Pale as Death

by Heather Graham

  They were halfway to the church and graveyard when Sophie’s phone rang; it was Captain, reporting that Grace Leon’s car had been found.

  Her car was found parked in a lot—not back in Malibu, but off Sunset.

  “She must have left the inn, headed in to meet Perry Sykes as she said she was going to—and then been waylaid,” Sophie said. “Bruce, Henry was at the play. He drove there with Lee Underwood and Dr. Thompson.”

  “And they all had plenty of time to get back here. An hour out to Malibu, maybe, maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less,” he said. “Any of them might have taken Grace.”

  “How could she have been fooled by any of them? And why in God’s name—knowing what happened to Lili Montana and Brenda Sully—would she go with anyone?”

  “Maybe he’s changing up his operation,” Bruce suggested. “We know that Brenda and Lili were lured first to the studio. Then, they were taken for their ‘audition’ to the graveyard.”

  “How the hell does this guy have a key?” Sophie murmured.

  He glanced her way. “How the hell did he have a key to your apartment?”

  “Because he is someone I work with,” she said.

  They had reached the graveyard. He barely drew the car to a halt; Sophie was out of it.

  She was already heading toward the place in the old stone wall where they had gone over before.

  He had to hurry to get the key out of the ignition and run to her side. She was waiting; he hopped up and reached down for her.

  They made it up on the wall and then hopped down into the graveyard. As they made their way through the shrubs and broken stones toward the church and the Johnstone set of family tombs, Sophie was whispering urgently.

  “Michael! Ann Marie! Where are you?”

  She stopped dead, staring at the Johnstone tomb.

  “Michael!”

  Bruce started studying the tomb. It was possible that there was some kind of a secret closure on one of what appeared to be cement sarcophagi—but it did seem that they were solid and aged. They had figured that the opening had to be at one of the ends.

  He started to move around the tomb, but the ghost of Michael Thoreau—hand in hand with the ghost of Ann Marie—was hurrying toward Sophie.

  “Hey!” Michael said.

  “What’s gone on here tonight?” Sophie asked.

  Michael looked at Ann Marie, shrugging as he looked back at Sophie.

  “Um—nothing,” Michael said.

  “That we know about,” Ann Marie said.

  “There haven’t been any screams? Nothing? Did anyone open the gate?” Sophie demanded.

  “Um...” Michael said.

  “We didn’t hear any screams. We would have heard screams,” Ann Marie said.

  Michael admitted, “We weren’t by the gate. We were...we’ve been talking and working on...”

  “He’s been teaching me how to concentrate and appear—to those who can see us. We’ve been very busy,” Ann Marie said.

  “No screams,” Sophie said, and she appeared to be perplexed. “Oh, Bruce, if I am wrong, if there’s nothing out here, no one out here...”

  “No screams,” Bruce said. “But if Michael and Ann Marie weren’t paying attention...”

  “Damn, we’re so sorry,” Michael said, horrified. “But honestly...”

  “What if he has another girl?” Ann Marie asked, stricken.

  “Still, we should have heard,” Michael said.

  “Not if he was quick—as he would have been,” Bruce said. He looked at Sophie, and she knew that she was really worried.

  For Grace Leon, first.

  And then, of course, if she didn’t find anything here, her credibility would wind up being in question.

  “We’re going to find something,” he said, determined. He gave her a serious nod. “We will find something. We will find Grace.”

  Alive! he prayed.

  As he made his way around the steps, he forced himself to use logic. Grace Leon was missing—and she should have been with Perry Sykes.

  But then again, they didn’t know Grace.

  Maybe she’d changed her mind.

  Maybe she had gone to the home of a girlfriend.

  But she wasn’t answering her phone. She wasn’t responding to texts. And her car had been abandoned.

  Bruce could hear a car door opening and closing from somewhere; Jackson and the FBI or more members of the police department must have arrived.

  He was at the head of the tomb. He scanned it, then began to touch it. The damned thing just appeared to be sealed cement.

  “Bruce!”

  Sophie called out to him from around the other end of the stacked tombs.

  “Bruce!”

  The last call of his name sounded...breathless.

  Almost...

  Strangled off.

  He ran around the tomb as quickly as he could.

  Well, he hadn’t found the entrance. Sophie had.

  She’d pushed...and the wall of “cement” had swung inward, revealing...

  Steps.

  Down into stygian darkness.

  But...

  No Sophie.

  She had disappeared. Right down the flight of stone steps that led into that hellhole of black.

  * * *

  Sophie gasped, trying to regain her breath. She felt like an idiot; she’d pushed hard—and fallen.

  The impetus of her own weight had brought her careening down the stairs.

  She moved each of her limbs; she was all right. She fumbled in the darkness, finding her penlight.

  Even as she did so, she was aware of an odor. It was an odor of rot and decay, an odor of the earth...and more.

  It was the smell of rot. Rotting, putrid blood.

  She sat up and leaped quickly to her feet, looking around. At first, her little light did little. She saw the death of decades; family members in broken, rotting coffins, the stacks inside the catacomb built to align with the steps outside and above the ground. Some had been interred and then cement closed over the coffin slots.

