The Astral

by V. J. Banis

  Chang stuffed the pictures back into her briefcase. “You’re certain about this Paterson? You’ve never met him? Maybe at a party? In a bar?”

  “I don’t do bars,” he said coolly. “And I’m quite sure I have never met the gentleman.”

  “He’s not a gentleman.” Chang stood abruptly.

  “Sergio,” he called again.

  “Don’t bother, we can find our own way out,” Chang said.

  “Sergio,” louder this time, “Please see the ladies to the front door. And bring me a drink, this one is practically tepid.”

  * * * *

  “He’s lying through his teeth,” Catherine said when they had been escorted carefully out of the house, the door closed solidly, almost slammed, behind them.

  “I’m going to love nailing that little weasel’s butt,” Chang muttered.

  * * * *

  O’Dell hurried along the hall, drinking so greedily that the bourbon sloshed over the rim and puddled unnoticed on the tile floor. He locked the bedroom door after himself. The good stuff was in a locked armoire that he opened with shaking hands. He pulled out a little teak chest inlaid with mother of pearl and opened it with a key from a dresser drawer.

  He’d get rid of everything, put it in a plastic bag and dump it into the ocean. He should never have had it in the first place. It was too dangerous. How had he ever let himself get dragged into this? It was all Paterson’s fault.

  He snatched up the DVDs lying on top. Just underneath them was a stack of photographs. He looked at the first one, a pretty young boy, the same boy whose picture that crazy looking F.B.I. agent had shown him just minutes ago, leaning back on a sofa, apparently asleep. Or was he drugged? He wouldn’t put that past Paterson. He wouldn’t put anything past Paterson. The man was a monster.

  He knew that sofa all too well, too. Paterson had been sitting on it the last time he had seen him. If the picture were found in his possession, it would link him definitely with Paterson.

  He picked up the picture, was about to crumple it, but his eyes fell on the one beneath it. A different boy, this one’s wide eyes staring at the camera as if surprised to see it there.

  O’Dell put the DVDs aside and lifted the stack of photos out of the box, sank back on the bed with its silk duvet and lilac Frette linens, and began to go through the pictures, savoring them one by one.

  Maybe it was silly to think of getting rid of them. Those women hadn’t accused him of anything. It was Paterson they were looking for. No reason to think they really suspected him. That fool Paterson must have had his name written somewhere, but that proved nothing. He was a star. Lots of people must have his name written down.

  The Sponge Bob trunks slipped to the floor. The silk whispered faint insinuations.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Conners. Chang couldn’t stop thinking of him, and what had happened between them. He was like a big boulder in the road, couldn’t get over him, couldn’t get around him.

  She got up extra early in the morning and pulled her groggy self together, picked out a pair of lacy pink, never worn panties, slipped into them, and was about to put on her jeans when she saw herself in the mirror.

  “Ugh.” She grimaced in disgust, stripped off the panties and tossed them in the overflowing wastebasket, and switched to her usual boxers.

  She stopped on the way to pick up a box of Krispy Kremes, because she had never heard of a cop who didn’t scarf them up at any opportunity. Plus, she was inordinately fond of them herself, and she thought she might need to fuel her resistance.

  Thus armed, she knocked on Conners’ door, hoping as she waited that he didn’t have company. Hoped he had a shirt on this time. And that he didn’t answer in his skivvies. Or worse yet, in a towel. Towels came off way too easily.

  To her relief, he was fully dressed, face clean scrubbed, hair still wet from the shower. And as perky as ever. Jesus, it was ten after eight in the morning. How could anybody be perky? One more strike against him in her book.

  “Breakfast,” she said, flaunting the doughnuts. “Got any coffee?”

  “Just made,” he said. He looked glad to see her, and wary at the same time. “Come on in.” He stepped aside for her, but gave her plenty of room. He was thinking of those stories about de-balling men. For sure they were apocryphal. On the other hand....

  His apartment was just as neat and clean as it had been the last time. That, she thought, was truly disgusting. You had only to look around the planet to see that some disorder was part of the Godly plan.

