by Josh Lanyon
Not a single picture on the wall. Now that truly was weird.
I made tracks for the kitchen. It was disorderly, but not dirty, despite the persistent reek of garbage. A phone book lay open on the table. I glanced at the yellow pages: locksmiths. Was that significant?
Next to the fake oak cabinets was a bulletin board with photos of Angus and Wanda — Wanda in a giant sombrero, her face smeared in whipped cream. Birthday party, California style. There were a couple of postcards, a schedule of classes that neither of them was attending. That was about it.
All the while I searched, the quiet chill of the place gnawed at me. I began to feel like I was being watched. Every time the house creaked — and sometimes when it didn’t — I snapped to attention, staring about myself uneasily.
If I hadn’t already told Jake I would be there, I’d have walked out a dozen times. As it was, I’d been inside about eight minutes when I decided I’d had it. I would wait for Jake out front in the Forester. For that matter, I didn’t even know if Jake had got my message. He likely hadn’t. He hadn’t called me back. He was probably home in bed, sound asleep, right now. Which is where I would have been if I had any sense at all.
As I crossed the living room, heading for the glass door, it occurred to me that the sour sick smell that hung over the place like a pall was stronger from the hall that led to the bedrooms.
I stood rooted in the intersection of rooms, my mouth dry with dread.
Thank you and good night, I thought. At the same instant, I realized that I couldn’t walk away. Never mind the ethics of the situation, I’d touched the front door knob, the sliding glass door, the lamp — and those were the articles I knew for sure would retain fingerprints. The articles I remembered touching.
I could be wrong, I reassured myself. I was often wrong. More and more often, it seemed lately.
But I knew I wasn’t wrong. Not this time. Not about this.
I turned down the hallway. It felt like when you’re trying to run in nightmare. Despite the adrenaline overdrive, my footsteps dragged as I paced the length of the hall. I poked my head around the doorframe.
Moonlight poured from the back window onto the thing sprawled on the bed. White, limp, and streaked with dark: a body.
“No,” I said. “No. No fucking way.” My voice sounded shocked and loud. Way too loud. Too loud for the room, too loud in my head. I clamped down on it.
Dimly, I made out the giant circle scrawled on the wall above the headboard. Circle with a five-point star, and in the center, a terrible symbol — the calling card of a high-ranking demon.
Chapter Ten
I retreated a step, then a few more, walking backward because — crazily — I was afraid to turn my back on the body in the bedroom. I reached the living room without falling over anything. I stood there, white noise filling the space usually needed for thinking.
The glass door slid open behind me. I spun around, blood thundering in my ears. I don’t do surprises well.
Jake slipped inside, got one look at my face, and was across the floor in two strides. His hands closed on my arms. He said close to my ear, “Don’t pass out.”
“I won’t.” I thought I said it aloud, but maybe I was just thinking it. My face seemed to be pressed into his shoulder. I breathed him in. He smelled like the night and like deodorant soap; he smelled alive.
After a few moments he gave me a shake. “Adrien? Come on, baby. Pull yourself together.” He gave me another joggle, this one less patient. “Is it Angus?”
I shook my head.
He put me away from him, moving past. I heard the bedroom light click on. Light spilled down the hallway. I tottered the last steps to the couch, dropped into the sagging cushions, practiced taking long, calm breaths.
While You Were Out, with special guest Charles Manson.
After a couple of minutes, Jake dropped into the chair across from me. I glanced at his face. Nice to know I wasn’t the only one sick with horror.
“I think it might be the girl from the bookstore,” he said.
“Velvet?” I was aghast.
Jake looked confused. “The one you called Kinsey. The blonde.”
Kinsey. Right. Where did I get Velvet from? That was a weird jump.
“Who’s Velvet?”
I shook my head.
He was silent. Then he said abruptly, “Did you see the symbols over the bed?”
“Not clearly.”
“Could you handle another look?”
I stared at him.
He explained, “I think they match the carvings in the tree where we found the Zellig kid. I think, but I’m not sure, that they match the stuff painted on your doorstep. Would you be able to tell?”
Why did he have to know right that minute? Why the fuck couldn’t he wait till he looked at the photos himself?
I gave him a long, unfriendly look, forced myself to get up. I walked back to the bedroom.
How had I not instantly recognized that smell for what it was? I swallowed hard.
Jake followed. As feeble as it sounds, the fact that he stood at my shoulder did bolster me. I kept my gaze focused on the wall, not looking at what lay beneath, but Jesus Christ, the thing was written in blood — her blood.
I reached for the door frame, and he startled me by catching my wrist.
“Try not to touch anything.”
That didn’t register. The fact that he gripped my arm hard enough to leave his own fingerprints didn’t register.
“I think it’s the same.” The voice didn’t sound like mine.
He let me go. I turned, found my way back to the couch. I put my face briefly in my hands, trying to scrub away the picture in my brain. I’ve seen bad things, but that was the worst, by far.
Jake came and stood over me.
“He set you up. You do realize that?”
I lifted my head. Blinked at him. “Huh?”
“Your pet nutcase. Angus.”