  Some...just lay there.

  A bony hand, barely connected to bony arm through mummified flesh, dangled from one. The rot had touched everything.

  That was time. The ravages that time played upon human flesh.

  She heard a squeal; a rat raced over her foot.

  She played her flashlight more deeply into the tomb.

  And then, she saw her.

  A woman, alive, her clothing half ripped from her body, and tied down on what should have been a cover to a tomb. Her hands had been stretched high above her head and tied, her feet had been trussed together, and then tied to some kind of stakes that protruded from the makeshift marble bed.

  “My God!” Sophie breathed. She started to race forward; she stopped, going for her gun, and then waving her light around the place.

  “Sophie!”

  She heard Bruce; he was calling to her frantically.

  “Here! I’m here,” she cried. “Hurry!”

  She could hear his footsteps on the stone stairs that led down.

  Having sent her light over the space and finding no one else—no one living at least—she hurried toward the woman who was tied to the slab.

  It was Grace. As she reached her, Grace started to scream.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right,” Sophie said. “It’s Detective Manning. You’re all right.”

  “No, no, no, no!” Grace cried, ripping against her restraints. “Help, oh, God, help me, help me, help me!”

  “I’m trying to help you!” Sophie declared.

  Grace looked at Sophie. Her eyes were wild and disoriented.

  Sophie dug in her pocket for a knife and slit the bindings holding Grace; she had managed to cut her a
rms free when Bruce reached her. He pulled his pocketknife out and freed her from the ropes about her legs.

  Grace tried to sit up. Sophie reached for her; Bruce dialed for an ambulance, but of course, by then, it seemed that sirens were screaming all around the street.

  “You...who...oh, God, oh, God, where am I?” She looked around, and a scream tore from her lips.

  She started to fight Sophie. “No, no, no, please, God, don’t hurt me, don’t...”

  “It’s Detective Manning, Grace. I’m not going to hurt you. But who did this? Who brought you here? Please, Grace...”

  “My car... Perry... I have to meet Perry... No, no, no... I don’t know...”

  “We’re not going to get anything from her right now. Maybe later,” Bruce said. “Sophie, she has to get to a hospital.”

  “Of course,” Sophie said. She tried to help Grace. She was strong, but Grace was dead weight, barely coherent, and fighting her, though Sophie doubted that she meant to.

  Bruce stepped in.

  As he lifted Grace up, Sophie saw that she was covered in earth and dust and...something red.

  And then she realized. It was the blood she had smelled.

  Not so fresh, after a week.

  Blood.

  Blood...probably belonging to Lili or Brenda.

  Sticky...dried, rotting...

  She swallowed hard.

  She had to remember that they had just found Grace alive. And finding the young woman alive...

  “Let’s get her up,” Bruce said.

  “They’re coming.”

  The sirens were now almost deafening.

  Sophie used her light to illuminate the steps first for Bruce, who made his way up carrying the wildly mumbling and flailing Grace Leon. She followed behind him, but then paused.

  They’d found Grace.

  Thank God, they had found her alive.

  But they had found her alone.

  There was no trace of the killer.

  How the hell had he gotten Grace down there—and how the hell had he gotten out and gotten away so quickly?

  They reached the top step and were back out in the night air—air that now seemed incredibly cool and sweet.

  The police had simply used a metal cutter on the gate; cops, forensic people and others were quickly flooding the graveyard.

  Luckily, paramedics were already with them. Bruce handed Grace over to one of the young men; he quickly laid her down while his partner joined him, calling in to speak with a doctor as others came forward with a gurney.

  Jackson Crow stood at the no-longer hidden door to the tomb.

  “Anything?” he asked Bruce.

  Bruce shook his head. “Sophie?”

  “No. She thought I was going to hurt her.”

  Bruce shook his head. “Don’t know with what, don’t know how badly, but this time, she was drugged. She may know something, but I think that she was attacked, and didn’t see whoever took her, and I think she was just coming to when Sophie went flying down into the tomb.”

  How did he know that she hadn’t simply walked down the steps? Ah, probably the dust and grime and tomb rot that was surely covering her now.

  “I’ll go to the hospital with Grace,” Jackson offered.

  “Sophie may want—”

  “No,” Sophie said quickly. “I need to get back down there, Bruce.”

  He looked at her. “I intend to search, you know.”

  One paramedic was receiving instructions from the doctor who would meet them at the hospital. Sophie heard him giving details about Grace’s pulse and other vital signs.

  Then they were carrying her away to the waiting ambulance.

  Jackson hurried after.

  Captain Chagall had arrived and hurried over to Sophie.

  “You found her! Alive. Is the killer here?”

  She shook her head. “He’s got to be somewhere close. But I don’t know where. I’m going to get back down there. I need a floodlight.”

  “Floodlight!” Chagall called out.

  An officer, grim and pale, hurried over to her with a large floodlight. She turned, allowing the light to flood the tomb.

  “More lights!” Chagall called out. “Sophie, careful what you touch. McFadden, will you go with her?”

