Darkness Rising (The East Salem Trilogy)

by Lis Wiehl

  He set the leg down and replaced the sheet.

  “Rigor is incomplete because she’s lost skeletal integrity. Her bones have been more or less pulverized. Multiple fractures and splintering. The skull’s spherical configuration resisted compression but the rest . . .” Banerjee made fists and then exploded his fingers. “But not from concussion. She was not hit. She was squeezed. The result is something like what happens when you suck the air out of an empty plastic soda bottle to create a vacuum. The bottle collapses under atmospheric pressure.”

  “How?” Metz said.

  “I don’t know.” Banerjee tucked the clipboard under his arm and put his hands in the pockets of his sweater.

  “Would it be possible,” Casey said, raising a finger, “and I’m just thinking out loud here, but would it be possible for someone to . . . This is going to sound crazy.”

  “Crazy might be the right way to sound,” Dani said.

  “Could somebody have put some sort of plastic bag around the body, maybe after she was dead, and then sucked all the air out of it?”

  Dani’s thoughts led to an explanation she didn’t dare voice. She didn’t know how or why, but Abbie was clearly an enemy of evil and somehow engaged in thwarting whatever was going on at St. Adrian’s. If she was a threat to them, it made sense that they would have wanted to eliminate the threat, though Dani couldn’t very well raise her hand and say, “Have you considered the possibility of a demonic assault?”

  “If that were the method,” Banerjee said, nodding toward Casey, “we would still need the means. Do we have any evidence of human-sized vacuum bags or massive air pumps?”

  “No,” Casey said.

  “What do we have?” Dani said.

  “We have her,” Casey said, gesturing toward Abbie Gardener’s body. “Found in a room with the windows locked from the inside, and the only other entrance is the door to the hallway.”

  “And the hallway was under video surveillance,” Metz said, raising his hands to his eyes as if using binoculars.

  “The videos don’t show anybody entering her room?” Dani said.

  Metz shook his head.

  For a long time nobody spoke, each of them trying to think of an explanation. Tommy had said “Interesting timing.” For Dani the question was again not, Why now? It was, Why not before? If it was a homicide, and someone or something wanted her dead, why wait until she was 102?

  “I have two other findings,” Banerjee said. “But they’re not going to be of much help, I’m afraid.”

  He moved to the head of the dissection table and pulled back the sheet covering Abbie Gardener’s face, which was as bruised and blue as her body. Dani moved around to the far side of the table for a closer look. Banerjee pointed to Abbie’s mouth, to a black blotch at the center of both her upper and lower lips, which were otherwise purple.

  “What is that?” Casey said.

  “Frostbite,” Banerjee said. “Fourth degree. No other indications anywhere else on the body.”

  “What would make it this localized?” Dani said.

  Banerjee laid his finger over Abbie’s lips to cover the blotches, though his finger wasn’t wide enough to cover them perfectly. “A few things,” he said. “Exposure to liquid nitrogen or liquid helium.”

  “She was trying to drink it?” Metz said. “Or she was forced to?”

  “Either seems unlikely,” Banerjee said.

  Dani heard thunder again. “You said you had two more findings,” she said. “What’s the second one?”

  The medical examiner covered the body again and turned off the fan. He removed his gloves and threw them in the wastebasket, then gestured for Dani, Metz, and Casey to follow him.

  In his office he turned on a stereomicroscope and invited them to have a look. The specimen on the slide appeared to be a sample from a pinecone. When Dani looked up from her turn at the microscope, Banerjee, anticipating her request, handed her a pair of tweezers. She flipped the sample over and refocused the scope. She stared intently into the eyepieces. Whatever it was seemed translucent, pointed at one end and rounded at the other. Finally she leaned back.

  “I give up,” she said.

  “We found this under a fingernail,” Banerjee said. “She had rather long fingernails. Apparently she didn’t like to have them trimmed. We also found a more complete sample on the floor near her bed. I’ve sent that to the FBI lab for DNA.”

