by Tim McGregor
Unable to think clearly, Justin forced himself to look away. “She’s still at the hospital.”
“But she’s awake,” Owen added.
Evelyn turned the platter over, slotted it onto the pin and swung the needle arm onto the groove. “And is she lucid? What has she said?”
“Nothing,” Justin said. “She doesn’t remember anything.”
“That’s fortunate.” The woman stepped away from the phonograph as the music played. Crossing to a sideboard, she picked through a vase of white roses. “For now at least.”
“Can you still reach her?”
“Maddeningly no,” the woman said. Plucking the roses out, she gathered up a large pair of metal scissors and began trimming the stalks. “Something is shutting me out. I think that damned Englishman has meddled with her somehow.”
Owen blinked. “Meddled?”
“A protection seal or some such thing. It’s blocking me.”
Justin watched the clipped ends of the green stalks tumble down to the floor. The blades of the scissors foaming green as she trimmed one after another. “If we knew what to look for, maybe we can remove them.”
“No,” she sighed. “The girl is useless to me. I realize that now. But she will need to be silenced.”
Owen swallowed hard. “Her memory is gone. I don’t think she’s a threat to you.”
“She’s a loose thread in this. And loose threads get tugged until they unspool the whole tapestry. I won’t have it.” Her head turned and she looked directly at the two men. “If neither of you are butch enough to trim the thread, speak now.”
“It’s taken care of,” Justin said.
White petals from the flowers fell across the board as the woman cut each stem and returned the flowers to the vase. “You have to understand, I cannot be trapped in this wretched house any longer. And so many attempts to escape have gone wrong. I will not suffer another failure.”
Owen removed his cap and held it in his hands. “Don’t you need Kaitlin?”
“She’s not strong enough. Just like that little Norwegian tramp. No, I need someone with real talents.” She swept the petals to the floor. “I need the gypsy girl.”
“Who?” Owen stammered, shooting a look at his friend.
“Kaitlin’s friend,” Justin growled. “Billie.”
“Yes. She’s got real power, that one.” Evelyn Bourdain stepped over the petals and walked to the doorway, her heels clicking against the marble. “You need to bring her to me. Can you do that?”
“We’ll think of something,” Justin said.
“Good. Now you must go before the guests arrive. I’m afraid you won’t like them very much.” She stopped at the threshold of the room and touched Justin lightly on the cheek. “God speed.”
Owen watched his friend almost swoon at the woman’s touch. Justin all but clicked his heels in salute and left the room. Owen turned to follow.
“Owen?”
He stopped but averted his eyes. Looking directly at her was too much. His brains seemed to jam up if he beheld her beauty for more than a heartbeat. “Yes?”
“Trust in your friend. He knows what he’s doing. Make me proud.”
“I will,” he stammered.
“Do this,” she smiled, “and we will all be together. In the flesh.”
He nodded and stepped out of the ballroom. Back in the crumbling corridor, he spied a framed mirror on the floor. The glass was broken, with jagged pieces missing. Propped up against the wall, it reflected the ballroom but Owen startled at what he saw there. Gone was the brilliant cheer of chandelier and flowers and banquet. Like the rest of the house, it was decayed and dark and filthy. And the vision of the woman standing there in her putrid flapper dress was so abhorrent that he felt his scrotum shrivel up inside his drawers.
Chapter 20
NEEDING ELBOW ROOM, Mockler took the map to an empty task room and spread it over the long table. Setting the laptop to one side, he called up the database he needed. From there it was just a matter of tediously cross-checking records and marking coordinates on the map.
Detective Odinbeck stuck his head in the door. “Hey chief, do you remember the witness in the Prambo file? She lived on Beechwood, just off Gage?”
“She had a little boy, didn’t she?” Mockler said, looking up. “He kept kicking you in the shins.”
Odinbeck snapped his fingers. “That’s her. Did we get a follow-up statement from her?”
“Someone did. Ask Latimer. He was assisting that one too.”
The older detective looked over the map on the table. “What’s all this?”
“Sifting the database for decommissioned churches.”
Odinbeck took one of the dossiers from the table and read the title. “Historical Society, Heritage buildings. What’s this for?”
“Possible lead in the Riddel case.” Mockler closed the laptop and started folding the map back up. “It’s a total longshot but I’m trying to find where he buried the Culpepper woman.”
“Billie’s mom, right? Man, what a messed up case that is.”
“You’re telling me.” Mockler tucked the map under one arm and gathered up the rest.
“Hey, you want some help with the search?”
Mockler headed out the door. “Nah, I’m good. I already got some help with it.”
Detective Odinbeck watched his colleague march off in a hurry, wondering if he had been assigned a new partner.
~
“Don’t you dare light that.”
“Relax. I got the bloody window open.”
“I don’t care,” Mockler barked. “You can’t smoke in my car.”
“Don’t be a fucking baby,” Gantry sneered, lighting it up.
This wasn’t worth the aggravation, Mockler thought. Driving down backcountry roads looking for ruins with this asshole in the passenger bucket.
