San Francisco Night

by Stephen Leather

  “I’m easy,” said Nightingale.

  “White it is, then,” said Chen, taking a bottle out of the fridge and picking up two glasses. “That astrologer. Starr. He was tortured, Jack. Probably by the same person that killed Dukas.”

  “Do the detectives know that?”

  “Dukas was burnt up in the fire so they’ve not put it together yet. But I think they will eventually. You know what this means?”

  “That someone is killing everyone who helps me? Yeah, I’d worked that out.”

  “Not just killing, Jack. Torturing. Which means they’re trying to get information from them.”

  Nightingale nodded.

  “What’s that?” she said, gesturing with the bottle at the TV screen as she sat down.

  “My journalist contact found it for me. Karl Woods, he works for the Chronicle and has been covering the missing kids story. He found an article from The San Francisco Call, dated January 1905.” Chen took a bite of pizza as she read the words on the large screen. There were two headlines. SAYS HIS WIFE IS A SORCERESS and SAN FRANCISCO MAN CONTENDS SHE IS A WITCH.

  She gestured for Nightingale to open the wine bottle as she read what was on the screen. A 21-year-old man called Felix Rybiski had appeared before Justice Caverly at the Harrison street police station in answer to a charge of abandonment, and begged the court to protect him from his wife. He claimed she was a witch while Mrs. Rybiski had in turn charged him with inhuman cruelty, abandonment of herself and their baby and finally alleged that she believed him to be insane.

  Chen started reading the story out loud in between bites of pizza. “Rybiski is the inventor of a patent shingle, and it was while working on the roof of her home in the fall of 1905 that he claims he first came under her influence. In telling the story at the station, he seemed half crazed with fear and from time to time glanced furtively at his wife as if he expected to be again cast under a spell.

  “He stated that the woman simply looked at him, and that thereafter he was powerless save to obey her commands. He took up a residence in her home. Then, after a week or so, after a walk which he remembered only in a hazy way, he was informed that they were married, and that the woman he dreaded was his lawfully wedded wife.”

  Nightingale looked over at Chen. “A big part of Satanic power involves having influence over others,” he said.

  “Are you talking about hypnotism?”

  “More like mind control.” He poured wine into the glasses, then passed one to her as she continued reading what was on the screen. “From this time on, until he finally regained possession of his will power and returned to his family, he declares he was forced to lead the existence of a dog. According to his statement, he was engaged to marry Mary Runklowicz, a girl of his own age, but that when he was with his wife he forgot even her name. Whenever he grew assertive, his wife would glare at him and he would feel his faculties slipping away. His sister-in law, Mrs. Ella Hofft bore out his testimony that Mrs. Rybiski was a witch.”

  Chen looked over at Nightingale. “I suppose journalistic standards weren’t as high back then.”

  “Papers didn’t do much in the way of fact-checking,” agreed Nightingale.

  Chen picked up another slice of pizza but it stayed in her hand as she frowned at the final two paragraphs.

  “Seen at her home, 2995 Lyman Street, last evening, Mrs. Rybiski, a short, sweet-faced, motherly looking woman, about 45 years old, denied each of the charges as the workings of a diseased brain. She is a wealthy and educated woman. Before her marriage, she was Miss Agatha Dukas and a wealthy heiress, though she is now reduced to working as a telephone operator.”

  “That’s Dukas’s great-great-aunt,” said Nightingale. “She died in the fire after the 1906 earthquake. There’s a copy of her death certificate on the thumb drive somewhere.”

  Chen continued to read out loud. “The talk of my being a witch is absurd, Did I possess any unnatural powers? I would exert them only to such an extent that it would be unnecessary for me to work ten or more hours daily in order to support myself and my baby, towards whose keep its father has never given one penny.” She shrugged. “Okay, that’s interesting, but it doesn’t help us, does it? Dukas’s great great aunt was an alleged witch. So what? That doesn’t mean for sure that she was involved in any rituals back in 1906.”

  “Woods found something else out,” said Nightingale, scrolling through the thumb drive’s menu. “Two children went missing just a week before the earthquake. There was quite a search at the time, but obviously the earthquake put paid to that.” He found the newspaper article and it filled the screen. There were no photographs, just words. Chen read the article quickly, her wine glass in one hand and a slice of pizza in the other. Her jaw dropped and she turned to look at Nightingale. “A white boy and a black girl.”

  “Coincidence?”

  She looked back at the screen and read the story again. The two children had been snatched on the same day. There had been witnesses on both occasions. Each time witnesses reported seeing two men push the child into a horse-drawn delivery van. There was a description of the horse and the van in both articles but at the time there were thousands of horse-drawn vehicles in the city. There were motorcars, too, but horses were still the main form of transport. And with no registration plates and only a sketchy description of the men, it was hardly surprising that the children hadn’t been found. There were several other articles from various papers on the thumb drive, basically all saying the same thing, that the children were missing and the police had nothing to go on.

  Chen finished reading the articles and sat back, sipping her wine.

  “You know what this means?” said Nightingale.

  “I think you’d better tell me.”

  “It’s going to sound crazy.”

