“Bobby?” he said, not really expecting an answer.
He didn’t get one. Nemo didn’t move. No reason he should. He was dead, the missing bedspread wrapped around him, a single gunshot wound to the right side of his head.
Donovan leaned in for a closer look and something caught his eye: a folded scrap of paper protruding from between Nemo’s lips.
He hesitated. What the fuck?
With trembling fingers, he reached in through the open window and pulled it free.
There was a logo just above the fold. Motel stationery, a dozen years old, printed back in the days when the Wayfarer Inn was halfway respectable.
His name was written across it in black ink:
SPECIAL AGENT JACK
Not knowing what to expect, Donovan slowly unfolded it and found more black ink with nine underlined spaces beneath:
AUTOGENOUS WORK THAT CAN GET YOU ARRESTED
— — — — — — — — —
A makeshift crossword puzzle.
Knowing he’d just stepped off a high cliff into the abyss, Donovan mulled the clue over in his mind a moment, trying to make sense of it.
Autogenous work that can get you arrested.
Autogenous.
Produced from within.
It took him a moment longer, but when Donovan finally solved it, there was no doubt in his mind who the message was from and what it meant.
Alexander Gunderson was back among the living.
48
RACHEL WAS IN the shower when her doorbell rang.
It was just past 8 a.m. and she’d already been up for hours, unable to sleep. Ever since she’d left Jack yesterday afternoon she’d felt anxious and uneasy. And at the root of it was the story he’d told her.
His trip to the other side.
Rachel had never been deeply religious, but she was a believer. Growing up in a Chinese-American household with a grandmother who, as a little girl, had come straight from Tai Wo, Hong Kong, she’d heard her share of ancient stories. Tales of gods and goddesses, ghostly apparitions, the Ten Courts of Hell. Stories told with a quiet reverence and a conviction born of faith.
She remembered the fireworks and the colorful dancing dragons on the streets of Chinatown during the Chung Yuan Festival—Ghost Day—which celebrated the rising of souls from the bowels of hell to visit their earthly homes. Every year, Grandma Luke lit incense and set out plates full of mango, peaches, and roast duck on a card table in the living room, an offering to appease the restless spirits.
Against her family’s wishes, Rachel had made the mistake of marrying David in August, smack in the middle of Ghost Month. And while she didn’t exactly blame the denizens of hell for the disaster her marriage became, at times she had to wonder. Had they been cursed from the start?
Rachel wasn’t a strong believer in the stories Grandma Luke had told her—every religion had its share of tall tales—but she believed enough to feel just a tickle of anxiety whenever the subject arose. That anxiety had been reinforced the moment Jack had told her about his otherworld encounter with Alexander Gunderson.
The possibility that he might have imagined it all, that his mind had conjured up some bizarre death dream, was not a thought she even entertained. She knew that what he’d experienced was all too real.
And potentially dangerous.
Now, according to Sidney, Jack had been cut loose from the investigation, asked to step aside while the fools upstairs took over the case. She understood that they were simply following procedure, that the leeway they’d given Jack was a courtesy they weren’t obligated to extend. But she wondered how they could turn him away. Why deny a father access to the resources that might help him find his own daughter?
Now, with Jack at loose ends and still reeling from his encounter with death—and with time ticking at its ever relentless pace—the probability of disaster loomed large.
Jessie could die.
And a part of Jack would go with her.
Rachel was thinking about these things and rinsing the soap from her body when her doorbell rang. She quickly finished rinsing and shut the water off.
The bell rang twice more before she got to the front door, wrapped in a terry-cloth robe. Despite the perfunctory swipe of a towel, her hair was still tangled and dripping wet. She knew she looked a mess, but didn’t much care. She had been waiting for hours to hear from Jack—he hadn’t returned her calls—and the doorbell ringing at eight in the morning only compounded her anxiety.
Feeling like a military wife waiting for her husband to be shipped home, she pulled the door open, only to be overcome by a sudden surge of relief.