  In the tidy little kitchen, he filled a Wiley Coyote mug for her and set a sugar bowl by it. She added three spoons to the cup, contemplated it a moment, added another and took a tentative sip. Just the way she liked it—hot as hell, sweet and strong enough to melt tin.

  There was a just-rinsed bowl on the drain board and a box of granola on the kitchen table. She hated that stuff. “Nuts and twigs?” She gave him a scornful look.

  He shrugged. “Healthy. But I love Krispys too,” he added quickly. He took one and nibbled decorously at an edge. She bit off half of hers, chewed vigorously, and washed it down with coffee. The perfect breakfast. She cleared her throat.

  “Look,” she said, “I just wanted to say, well, I’m sorry I tore into you the way I did the other day. It was uncalled for. It wasn’t like you grabbed me by the hair and dragged me to the bed.”

  “We could do that scenario, if it works better for you.” He grinned a little tentatively. “I’m really flexible.”

  “Jesus, are you always so cheerful? Cops are supposed to be pricks.”

  He nodded eagerly. “I can do that, too. After what happened, I’m willing....”

  “What happened, Conners, was just a fluke.”

  “Roby, see....”

  “The guys call me Chang.”

  “Look, Roby, now that we’re involved....”

  “We are not—I repeat, not—involved,” she fairly shouted at him. “We fucked, damn it.”

  “We fucked great. We fucked fabulous. Fabulous fucking qualifies as involved. I looked it up. It’s in the regs.”

  She sighed and spread her hands. “You are hopeless. You know that?”

  He grinned again, less tentatively. She wanted to punch him. Or something.

  “I guess you’re going to have to whip me into line. What the hell, I’m open minded,” he said. “Look, tell me the gospel truth, didn’t you like it too?”

  She slapped a hand over her eyes. “Damn it. All right, yes, it was good.”

  “Just good?” He looked dismayed. It exasperated her. It also did something funny inside her where her heart would have been if she’d had one. Which she didn’t. She had traded that in for a Glock and a shoulder holster.

  “It was great, then, dammit, it was, what did you say, fabulous, okay, does that make you feel better?”

  “Lots. Honestly. Because I’m hoping we’re going to do it again. Oh,” he put his hands up to forestall her and added quickly, “It doesn’t have to be right now. I mean, we can wait fifteen, twenty minutes.” She glowered. “Okay, a couple of days. Whatever. You set the pace. It’s just, well, we are going to do it again, aren’t we? Cause it would be a crying shame if we didn’t. I mean, I’ve waited forty years for it to happen like that.”

  “You’re only thirty-eight, for crap’s sake,” she snapped.

  “I heard about you when I was out there in the ether. Projecting. I was waiting for the right time to tell you about that. See, the projectiles, that’s what we call ourselves, they sat me down one day and they promised me this was going to happen. And it was just like they said it would be, the red hair, the sparks bouncing off the ceiling, everything. I just want to know if it’s going to happen again in this lifetime, or if I have to wait for another go-round. Because if it’s not till the next life, I’m going to hurry this one along, no sense wasting my time.”

  She sighed again and rubbed her eyes. This would be a lot easier if he wasn’t so damned cute. She hated
cute guys. Most of all, she hated cute cops. And she absolutely loathed cute cops who made her nipples get hard remembering what they were like in the sack.

  Plus this man was impossible. You couldn’t get him to be serious. Just her luck, she would have to link up with a Looney-Tunes. Why couldn’t she have gotten some good old-fashioned psycho? She could simply have shot him after they got off. No jury would convict her.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I...I just don’t know. Conners, I am not good at this shit. I’m married to the Bureau. You know that. That’s the only love life I have. It’s all I want. It’s all I can handle.”

  “Okay.” He sighed and said in a voice of infinite patience, “Then, tell me something: how did you get so married to the Bureau? What made you get into it the way you are? There’s got to be a story there.”

