by Lis Wiehl
“I’ll be in the house. Knock yourself out.” She hesitated. “I meant that as a figure of speech. Be careful.”
“I’m always careful.”
“Of course you are.” She kissed him. “Stay away from Lake Atticus.”
“Point taken,” Tommy said, readying the launcher for a second flight. “This thing is corn on the cob.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Something my dad used to say,” Tommy explained. “If something was all good, couldn’t be better, he’d call it corn on the cob. Because what could be bad about a nice piece of corn on the cob? It could be confusing sometimes, because he’d say it even if he was eating asparagus.”
Dani realized where Tommy got his quirky sense of humor; it made her sad to think of what he’d told her about his father’s worsening condition.
She could tell from the expression on his face that he was thinking about his dad too.
“I want to stay on top of the situation with Reese,” she said. “I think you’re right. I think he’s hiding something. Maybe from himself.”
“If he is, he’ll do the right thing. Just give him room.”
“It depends on if he’s been traumatized,” Dani said. “I don’t think he fully trusts us.”
“The way to get trust is to give it,” Tommy said. “I see it all the time with the kids I work with at the gym. You tell ’em you don’t think they can do something, they don’t. Show ’em you believe in them, they do.”
Dani kissed him again, keeping to herself the thought that what might work on a sports team or in a gym wasn’t necessarily true in a broader context.
In the kitchen she found Cassandra at the computer. It sometimes still struck Dani as odd to walk into a room and see Cassandra Morton there, probably because she’d seen her picture so many times in the glossy celebrity magazines in the checkout lanes at supermarkets. There was still a kind of shock of recognition, something like the way Dani had felt when she saw the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and thought, Wow, that looks just like the Mona Lisa, then realized it wasn’t like the Mona Lisa—it was the Mona Lisa.
The fact that Cassandra was Tommy’s ex was no longer an issue. The demons they were fighting had tried to drive a wedge of jealousy between Dani and Tommy, but they’d failed, and in fact, Dani and Tommy’s relationship was stronger for it. Still, it was odd sometimes to see Cassandra up close; women that beautiful and famous weren’t supposed to occupy real time and space. In reality, Dani had learned Cass was just as nice but far more troubled than her public persona made her out to be.
Cassandra turned to her and smiled. “You okay?” she asked.
“Coping,” Dani said. “And you?”
“The same. I was trying to think of how I might make myself useful around here,” Cassandra said. “Everybody else seems so smart and talented …”
“Cass—”
“Just hear me out,” the actress said. “I know what I’m good at. And I think I found a way to put it to good use. Did I tell you about Alberto?”
“VO5?” Dani said. “The shampoo?”
“The soccer player.”
“The Brazilian?” Dani remembered seeing something about him in one of those celebrity magazines: “Soccer Player Breaks Movie Star’s Heart,” or something like that. “Or was he Argentine?”
“Oh, what difference does it make?” Cassandra joked. “He’d roll over in his grave if he heard me say that. If he were dead.”
“Wasn’t he voted the Sexiest Man Alive?”
“Only if he was allowed to vote for himself. You’re thinking of Jürgen Metzler, the German soccer player.”
“It’s hard to keep them straight.”
“Tell me about it,” Cassandra said. “Jürgen asked me out after he learned Alberto and I had stopped seeing each other. Actually, he asked me before we stopped seeing each other. And Alberto was supposedly his best friend.”
“Isn’t he married? Jürgen?”
“Not so’s you’d notice,” Cassandra said. “He’s a terrible person. He’s also dumb as a box of doughnuts, but I just got an e-mail from him. He asked me if I wanted to go to a party with him at the German consulate in New York. I think I should.”
“Because?”
“Udo Bauer is one of the honored guests.”
Bauer. The chairman of Linz Pharmazeutika.
