Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation

by A. W. Hill

  He paged again through the prayer book, looking for something. He found it in rite two of the Daily Evening Prayer.

  “If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will cover me, and the light around me turn into night,’ I will despair. But the darkness is not dark to you, O Lord; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.”

  She lifted her head and looked at him, noticing his eye patch for the first time.

  “What happened to your eye?”

  “A little bird had it for breakfast.”

  “Did they . . . do that to you?

  “To tell you the truth, I think I got off easy. They blew Dante’s brains out.”

  She sat up, wobbled, and rubbed her head. “What?”

  “You can’t be surprised, Ruthie. You’re a long way from naive.” He turned to her. “Why did you do it? Why did you tell them about the cave? What was the deal?”

  “The deal was you or me. That prick Djapper had so much shit on me from when I hung with Henry. Interstate transport of illegal weapons. Drugs. Stuff we blew up. He only played me because he figured sooner or later he’d get to use me. And he did. He used me in the usual ways, and he used me to get you taken out.”

  “Djapper put you up to that?”

  “He bought my fuckin’ ticket. Told me how to find you.”

  “And if you’d said no—”

  “I’d go to jail . . . maybe worse. Couldn’t take prison. No way. And I couldn’t stand it hangin’ over my head. Can’t take that shit, either.”

  “But Djapper was blown to bits before we even made it to El Mirai. You sold me out to a dead guy.”

  “I didn’t know he was dead. And anyway, who were you? Just some guy who’d fuck me and walk away . . . the way everybody walks away.”

  “Yeah,” Raszer said softly. “So that was it? Life sucks and then you die?”

  “Pretty much,” she replied, then leveled her eyes at him. “Except that he told me if I didn’t cooperate, he could see to it that Katy was raped by dogs, cut into a thousand pieces, and fed to them for dinner.”

  Raszer closed his eyes and the prayer book and let it wash over him.

  After a moment, she spoke again. “Johnny and Henry told me the stories about the Garden. It sounded like some kind of peace.”

  “And peace is what you wanted?”

  “I wanted a whiteout. You know, like how in the movies sometimes everything goes white? No complications. No fucking choices. I wanted to white out the world.”

  He glanced at the bomb pack. “And that’s what you intend to do tonight.”

  “Damn straight,” she said. “So why don’t you get out of here?”

  “Not without you, Ruthie,” he said.

  “Why? What am I to you? I fucked you over, mister. Wise up.”

  “Shams asked me to look after you. Said you had a soul worth tending.”

  She stared for a few moments, then lowered her eyes. “Shams said that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Shams was a dreamer. Look where it got him.”

  “Right. Look where it got him. Flowers spring up where he steps.” He waited. “Walk out with me, Ruthie. This whole thing with the Old Man is coming apart. Your testimony will be worth something, maybe immunity. These guys killed Johnny and Henry, Dante and Shams. Don’t throw yourself on the pyre for them. Don’t—”

  Without preface, she laid her head against his chest, and he held her close for what seemed a small eternity. “Guys like you screw up everything for people like me,” she said. “You make it seem like there’s a reason for things. Take me out of here before I see through your con.”

  Lightly, almost chastely, she kissed him, then took his hand.

  They made their way breathlessly up the aisle toward the western door. She squeezed his hand tight and let out a sob of anxiety as he reached for the big handle.

  He pulled the door open and called out. “Davos! I’m bringing her out. Get everybody back and get your man ready to go to work. Are we clear to walk?”

  “You’re clear,” he called back. “Come ahead and then move away from her.”

  Raszer stopped and squinted into the police lights. “Move away? Why?”

  “Like I told you,” came the reply, “we don’t know how it’s triggered!”

  He squeezed her hand. Arc lights cast the snow in shimmering relief as they stepped out together. It looked like a movie set. The bells had begun to play “O Little Town Of Bethlehem.” Raszer’s hand was torn from Ruthie’s and he was moved hurriedly toward a bomb shield and restrained, while Ruthie stood alone, blinded, on the uppermost step.

  The massive door swung shut behind her, leaving the cathedral in near darkness. A few seconds later, an explosion ripped into the doors and sent shrapnel eighty feet into the air, shattering the rose window and littering the pews with shards of brilliantly colored glass. The wind gusted down to the altar and snuffed the candle out. The tower bells stuck on the first syllable of Beth-le-hem, and kept ringing out the same note.

  It was a long time before anyone stopped them.

  EPILOGUE

  The January rains pelted the picture window with a staccato rhythm. Each rivulet took its own form on its way down to the sill. Some looked like rivers Brigit knew from her maps, and others looked like anacondas. She turned away, thinking that the rains wouldn’t be as bad as last year, and that this was all right. There had been enough bad weather. She saw Dr. Schoeppe coming out of the bedroom and knew that this meant she could go back in. Brigit approached her with a certain hopefulness.

  “He’s better today, don’t you think, Dr. Schoeppe?”

