Skirting the pool of light, I inspected the back of the building. There were a couple of ground-level basement windows, but they were barred. Painted over, too, so I couldn't see in. Ankle-high debris crowded up along the wall. I grabbed the bars on each window and shook them. Some ox of a guy might have been able to tear one loose with a pry bar, but not me. The door was heavy steel, with a flange covering the bolt area. It was a tougher one than the front door.
I continued down the alley in the darkness. At one point when I stopped to get my bearings and listen, something heavy ran across my foot. I jumped straight up and fought not to come down again. A rat the size of a raccoon disappeared behind some cans.
Everything was quiet. Coming around to the front of the building, I had a clear view of traffic from both directions. Livernois was a big five-lane avenue, so when cars went by at that hour, they were moving. I was pretty exposed, but I could also see anyone approaching. I preferred it this way to a tighter space where somebody could come upon me at any moment.
I lurked just at the corner of the little wooden entry hut, which was tacked onto the side of the building adjoining the parking lot. The door to the hut was locked, of course. It was a crude affair with a steel hasp and padlock. The hut was made of thick lumber covered in tired white paint. Bolt cutters would have been the thing to bring.
The weakest point on the whole job looked like the hinges, so I took one final look around, put my blanket down, slipped my pry bar out, and donned my work gloves. I eased one edge of the bar into the space between door and jamb; the hinges didn't fit very tightly. I worked the bar back and forth, rocking it with my weight. The wood started to splinter, the one-way screws anchoring the hinges starting to give. I'd never broken into a place, but I'd opened plenty of wooden packing cases when I had a summer job in receiving at GM Truck & Coach in Pontiac.
A tiny sound came from over my shoulder between the creakings of the wood. At the same instant I inhaled and almost keeled over from an overwhelming cloud of alcohol vapor. I turned and brushed noses with a wino who was rocking in time with me, hovering his head over my shoulder.
Other than his breath, he smelled exactly like the rancid alley. For all I knew I almost fell over him in there. I gave him a fierce look, and he stepped back. He was doubtless much younger than the sixty he looked. His chin glinted with silvery stubble and a little drool. A quilted winter jacket hung from his narrow shoulders. He had to be hot in it—I'd started to sweat in my windbreaker as soon as I put it on—but God knows he was probably afraid to take it off and forget it somewhere.
His hands were empty. He looked down at my blanket. I put my foot on it. I got out two dollars, packed into my left front pocket for just such a contingency, and handed it to him. He took the money without speaking and moved away down Livernois.
I kept rocking and working the bar. Finally the top hinge came loose and I was able to force enough of a slot to squeeze through. I pulled the door back into place behind me so at least from a distance it would look normal.
The rest was easy. I grasped the knob of the inner door with my left hand, wound up with the pry bar in my right, and bashed it into the one-way window set into the door. The glass wasn't plate glass; it was some kind of reinforced stuff, but it broke anyway. A small hole with crumbly edges opened up. I chipped at it until I got most of it broken away. The door was a heavy one, but the window was the weak link. Just big enough for me to get through.
I folded the blanket over the jagged edge and ducked through headfirst. I walked on my hands along the floor until I could get my feet through, the gloves protecting my hands from the sharp debris. Why didn't I just reach in and open the door from the inside? The alarm system. I'd remembered seeing a sticker on the door, which prompted my call to Kevin.
Most systems are alike: contacts on the doors that set off the alarm if broken, the same on windows that can be opened. Nobody uses that silver tape anymore to detect breaking glass. I'd held on to the knob before I broke the glass, because I didn't want the door to rattle and possibly disturb the contacts.
Using my flashlight I found the keypad in a nook behind the bar. Its red light glowed steadily. So I was inside, but as far as the alarm system was concerned, the perimeter was secure. I felt pleased with myself.
My small cone of light made shadows jump all over the place. The empty bar felt like the antechamber of a tomb. The tables and chairs were neatly spaced, each table with an ashtray, a candle pot, and a card with the snack menu on it. Dead quiet.
