by Harker Moore
He was imbedded in data. Forms multiplying like bacteria filled his office, along with petition lists and surveillance photographs from the latest community action meetings. He took another swill of the coffee and set the mug down. Pulled over the tabloid that Kelly had left on his desk. The papers were still filled with speculation about the homosexual killer, but since last week’s article on the incense, nothing more of real substance had leaked. That much was good at least.
“Your taste in reading has changed.” Michael’s voice from the door.
He looked up. “Just trying to keep on top of things.”
Darius walked over to sit in the chair in front of his desk. “Anything new?”
“Pinot seems to have been something of a departure, more a victim of opportunity. But I don’t know what that means.”
“What did that professor say?”
“Isaacs? He had some complicated theory. Thinks the killer is targeting gays because he believes homosexuals are more like angels than straights.”
“What …?”
“Isaacs thinks,” he went on, “that the names on the walls might not have any direct connection to the bodies.”
Darius’s mouth twisted. “It’s obvious the killer is naming them,” he said, “and believes the victims somehow embody these fallen angels.”
“I agree.” He picked up his coffee. Nodded at the cup. “Want some?”
Darius shook his head, taking out his cigarettes instead. “I found something,” he said.
Finally the explanation of why Michael was here. He waited while he lit up.
“Turns out Westlake had been staying at Lindel’s for only a few months.” Darius blew out smoke. “I just made a visit to his old apartment.” He stopped, drew hard again on the cigarette.
“You going to make me suffer for this, Michael?”
“No.” He took something out of his pocket. “There was an abandoned warehouse across the street from Westlake’s old room. It was easy enough to get in. I found this.”
“In the warehouse …” Sakura picked up the plastic bag that Darius had tossed on the desk and held it up to the light. There was a torn fragment of printed cardboard inside.
“It’s part of a film carton,” Darius said. “A piece of the end flap. See the letters?”
“… IE 36.”
“The H in front is missing. It’s HIE 36. High Speed Infrared. Thirty-six exposures. The same film we use for surveillance.”
“He’s stalking them.”
“Westlake at least.” Darius leaned back in the chair. “I saw what looked like tripod marks in the dust by the window.”
“We haven’t been going back far enough in their lives.” Sakura was thinking aloud. “There may be other things we’ve overlooked. It seems like he might have backlogged the first three. He stalked them and killed them, one right after another. Then almost two weeks pass before we get Pinot. Tomorrow’s a week without a DOA. What’s he doing?”
“I don’t know,” Darius said. “I’m just afraid we might be making a lot of unwarranted assumptions.”
He smiled at the diplomatic phrasing. “We, Michael? You mean Willie and I…. You two getting along?”
“Sure.”
Sakura wondered what complexities that single syllable was meant to cover. He hadn’t gotten any more today from Willie. “Are you coming for Thanksgiving dinner?” he said.
“What time?”
“Around one is good. I plan on coming in for a few hours in the morning. It’ll be a skeleton crew and some backup for the guys working the parade route. You haven’t forgotten what it was like to work the Macy’s crowd?”
Darius didn’t answer but reached to crush his cigarette against the inside of the trash can.
Sakura shook his head. “You’re the only one I let smoke in here.”
“Kelly smokes.”
“Not in my office,” he said. Then, “I’ll get a warrant to search that warehouse first thing Friday…. And thanks.”
“For what?” Darius shrugged. “There’s nothing there. That piece of box top was behind some lumber in a corner. He had to reload the film in the darkest place he could find. Probably used a changing bag, but it’s awkward under any circumstances.”
“There must be footprints.”
“In the dust … yeah. Looks like some kind of work boot.”
“There could be fingerprints too. If not in the warehouse, we might get at least a partial off this.” Sakura was looking at the torn sliver of cardboard. “It’s another long shot with all the professional photographers in this city, but we can try to get a lead from the kind of film. And who knows what we might turn up in a canvass. Let me dream for a few hours. We could get lucky.”