“No.” Dani shook her head. “It’s too dangerous, Cass. I don’t think—”
“Dani,” Cassandra said, cutting her off, “listen to me. I know men like Udo Bauer. I’ve met hundreds of them. They have enough power and enough money to get anything they want, so the only thing they want is what they can’t have. If I arrive at a party with the so-called Sexiest Man Alive and dump him for somebody else, that somebody else is going to feel flattered.”
“I’d have to agree with you on that,” Dani said.
“If I can get close to Bauer,” Cassandra said, “maybe I can find something out. Especially if he thinks I’m stupid. Which most people do, thanks to all those blonde jokes. Men will tell women all sorts of things if they think they’re stupid. It makes them feel superior. They can’t help it.”
“Wow,” Dani said. “Your life is really different from mine.”
“I want to help,” Cassandra said. “I’m an actress. If you think about it, this could be the most important role of my life. Everything else was just … silly. This is real.”
She tilted her head back and to the side to flick the bangs from her eyes, and then she bit her lower lip, the way she’d done so many times in the movies Dani had seen, usually when Cassandra’s characters were trying to be brave or find meaning in loss or heartache.
“This matters. I have a feeling … I know it sounds strange—silly, even—but I was born to do this, Dani. Everything I’ve done so far in my life has led up to this point.”
It did sound strange, but Dani had been thinking along the same lines, that everything that had happened to her, everything that had shaped her into the person she now was, had been preparation for the task she was now facing. Tommy had said much the same thing to her the other day—that everything he’d experienced, even the tragedy that convinced him to retire from football and follow his other childhood dream of being a private detective—had all been part of a plan.
Dani had the feeling she knew whose plan it was.
“You could be right,” she said. “Let’s talk about it with Tommy when he’s done with his new toys.”
“More toys?” Cassandra smiled. “He loves his gadgets, doesn’t he?”
Dani smiled back, nodding. “He sure does. Did you know he owns a gadget website?”
“It doesn’t surprise me. By the way,” Cassandra said, “those things I was saying about men? They’re not true about Tommy. He’s truly different. You’re lucky.”
“I know,” Dani said.
8.
December 21
2:10 p.m. EST
Tommy didn’t understand why he was so scared—why his usual self-confidence seemed temporarily unavailable. He’d waited to find if he was going to be drafted in the first round in the NFL; he’d played in the Super Bowl twice; he’d spoken in public, in front of millions of television viewers at the ESPY awards show, but he’d never been this nervous. Probably because he’d never prepared to ask a question as important. He was 99.99 percent certain he knew what the answer was going to be, but he wanted the event of the asking to be memorable and perfect.
“I think I got it,” the jeweler said, returning from his workbench in the back of the shop. Main Street was abuzz with shoppers buying Christmas presents and stocking stuffers and food items. “I have to say, I’m pretty sure in all my years I’ve never sized a ring in quite this fashion.”
Tommy had seen an opportunity when Dani took her rings off to do the dishes at the kitchen sink. When she stepped into the next room, he’d seized the moment to take one of her rings and press it into a stick of hard butter, which he’d kept cold in a cooler full of ice a
s he drove to the jewelry store.
“You want your butter back?” the jeweler asked. His name was Sidney Gruen, and Tommy had known him since the days when Tommy had worked after school on a landscaping crew for his father’s nursery, clearing leaves and doing yard work. Every fall, once he got his driver’s license, Tommy had delivered a cord of firewood to Mr. Gruen’s house and stacked it for him, even though customers were supposed to pay extra for stacking.
“Not really,” Tommy said.
“She looks like a six and a half,” Gruen said, setting the stick of butter down on the counter, where his cat sniffed it and walked away. “I can always make adjustments. Did you have a price range in mind? Or a style?”
“Something simple,” Tommy said. “She’s not an ostentatious kind of person. Is ten carats too big?”
“In my experience, Tommy, there’s no such thing as too big a diamond,” the jeweler said. “And I’ve been around a long time. But that’s a big stone. Ten carats is not going to be particularly modest. By simple, I’m thinking you want a solitaire?”
