Castro Directive

by Mertz, Stephen

  Pierce stared at the altar a moment as the guide pointed to the larger of the two towers. He talked about the stonemason as if he were a dear, old friend. "Ed lived a very ascetic life in his tower. He slept on a swinging bed made of burlap and metal."

  "Did his Sweet Sixteen ever find out about the castle?" a young woman asked.

  The guide nodded solemnly. "That's a sad story. After Ed died, the family who took over ownership of the castle located the woman. She was a widow in her sixties and still living in Latvia. She had heard of the Coral Castle, but had no interest in seeing it, even if her trip was paid for. A heartbreaker to the end."

  As the group headed up the steps to the tower, Pierce saw a stream of students with notebooks filing into the castle through the revolving door. The class was obviously over. A moment later, Redington entered the courtyard accompanied by several students. His half-moon glasses hung over his chest from an elastic band, which disappeared beneath his ponytail, and he carried a thermos bottle under his arm. He stopped at the valentine table, and the students grouped around him.

  Pierce ambled over and stood a few feet away from the group. Redington was comparing coral rock to the unconscious mind when he saw Pierce staring at him. The professor looked blankly at him, as if he couldn't figure out where he'd seen him, then scowled. He excused himself from the students and moved over to Pierce.

  "What the hell are you doing here?" he said gruffly. A shock of white hair hung over his forehead, which was pimpled in sweat.

  Pierce decided to confront him with the break-in. He could be as direct and caustic as Redington. "Someone broke into my place last night. You know anything about it?"

  "Why would I know anything about that? You think I did it?"

  "I know who did it. I just don't know who put him up to it."

  Redington ran a hand through his hair. "You drove all the way out here to accuse me of sending someone to break into your house? You think I was responsible for the break-in at Dr. Simms's house, too?"

  Pierce lifted his sunglasses, balancing them on his head and revealing his shiner. "I want some answers. That's all. The same guy who broke into my place killed Loften."

  "I don't know what to tell you, except that you're lucky you're still alive."

  "Tell me this. Why were you and Elise's father involved in a group called Noster Mundus?"

  Astonishment flickered across Redington's features, then melted away as he glanced around and noticed students looking his way. Pierce thought that he was about to deny knowing what he was talking about. Instead, he said: "I have a class now, but sometime soon we should talk about it."

  Redington turned away, Pierce fired another question. "I hear Elise didn't talk to her father for several years. That true?"

  Redington glanced back. "I think you should talk to her about that matter. It's none of my business."

  "I will." He followed Redington toward the rear of the castle, where Redington's second class was gathering. "By the way, why are you holding your class here?"

  Redington smiled for the first time since he'd seen Pierce. Either he was more at ease with that question or he was trying to cover up his anxiety. "Why don't you join us and see? I always hold one class here each quarter."

  Redington stopped at the revolving door and motioned to Pierce. "Give it a shove."

  Pierce pushed, and was amazed by how smoothly the huge rock revolved. He looked around the garden. "It's pleasant back here."

  "A bit humid this time of year, but the bottlebrush trees and wild almonds are still in bloom." Redington spoke as if their earlier, strained conversation hadn't happened. "Now, please excuse me."

  When the class began, about twenty students were seated on the grass in the umbra of several date palms. Pierce leaned against a tree by the castle wall barely within hearing range of the class and watched Redington pour himself a steaming cup of water from his thermos. How the hell could he drink that stuff?

  He listened as Redington asked who had toured the castle. He nodded at the show of hands. "What would you say is the main factor that attracts people here?"

  The man Pierce had heard questioning the guide about the tower spoke up. "It was built by one man with primitive tools."

  "It's the only castle in town," another student said, and everyone laughed.

  Redington smiled and Pierce could tell he had good rapport with his students. He wondered what they would think if they knew the professor was a suspect in a case of murder and theft.

  "It is unique," Redington said. "That can't be denied. And that it was constructed by one man with homemade tools is indeed interesting. However, that's a matter more suited for engineers and physicists than a psychology class.

