No Return: A Contemporary Phantom Tale

by Pope, Christine

  “No, really. Probably I bit your head off because I had just borrowed the money from my parents.”

  “So your house is safe?”

  “It is unless someone else in the assessor’s office screws up again—which I kind of doubt, since my dad has a friend of his in the D.A.’s office who’s offered to look into the matter. We’ll probably get the money back in the next month or so.”

  This was news to Erik, but he hadn’t bothered to follow up on the matter of Randall’s delinquent taxes for the past few days. He’d been too busy with his preparations for Christine’s arrival in the house. Still, the outcome of the matter didn’t surprise him all that much. He’d assumed that Randall would be able to extricate himself from the situation without too much difficulty, and at any rate the object had been to throw some frustration the boy’s way, not to actually render him homeless.

  “Thank God for that, at least,” Christine said.

  “Well, I have to admit that I’m glad to not have that hanging over my head anymore. But this audition thing—this is just somebody being cruel.”

  A brief silence. Then she said, her voice small, “Why would anyone want to do something like this?”

  “Not ‘anyone.’ Someone. And I have a pretty good idea who.”

  “Not—”

  “Yeah, Carrie Gustafson. It’s not as if she’s made any secret of the way she feels about you.”

  “But why? And don’t tell me jealousy—she’s a mezzo—it’s not even as if we’d be up for the same parts!”

  Randall sighed. “Christine, I have to say I’m touched by your faith in the goodness of humanity, but since when have feelings ever been logical? Of course she’s jealous—you can sing rings around her, you’re much prettier than she is, and it’s obvious to everyone that you’re Dr. Green’s favorite student. That’s enough to piss off a spoiled brat like Carrie. I know her better than you, anyway—she’s been at USC for four years, and I’ve had to put up with her crap the whole time.”

  “Okay, so let’s say I agree with your version of ‘why.’ But how?”

  “Well, it’s pretty easy for Carrie to get her hands on official letterhead from the Long Beach Opera—” and here Randall paused for a second— “considering that her father’s on the board of directors.”

  “Oh.”

  “Exactly ‘oh.’ And God knows her father wouldn’t deny his precious spoiled darling anything she asked for.”

  Then Christine said, with some heat, “What a bitch,” and Erik smiled to himself. He was always pleased to see flashes of the spirit he knew burned beneath her calm exterior.

  “With a capital B,” Randall replied, and for some reason that made them both laugh.

  “So I suppose,” Christine said, obviously considering her words, “that the best thing for me to do tomorrow is to walk into class like nothing happened.”

  “Absolutely. It’ll drive her nuts—and she won’t be able to come out and say anything directly to you, because then she’d just be giving herself away.”

  A small, wry laugh. “This actually might be kind of fun.”

  “That’s the spirit. You know, I wasn’t going to be accompanying the master class tomorrow, but I think I’ll see if I can switch with Susan. I don’t want to miss the expression on Ms. Gustafson’s face!”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Christine agreed. Then her tone grew more sober. “Thanks, Randall. Now I feel like I can actually sleep tonight.”

  “That’s what I’m here for,” he replied, the quiet intensity of his voice belying the flip words. “Take care of yourself, Christine.”

  “I will,” she said. “Good night, Randall.”

  “’Night, Christine.”

  And with that the line went quiet. The red recording light on the listening apparatus stayed on for a few seconds longer, then dulled to black.

  Erik sat in the warm semidarkness of the office, unmoving for a moment, then slowly lifted the headphones from his ears. Unfortunate that the two should have patched up their differences so quickly, but he knew he would have been fooling himself to think they would hold a grudge for any length of time. Neither one of them had the darkness of spirit for that sort of behavior.

  Whereas he, on the other hand—

  Discarding the headphones on the desk, Erik punched the intercom on the phone. At this hour Jerome would most likely be in the capacious apartment over the garage that was one of the perks of his employment. Sure enough, the man responded to the intercom’s buzz almost immediately.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Jerome, I need everything you can find on a Carrie Gustafson. She’s a senior at USC.”