I remembered Kevin mentioning rats. Well, I couldn't worry about goddamn rats. I figured as long as I couldn't hear anything moving, I'd be glad enough. The building's walls were cinder block, no windows except for the two basement ones. I poked around behind the bar looking for anything unusual. I crossed the room, stopped for a minute, then slowly edged into the back hall. I stuck my head and flashlight into the restrooms, nothing. Then I opened the door marked PRIVATE.
I was so tense, my spine felt as if it would snap in half if I made a sudden move. I felt for the light switch. Bright fluorescent photons filled up the room. Typical manager's office. Beige metal desk, office chair; phone, a straight chair. A small safe next to the desk covered with papers, invoices, a coffee mug, a copy of People. Delivery schedules posted on the wall. I opened the desk drawers. Just junk: cigarettes, hand lotion, paper clips. A file cabinet in the corner. I opened every drawer, looked into every folder. Nothing, just paperwork: utility bills, payroll records, tax records. Most everything was in the same handwriting, Bonnie's I supposed, a boxy combination of cursive and printing. Office supplies. The safe was locked.
Dread rose in my chest and sent tentacles through my body. I shut off the light, closed the office door, and continued down to the end of the hallway. The back door was there, beyond that the alley. The stairwell yawned off to my right. I crept to the bottom. Another door there. I grasped the knob, locked. The door was pretty heavy, another metal one.
I got out the chisel and hammer and went to work. The metal-on-metal blows rang in the concrete-block stairwell. I punched through the lock core, not knowing whether that would do it, but the knob clicked and I was in the basement, looking.
It was dusty, nearly empty, and smelled like stale beer. There were several light switches on a box mounted on the rough cinder block, and I flipped them all.
The basement was smaller than I'd expected, split into two narrow spaces, one of them merely a passageway that led to a compact area where the beer kegs and pop canisters stood, their plastic lines leading upward, then disappearing through the ceiling to the bar.
One side wall appeared shiny, and I realized it was the steel door of a walk-in cooler. Of course, every bar of any size has a walk-in. I moved down the passage and stood before it. No lock on it. Images of dead bodies stacked like wood zoomed, unbidden, through my mind. Or else they were hanging there draped in plastic shrouds, their mouths gaping and bloody and toothless.
I grasped the chrome latch and heaved. Cold air flowed out around my ankles as the gasketed door moved in a smooth arc. Inside, I saw a more or less orderly arrangement of beverages and perishable food supplies. I felt relieved and chagrined all at once. Where the hell did these people commit their horrors?
I turned back. The other room looked unused. There were a few cardboard cartons piled up, which proved to be empty. Most everything looked pretty dusty and undisturbed.
Except—something didn't add up. As I scanned the basement again I realized there was only one window. But out in the alley I'd seen two basement windows. There were more boxes stacked at the far end, stacked up pretty high against the wall, higher than my head. It was a dim cul-de-sac down there with a string dangling from a bare bulb. I could just make out the white string in the darkness. I felt my way over and twitched it.
The yellow light from the bulb showed that the boxes were sealed with tape and labeled things like bank cards, reg journal tapes, etc. I touched the boxes, nudged them some. While the
y seemed heavy enough to be full of paperwork, they were oddly balanced.
I boosted one down, tore off the tape and looked inside: just crumpled-up newspaper on top of a few inches of old magazines. I took down another, and another—all the same. Then I noticed the point of the whole exercise. The boxes were stacked up against a door, a low wooden door about chest high set right into the cinder blocks. I couldn't imagine any reason why the staff would have had occasion, or even the curiosity, to poke around those boxes. I shoved them aside and found another padlock.
As I worked on this one I kept expecting the booby trap to go off, you know, a volley of poison arrows or a falling anvil, but eventually the lock broke and the door swung open.
Chapter 33
Maybe there was an automatic light switch connected to the door, or maybe my hand found the switch by itself. I was in a room about the size of my apartment. Any connection to reality ended at that doorway. I knew I'd found headquarters.