“Besides,” Gantry said, folding the map across his lap. “All this clean country air will neutralize the smoke. Saw that on the science channel once.”
Mockler indulged momentarily the idea of drawing his service issue and simply putting a bullet through the bastard’s head. “How far until the next one?”
Gantry scrutinized the map. “If I’m reading this right, just up ahead. There.”
Mockler slowed the car and turned onto a dirt road flanked by a forest of pine and birch on the north side and a field to the south. Great round bails of hay were scattered through the meadow, waiting to be collected and stored for winter.
“Which one is this?” asked Mockler.
“Saint Lucia, deconsecrated in fifty-three,” Gantry said, consulting the list. He checked the map and then back to the road before them. “We ought to see it by now.”
“I see it.”
The shape of it rose from the trees as they approached, a dark silhouette against the twilit sky. Mockler eased the car onto a rutted path overgrown with weeds and the two men clambered out. Flashlights came on as they trudged through the knee-high strands of heather and foxtail to the ruins rising up out of a hedgerow.
All that remained of Saint Lucia’s church was the stone foundation, the walls rising up into the sky. The roof was gone, along with any sign of the doors and windows. The brickwork was stained black with soot. The men trampled the weeds until they came to the main entrance. All that remained of it was a squared gap in the masonry.
“It must have burnt down,” said Mockler, training his lightbeam over the framework.
Gantry went on, following a worn footpath along the western rim of the church. “There’s a graveyard here too.”
Headstones rose up from the tall weeds like broken teeth, some standing plumb and others tilting this way and that. The inscriptions were worn away and dotted with lichen as each was lit up in the beam of Gantry’s flashlight. A few of the family names were still legible, all Scots and Irish from the look of them.
Gantry straightened up and hollered back to the church. “Find anything?”
Detective M
ockler stepped over the threshold onto the uneven ground inside the church walls. Above him the night sky opened up, a few early stars twinkling against an October sky. Testing his footing, the ground gave away here and there and his shoes sunk into soft loam. There was a thin crust of soil and moss carpeted over what he could now see were the broken timbers and ash of the old roof. Progressing slowly in this way, he traversed the perimeter of the walls until something flared up in the beam of light.
Gantry appeared in the doorway. “Did you not hear me?”
“Take a look at this,” Mockler replied. “Watch your step.”
“Cor,” Gantry griped as his shoes sunk into the soft ground. “What is it?”
“Found this.” Mockler pulled something out of the ground. A spade. The wooden handle had broken apart and the blade was dark with rust.
Gantry swept the ground with the light. “You think she’s buried here?”
“The ground is soft for digging. And this spot is on the way from Poole to Hamilton.” Mockler let the spade fall back to the dirt. “It’s the best lead so far.”
Gantry surveyed the uneven earth inside the church walls. “That’s what, two thousand square feet? That’s a lot of ground to dig up. She could be anywhere in this mess. If she’s here at all, that is.”
Mockler studied the ground and then looked at the Englishman. “Can you, uh, sense anything? Pinpoint it?”
“I’m not the psychic, mate.”
“Do you think Billie could find it?”
“To the square inch.” Gantry kicked at the loose moss with his shoe. “The question is, will she?”
~
The room was dark when Billie opened her eyes. A thin wedge of pale light bled in from the window. She reached over to draw the blind and immediately dropped back down from the pain. Everything hurt. Riding it out, she counted to three before trying again. Her muscles ached but she drew the blind up, letting the morning light in. It was pale grey, like a storm was on its way.
The ache nettled every inch of her frame and scrambled her thoughts. It took five minutes just to sit upright and blow out the cobwebs in her head. Memory came back in flashes; the morgue, the bones clicking together, the seizure. Overriding all of that was an awful dread that she had done something she shouldn’t have, that a cardinal sin had been committed for which there would be some terrible reckoning. A bible story came to mind, a shred of memory from the Sunday school sessions that aunt Maggie insisted she attend as a child. It was about a king and a witch and the summoning of the dead. If she remembered her lessons correctly, King Saul had been punished for his act of blasphemy.
Jesus, she thought. How Catholic of me.
Maybe her wretched state was punishment enough. Close contact with the dead drained her but the experience in the morgue had left her absolutely wasted, like she’d been beaten black and blue with a stick. Simply sitting up was torture. Making it all the way to the bathroom would be a Bataan Death March.
She noticed her nightstand had been tidied. Where there was usually a pile of paperbacks and trashy magazines, there was now only a bottle of water, a bottle of orange juice and a container of aspirin. Also a note. She picked it up.
Morning. You’ll need fluids. Drink them all.
I’m out looking at churches with your asshole friend. Be back as soon as I can. —M
Asshole friend? It took a moment before she realized he must mean Gantry. How nutty was that idea? Would the two of them kill each other on the way? The church reference had her wrinkling her brow until she remembered what the reanimated bones of Franklin Riddel had said. About burying her mother in the ruins of an old church. And here these two men, the detective and the wanted suspect, were out trying to locate it. For her. It was almost too much to bear; that act of kindness was not something she was accustomed to and she scolded herself for getting maudlin about it.