  “What is it?” Casey said impatiently.

  “Well,” Banerjee said, drawing a deep breath and then sighing. “It seems to be a scale of some sort.”

  “Fish?” Dani asked.

  “No.”

  “Reptile?” Metz said.

  “Probably.”

  “Snake?” Casey said.

  “A giant anaconda might explain the compression fractures, but I don’t think so. The formation is keeled, indicated by the ridge on the top, and there’s a dermal papilla on the reverse, which makes me think this may be an epidermal component with an osteoderm beneath it.”

  He saw the confused look on Casey’s face.

  “The osteoderm is the layer of skin beneath the epidermis,” Banerjee said. “The epiderm would be like having an outer layer of, well, armor.”

  “Armor? Found on?”

  “There are different kinds of armor. Turtles, rhinoceroses. In this case, lizards. Judging from the size of the scale, big ones. Did Ms. Gardener, by any chance, keep a Komodo dragon as a pet?”

  6.

  Dani had supper that night at her sister’s house. Beth and Gary lived just three miles away on a cul-de-sac in a subdivision called Willow Pond Estates, where Dani saw teams of Spanish-speaking landscapers readying properties for winter, wielding leaf blowers and rakes. Dani was long overdue for a visit and in great need of a little face time with her nieces, Emily and Isabelle. After dinner she played Yahtzee with them, and when it was time for bed, they asked Aunt Dani to tuck them in.

  “What kind of bedtime story do you want?” she asked.

  “Something embarrassing about Mommy!” they chimed in unison.

  So Dani told them how Beth once bought a new jacket for an important job interview and did the whole interview with a large price tag dangling from the cuff of her sleeve. The girls howled with delight.

  Dani joined them as they said their evening prayers: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; if I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.” She pulled the covers up and kissed them each on the forehead.

  “And a hug,” demanded Emily, who was ten.

  “And make sure the closet door is shut tight,” added Isabelle. “’Cause there’s a brain-eating monster in there, but he can’t get out if the door is closed.”

  “Sounds like he needs to eat a few more brains,” Dani joked as she closed the closet door.

  She recalled her own recent nightmares, the ones that woke her up night after night at exactly 2:13. They made a brain-eater in the closet appealing.

  She joined Beth in the kitchen, where she’d just finished loading the dishwasher. Beth made two cups of tea and the sisters sat down in the breakfast nook. Dani’s brother-in-law, Gary, was in the den watching a Knicks game on the television.

  “So tell me about Tommy Gunderson,” Beth said. “You two have been spending a lot of time together lately.”

  Beth, of course, knew the first part of the story. Dani and Tommy had first met in grade school, when boys and girls were sworn enemies. In high school they’d been elected homecoming king and queen, but he’d been the super jock and she the academic overachiever. “Princess and the Pea-brain,” someone had joked. Dani had dreaded their first duty as newly crowned high school royalty, the prom’s first dance together, because Tommy was “the boy no girl could resist.” She’d been determined not to fall under his spell.

  “It’s nice,” Dani said, smiling. “He’s a lot different from what I remembered. I mean, we all are, but I was wrong about him.”

  “Wrong how?
”

  “There’s more to him. I thought he was just . . .”

  “Incredibly handsome? Built like a Greek statue?”

  “Beth, please,” Dani said. “I’m entirely impervious to that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, right. So why does he want to be a private detective? His fitness center isn’t making any money?”

  “The gym is doing fine. He said when he was a kid he wanted to be either a professional football player or a private eye. He did the football thing and now he’s following his other dream.”

  “And you hired him?”

  “Not exactly. I mean technically, legally, yes. I’m paying him. One dollar a year.”

  “Wow,” Beth said. “I’ll bet he could get twice that. So what’s going on between you? And don’t say it’s nice. I know it’s more than that.”

  “It’s good.”

  “Good? That’s all you’re going to give me?”

  “I think he’s . . .” Dani tried to think of the word.