Darius had this way of reacting, his eyes narrowing, hovering on some border of change, as if in the next second, he was as likely to laugh as cry. He did it now, tilting in the chair, his lips twisting in a cynic’s version of a smile.
“You’re right, Jimmy, there’s something about all of this that we’re missing. We find what it is; we get him. And luck won’t have anything to do with it.”
Glass stretched uninterrupted across the rear of the house, exposing a kitchen constructed of granite and wood. Sections of stainless steel, copper, and porcelain glinted like small constellations. The man was close enough now in the dark for his breath to fog the window. He inhaled. The thin crust of fresh frost could not obscure the rich smell of decaying leaves underfoot. He crouched lower behind the tangle of thick bushes growing near the outside wall. The doctor had been relatively easy to follow to his Forest Hills home.
He pressed closer, pushing less important layers of sound into deeper recesses of his brain. Gone was the weak skitter of insects in the cold soil, the beat of his own heart. He concentrated on their voices, his vision tracking, moving beyond the reflections in the glass to the flesh inside.
The daughter looked like the father. Blond, blue-eyed, and pretty. With the kind of skin that would freckle in the sun. He heard her giggle. Her father had pulled one of her pigtails. The son was more like his mother. Darker, with deep-set eyes. Eyes that could show hurt.
“I thought you two were going to make the salad.” The mother’s voice was unexpectedly rich.
“We are, Lylah. Can’t you see how hard we’re working? Aren’t we, Emmy?” Kerry whispered conspiratorially to his daughter.
“The only thing you two are doing is making a mess. Right, Jonathan?” The mother was seeking an ally of her own.
“Yes, Mommy,” the young boy said, looking for confirmation he’d given the right answer.
“Come on, the spaghetti’s almost ready.” The woman sounded more tired now than annoyed.
“We’re almost done.” Emmy tore furiously at the lettuce.
“It’s getting late and you two haven’t even had your baths.” Lylah shook her head in mock exasperation.
“We don’t need to take a bath tonight,” the girl begged. “No school tomorrow.”
“But there’s lots to do before we leave for Aunt Penny’s Friday morning.”
“Daddy, please come with us to Aunt Penny’s,” the daughter pleaded.
“Sorry, sweetie.” He planted a kiss on the top of her head. “I’m on call, and I’ve got to get a speech ready for a seminar. Besides, we’ll get to carve up old tom turkey together before you leave.”
Even under the bleaching effect of the fluorescents, the doctor’s aura was blinding. The man crouched, mesmerized, thinking how he’d spent over a year tracking the first ones, making meticulous plans, then orchestrating their awakenings—one, two, three. Luis, whom he’d found at the clinic. David, whom he’d known before but rediscovered on his first gallery visit after the accident and his own awakening. And Westlake, he’d seen on TV.
Then came Pinot. And now Kerry. He shivered with the deliciousness of his good luck, the joy of beating God at his own game.
CHAPTER
9
Agnes Tuminello pressed her back
against the wall and hid in the shadows of the second-floor alcove. She wouldn’t have been here in the rectory at all, if she hadn’t felt guilty about her little holiday with her daughter Connie’s family, leaving poor Father Kellog with nothing but leftover turkey these last two days. And so she’d come this evening with a pan of her special lasagna, only to be drawn from the kitchen and up the stairs by the loud voices.
Never before had she heard Father Kellog speak in such anger. She closed her eyes, clasping the Miraculous medal that hung from a thin chain around her neck, asking God to deliver them from such evil.
“You do not respect my authority. You do not respect me. You do not respect—”
“God? Oh, I respect God, Father Kellog. Because I know how dirty He can play.”
“You blaspheme.”
She cringed at Graff’s nasty laughter.
“I’ve never failed to do my duty,” the younger priest said. “I’ve never missed Mass. Or confession. I have listened to enough pettiness and foolishness, have smelled enough death and despair to last a lifetime. What more, old man, what more do you want from me?”