“I guess,” Tommy said. He’d shopped for engagement rings before, when he’d gotten engaged to Cassandra, but that was in a larger jewelry store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and three of his teammates, all enormous defensive linemen, were with him at the time.
“Do you have a cut in mind?” Gruen asked, reaching into a safe for a tray of sample rings. “You have American Standard, Ideal, Eulitz, Parker, AGA—you’re Scandinavian, right? How about a Scandinavian cut?”
“Yeah, but it’s not about me. What’s that one?” Tommy said, pointing to a ring that caught his eye.
“That’s a Passion Cut,” the jeweler said. “A modification of the classic Tolkowsky design. Eighty-one facets instead of fifty-seven. If you—”
“That’s the one. Did you hear that?” he said, raising his voice to a falsetto. “I just heard it say, ‘Tommy pick me—I’m the one you want!’”
The jeweler removed the ring from the black velvet-lined tray and slipped it onto his sizing stick, holding it up for Tommy to see.
“Six and a half, on the nose,” he said, smiling brightly.
“Is that the same as six and a half on the finger?”
“I’ll get you a box.”
While he waited, Tommy skimmed the front page of the local paper. The accident had occurred too late to make the day’s headlines, but it would be there tomorrow.
“You hear about Crazy George Gardener?” the jeweler said when he saw Tommy looking at the paper. “Car accident, last night on 124.”
“I heard,” Tommy said. “And George wasn’t crazy, Mr. Gruen. He just wanted kids to think he was so they’d stay off his property. I heard they hit a deer.”
“Was that it?” the jeweler said. “I heard they hit an oil slick. That’s what the guy told me.”
“Who?”
“One of the EMTs,” Gruen said. “He came in because the battery in his watch died.”
“Why would there be an oil slick on 124?”
“That’s what I said,” the jeweler replied. “Can I ask—who’s the six and a half?”
“Last time I bought a ring for someone, it got in all the tabloids,” Tommy said. “I think I’m going to keep this one private. Okay?”
“Sure,” Gruen said. “If anybody asks, you weren’t here. Say hi to your father for me.”
“I will,” Tommy said. “He’s coming home in a couple days.”
9.
December 21
2:12 p.m. EST
Dani wondered why Tommy had acted so strangely when he told her he had some errands to run in town. All she’d said was, “What errands?” He didn’t seem to have an answer.
She was, however, getting used to his quirks of mind. She set aside the strangeness with Tommy and focused on her driving. The snow was still falling, albeit more lightly than before. She turned off Dana Road and found Baldev Banerjee’s black Mercedes in the parking lot, the only car there; the rest of the New York Medical College campus was empty, the cement buildings as gray and dreary as the sky.
She found out where everybody had gone when she got to the medical examiner’s office. Banerjee was in a festive mood, humming “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” as he opened the door for her.
“The Christmas party is tonight,” he said, smiling. He was festively dressed as well, in a green vest and a red bow tie. “Across the street, at the police academy. I’m sure you would be welcome to attend.”
Christmas party. Dani forced a smile. “I have plans already. Sorry.”
“Of course, of course.” Banerjee had explained to her once that his parents were among India’s forty million plus Christians. He’d always celebrated Christmas, but it was hard for him to get used to Santa Claus, he said, because Santa’s long beard made him look like one of those self-proclaimed mystics who were always trying to swindle the gullible in India.
“Your Santa Claus is just like the phony gurus,” Banerjee said, taking Dani’s coat to hang on the back of a chair. “Swindling me out of every last penny I have, buying presents for my children. My six-year-old wants an iPad. And do you know what the sad thing is? She’s going to get one. She plays me like a drum. It’s the same thing every year.”
“My nieces do the same thing to me,” Dani said. “Everything has to be princess with them. You could give them a shovel, and as long as it’s pink with rhinestones on it, they’ll love it.”
“My eight-year-old wants American Girl dolls,” Banerjee said. “The ones that come with matching outfits for the girls who own them. It never stops.”
“No,” she said. “I guess it doesn’t.”
