Angel City (6 page)

The clock chimed four a.m. Then came the sound of both doors opening at once.
Whoosh, thunk, clunk . . .
Four French GIGN police marched in, dressed for a riot. Two with submachine guns pointed at Harper, one with plastic ties and a black hood in his hands. The last one laid an official document on the judge's desk. A set of gloved hands grabbed Harper's shoulders and pulled him to his feet. Two seconds later, Harper's own hands were bound at his back. The copper began to pull the black bag over Harper's head, but Harper shook him off. The copper rammed a Taser into Harper's back and let go with fifty thousand volts. Harper's muscles seized up and he dropped to his knees. The copper grabbed him and hauled him to his feet again. Took Harper a few seconds to get his mouth working.

“This your idea of offering help?”

The judge looked up from the document. “I regret we could not understand each other earlier. Any help I may have been able to offer has been superseded by a development, monsieur.”

“What sort of development?”

“Pandora's fucking box has disappeared.”

“The bomb?”

“When the containment unit arrived at its destination and was opened, the bomb from the
Manon
was gone. You are suspected of knowing how such a thing could happen.”

So that was the order of battle, Harper thought. The inspector's lads went for the WMD first, leaving him holding the shit end of the stick. Leaving Harper to wonder how shitty it could get.

“And what happens to me?”

The judge read from the paper in his hand.

“By order of the president of the French Republic, you are hereby denied due process under the Code of Criminal Procedure, and all rights guaranteed under Article Nine of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen are rescinded. You will be transferred, without delay, to La Santé Prison to be subjected to enhanced interrogation at the hands of the Direction Centrale du Renseignement Intérieur.”

“Sounds like a place where the screws punch first, ask questions later.”

The judge looked at Harper.

“I'm afraid, monsieur, you will find the conditions at La Santé extremely difficult.”

“How hard can it be, gov, if you're already dead?”

The black bag came down on Harper's head.

M
AX WAS SLEEPING.
T
HOUGH EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE HE'D SUCK
at the sippy cup and the milk would leak onto his lips. Katherine eased away the cup, dabbed runaway drops from Max's chin. She carried him to the crib, laid him down for a nap. He shuddered, then settled. She covered him with a blanket, blew out the candle, and turned on the crib monitor. She left the room, pulled close the door. A fat ball of gray fur was waiting in the hall, its tail plopping from side to side, blocking the way forward.

“Hello, fuzzface. Suppose you're hungry, too?”

Mew.

“C'mon.”

Monsieur Booty followed at Katherine's ankles as she walked down the hall. She passed Officer Jannsen's room. She was sitting on her bed, tapping the keys of a laptop. A Glock pistol was strapped to her hip. Katherine stepped into the room. She caught the scent of Chanel and gun grease.

“Chatting with your boyfriend?”

“Filing today's stat report with Berne.”

“I hope you're telling the inspector I've been a good girl.”

“
Bien sûr.
I also told him you qualified on the firing range. How was the shop this morning?”

“Making more candles than I'm selling, but who cares?”

“Max asleep?”

“Yeah, he'll be out for a couple hours. I'm going to have a hot bath.”

Officer Jannsen checked her watch. Katherine shrugged and walked off. Their voices chased each other back and forth down the hall.

“I know, tea before bath.”

“See, you are a good girl.”

“This must-be-punctual-in-all-things stuff makes me want to scream sometimes.”

“It's good for you. Builds character.”

“You say that about everything I hate doing.”

“I know. It's the best part of my job.”

Katherine walked down the stairs and into the sitting room. It was a large open space with a high timbered ceiling, floor-to-ceiling windows looking out to the edge of a forest. Mount Hood, across the river in Oregon, peaked above the trees and pointed to that glowing spot in the clouds where the sun was hiding. It was a nice view. Sometimes she'd see a deer walking through the trees. Sometimes a small black bear or a fox; sometimes it'd be one of the Swiss Guards patrolling the perimeter with a Brügger & Thomet submachine gun in his hands. But now, there were only the trees.

She picked up a copy of
The
New Yorker
from the sofa. She thumbed through the pages on her way to the kitchen, checking if there were any cartoons she'd missed. Monsieur Booty was already sitting by his food dish. If the beast had fingers instead of claws, they'd be tapping the floor.

“Oh, get a grip.”

