“I’ve just now realized where I’d seen that horrible man before. Remember, I told you about that party that old Hearst gave where everyone was dressed in Renaissance regalia? The one where Howard was hired as a painter? One of the other painters, he was the one from my dream. In fact, he was the one who had painted the picture of that poor actress who had the breakdown.”
“The one who claimed the painting changed?” Jack said.
Althea nodded. “Perhaps he’s also the one that Howard was trying to warn me about.”
“Could he be the one who painted the mural?” Dani asked.
They each looked from one to the other in silence, which was suddenly shattered by the ringing of Jack’s cell phone, which startled all three of them. With a sense of apprehension, Jack answered it. “Hayden.... Oh, hello, Chief. What? Of course I know about the ghost town out in the middle of the woods, that’s the project I’ve been working on. You’re out there now? Why? Yes, I was there earlier today, how did you know? You had me followed? Jesus, Creeley!” Jack raised a hand to his forehead. “Yes, I saw a car when I was out there, two cars in fact. One was a parked Chrysler that I’m pretty sure belongs to my client, and one was a Jaguar. That one belongs to my boss, but—” Jack stopped talking and listened for a minute, and then his face blanched. “My god.”
Jack sunk down onto the floor of the room and started to shake again. “Okay,” he said, “the owner of the Jaguar is named Marcus Broarty. No, I didn’t see him, just the car, but I know the car and I saw it drive away, so I assume that Marc was behind the wheel. Yes, I think I know who the man you found is. His name is Egon McMenamin. Yes, I can come right down. You have my word I’m coming right down. Okay.” Jack clicked the phone off. “I don’t know how much worse this can get.”
“Now what?” Dani asked.
“They found the body of my client stuffed in the trunk of a car out at Wood City.”
* * * * * * *
Twenty minutes later Jack bumped his pickup into Wood City, pulling up behind the Glenowen police car. There was also a state trooper’s car nearby, and in the center of the scene he saw Egon McMenamin’s Chrysler. The trunk was open, though facing the other way, which Jack was grateful for. Getting out of his truck, he walked toward it. At other times he would have relished the clean piney scent of the woods, but today the aroma of nature was being intruded upon by another odor, one that hung like a thick cloud just above his head. Real or imagined, Jack Hayden smelled death.
A uniformed trooper started to approach him, but Creeley appeared from behind a tree and shouted, “He’s okay, I’ve called him here.” Walking up to him, Creeley did not bother to shake hands, then Jack saw that he was wearing rubber gloves.
“How are you, Mr. Hayden?”
“If I were capable of laughing right now, I’d laugh at that, question,” Jack answered.
“Want to a peek at what we found?”
“No.”
“Too bad. Follow me.”
It was not the first body Jack had encountered. Years ago, not long after he had started working as a building inspector, he had been hired to go into an old abandoned warehouse in Skid Row that was then in line for gentrification. It had been vacant for a while and there were ample signs of squatting, including piles of trash, graffiti, ashes, even old feces. But there was a smell on the second floor of the place that could not be attributed to human waste. Checking it out, Jack had found his first body. It had been an old man and based on the state of decomposition he had been there for quite some time. Jack had managed to keep both his head and his last meal and run out to find a phone and call for the police (this had been before the era of cell phone dominance). Only later that evening did he begin to feel sick. It was the mental image of the maggots that did it.
So Jack figured he would probably have no trouble handling a much fresher body now, even if it was someone he knew. Still, his heart began pounding as he walked around to the open trunk with Creeley.
“Do you recognize this man?” Creeley asked.
Jack winced when he saw the face. “Good god, what happened to him?”
“What do you mean?”
“His face.”
The body of Egon McMenamin had been shoved into the trunk at such an unnatural angle that he had to have been dead before going on. His head was at a near right angle from his neck and one arm was wrenched behind him, probably dislocated from its socket. But what disturbed Jack was Emac’s expression. It was one of abject horror, like he had seen the devil himself at the moment of death.
