier in Chelsea and was able to show the police the precise spot where he had stood and leaped joyfully to his death. It had taken all she had not to jump in the river at that point, but the dead man had so much bliss upon ending his life—and his pain—that it was fairly easy to resist the pull.
But Gloria Franco was another story. She was an animal of a woman. She was, Cali surmised, ruled by how she felt, by her desires, her hungers.
And she knew something else about Gloria Franco now.
She knew that Gloria Franco had set up her own murder.
14
Det still gasped, practically collapsing on the kitchen floor tiles. “Baby, that was ... you were a lust monster or something.”
“Shocking,” Cali said, feeling suddenly exhausted and reserved. She coughed; felt embarrassed; felt relieved that whatever had been driving her through this sexual frenzy had evaporated like mist. “That’s all we can call it.”
She glanced around the kitchen—her shoes were near the door, her hose hung near the edge of the sink; his gray jacket had been flung down on the small rug next to the kitchen table and his tie and shirt were all crumpled in a corner.
“I’ve never seen you like that,” Det said, sitting up, drawing his slacks back on.
Cali closed her eyes. “That’s because it wasn’t me. It was something else. Maybe Gloria Franco.” That should’ve been a joke, but as soon as she said it, it didn’t sound hilarious at all. It sounded as if it was true.
“Jesus,” Det said, shaking his head.
15
‘That was probably the hottest sex I’ve ever had,” Cali said with some regret, ten minutes later. She had gotten an Amstel Light out of her refrigerator for him. It wasn’t his favorite, but it was all she had in the way of beer. “And I was barely there to enjoy it.” She had slipped into her flannel bathrobe, pulled tight at the waist, and wished she could just cuddle up with him for a while, but she was afraid that something else might come out within her again. She didn’t want to ever feel that way again.
“How’d it happen?” Det asked. He had tried to hug her, or hold her, but she drew away from him each time.
Cali shrugged. “I guess being at the murder scene. Knowing the little boy was in that closet. Knowing more about Gloria than anyone knew ... She was an adrenaline junkie, Det. Gloria wasn’t into sex, she was into annihilation.”
“Don’t worry about that now. Oh, baby, I’m so sorry. If I had known, I would never …” Det said. He reached for her. “If I thought for a second it wasn’t you …”
Cali pulled away. “It felt like …”
Det looked at her, his face shiny with sweat. “Rape?” He cringed a bit when he said it. He took a long swig from the beer bottle.
“No.” Cali shook her head. “Not like that. It felt good, don’t get me wrong. It just ,,, well, it was like someone else was there. Watching me. Feeling what I was feeling. Pushing me on in some way that didn’t feel like me. But not like rape.”
“Jesus,” Det said, wiping his hand across his face. “I wish I had known.”
“How could you have?” Cali said. “As far as you knew, that was all me.” Then she looked directly into his eyes. “Do you love me?”
“You know I do.”
“I feel dirty now,” she said, hugging herself as if she was freezing. “I’d like you to go home now. I feel dirty, and that probably seems dumb, but it just is. Sorry.”
“You sure?”
She nodded.
16
“I hate to leave you alone after this. I feel ... somehow ... responsible,” he said weakly. He was just out the door of her apartment when he turned around. His eyes were so solemn, she wanted to overcome her resistance and just give him a big hug before he left, but she felt cold inside. Cold and yet still very needy. “I feel...”
“How could you be responsible, Det? It was beyond anything I’ve ever felt. Part of me wonders—I mean, right now, I wonder if maybe I didn’t imagine it. Maybe it was me. Maybe it was. But whatever that was, it really wasn’t your doing.”
“I know, but...”
“I’ll be fine,” Cali said. “I’m exhausted.”
“Friday?”
“I’m going up to that house.”
“Oh, yeah. The experiment.”
“Yep.”
“You going to do a broadcast from up there?”
“No. They won’t let me bring anyone. No recording equipment. Nothing.”
“Not even me?”
“No way.” Cali laughed softly.
“How long?”
“Less than a week. Oodles of bucks for a long weekend.”
“Not a bad deal. You think there’ll be ghosts up there?”
Cali paused, trying to block the feeling of having sensed the little boy at the apartment in the Mohegan Hotel. “Not like I believe in ghosts.”
“Okay, whatever. Residue. That’s what you call it, right? Entity and residue.”
“Mmm-mmm. Psychic residue. Like a tape recording. Just like when I hold things.”
“You know,” Det said, a brief hesitation in his voice. “You know, sometimes all this stuff you do frightens me a little. Fo
r your sake. I want... I want you to be happy, Cal.”
“Yeah, I know. Me, too.”
“Sometimes,” he began, but she knew what he would probably say next. Either it was going to be, “Sometimes I don’t know whether to believe you really can do this or if we’re all just fooling ourselves.” Or something along those lines. He’d almost said it before.
“Don’t,” she said. “I’ll see you Monday, and by then you’ll probably have Franco’s killer.” He hadn’t heard her; she shut the door gently; listened for his footsteps as he went down the stairs; she latched the door and turned the dead bolt.
Even locked away in her one-bedroom apartment, Cali didn’t know how she would keep out the dead woman or that little boy.
17
A drink would help.
Beer was not really her drug of choice. She got a bottle of Sterling Vineyard’s merlot from the cabinet under the microwave and managed to uncork it without stabbing her thumb more than twice. The first sip was delicious, and she closed her eyes, just savoring it. It had a warm but crisp flavor, fruity and mild. The second sip made her thirsty, and she drank the rest too fast. A second glass of wine went down smooth, but her nerves remained frazzled. “Don’t get completely drunk just because you’re scared,” she said aloud, as if her own voice would make her feel less alone.
She was almost happy when the phone rang as she was flipping through the cable channels, finding nothing to watch on the nearly seventy channels available to her.
“Okay, the dirt,” her sister said before Cali could get a breath out of her mouth.
“Oh, Bev. It’s been too much of a night.”
“Come on, I want to know. Did you slap him or did you kiss him?”
“What do you think?”
Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite) Page 40