Angel of Death

by J. Robert King

  Azra shook his head, nettled.

  “Were you in heaven? Were you on earth? Were you working somewhere else? Were you a person, yourself, on the day before – a person who got killed and became an angel?”

  “I… I don’t… I don’t know…” Azra said. The doctor looked up. His hairy brows furrowed.

  “Were you an angel before, charged with some other duty? Or were you a human? You had to be something on the day before.”

  “I said I don’t remember.”

  Doctor Gross smiled affably. “Well, that’s the first part of sorting this all out. Let everybody else worry about what you’ve been doing in the last fifteen years. We can focus on what you were doing before that. What you were. Who you were.”

  “But if I can’t remember–”

  “Would you be willing to be hypnotized?” the doctor asked. “The mind often represses memories that cause intense psychological pain. It’s a survival response. But now your survival depends on remembering, not forgetting. Hypnotism is one way to remember.”

  Azra looked between the two, his fingers tightening on Donna’s hand. “I don’t know. Hypnotism can introduce suggestions. It can create memories instead of uncovering them. It’s playing with nightmares.”

  “We’re already doing that,” urged Doctor Gross, not unkindly.

  Donna patted Azra’s hand and wore a grim smile.

  “Please, Azra. We have to start somewhere.”

  Reluctance ghosted across his eyes. “Yes. Go ahead.”

  The doctor’s sigh echoed through the space like a contented wind. “Lean back, Azra. Get as comfortable as you can. Good. Close your eyes. Good. Take three deep breaths: one… two… three… Good. As you draw your next breath, feel the air flowing across your lips, your nostrils, through your nose, down your throat, into your lungs. Feel the lightness and coolness of it. Now breathe out, sending all the heaviness and darkness out with it. Okay, let your next breath go even deeper. Let it lighten and cool you even further, down to your navel and up to the crown of your head. Breathe out all the heaviness from those regions. Good. Your upper body feels light and comfortable, like a cool pillow on a warm window seat in April. Breathe in again, letting the lightness suffuse you to your very toes and the ends of your hair. Breathe out. What is left is soul only, a light and cool and floating creature. Good.

  “Leave this place, now. Let your soul drift beyond your body, beyond this room, beyond these walls. Let your soul find its place of bliss, its home, the one place where there is no worry, no fear, no guilt, no pain. You’ve breathed all those things out, and they are gone from you, and now your soul is drifting to the place where those things cannot enter, cannot reach you. Are you there, Azra?”

  “Yes.”

  “You don’t have to, but if you would like to, you could tell us about this place.”

  “It’s Donna’s love seat. She’s beside me. The bay window is dark behind us. The TV is showing a play by Tennessee Williams. There’s popcorn in a paper bag between us.”

  Donna teared up, biting her lip. Doctor Gross offered her a tissue, but she shook her head.

  “Good, Azra. Very good. This is your place of bliss. Nothing evil can reach you here. You are safe here. You can talk about anything in this place. You can remember anything in this place, and do so without guilt or fear or pain.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve brought with you a scrapbook of memories. It is your most precious personal possession. It tells you who you are. Would you like to look at it?”

  “I don’t know if–”

  “Nothing can hurt you here. No memory can bring guilt or fear or pain.”

  “Yes. I would like to look at it.”

  “Would you be willing to let Donna look at it, too?”

  She shot a fearful glance at the doctor, but he nodded gently at her.

  Azra said, “Yes.”

  “Share something with her. Open the scrapbook and show her a picture of something.”

  “What about this one, here?”

  “Yes. That’s a good one. Describe the picture to her.”

  “I’m eight years old. That is my bike. It had a banana seat. It didn’t have a sissy bar. I bent the rim jumping a rock.”

  Donna blinked, uncertain. “Are you riding the bike?”

  “I’m standing by it. My hand is on the seat. There is a yellow house behind me, and an oak tree. The sidewalk is all broken up from the tree roots. That was a good day. Later that week, I fell and scraped my knee, but that day not even once.”

  Donna smiled, her eyes watering. “That’s a beautiful picture, Azra. A beautiful picture.”