  "We're more concerned with the symbolic aspects of this marvel. Here we have a man who lost the love of his life on the eve of his marriage. So what did he do? He made his love concrete by building a stone castle in her honor from coral rock."

  He paused, giving the students a moment to consider the thought. A woman raised her hand. "But Dr. Redington, stone seems so cold and unemotional. Stone doesn't care or love."

  "True. But at the same time, something constructed of stone symbolizes the eternal, that which is immortal and unalterable, which is, of course, our little stonemason's love for his Sweet Sixteen."

  Redington motioned toward the castle walls. "Edward Leedskalnin said little about what he was building here. But it's all written symbolically in stone. This man, an uneducated contemporary of Carl Jung, understood the archetypes of the unconscious mind without ever taking a single psychology class at any university. New hope for those who skipped today."

  Redington grinned as the students laughed. "Leedskalnin apparently tuned into the objective or collective unconscious, our racial memory—which, as you all know by now, was described by Jung as a storehouse of knowledge lying below our individual subconscious minds." He fiddled with the half-moon glasses dangling over his chest, and Pierce had the impression that he was momentarily distracted by another thought. Then he blinked and went on. "Let's list some of the symbols we can see here. I've told you the stone itself is one. Who has another?"

  Several students raised their hands and offered ideas: the tower; the planets; the heart-shaped table; the sundial; the well; the solar hearth; the altar.

  "Excellent," Redington remarked. "Another one is the four-sided configuration of the castle walls. I could expound on each at length, but instead I'll let you select one for a short paper, the last of the quarter."

  The class groaned in unison.

  Pierce smiled, recalling his own college days, and remembered something he hadn't thought about for years. Ray Andrews had run a term paper sales business along with his drug operation. Andrews had considered college a profit-making venture as well as an education, and somehow, he'd made it through his four years without ever getting expelled or arrested, and even though he skipped most of his classes Andrews graduated with a B + average.

  He decided he'd heard enough. He walked over to the revolving door and pushed through it. As he crossed the courtyard, he glanced up and saw the silhouette of a man's face in the window of the tower. Something about the shadowy image disturbed him. He felt a tingling in his lower spine, the same sensation he experienced when he thought of entering elevators. He kept walking.

  He'd nearly reached the exit when he decided not to ignore the eerie feeling about the silhouette. He backtracked, then slowly climbed to the tower. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He glanced in the corners. No one was there. But the burlap bed, which hung from chains, the bed where Ed Leedskalnin had slept, was gently rocking.

  As he walked out to his car, he saw a dark blue Mercedes pull out of the parking lot and quickly accelerate as it headed north on U.S. 1.

  Chapter 18

  Pierce knocked and waited. Waiting for people was a big part of his job. He didn't want to think about what percentage of his time over the past several years had been spent standing a
round or sitting around. Waiting for someone to leave a house, waiting for someone to answer a door, or just waiting for a subject to do something.

  He'd called Elise earlier, briefly told her about the break-in, and said he wanted to see her. Her Cabriolet was in the driveway, but the lights in the front of her house were off. Maybe she was in the shower.

  He sauntered around to the side of the house and peered up at the window where the intruder had entered. The broken glass had been replaced, but he could see inside and noticed light filtering from the kitchen. He walked to the backyard.

  "Elise?" he called out. Lots of tropical shrubbery, as in the front yard, but no sign of her. He approached the back door. He knocked, he pounded, but still no answer. The scent of jasmine from a nearby bush curled through the late May night. A shriek of tires somewhere in the distance made him aware of just how deeply the silence surrounded the house, as though it were encased in silence, frozen in it.

  Fuck propriety. He tried the door and it swung open. "Elise?"

  His voiced sounded hollow, empty, stripped. There was a mug on the butcher-block table and a newspaper spread out on it. He moved into the dining room; the silence and darkness seemed to seal him off from the rest of the house.

