by C R Trolson
“At some level.”
He looked sane, she thought. He believed what he was saying. “What’s LX got to do with Thomkins’ killing? Even if it is true?”
“It’s true, all right. Ajax has been experimenting with LX for years. LX changed Homer Wermels into the Anaheim Vampire. And guess who gave it to him?”
While Reese explained his bizarre theory that Ajax was spreading his wonder drug worldwide, she wondered, Why? Ajax had money. Ajax had it all. None of it made sense. It wasn’t Ajax but Reese who was nuts. Or was he? She had her own questions about Ajax. “Why did Ajax kill Thomkins? You didn’t tell me that part.”
“To get at me.”
“Why not just kill you?”
“Not get me, but get at me. Pull my chain. Scare me. Fuck with me. He’s saving me for something, is my guess. He’s saving both of us for later is my guess.”
“Me and you? A package deal?”
“He used your sickle on Ramon to draw you in, hold onto you, keep you in town. He’s not finished. He’s not finished with me. He’s not finished with you. He’s not finished with the world.”
“He’s not finished with the world, Reese? Really? You’re starting to scare me. Anyway, whoever killed Ramon walked by my toolbox. The sickle was convenient. That’s all.”
“Maybe.”
She changed the subject. She still couldn’t believe Thomkins was dead. “I rented a video you’ll want to see.” She turned on the television and the VCR. She inserted the tape. She fast forwarded to the beginning of the movie: Raul Pavoni speaking to the platinum blonde.
“What is it?” Reese asked and squinted his eyes to get a better look.
“A movie from 1935,” she said. “You saw Raul Pavoni on TV. You told me about it. How he looked like Ajax. You got me thinking. Pavoni looks like he’s about forty, so…. That would put him at well over one hundred years old, more or less,” she said. “If he were still alive.”
“You’re talking about Ajax?” he asked.
“I don’t know what I’m talking about,” she said and handed him the property deed and cancelled check she’d found earlier in the courthouse basement. “Notice the dates and the signatures.”
“A check for property taxes that Ajax paid in 1991?”
“Look at the other page.”
He read a little then stopped. “This is a deed transferring three acres off Cold Springs Road to Alphonse Rasmussen dated 1878. Alphonse? Another one of Ajax’s ancestors?”
“Compare signatures.”
“They’re similar,” he said and asked, “These aren’t copies - ”
“No, they are not copies. I stole them. I stole the originals.” She explained how the clerk had already pulled the files, probably on Ajax’s orders. “Ajax has his hooks into everyone. And don’t forget the picture of Father Delgado.”
“How could I?”
“It could have been a picture of Ajax,” she said. On the screen, Ajax grabbed the blonde and disappeared into the shadows. She turned off the TV and looked at him for an answer, but she knew there was none, and yet it was all too bizarre to believe. Her life had always been grounded in facts, the foundation of science, and if she were to believe even half of what she suspected, a lifetime of discipline must first be thrown out the window.
Reese sounded weary. “What you’re saying - that Ajax is a few hundred years old - is crazier than me saying Ajax wants to poison the world with his instant-zombie potion.”
“It’s not crazier,” she said, “but it’s just as crazy. There could be a simple explanation, Ajax could be a victim of circumstances.” She paused for a moment. “You’re not ready to put a bullet in his head, are you?”
“Are you?”
“I’m doubtful.” She put the deed and the check into the desk drawer. “I’m meeting Hamsun at the mission tonight. I’m getting the third skeleton. You’re invited.”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” he said, “but I want to go home first and change, clean up a little.”
27
Reese scanned the shadows as she hit the switch that turned on the lights she’d set up around her excavation. She pushed open the cemetery door, lifting it slightly so it didn’t scrape the bricks. He wasn’t sure who she thought would hear them. The skulls above the door smiled down at him. The limestone grave markers glowed dead white. He touched the pistol, snug against his side. He’d reloaded it with silver bullets. He was ready for anything. He was starting to believe in anything. She’d laugh if she knew. He smiled, betting she was carrying her trusty jade whistle.