  “Oh my gosh,” Beth said. “You’re in love. Did I call it or what?” She called to the den, “Gary—what did I tell you?”

  “Beth—”

  “Don’t pretend.”

  “I won’t pretend,” Dani said. “Let’s just say: to be continued . . .”

  “I can’t believe it,” Beth said. “You’re not worried that he’s on the rebound from America’s sweetheart?”

  She was referring to Tommy’s well-publicized engagement to—and breakup with—the actress Cassandra Morton. After leaving pro football, Tommy had been a favorite of the tabloids, portrayed after the end of “Tomsandra” as a bad boy dating starlets and supermodels while poor Cassandra wept and wasted away from a broken heart.

  Tommy had told Dani the truth, that beneath Cassandra’s absurdly beautiful façade and the romantic comedy roles she’d used to perfect her image as the girl next door with the heart of gold and the total-package body, the real Cassandra Morton was deeply troubled. She was an abuse victim still struggling to cope, making meaningful intimate relationships hard to establish, her doubts self-sabotaging and in the end tragic. Her entire life, men had wanted things from her, promised her things, only to break their promises. Tommy hadn’t broken up with her—she’d broken up with him, repeatedly, and he’d finally agreed to play the part of the cad to protect her image. In the end they’d wished each other well, and he’d prayed that she might learn from the experience and break out of the pattern that entrapped her.

  “There’s more to that story,” was all Dani told Beth. “Don’t believe everything you read in Us Weekly.”

  “I don’t believe anything I read in Us Weekly,” Beth said. “So it can’t possibly be true Cassandra Morton is dating the soccer player recently voted Sexiest Man Alive. Can it?”

  “I wouldn’t know. Tommy’s not in touch with her these days.”

  “I certainly hope not,” Beth said. “For your sake. Oh gosh—that didn’t come out right.”

  Dani smiled.

  “I just mean I’m happy for you,” Beth said. “So when are you going to bring him over for dinner? Gary would die. He still has a Tommy Gunderson jersey in his closet.”

  “I’ll bring him along next time. Just make sure Gary doesn’t wear the jersey. That would be awkward.”

  When she got home that night, Dani parked her car in the garage, closed the garage door, and let herself in through the back door. She flipped on the kitchen lights and saw a man standing in the middle of the room.

  Without another thought she reached for a kitchen knife, but then the man smiled, and she realized she knew him.

  Charlie.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  The angel was dressed the way she’d seen him in her dream—and the way Tommy had described him—black boots, jeans, black T-shirt and black leather jacket, one earring, and a ponytail. He looked around the room as if he’d never seen a kitchen before.

  “Can I get you anything?” she said. It was, she realized, a stupid question to ask an angel, but she had been brought up to be hospitable.

  She was a little surprised when he said, “What have you got?”

  “I’m not sure. Lemme look in the fridge.”

  As she opened the refrigerator door, she wondered exactly what an angel would eat. She could just hear Tommy saying “Angel food cake, obviously,” but she didn’t have any of that. Or much of anything. A few sodas, some cheese, a little tub of ice cream . . .

  “Would you like a root beer float?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve never had one.”

  She grabbed a can of root beer and the ice cream. Charlie stepped aside when she opened a drawer and started digging around for her scoop.

  “Have you been waiting long?” she said as she dug into the ice cream.

  “What would you consider long?”

  “I don’t know—twenty minutes?”

  “Not long,” he replied.

  She handed him the float, along with a long-stemmed iced-tea spoon and a straw. He took a sip, and Dani saw the angel’s eyebrows rise in surprise.

  “That’s very good.”

  “They’re even better on warm summer nights, sitting on the porch,” she said. Everything that came out of her mouth seemed stupid and inadequate.

  “I’ll bet,” he said as he worked the straw. “You have a lovely home.”

  “I inherited it from my parents. They died in a plane crash.”

  “I know.”

