Fear Nothing (28 page)

Recklessly, I squeezed the hand brake, slid through a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, came to a halt with one foot on the blacktop, and looked back.

Little could be seen, no details: a core of hard yellow-white light surrounded by orange plumes, all softened by the deep, eddying mist.

The worst thing I saw wasn’t in the night but inside my head: Lewis Stevenson’s face bubbling, smoking, streaming hot clear grease like bacon in a frying pan.

“Dear God,” I said in a voice that was so raspy and tremulous that I didn’t recognize it.

Nevertheless, I could have done nothing else but light that fuse. Although the cops would know Stevenson had been killed, evidence of how it was done—and by whom—would now be obliterated.

I made the drive chain sing, leading my accomplice dog away from the harbor, through a spiraling maze of streets and alleyways, deeper into the murky, nautilus heart of Moonlight Bay. Even with the heavy Glock in one pocket, my unzipped leather jacket flapped as though it were a cape, and I fled unseen, avoiding light for more than one reason now, a shadow flowing liquidly through shadows, as though I were the fabled Phantom, escaped from the labyrinth underneath the opera house, now on wheels and hell-bent on terrorizing the world above ground.

Being able to entertain such a flamboyantly romantic image of myself in the immediate aftermath of murder doesn’t speak well of me. In my defense, I can only say that by recasting these events as a grand adventure, with me in a dashing role, I was desperately trying to quell my fear and, more desperately still, struggling to suppress the memories of the shooting. I also needed to suppress the ghastly images of the burning body that my active imagination generated like an endless series of pop-up spooks leaping from the black walls of a funhouse.

Anyway, this shaky effort to romanticize the event lasted only until I reached the alleyway behind the Grand Theater, half a block south of Ocean Avenue, where a grime-encrusted security lamp made the fog appear to be brown and polluted. There, I swung off my bike, let it clatter to the pavement, leaned into a Dumpster, and brought up what little I had not digested of my midnight dinner with Bobby Halloway.

I had murdered a man.

Unquestionably, the victim had deserved to die. And sooner or later, relying on one excuse or another, Lewis Stevenson would have killed me, regardless of his coconspirators’ inclination to grant special dispensation to me; arguably, I acted in self-defense. And to save Orson’s life.

Nevertheless, I’d killed a human being; even these qualifying circumstances didn’t alter the moral essence of the act. His vacant eyes, black with death, haunted me. His mouth, open in a silent scream, his bloodied teeth. Sights are readily recalled from memory; recollections of sounds and tastes and tactile sensations are far less easily evoked; and it is virtually impossible to experience a scent merely by willing it to rise from memory. Yet earlier I’d recalled the fragrance of my mother’s shampoo, and now the metallic odor of Stevenson’s fresh blood lingered so pungently that it kept me hanging on to the Dumpster as if I were at the railing of a yawing ship.

In fact, I was shaken not solely by having killed him but by having destroyed the corpse and all evidence with brisk efficiency and self-possession. Apparently I had a talent for the criminal life. I felt as though some of the darkness in which I’d lived for twenty-eight years had seeped into me and had coalesced in a previously unknown chamber of my heart.

Purged but feeling no better for it, I boarded the bicycle again and led Orson through a series of byways to Caldecott’s Shell at the corner of San Rafael Avenue and Palm Street. The service station was closed. The only light inside came from a blue-neon wall clock in the sales office, and the only light outside was at the soft-drink vending machine.

I bought a can of Pepsi to cleanse the sour taste from my mouth. At the pump island, I opened the water faucet partway and waited while Orson drank his fill.

“What an awesomely lucky dog you are to have such a thoughtful master,” I said. “Always tending to your thirst, your hunger, your grooming. Always ready to kill anyone who lifts a finger against you.”

The searching look that he turned on me was disconcerting even in the gloom. Then he licked my hand.

“Gratitude acknowledged,” I said.

He lapped at the running water again, finished, and shook his dripping snout.

Shutting off the faucet, I said, “Where
did
Mom get you?”