  He found a light, turned it on. Everything looked as though it was back in order. He walked over to the stairway. Maybe she was taking a nap. Yeah, that must be it. It had to be it. A sound sleeper might not hear a knock on a downstairs door.

  "Hello, you up there?" Would she really take a nap and leave a door unlocked?

  He listened, remembering the scratching sounds he'd heard the last time he'd stood here. But there was nothing this time, only the interminable silence. He started up the staircase, into the yawning dark. He ascended, and several of the stairs creaked with his weight. At the top of the stairs, he paused and listened. He heard a click and a hum as the air conditioner turned on.

  "Elise?" His voice was soft and less self-assured.

  He moved down the hallway and squinted at the darkened doorway to her bedroom. His heart thumped, and it wasn't from the climb up the stairs. He stepped through the doorway and fumbled for a light switch. He found it and she wasn't in the room. He quickly checked the rest of the upstairs without finding a clue to her whereabouts. She was probably visiting a neighbor. He tried imagining her talking to the old lady across the street, but couldn't.

  He descended the stairs, was halfway down when he heard the front door open. "Nick, you here?" She stood in the doorway, her purse over her shoulder, a shopping bag under her arm. She was wearing jeans and a T-shirt and her short hair looked windblown.

  "Up here." He hurried the rest of the way down the stairs. "I was looking for you. The back door was open, and…"

  "You decided to snoop around." She looked intently at him.

  "No," he said defensively. "I thought something might have happened."

  She shrugged. "It's okay. You've already seen everything I own, dumped on the floor for your ease of inspection. You want a glass of wine?"

  "Sure." He followed her to the kitchen, trying to remember if he'd seen any grocery stores nearby. He was almost certain the closest one was at least several blocks away. He watched as she put away a loaf of bread and a carton of milk. Then she took a bottle of white wine from the refrigerator and set it on the counter.

  She turned, looked at him. "Nice shiner. How are you feeling?"

  "Better. I saw your car in the driveway. What'd you do, hike down to a store in the dark?"

  She opened a drawer and rummaged around in it. "Shit, where's the stupid corkscrew?"

  She opened another drawer; it irritated him that she was ignoring his question. "Here it is."

  She held out the corkscrew. "Will you open it?"

  Pierce took it, but didn't make a move to open the bottle. Elise saw his inquiring look and snatched the corkscrew away. She turned her back to him and worked on the bottle.

  "What's wrong?" he asked.

  "Okay." She paused. "Okay, that's enough." Something—anger, suspicion, chagrin—curled in her eyes. "I lied to you."

  "About what?" She was going to own up. His eyes darted to the kitchen door as he heard a noise. Shit, it's a trap. The kitchen door suddenly swung open and a tall, brawny man with thinning blond hair stared at him.

  "This him, Lisie?"

  The man had something in his hand, but Pierce kept his gaze on his eyes. They were bloodshot, as if he'd been drinking. "Damn. Looks like you beat him."

  Pierce glanced at Elise just as she raised the wine bottle by the neck. He jerked back, raised an arm, but she was moving toward the man in the doorway. "Get the fuck out of here, Steve."

  "Hey, I was just giving you an extra filter. Take it easy." His voice was slurred. He weaved from side to side, held up his empty hand, and placed what looked like an air-conditioning filter against the wall. "Christ's sake, Lisie."

  Pierce looked between them, baffled, and at the same time relieved that he wasn't the target of the confrontation.

  "Bye, Steve." She moved toward him again. He stepped back, then stopped. "I said, Bye, Steve."

  He took another step back. "Don't come crying to me next time something goes wrong."

  She slammed the door in his face, locked it, and leaned against it. "Sorry," she said. A slight smile curled her lips and she held the bottle out to him. "Will you open it now? I'll tell you all about it."

  He took the bottle from her, smiled back. "Your ex-husband, right?"