  “Yes, Captain, of course!” Bruce said, following Sophie down.

  Someone from the forensic team, a paper mask over his nose and mouth, gloves on his hands and paper booties over his shoes, came hurrying after them.

  “Detective Manning!”

  It was Lee Underwood. She had a feeling that he’d just been dragged out of bed to be here.

  “Gloves, Sophie, Bruce.”

  Sophie accepted them, sliding them on quickly.

  Another light flooded the place.

  Chagall was descending the stairs with his own flashlight.

  Sophie began to explain. “We found her on that slab. It’s been set up on broken tombstones. And there...not sure what those spikes are at each end. Her hands were tied over her head, the ropes attached to that spike. Her feet were bound together, and then attached down there, to that spike.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Lee Underwood swore. He’d backed into an old coffin, right at the place where an earthquake had broken up the concrete seal. The coffin bounced out and to the floor.

  A skeleton, with partially mummified skin and tattered remnants of clothing, burst out of the decaying coffin.

  “Underwood. What the hell?” Chagall said.

  “Captain, not his fault—it’s all decayed down here,” Sophie said.

  “There’s blood all over. We need samples, tons of them,” Chagall said. “We need fibers, hair, you name it. Underwood, get your boss, get everyone—and quit knocking the long-dead around, all right?”

  “Yes, sir!” Underwood said.

  Someone else was coming down the steps, an officer, with yet more light.

  He was followed by Henry Atkins.

  “Grace Leon, alive. Thank God.” He saw Sophie and beamed. “You saved her—I just got the call from Captain.”

  “Kenneth Trent called Sophie,” Bruce explained.

  “But...how did he know?” Henry asked, bewildered.

  “He just knew that she wasn’t where she was supposed to be,” Bruce explained.

  He was studying Henry.

  It appeared that Henry had just been awakened.

  As they all had been.

  “Where did he go?” Sophie murmured. “The killer...he got her here. And then...where the hell did he go?”

  “Sophie, you’re something. How did you find this place?” Henry asked.

  “It’s getting crowded down here,” Chagall said, ignoring Henry. “I’m moving out. Manning, McFadden, do your looking, then let the forensic team do their jobs before we turn the whole damn thing into a pile of bone and ash.”

  There was really nothing else to see. Whoever had brought Grace there was gone.

  Their hopes of catching him lay with the forensic team.

  “Water—where did he get the water to wash the bodies?” she asked. “And his tools—where are the tools he used to slash them and bisect them?”

  “I don’t see anything,” Underwood told her.

  Henry Atkins was already busy setting up his camera.

  “Let’s head up. With all the commotion, he’s probably long gone. He might even have left Grace here alone for hours, and been nowhere near here when we arrived. But maybe we’ll find something in the graveyard,” Bruce said.

  She nodded. But as Bruce headed toward the stairs, he suddenly stopped and looked back at the tomb slab where Grace had been tied down.

  He walked back toward Sophie and the slab.

  Sophie was next to him, but he was seeing just beyond the slab. Sh
e moved slightly to manage to get to his range of vision.

  And she saw what he had seen.

  Tiny, and hard up against the shored-up earth wall at the rear of the large catacomb.

  It was a boutonniere. A boutonniere like those worn by the “guests” who had attended the night’s performance by the Hollywood Hooligans.

  Its petals were smashed.

  Petals could have been smashed on any of the roses worn that night.

  But this rose was different.

  The petals weren’t just red, as most of the boutonnieres had been. They were hybrid, red and yellow. Just like the rose she had seen on Henry Atkins.

  16

  Sunday, break of dawn

  Bruce straightened, letting Sophie pick up the mangled rose boutonniere with her gloved hands.

  He turned to look at Henry, who was already busy shooting pictures.

  Chagall was staring at Bruce; he turned, curiously, when he realized that Bruce was looking at Henry Atkins.

  “What? What is it?” Captain Chagall demanded.

  “This,” Sophie said, her voice weak. She, too, was staring at Henry.

  Lee Underwood gasped.

  Henry put down his camera, interested in what was going on.

  “What? What is it?” Henry asked.

  “It’s the rose you were wearing,” Sophie said, staring at Henry.

  “The rose I was wearing?” Henry Atkins appeared to be truly confused. “The rose? Oh, you mean from the show? I must have just dropped it. Can’t believe it—I never contaminate a scene.”

  “Henry,” Sophie said, and her voice was torn. “You didn’t just drop it—you’re not wearing the same clothing you had on at the show.” She added, “And you just got here—you were never even at this end of the tombs!”

  “No. No. You all can’t be serious. I mean, how do you know that’s the rose I was wearing?” Henry demanded.

  “I saw it when it was still on you. It was colored differently than most people’s, and crushed in this peculiar way,” Sophie said. Her voice remained a tight, thin stream.

  “Sophie! Hey, you guys, come on! You can’t be serious. I work with you every day.”

  He was looking from person to person as he spoke, desperate for someone to pipe in and help him out.

  Everyone just stared back at him.