  “Like I said before, that ship has sailed, Jack.”

  He took a deep breath before speaking. “Back in 1906, Agatha Dukas was involved in the occult. Devil worship. She discovered the book that Basil Dukas, her great great nephew, had in his library. Maybe it had always been in her family, maybe she came across it in a shop. She realized what it was and set about carrying out the ritual. She was involved in setting up a group of Apostles. Just like has been happening here. Then…” He shrugged. “Then it’s just conjecture, right? Guesswork. We can’t know for sure.”

  “The earthquake stopped them? She died in the fire?”

  “It could be more than that, Amy,” said Nightingale quietly. “It could be a lot more. Maybe the ritual caused the earthquake. Maybe what Agatha Dukas and her Apostles did resulted in a wave of destruction and mayhem that…” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. It makes my head hurt.”

  She gestured at his glass. “Maybe wine will help.”

  “Yeah, maybe.” He gulped down half the glass and refilled it. She held her glass out and he refilled hers too. “Here’s the thing. If there was a group of Apostles around in 1906, there must have been the twelve murders that go with them. The Christian virgins killed in the way that original the Apostles died. Can you check, tomorrow? There’d be records, right? Even that far back?”

  Chen nodded. “Of course. But I’m not sure how many have been computerized. But I can find out.”

  “If you can find missing nuns and priests in early 1906, that would pretty much nail it,” said Nightingale.

  She nodded. “But then what, Jack? How does that help us stop what’s happening now?”

  He forced a smile but he didn’t know what to say. She was right, of course. The problem wasn’t what might or might not have happened way back in 1906. The problem was what was going to happen on Wednesday night. Just one day away.

  “We need to get inside The Elms, don’t we?” she said.

  “I think so. Yes.”

  “That’s not going to be easy.”

  “I know. But I don’t see there’s any other way.”

  CHAPTER 79

  Abaddon was already sitting on a bench in Ghirardelli Squ
are, a cluster of restaurants and shops in the Fisherman's Wharf area, when Judas walked up. “It’s turning into a very pleasant evening,” said Judas, sitting down next to her.

  “The calm before the storm,” said Abaddon. “Andrew assures me that if the book was in Dukas’s house, it has been destroyed. But there is a chance, a small chance admittedly, that Nightingale has it.”

  “What did the police say?”

  “He had a book in his pocket when he came out of the house, but I am told it was French, not Greek.”

  “Even if he has the Grimoire, the knowledge it contains will do him no good, surely?” said Judas.

  “He is not an Adept, that’s true,” said Abaddon. “But Joshua Wainwright is. And Nightingale works for him.”

  Judas nodded thoughtfully. “I shall pay Nightingale a visit tomorrow. If he has the book, he’ll tell me.”

  Abaddon smiled. “I know how persuasive you can be. And has everything else been taken care of?”

  Judas nodded. “The nosy journalist is no more, and the astrologer has also been dealt with.”

  “Excellent,” said Abaddon, standing up. “Once you have finished questioning Nightingale, please deal with him too.”

  “Of course.”

  “And the policewoman who has been helping him. Amy Chen. Find out how she managed to evade the Elemental. Then kill her too.”

  “It’ll be a pleasure,” said Judas, as Abaddon walked away.

  CHAPTER 80

  Nightingale woke to find Chen standing over him and he realised that she had just shaken him. “I’ve got to go in to work,” she said. “For the morning at least.”

  “Will you have time to check the historical records, to see if there were abductions that could be tied in to an Apostles group back in 1906?”

  “I’ll do my best,” she said. “Why do you think it’ll help?”

  “If the ritual was performed back then, maybe something stopped it.”

  “Maybe the earthquake put paid to the ritual, have you thought about that?”

  Nightingale nodded. “See what’s in the records,” he said. “And see if you can get plans of The Elms. There has to be some sort of chapel or crypt in there, we need to know where it is.”

  “You’re planning on going in tonight?”

  “I don’t see there’s any other way,” said Nightingale. “The cops won’t go in but I’m sure the kids are in there. There’s still time to work something out. More than twelve hours. And I’ll keep watching the iPad. Nothing’s going to happen until Speckman and Carr get there.”

  “You hope.”

  “They’ll need all the Apostles.”

  “Again, you hope. You don’t know for sure, do you?”

  Nightingale grimaced. She was right. Without the Grimoire he had no way of knowing what the ritual entailed. He was guessing that the twelve Apostles were vital to the ritual. He could be completely wrong. And he could also be wrong about the time. He was assuming midnight, it could just as easily be another time of the day or night.

  Chen looked at her watch. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  “Can you leave the car? I don’t want to be chasing around for a taxi if I have to move quickly.”

  “Okay. Keys are by the door.”

  Nightingale shaved, showered and dressed before driving Chen’s Mustang to the laundry where he’d left his raincoat. “It smelled really bad,” said the Korean lady who gave it to him.

  “Yeah, sorry about that.”

  “You smoke too much.”

  “Sadly that’s probably true.”

  “Do you want a bag?”

  “No, I’ll wear it here.” He paid her then stripped off the polythene covering and pulled it on. She had done a good job of cleaning it though there were a couple of scorch marks.