What was it Marta Ostensky had told her? That she had a protector. A guardian angel who would watch out for her whenever she needed it. The question was, which one was it? Mockler or Gantry? Both had been there when she needed them, both had helped and protected her with no prompting or request. Gantry, she reconsidered, had also left her in the lurch a few times so the scales tipped more toward the detective. Still, the wily Brit had, despite all his gruff, helped her navigate this weird path in a way no one else could.
She parched her thirst with the water, dropped two of the aspirin and polished off the orange juice. Her guts rumbled uneasily but a small patch of fog dissipated from her head. Emboldened, she swung her legs off the bed and planted her feet on the floor.
The bedroom door clicked and creaked back. The Half-Boy pushed it open all the way to clear a flight path for her to stumble through. She smiled at him. “Thank you,” she coughed, trying to work up the energy to stand but the phone rang, postponing the effort.
“Hello?”
“Billie?” said a man’s voice. “It’s Kyle.”
That was a surprise, she thought. Even under the best of circumstances, Kyle barely paid any attention to her. Now this. “Is everything okay? What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s fine,” he said. “Can you come to the hospital?”
“Yes. Of course.” Maybe she could snag a hospital bed for herself, considering how wretched she felt. “Why?”
“Kaitlin needs to talk to you.”
~
It was difficult to tell if Kaitlin had taken a turn for the worse or if she was simply pale with fright. “Billie,” she whispered, “I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for.” Billie pulled a chair to the bedside and took Kaitlin’s hand. “Did something happen?”
Kaitlin looked out at the corridor where the staff were passing by her room. “Shut the door,” she said.
Billie did as she was asked. “What is it?”
“I remember,” Kaitlin whispered, even though they were alone in the room. “Not everything, but pieces here and there.”
Billie slipped her hand into her friend’s. “Okay. Take it slow. Tell me what you remember.”
“I tried to kill you. With a big knife. God, it was awful.” Kaitlin covered her mouth, as if afraid to say more. “Why did I do that?”
“You didn’t,” Billie said, wondering how to explain it when she herself didn’t understand it. “It wasn’t you. Not in that moment, anyway. The look in your eye, that was someone else.”
“But I remember thinking it. I had all these awful thoughts. I was furious at you for interfering but I don’t remember what for.”
Billie smoothed her thumb over Kaitlin’s knuckles. “Tell me what else you remember. Anything, no matter how crazy.”
“There was a woman. She said she was trapped and lonely. She begged me to help her.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t remember. She told it to me but, it’s lost.”
“Okay,” Billie said. She didn’t want to lead Kaitlin falsely, so she kept quiet about the woman’s name. “What else?”
“She wanted something from me. I don’t remember what but she promised me anything if I would give it to her.” Kaitlin closed her eyes, trying to recall more. “I wanted to help her. I told her I’d do anything to save her. The rest is a blur. I was back in that cellar. There were other people in the room, standing around a circle but I couldn’t see their faces. We were doing something important, all of us. And then you were there. I had a knife in my hand. And I suddenly wanted to stab you with it.”
Billie fetched the tissues and Kaitlin dried her eyes. Then she looked at Billie. “I didn’t, did I? Stab you?”
“No. We fought, then we fell into the pit.”
Kaitlin began rocking back and forth. “Oh God. I’m scared, Billie.”
“You’re safe now. No one’s going to hurt you.”
“No, you don’t understand” Kaitlin said, shaking her head. “I messed with something I shouldn’t have. And I’m afraid I’m going to go to Hell for it.”
Billie’s first instinct was to dismiss her friend’s fears, to shoo them away as nonsense, but she could not. Despite everything she had witnessed and experienced since her abilities had bloomed unwanted in her heart, she had no idea if there was such a place as Hell or who was destined there and who was not. So she did what people do; she lied to allay her friend’s fears. “That’s not going to happen. Not on my watch. Do you remember my friend, Gantry?”
“Yes. He was here. He put something on me.” Kaitlin drew her hair back to reveal the mark blazoned there.
Billie examined it and then smiled. “That’s for protection. He knows this stuff. So don’t worry.”
Kaitlin sniffled and tried her best to return the smile. “I hope so.”
“Why don’t you rest. I’ll send Kyle back in.” She adjusted the pillow for Kaitlin to settle into and then turned to leave the room.
“Billie?”
“Yes.”
“I just remembered her name. The woman in the house.”
“That’s okay. I already know her name. Get some rest.”
Walking past the nurses station, Billie was surprised to see Mockler there. Waving to her, he ended his call and met her halfway.
“What are you doing here?” She couldn’t have stopped her face from beaming if she tried.
“Looking for you.” He took her chin in his fingers and examined her features. “You look a little piqued. You should be resting.”
“I’m fine,” she lied. An old habit with her, always saying that she was fine. She could be bleeding to death and her response would be the same. “I missed you.”
His eyes lit up and he ducked low for a quick kiss to her lips. “Ditto.”
She pulled back. “Did you really go road-tripping with Gantry?”