  “I think you can call me Hildegarde,” said Raszer’s analyst. “Yes, better. Not great, but better. Great will take some time. What about you?”

  “Mmm. Okay, I guess. Sad a lot. My dad’s always been, you know, excited about things. Like, ‘Brigit, check this out!’ or ‘Brigit, guess how the ancient Gubi-Wubi tribe made the sun stop!’ It’s hard to see him not be excited.”

  “I know. For a while, you may need to be excited for him. It’s contagious, you--”

  There was a knock at the main door—the door Silas Endicott had walked through almost a year before.

  “Should I open it, Monica?” Brigit called into the office.

  “I’ll be right there, Brij,” Monica answered, rising from her workstation. She wore a gray wool tube dress and had newly streaked her hair. She peeked through the window, then opened the door for Lieutenant Borges.

  “Buenas tardes, señorita,” said the lieutenant, with a courtly tip of his head. “As always, your beauty is a cure for the stormiest of Mondays.”

  “Buenas tardes, Lieutenant,” said Monica. “Lorca couldn’t have said it better.”

  Borges looked past her shoulder. “Ah, he has a visitor . . . ”

  “That’s all right,” said Hildegarde. “I’m just leaving.”

  “Dr. Schoeppe,” said Monica, “this is Lieutenant Luis Borges, of the LAPD.”

  Hildegarde stepped forward to shake his hand. “It’s a great pleasure, Lieutenant. Stephan speaks very highly of you. He says you keep the city sane.”

  Borges chuckled.

  “And this is Hildegarde Schoeppe,” Monica continued. “She’s Stephan’s, er—”

  “Hildegarde is my dad’s shrink,” Brigit piped in. “But she’s a Jungian.”

  “She is, is she?” said Borges. “In that case, I will escort the doctor to her car. I have never met a real . . . Jungian.”

  “I’m not sure I believe that,” said Hildegarde. “But I’ll accept your escort.” She turned back to Monica and Brigit. “I’ll see you on Wednesday. Call me if—”

  Monica nodded.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Borges.

  “Okay,” Monica replied with a soft smile. “I’ll leave the door open.”

  When they had reached the end of the front walk, Borges spoke. “Would it be a violation of doctor-patient privacy for me to ask
how he is doing? He seems very much a changed man.”

  Hildegarde turned to him and thought for a moment. “I’ll speak to you as his friend. I think he’d be all right with that. He’s the same man. Older, I think . . . in the sense that he left years behind over there. He’s shaken, that’s for sure. It would be glib to sum it up as post-traumatic stress . . . although there is certainly that. It’s not psychosis. He’s perfectly lucid. He can’t seem to get out of this ‘place’ he’s in. He calls it ‘seeing outside-in.’ Parts of his description of it make it sound like autism…but it’s not. And there’s grief—deep grief. A real connection with this girl. The one who—”

  “Who blew herself up,” said Borges.

  “Or was blown up. Yes.”

  “Well, you know . . . he always suffers when he can’t bring them back.”

  “Oh, I know,” she said. “Believe me, I know. This is deeper.”

  “I have a theory,” said Borges. “I won’t ask you to endorse or refute it. You know, I’m sure, that he had a couple of brushes with suicide when he was a boy . . . ” She gave the slightest nod, but that was all he asked. “I think every time he pulls one of these people out of the darkness, he pulls himself out. And when he can’t . . . ”

  She nodded. “The city is lucky to have you, Lieutenant. Keep us sane, will you?”

  “Do my best,” he said, and opened the door for her. “But remember, this is L.A.”

  Brigit was at Raszer’s bedside when Monica showed Borges in. Raszer was prone on his old futon—the same he’d had since the divorce—and Brigit sat cross-legged on the Persian rug, looking through a photo album. She glanced up.

  “Does this mean I have to leave again?” she asked Monica.

  “Just for a few minutes, angel,” said Borges. “If that’s all right.”

  “I know,” Brigit said, rising. “Police business.”

  “C’mon, Brij,” said Monica. “I’m making ginseng smoothies.”

  Borges scanned the room for a place to sit. Raszer, lying on his left side under a pale green bedsheet, motioned to a high-backed chair in the corner. With evident pain, he sat up and reached for a cigarette. He wore drawstring pajama bottoms and was wrapped in bandages from waist to chest. He groaned and lit the cigarette.

  “When do those bandages come off?” Borges asked.

  “Another week,” said Raszer, exhaling smoke. “And every time they change them, I go back there, Luis. I have to watch her . . . come apart.”

  “It’s just a damned good thing they pulled you behind that flak shield when they did, amigo, or you wouldn’t be here to relive the horror.”

  “She was all alone on those steps. So fucking scared. The look on her face—”

  Borges sighed deeply and dropped his chin to his chest.

  “So, what do we know today, Luis?”