“Mr. Hayden, can you verify this is Mr. McMenamin?” Creeley repeated.
“Yes, it’s him. He works...worked...for a company called Resort Partners. They’re the ones that are trying to turn this area into a vacation complex. My god, I can’t believe Marc did this.”
“You seem pretty certain your boss is the killer.”
“Who else could it be?”
“You were out here this morning, too, Mr. Hayden.”
“Sure, but—” Jack stopped and stared at the policeman. “Are you saying you suspect me?”
Robert Creeley studied him for a moment, then said, “Your boss was driving a Jaguar, right?”
“A dark green one.”
“I don’t suppose you happen to know the plates, do you?”
“Actually I do: MBA-500.”
“Vanity plates, huh?”
“Everything about Marc Broarty is rooted in vanity.”
Creeley called over a uniformed officer and relayed the information about Broarty’s car, then sent him away again. When the trooper was out of earshot, Jack said: “You don’t seriously think I had anything to do with Emac’s murder, do you?”
“I thought it was Egon.”
“Emac is...was his nickname.”
Creeley exhaled heavily. “I’m not supposed to judge suspects, or anyone for that matter. That’s not my job, that’s the judge’s job. But I’m going to level with you, Mr. Hayden. No, I do not think you had anything to do with this. But I do need to talk to you privately. Come on with me.” Creeley started to walk away from the hubbub with the state police, but Jack remained where he was. “Come on, Hayden, I’m not going to take you in the woods and murder you. I just don’t want the others to hear this, or else they’d threaten to put me away.”
“So something strange has happened to you, too.”
The policeman just motioned for Jack to follow, and this time he did. The two walked through the woods until they were out of earshot of the remaining state policemen. “The first time I talked to you, when we pulled you in for public urination, I thought you were probably just another drunk or druggie or maybe a crazy person,” Creeley began. “But I stopped thinking that pretty quickly. Same with your friend, Ms. Lindstrom. On top of that I’ve got my wife who believes in angels and devils and ghosts and she’s been sensing something. She’s spent the last two days lighting candles all over the house to protect us. If I were to say this to anyone else, they’d think I was just as substanced-out as I first suspected you of being. But I kind of feel it myself. There’s a big dark nasty cloud that just dropped down on this whole area. I just don’t know what the root of it is.”
“That I think I can show you,” Jack said. “It’s up this way.”
“First let me go tell the staties I’m stepping out,” Creeley said, jogging back to the troopers to explain his disappearance. Then he and Jack walked up the road through the forest to the heart of Wood City. “These places are kind of nice,” Creeley said, looking at the houses that dotted both sides of the path. “I’ve spent nearly all my life here and I never knew this place existed.”
“They weren’t nice a few days ago,” Jack replied. “They were nothing but foundations, some of them.” Coming to the City hall, whose walls now gleamed, he added: “And up until recently, this place was a mess.”
“Who fixed it up?” Creeley asked. “I don’t see any work crews or service trucks.”
“There aren�
��t any, Creeley.” Stopping in front of the City hall, Jack turned to the policeman and said: “You know all about 1930’s WPA murals, right?”
“That a kind of cigarette?”
Jack smiled. “They’re decorative paintings that were done in buildings during the Depression, when the government hired artists to keep them from starving.”
“Like up in Coit Tower in San Fran?”
“Exactly. Well, this building has a mural of its own. And as crazy as it sounds, I think that it is the source of this evil cloud you’re looking for. You want to come in and look?”
“I made you come out and look at a body. I suppose I can go look at a painting.”
“The body might end up being the more pleasant of the two,” Jack said as they slowly walked to the steps. Creeley pulled a small flashlight from the holder in his belt. “You won’t need that, the lights are on inside.”
“Who’s paying for the juice?”