  “‘S-o-n’ or ‘S-e-n’?” Jerome asked.

  “I’m fairly sure it’s the former. I don’t know if Carrie is short for something else.”

  “I’ll check on it, sir. Anything else?”

  “That’s all. I want her address especially.”

  “Right on it, sir.”

  Not bothering to reply further, Erik pushed the intercom button again, disconnecting the call. He had no doubt that Jerome would have the information for him by the time breakfast was ready. And then—

  Then Ms. Gustafson would have every reason to regret the day she made Christine Daly the target of her spite. Yes, it would be most pleasant to give Carrie instruction in shame and humiliation. She would find that Christine was not quite so alone and friendless as she thought. It was a lesson she would remember every time she looked in a mirror.

  Erik laughed softly. It was not a pleasant sound. Thank you, Ms. Gustafson, he thought. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to become Christine’s avenging angel!

  Chapter 9

  It was ironic that one of California’s most prestigious schools was located in L.A.’s most notorious slum. Only a few blocks from USC’s graceful stone and brick architecture and carefully manicured lawns stretched South Central, spawning ground of the 1992 riots, drive-by shootings, and gang warfare that continued despite the police department’s best efforts.

  Not that Erik cared much for any of that. What did bother him was the fact that USC’s proximity to South Central caused the streets around the campus to be crawling with campus police and LAPD patrol cars.

  He sat in the front seat of his rented Ford, a big white Crown Victoria that itself looked like an unmarked police car, waiting for the last light in Carrie Gustafson’s house to go out. It was now almost one o’clock in the morning; apparently one of her flatmates was a night owl.

  The house was a carefully restored two-story Victorian in a street of gentrified homes that just bordered on the campus. It had been broken up into two flats, one up, one down. Luckily for him, Carrie Gustafson lived in the bottom flat. Alone.

  Still, even though her lights had been out for almost two hours now, he had to wait until all was dark in the entire building. He could not risk being heard or seen. What he had planned would take only a few moments, but he was not going to take any chances.

  There—finally, the last light had been extinguished. He glanced at his watch. One-fifteen. It would be at least fifteen minutes before it was safe to go in.

  A pair of headlights turned down the street, moving at a leisurely pace. Erik quickly slumped in his seat, waiting as the car moved by with agonizing slowness. Had to be some sort of patrol car, although he didn’t dare sit up to take a look. The sound of its engine trailed off, and he raised his head cautiously, catching a final glimpse of red taillights before it turned the corner and headed down Jefferson Boulevard.

  He sat up all the way then, pulled up the hood of his dark sweatshirt to cover the black ski mask he already wore, and drew on a pair of thin black leather gloves. His lock-pick set had already been stowed in the small black duffle that also carried a small pink plastic bottle. One last check of the time—one-thirty. Good enough.

  Although he had parked across the street and partway down the block, he was still careful to shut the car door quietly and lock it with the key rather
than using the remote lock. Those things were just too noisy, especially on a residential street after midnight.

  Moving quickly without seeming too hurried, he crossed the street and then, when he got to the edge of the big Victorian’s property, he headed up the driveway, which was partially blocked by a dusty 4Runner and a robin’s-egg-blue New Beetle convertible—Carrie’s of course.

  He resisted the impulse to stop and slash the tires, or at least let the air out of them. That wasn’t the objective here, and if nothing else his father had ingrained in him a love of German engineering, even if in this case the object in question looked more like a piece of Easter candy on wheels than an actual automobile.

  The gate into the side yard had only a simple latch without even a padlock. Erik reached over the fence, lifted the latch, and let himself in, hoping at the last minute that the girls in the house didn’t employ a Rottweiler or pit bull as their own form of burglar protection.

  No snarls or startled barking met his intrusion onto the property, however, and he continued to the back door that opened on to a service porch. Jerome’s thoroughness had resulted not only in Carrie’s address, phone number, academic records (spotty at best), bank accounts (impressive for a girl in her early twenties), credit cards (mostly maxed but all paid for by daddy, apparently), and DMV record (better than she deserved), but also the actual blueprints for the house, unearthed in some archive that dated back to the gentrification of the neighborhood in the late 1980s. It was always better to go to the back door if possible; not only was it was less visible from the street, but people were usually less careful about what sorts of locks they put on their back doors.