He met my eyes again.

“What secret was my mother keeping?”

His gaze was unwavering. He knew the answers to my questions. He just wasn’t talking.

27

I suppose God really might be loafing around in St. Bernadette’s Church, playing air guitar with a companion band of angels, or games of mental chess. He might be there in a dimension that we can’t quite see, drawing blueprints for new universes in which such problems as hatred and ignorance and cancer and athlete’s-foot fungus will have been eliminated in the planning stage. He might be drifting high above the polished-oak pews, as if in a swimming pool filled with clouds of spicy incense and humble prayer instead of water, silently bumping into the columns and the corners of the cathedral ceiling as He dreamily meditates, waiting for parishioners in need to come to Him with problems to be solved.

This night, however, I felt sure God was keeping His distance from the rectory adjoining the church, which gave me the creeps when I cycled past it. The architecture of the two-story stone house—like that of the church itself—was modified Norman, with enough of the French edge abraded to make it fit more comfortably in the softer climate of California. The overlapping black-slate tiles of the steep roof, wet with fog, were as armor-thick as the scales on the beetled brow of a dragon, and beyond the blank black eyes of window glass—including an oculus on each side of the front door—lay a soulless realm. The rectory had never appeared forbidding to me before, and I knew that I now viewed it with uneasiness only because of the scene I had witnessed between Jesse Pinn and Father Tom in the church basement.

I pedaled past both the rectory and the church, into the cemetery, under the oaks, and among the graves. Noah Joseph James, who’d had ninety-six years from birthday to deathbed, was just as silent as ever when I greeted him and parked my bike against his headstone.

I unclipped the cell phone from my belt and keyed in the number for the unlisted back line that went directly to the broadcasting booth at KBAY. I heard four rings before Sasha picked up, although no tone would have sounded in the booth; she would have been alerted to the incoming call solely by a flashing blue light on the wall that she faced when at her microphone. She answered it by pushing a hold button, and while I waited, I could hear her program over the phone line.

Orson began to sniff out squirrels again.

Shapes of fog drifted like lost spirits among the gravestones.

I listened to Sasha run a pair of twenty-second “doughnut” spots—which are not ads for doughnuts but commercials with recorded beginnings and endings that leave a hole for live material in the center. She followed these with some way smooth historical patter about Elton John, and then brought up “Japanese Hands” with a silky six-bar talk-over. Evidently the Chris Isaak festival had ended.

Taking me off hold, she said, “I’m doing back-to-back tracks, so you’ve got just over five minutes, baby.”

“How’d you know it was me?”

“Only a handful of people have this number, and most of them are asleep at this hour. Besides, when it comes to you, I’ve got great intuition. The moment I saw the phone light flash, my nether parts started to tingle.”

“Your nether parts?”

“My female nether parts. Can’t wait to see you, Snowman.”

“Seeing would be a good start. Listen, who else is working tonight?”

“Doogie Sassman.” He was her production engineer, operating the board.

“Just the two of you there alone?” I worried.

“You’re jealous all of a sudden? How sweet. But you don’t have to worry. I don’t measure up to Doogie’s standards.”

When Doogie wasn’t parked in a command chair at an audio control panel, he spent most of his time with his massive legs wrapped around a Harley-Davidson. He was five feet eleven and weighed three hundred pounds. His wealth of untamed blond hair and his naturally wavy beard were so lush and silky that you had to resist the urge to pet him, and the colorful mural that covered virtually every inch of his arms and torso had put some tattooist’s child through college. Yet Sasha wasn’t entirely joking when she said that she didn’t measure up to Doogie’s standards. With the opposite sex, he had more bearish charm than Pooh to the tenth power. Since I’d met him six years ago, each of the four women with whom he’d enjoyed a relationship had been stunning enough to attend the Academy Awards in blue jeans and a flannel shirt, sans makeup, and outshine every dazzling starlet at the ceremony.