“Damn good question.” The two walked into the City hall, which was indeed alight, but dimly so, the chandelier only operating on half power. Still, it was enough to see the mural.
The figures were vibrant and colorful, almost alive. Jack and the policeman stood and looked at it, examining every image, every scene, every figure, every corner of the large work. “Fucking son of a bitch!” Jack cried.
“What’s wrong?”
Nothing was wrong with the painting. It was a perfectly legitimate period mural showing characters going about their business in a perfectly ordinary way. “Son of a bitch,” Jack said again. “I’ll bet I can tell you something else, too.” He walked over to the painting and smacked the palm of his hand on it, then pulled it away and examined it. Jack smacked his hand on the painting three more times in different places, then held his palm up to Creeley. “It’s dry,” he said. “Bone dry.” Turning back to the mural, he went on: “It was wet when I was here before. The paint was wet. The goddamn thing’s toying with us. It’s tricking us. Or maybe it’s just tricking you, Creeley.”
“Why would it want to trick me?”
“Because I’ve seen the way it works. It’s evil, for lack of a better word. If it could convince you that I’m just a whack job who’s making all this up, it will.”
“Mr. Hayden, I’m giving you every benefit of the doubt I can, but I have to tell you, if you start talking to any of those other officers out there like this, claiming that a painting on a wall has a consciousness, well, I don’t know how they’d take it.”
Jack wiped his tired eyes. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Okay, let’s get out of here.” They went back outside and Creeley sat down on the steps, motioning for Jack to sit as well, which he did. Jack grimly noticed that the spot where he had thrown up was now cleaned up and spotless. “Here’s the point I’m making,” the policeman began. “Everything you say is based on asking someone to believe you, and that goes against everything I was every taught in police training.”
“But you still believe me, right, Creeley?”
“I’d prefer it if you didn’t call me Creeley, Mr. Hayden.”
“Sorry, chief.”
Creeley smiled. “The day I haul your raggedy ass into jail, you can call me chief. But friends call me Cree, like the Indian tribe.”
“All right, Cree. And I’m Jack, not Mr. Hayden.”
“Fair enough, Jack. To answer your question, I do still believe you. Even though it may cost me my career.”
“Because of your wife?”
Again, Creeley breathed in and out heavily. “Well, there’s certainly that. But there’s something else, too. The day I brought you into the station, I had a hard time getting to sleep that night, so I got up and prowled around, and finally pulled out this big book on the history of this area and started flipping through it. I don’t even know why, just seemed like the thing to do. Guess what I found?” Jack shook his head. “An old picture taken a hundred or so years ago of a saloon called The Saddleback.”
“And in the photo was a woman standing out in front of the place, right by the door,” Jack said.
Creeley frowned. “So I guess you’ve seen that book,” he said.
“No,” Jack said, “but there’s an identical photo hanging on the bathroom wall in my motel room, or at least there was. It’s changed, too. Cree, there’s no question it’s the place I spent that demented afternoon, and for the record, that woman in the picture was there. I saw her. I talked to her. And I know the next thing you’re going to say, that if I’ve seen the picture, I could just be describing the building and making up the story about being in the saloon to cover my little peccadillo out on the street. I feel bad about asking you to take my word for it, but—”
“Here’s the thing, Jack. After I found the reference to the Saddleback in the book, I poked around for some more information. I called a friend of mine who works in the local historical society and asked him to check it out.
“What I learned was that there had been such a place, but it burned down some seventy-odd years ago. Where it stood is now Linder’s Gallery.”
“Is that good?”
“For you it is, because Linder’s was the building we found you leaning against that day. So you were in exactly the right place to be coming out of the saloon that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Jack let that sink in. “Your fellow policemen would say that I called this historian just like you did and got the information.”
“I know they would, and that’s why I asked my friend Nicky if anyone else had contacted him and asked for the information. He said no, and I trust him. So, unless you’re one godamighty good guesser, there’s no way you could have known you were standing on the site of the old Saddleback saloon.”