“Well,” Banerjee said. “We have things to talk about, don’t we? Do you want to see your friend’s body, or would you prefer to just go over the histology?”
And just like that, the festive mood was gone.
The body in question belonged to Carl Thorstein, a theologian and scholar who’d been Tommy’s friend and spiritual counselor after the onfield accident that ended Tommy’s career. But in this new battle they were fighting, the counselor had been vulnerable. Dani had asked Banerjee to do a detailed workup on Carl, though she hadn’t told him exactly why. Of course, she could hardly have said, I want to look to see if we can find any evidence that this man was possessed by demons. Banerjee would have given her a look that said, Are you crazy?
It was the same look she would have given anybody who said the same thing before the events of the last few months. Before she came to understand that demons were real and that they truly did do the work of Satan. Demons couldn’t possess someone against their will, though—you had to invite them in. And Carl, for some reason, had done just that. Tommy suspected it had something to do with the death of Carl’s daughter, Esme, who’d drowned in a kayaking accident in Alaska. An accident Carl survived, but for which the man had never forgiven himself. They’d never know what trick the demon had used to get Carl to invite him in, but whatever it was, it had worked.
At first, as they were able to piece it together afterward, Carl had served as a spy behind enemy lines, reporting back to Ghieri and Wharton to tell them what Dani and Tommy were up to. Then he’d tried to steal the book that Abbie Gardener, the Curatoriat’s last Guardian, had left them. The Vademecum Absconditus, or “Secret Reference,” gave the history of the Curatoriat and listed the names of the current members. Only the Guardian knew the identities of all twelve curators; the Curators, in turn, could contact the Guardian but didn’t know who the Guardian was or where he or she lived. That way, if a Curator was ever questioned, he wouldn’t be able to identify the organization. Not even her own son, George, knew Abbie was the Guardian. Villanegre had found them only because he’d followed the painting to East Salem. Had the book fallen into the hands of Ghieri or Wharton, the results would have been disastrous.
Yet in the end Carl had apparently resisted the control the demon had over him. He’d killed himself—ridden his motorcycle off the clif
f at Bull’s Rock Hill, plummeting to his death in the waters of Lake Atticus below—rather than do Satan’s bidding any longer. Dani was hoping Banerjee could help explain how he’d managed to resist. The evil that had been inside Carl was a spiritual thing, but maybe it had a physical or biological component? Maybe it had left a mark, or a stain? And maybe there was something they could learn from Carl, who had always been a teacher—maybe there was one last thing he could teach them?
“I don’t think I need to see the body,” Dani said. “You’ve taken samples?”
“I have,” Banerjee said, seating himself at his desk. A large flat-screen monitor on the wall behind him served as a kind of electronic blackboard. He called up Carl Thorstein’s file, and Dani saw a table of numbers. “This was a drowning victim?” he asked.
Dani nodded. She sat in the black leather office chair on the opposite side of the desk and swiveled to face him.
“But he drowned himself intentionally,” she added. “He rode his motorcycle off a cliff at ninety miles an hour. I was hoping you could tell me something about his state of mind.”
“He rode his motorcycle off a cliff? At ninety miles an hour? I would say his state of mind was suicidal. Though you know that already.” Banerjee frowned. “I did the proteome analysis you wanted. Chromatography, catecholamine assay, spectroscopy. You were correct. The similarities to our recent client Amos Kasden are statistically significant. But the differences are too.”
“How so?” Dani asked. The tests the medical examiner referred to could determine the biochemical makeup of the deceased’s cerebrospinal fluids, the relative concentrations of hormones and neurotransmitters and metabaloids for drugs or mind-altering substances, and could indicate—but not prove—a person’s state of mind or mood.
They’d known Amos had been taking some kind of drug—probably as part of the Selected, Dani now thought, after what Reese had told them. The tests they’d done on Amos postmortem revealed extremely low levels of dopamine and serotonin, naturally occurring hormones that allow people to feel pleasure and think clearly, as well as elevated adrenaline and noradrenalin. It was a prescription for psychotic outbursts.