San Francisco Night

by Stephen Leather

  “So if someone was already helping him, why did he come to you?”

  “The stars, Jack. He knew there was something big coming up, he wanted me to tell him what and when.”

  “And did you?” asked Nightingale.

  “No. No data. I could have cast his chart, but I didn’t know any details for the other people. We figured out that the first girl he saw sacrificed was Suzanne Mills, and I was able to run her chart and read the numbers on her. But it was nowhere near enough. I had no idea where these Apostles were going by sacrificing her.”

  “What about Lee’s chart? What did that say?”

  “It predicted a crisis on the twentieth, crossing the path of an emissary from Saturn on the twenty-second...and then nothing more, though I didn’t tell him that. I’m good at this. Too damned good.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said Nightingale. “Sometimes you can’t save people, doesn’t matter how hard you try.” He leaned towards Starr. “I need to stop these people, Gabriel, before anyone else gets hurt, and before whatever they’re planning comes off, because it won’t be good. Will you help me?”

  Starr nodded. “I’m not sure what help I can be, though?”

  “I’m not sure either, yet. But maybe your charts can help me put me a time-line on what’s happening.’ He spent the next fifteen minutes telling Starr everything he knew, though he didn’t tell him about the Elemental appearing at Mitchell’s house. Some things were better left unsaid.

  “So, you have a missing nun, a disappearing priest, a monk, a spinster, various church folk. All Christian, obviously. But you can see the other obvious connection, can’t you?”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Nightingale.

  “Virginity,” he said. “Never been kissed, my dear. The Great Unfucked. Monks, nuns and priests take vows of chastity. The others are young, utterly fugly or maybe never got asked. Can’t be sure, of course, but a fair guess. They’re sacrificing virgins. Christian virgins.”

  Nightingale opened his mouth to speak but Starr silenced him with a wave of his hand. “I’m an astrologer, Jackie, not a Satanist...but even I know that virgin blood has more potency than anything else in a sacrifice. Do you have the date of birth of the ones that are missing. I’ll cast horoscopes for them and see what they tell me.”

  “I don’t have them to hand. I’ll call you with the dates when I get them.”

  “I can make a start with their names.”

  Nightingale frowned. “How does that work?”

  “Numerology,” said Starr. “You can tell a lot from a person’s name.” He gave Nightingale a business card. “And what about your date of birth, Jack?”

  “You want to do my chart?”

  “It might show you what is coming,” said Starr.

  “If it’s bad news, I’d be better off not knowing,” said Nightingale. “I’ll pass.”

  CHAPTER 26

  Nightingale drove back to the Mission Street library and spent an hour on a computer looking for the birthdays of Sister Rosa, Father Mike and Brother Gregory. He had no luck and realized that there was only one way he was going to get the information he needed. He phoned Amy Chen. “It’s that pest of a Brit, I’m afraid,” he said when she answered. “I need a favor.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  “Can you let me have the dates of birth of the missing persons we spoke about?”

  “Your missing Christians?”

  “Yeah, do you mind?”

  “Do you want to tell me why?”

  Nightingale closed his eyes and winced. He didn’t like lying to her but he didn’t see he had any choice. “I just want to do a search of official records, see what I can dig up.”

  “Okay, I don’t see why not,” she said.

  “Have you had a chance to look at other missing Christians?” A librarian walked over, a hatchet-faced woman in her fifties, and she jabbed a finger at his phone and then wagged it. No phones in the library.

  Nightingale waved a silent apology and headed outside, the phone still stuck to his ear.

  “Yeah, I was in two minds about calling you about that,” said Chen.

  “You found someone.”

  “I found another two cases of Christians vanishing a week before a full moon.”

  “So there is a pattern?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know. If you stare at a blank wall long enough you see patterns. Your mind plays tricks, it tries to make sense of nothingness.”

  “Christians going missing a week before a full moon is pretty specific.”

  She sighed. “Yes, I know.”

  “Who are they, these new cases?”