“And this is what’s convinced you I’m on the level?” Jack asked.
“It helped. But last nights ago, my wife Maria woke me up, talking in her sleep, which is something I’ve not known her to do before. This is after filling the house with candles. I couldn’t understand what she was saying at first, but once I became fully awake and started listening hard, I was able to catch the words. She said, ‘legion is rising.’ Does that mean anything to you?”
Jack felt cold. “My friend Althea mentioned something called the legion,” he said. “What it means, I don’t know.”
“Althea?” Creeley said sharply. “Damn. Maria mentioned that name, too. Also someone named Howard.”
“Howard was Althea’s boyfriend. He’s dead, though.”
“Damn,” the policeman said, wiping his upper lip. “What I was able to get from my wife’s talking in her sleep is that you, me, Althea, Howard, and another person have to team up to fight this legion thing, and apparently the last person is the most important player in all this. That one’s name is Robin. You know anyone named Robin?”
Jack had to force himself to remain conscious.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Elley knew she was probably in for a rough evening when Robynn fell asleep in the car somewhere around the city of Ventura and stayed asleep for the rest of the trip home. She was not a kid who took naps during the day—at least that’s what Nola always told her—so to sleep this early meant Elley would probably never get her in bed. And after this drive on top of last night’s drive, plus all the other shit going on in her life, Elley desperately wanted some me time that evening.
They had not gotten in until after three. Thanks to the heaving traffic that started around Oxnard, made even worse by a three car pile up, it took almost seven grueling hours to get back. She tried to wake Robynn up, but ended up unbuckling her and carrying her inside, taking her to her room and laying her down. I won’t get her down until midnight at this rate, she thought. Then again, it wasn’t like she had to get up and go to work the next morning.
After pouring herself a Bailey’s on the rocks, Elley noticed that the phone machine light was blinking, signifying that a call had come in, so Elley went to check it. It was from Chelsea Lackteen, one of the junior account e
xecs from the office. Elley, we’ve all been told that you’re no longer working here, Chelsea’s recorded voice began. Mr. Micelli called en route from New York and told Shakira to clean out your office for you. He isn’t even letting you do it. The stuff’s already packed up in boxes. My god, what did you do? Call me. There was a beep and the message stopped.
“Honey, if you stay there long enough, you’ll find out exactly what I did,” Elley told the now-silent machine. Fine, so they packed up her office. Whatever. Fuck Blaise Micelli and the assistant he rode in on. He’d get his someday.
Picking up the phone, she dialed the office and asked for Chelsea.
“My god, Elley, what happened?” the young woman asked in a voice that sounded more eager for gossip than illumination.
“We had a difference of opinion at JFK,” Elley said. “A five-finger difference of opinion.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means I slapped his sexist pig face across the river into New Jersey.”
Chelsea whooped on the other end of the line, and Elley knew that all the juniors would be dining on that tidbit for the rest of the week. Fine. Let them.
From upstairs, a cry of “Mommeeee!” was sounded. “Hey, Chelsea, I’m home with my kid and I have to go now. I’ll come in tomorrow to pick up my stuff, okay?”
“It’ll be here.”
Robynn called again and Elley hung up the phone and went upstairs to her room. She had awakened disoriented, but Elley assured her that everything was all right.
If only.
As it turned out, the rest of the afternoon with her daughter went very smoothly. Robynn watched all her favorite shows on television, leaving Elley largely alone, and when dinnertime came Elley found some Boboli pizza shells in the pantry (how they got there she had no idea; she hadn’t bought them; maybe Nola had) along with packets of sauce and a bag of shredded mozzarella in the fridge. Together she and Robynn made their own pizzas for dinner, and both of them had a great time. I’ve missed all of this, Elley thought absently as she pulled the bubbling, aromatic pizzas from the oven, and saw the eager smile break out on her daughter’s face.
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