The guy looks at her as if she is some kind of lunatic. “Only every day. He owns the place.”
After a brief phone call, the booth attendant directs her to a spiral staircase. As Singh winds upward through a turret-like cone of stone work, she has the thought, I am entering the story, now.
She steps out of the stairwell into the nave of a former church, elaborately re-visioned into a music club. What used to be the dais is now a stage, where a band of young musicians is playing something darkly rhythmic.
At the top of the stairs, a man who must be Jamie Kennedy moves forward to meet her. He looks much as she pictured him as Snyder was telling his story. Clear-eyed, clear-skinned, with a tranquil aura of authority about him.
Her words come before she thinks. “You bought the club. I am so very glad to know it.” She is charmed by the idea.
He seems startled by her impulsive intimacy. “I’m sorry—do I know you?”
“You knew some colleagues of mine. They have told me something about you.” She looks around at the obviously thriving club. “How did this come about?”
He looks away, modestly embarrassed. “My band did really well on a record and the place was up for sale—and I just went for it. It seemed like it was what I was supposed to do. I hated the idea of it being turned into something else. So…”
For the first time in a long time Singh feels a warm glow for humanity in general. She has almost forgotten what it is like to hope.
“I am pleased it is doing well for you.”
“Beats working,” he says, and flashes an electric smile. It gives her a sense of what his stage persona must have been. “But you’re not here to talk about music or Church,” he says.
Singh remembers herself. “I apologize. I am FBI Special Agent Singh, of the San Francisco Bureau. And I am following up on a case that you assisted members of my team with, in 2009.
Kennedy’s face shadows. “Wow. Okay. I thought that was done a long time ago.”
“Yes. And possibly no.”
She has no intention of questioning him about the Street Hunter case. She does not have sufficient information, herself, and any talk of those events should take place only with Agent Snyder present.
But there is a separate aspect of Roarke’s part in this investigation that she has been wondering about all evening.
She takes out her phone, where she keeps a photo of the police sketch of Cara. There is a mug shot, of course, from Cara’s brief incarceration, but Singh has spent time with Lindstrom. She knows the sketch does her much better justice.
She hands her phone to Kennedy now.
And she sees it in his face. He looks down on the sketch and Singh is sure. He knows her.
Because meeting Cara—you never forget.
She was here.
Chapter 44
Portland - 2009
Cara
She stands on the Morrison Bridge, one of eleven spanning the Willamette River, and looks out over the wide band of water.
She has been across the country nearly a hundred times now. West-East, East-West, North-South, South-North. On the interstates and on meandering side roads. On scenic highways and circuitous road trips with no particular destination in mind. She has explored every state, with the exceptions of Alaska and Hawaii—because she will not get on a plane, and she will not go anywhere that requires a passport, and while there are ferries that go to Alaska without stopping in Canada, she will not risk that journey.
She has long ago stopped haunting the interstates with the single-minded purpose to drive a road from beginning to end. She knows now she should never have done it to begin with. It was a pattern that would be too easy to guess, if someone were inclined to trace her movements.
But she cannot regret the risk. Because now the country is in her very marrow. She has come to know its geography so well, she feels sometimes that all she need do is think of a place and she will be there. She can call up the map of it in her mind, could sit down with pen and paper and draw every major road in every state. She would never have learned it so thoroughly without her methodical driving.
Also because of that systematic driving, she is never far from cash, from fake IDs, from master car keys, from disguises, from a weapon. She has seeded her emergency stashes everywhere.
And she has done The Work across so vast a territory that it would be nearly impossible to guess the pattern. It has been met and defeated in hundreds of different guises. And against all odds, something has protected her. From her first encounter with the monster on The Night, which she knows logically she should never have survived—and in every Encounter since. It is proof that what she is doing is meant.
The effect cannot help but ripple outward. With each Encounter she knows dozens of people will no longer have to fear that particular predator.
But she will never again be so predictable.
Now, in 2009, she is back on the West Coast. She is still most comfortable in the West and Southwest: the Pacific Coast, the deserts of California, Arizona and New Mexico. She spends large swaths of time in the national parks. But she has become more familiar with the cities as well. Los Angeles, and San Francisco, of course—still her favorite—Seattle, and San Diego.
Now she is exploring Portland. Tucked in between the Columbia and Willamette Rivers, in the shadow of volcanic Mount Hood. So walkable, with Pioneer Courthouse Square, the waterfront, the Grotto’s botanical gardens, the hippie stalls of the Saturday Market, all within easy strolls of each other. The city has a young energy and she finds it easy to blend in on the street, with its microbreweries and coffeehouses and electric music scene, venues with names like Backspace, Laughing Horse, and Slabtown.
The city’s two halves straddle the Willamette River and she takes unique pleasure walking back and forth over the city’s eleven bridges. It is what she is doing today, in the light drizzle or heavy mist. Walking the paved path of Waterfront Park beside the river, crossing a bridge, walking to the next bridge on the opposite side. Hawthorne, Morrison, Burnside.
