The door to the private residence was bashed in, and a hail of shouts sounded as George opened his eyes. Police were everywhere. The men were being pushed and shoved against the walls of the living room, and the fat man with the gun was brutally subdued.
“Frankie DeLuca, you are under arrest!”
The fat man was thrown up against the wall with his associates, and his hate-filled eyes turned to a shocked George Cordero, who was also being handcuffed.
“I’ll kill you!”
“You ain’t killing anyone, fatty, at least not where you’re going. You are all under arrest for trafficking in prostitution and money laundering,” the man with the black suit said as he examined all the faces in the room.
“What about this fella?” a uniformed Atlantic City police officer asked as George was roughly turned around to face the detective in charge.
The man walked up to Cordero and then cocked his head in thought. “What’s your name? You famous or something?”
“He’s a fucking mind-readin’ freak, man!” one of the handcuffed men said as he was led out of the house.
George remained silent as he was held by the arm. He looked away from the detective as much as he could until the man reached out and pulled his chin around. The smile came on slowly but surely. The cop reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a notepad and flipped through the pages until he stopped and went back two, and then the smile grew.
“I saw that show you were on”—he looked at the notepad—“Mr. Cordero.”
George felt as if he wanted to cry at his failure to dramatically end his own life.
“I’m a fan,” the detective said as he slapped the notebook on his other hand and then slid it back into his coat. “But we do have an arrest warrant on you. I think a judge out west is waiting to discuss your exploits with the rest of … of … what is it they called your little spook-hunting group?” He turned away and then snapped his fingers. “That’s right, the Supernaturals. As I said, I’m a huge fan.”
SPOKANE, WASHINGTON
The twentieth day of October dawned cold and blustery in the small city east of Seattle. The day before, the weather had been as near perfect as anyone could remember for late September or October. Lights across the city started to come on and people prepared for their day. The occupants of one house in particular, a recent rental, had never turned off their lights from the night before, and neighbors had noticed only because the lights in the one-hundred-year-old house had not gone dark since the very strange people had moved in three weeks before.
The large man pulled the curtain back and spied the cold morning from the warmth of the immense living room. Nearly unrecognizable with his long black hair trimmed short, John Lonetree raised a brow as a milkman—yes, he was surprised that any major city still had milkmen—watched the house as he made his local deliveries. Lonetree watched the man in the blue uniform quickly move past the house.
“When did milkmen stop wearing white?” he asked, his words fogging the leaded glass window as the curtain fell back into place.
John didn’t receive an answer, so he turned and looked and saw that he was alone in the living room. He moved to the fireplace and stirred the embers alight and then, frustrated, allowed the cast-iron poker to fall to the bricks that made up the hearth. He slapped his large hand against the mantel and then angrily turned and left the room.
It didn’t take long to find her. She sat at the kitchen table. She had both her small hands wrapped firmly around a large mug of coffee. Her eyes stared straight ahead, and she didn’t react when John entered the kitchen. He started to say something but stopped, as he didn’t want his words to come out as an angry rebuke. Instead he walked to the counter and poured himself a cup of the overheated and old coffee and then turned and faced the diminutive woman who sat with her sweater pulled tightly around her chest.
Dr. Jennifer Tilden, renowned for her forensic anthropology work, didn’t raise her eyes as John pulled out an old yellow art deco chair that had lost its argyle pattern right around the time that Ike was president, and sat down. Jenny’s eyes still didn’t move. John reached out and forcibly removed her left hand from the mug and held it gently. She finally looked up with the barest trace of a smile. He was about to speak when he heard a loud crack as wood someplace in the old house separated from a nail. The moans and groans of old houses never ceased.
“This place alone would have given all those ghost-hunting rags a thrill of a lifetime.”
Jenny looked as if she wanted to say something, but she lowered her eyes instead. She never lost her smile, which to John was a reasonable start. Ever since they had been on the run, only because Gabriel Kennedy wanted them on the run, Jenny had been having bad dreams about Bobby Lee McKinnon. The songwriter had been murdered by mobsters in the very early sixties, and while investigating his death many years before, the ghost of the musical composer was sewn to her soul like a patch on a ripped coat. Bobby’s ghost had come in handy in their efforts to stop the horrid haunting in Pennsylvania years before and had been blessedly absent for the many years hence. Now it was apparent, with no real evidence other than whispered thoughts and confusing dreams, that Bobby Lee McKinnon had made a silent and hidden return.
“I’m going to ask you something, and I don’t want that famous eye-rolling you do, okay?”
Jennifer rolled her eyes to make light of John’s remark.
“Do you think your subconscious mind wants a return of Bobby Lee?” John swallowed and then plowed ahead. “Or maybe … maybe you miss him in some form or other?”
A shocked look came to Jenny’s soft features. She was about to say something but stopped short. Instead of the angry rebuke she had primed and ready to fire, she deflated.
“Maybe. I just don’t know. It’s like he never left but has decided for courtesy’s sake to leave me alone, at least in my waking hours.” Catching John off guard, she smiled, and for the first time in months, he saw the real Dr. Jennifer Tilden inside those tired eyes.