The place was furnished sparsely and lined with patterned wallpaper. In the center of the room stood a large round display case; in fact, it was a pie case like you see in diners, lit up with fluorescent tubes. It glowed in an eerie, radioactive way. I approached and looked. Inside was an array of tiny off-white things, stuck on little clear pedestals. I looked closer, not opening it. They were teeth, of course. I counted twenty-two of them, engraved or inscribed somehow with tiny spots or symbols in black. They looked familiar, like mine, only nicer.
A cardboard tray on a lower shelf contained more teeth, unadorned. The air smelled musty and dead.
Another significant thing in the room: a hospital gurney, complete with straps and white sheets, set at an angle near a couple of metal cabinets, as if it were a piece of occasional furniture. Neat linens tucked in around the edges. A crummy couch covered in tattered brown corduroy sat against one wall, looking as if it'd been dragged in from the alley.
I opened the cabinets. They contained an array of dental instruments: picks and burrs and those big pliers they use for the old one-two. God almighty. Some stainless steel basins. I took out a basin and carried it around with me in case I needed to throw up.
A small table in a corner was tricked out like an altar, with a cross and plastic flowers and a string of tiny multicolored Christmas lights framing everything. A collage of Polaroid snapshots was taped to the wall around it. Faces of women posed in this very room.
Lots of pictures but not many different faces. Ten or a dozen. All were alive when the photos were taken. There was Iris. She looked all right. I mean, she was just looking into the camera with a serious expression. Not terrified. She was sitting on the couch. The gurney wasn't visible in the picture.
Then I recognized the wallpaper: It was made up of small Bible pages, set edge to edge like tiles, plastered from floor to ceiling, all the way around the room. My eye focused on, "Therefore snares are around thee, and sudden fear troubleth thee." Right on.
I followed the pages for a while, realizing they were in order from left to right, in columns of six. Genesis began right of the door, and Revelations finished off to the left. I was literally standing inside the Word. Then I remembered noticing the same odd wallpaper in the Creighter living room. I'd just glanced at it but noticed it had an unusual rectangular pattern, just like this.
I stared into space for a few moments, trying to make sense of everything. Of anything. I couldn't.
Then I noticed a black notebook, the kind with a nice sewn binding and hard covers, propped on the altar table. I opened it and found it blank except for the first page.
On that page were written a few simple columns in what looked like the same handwriting I'd seen in the upstairs office, and at that moment a big chunk of the puzzle slammed into place.
The columns were labeled: Subject, Age, Date, Method, Result. Under "Subject" were listed merely the letters of the alphabet. My eyes skipped to the "Method" column, where I read on the first line for Subject A, "Psalms." Under "Result" was the word "Unsuccessful."
The method for Subject B had been "Deuteronomy." The result was the same, but indicated by ditto marks, as if the writer hadn't been eager to write out the word "Unsuccessful" again.
Different books of the Bible marched down the page under "Method," and the ditto marks went on unvaryingly through the most recent entry: Subject N. The date for N was last Sunday, and N's age was thirty-four.
The rest of the dates fit. I was looking at the shorthand chronicle of a deprogramming retreat founded around the time that the first of the Midnight Five had disappeared. Iris Macklin's entry meant there'd been fourteen subjects. The Midnight Five were here. The blank lines beneath Subject N and the blankness of the rest of the pages in the notebook sickened me more than anything I'd seen so far.
I closed the notebook.
Back to the pie case. For once something wasn't locked. I unlatched the door panel, and a blast of chemical smell came out. Carefully I reached in and took out a little pedestal with its tooth.
I couldn't easily make out the marking on it; it looked like a dark beetle. I noticed a magnifying glass on a shelf inside the case. I held the glass and the tooth up to the light. The tooth was an incisor. Painted in gorgeous—I have to tell you—detail was a copy of one of Raphael's Madonnas. I couldn't tell you the name of it; I skipped too much of art history class to know. This tooth had everything—the expression, the hair, the background, the proportion.
I rubbed my finger over it and realized it was actually an engraving, a shallow engraving. Like scrimshaw. I shook my head. Can you believe it? Human-tooth scrimshaw.