She is kitted out in the uniform of the Portland underground: grunge fashion. It suits her, the knitted caps and flannel shirts and torn tights she finds in thrift shops. It is defiant and anonymous and warm enough for the damp and always chilly weather. And it is an easy disguise: in these clothes she looks years younger, a teenager, just another street waif, indistinguishable from the others on the riverfront walkway.
There are frightening numbers of them, young people living on the riverbank in rows and rows of tents under the bridge. Camping in pods in the parks. Squatting in downtown doorways. Every larger city has them, and the West Coast more than elsewhere because of the temperate weather, youth services, and youth culture. Since the financial meltdown there are even more. And the predators flock to snatch them up.
She had not meant to stay long in Portland, but the signs are telling her that this is where she needs to be. The moon is growing and there are shadows in the street—the shadows of predators, trolling for teenagers, children, young people of fluid gender who draw the concentrated malevolence of It.
She fingers the razor she always carries in her pocket, now. She will need to use it soon.
When she descends the bridge for the riverfront walkway, there is a young man busking under a tree, playing guitar. She slows to listen, intending to toss coins into his instrument case. But on second glance he is older than she thought, about her age. He doesn’t look homeless, either. He smiles at her beatifically, and extends a flyer.
“We’ve got a show tonight. Come to Church.”
She stoops and takes a flyer, and their eyes meet for a moment with a heat that catches her by surprise, before she turns and walks away.
The flyer is in her pocket when she leaves her Pearl District hotel that night. She has a car stashed on a side street, but public transportation is part of Portland’s appeal. She jumps on the easy access MAX train to the Aurora District.
She can sense it before she feels i
t, a rhythm through the sidewalk, a faint, but insistent pulse. Music coming up from the sidewalk. She stops at a door at the foot of a set of stairs leading down from the sidewalk.
The neon sign over the door says simply, Church.
She goes down a darkly blue lit set of stairs, and pays the cover at a booth, where she gets a glowing plastic wristband. She follows the music up another set of stairs and emerges through an arched doorway… into a cathedral.
No. Not quite. But the soaring ceilings of the church give it the spaciousness of a much larger venue. It is a complete and enchanting revelation, totally unexpected from the innocuous, anonymous entrance. A blue-lit two-story space, with the stage on the former dais, walls with curtains hung between original stained glass rose windows. The middle floor is a huge dance area; she gets a glimpse of tables in the choir loft above. In one wall, double doors lead outside to a large outdoor patio and garden lit with fairy lights.
Onstage a band plays, the music dark and haunting, rhythmic and fluid. She recognizes the lead singer’s dreads and beatific face. The young man who gave her the flyer. A shiver of anticipation ripples up her spine.
More will be revealed.
She pays cash for a prop drink, finds a high stool in a corner to sit. People look her over, but she doesn’t interact and no one bothers her.
The band finishes its set to enthusiastic cheers, and a recorded soundtrack takes over.
She gazes up and around her. The arched ceiling is painted midnight blue, and the constellations glimmer in gold, painted astrological signs in human form, made up of stars. And around the ring of ceiling in silver are painted the phases of the moon.
She stares directly above her at a full silver disk...
When she looks down from it, the dreadlocked singer is standing beside her, smiling. “You came.”
She nods to him warily. He is glowing from the show, a fine sheen of sweat and adrenaline. “I hope you liked the music. Not that I’m fishing or anything.” He smiles at her.
She did. She says so.
“Well, you just made my night.” he says. He is charming and somehow luminous. There is a light there that that seems a bit more than just post-performance high. “You’re new. To Church, anyway. Just visiting?”
Since that night in Arizona with Paul Hawthorne, she has become better at talking to people when she needs to. It is good practice. She finds it easy to make up histories for herself. She can briefly imagine other lives that she might have lived, if not for The Night. If she had never been Scratched.
If her eyes had never been opened.
She tells the musician she’s from San Francisco, because she knows it well enough to provide a detailed story.
He nods knowingly. “Great city. Portland’s the same, but—smaller. Flatter. Younger. Maybe not quite so crazy.” He smiles. “But what do I know?” He looks back over his shoulder toward the choir loft. “The band’s going up to the green room. Want to come and hang?”
She tenses, looks him over quickly. There is no sense of anything ominous. Rather, she feels a pull of import. As if this is what she is here for.
Still she can’t help but ask, “Why?”
He pushes his hair out of his face. “I like the way you watched the show. And okay, yeah, you’re really freaking beautiful. I hope that’s not so shallow it drives you off.”
She thinks of the Beauty Prayer. Beauty isn’t shallow. But the beauty of the oceans and deserts is a different thing than the “beauty” portrayed in advertisements, on billboards and magazines. She doesn’t know which beauty he means, here. But these things are always revealed.
She says nothing.
But she goes with him.
His name is Jamie Kennedy.
At the top of a spiral set of stairs he holds the green door for her and she steps through warily, her body as always braced to flee or fight. She is looking into the balcony she glimpsed from the floor below. Young people are sunk into huge sofas and chairs. A makeshift but well-stocked bar and bowls of snack food are set up on a table lit with electric candles.