Then suddenly Graff was out of his room, flying down the stairs, flinging wide the front door, running away from the rectory into the street.
When she dared, she could see downstairs through the opened door that rain had begun to fall. She should go down and close the door, but she could not move, could not let Father Kellog know she’d been on the landing, listening.
A small noise, and she saw the priest standing outside Graff’s room. For an instant he clutched the wall for support, then his hand reached for the banister. She wanted to go to him, comfort him, but she must not.
She watched him pad slowly down the stairs, shut the front door, and enter his study. A bit of shuffling, the squeak of a spring from his favorite chair, then nothing. She glanced up at a nervous skittering. Squirrels in the attic or, worse, mice. Behind her the wall creaked, an old house rattling its bones. Then slowly she stepped from her hiding place, stiff from having remained still so long.
A band of weak electric light fell across the hall carpet from Father Graff’s suite. The priest had converted the larger sitting room into his bedroom, and the bedroom into what Mrs. Tuminello referred to as his “secret room.” Standing in the hall, she now vowed never to enter the priest’s room again. Never to dust the furniture or change his bed. The rugs would go unvacuumed, the floor unpolished. It would be her small revenge against Graff for upsetting Father Kellog. For now, she would just shut the door. However, what she glimpsed through the gaping door caused her resolve to punish the priest to instantly evaporate.
Her hand fell away from the doorknob, and she stood transfixed, eyeing the long, dark fissure in the far wall. In his haste and anger, Father Graff had been careless, had failed to lock the door between his two rooms. All the doors inside the rectory had old-style locks. A rusting assortment of skeleton keys found in the hall desk drawer might or might not fit any particular lock. On the door between his bedroom and his private room, however, Father Graff had installed a sturdy dead bolt, explaining to her that he would be responsible for any cleaning that had to be done inside. She had complained to Father Kellog, but to no avail.
Now she slowly crossed the bedroom, stopping before the partially opened door between the rooms. She began a Hail Mary, but it died just as she stepped inside the smaller room’s threshold. At first she attempted to make sense of the collection of shapes and patterns in the dimness. Then she felt a brush of cold against her cheek. She jumped, watching a brass chain swish back and forth from a bulb in the ceiling. She pulled the cord. Red light flooded the room. Hell was her single thought.
Her eyes took in the eely coils of discarded film, the stainless trays of clear liquid, the hump of a camera. Then her focus moved to the collection of blown-up prints, gleaming black-and-white photographs, suspended like grotesque laundry, one piece after another, from a taut drying wire.
The cobwebs in William Kerry’s head lifted gradually but completely. He remembered the fear, slick and cold in the pit of his stomach. Then he remembered why he’d been afraid.
Flat on his back in the darkness, still naked from his bath, his wrists and ankles bound together with tape, he threw his head from side to side on the bed. He couldn’t see anyone in the room now. But God, oh God, why hadn’t he acted on his impulse to drive into the city on Friday morning as soon as Lylah had left with the children?
He lay quiet against the bedspread for a moment, his pulse racing with adrenaline. He concentrated on the nubby feel of the fabric on his skin, tried to slow his breathing. He had to think. There was a clock on the nightstand. It showed he had been out only a few minutes. The odorless gas he’d been sprayed with had to be something harmless like nitrous oxide. He was okay. He hadn’t been hurt. The man was probably a burglar who specialized in houses like this. Damn good at it too, or the alarm system would have worked.
A laugh escaped. He was flirting with hysteria. But it was a good sign that the guy was a professional. It meant he didn’t make mistakes. It was only the rank amateurs who screwed up and killed people they found at home.
So what was he going to do now? Just lay there? The man was probably still in the house. With the nearest house so far away, it wasn’t any use to scream. And anyway, he didn’t want to make this guy mad. Still, maybe he shouldn’t wait to do something. He could wiggle his way across the bed and throw himself on the floor. His wrists were hog-tied in front to his ankles, but he could still drag the phone off the nightstand, punch out 911…. What was that smell? Shit, it was strong.