She dropped the magazine on the kitchen table, opened a cabinet, and pulled out a bag of cat food. She fed the beast, scratched it behind the ears, then walked to the sink and turned on the water pump. She picked up the kettle and filled it from the tap. She looked out the window, saw the small garden at the back of the house. The garden, like the front of the house, backed up to dense forest; in fact, the whole place was surrounded by dense forest. And each time she looked at it, she felt safe. She switched on the kettle, opened her box of magic teas. That's what she called them, anyway.

They were from a health food shop in Grover's Mill and they came in mason jars. Her doctor in Portland prescribed them as part of her recovery. This one in the morning, that one at midday; this tea for afternoons, that one before bed. It was part of her daily regimen. Along with no cigarettes, no alcohol, no drugs. Then again, with a box of magic teas, who needs dope? Especially when the teas had names sounding like the exotic strains of weed she used to buy at her favorite head shop on Santa Monica Boulevard. Morning Light, Midday Buzz, Night Clouds. She prepared the afternoon blend, Violette's Garden. Something for the remembrance of pleasant memories, the man at the shop told her. There was a quote from some dead poet on the back label:

Each violet peeps from its dwelling to gaze at the bright stars above.

—Heinrich Heine

The kettle clicked off. Katherine saw rain pelting the kitchen window.

“Not here, Heinrich old boy. This is the land the stars forgot, and the sun most days.”

She poured the boiling water into the teapot to brew. She inhaled the fragrance and a feeling of calm came over her, the way it always did. She arranged the pot and cup and saucer on a tray, and she carried it to the table. She lit a candle, sat down. She curled up her legs and pulled her bulky sweater over her knees. She watched the candle burn.

When she first came to the house, this comfy cabin in the middle of a wooded nowhere, nine and a half kilometers from the nearest town, she was in a daze. The last thing she remembered from back in Lausanne was telling Inspector Gobet she wanted to see the cathedral once more before leaving Switzerland. And she could remember standing on the esplanade, looking at the tower for a few minutes . . . Then Inspector Gobet took her by the arm and led her back to the car. They gave her a shot on the way to the airport, one of those shots that sent her off to Neverland. She didn't even remember boarding an airplane. Next thing she knew, she was here. And if they told her “here” was Miami Beach instead of the boondocks of Washington State, she wouldn't have known the difference.

She remembered wandering upstairs and downstairs and through the halls. The fat furry cat she'd carried all the way from Switzerland was still in her arms. She found her way to the kitchen. A small wooden table stood in the center of the room, two wooden chairs tucked under it. She walked around the table, counterclockwise, three times before dropping Monsieur Booty to the floor and pushing the table and chairs to the side of the room, blocking a counter and some cabinets. She had no idea why she'd done it, other than the table felt out of place where she'd found it. The next morning Katherine returned to the kitchen to find someone moved the table and chairs back to the center of the room. Katherine shoved them back to the wall. It went on like this for a week, till she wrote a note and tacked it to the kitchen door:

Whoever the fuck you are, leave the fucking table where I fucking put it.

The next day, the table was left against the wall. And every day since, Katherine would sit alone at the table with a pot of tea, watching a candle burn. One day, after a long week of rain, her eyes were drawn to a ray of light passing through the open door. She looked out to the garden, saw the clearing sky, saw the snow-covered peak of Mount Hood glowing in the light, and she realized why she needed the table to be here. It reminded her of the small table jutting from the wall in the belfry loge of Lausanne Cathedral. And some afternoons, sipping her tea, Katherine could almost see the crooked little man who lived in the loge . . . and after a time she remembered his name: Marc Rochat. Then she remembered how he found her running through the streets, knowing she was hunted by a pack of killers. He brought her into the cathedral to hide her because . . . because the crooked little man thought she was an angel who needed to find a way home. She remembered how he'd sit with her at the table and stare at her with a half-mad look in his eyes, telling her he was back with her in “nowtimes,” and that he'd been in “beforetimes.” And he had the funniest stories about the people he'd met along the way. She remembered how the belfry loge shook at the ringing of the hour, how it scared her to death at first. Rochat told her it was only Marie-Madeleine telling Lausanne the time. She remembered how on that last day, amid the cacophony of all the bells, the crooked little man saved her life, saved the cathedral he imagined to be a hiding place for her and all the lost angels in the world. She remembered looking down from the belfry and seeing him dead on the ground. She remembered calling his name, begging him to come back.

And there was another man, she thought, but she could never remember who he was, or if he was even real. As if the man was there and not there at the same time. Sometimes she thought she could almost see him, but each time her memory searched for a name, the man disappeared.