  “Not much that we didn’t know yesterday. Except this, and it’s unconfirmed; it will probably never be confirmed. My guy with the FBI’s counterterrorism group says they did have one of the other bomb packs in hand two hours earlier. Found it in a gym locker in Foggy Bottom. A government building. An employee handball court.”

  “Foggy Bottom,” Raszer repeated. “The State Department?”

  “He wouldn’t say. He did say that they took it apart, they knew it was cell phone activated, and they had the number. Now, that doesn’t mean it was her number . . . ”

  “Yeah, but Christ, Luis . . . they could’ve dropped a radio shield over her and blocked the call the minute she walked out of there. I’ve seen it. I know they can do it.”

  “Maybe there just wasn’t time.”

  “I don’t want to tell you what I think.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’ll write me off as a nut job,” said Raszer.

  “I did that a long time ago,” said Borges, “and I’m still listening.”

  “I need to think before I rant,” said Raszer. “I just wish . . . I just wish . . . ” He stubbed out the cigarette and lay back down with a groan. “God, I’m tired. I hope this isn’t what getting old is like.”

  “I know where you’re coming from. Conspiracies, when they’re real, don’t work like assembly lines. They’re about gambling on probability; a series of on/off switches that may operate and let the thing happen. Or may not. Nobody ever touches the switches—that’s how they keep their hands clean. I see it here all the time. And if there were people moled into the U.S. government who wanted to see the sky fall, this is the way they’d go about it. If it doesn’t happen this time, they just snap their briefcases shut, slip off quietly to some high-priced lobbying or consulting firm, and wait for another day. The good news is, thanks to you, that day is not today.”

  “Not to me,” said Raszer. “I’m a foot soldier. But there is a guy—”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Borges. “I like being at least a little dumb. Not you. You’ll never close your eyes. You’ll never walk away from a door you can jimmy open. So, my friend, you’d better figure on a long ride on the edge.” He stood up. “Speaking of eyes,” he said, pointing to his own right, “I know a guy downtown, on Jeweler’s Row, who makes the most beautiful glass eyes you’ve ever seen. He uses gemstones—sapphires, rubies, emeralds—for the iris. He did one for a partner of mine. Want his number?”

  “Maybe later. I’m going to stay with the pirate patch for now.”

  “Okay, friend. Rest up. And rest a little easier. Detective Aquino called me this morning. That JW Elder, Amos Leach? He’s been charged with six counts: two sexual battery, two contributing, one statutory, and one obstruction. And all that without any cojones. Your boy Emmett Parrish came out of his shell to give a statement.”

  After the cop had left, Brigit crept back in with her smoothie and two straws, and took her place beside the bed. For a long time, their exchange was wordless. Raszer gazed at the stained-glass window he’d commissioned some years before, a depiction of Sir Galahad’s vision of the Holy Grail. The golden rays issuing from the Grail were runnels in the glass, and had been cut at angles so as to trap and refract the late-afternoon sun.

  Brigit could, up to a point, hop aboard her father’s train of thoughts, but not when he went to the outside-in place. There, she couldn’t follow.

  “Tell me again about Francesca and the Fedeli d’Amore,” she said.

  “Francesca,” he said softly, easing back. “I want you to meet her one day. She’s quite a lady. And she has a dog that isn’t really a dog at all.”

  “Shaykh Adi,” Brigit said.

  “That’s right. The kindest, wisest eyes you’ve ever seen.”

  “And you’ll take me there . . . to the place that isn’t really a place at all?”

  “Na-Koja-Abad.”

  “Nowhere-Land.”

  “Maybe someday,” he said. “After they clean up the neighborhood.”

  “Do you go there sometimes, Daddy . . . even when you’re here?”

  “I think so, yeah. I’ll try to keep the visits short.”

  “That’s okay,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye on you here if you want to go. In your mind, I mean. Or whatever--”

  “Thanks, muffin. It’s always good to know someone’s waiting.”

  “I’ll be waiting,” she said, and touched his arm. Her expression froze.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I just had one of those . . . that weird feeling.”

  “Déjà vu?”

  “Yeah. When I said, ‘I’ll be waiting.’ I’ve said that before.” She smiled—a little epiphany. “You know how you said that sometimes you feel like you’re still in that game? That you’re just playing and the real you is someplace else?”

  He nodded.

  “Maybe that just comes from knowing that there’s a story made up for all of us, way before we’re born. And we just sort of walk through it—like a game—until we figure it out and start playing for real. Then it’s not a game anymore, is it?”

  He laid his head on the pillow and ai
med his good eye through a stained-glass rose to the sun, now golden and sinking. Brigit took her book and curled up on the rug, close enough to take his hand if he had a nightmare. She would stay the long night, and be the first thing he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Those without whom, nothing: My publisher, Charlie Winton. My editor, Michele Slung. My agent, Kimberly Cameron. Copy Editor, Annie Tucker. Production Mgr, Laura Mazer. My protectress, Dorris Halsey.