  “Good, Azra. That was a good day. And even remembering that you scraped your knee – that doesn’t hurt now, or make you fearful or sad.”

  “No.”

  “Good, Azra. That was a good day. Would you like to show Donna another picture, of a day that wasn’t so good? One that had lots of pain and guilt and fear?”

  “How about this one?”

  “That’s an excellent one. Describe it to her.”

  The wind scorpions are gathering on the cell window again. It will be a cold night. They come at dusk, after the rocks and sand have given up their heat and before the bats begin their nighttime feasts. They crawl up the side of the cell and sit on the windowsill and let their bodies soak up the last heat of the day. When the sun is gone, I will be their heat.

  I lie on the stone bed and watch the bugs gather. One of them is as big as my hand, which means he is old and doesn’t have much venom left. I call him Bush III because Bush I sent me to Iraq and Bush II sent me to Gitmo – and Bush III, seems he’s got a plan for me, too. He calls his coalition of the willing, and the wind scorpions gather. I count them. Six so far. They are my saints. I venerate them. They alone command my attention, my memory. All else is insignificant. Only the saints, who come every evening to wait like votives on the windowsill, are worth remembering, for they cure the wounds that appear across my body.

  Bush III is tending the knee that won’t straighten. The two smaller ones on either side of him – they are sisters. Their needle-like legs are the best ones for stitching up cuts. The one that is waving its head and seems to have a mustache is John Bolton. He tends the wound lowest down on my foot and blesses it. They like to eat dead flesh, so I am a feast. Once the waterboarding and wires and fists are done, I’ve got plenty of food for them. Letting them eat at my wounds keeps me from rotting.

  Rot has to go. Only what is holy can remain. Marines come to the bars and tell me to come. I do not, wanting to pray to my saints. One for every wound. But there are only eleven. I have a long way to go. Marines tell me I will regret making them wait. I ignore their insignificant voices. I am a Marine, and no one listens to me.

  There comes the twelfth.

  And then, suddenly, the bars swing into the room and there are two Marines with them, and wounds are coming faster than wind scorpions.

  “–but you are not in that terrible place. You are only viewing it from your place of bliss. Yes. Remember. Good. Good. Two more breaths. Breathe back in the solidity of your body. Settle back into your flesh. Let your soul sigh. One last breath, and you will be fully awake.”

  Azra opened his eyes. The hypnotic spell faded away behind walls of pink paint and cinder block and steel bars.

  Donna opened her eyes as well, but they were brimming, and her face was the color of paper. She blinked, and a tear dropped from her eyelid and painted a red line down her white cheek.

  “Good, Azra,” said Doctor Gross, a smile knifing beneath his mustache. He tried to look pleased, but he wore an expression that he himself would have called an angry grin. “You’ve opened the archive of memory. You’ve begun to touch once again the person you had been.”

  Azra bent his head toward the table and rubbed his forehead with his hands. “But they aren’t memories. They’re fantasies. Suggestions. I was talking with my cell mate. That’s where all that stuff about Gitmo cam
e from. It’s all a lie.”

  Doctor Gross patted Azra’s hand patiently. “We’ll sort that out, too, in time. Yes, recovered memories and outright fantasies are sometimes hard to distinguish. Sometimes it doesn’t matter. Memories tell us who we were and fantasies who we wish we were. Both tell us a great deal.”

  “Don’t equate them,” Azra said, flinging off the doctor’s touch. “I was an angel. Not a human. Not a psycho. I was an angel. The picture of me with the bike, that was only a fantasy. I want so much to be human, my mind concocted a fantasy.”

  “Sweetheart,” said Donna, tears standing in her eyes.

  “It’s not a fantasy. These memories are the real ones. You are human. You are.”

  Doctor Gross rose. “Well, I need to get going. I’ll come back in a few days, and we’ll talk some more. In the meantime,” he smiled sadly, “remember your place of bliss.”

  Azra watched him go. Once the teal shirt had disappeared beyond the guard, he spoke to Donna quietly, urgently, “You said you believed in angels.”

  “Yes.”

  “In fallen angels – in Satan?”