He walked down the rough path toward her ditch, her diggings as he now thought about it, now an island of light. He carried a basket filled with more of Thelma’s sandwiches. No sense working all night on an empty stomach. If nothing else happened tonight, he didn’t plan on starving.
The air was cool, he could smell the ocean, spurts of fog blew across the thumbnail moon. When he moved his hand to her shoulders, he felt the tightness in her neck. She was tense. They both were.
She unpacked extra lamps. She worked smoothly, putting together the frames, snaking out the power cords, hitting the switches. Each lamp added another small sun. He glanced back at the mission, quiet and serene. He could hear her breathing, a solid metronome.
She’d been busy. The hole was twice as large. A new screen had been erected and now swung gently from a steel, triangular frame. The piles of dirt had grown waist high. She’d hung the tarp they’d laid across the ditch days earlier from four poles, forming a rectangular canopy.
He opened the thermos bottle and poured coffee into two Styrofoam cups.
She pointed to an oval of dirt in the bottom of the ditch. “We’ll undercut the pedestal and slide it onto plywood.” She pulled on a pair of gloves. “Hamsun can remove the dirt in his lab.”
“So the bones don’t turn to dust in the sun?” he asked. “That’s what we’re talking about.”
She took a cup of coffee from him. “Something like that.”
Beyond the mound, the ditch was still engraved with the outline of the first skeleton. Without the bones, the silhouette appeared cold, a pale cameo of death.
He heard the cemetery door scrape across the bricks. A shadow stretched along the path. An old man came into view, waving his cane back and forth like he was blind.
“Should we tell him what Ajax is up to?” she asked.
“I don’t think it matters.” He guessed that Hamsun, his face carved with a weary awareness, already knew.
“Night work,” Hamsun said when he was close. “I’m too old for it.” Hamsun’s eyes zeroed in on the picnic basket. “You two youngsters going to offer an old man a snack, perhaps?”
She introduced them to each other and crawled into the ditch. “Help yourself, Professor,” she said. “I want to clean up the ditch before we start sawing.”
“Work,” Hamsun said and nudged the basket with the point of his stick. He unwrapped a sandwich, sniffed, shook his head, and sloppily rearranged the wrapping. He unwrapped another sandwich more to his liking and bit into it. “Ahh. Roast beef.”
Moths dove into the lights, Hamsun ate greedily and loudly, and Rusty shoveled dirt over the screen.
Hamsun wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing mayonnaise and wiping the excess on his canvas pants. “There is a sadness here,” he said to Reese.
“It’s a graveyard,” Reese said. He’d ordered the roast beef for himself and didn’t like Hamsun eating it. Why did old people always think they could get away with anything? Hamsun had probably been honing his crotchety act for years and getting away with it.
“No. No.” Hamsun said. “Between you two.”
“A friend of ours got killed.” He grabbed and unwrapped a sandwich, the corned beef, before Hamsun ate everything. There was a turkey sandwich left for Rusty but at the rate Hamsun was going she might go hungry.
“The young policeman?”
He nodded and took a bite. He could not have kept Thomkins from ge
tting killed. He could not have stopped anything and that was the truth.
“It’s awful when someone young dies,” Hamsun said. He seemed to savor the sandwich, like he hadn’t eaten in weeks. “Did you know that you killed one of the best assistants I ever had?” he suddenly asked.
“What?”
“Homer Wermels worked for me. It wasn’t much, I guess. He was a good boy. He cleaned up my office and lab in the afternoons. Took the bus in from Santa Marina. Arranged my notes, a bit of research. Not much of an education, but he was willing.”
“I didn’t have much choice,” he said slowly, thinking that it wasn’t too odd that Hamsun knew Homer. Santa Marina was the typical small town. Everyone was connected. Worms in a jar.
“I’m not blaming you.”
“What changed him?”
“He worked for Ajax as a gardener. That’s the story, at least,” Hamsun said. “The truth is that Ajax does not like me. We’ve had our troubles over the years. One thing and another. He lured Homer away from me.”
“Ajax turned Homer, your assistant, into a serial killer because he didn’t like you?” He was not surprised that Hamsun was involved. He looked too much like Boris Karloff not to be.