  There was. She had never shared it with anyone before. “You don’t want to hear it,” she said.

  “Yes, I do,” he said, and for once he was absolutely serious. “Really. Tell me. Please.”

  Out of the blue, to her own surprise, she began to talk to him about it in a barely audible voice. She couldn’t imagine why—now, here, with him. Maybe it was just time. Maybe because he looked so sincere. The words just seemed to come of their own accord and for the first time in her life she didn’t try to stifle them.

  “I had a sister,” she said.” The words came out slowly, unevenly, as if they were sticking in her throat.

  “I didn’t know that,” he said.

  “We were twins. Rachel and Roby. Little girls. We were eight years old and we had been to the store for ice cream bars. It was just a block and a half down the street, a nice quiet little residential neighborhood with a Mom-and-Pop at the corner. It should have been safe enough for two little girls.” She paused for a long moment.

  The anguish on her face tore at him. “Look, I’m sorry, if this is too hard for you to tell, it’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t mean to push.”

  “No. I want you to hear it. I want you to understand. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know myself.” She paused again, then went on: “There was this guy, sitting at the curb in a van, motor running. He tried to ask us for directions to some place and we ignored him. That’s what Mom had always told us to do.

  “All of a sudden, he jumps out of the van, starts toward us. ‘Run,’ Rachel said, and we did, we ran like hell toward home. But, all of a sudden, I realized Rachel wasn’t with me, and when I stopped to look back, he was dragging her into the van. He threw her inside and he looked at me again and I took off. I ran.”

  She was breathing hard, talking fast, words running together, remembering it the way it had unfolded, memories she had kept at bay for years. She looked at him, with an eight-year-old girl’s look of horror and pain. “I left her there, alone.”

  “Roby,” he started to say, but she cut him off.

  “They found her a week later in Griffith Park. The coyotes had eaten most of her face off. They had to identify her by her dental records. She was dead and I was alive because I ran.” She paused.

  “That’s when I joined the Bureau. I mean, I didn’t sign up till years later, but that’s when I knew I was going to live my life catching people like him. I go after the shitbags, Conners, the real shitbags. These guys make your ordinary killers look like choirboys. I can’t afford feelings. If I ever started having feelings, it would kill me.”

  “Jesus, Roby, you were a little girl,” Conners said. “You did the right thing by running. You know that. That’s exactly what you would tell a little girl to do today.”

  “I could have fought him. Even then I was a tough kid, I could beat the shit out of boys twice my age. I let him take her.” Her voice broke. She turned away from him.

  “Roby, listen, I can see why this was so hard for you, what happened between us. I’m sorry. If I had known, I’d have taken it slower, given you more time. But, Baby, you can’t live without feelings, nobody can. And we can’t just pretend it didn’t happen either. I can be patient. I joke too much, I know, but, seriously, I can wait till you’re ready. I just don’t want to wait without any hope. Just tell me there’s that. Just tell me maybe.”

  She turned to look long and hard at him—and saw, in the back of those warm brown eyes studying her so hopefully, what she had seen in the eyes of so many homicide cops, and hadn’t seen in his until now: the virus that ate at them, a virus they caught from the evil they dealt with, nurtured by grief and bloodshed and anger and guilt. None of them escaped it. Some of them weathered it and survived. Some of them were broken and fell to pieces.

  Conner’s jokes, the college boy façade, the determined cheerfulness, were just his defenses against his vulnerability. She could see that. It broke her heart. It shouldn’t be a bad thing to be a good guy.

  “Okay. Maybe,” she said.

  He breathed a sigh of relief. “I’m not on duty for forty minutes. I think we could work it in.”

  “You are the most disgustingly sex obsessed man I have ever met.” She went toward the door.

  “That’s the first really sweet thing you’ve said to me since you got here.”

  She snorted, but she did not move away when he came to her and put a tentative hand on her arm. He turned her toward him, very gently, searched her face for a long moment, and lowered his mouth to hers. It was a surprisingly chaste kiss, and brief—the kind friends might share without embarrassment.