Bobby says that Doogie Sassman (pick one) has sold his soul to the devil, is the secret master of the universe, has the most astonishingly proportioned genitalia in the history of the planet, or produces sexual pheromones that are more powerful than Earth’s gravity.

I was glad Doogie was working the night, because I had no doubt that he was a lot tougher than any of the other engineers at KBAY.

“But I thought there’d be someone besides the two of you,” I said.

Sasha knew I wasn’t jealous of Doogie, and now she heard the concern in my voice. “You know how things have tightened up here since Fort Wyvern closed and we lost the military audience at night. We’re barely making money on this airshift even with a skeleton staff. What’s wrong, Chris?”

“You keep the station doors locked, don’t you?”

“Yeah. All us late-night jocks and jockettes are required to watch
Play Misty for Me
and take it to heart.”

“Even though it’ll be after dawn when you leave, promise me you’ll have Doogie or someone from the morning shift walk you out to your Explorer.”

“Who’s on the loose—Dracula?”

“Promise me.”

“Chris, what the hell—”

“I’ll tell you later. Just promise me,” I insisted.

She sighed. “All right. But are you in some kind of trouble? Are you—”

“I’m all right, Sasha. Really. Don’t worry. Just, damn it, promise me.”

“I did promise—”

“You didn’t use the word.”

“Jesus. Okay, okay. I
promise.
Cross my heart and hope to die. But now I’m expecting a great story later, at least as spooky as the ones I used to hear around Girl Scout campfires. You’ll be waiting for me at home?”

“Will you wear your old Girl Scout uniform?”

“The only part of it I could duplicate are the kneesocks.”

“That’s enough.”

“You’re stirred by that picture, huh?”

“Vibrating.”

“You’re a bad man, Christopher Snow.”

“Yeah, I’m a killer.”

“See you in a little while, killer.”

We disconnected, and I clipped the cell phone to my belt once more.

For a moment I listened to the silent cemetery. Not a single nightingale performed, and even the chimney swifts had gone to bed. No doubt the worms were awake and laboring, but they always conduct their solemn work in a respectful hush.

To Orson, I said, “I find myself in need of some spiritual guidance. Let’s pay a visit to Father Tom.”

As I crossed the cemetery on foot and went behind the church, I drew the Glock from my jacket pocket. In a town where the chief of police dreamed of beating and torturing little girls and where undertakers carried handguns, I could not assume that the priest would be armed solely with the word of God.

The rectory had appeared dark from the street, but from the backyard I saw two lighted windows in a rear room on the second floor.

After the scene that I’d witnessed in the basement of the church, from the cover of the crèche, I wasn’t surprised that the rector of St. Bernadette’s was unable to sleep. Although it was nearly three o’clock in the morning, four hours since Jesse Pinn’s visit, Father Tom was still reluctant to turn out the light.

“Make like a cat,” I whispered to Orson.

We crept up a set of stone steps and then, as silently as possible, across the wooden floor of the back porch.

I tried the door, but it was locked. I had been hoping that a man of God would consider it a point of faith to trust in his Maker rather than in a dead bolt.

I didn’t intend to knock or to go around to the front and ring the bell. With murder already under my belt, it seemed foolish to have qualms about engaging in criminal trespass. I hoped to avoid breaking and entering, however, because the sound of shattering glass would alert the priest.

Four double-hung windows faced onto the porch. I tried them one by one, and the third was unlocked. I had to tuck the Glock in my jacket pocket again, because the wood of the window was swollen with moisture and moved stiffly in the frame; I needed both hands to raise the lower sash, pressing first on the horizontal muntin and then hooking my fingers under the bottom rail. It slid upward with sufficient rasping and squeaking to lend atmosphere to an entire Wes Craven film.

Orson chuffed as though scornful of my skills as a lawbreaker. Everyone’s a critic.

I waited until I was confident that the noise had not been heard upstairs, and I slipped through the open window into a room as black as the interior of a witch’s purse.

“Come on, pal,” I whispered, for I didn’t intend to leave him outside alone, without a gun of his own.