“I don’t know what Ajax did nor why he did it,” Hamsun said testily. “All I know is that four months after Ajax hired him, you had a fateful meeting in Los Angeles with Homer Wermels, who was by then a somewhat prolific and dedicated serial killer.”
“He was almost the last person I met,” Reese said. If anything, Homer’s death proved you didn’t need silver bullets to kill a vampire, but then Halloran had said that LX affected everyone differently.
Hamsun finished the sandwich, wiped his mouth broadly with his hand and said with little conviction, “I’m glad the better man won.”
“I haven’t won anything,” Reese said and watched Rusty’s head disappear into the ditch. “What do you know about the mission, the local history?”
Hamsun looked up. “What did you have in mind?”
“Secret passages. Secret doors. Escape tunnels. Any way that Ajax could get in and out of the mission without being seen.”
“The priests would know.” Hamsun scratched his face with a toothpick, then angled it into his mouth to suck on. “There was the old aqueduct.”
“Aqueduct?”
“Yes. It carried water underground from Riven Springs into the mission.” The old man pointed the toothpick at Reese. “Approximately where Ajax built his house.”
“You’re sure?”
“Everything leads to Ajax.”
He wanted to ask Hamsun if he thought Ajax was planning to poison the world, but realized Hamsun would either laugh or say, Of course. “The jade whistle Rusty found? You’re sure it’s the same one you found in 1963?”
“Absolutely, young man.”
Before he could ask Hamsun another question, Rusty walked out of the ditch and asked him to help her saw under the pedestal of dirt. A flexible wire saw, probably diamond-coated, dangled from her hand. The wire resembled a garrote and was four feet long, a handle at each end.
They worked the wire back and forth like grim loggers. Hamsun’s face loomed above them. “I hope you soaked the dirt good for compaction. If you didn’t, the entire matrix will crumble when you slide it onto the board.”
“Thanks, did it yesterday.”
“Good, good,” Hamsun said and wandered off. “I’ll just poke around if you don’t mind.” Hamsun ambled off good-naturedly poking at the ground with his stick.
“Have fun,” she said, but Reese could tell she didn’t appreciate Hamsun’s advice.
“You’re mad at him,” he said. “You don’t like orders.”
“And you do?” she said.
When they’d cut halfway through the pedestal, Rusty gave him a concerned look and suggested a coffee break. He guessed she figured he was getting old, she might even put him in the same category as Hamsun, but he didn’t argue. His back and legs were sore from chasing Rawlings, and when he straightened up, the dull pain made him stagger, but he said nothing and climbed out of the ditch to get them coffee. Hamsun was at the far end of the ditch, still poking at the dirt with his stick.
“This layer of dirt seems to be off-colored,” Hamsun said. “You probably didn’t see it in the sun, but the sodium lights bring out the green. Like the joke - If you want a green suit, Abby, turn on the green lights.”
While Hamsun cackled, Reese filled two foam cups from the thermos. He went over and handed her one of the steaming cups and then walked over to see what Hamsun had found.
Hamsun kept working the stick until a large flake of dirt fell, revealing polished wood. Hamsun worked off another flake, revealing a dull green, brass handle.
“Coffin,” Reese said.
“Off course it’s a coffin,” Hamsun said. “Mahogany. I was looking at coffins just last week and it looks like the premium model, seven, eight thousand dollars…fairly recent. The corrosion of the brass discolored the dirt green. Caught my eye. I wonder if it’s occupied.”
Reese grabbed a shovel and started scooping loose soil off the top of the casket. He did not need to guess if a body was in the coffin. He didn’t even need to guess who it was. The dirt flew, a meteor shower across the sodium lights.
Rusty took a bottle of brandy from her rucksack and filled her cup. She felt tired. She told Reese to take it easy, but he ignored her, focused completely on uncovering the coffin. As the dirt flew, she guessed the coffin was probably some funeral home scam. You pay for a plot and they dump the body elsewhere, usually not in an expensive looking coffin, but who knew. Whatever it was, she was not interested. Tonight, she wanted the bones encased in dirt out of the ditch and on their way to Hamsun’s lab.