The constellations on the arched ceiling above are much closer now, and she can see the phases of the moon in detail. The black walls are layered in wild scribblings and sketches in colored chalk, and the air is smoky with the green smell of pot.
This is Normal. Not everyone’s idea of Normal. But for the creative kind of person, definitely. An experience as alien to her as other kinds of Normal.
She recognizes the musicians from Jamie’s band among the others. There are non-musicians as well. Street kids. Waifs. Their body language, their scratches, make it clear they are tricking to survive.
Jamie brings her the tea she asks for in place of anything stronger, and introduces her around as Mia, the name she has given him. She tolerates the niceties, because it gets her closer to these young people. The wounds she senses in them are not just from the past. The cloud of fear over the huddled groups is tangible, stomach-turning.
Jamie is a light in this anxious darkness, obviously beloved, a leader in the crowd. She half-listens to conversations he has with various starry-eyed kids gushing about the show, about his performance. And she waits for the reason she is here to be revealed.
It isn’t long.
She spots her almost immediately. It’s hard to miss the slim, flamboyant young—girl or boy, Cara isn’t sure. Which is clearly the point.
Her clothes are flashy but Cara’s quick eyes catch the missing sequins on the worn velvet.
Seeing Jamie, s/he stops in her tracks, with a dramatic feigned swoon. “Be still my heart.”
Jamie gives her a smile. “How’s it going, Brandi?”
Brandi strikes a pose, inviting scrutiny. “How does it look?”
Jamie laughs. “You’re a vision, as usual.” He turns to Cara. “This is my friend, Mia.”
Brandi looks Cara over, and Cara gets a flash of the keen, cold perception under the camp act. A survivor assessing a survivor, without filters, without mercy. But when Brandi speaks, it’s with elaborate nonchalance.
“Where you from, sweetness?”
“Here and there,” Cara responds.
“Citizen of the world,” Brandi supplies, challenging.
Cara gives a nod and says nothing.
“Here, there, and everywhere,” Brandi drawls.
“Like that,” Cara says quietly.
Brandi gives her another X-ray look, and her eyes widen slightly. “Oh my.”
Cara is suddenly sure Brandi has seen everything there is to see. Then Brandi pivots to Jamie. “This is my competition, hmm? It’s a tragedy, I tell you.”
Jamie smiles. “You’ll always be the one for me.”
Cara had not been sure about Jamie until that moment. But his easy, egoless flirting with this damaged soul stirs something in her. Jamie is a genuinely kind person. More clearly so than most she has ever met.
Brandi gives her wig a preening pat. “I hate to seethe and run. But—places to go, people to blow…”
Jamie’s concern is instant. “You’re not going out tonight, are you?”
“Girl’s gotta eat.”
Jamie reaches a hand into his pocket for his wallet. Brandi stops him. “You put that right back. You wouldn’t want to make me feel cheap.” She smooths her hands down her waist. “Day comes I can’t make my own living, just take me then and there.”
Jamie put his wallet away with obvious reluctance. “Just be sure to check in.”
Brandi waves a jaunty hand back over her shoulder without turning around, a diva gesture that is likely out of some film Cara has never seen.
Jamie watches her go, concern in his gaze.
When he turns back, he sees Cara watching him. “We’re trying to pair people up on a buddy system,” he explains. “So that anyone out working checks in at the end of the night.”
And then he tells her why.
A sixteen-year old girl and a younger boy, found in the woods outside the city within the space o
f two weeks. Raped, slaughtered, and dumped near the river within a mile of each other. Apparently the crime scenes have been revisited. A monster taking his pleasure from the dead.
As Jamie speaks, she must use all her strength to hide what is going on inside her.
“It started in Seattle. All kinds of street kids were disappearing and they turned up dead. Now it looks like the guy’s decided to move down here. So. The buddy system.”
Cara says nothing, not even to point out the obvious flaw in the system. It is reactive, not proactive. Merely an alarm bell sounded after the wolf has done its bloody work.
It is the thing that makes her most angry, and despairing—and implacably dangerous. It is what most wrenches her soul, if there is such a thing as a soul, and if she has one. How people can use children, those luminous beings who are all the future of the world, like blow up fuck dolls.
And that all the power of the law is somehow not focused on obliterating these monsters.
If she had her way every single one of them would die instantly.
The world being what it is, she must content herself with one at a time.
Chapter 45
Portland – present
Singh and Snyder
Singh pauses for breath.
“Cara Lindstrom was here when we were investigating the Street Hunter,” Agent Snyder says, with a kind of reverent awe.
She answers him. “Jamie Kennedy identified her from the police sketch. His own description of her is unmistakable. She was here.”
“I remember Kennedy well,” Agent Snyder says. “Thoroughly credible.”
Today he shows no signs of the fatigue of the last night. His eyes are more than simply alert as he stares across the study at her, with an expression she has never seen in him before. He is focused, still, formidable. He is a hunter.
“There were always holes in my understanding of the Street Hunter case. And Matthew knew it, too. From the moment you spoke of your red string theory I suspected Cara was a missing piece. And that changes everything.”
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