“You think Angus killed her?”
“If he didn’t, he sure as hell knows who did. He didn’t accidentally pick tonight to send you over here.”
I tried to remember the details of my conversation with Angus. “He was terrified.”
“That fits.”
Did it? Maybe it did. Angus knew about the Eaton Canyon murder. I didn’t want to believe he had been involved in that, but it was hard to explain his knowing, yet not being incriminated. Why wouldn’t he have gone to the cops? What excuse was there?
It was over anyway. He had Angus’s phone number. In a matter of hours, Angus would be arrested for murder. At the least, he would be brought back and questioned. Maybe that was just as well, because this had to end.
I became aware that a long silence had fallen between Jake and me. I glanced at him.
“Have you called it in?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what to do about you.”
“Say again?”
His expression was bleak. “How do we explain your presence here?”
I shrugged tiredly. “Angus asked me to swing by and pick up his mail.” I wondered if Angus would be willing to back that story once he was officially under suspicion for murder. “And I called you because I knew —”
I got it at last. How did I know of Jake’s interest in the case? How did I happen to have his cell phone number? And why had Jake come sneaking over here at my offer of an unofficial peek into Angus’s home? The answers to these and other obvious questions inferred a personal and intimate acquaintanceship between me and Jake.
He said slowly, as though he were thinking aloud, “It’s reasonable that you could have called me. I could have come to the bookstore following up a lead.”
“What lead?”
“Okay, scratch that. You called me when the kid disappeared. We met during the Slasher investigation, and when this happened you gave me a call. You were concerned about the kid, and I gave you my cell phone number and told you to call me i
f you heard from him.”
It was fascinating, in a painful and weird way, to watch him try to rationalize away any reason for a personal link between us. To cover the fact that he had been friends — and occasionally more — with a gay man.
“Then what?” I asked with a strange detachment. “You came over here and found the…her?”
“Why not?”
“What about my fingerprints?”
“What did you touch?”
I told him. He shook his head dismissingly. “It’s hard to lift latent prints from rough surfaces like terra cotta and unfinished wood. Even getting them off a curved surface like a door knob is tricky.”
“They can do it with chemical processing.”
“Yeah.” I spotted the tinker-toy wheels turning. “But I don’t want to risk destroying the perp’s prints. Anyway, your fingerprints aren’t on file, and there’s no reason for you to be printed now.”
He spoke confidently, working it out as he went along. Contemplating him from what seemed like miles away, I felt kind of hollow.
“Is it worth the risk? We’ll have a shitload of trouble trying to explain why we lied, if your story doesn’t hold up.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “Or even seriously interviewed,” he said as though I hadn’t spoken. “There’s a good chance I’ll catch the case. I’m part of the occult-killing task force.”
Oh, good. Promotion ops for Jake.
I planted my hands on my thighs, pushed myself to my feet. “Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” I said politely. “Is there any reason for me to hang around?”
He shook his head. I’m not sure my words actually registered.
“Can I leave by the front, or do I need to climb over the back wall?”
“Hang on.” Pulling a hanky out of his pocket, he went to the front door and gingerly opened it, touching the knob as little as possible. Opening the screen door, he stepped out, studied the street, and then turned back to me. “It’s clear.”
“I gripped the front knob.”
Without a word, he wiped the door handle. So much for not destroying evidence.
My eyes met his for an instant before I turned to slip past him.
He grabbed my shoulder. “You’re wrong,” he said roughly. “I wouldn’t compromise an investigation to protect myself. Not even to protect you.”
I couldn’t help a bitter laugh. “This isn’t for me.”
“Jesus, Adrien. Neither of us needs this complication right now. We both know you didn’t do her, that it went down just as you said. What the fuck would be gained by going through the formality of questioning you? Why would I want to waste department time and resources checking your story out? Christ, do you want your picture in the papers again?”
I sure didn’t, but it troubled me that he was destroying possible evidence. The harder he tried to convince me that this was all in the interests of the investigation, the more I knew it was to protect himself.
He must have read my thoughts. Abruptly, he let me go. “Think what you want,” he said curtly.
I stepped out, the screen door springing shut behind me with a little bang.
* * * * *
Angus had left three frantic messages on my machine. I listened to them, stomach curdling with irrational guilt, then I erased them. I wondered how long it would be before the cops audited the phone records of wherever he was staying and came to interview me.
But then, we weren’t trying to hide the fact that I had called Jake, we were concealing how well I knew him.
I poured myself a snifter of brandy. Actually, it was more like a soup bowl. I downed it in a couple of gulps, then refilled my glass.
I was going to have to lie for Jake, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to. I wasn’t sure I wanted to. Through the warm haze of the brandy, I listened to that whisper of rebellion, then turned down the volume.
Guy Snowden had also left a message: crisp and to the point.
“I had a visit from LAPD today. I’d like to meet with you again. I’d like to introduce you to a friend of mine.”
When I finished the brandy — and I do mean all the brandy — I gave Guy a call. Predictably, his answering machine picked up.
I hesitated, wondering if he was awake, maybe listening in the darkness for one particular voice.