Orson sprang inside, and I slid the window shut as quietly as possible. I locked it, too. Although I didn’t believe that we were currently being watched by members of the troop or by anyone else, I didn’t want to make it easy for someone or something to follow us into the rectory.

A quick sweep with my penlight revealed a dining room. Two doors—one to my right, the other in the wall opposite the windows—led from the room.

Switching off the penlight, drawing the Glock again, I tried the nearer door, to the right. Beyond lay the kitchen. The radiant numerals of digital clocks on the two ovens and the microwave cast just enough light to enable me to cross to the pivot-hinged hall door without walking into the refrigerator or the cooking island.

The hallway led past dark rooms to a foyer lit only by a single small candle. On a three-legged, half-moon table against one wall was a shrine to the Holy Mother. A votive candle in a ruby-red glass fluttered fitfully in the half-inch of wax that remained.

In this inconstant pulse of light, the face on the porcelain figure of Mary was a portrait less of beatific grace than of sorrow. She appeared to know that the resident of the rectory was, these days, more a captive of fear than a captain of faith.

With Orson at my side, I climbed the two broad flights of stairs to the second floor. The felon freak and his four-legged familiar.

The upstairs hall was in the shape of an L, with the stairhead at the junction. The length to the left was dark. At the end of the hall directly ahead of me, a ladder had been unfolded from a ceiling trapdoor; a lamp must have been lit in a far corner of the attic, but only a ghostly glow stepped down the ladder treads.

Stronger light came from an open door on the right. I eased along the hall to the threshold, cautiously looked inside, and found Father Tom’s starkly furnished bedroom, where a crucifix hung above the simple dark-pine bed. The priest was not here; he was evidently in the attic. The bedspread had been removed and the covers neatly folded back, but the sheets had not been disturbed.

Both nightstand lamps were lit, which made that area too bright for me, but I was more interested in the other end of the room, where a writing desk stood against the wall. Under a bronze desk lamp with a green glass shade lay an open book and a pen. The book appeared to be a journal or diary.

Behind me, Orson growled softly.

I turned and saw that he was at the bottom of the ladder, gazing up suspiciously at the dimly lighted attic beyond the open trapdoor. When he looked at me, I raised a finger to my lips, softly hushed him, and then motioned him to my side.

Instead of climbing like a circus dog to the top of the ladder, he came to me. For the time being, anyway, he still seemed to be enjoying the novelty of routine obedience.

I was certain that Father Tom would make enough noise descending from the attic to alert me long before his arrival. Nevertheless, I stationed Orson immediately inside the bedroom door, with a clear view of the ladder.

Averting my face from the light around the bed, crossing the room toward the writing desk, I glanced through the open door of the adjoining bathroom. No one was in there.

On the desk, in addition to the journal, was a decanter of what appeared to be Scotch. Beside the decanter was a double-shot glass more than half full of the golden liquid. The priest had been sipping it neat, no ice. Or maybe not just sipping.

I picked up the journal. Father Tom’s handwriting was as tight and precise as machine-generated script. I stepped into the deepest shadows in the room, because my dark-adapted eyes needed little light by which to read, and I scanned the last paragraph on the page, which referred to his sister. He had broken off in mid sentence:

When the end comes, I might not be able to save myself. I know that I will not be able to save Laura, because already she is not fundamentally who she was. She is already gone. Little more than her physical shell remains—and perhaps even that is changed. Either God has somehow taken her soul home to His bosom while leaving her body inhabited by the entity into which she has evolved—or He has abandoned her. And will therefore abandon us all. I believe in the mercy of Christ. I believe in the mercy of Christ. I believe because I have nothing else to live for. And if I believe, then I must live by my faith and save whom I can. If I can’t save myself or even Laura, I can at least rescue these pitiful creatures who come to me to be freed from torment and control. Jesse Pinn or those who give him orders may kill Laura, but she is not Laura anymore, Laura is long lost, and I can’t let their threats stop my work. They may kill me, but until they do