Alchemy of Murder

by Rex Baron

  “You never know what might happen... yeah, like being institutionalized as a lunatic.”

  “Now, Tom,” Elizabeth smiled. “Be nice. The poor girl is delusional, but she’s probably not certifiable. I used to have girlfriends, when I was in school, who felt that way about pop stars. They knew every detail about them and some of them actually believed that one day they would meet their dream boy and their life would be changed forever.”

  As they walked back to the Cine Grille for a well-deserved nightcap, Tom turned to Elizabeth for her professional appraisal of what they had just heard.

  “I think she’s a wack job, but you don’t think there’s really anything to it, do you?” he asked. “I mean, I’m not missing a story here and messing up, am I?”

  Elizabeth ordered a sherry and outlined to him what her scientific brain had observed.

  “This kind of phenomena is a very common form of attention-seeking, prevalent among religiously-oppressed or socially-repressed young women. This one is a little older than the teenage girl one might expect to have these delusions, but judging by where she said she was from and her appearance, I’d suggest that she came to Hollywood to make up for the dreary life she probably left behind. Her clothes, her makeup are all theatrical and extreme... something she could never get away with back home in Cedar Rapids.”

  “Then you think she came here to act out a kind of fantasy?” Tom asked, as he took a swallow from his bottle of beer.

  “Absolutely... Hollywood is a Mecca for these kinds of people, who have a dream and let it go just a bit too far into something that can be damaging and sad. That poor woman is doomed to be disappointed. I guarantee you that whatever she is looking for... whatever she thinks she misses, she won’t find it here.”

  Elizabeth could not help but think of Marc and her profound disappointment that his ambition and his dream of success had destroyed her fantasy of finding a true and lasting love with him as the man of her dreams. But she was no deluded shop girl from the Midwest, she reminded herself. She had something that Marc wanted, and she would not rest until they had struck a bargain, and she was guaranteed some measure of what she desired.

  Tom broke into her pondering.

  “When you were talking to Vanessa, how did you know that she wasn’t really seeing an apparition? After all, Valentino might very well have spent his time hanging around this place and still be lingering. Like so many hauntings… sorry… cases, the person who is receptive and wants to see them might be drawing them in and allowing the spirit to manifest because it’s in a welcoming and familiar environment.”

  “Not the case here,” Elizabeth answered flatly. “Every question I asked gave me the distinct impression that she was claiming to see what she already knew. I asked her what the apparition was wearing. She said a suit without a vest. Impossible. Dress for men in the 1920s was very rigid. If he was wearing a double-breasted suit, with two rows of buttons down the front, or if he was wearing a blazer and slacks, he would not be wearing a vest. But for someone of Valentino’s style and social class, to go without a vest is unthinkable. Ties were narrow, not wide in the 20s, and paisley was not popular. The questions about his tie and the color of his suit told me that she had only seen him on the movie screen or in black and white photographs, so she was unable to assign a color to his suit or tie because she had never seen him in color, and therefore never really seen him. The same is true of his complexion. In real life he was always dark-skinned and tan. But for the silver screen they made their faces up to be very pale, in order to look younger and have the capability to be recorded on the early film.”

  “Wow, you sure took in a lot more than I did,” Tom said admiringly.

  Elizabeth added one last irrefutable point to put his mind at ease.

  “One last, not unimportant detail, is that this hotel could not have been an old haunt of Valentino’s, if you’ll pardon the pun, because the hotel did not open until 1927. I know because I did research on it for an article years ago... and Valentino died of a perforated stomach ulcer in 1926. So you see, he would have had to be a ghost even then, to be hanging around this hotel.”

  Tom sighed with relief.

  “At least now, I feel better. I don’t have to worry about missing a good story.”

  “Oh, there’s a story there all right,” Elizabeth answered, as she took another sip of her sherry. “…one of disillusion and disappointment. That poor woman is such a mess, I feel sorry for her.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  UCLA Campus

  The morning mail lay unopened on Elizabeth's desk until well past four o'clock. She sat in the dim lab without turning on the lights, smoking one cigarette after another and staring at the envelope without a return address on the top of the stack. She knew it was the letter John Ruskin had told her about, in which the director would state politely that her funding had been cut and the Psychic Research Department would be dissolved, due to an increase in university operating costs and a lack of suitable documentation from valid scientific experimentation. She did not have to open it to know that she would soon be terminated.

  Elizabeth felt that her world was slipping away, bit by bit. She could not stop thinking about Marc being at Holly Driscoll’s house only the night before, flattering her and working his charm on her... just as he had from the start with her, when he had left the cryptic note on her car and then showed up, the dazzling stranger that she had been waiting for all this time. She wondered how far Marc would go to get a showing of his work or whatever it was that he wanted from the successful middle-aged socialite. She lit another cigarette to try and calm her anger.

  By the time Marc arrived, the ashtray next to her was overflowing with foul- smelling, crumpled cigarette butts. Elizabeth watched him come in and followed him with her eyes, saying nothing as he crossed the room.

  “You look as if you'd had a nice uneventful day, down right relaxing I'd say, by the look of it,” he grinned.