Jack was in the hallway.
Unfortunately, he looked (as David used to say on those many mornings after) as if he’d been pulled through a knothole.
“Jack, my God, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“It’s all gone to shit,” he said, then stumbled into her arms.
DONOVAN KNEW HE had no right to do this to Rachel.
Sure, there was a bond between them, had been from the moment she’d first stepped into his office over two years ago. But she didn’t owe him anything. No reason she should. And throwing the weight of his troubles onto her shoulders was, to say the least, unfair.
Then again, Rachel was more than just an IA who had managed to catch his fancy. She was, Donovan had come to realize, the only one he could trust.
The only one he wanted to trust.
When she opened the door, he had practically collapsed in her arms, raving like a street-corner lunatic. But she didn’t falter. Not for a moment. She guided him to the sofa and sat him down and listened attentively as he sputtered on, telling her about the blistering headache, the night he couldn’t remember, and the untimely deaths of Luther Polanski, Charles Kruger and Bobby Nemo—two of whom he was certain he had executed.
That she didn’t immediately pick up the phone and call the boys with the butterfly nets was, to Donovan’s mind, a testament to her strength.
Instead, she brewed him a cup of tea and sat beside him on the sofa, a gentle hand on his shoulder, lightly stroking it as he opened up to her for the second time in the last twenty-four hours.
It felt good to be with her. To share his demons. His fears. His pain.
When he told her about the note and its cryptic message, she said, “Show me.”
He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to her, watching her carefully as she unfolded it.
“Looks like your handwriting,” she said. “But … different.”
“Read it,” Donovan said.
She did as he asked, reading aloud. “ ‘Autogenous work that can get you arrested.’ ” She stared at the nine underlined spaces drawn beneath it. “A crossword puzzle clue?”
Donovan nodded. “Two words.”
Her brow furrowed as she thought it over. Then her expression changed and she looked at him. She’d gotten it much quicker than he had.
“Inside job,” she said.
Donovan nodded again.
“And you think this means you killed those men? That’s ridiculous, Jack. You’re not built that way. You don’t have it in you.”
“That’s just it,” Donovan said, trying to keep his desperation under control. “I do have it in me.” He pointed to the note. “You’re right about that being my handwriting, because I wrote it.” He paused. “Only I didn’t.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Inside job,” he said. “Get it? It’s a message. A joke. When I blacked out last night, I did things I wouldn’t normally do because I wasn’t in control of my own body.”
Rachel stared at him for a long moment. And in that moment he thought he’d lost her. She was willing to go only so far with this stuff and now he’d crossed a line. Her hand stiffened on his shoulder, a ripple of fear just beneath the surface of her fingertips.
Then she surprised him.
“Gunderson. He’s doing this.” And when she said it, he wanted to put hi
s arms around her and hold her forever.
“He’s inside me, Rache. Last night he managed to take control and he wants me to know it. That’s why he played hide-and-seek with Nemo’s body. It’s just the kind of move Gunderson would make.”
It was a ridiculous notion, of course. Something you’d hear on the mental ward at Mercy Hospital. But was it any more ridiculous than what he’d been through these last couple days? Unlike Sidney Waxman, he’d already suspended any inkling of disbelief that may have plagued him.
Apparently Rachel had as well.
She stood up, heading toward an adjacent hallway. “Give me a minute to get dressed.”
“Why? Where are we going?”
She turned, looking at him with concern. “There’s someone I want you to meet.”
49
THEY TOOK TWENTY-SIXTH out of Bridgeport and headed into Chinatown.
Rachel drove, weaving her Celica in and out of traffic with the seasoning of a pro, reminding him for a moment of A.J. Donovan, watching her watch the road, the concern still in her eyes. How long, he wondered, before this steely support of hers broke down?