He smiled back.
“Now are you, my Indian guide to the nether reaches, asking because you’re worried about your insane girlfriend, or could it be that Mr. Wonderful Dreamwalker is jealous?”
John lost his smile and became falsely indignant. “Worried? Of course. Why, I—” Lonetree saw her smile grow larger, and he stopped. “Jealous, I guess.”
Jenny pushed her now-cold coffee away and stood and went to Lonetree and then slid up onto his lap. She kissed him deeply and then ran her small hand through his now-short-cropped hair.
“You know, for a former chief of police and dreamwalker extraordinaire, you sure can be silly sometimes.”
“Let’s just say concerned, then, and keep it at that.” This time, it was John who kissed her.
With a wink, he stood up and was about to offer to make breakfast when the front door opened. John instinctively reached for a sidearm that had not been on his hip for seven years. Jenny smiled and then stood from his lap and adjusted her green sweater. They heard the shrill greeting from the living room. Soon the image of former UBC field reporter Julie Reilly stood in the kitchen doorway.
“All they had was The Seattle Times; the Los Angeles papers hadn’t arrived yet, and I waited so long it felt like everyone at the newsstand knew who I was, so retreat being the better part of valor, I came home. Is that coffee still hot?”
John watched as Jenny poured Julie a cup of the burned coffee and then relieved her of the newspaper.
“Call it paranoia, but it feels like everyone in town knows who we are.”
“As long as we keep Sitting Bull here out of public view, we should be fine,” Jenny said, patting John on the arm as he skimmed through the Seattle morning paper. His smile slowly left and Jenny removed her hand.
“Don’t think for a moment that I didn’t notice the anti-Indian sentiment in that remark.” His face fell as he came to page 4. “Damn. They arrested Gabriel on contempt charges.”
“Read on; they a
lso have Damian and Leonard. Kelly was arrested in San Antonio.”
Julie was about to say something when a knock sounded on the front door. At the same moment, they heard movement out on the old back porch as someone pulled open the raggedy screen door, challenging the old and rusty spring. John winced as he nodded at Julie and Jenny.
“Mr. John Lonetree, Ms. Julie Reilly, and Ms. Jennifer Tilden, this is the Spokane Police Department. We have warrants for your arrests.”
“It’s my fault for insisting we get some news. I must have been spotted. Someone had to have recognized me from my UBC reporting days,” Julie said as she stood to open the back door, preparing to let Spokane’s finest in. “We may as well get this over with.”
* * *
Neighbors watched as the three were led out of the rented house in handcuffs. They saw the large Indian bringing up the rear with three of Spokane’s finest watching the six-foot-five John Lonetree. Later Julie would be surprised to find out that it wasn’t her life as a reporter that was their undoing but the mere fact that a little seventy-two-year-old neighbor lady had mistakenly thought the new out-of-place renters were at the very least the heads of Al Queda and ISIS, all living in Spokane and plotting evil deeds against the citizenry.
* * *
At seven thirty on the twentieth day of October, the scientific group known to the world as the Supernaturals were all taken into custody. A very sad ending to a group of men and women who had changed the face of parapsychology forever, an ending that opened a whole new world to come—a world where anything was again possible.
2
MORENO, CALIFORNIA
Anson Kilpatrick, a former Pomona, California, police lieutenant, looked down the empty street the locals called, rather euphemistically, Main Street and shook his head. He had never seen a town before that was so void of life. The empty shops, the civic center, the entire town was lifeless and barren. He knew he only had one more option in his search for Dylan Hanson and his two friends—the record store across the street. He spied the sign—K-Rave, as it was still apparent on the lifeless signage over the entrance to the old radio station—and he could see movement behind the filthy glass as someone watched him. He crossed the street without bothering to look, dodging, of all things, a lone tumbleweed as it rolled down the empty boulevard. He shook his head at the mall joke the town threw his way.
The detective had been looking high and low for the three missing high school kids for seven full days. Dylan Hanson’s well-to-do father had guided him here but, thus far, he had found nothing.
As he faced the glass door and was about to reach for it, it opened, and a chubby, bearded man with an even heavier woman behind him greeted him with a smile.
“Didn’t think you would ever come calling,” the man with the ponytail said as he stepped aside to allow Kilpatrick entrance.
The detective looked around in what used to be the front lobby of the radio station. Racks and boxes of old vinyl records were everywhere. He saw the old triple-paned glass that used to house the disc jockey booth, and he could see the dangling wires and old empty-shelled broadcast equipment that used to send out fifteen thousand watts of rock-and-roll power to the Inland Empire.
“You’re just in time! We just got a batch of brand-new titles in from Capitol Records,” the woman proclaimed proudly. “We were the highest bidder when they cleaned out their warehouses.”
The detective smiled as he took in the sad reminders of yesterday’s technology all stacked and sorted.
“We have an original Greatest Hits of Tommy James and the Shondells, unopened and no damage to the cover. Still has the shrink-wrap on it.”
“Tommy who?” the detective asked.
The man and the woman looked at each other as their hopes faded fast at a prospective customer gone awry.
“Anyway, have you seen this boy hanging out in the town?”