  Elizabeth did not respond.

  He turned on the lights and opened a window.

  “It's very stuffy in here,” he said, “and it smells of cigarettes. Who was smoking?”

  “I was,” Elizabeth answered coldly. “It's one of my little faults.”

  “But I thought you'd given it up. I didn't know you'd taken it up again.”

  “There's a lot you don't know about me,” she answered, glaring at him from across the room.

  “That sounds like a lead-in line to an argument, if I ever heard one,” Marc answered, keeping a cautious eye on her, the way one might gauge the ferocity of an unfamiliar animal.

  “What makes you think we are going to have an argument?' she asked. “We never have before. Why should we start now?”

  Marc dropped into a chair and sighed with annoyance.

  “It was only something to say,” he responded carefully. “You're acting very strange. But I've got a lot on my mind and I'm not in a mood to argue right now.”

  “Is that a fact?” Elizabeth said with a noticeable trace of venom in her voice.

  Marc did not take up the bait. He moved away from her and busied himself around the lab, organizing the sensory tapes in the sound booth.

  After an agonizing moment of silence, Elizabeth spoke. “I'll do it,” she proclaimed.

  Marc looked up from his busy work, puzzled by her cryptic statement.

  “You'll do what?”

  “The incantations, the ritual, the ceremony, whatever you call it to conjure up the powers of Hell.”

  “What are you talking about?” Marc asked surprised. “Have you suddenly realized that you need a new fur coat, a trip to Europe or something else that you find you just can't live without?”

  “Let's just say there is something I want.”

  She pointed to the letter on the desk and instructed him to open it and read. After he had finished, his eyes widened and he looked up at her open-mouthed.

  “You see. The funding has been canceled, and in a few weeks, I wil
l be too.”

  “So what are we going to do?” Marc asked calmly.

  Elizabeth dragged her fingers through her hair. “We?” she asked, giving him an incredulous glance.

  “As I told you before, we're in this together,” he answered. “I suppose, we might try one of the incantations just to see if it works. The way I see it, it looks as if you have nothing to lose.”

  He came toward her and took her by the arm, but she drew away.

  “Do you love me?” she asked, staring at the bowl of crippled cigarettes.

  A hesitation in his answer confirmed her suspicions.

  “You know I do,” he finally answered, touching her shoulder lightly.

  “Don't tell me what I know and don't know,” she snapped. “Tell me Marc… why did you choose me? That's what I want you to tell me. Our worlds are totally separate. There is nothing in either that might have brought us together and yet, you wander into my life by dropping a snappy little note on the windshield of my car... and here we are. It was no coincidence that we met, was it? You planned it from the start, and wanted something from me from the first day… didn't you?”

  Marc heaved a sigh and let his face drop into his hands.

  “It started out that way,” he said through his fingers, “but it all changed when I got to know you. I care about you Elizabeth, you must believe that.”

  “But you don't love me, do you?”

  “I'm too eaten up with ambition and frustration about my life to be able to truly love anyone,” he said.

  Elizabeth threw her head back in a bitter, mocking laugh, but he continued his explanation.

  “There was no other way to get close to you. I had read about your family and their occult connections, seeing your family name listed among the movers and shakers for years. Then, one day, I saw your name on a list of credits on a TV show about Parapsychology and…”

  “You tracked me down here at the university,” Elizabeth completed his sentence.

  “I prefer to think of it as fate, that we discovered each other.” Again, he touched her shoulder but she pulled away.

  “And just what is it that I'm supposed to be doing for you?” she asked coldly.

  “At first, I hoped that you could teach me how to develop some power in myself that might be lying dormant. I didn't feel any different than anybody else, and I thought that if you could help me awaken that part that was missing, my life would begin to work. I didn't want any more from you than that, I promise, nothing more than the benefit of your research and your mind.”

  Elizabeth’s eye fell on a single errant cigarette that had rolled to the back of the open drawer. The sight of it brought a tight little smile to her lips, and she snatched it up and pressed the dried-out paper cylinder to her lips, striking a match. She drew in the smoke with angry enjoyment.

  “Then, that day in the lab, when you slammed that coffee pot across the room, I knew you had what was missing. You had the energy, the real goods. I realized then that I had to stay with you, to make you want what I want.”

  “And what is that?” she asked, firing the smoke at him like a bullet.

  “To be successful and happy,” he answered.

  “And you're going to do all that with witchcraft?” Elizabeth asked, appraising him through the smoke that hung around them in the air like sadness.

  “Yes, I think I can.”

  “You believe you can sell your Soul, in classic, Faustian style, in exchange for a couple of years of what you call happiness. Then what, the eternal fires of damnation?”

  “That's nonsense and you know it,” Marc protested angrily.

  “Is it? If one believes that you can conjure up demons to do your bidding, then one has to believe the whole part and parcel, the whole gory drama of agonizing reprisal for that single moment of happiness.”

  Elizabeth felt the weight of her own words and wondered if, perhaps, she had not already had her moment of happiness with Marc, and now saw a future filled with untold agonies beginning with Holly Driscoll.