Chinatown was eleven blocks of gaudily painted pagoda-domed buildings, nestled among two-story walk-ups, dry-goods stores, and restaurants, plenty of restaurants. Dim sum and roast duck were the specialties, advertised on multicolored signs written in various dialects.
No matter the time of day or night, the streets always seemed to be crowded. Businessmen, shopkeepers, students, prostitutes, and just about every type of petty criminal you could name.
On its surface, Chinatown was no different from any other cultural stronghold in the city. But beneath the surface, Triad rule had wormed its way into every crevice of the small district, a fact Donovan had become well acquainted with many years ago, when he’d worked a case down here. He’d learned quickly that what happens in Chinatown stays in Chinatown.
Unlike Vegas, however, they didn’t advertise.
There were no parking spaces on the street, so Rachel pulled into a public lot near the train station and they walked the two blocks to her mother’s apartment.
Rachel’s mother and grandmother lived in a second-floor walk-up, just above a restaurant called Ling Su’s. The strong odor of clams and roasted garlic assaulted Donovan’s nostrils as they climbed a dilapidated flight of stairs to a door marked 1.
Above the doorframe, a sheet of yellowed paper featuring an ornate drawing of a scowling Chinese warrior was held in place by a blue plastic pushpin.
Rachel had said little since they’d left her apartment and wasn’t offering much now. She knocked, showing him a small, timorous smile as they waited for an answer.
A moment later, the latch turned and the door opened and a middle-aged Chinese woman—whom Donovan could easily have mistaken for Rachel in a dark hallway—peeked out over the safety chain.
Evelyn Wu smiled warmly at the sight of her daughter. “Rachel, honey.”
“Hi, Ma.”
Closing the door, Evelyn unhooked the chain, then opened it wide for them, motioning them inside. “Come in, come in. I’ll make some tea.”
“No, Ma, we don’t have time.”
Evelyn searched her daughter’s eyes. “Is something wrong?”
“We’re here to see Grandma Luke. Is she awake?”
Evelyn offered a short grunt that suggested this was a silly question. “You know your grandmother. Always up at the crack of dawn.” She glanced at Donovan. If she was alarmed at all by his appearance, she wasn’t showing it.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said. “This is my … my friend, Jack.” Then she said something in Chinese that Donovan didn’t catch and wouldn’t understand if he had.
A look that mirrored Rachel’s spread across Evelyn’s face and she nodded, heading down a short hallway. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
She opened a door and the murmur of a television bled out into the hallway as she disappeared behind it.
“What did you just say to her?” Donovan asked.
“That you’re battling an angry spirit.”
The directness of Rachel’s tone startled Donovan. He hadn’t thought of it as something so simple and matter-of-fact, but what better way to explain it?
An angry spirit. Gunderson was that, and then some.
As they waited, he glanced around the room, which was small and modestly furnished. A doorway opened onto a tiny but serviceable kitchen, where an ancient refrigerator hummed noisily.
A table near the kitchen doorway held framed family photographs: Rachel as a child, clinging to the leg of a man he guessed was her father; Rachel and her mother, taken when she was still in her teens; Rachel at the prom with an unknown escort …
Donovan thought of Jessie and wondered if he’d ever see such a photograph in his own home.
A moment later, Mrs. Wu appeared in the doorway and nodded to Rachel, who took him by the arm and led him down the hall. They stepped into a small room dominated by a wasabi-green Barcalounger that was situated in a corner across from an old Zenith console.
The Beverly Hillbillies played on-screen, Granny wielding a shotgun.
An Asian version of Granny sat in the Barcalounger, dwarfed by the big chair, an ancient Chinese woman wearing a loose sweater over a muted gray dress. The old woman saw Rachel and spoke in her native language, holding out her arms for a hug.
Rachel obliged. “Hi, Po-Po.”
Grandma Luke hugged her granddaughter, then pointed to the television and spoke again as Granny fired the shotgun into the air. Rachel laughed and Evelyn turned to Donovan, explaining, “She says Granny’s a very obstinate woman.”