  “Jack, I’m busy right now. And I’m not over happy about discussing cases over the phone. Do you like jazz?”

  “Depends. Ella, Louis, Bessie Smith, yes. Not modern stuff very much.”

  “Billie Holiday?”

  “Overrated and a thin voice, even when she wasn’t strung out. Diana Ross did it better.”

  “There’s a group of us going to The Blue Room tomorrow night. Fillmore Street, 8.30. Swing by and we’ll talk.”

  “It’s a date,” said Nightingale.

  “No it’s not,” said Chen. “It’s a meeting. I’ll see you there.”

  The phone went dead and Nightingale slipped it back in his pocket. He took out his pack of Marlboro and lit one as he walked back to his car.

  His phone rang again as he was walking into his hotel. It was the Abbot. “Jack, I’m more than halfway through the diary and it’s bad. Really bad.”

  “In what way?”

  “The individual sacrifices are just the start of it. When all twelve have been carried out there is to be a final ceremony, a ritual that will literally change the world.”

  “What happens at this ceremony?”

  “The diary talks about a young white cockerel and a young black hen being killed, but I think they are metaphors. I think they’re referring to children. There is to be a ceremony involving a double sacrifice that has to occur at a particular time. I’m still trying to work out when that might be. But I can tell you that before they are sacrificed, the children have to be branded.’

  “Branded?”

  “With hot irons. The mark of a demon has to be seared into the flesh. It has to begin healing and then the children are sacrificed.”

  CHAPTER 27

  The moment that Father Benedict mentioned the sacrifice of a white boy and a black girl Nightingale flashed back to the conversation he’d had with Inspector Chen. Brett Michaels and Sharonda Parker, both ten years old and both abducted on the same day. He went back outside and bought a copy of the Chronicle and flicked through it. He found an article on the top of page five, complete with photographs of the two children. The police hadn’t made much progress and although the story covered both abductions, the police weren’t prepared to say that the cases were connected. There were two bylines on the page four story, Karl Woods and Sonja Price. Nightingale went back to his SUV and entered the Chronicle’s address – 901 Mission Street – into the SatNav.

  The building was on the corner of Mission and Fifth, a three story building with a clock tower in the middle. Nightingale found a parking space a short walk away and headed into reception. A young blonde girl with a headset flashed him a plastic smile and Nightingale asked if he could speak to Sonja Price, figuring that he’d probably have more luck with a female reporter. She wasn’t at her desk so Nightingale asked for Karl Woods. The receptionist nodded at a phone on the counter and Nightingale picked it up. “Yeah, this is Karl Woods,” said a brusque voice.

  Nightingale introduced himself as a freelance journalist who was writing a feature on child abductions and asked if Woods could spare a few minutes.

  “Are you a smoker?” asked Woods.

  “Do you not talk to smokers?” asked Nightingale, confused.

  Woods laughed. “No, that’s not it. I’m due a cigarette break now so I can talk to you on the sidewalk, if you wa
nt.”

  “Perfect,” said Nightingale. “I’m happy to provide the smokes.”

  “What brand?”

  “Marlboro.”

  “Red or gold?”

  “Red.”

  Woods laughed again. “My day is getting better and better. Give me five minutes.”

  The journalist had a big voice but he turned out to be a short ginger-haired man who Nightingale figured weighed under a hundred and fifty pounds. Woods was around five foot six, twenty-five or so with a faceful of freckles and black plastic glasses.

  “Jack?” said Woods, offering his hand.

  “Thanks for this,” said Nightingale, shaking the reporter’s hand.

  “No problem,” said Woods as he took Nightingale outside. There were two young men standing in the smoking area and they both nodded at Woods. Nightingale offered the journalist a Marlboro and took one himself. They lit their own and blew smoke contentedly.

  “So what do you need, Jack?” asked Woods.

  “I’m putting together a feature on abducted children, basically showing how the Brit cops handle things differently to the Americans.”

  “Which paper?”