  “You are aligning yourself with evil when you do this. Don't you see that?” she asked.

  Marc sighed impatiently.

  “We've been through all this. You said, a moment ago, you were willing to try it. Are you or aren't you?”

  Elizabeth turned the ghoulish possibilities over in her mind. She had, after all, little choice. If she refused, she would surely lose everything, including Marc. She knew that he did not really love her, but she also knew that she could not let it end here. He had deceived her, it was true, but he had affected her and made her feel things, and created hopes that she had never dared for herself. She had been like a Genie in a bottle, waiting to be discovered, and now that he had found her, she must grant him his wish. Elizabeth smiled at the idea.

  “You can get your funding back, don't you want that?” she heard Marc's voice filtering through her musing.

  “I want it to be the way it was before I found out the truth about you,” she answered, looking into his eyes and seeing a stranger. “I want it to be the way it was supposed to be.”

  All at once, the possibilities of this bizarre bargain with the unknown unfolded in her mind. She could have far more than the funding or a brilliant reputation at the university. She could have Marc as well. She was annoyed with herself that she should want him at all, after he had maneuvered into her life and coldly used her for his own ends, but it no longer mattered. She knew that it was too late to turn back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  UCLA Campus

  The clock ticked so loudly in the closed car that Elizabeth wanted to scream. Her nerves were on the verge of snapping, and it seemed they had waited an interminable time, measured only by the recurring sound of a dog barking in the distance and her damn wristwatch pounding at her wrist like a pulse. She and Marc waited in the parking lot until the security guard had passed on his eleven o'clock rounds of the Visual Arts building.

  It was a nineteenth century structure, designed to replicate the Gothic grandeur of another place and time. Twisted little gargoyles of stone leered down at them from their lofty vantage points along the uppermost edge of the roof, in full knowledge of what the intruders were about to do. Elizabeth felt this gaze of tainted reverence, staring down at her from their hideous faces, envying her that she would soon be in contact with the dark Master. She turned her face away.

  “Why does the video equipment have to be in such a dreadful place?” she whispered, glancing over at Marc.

  In contrast to her nervous anxiety, Marc appeared calm and resolute in his intent. He patted her hand, but never took his eyes off the uniformed man with the gun who patrolled the grounds. As the guard turned the corner out of sight, Marc tapped Elizabeth's arm and signaled for her to leave the car. They dashed to the side entrance of the building, where he slipped his credit card into the lock and forced it open with the sharp plastic edge.

  He had done his homework the day before and noted that the door’s strike plate was not properly aligned, allowing the security pin to be disengaged and thus vulnerable to the credit card trick, as well as having scouted out that the alarm system had a short in its wiring and would not be repaired until the following day, leaving the valuable stash of video equipment at risk for a single unprotected night. They both breathed a sigh of relief as Marc inched the door open to see the alarm panel next to it reading in plain view “not ready to arm.”

  They slipped inside unnoticed. Marc illuminated the hallway with a flashlight that he held low to the ground, in order to avoid the light being seen from outside the bank of windows.

  Again, they heard the dog barking in the distance, but now it sounded to Elizabeth to be the plaintive call of a wolf. It was surely the cry of one night creature to another, a voice in the darkness, like a steeple bell summoning the faithful to a black mass. Elizabeth felt strange presences all around her as they made their way down the corridor. She thought she caught sight of a slight figure on the stairwell leading to th
e basement where the equipment was kept. A cold hand brushed past her, caressing her with its icy fingers in the tomb-like light.

  She was a scientist, she reminded herself. Perhaps she had driven herself insane with the stress and frustration of the last few days, but she was a professional and could not allow her own mind to trick her into believing in things that were not there. The problem was that her mind had become too powerful, and at moments such as this, she was unable to distinguish between what was tangible, in the real world, and what had been created by her mind. It was this distorted world that she feared, the world of chairs and tables restlessly stretching, dragging themselves across the floor, mutely searching for something, threatening her with their silent insistence.

  She pulled her thoughts back to the reality of the hallway, and clutched at Marc's arm as he led her down the stairs to the storeroom.

  In spite of the addition of pegboard paneling and layers of paint, the rancid smell of ancient whitewash lye still oozed from the cellar walls like a vapor in the steamy darkness.

  Marc switched on the overhead lights, and Elizabeth exhaled an uncomfortable breath.

  “There, that's better. We don't want to spook ourselves before we even start,” he said, turning toward her. “You're white as a sheet. Are you all right?” he asked.

  Elizabeth had half fantasized, as they were coming down the stairs, that they were a couple stealing away to make love. The idea had helped quell the fear that she felt eroding her confidence on every side. But she knew that it was only a fantasy, and that Marc wanted her with him only to assist in the conjuration.

  “I'm fine,” she answered, folding her arms across her chest. “I'm just a little cold, that's all.” She looked away from his eyes that were so filled with purpose, so unkind that she felt pity for him. She glanced at her watch. “Hadn't we better get on with this nasty business of yours,” she said. “In twenty-five minutes it will be midnight, and we have to be under way by then.”