He fought to get higher on the pillows. The man was in the room. Had been there all the time, in the shadows. Naked. The man was naked. That was the fact his brain had forgotten to register. The burglar who had come at him from the deeper darkness of the closet had been nude, except for the gas mask … and the leather straps.
The mask was gone now. The face it had covered was strangely familiar. And the leather was some kind of harness. The man turned, putting a small plate with a cake of burning incense down on Lylah’s desk. Folded on his back was a perfect pair of wings.
“Oh, my God.” The words had escaped without volition. The ones that came next were babble from some autonomic center in his brain. He listened to them as a spectator, knowing already they were useless.
“What do you want … money? There’s a safe. You can have whatever you want. Just, please, please, don’t hurt me.” He was digging his heels in the mattress, arching himself higher. Not wanting to see but having to. Having to know what was coming, because imagining had to be worse.
The man hadn’t spoken. He stooped down, got something from a bag on the floor. Walked toward him with a rolled-up piece of plastic and a small leather case in his hand.
Please…no… please…no… please…no. The adrenaline had taken over now. He was moving, skittling like a crab across the covers. The man was strong. A hand clamped his shoulder, pulled him back across the bed.
The case was on the nightstand, open. It held a pair of syringes. Something inside him gave up fighting. “Who are you?” he asked.
The face above him smiled. “What I’m going to show you, Dr. Kerry, is who you are.”
The last of summer. Leaves along the highway already growing brittle, whispering like children in the dark. The man could remember the drive to the city. Too often, like tonight, he dreamed of it. The good part about it was Marian. In the dream he could see her, could hear her laughter. That night she had laughed like the old Marian before her obsession with the Church. Her head thrown back. Her blond hair whipping her face and throat.
She’d been turned toward him, still smiling, when he’d gone around the curve, half looking. Although it wouldn’t have mattered. The oil on the road was invisible in the darkness, the loss of control inevitable at his speed. He remembered his first startled impression of the truck jackknifed along the shoulder, I beams jutting from its broken trailer. Remembered
the Land Rover spinning, the sickening uselessness of trying to steer. And the noise of Marian’s screaming, slow motion like the rest, cut off in the moment of impact.
They said it was impossible. That her head had been gone in that instant, smashed beyond recognition. But real or not, he knew it was her head he had seen bouncing at his feet on the floorboard. Not pain but surprise in her eyes.
His own pain he didn’t remember, not even in his leg. He felt only the constriction of his chest, and the gathering blindness that might have been the blood flowing from the head wound into his eyes. The tunnel was what he remembered next. The light at the end. And Marian, miraculously whole, moving ahead of him. In the dream it was real again. The tunnel was here and now. He fought the pull of Earth. The claim of new flesh. He cried for Marian to wait, clawing, scrabbling his way minutely toward the light.
The barrier was a subtle thing. Invisible. Sensible only in his inability to make any real progress. And in the moment when he finally understood that he could not follow Marian, he had remembered … remembered who he was.
He sat up, gasping for the air to fill his lungs. A cold, sour sweat filmed his body, the flavor of tears. He sat rigid and still, trying to hold on to Marian in the moment she had turned to him smiling. But that part of the dream was gone, and he jammed his palms into his eyes to block what came instead.
He increased the pressure of his hands, fighting away the image, thinking of that moment in the hospital when he’d first come to consciousness, of the confusion that had been but a momentary blessing. For that split second he had remembered nothing of the accident or the tunnel. It was his last human moment, when he had only wondered why he had not awakened in his own bed, wondered where was Marian.
Her name forced the horror back, just as it had that day. The insanity of her death, a vacuum that sucked him back to the tunnel and the knowledge that could not be escaped. He was ma’lak Elohim, to give it the name he had read so long ago in the ancient Jewish texts. He was a fallen angel, one of a host who had rebelled in their desire to experience matter.