  "You got it. Like I said, I lied to you. I told you I never see him." She crossed her arms, remained leaning against the door. "The truth is, he comes over all the time, always to fix something, or work in the yard. This evening he changed the air-conditioning filter. Then he hung around. As you could see, he'd had a few drinks. I finally asked him to drive me to the store, hoping he'd just drop me off when we got back. He must have seen your car when I got out."

  "He's a big guy." And, ironically, he was the guy Pierce had planned to look up.

  She walked over to the cupboard and took down a couple of wineglasses. "A big baby."

  Pierce poured the wine. "What kind of law practice does he have?"

  "Oh, so there's something you didn't find out on your own. He was in private practice in Chicago, but he took a job with the federal prosecutor's office when we moved down here."

  Pierce nodded. "Does he get jealous about your seeing other men?"

  "Oh, no. Not him." Sarcasm dripped from the words.

  Pierce's hope that Steve would be helpful was fading fast. He doubted that the man would be cooperative now that he'd seen him here. "Did you tell him about the break-in?"

  "You serious? He'd be here every day for the next two weeks installing a five-thousand-dollar electronic security system at his own expense, and making me feel guilty."

  Pierce laughed. "He sounds like a male version of my ex-wife."

  Elise held up her glass, touched Pierce's. "To our ex-spouses. May they go their own ways."

  "May we let them," he added.

  They sipped at their wine, and Elise asked if he wanted to move out to the living room or sit at the kitchen table. "Let's just stay here." He pulled out a chair and sat down.

  She joined him, stacking the newspapers in a pile on the corner of the table. "Now you've seen me at my worst, threatening Steve with a bottle of wine."

  Her sincerity nearly convinced him she was telling the truth. But then he remembered something. "I don't care what you said about your ex-husband. But I wish you'd told me the truth about your father."

  "What about him?" A defensive edge laced her voice, her brow knitted in a frown.

  "He was a member of Noster Mundus." He paused. "Andrews told me, and Redington verified it. He was a member himself."

  "So what?" Her response was quick, too quick. "Dad and Bill both quit when they got wind of the replica fraud."

  "It bothers me that you didn't tell me the full story."

  She shrugged, looked do
wn at her glass of wine. "I didn't think it was important."

  "That's not all. Andrews said you haven't spoken to your father in years. Not until recently, when you expressed interest in the crystal skull."

  Color rushed into her cheeks. " That's a goddamn lie. We get along fine." Her fingers raked through her hair. "Don't you see what Andrews is doing? He's trying to stick this theft of the skull and Loften's murder on me, just like he stuck my father with the replica fraud."

  "Then why did Bill confirm the thing about you and your father?" The question hung there, thick, ugly. He was hoping that by confronting her, she would tell him the whole story, not just her edited version.

  "Bill told you I haven't spoken to my father in years?" She sounded incredulous.

  "Well, not exactly. But I sensed he was confirming it."

  "That's hardly the same thing." She glanced at him, then dropped her gaze again, staring into her wine. Her fingers tapped nervously against the glass. "But there were several years when Dad and I didn't talk."

  "Why not?"

  "When I entered the field, I rebelled against him." Her voice was calmer now, as she acknowledged that Andrews's comment was not completely fallacious. "See, he has a mystical bent. It's really the force behind his work. I tried to forget all of that and take a strict, empirical approach to everything, and it was like a wedge between us."

  Pierce sipped his wine, then set his glass aside. "Why didn't you say that before?"

  "Because that's the past." She looked up; her eyes were pinched with fatigue. "Things changed after my marriage fell apart. I spent a few months in Guatemala doing fieldwork, and we reconciled. Part of it was that Dad introduced me to a Mayan man who understood the Tzolkin—the sacred calendar—far better than I did. It was through him that I began to come to know its true significance, and what Dad is all about."

  "And what's that?"

  Her fingers absently touched a pendant through the fabric of her blouse. He saw a glint of light between two button holes and realized it was the same crystal she'd worn when he'd met her as Monica. "Basically, he sees the Mayan culture as alive. He's penetrated the hidden part that's linked with the ancient past."