  Of course you do, she thought. Something about him seemed to change as she looked at him. It was as if he flickered in and out of focus, but at the same time was entirely present. He seemed kind and patient.

  “You remind me of someone,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “My father. A little.”

  He set the empty glass on the counter. “I have a message for you,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Someone is going to betray you. Someone you trust.”

  “Someone I trust . . .” She hesitated, unsure how to respond.

  “How you handle it,” he said, “will make all the difference.”

  She wanted to say, “All the difference in what?” but before she could get the words out, he was gone.

  She went to the counter and picked up the empty glass. She held it up to the light, wondering if angels had fingerprints.

  Both the cardio and weight rooms at the All-Fit Sports, Health, and Fitness Center of Northern Westchester were filled to capacity with men and women working out. Tommy welcomed the newcomers and greeted the regulars, including a man the staff had dubbed The Poser because he was always pacing intensely and shaking his limbs and stretching as if he’d just finished a set of repetitions or was just about to begin one, but no one had ever seen him actually lifting weights. Tommy, who’d built the center after retiring from professional football, had gone to the gym to plow through some paperwork he’d been putting off, and because he needed to work out. He did his best thinking when he wasn’t trying to think. If he exercised, answers came to him, sometimes to questions he hadn’t even asked. He’d read enough scientific papers to know that when you are in the middle of a workout, the brain sometimes transitions into a wakeful, dream-like state, generating theta waves, akin to what happens during REM sleep. For him it was the right blend of conscious and unconscious thinking, a way to keep his body occupied while his mind was free to wander.

  Dani had sent him a text that afternoon: ABBIE’S DEATH SUSPECTED HOMICIDE. BODY FOUND IN LOCKED ROOM. As he pushed through his reps, he tried to think of why anybody would bother to kill a 102-year-old woman. The first thing that occurred to him was that her property was one of the most coveted pieces of real estate on the East Coast. It was possible somebody wanted her out of the way in order to acquire the farm—it sounded far-fetched, but he’d heard scarier stories concerning choice bits of land in Westchester County. The second thing that occurred to him: was it possible Abbie knew
something about Julie Leonard’s murder? Maybe someone still wanted to stop her from talking.

  He quickly showered and hurried to his car, eager to take a second look at the video he’d shot of his interview with Abbie in the nursing home. The roads were slick with wet leaves and strewn rotting shells of smashed Halloween pumpkins.

  Ten minutes later he was home. He paused outside his gates to retrieve a package from his mailbox, an item he’d ordered online after the Leonard case was closed.

  He set the package on the food island in his kitchen, grabbed a carving knife, and sliced open the box. He knew Dani would make fun of him for buying yet another gadget, but he really needed this one. Unlike, for example, the Locator, a device that used microchips to help you find your keys or your sunglasses—which would probably have worked fine, if he could remember where he had put the Locator.

  He inserted batteries in the handheld infrared thermal imager, flipped open the video screen, turned the device on, and pointed it at his refrigerator. His $10,000 Sub-Zero was supposed to have a perfect seal around its door gaskets, but the image on the screen showed a blue spot at the top of the freezer where the seal leaked, as well as heat from the condenser coils venting out the toe-plate and around the sides. Things that were hot registered from yellow to orange to red, and things that were cold went in the opposite direction, registering from green to purple to blue. When he swung the imager around to scan his kitchen, he saw cold air coming in from a window he’d left open a crack, and orange heat radiating from the lights above the sink.

  When he pointed the imager toward the back door to see if any cold air was leaking in, he saw the outline of a man radiating a shimmering white aura.

  He looked up to see Charlie, who had changed out of his tuxedo from the night before and was now wearing his customary black boots, jeans, and leather jacket.

  “What’s that?” the angel asked.

  “An infrared imager,” Tommy said.

  “What’s it for?”

  “Well . . . ,” Tommy said. He again felt a deep sense of awe and wonder, but at the same time the angel seemed approachable. “It measures heat. People use it to check their homes, to find places where they can be more energy efficient. For a better planet.”