  As appeared to be the case here. He hadn’t approached the front door, a handsome oak affair with a stained-glass inset, but it had a handsome newish-looking brass latching handle, probably with a matching handsome deadbolt. The back door, however, looked as if it could use a new coat of paint, and while it too had a deadbolt, it was only a Kwikset, something Erik could probably pick in his sleep.

  Picking locks was something he had taught himself when he was in his early twenties, bored beyond belief and looking for something to occupy his mind. Lock-picking seemed interesting, something that would challenge his mind and his manual dexterity—and he was equally attracted by the slightly subversive nature of the skill. So he acquired a fancy lock-picking set, several books, and a variety of locks to practice on, and went at it nonstop until he could pick even a difficult Schlage in less than two minutes.

  He set the duffel bag down on the back step and pulled out his lock-picking set, a fancy seventy-two-piece kit that had come in its own leather case. It seemed like overkill for the lock he was facing right now, but of course he hadn’t known exactly what he would have to deal with when he came here.

  First, using his left hand, he inserted the tension wrench, a thin, flat piece of metal, and turned it slightly. Then he drew out the two picks that he’d used on Kwiksets in the past and leaned close as he inserted the first one, lifting, lifting—

  Click. There went the first pin. Good. He tried again for the second pin. It too clicked into place, and the next three were a matter of less than a minute. Using a cam, he was able to turn the plug as easily as if the correct key had been inserted, and the door swung inward.

  Moving quickly, he removed the picks and tension wrench from the lock and tossed them inside the duffel bag. There would be time enough to put them in their proper places after he was done here.

  The service porch was dimly lit by the sickly salmon glow of the sodium-vapor street lights outside, its only occupants a washing machine and dryer and an empty laundry basket. It opened onto the kitchen, which was likewise dimly lit and also empty, its counters littered with what looked like empty containers of Chinese food and several stacks of dirty dishes.

  He frowned in fastidious distaste. Of course the kitchen in his own home had never been anything but spotless, its counters and floor gleaming under the watchful eyes of Ennis and his attentive staff, and he’d certainly never had to shift for himself beyond the odd midnight snack. But in those rare instances he’d at least always cleaned up after himself, unlike Ms. Gustafson, who apparently could add “slob” to her long list of undesirable qualities.

  However, once he reached it, the bathroom wasn’t as bad as the kitchen had led him to expect. Despite an unfortunate preponderance of pink in the decor, it was reasonably tidy, although cluttered with a frightening assortment of hair products and styling tools.

  Under the ski mask, Erik’s mouth twitched. Very soon she wouldn’t have much need for those items....

  The shampoo bottle sat in a plastic caddy that hung from the shower head. He took it, carefully poured a little over three-quarters of its contents into an empty plastic bottle that he’d also brought with him in the duffel bag, then lifted the pink bottle he’d carried along with him and drained it into the larger shampoo bottle. Then he placed the empty pink container back into the bag.

  He lifted up the ski mask just long enough to take a whiff from the open shampoo bottle. Luckily Carrie favored a shampoo with a heavy floral scent, a scent that did a fairly good job of masking the underlying chemical smell of the product he had added. Very probably she wouldn’t notice the difference until it was too late.

  Excellent. He zipped the duffel bag shut, looked around quickly to make sure nothing else in the bathroom had been disturbed, then exited down the hall, moving with quiet haste. After returning to the service porch, he pulled the door shut behind him, double-checked to make sure it was locked once again, then made his way back to his car.

  Once inside the vehicle, he threw back the hood of his sweatshirt, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled quietly away from the curb. It was not until he was safely cruising up the 110 Freeway back toward Pasadena that he also pulled off the ski mask and started to laugh. He could drive through the darkness without anyone seeing his face, and he could no longer tolerate the itchy knit against his skin.