  “It’s very old,” said the lady. “You should buy a new one.”

  Nightingale shook his head. “This is my lucky coat,” he said. “I couldn’t be without it.”

  He went back to the car and decided to drive to Haight Street, figuring that he would ask Margaret Romanos if she knew anything at all about the Bimoleth ritual. As a Pagan she probably wouldn’t know much, but there was a chance she might have a book that would help. The police tape was still outside Starr’s shop. He drove to Pagan World and parked the Mustang close by. There was a CLOSED sign in the window and he cursed under his breath. He lit a cigarette and peered through the window but the shop was empty. He hoped that the closed shop didn’t mean that something bad had happened to her, but he was expecting the worst. He cursed again and walked back to the car.

  He drove to The Elms, deep in thought. He didn’t have too many options and all of them involved getting into the house and disrupting the ritual. The problem was that there didn’t seem to be any way of doing that on his own. The high wall, the CCTV and the security guards made it hard enough to get in, but assuming he did get in, then what? Twelve Apostles and Abaddon was more than he could handle on his own, even if he could get a weapon. The cops could go in mob-handed but what if they didn’t find the children? The Apostles could presumably wait and try again at some other time. His mind went around and around the problem but he was unable to come up with anything approaching a solution.

  He drove on auto-pilot, barely aware of his surroundings, and almost went by the entrance to the mansion. He slowed and then parked at the side of the road. Part of him wanted to get out and look through the gates but he knew that to do so would only attract attention to himself. And he’d already seen the guardhouse and the guards. He looked at the wall. It wouldn’t be too much of an effort to get over it, but what then? There’d be dogs, maybe. And CCTV for sure. And that was before he even got to the house itself.

  He started driving again, following the road down until it reached the coast. There was a turn to the left but it was little more than a dirt track and it was marked as a dead end. He drove for a couple of hundred yards and reached a small parking area. There were half a dozen cars there and most were empty. There were a couple in a Mercedes who looked as if they were in the middle of an argument and they both glanced over at him as he climbed out of the Mustang and buttoned up his coat. He locked the door and headed towards the beach. The sea was to his right and cliffs to his left. He walked slowly, the wind ruffling his hair, walking as close to the water as he could without getting wet. Even walking on the wet sand, he couldn’t see the tops of the cliffs. He figured The Elms was about three-quarters of a mile from where he parked the car, though he had never been great at judging distances. He lit a cigarette as he walked. The cliffs weren’t sheer but they were steep. In a few places there were steps leading up, with handrails in the steepest places. He craned his neck but he couldn’t see where the steps led.

  “They’ll kill you, those things,” said a voice behind him.

  He turned to see Proserpine watching him. She was wearing a long black coat that was so shiny that it could only have been plastic, high-heeled black boots that appeared to be making absolutely no impression on the sand she was standing on, and a black collar around her neck with a silver ankh hanging from it. She was wearing her hair long but despite the wind blowing in from the sea, it remained motionless, unlike Nightingale’s which was constantly blowing across his face.

  “Cigarettes or cliffs?” he said.

  Her dog was standing by her side, its head up, sniffing the air, its fur totally unaffected by the breeze.

  “Both,” she said. “Either. Are you planning to gatecrash the party tonight?”

  “I don’t see that I have a choice.”

  She smiled but her eyes were hard. ‘There’s always a choice, Nightingale.”

  He took a long pull on his cigarette and blew a plume of smoke which was immediately whipped away by the wind. “Why are you here, Proserpine? These Apostles are nothing to do with you, are they?”

  “No, but you are. I’ve always felt that I had first claim on your soul.”

  “So wha
t are you saying? That if I go in to the house, you won’t get my soul? I’ll die, is that it?”

  She smiled slyly. “Now that would be telling. Wouldn’t it?”

  “What about this Bimoleth? Can they summon him?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “But they can, right? The ritual will work.”

  “They seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “And what happens to the world if Bimoleth is here.”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “So why won’t you answer it?”

  “That’s not why I’m here, Nightingale.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I thought you might want to make a deal. Why else?”

  Nightingale frowned. “A deal?”

  “Your soul, for the kids.”

  “How would that work?”

  She laughed, but it was harsh sound, almost mechanical. “It’s not rocket science,” she said. “You give me your soul. I make sure the children are returned to their parents.”

  “Are you behind this?” he asked. “Is that what all this is about?”

  She shook her head. “I’m just trying to turn a difficult situation to my own advantage,” she said. “If the children are returned to their parents then the ritual will fail and Bimoleth will remain where he is. All’s well that ends well.”

  “So you don’t want Bimoleth here?”

  She tilted her head on one side. “That’s not what I said.”

  “That’s what you implied.”

  “I’m just giving you a way out. I didn’t expect you to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  Nightingale narrowed his eyes as he took another drag on his cigarette. It was always difficult to get a read on her because none of the human tics and mannerisms applied. She was a demon from hell when all was said and done. “Bimoleth will upset the balance if he comes, won’t he?”

  Proserpine didn’t reply.

  “So why don’t you stop it? Why bring me into it?”