  “Yes, in fallen angels.”

  “In the Dark Angel who wrestled Jacob at Peniel – ?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why can’t you believe in me?”

  Donna seemed suddenly deflated, and the glow of hope on her features faded away.

  Lynda Barnett leaned forward. “I’m going to have to stop this conversation right here.”

  “No, you’re not,” Azra said fiercely. “I’m in charge of my own defense!” Lynda rolled her eyes, released a hiss of steam, and slouched back, arms folded, in her chair. Azra turned back to Donna. “Well?”

  “Why don’t I believe you?” Donna sought through interior spaces. “Do you know about Herbert Mullin?”

  “I don’t.”

  “He was a serial murderer in California. He heard his father, who was half a world away in the military, tell him to kill. Vietnam had just ended, and Herbert believed that the casualties of that war had been sacrifices to nature. With the end of the war, nature was growing angry. It was his job to go kill in order to provide more sacrifices and keep California from falling into the ocean.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you know about Richard Trenton Chase?”

  “No.”

  “He believed he had soap-dish disease. If you pick up your soap and it is gooey underneath, you have soap-dish disease. It turns your blood to powder. When he was in a psychiatric home, he would capture rabbits in the courtyard and inject their blood into his veins. He was once stopped when leaving an Indian reservation because he had buckets of blood in the back of his truck. It was cow’s blood, but later he hunted humans, drank their blood, and put their livers and kidneys into blenders.”

  “Your point is?”

  “Both of them were convinced of the supernatural forces that affected them. Both pleaded with those around them to understand, to believe. Both were human. Both died because they could not escape their delusions.”

  Azra’s face fell. “It can’t be true, Donna. It can’t. If I was an angel, I was a great servant of God. If I was only human, I was a madman and a monster.”

  “Whatever you were before, you’re human now,”

  she said. “You’re human now. And you have to live.”

  “You’re wrong. You’re wrong, and I am going to prove it.”

  THIRTEEN

  The news got out that the cop who had caught the killer was now sitting beside him in the Racine County Jail, holding his hand while a liberal professor and the public defender appointed by activist judges took part in a séance. They called to angels and to demons to testify in court to free the killer – or so said an unnamed guard. Donna’s phone began to ring; her answering machine filled with death threats. She changed her number to unlisted. Threatening mail arrived, and Donna opened only bills.

  Except when a small square package showed up in her mailbox. It was wrapped in brown paper, and its return address simply read, “From a Friend.”

  “There’s something about this one,” said Donna, holding it in her hand as she walked into her kitchen.

  “Feels – soft.” She got a knife from the drawer and gingerly sliced into the paper. Then she shone a flashlight into the slit. Inside lay something that looked like an old wallet.

  No apparent booby traps, no anthrax…

  Donna cautiously cut two more slits and lifted the paper away.

  Inside was a billfold, worn and brown. She opened it and found an Indiana driver’s license with a very familiar face.

  “Mother of God – Azra.”

  It was more than a driver’s license. The whole thing was stuffed with ID – Social Security, library cards, video rental clubs, grocery check cards, blood donor cards, grocery receipts, thirty-eight dollars in tens, fives, and ones, and a short shopping list.

  “William B. Dance, male, six foot one, one hundred eighty-five pounds, black hair, gray eyes, no sight restriction, Social Security number…”

  Donna went into her home office and scooted her chair up to her computer. A few bookmarks, a few passwords, and she was into the Burlington Police Intranet. She began by typing in the driver’s license number. His name is William Dance. The little boy with the bike was named William Dance. In moments, the information began scrolling up:

  No record of parking citation.

  No record of traffic citation.

  No record of misdemeanor arrest.

  No record of felony arrest.

  She picked up the phone and flipped through her Rolodex. Her fingers stopped on the address and phone number of Jason Knight, IRS inspector. She dialed.

  “Extension five forty-seven. Thank you. Hi, Jason. This is Detective Leland from Burlington. Right, the Pizza Hut arson case. Yeah. Oh, fine, how about you?