Well, she thought, Reese had been through the wringer tonight. He had the right to go a little nuts. He should have stayed home, but he’d insisted on coming, probably to keep an eye on her, protect her, and that thought made her feel good. Maybe the work would clear his mind. In any case, she’d seen men get dirt happy before and there was nothing to be done about it.
Hamsun held out his cup for brandy. “He’s obsessed,” he said and impatiently shook the cup until she filled it to the top. “Watching him dig like that, though, I wish I were young again. Why must one get so shabby with age?”
Before she could tell him that he was in the prime of his senility, she heard the shovel hit wood twice. Reese dropped to his knees, clearing dirt with his bare hands.
Bugs fluttered against the lights; moths and chiggers stuck to the sweat on his back. His face looked hard in the light, the shadows breaking and jagged, the set of his jaw and eyes tragic, somehow monstrous.
He was several minutes cleaning off the top. She walked over, Hamsun behind her, a wary spectator. The coffin was seven feet long and shaped like a crusaders shield, an oblong rectangle with six sides. An upside down cross was carved in the top. The dusty mahogany was dark and dry. It seemed years and yet it had only been weeks since she’d last seen an inverted cross. The thought of it made her cold. This was no mortician’s scam.
“The premium model,” Hamsun said. “Notice the carving.”
“An upside-down cross on the premium model?” she asked. The cross was as good as a signature from Ajax. He might as well have carved his name into the wood.
“That’s just the point,” Hamsun said. “Premium means custom. Built to order.”
Reese asked for a pry bar. She was a second looking through her toolbox before finding him a short nail-puller. Who had Ajax buried? No, she thought, don’t jump to conclusions. The only way through this mess was logic. Which put her back to the same question. Who?
Reese grabbed the nail-puller and went to work. The screeching nails made her blink. “Be careful,” she said.
Reese wedged the nail-puller under the lid and popped out more nails. Then, he braced his legs against the side of the hole, got his hands under the lid, and jerked. He threw the lid out of the hole like
it was cardboard. It landed upside down with a thud. The quilted red satin lining was shredded chest level.
She stood behind Reese. The man in the coffin wore Levis and a plaid shirt. His hair, under the khaki baseball cap, was gray and wispy. The face, withered from mummification, made the heavy black glasses appear large and obscene, magnifying the dry, milk-blue eyes. His clothes fit loosely. The hands, the white tendons stark, the fingers curled and drawn to the chest, were covered with torn, stained quilting, the fingernails broken at the nubs.
Hamsun was at her side wheezing. He bent at the waist for a closer look. She smelled ripe dirt and Reese’s sweat. She smelled rotting moss.
Hamsun straightened and pronounced, “It looks like a gardener or a fisherman. It’s certainly no Indian and he hasn’t been dead more than, than - ”
“Twelve months,” Reese said. He reached into the coffin, searching the back pockets. The body rattled like an empty shell. He pulled out the wallet.
Hamsun was impatient. “Well, Who is it? Say something, young man.”
Reese slid the driver’s license back inside. “A guy who once disagreed with Ajax Rasmussen. A guy who figured out what Ajax was doing before we did.”
Rusty held the blood-stained lining.
“They buried him alive.”
Ajax adjusted the lens of the brass telescope, bringing the trio into focus. He watched them put the lid back on the coffin and load the small mound of dirt containing one female skeleton into a truck. He stepped away from the eyepiece, walked into his bedroom, and dressed slowly. He could barely see himself in the mirror and felt the first, deep pangs of Hunger. He pondered his next move. An hour for Reese to drop off Penelope and return to his hovel at the Palms. Give him a taste of things to come? Perhaps.
An hour later, Ajax was at Reese’s window, slipping with the shadows, pressing his palms flat on the glass. He floated, effortlessly now, around the apartment to the sliding glass door and opened it. Inside, the first sniff told him: empty. He haunted the apartment, searching, searching, curious really. But there was nothing of interest except for a slight hint of Homer, a feral quality to the scent. A goatish smell. Fear or insanity? He smiled. Then again, he could be sensing Reese. The policeman was probably still with her. Good. Why not? They were young. He certainly had no qualms with nature’s pull.