Hallowed (25 page)

One of my grandfather’s favorite sayings, Mom is fond of telling me, is “Man plans.  God laughs.”

Dad had just finished filling the coffeemaker with fresh grinds when I came home.  I could tell that something unexpected was about to happen—more so because of the fact that he was rarely home before Mom and I were asleep than from the decisive look he gave me as he took a seat at the kitchen table.

“What are you doing home so early?”

“I’m working from home tonight.”  He patted the seat next to him.  I sat with some trepidation, removing my backpack and setting it on the floor between my feet.

“You were friends with Bridgette Sullivan.”

“I talked to her a few times but if you’re asking me if we hung out, then ‘no.’”

He patiently stared into my eyes, and I realized with dread that my father was questioning me not as a son but as a “person of interest.”

“Relax, son,” my father suddenly said, giving me a disarming smile.  I couldn’t help but wonder how many suspects had been on the business end of those prying eyes.  “Your name came up a couple of times during routine questioning. I just want to know what your relationship with her was, and how often you had the occasion to talk to her.”

“We talked on the band bus a couple of times, and we had a long conversation about the Sa… the murders during the Homecoming game.”  I lowered my head.  “I think she kinda liked me, Dad.”  For one terrifying moment I thought I was going to burst into tears in front of my father, but I summoned all my will and settled down again.

“You’re going to hear more than you want about it eventually, but I need to know if you
want
to know anything from me.”

I peered up at him in confusion.  “What, are you asking me if I want to know what happened to her?”

“I’m leaving that decision to you, Paul,” he told me.  “I feel that you’re adult enough to handle it, but I don’t want you to be blindsided, when you start hearing about it on CNN.”

You mean blindsided
again
, I thought.

“I think I need to know,” I heard myself saying before I had even given it the briefest of thoughts.

He rose and I felt his hand on my shoulder.  “C’mon.”

As I followed him upstairs, I felt the plans I had made with Claudia slowly drifting off the predetermined track.  The dying afternoon sunlight lit up a desk littered with paperwork.  He led me inside, retrieved a thick sheaf of pages bound together with aluminum brads, and held it out to me.

I glanced over at the crime scene photos scattered across his desk.  He shook his head.  “Not yet,” he answered my unspoken request.  “First, the facts gathered at all four of the crime scenes.  I haven’t made up my mind about the photos yet.”  He started into the hall.  “I’m going to get myself some coffee. You care for some?”

I wasn’t altogether sure all of this wasn’t some kind of test.  “Sure?” I said with a questioning lilt to the word.  “Where’s Mom by the way?”

“Out getting groceries.  Don’t worry about her, Paul.  This is between you and me.  I’ve already made up my mind.”  When a Graves’ mind was made up, neither hail nor high water could divert us from our predetermined path.

And with that, I was left alone with the entirety of the Samhain investigative materials that had been gathered by the Broward County Sheriff’s Department up to that point.

I had only managed to get through the first few pages of the report when he returned, but in that brief amount of time, I had managed to read one of the worst descriptions of mutilation my mind could ever imagine given a lifetime of horrors.

The body had been found stuffed into the trunk of a 1967 Chevy Corvair by several college kids looking for spare parts for a classic car.  The chest cavity had been spread open, the heart removed, and wrapped in thorns.  Both the hands had enfolded a wooden Celtic-style cross lying atop the abdomen and a silver crucifix lying in the trunk next to the body as if discarded.

I firmly compartmentalized the fact that I was reading about a friend.

When my father returned, he found me sitting on the fold-out couch, the report about three feet away from me atop the coffee table.  I must have been just sitting there shell-shocked, because he asked me if I was okay.

“I-It’s horrible,” I managed.

“Yeah, Paul, it is.”  He set the two mugs of coffee on the table and returned to his desk, collapsing with a grunt.  “This kind of work, it drains the soul.”

This I could understand, but it was the sort of thing I would have expected to hear from Uncle Hank, not Dad.  Did my father even believe in the existence of a soul?

“I know you and Claudia think this is a little exciting and it can sure look that way from the outside, but the kind of person you sometimes deal with is the worst this world has to offer.  Human garbage.”

I lay back, deliberately distancing myself from the material, when something occurred to me and I leapt forward to look at the report again.

“What is it?” Dad asked, sitting up.

“There were two crosses, right?  One wooden cross and one silver crucifix, right?” I asked, knowing the answer.  “That crucifix doesn’t belong to Bridgette.”

“Why?”

“Well, the most obvious reason is that Bridgette’s family is Baptist and a crucifix--the crucified body of Christ-- is distinctly Catholic.”

Staring at me with slowly gathering interest, he nodded.  “Her parents couldn’t identify the crucifix, but they thought it might have been a gift from someone.”

“Even if it was, I doubt she would have worn it,” I replied.  “From what she told me, she was more into Buddhism.”  I rose from the couch with excitement and rushed over to him.  “Her parents couldn’t identify it because it didn’t belong to her, just as the ankh didn’t belong to Sadie and the tarot card didn’t belong to Kalim.”

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing with interest.  “Go on.”

“They’re trophies taken from the previous victim,” I pronounced and even as the words left my mouth, I knew it felt right.  It made sense.  “That’s why Grace didn’t have one with her, because she was the first.”