Donovan offered a polite smile, but bristled slightly as Grandma Luke’s wizened eyes shifted in his direction, assessing him. Despite her age, those eyes had a clarity and depth that was vaguely unsettling. She spoke again, her voice low and melodic, and when she was done, Evelyn reached over and shut the TV off, turning again to Donovan, her expression sober.
“What did she say?” Donovan asked.
“The look on your face,” Evelyn said. “She’s seen it before.”
“Oh?”
“You’ve been to the other side.”
Surprised, Donovan glanced at Rachel, but Rachel shook her head. “I haven’t told her a thing.”
“It’s a look that only a traveler wears,” Evelyn said.
Traveler, Donovan thought. Another simple, yet appropriate phrase. The Wu family’s ability to cut through the bullshit was starting to impress him.
Still looking at him, Grandma Luke spoke again and Evelyn translated.
“Your story,” she said. “Tell us your story.”
SO HE TOLD them, letting it spill out of him once again, avoiding the temptation to embellish, telling it exactly as it happened.
Grandma Luke’s face remained immobile throughout, but her dark eyes drew him in as he spoke. For a moment it seemed as if only the two of them were in the room, priest and confessor, mother and child. Telling his story to this old woman was an emotional cleansing that seemed to both drain him and give him strength.
When he finished, Grandma Luke spoke again and Evelyn said, “This man you saw on your journey. The one who kissed you. He died a violent death?”
Donovan flashed back to that moment in the train yard that seemed like eons ago. “Yes,” he said. “He was shot.”
Grandma Luke nodded.
“He is a hungry ghost,” Evelyn translated.
“A what?”
“A hungry ghost,” Rachel said. “It’s an ancient Taoist belief. Every year, during the seventh moon, the gates of hell open and hungry spirits roam the earth in search of bodies to possess.”
“Seventh moon?”
“August,” Rachel told him.
“August came and went a long time ago,” Donovan said.
Grandma Luke spoke once again, her words filtered through Evelyn.
“Time doesn’t matter,” she said. “This is a new spirit. One who foun
d his way here before his final descent. He’s the hungriest of all—and the most dangerous. That kiss he gave you opened a door into your consciousness, leaving you vulnerable to his attacks.”
“Then I was right,” Donovan said. “He’s inside me.”
“Yes,” Evelyn translated. “But he failed to possess you completely. Part of his soul remains stranded in the dark world. His strength comes and goes with the ebb and flow of your own.”
Donovan glanced at Rachel, saw her distress. This clearly wasn’t territory she liked to explore.
“The absence of light you experienced was his way of taunting you,” Evelyn continued, “enticing you to seek him out, so that the transfer of souls can be completed. He killed those men to get your attention, to force you into a confrontation.”
“Confrontation?” Donovan frowned. “What kind of confrontation?”
“On the other side,” Rachel said, a slight tremor to her voice.
“What?”
“He’s calling you back. Challenging you to some kind of … metaphysical duel.”
As Donovan tried to digest this, Grandma Luke spoke again.
“Ignore his taunts at your peril,” Evelyn translated. “If his challenge goes unanswered, he will continue to haunt you until you either go mad or your body gives out.”
“Wonderful.”
“But should you choose to confront him, he will do everything he can to steal your place here on earth.”
“So I’m screwed no matter what,” Donovan said. “And Jessie’s his trump card. If I don’t accept his invitation, I’ll never find her.”
“You don’t know that,” Rachel said.
“Don’t I? He’s the only one left, Rache. He made sure of that when he killed Luther.”
“Maybe so,” Rachel said. “But how do you plan on accomplishing this little get-together? Drive off another bridge?”
Donovan hesitated. She had a point. Even if he chose to confront Gunderson, how exactly would he do it? His first trip to the netherworld had been a fluke, an anomaly. Short of putting a gun to his head, how would he get there again?
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