The clock above the kitchen door chimed four times.

Katherine stared at it, feeling something very strange, as if coming back to nowtimes. She looked at the calendar hanging from a hook on the wall.

“Two and a half years ago. Two and a half fucking years.”

She poured a cup of tea and inhaled the fumes, wishing to remember more, but she couldn't. That's what made her feel she was still losing her mind—what was left of it, anyway. She talked to her doctor about it. He told her the depth of her trauma had altered her memory of events. Rewritten them into a scenario that made it easier for her to accept. The doctor told her it would be best to just let go of them. Better for her, better for the child growing within her body.

Katherine sipped her tea, laughed to herself.

“And wasn't he just the little surprise?”

Max Taylor.

Not Maxwell, no middle name, just Max. Six pounds, four ounces of screaming joy. Katherine took one look at him and called him Max, thinking the gooey runt was going to need all the help he could get. She sipped her tea and the memories continued to play through her mind like a film.

It wasn't till she got to Grover's Mill that she even realized she was pregnant. And not just a little pregnant, but four and a half months' worth of pregnant. At first, she thought she'd been putting on weight from the medications her doctors had prescribed, not to mention her appetite suddenly knowing no bounds. Then came the morning she stepped from the shower and saw herself in the mirror.

“Wait a minute—no way in hell is
that thing
my butt.”

The more she studied her body, her breasts and her hips, the more she tried to remember the last time she had a period. She couldn't.

“Oh. My. God.”

She threw on a robe, stormed out of the bathroom, and marched down the hall for a
what the fuck?
session with Officer Jannsen.

“Anne!”

Officer Jannsen ran up the stairs, her sidearm drawn, ready to fire.

“What's wrong?”

“You know damn well what's wrong.”

Officer Jannsen holstered her weapon, leaned against the wall.

“Someone move the kitchen table again?”

“Fuck the kitchen table.”

“All right then, what's the problem?”

“Problem? What could possibly be a problem? Everything's just so fucking fine. By the way, when were you planning to tell me about
this
?” Katherine said, pointing to her belly.

Officer Jannsen led Katherine to her room and sat her on the bed.

“You were brutalized, Katherine. You suffered severe mental and emotional trauma.”

“Yeah, yeah, it's all about me. But in the middle of all this caring and sharing, why didn't anyone bother to tell me I was fucking pregnant?”

“The doctors in Switzerland, your doctors in Portland, all thought it best you discover it on your own. It would be a positive sign that you were reconnecting with reality. Telling you sooner would have created more shock and stress harmful to you and the baby.”

“The baby? What makes you guys think I even want a baby? What makes you think I don't want to call Abortions-R-Us and get rid of it, like right fucking now?”

“Is that your choice, Kat? Is that what you really want to do?”

“What? Four and a half months gone, and
now
you offer me a choice? Why didn't all those fucking doctors in Switzerland make the decision for me? I was crazy, I was certifiable, wasn't I?”

“None of us is allowed to make that kind of choice.”

“Why the fuck not? You choose everything else about my life. Where I live, who my doctors are, what I eat and drink. Jesus, I don't even know who the father is. I was gangbanged . . . How am I supposed to . . .”

Katherine felt a jolt, and she touched her belly. Officer Jannsen watched the look on Katherine's face.

“What is it?”

“The little bastard just kicked me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I mean, I think so.”

Officer Jannsen sat next to her and rested her hands over Katherine's belly. There was a kick, then another, as if demanding to be part of the conversation.

“Seems to be of an opinionated mind. Like his mother, I'd say.”

“You think?”

Officer Jannsen nodded.

“Listen to me, Katherine: We've monitored the baby from the beginning. You were given everything you needed to make sure the baby would be healthy. He's fine.”

“It's a boy?”

“Yes, Kat, it's a healthy boy.”

That night, after a triple shot of Night Clouds tea, Katherine lay in the moment of half sleep and she imagined herself standing in the nave of Lausanne Cathedral. It had been one of her favorite falling to sleep dreams. Light pouring through the giant leaded-glass window in the south transept wall. Bright, warm . . . like standing in the middle of a rainbow. She could feel the colors seep into her body. But that night, falling to sleep, she heard a voice in the dream. A voice telling her to be not afraid, that the life within her was pure, that she was the bearer of the light. Katherine knew it was a crazed imagination. But just now, drifting deeper into sleep, it was comforting.