  “I’m freelance,” said Nightingale. “But the Guardian is interested and the Independent has taken my stuff before. So I saw you were working on the Brett Michaels and Sharonda Parker case.”

  Woods pulled a face. “Strictly speaking, we don’t know if it’s a case. The cops certainly aren’t connecting them.”

  “They went missing on the same day?”

  “Sure, but other than that there’s no connection. White, middle-class boy, black working-class girl.”

  “But you covered both kids in the same stories.”

  “Because it’s easier that way. And the fact they vanished on the same day sort of connects them even if the situations are different. Sonja Prince did the interviews, I wrote up most of it.”

  “Okay, so tell me about the boy.”

  “His father’s a VP at Bay City Bank and has been making plenty of noise. He’s on the phone to me every day, pushing me to keep the story in the papers. And I gather he’s been hounding the cops. But it’s a tough story to keep writing because there’s no new angle, no sightings, no clues, nothing. It’s a strange one too, Brett normally waited for his father to collect him after baseball, but this time it looked like he left early. One of the other kids in the team said he told him he had to go with his aunt, but he must have got that wrong, Brett doesn’t have an aunt.”

  “So no-one saw him leave?” asked Nightingale.

  “No, the kids generally change after a game,” said Woods. “But Brett never went back to the changing room. All his street clothes were still there.”

  “And the police have no leads?” asked Nightingale.

  “None they’ve cared to share with the press. I kind of think they were expecting a ransom demand, but nothing I’ve heard about.”

  “And what can you tell me about the girl?’ asked Nightingale.

  “Same deal, nobody saw anything, nobody knows anything, no sightings. The father’s long gone, the mother’s holding down two jobs. They live out in the Tenderloin, and to be honest if the story wasn’t linked to the Michaels disappearance, Sharonda wouldn’t make the paper.” He shrugged. “That’s the way of the world, I guess.”

  “So do you have any theories?” asked Nightingale.

  Woods shrugged. “Probably the same as anyone else. Nothing good. Both cases are still open and the cops say they’re actively seeking leads. Which means they got nothing and every day that passes lengthens the odds of things turning out well.”

  “Karl, did you ever hear any reports of organized groups snatching children?”

  Wood’s shrugged again.

  “Pedos? I haven’t, but it’s as good a theory as any, I guess.”

  “What about other groups?” asked Nightingale. “Satanists maybe?”

  “Devil worshipers? You don’t believe in that shit?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I believe, it’s what they believe that counts.”

  “No such thing,” said Woods. “You get killers saying that the devil told them to do it but it’s bullshit.” His eyes narrowed. “Is that an angle for you?”

  “It’s possible, it depends on what I turn up.”

  “Does it happen in the UK?’

  “No evidence of it. But then if they were good at it, there wouldn’t be, would there? A lot of kids disappear, and most are found eventually. Most turn up alive and well, and sometimes it ends badly. But there are some cases where nothing ever turns up. No body, no nothing. Who knows what happened in those cases?”

  “We get that, sure,” said Woods. “But if these two kids don’t turn up one way or another, devil worshipers would be right down at the bottom of my list of suspects.” He took a final drag on his cigarette and then stubbed it out in a metal receptacle built into the side of the building. “And with that final thought, I’ve got to get back to work.”

  “Can you do me a favor, Karl? Can you let me have their addresses? I’d like to go around and talk to the parents.”

  “No problem. I think they want as much publicity as they can.” He pulled a notebook from his pocket, scribbled down two addresses and handed them over. “Quid pro quo, yeah? If you get anything new, give me a call?”

  “Deal,’ said Nightingale. “Have you got a card?”

  CHAPTER 28

  On the way to Sharonda Parker’s home, Nightingale stopped off at a camera shop to buy a Nikon SLR camera and a camera bag. The tenement block where the Parkers lived was in a poor state, but fitted in with the rest of the street, where burnt-out cars and dumpsters provided the background decor. Nightingale figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to leave the near-new SUV on the street so he found a parking garage a ten-minute walk away. He smoked a cigarette as he walked. He had the camera bag over one shoulder and the Nikon hanging around his neck.