  She was a little disappointed at the brevity. She put her arms up around him, pulled him down to her, and went for something a bit more interesting.

  He glanced over her shoulder at the watch he wasn’t wearing and said, “Thirty-seven minutes.”

  She punched him in the gut and left before he could change her mind.

  * * * *

  Catherine and Jack did finally have the quarrel that had been threatening.

  “Catherine,” he said after a mostly silent evening at the safe house, “I want you to listen to me, really listen. We have to go away. I mean, from Los Angeles.”

  She started to say something but he put up a hand to forestall her. He had rehearsed this spiel all day at work, wanted to get it said before she had a chance to argue. “Paterson can’t reach you over a distance, you said, right? Then let’s make it a real distance. Chicago. Or New York. I can get a job in either city, I’m sure of it. And New York is full of publishing houses, so you could surely find something as well. We’ll start a new life where he can’t reach us.”

  “And what if he learns to bridge the distance, what if he gets strong enough to find me there?” she asked. “What then? We run to London? South America? The moon?”

  “If we have to. We’ll go wherever he can’t find us.”

  She shook her head. “It’s no use. The answer is to see him brought to justice. In prison, if not dead.”

  “Catherine, you’re just one woman, a stubborn one and a wonderful one, but there are limits to what you can do alone, and the time may have come for you to face them,” Jack said angrily.

  “I’m not alone,” she snapped, and was immediately sorry that she had been so sharp. It was evidence of the strain she was feeling but it was no good taking it out on him. That was simply taking it out on them. “Besides, wherever we go,” she said more patiently, “he will find us eventually. He will never quit now that he knows who I am and how to project himself.”

  “There must be someplace,” he said in frustration.

  “Darling,” she said, pleading now, “Sooner or later, he’ll reach me wherever I am. He’s getting stronger all the time. I’ll never be free of him so long as he’s out there, searching for me.”

  “Which makes it all the more imperative that we put you out of harm’s way. All right, maybe in time he could find you, but it’s only an astral projection, right? Even if he learned that you were in New York, he couldn’t do anything to you without going there physically. And getting away from here does buy us time. He could be caught and in prison before he gets strong
enough to track us down. Catherine, if you love me....”

  Despite the tension of the moment, she laughed. “That line, darling, is positively Paleolithic. Next thing you’ll be asking me to bind my feet.”

  He laughed too, but begrudgingly. “Wrong era, but, okay, point taken. But, damn it Catherine,” he strode back and forth, fists clenched, “That is what this is all about. I love you....”

  “And I love you, but, damn it yourself, Jack, this, this thing that I have to do, it’s a part of me now, maybe the major part. I’m not an apple tree, you can’t just pick the fruit you want to eat and throw the rest to the hogs. If you want to make a pie, you have to take the whole tree.”

  He smiled glumly. “For a woman who edits books, you make a lousy metaphor.”

  “You think that’s lousy, wait till you try my meatloaf.”

  They regarded one another grimly for a long moment. Jack felt as if he were struggling through a quagmire, torn between his love for her and his fear of what her obsession was doing to her, to them. If she were ill, physically ill, if she had cancer, he would never leave her, would nurture and succor her in any way that he could.

  This was something else though, something he couldn’t ameliorate for her, this fixation with Paterson. That was her cancer, and it was as malignant, as insidious, as anything that might have corrupted her body. It was poisoning her. Poisoning them, feeding a gulf that seemed to grow ever wider and deeper between them.

  “Can’t you see,” she began, but he said, sharply, “What I see, Catherine, is that you’re married to him, in some psychic way.”

  “Don’t be dense,” she snapped. “I just want to see his evil ended.”

  “That’s not your job, Catherine. And it’s not just his evil anymore. Somehow, it’s become yours, it’s imbedded in your soul. It’s destroying you. I can’t bear to watch it any longer. Every time he goes after you, every time you go after him, it’s like some evil test of wills between the two of you, and I am left to stand helplessly aside and watch. It’s killing me.”