I pictured Mrs. Creighter, a corpulent elf, sitting patiently at her workbench, smiling slightly perhaps, as her pudgy nimble hands created these delicate masterpieces.
I took a quick look at the rest of them, then checked my watch: three-forty. I'd been there a very long time for a break-in.
The other teeth sported a variety of religious art. Thirteen of them were arranged in a row in a special holder. With a start I realized I was looking at DaVinci's The Last Supper, one face per tooth. Jesus, with extra halo, was in the center. All the teeth were front-type ones. I remembered Iris's molars were left in her head.
I found another little tray, or dish, filled with small bones, in the bottom of the case. A round bone caught my attention. It was convex like a shield, and it rang a bell in my mind. Bonnie's amulet, yes. Her amulet wasn't some faux Native-American charm—it was somebody's kneecap. Nicely smoothed, to be sure, stained mahogany and set with little chips of human teeth.
I left everything as I found it and looked around for a phone. I'd call Ciesla, then exit and keep watch until he showed. Clutching my burglar's tools, I started back up the steps. I allowed myself a deep breath and pictured Ciesla's face when he got a load of all this.
I swung around the corner from the top step, moving fast now into the hallway. But something was wrong—the lights were on in the bar. And Mrs. Creighter was planted there, feet apart, aiming her gun at me. And as I skidded to a stop on my heels, as I'd thought only characters in cartoons could do, she shot me.
Chapter 34
Knowing what I know now about how easy it is to score a solid hit with a handgun at close range, I'm a little surprised at what happened. At the last microsecond my body began to react, and I must have twisted some way. Mrs. Creighter probably thought I was diving for the floor, so she jerked the barrel of the gun down as she pulled the trigger. Cak! The report was sharp and very short. She missed, then fired again. The bullet struck my right thigh in an explosion of hot force. My leg flew out from under me and I hit the deck.
I screamed, not so much from pain as panic. Mrs. Creighter rushed over to me. As I writhed on the floor she looked down and yelled something, but I couldn't hear her: My ears were ringing from the shots, which had been amplified in the narrow bare hallway. I felt a deep burning in my thigh. I cursed a torrent, getting a little hysterical as blood welled up between my fingers. "You bitch from hell, you piec
e of shit, you shit!"
"Shut up," Mrs. Creighter said. Towering over me she looked like a Macy's balloon. Bonnie appeared next to her, holding a drink and a cigarette. Evidently the two had come in quietly while I was down the basement, fixed themselves a couple of drinks, and discussed strategy while waiting for me to come up. Bonnie kicked away my pry bar and hammer.
"Come on, let's go," Mrs. Creighter said. "Get up, come on."
"Ma, don't touch her!" Bonnie cried. "Why did you shoot her? Now I have to—we have to—"
Mrs. Creighter stood over me grinning violently, appearing not to hear.
Bonnie let out a desperate sound, almost a sob. "Wait a minute then." She set her drink down on the floor. Grunting heavily, they dragged me by the arms down the hall to the stairwell.
I tried to resist, clutching the doorframe. As we tottered on the brink, Mrs. Creighter let go of my arm, and I pitched forward. To avoid flying down behind me, Bonnie let go too. I felt space open below me and thought, what the hell. I relaxed and just sort of bounced all the way to the bottom, turning one somersault, I think. My back slammed against the door at the bottom. Mrs. Creighter clattered down after me.
"You ripped up our locks," she said, pushing open the door and stepping over me. Bonnie, having retrieved her drink, clumped down to join us.
"Come on, get up," said Mrs. Creighter, nudging me with her foot. "We're not going to hurt you anymore."
Hah. I pushed myself into a sitting position, my legs stuck out in front of me. The pain in my thigh was hot and fierce. I'd thought you got a kind of grace period after getting shot, you know, when you don't feel pain. Well, I didn't get one.
Mrs. Creighter went over to one of the metal cabinets and took out a white towel from a stack in there. She spread it on the couch and said, "Come on, sit over here. Come on."
Bonnie said, "Oh, Lord." She eyed me the same way she had before, with that dreamy, almost submissive look. Yes, that was it. My stomach turned.
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