Both old hippies looked at the picture the detective produced of an unsmiling Dylan Hanson. His pockmarked face stared back at them, and they could see that he was a boy they would not have gotten along with as youths.
“Nah, we don’t see many kids here, at least in the daylight hours. And those that come around here at night are troublemakers,” the woman said.
“You?” the detective asked the woman’s husband.
“Can’t place him, man.”
The detective took a deep breath and was about to place the photo back into his jacket when the man stayed his hand.
“Wait,” he said as he examined the picture again. “You know, over a week ago, we were just closing up the store when I noticed movement where there should not have been. I think it was near, or even in, the old theater. Wouldn’t swear on it.”
“The old theater, you say?” the detective asked with hope. “That place looks like it was completely gutted by fire.”
The man and woman moved away as soon as they both knew there would be no sale today, at least from this guy. The woman stopped short and turned as she moved a fresh box of old records out of her way.
“No, it’s still mostly there. Only the old façade and main floor burned. Most of the interior, while not show ready, is still intact.”
“Thanks,” Kilpatrick said, turning to leave. He stopped when he saw that he needed to do something. He turned and faced the old hippie couple. “You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres, would you?”
The woman’s smile lit up the dingy old radio station, and her large bulk moved like an agile gazelle’s as she made her way to the back. She was back momentarily and handed him an old album that had seen better days.
“Sorry about the jacket’s condition, but the vinyl is just fine. Only one or maybe two scratches.”
The detective looked at the album and then smiled. “I’ll take it.”
He didn’t even own a phonograph any longer, but he felt obliged to give these people something in return for the little information they had given him.
“Nine dollars and fifty-five cents,” the ponytailed man offered when the detective reached for his wallet.
He gave the man a twenty. “Keep the rest.”
The man and the woman watched the well-dressed man leave the store, and they went to the window and watched as he turned right and then crossed the street once more.
“ZZ Top? Is he kidding?” the man asked.
“There’s no accounting for taste, honey. Besides, there’s one hell of a lot more than just a couple of scratches on that thing. I think I spilled a milk shake on it last year when I unpacked it.”
“Serves him right,” the man said as he watched their customer vanish down the street. “Rock and roll went downhill when Janis Joplin died.” The man sniffed and turned as his wife handed him a lit joint. “Oh, Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz—”
His wife joined in singing the old Joplin tune as they turned away from the window and continued their preservation of sensible music restoration and salvage.
* * *
Kilpatrick stood under the partially collapsed marquee of the Grenada Theater. He eased himself over and around some of the neon light tubes that had once made up the garish display that once upon a time illuminated the entirety of Main Street after dark. The theater was one of the old chain of movie palaces that crisscrossed the nation in the Hollywood heyday of yesteryear. He took a quick look inside the old pagoda-style box office that sat twenty feet into the courtyard leading to the main entrance, just as he had on his previous cursory search of the Grenada the week before. The old ticket dispenser was the only item recognizable inside the box office encased in fogged and broken glass. He turned to his right and left and saw the old spaces where posters advertising what films were coming to a theater near you were once displayed. The glass in the cases was long since gone and the lights that had occupied the same memory—gone. The tattered remains of the long strip of blue ribbon lay half-attached on the filthy tile. AIR-CONDITIONED FOR YOUR COMFORT, it said. The little penguin on each end o
f the banner proclaimed that at one time it was the only building in town that actually had real air-conditioning.
The intricately laid tile under his feet was covered in over fifty years’ worth of grime and filth, to the point the yellow and gold tiles could no longer be discerned. Of the eight glass doors fronting the main lobby, only three were still hanging. The ticket-collecting podium was long since gone, and the carpeting, once a brilliant red color, was faded, scorched, and even missing in most places. As his feet slowly sank into the mushiness of the flooring, he saw the half-circular snack bar.
As the private detective looked around the shattered lobby area, he pulled out his flashlight and shined it around. The twin sets of stairs wound upward on either side of the large snack bar. He allowed the light to shine up those stairs, and a chill coursed through his body as he remembered the tales from that long-ago Halloween night. Because of what happened inside this theater, every police department in Southern California was trained on how to get patrons out of a burning movie house. He had to remind himself that six kids had been burned to death up in the balcony and five more crushed beneath it when it fell to the main floor after structural damage had weakened it.
Kilpatrick placed the album he had just bought, even though he wasn’t really a ZZ Top fan, on the unbroken section of countertop and moved to the far right of the snack bar. His light fell on the manager’s office he had searched the week prior, and then the light went to a spot in the darkened far corner. Just behind an old and tattered red curtain was a door. It was partially opened, and it was also a door he had not ventured through on his first trip. It was next to the manager’s office, and he suspected that was the way to the basement. With a deep breath, he managed to sidestep debris that had fallen from the ceiling over fifty years earlier and made his way to the door. With the glass end of the flashlight he eased the door open and shined his light inside. The small platform vanished after only a few feet, and he thought that was where his investigation would end, as the light went away into nothingness. Then he saw there was a reason. The steps vanished down a very dark and very unstable-looking set of wooden stairs.
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 6