  Yeah, I’ve got a Social Security number I need a check on. Sure. All right? You’ve got it. Okay.” She read him the number, and he repeated it back. “Yeah, that’s it. Okay, I’ll wait.” She leaned back in her chair. It creaked wearily, an extension of her tired body.

  “You got it? Good. None whatsoever? This guy is –

  let’s see, the license says he’s thirty-five. You sure you’ve got nothing? How could he have a Social Security number and never file taxes? Yeah, I’ll wait.” She fiddled with a pen on the desk before her.

  “MIA? From what war? Desert Storm? That would have made him… yes. A Marine? Are you sure? That was over fifteen years ago, which would have made him twenty. July 22, 1992 is when he disappeared? All right.

  “Well, Jason, if you dig up anything else, let me – oh, wait, have you got his serial number and unit? Yeah. Thanks. Got it. Good-bye. Yeah, the arson for profit scheme was more fun. Sure. I’ll see you. Bye.”

  Leland hung up the phone and stared at the ceiling. A veteran, missing in action for fifteen years. A POW. Scorpions and Marines with waterboarding and wires and fists and wounds coming faster than saints…

  Oh, Azra. No wonder you forgot everything. No wonder you became a monster.

  She punched another number into the phone.

  “Hello, this is Detective Leland of the Burlington Police Department. Burlington, Wisconsin. I’m investigating a multiple – that is, I’m trying to find the owner of a lost wallet, and I need some information about a Marine that served during Desert Storm. Yes, the National Personnel Records Center? And the number? Who should I ask to speak to? Thanks. Yeah. I need all the luck I can get.”

  She worked past dinnertime and into the night. There was no window in her home office, no skylight to look into and see the speckled blackness of a Wisconsin sky. Only her grandfather’s old wooden cuckoo clock told her how late it was. She had ignored the ten chirps, the eleven, and the twelve. But when there came only one, and then only two, the creeping morning could not be denied.

  How many cups of coffee? The stuff had kept her awake but had leant a jittery fear to the process. Most of her wo
rk had been the web equivalent of paperwork – online indexes, pentagon records, requests for information, directory searches, postings to recruiters and schools, even a conversation with the military liaison at the American Embassy in Baghdad. Most of the queries came up with no immediate aid, though the Veterans Administration had found Azra on one of their newer lists of “Missing in Action and Presumed Dead.” That list had indicated no known family, and that he’d been recruited out of the enlistment office in Alexandria, Virginia. There, she found a 1991 file that included a grainy photo of a young, thin, dark-haired recruit, and an enrollment record that identified him as William B. Dance.

  The supposed nineteen-year-old had had no Social Security number when he enrolled, but the file indicated it had been applied for. His place of residence was listed as Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In the space for parents’ names was the phrase “Ward of State.” The enlisting officer’s comments included the notes that,

  “William is a level-headed and solid-seeming young man. He should do well in combat.”

  “If he weren’t delusional,” Leland told herself grimly. He would be listed as MIA the very next year. The file also indicated he had an interest in covert operations, including strike-force tactics and disguise and camouflage maneuvers. “He says he would like to be a spy.”

  A spy for the Marines.

  But how could he have gotten from MIA in 1992 to killing in Burlington in 2008?

  The phone rang so loudly she leapt up from her seat. Her heart hammered. “Hello? This is she. What? Another one? Mother of God. Yeah, yeah, I’m on my way.”

  It was no joy to kill you, my friend, but it was your time.

  Yes, you slept peacefully. You might not ever have woken up enough to know what I was doing. Or, perhaps you thought I was raping you and decided to hold still until you realized you were strangling. I should have known you would bite down on my thumb when I held the penny in your throat. Of course, I wouldn’t have guessed you could bite it clear off.

  Now that I think of it, it was probably the thumb more than the penny that suffocated you. I could see the bone and sinew jammed in your teeth. You tried to spit the thumb out, but it was stuck. You tried to pry it out, but I was sitting on your stomach by that time. My own agony was terrible. I can’t imagine what you were going through, to look up and see me sitting there on top of you, holding the stump where my thumb used to be and waiting for you to suffocate on the penny and the thumb, both.