I quietly replaced the receiver in its cradle.
Chapter Eleven
Over a bowl of oatmeal and a bottle of aspirin, I watched Angus and Wanda being arrested.
The morning news brimmed with murder. Footage of Angus and Wanda being escorted out of a cabin in Lake Tahoe was replayed on every channel. Unreal. Angus and Wanda, handcuffed, trying to hide their faces, were escorted by burly sheriffs through a mob of cameras.
What would happen to them? I assumed Wanda’s family would come to her rescue, but I had never heard Angus mention any family besides this NorCal “Grampy.” He couldn’t afford legal defense. He’d wind up with some court-appointed public defender.
I changed the channel and watched Angus being guided into a patrol car once again. It was surreal. Eyes shining, the blonde reporter blabbed on with pseudo gravity to the folks at home. You’d have thought they had nabbed the Zodiac Killer.
I turned off the TV, dumped my dish in the sink. Belatedly, it occurred to me that Angus knew the truth about my relationship with Jake. How long before that came out in questioning? The minute he found out that Jake was the cop who’d discovered the body, he’d put two and two together. He’d spill. Or did Jake have a plan for keeping Angus quiet?
I considered Jake’s theory that Angus had tried to set me up the night before. It didn’t make sense. Set me up for what? It wasn’t like the cops had been waiting for me to stumble onto the crime scene. If anyone was being set up, wasn’t it most likely Angus? The body had been found in his house.
I was sketchy on the details of how he had angered his former playmates, but there was no doubt he had ticked off some unpleasant people. Then he’d compounded his offense by skipping out. Was it too much of a leap to suppose that, when they’d been unable to retrieve him through the power of negative thinking, they had decided to use the police?
Or to approach from another angle: Angus’s defection had posed a kind of threat to them. They had neutralized him by framing him for murder.
Granted, committing murder was quite an escalation from harassment and vandalism, but if these were the same people who had killed Tony Zellig and Karen Holtzer, then murder wasn’t anything new.
Why this girl, though? Kinsey had clearly been one of “them.”
Okay, qualify that. She had been one of the group looking for Angus. Did that mean she was part of Angus’s…what was it called? Coven? According to Guy Snowden, Angus had belonged to a harmless Wicca group. I’d met Wiccans, and they didn’t seem like the same species as Kinsey and the Poison Dwarf. Angus had been frightened of his former friends; the scariest thing about the gang at Dragonwyck was their addiction to wheatgrass.
The symbols left at the shop and the grave sites of Tony Zellig and Karen Holtzer had been inverted pentagrams — black magic. The Wiccans had been disturbed by them. So what did that mean?
Might there be two different factions? Was there some kind of woo-woo turf war going on? It was hard to picture Angus — the Angus I knew — as a major player in a diabolical chess game. He could be a pawn, though.
Thinking about it made my brain hurt. Or maybe that was the hangover. I decided to let it go and get downstairs.
* * * * *
I hadn’t been downstairs for ten minutes when Lisa phoned.
“Oh, Adrien, they’ve arrested That Boy!” She always referred to Angus as “That Boy.” “They say he killed a girl. That he may be a serial killer!”
“That’s bull— ridiculous,” I said. “I think he’s been framed.” First time I’d actually put the thought into words, but I realized I did believe this. I sure as hell did not believe that Angus was a serial killer, and I hadn’t noti
ced any of the symptoms.
“Oh, darling!” A blend of sympathy and dismay. Mostly dismay.
Cradling the phone between my cheek and shoulder, I glanced over at Velvet. She was busy addressing the shop’s Christmas cards. We’d spent an embarrassing amount of time yesterday trying to print labels. In the end we’d decided it would be faster to do it by hand.
I lowered my voice. “Lisa, would it be possible to talk to Mr. Gracen? Could something be worked out with my trust fund?”
“Have you decided about the house, then?”
“Huh? No. I was thinking of Angus. There’s no way he can afford decent legal defense.”
“Adrien, you must be joking.” Her tone was sharp. “Were it possible to lay your hands on that money, helping that boy would never be an acceptable reason.”
“Is the money mine or not?”
“The money is in trust for you. The reason it is in trust is to prevent this very kind of thing.”
“Oh, right. Thirty-two years ago my grandmother miraculously foresaw that one day I might need cash to help a friend —”
“He’s not a friend, Adrien. He’s someone who works for you. Someone whom I have always said was most unsavory.”
“My God, you should hear yourself.”
“What does Jake say?”
“Jake? What the hell does Jake have to do with it?” The mention of Jake made me madder than anything so far.
“Don’t swear at me, Adrien. Jake is a police officer. He has experience in these matters. And he’s your…oh, what is it called? Your partner.”
“Jake has nothing to do with anything. Angus is my responsibility.”
“Your responsibility? How is that boy your anything?”
“He works for me. I don’t think he has anyone else.”
She answered tartly, “Rather a feudal attitude, don’t you think, from someone who thinks I’m a snob?”
“Will you help me or not?”
“I will help you by doing whatever is in my power to prevent you from accessing that money. That money is your future. You have no idea when you may need that — that cushion.”