My father didn’t reach for a pen or a phone or make any movement at all like I’d expected.  Instead, he just stared at me with a smirk that I couldn’t read.

“It fits,” was all I could manage.  “Bridgette was interested in Buddhism.  That’s what we talked about at the game.  If you look into it, I’ll bet you’ll find that that crucifix belonged to Kalim, the ankh belonged to Grace and the tarot card belonged to Sadie.”

“Would you be surprised to know that that’s exactly what the Feds are looking into as we speak?” my father announced.  “But I’ll wager those big brains don’t know about her interest in Buddhism yet.  Not even her parents knew that tidbit.”

My eyes wandered over his shoulder and targeted a photo lying atop all the others, obvious from its position directly in front of where he was sitting that he had been studying it.  It was a black convertible, the 1967 Chevy Corvair mentioned in the report.

Protectively, my fingers curled over the bandaged cut on my palm.

I shuddered because I had seen it only the night before.  In my dream.

When my father caught my reaction and understandably misinterpreted it, he swiveled his chair slightly to block it from my view.  “They’re pretty graphic, Paul.  Why don’t you concentrate on the report for now?”  He finally reached for the phone on his desk.  “Can you give me a minute?”

As I started outside, I heard him call out to me and when I turned, he told me: “Not one of us at the Sheriff’s Department caught that. Just you and Feds.”  There was a pride in his eyes that I’d never seen before.  “After I’m done making my calls, you can look through as much of this as you’d like--tonight, and only tonight--but you are not, and I repeat, not to tell anyone any of the information you learned here.”  He made eye contact with me then, just to make sure I understood him.  “And if you do tell a certain someone, I don’t want to hear about it.  That’s all I’m going to say on the subject.”

When I called and told Claudia that our plans had changed, she hung up on me.

I gave her about five minutes to cool down then called her back.  She was more willing to listen the second time.

When I told her everything that had transpired including the crime scene and the monstrous condition of the body, there was silence on the other end.  She finally responded: “A crucifix and the symbolic Sacred Heart.  Well, there’s no doubt now that we’re dealing with a religious motivated killer.  We now have a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim, and a Christian.”

Of course, she wanted to see the evidence for herself, but I told her that Dad had made it clear that this was as close as she was ever going to get.  She was a little upset until I promised her that I would fill her in tomorrow on any new info I found.

“By the way, in my research into your dream, I found something interesting,” she told me.  “Did you know that an angel is supposed to blow his horn at the end of the world on Judgment Day?”

Funny that I had forgotten, but now, with her reminder, it all came rushing back to me.  Every child who had gone through Sunday school knew this little piece of trivia.

It was Gabriel, the archangel.

Thursday morning began like any of the others for the last month since Dad had started helping the Sheriff’s Department with the investigation.  He was up early and out the door before I had even awakened.

Mom left early, giving me a peck on the cheek and an appraising look.  “When I get home tonight, I want to know all about what’s going on around here between the men of the castle when the queen is absent.”

I drove myself to school and the first period started without incident.

Midway through second period Algebra 2, Principal Smalls showed up at the door with an officer I recognized from the church and interrupted class.  Can’t say that I minded.  After all, it was Algebra 2.

Smalls spoke with Miss Gelsing and before I knew it I was being escorted outside to a cruiser parked in front of the school.  The driver looked was the same deputy that escorted me to the church on Saturday.  I could see that Mrs. Wicke and Claudia were seated in the backseat.

I opened the back door and looked in at Claudia, sitting demurely with hands folded in her lap.  My first words to her: “What did you do?”

She looked at me with wide innocent eyes and shook her head.

The interior held a musky smell that was an unpleasant combination of cleaning products and beer.  I couldn’t help thinking as I sat down, what other fine upstanding citizens had shared this very same seat.

“Paul, do you know what’s going on?” Mrs. Wicke asked.

I leaned forward. “Deputy Baxter, right?”

“You got it,” the cop answered.  “Call me Nick.  Sorry but I’m out of the loop as usual.”

I gave Claudia a look.  “Here we go again.”

Deputy Nick leaned over and pushed open the passenger side door.  “Why don’t you ride shotgun and I’ll try to get your Dad on the horn.”

As we started out down Fountain Valley toward Highway 98, Baxter raised my father on the radio and handed me the receiver.  Though it had been a few years, I still remembered how to use it.

“Dad, it’s me.”

“Hi Paul.  Pat and Claudia with you?”

“Yeah, is everything okay?  Mom with you?”

“Of course, she’s fine.”  There was a moment of silence before his distorted voice came back to me.  “Sorry for the secrecy.  You can trust Nick Baxter.  He’s taking you all someplace safe.”

I looked from Baxter to Mrs. Wicke and Claudia in the backseat.  “I don’t understand.”

“Just be patient, son.  I’ll talk to you soon.  Okay?”

“Okay, Dad.”

I hung the receiver back on the radio and glanced over at Claudia, who was staring out the window in dazed frustration.  If this feeling of helplessness was bugging me, I knew it must be practically driving Little Miss Control Freak absolutely bonkers.  I turned back around and speculated about our destination as I watched Deputy Nick make the turn onto Highway 98 and head east toward the Louisiana state border.