  It had all worked out perfectly. His only regret was not being able to hide there until morning, to see Carrie’s rage and despair when she lifted her eyes to the mirror and saw what the Phantom’s revenge had done to her.

  Yes, Ms. Gustafson, he thought, very soon a mirror will be your enemy as well!

  Meg grabbed me almost the moment I walked out of my comparative lit class on Wednesday afternoon. “Oh, my God, Christine!”

  “What?” I stopped, catching my breath, certain from her tone that she’d just had a car accident, a fight with one of her boyfriends, or something similarly earth-shattering. “Are you okay?”

  I must have sounded sufficiently worried, because she stopped for a second, then shook her head and laughed. “No, I’m fine. Didn’t mean to freak you out there. Haven’t you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  Meg looked around, almost as if she didn’t want anyone else to hear her gleeful tones. “See what happens when you avoid Facebook? You haven’t heard what happened to Queen Bitch of the Universe!”

  She could mean only one person. “Carrie?”

  “Yeah, Ms. ‘look at my perfect two-hundred-dollar highlights’ Gustafson. Well, now those highlights are down the drain—literally!”

  “What?”

  “Oh, yeah. I heard it from Jessica Montalvo.”

  Jessica, I recalled dimly, lived in the upstairs flat in the house she shared with Carrie and another girl, Lisa Keneally, a pre-med student.

  Meg practically glowed with unholy glee. “Well, I guess earlier this morning Carrie was getting ready for class and got in the shower first, which Jessica really hates because Carrie uses up all the hot water. So Jessica was already pissed because she was running late and Carrie was going to probably make her miss her first class. Then a little while later, after the water finally stops running and Jessica starts calculating how long it’s going to be before the water heater makes enough water for her shower, all of a sudden Carrie starts screaming bloody murder.”
>
  “Screaming?” I repeated.

  “Screaming,” Meg said, obviously relishing the word. I was starting to wonder whether I should have told her the whole story of my abortive trip to the Long Beach Opera and Carrie’s involvement with it. She was enjoying this way too much. “So Jessica starts freaking out, like should she call the police or should she go down and see what’s wrong? After all, knowing Carrie, it could have been just a big spider or something, and then Jessica said she would have felt really stupid if she’d called the cops. So she goes downstairs to see what’s going on, and there’s Carrie, standing in the bathroom, screaming and bald, with huge chunks of hair on the floor and coming out of her hairbrush.”

  “Oh, my God,” I said, even as I started to think, Could Randall...?

  “Oh, yeah,” Meg replied. “And okay, she wasn’t totally bald, but she might as well be. Jessica said it was one of the scariest things she’d ever seen—there were still strands here and there, but everywhere else it was just white scalp.”

  “So what did Jessica do?”

  “Well, Jessica can hold her own in a crisis. Maybe it’s because she’s got five younger brothers. Anyway, she managed to get Carrie to wrap her head in a towel, found some Xanax in the medicine cabinet—it figures that Carrie would have some of that on hand—made her take some, and then called her parents. She stayed with her until Carrie’s mom came to pick her up.” Meg grinned. “Of course, Carrie’s mom started freaking out, too, but she hung on to it long enough to look at Carrie’s shampoo bottle, smell it, and then realize what had happened.”

  “Hair remover, right?”

  Meg grinned. “You got it. Apparently Carrie’s mom went really ballistic then—called the cops, had them come over and dust the whole house for fingerprints, even though there wasn’t any sign of forced entry or anything like that. The only fingerprints they found were Carrie’s, though, and a couple from Jessica and Lisa. Of course Carrie’s mom started saying Jessica or Lisa had something to do with it, which is just stupid, because even though neither one of them were big fans of Carrie’s they still had to live with her, for Chrissake. Jessica got all pissed, naturally, but I guess the cops finally managed to quiet Carrie’s mom down and got her and Carrie out of there, supposedly to make a statement at the police station, but probably more to get them away from Jessica than anything else. Jessica talked to Lisa an hour or so ago, and Lisa said that while Jessica was out at class, Carrie’s mom came back and got a bunch of her clothes and stuff, so I guess she’ll be staying at home for a while.”