  The Parker apartment was on the fourth floor. A young black woman opened the door, but kept the chain on.

  “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Parker?” said Nightingale. “I’m Karl Woods from the San Francisco Chronicle.”

  He handed over the card that Woods had given him. The woman gave it a cursory glance and handed it back. The chain stayed on.

  “Why you here?”

  “Our paper is going to run a fresh appeal for sightings of Sharonda. And I wondered if I could ask you some questions.”

  “Where you from?”

  “England. But I work for the Chronicle.”

  She squinted at the camera and slowly nodded. “Okay,’ she said, and took off the chain.

  “Sure,” she said. “Come in. Anything that’ll help.”

  She unchained the door and Nightingale walked in. The apartment was a world away from the Mitchell mansion. One room with an aging green sofa and two mismatched chairs, a tiny kitchen, bathroom and two bedrooms. It hadn’t been decorated in a long time, but was clean and tidy. Mrs. Parker was around her late twenties, dressed in cheap well-worn clothes. She’d obviously been doing a lot of crying.

  “I’m so sorry about what’s happened,” said Nightingale, which was pretty much the only truthful thing he’d said since she opened the door.

  “What you want from me?”

  Nightingale held up the camera. “I want to take a photograph of Sharonda’s bedroom. Is that okay?”

  “Why?”

  “It would show people what’s waiting for her. Make them think about her. Remind them that she is still missing.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “Sure yes, anything you want, I don’t care, anything that helps. I just need her home.”

  Nightingale put his arm round her. She sobbed against his chest for a while, then straightened up.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “There’s nothing to apologize for.”

  “Take the photos...it’s through there,” she said, pointing at a door.

  Nightingale walke
d in to the bedroom. There was just the one single bed, so he assumed the baby slept in its mother’s room. The furniture was cheap, the paint peeling, but again it was spotlessly clean. Sharonda’s clothes hung from a string stretched across an alcove, there was a teddy bear on the bed and a couple of dolls. A big orange cat was curled up asleep on the pillow. The girl had her own little dressing table and mirror. Nightingale turned to check that she hadn’t followed him into the room and then slipped a pink hairbrush into his raincoat pocket. He took half a dozen photos, then walked back into the living room, where Mrs. Parker was sitting at a small dining table. She looked up. “You done?”

  Nightingale nodded. “I do have a question for you. When is Sharonda’s birthday?”

  “Her birthday?”

  “Yes. When is it?”

  “Why do you want to know when her birthday is?” She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

  “We can plan a big piece on her birthday. Again, it’s a way of reminding people, of keeping Sharonda’s name out there so that people keep looking for her.”

  She dabbed at her eyes again. “It’s in two months,” she said. “The twenty-first of June. She’ll be eleven. I bought her a tablet.”

  “A tablet?”

  “One of those computer things, like an iPad. It’s a cheap one, from China. She wants an iPad but I can’t afford one.” Tears ran down her cheeks. “I’m a really bad mother.”

  “No, you’re not,” said Nightingale.

  She nodded frantically. “I am,” she said. “I’m the worst mother ever.”

  Nightingale was torn between hugging the woman or rushing out of the room. He hesitated for a few seconds and then took her in his arms and allowed her to sob into his chest as he stroked the back of her head.

  CHAPTER 29

  According to the SatNav, the house where Brett Michaels lived was just eight miles and nineteen minutes away from Sharonda Parker’s tenement block, but it might as well have been on the other side of the planet. The roads and sidewalks were immaculate, the houses were pristine and surrounded by landscaped gardens that must have cost a small fortune to maintain. Most of the lawns were dotted with small but very visible signs that said the homes were under the protection of armed security response teams. The Michaels house wasn’t quite in the same league as Kent Speckman’s mansion, but it wasn’t far off. There was no wall and no CCTV cameras so Nightingale was able to park in the road and walk up the driveway. There was a treble garage to the right of the house and a white Range Rover parked outside.