The Hidden Man (23 page)

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING

ON THE DARKENED STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO

V
IGNETTE WALKED SO FAST
that she figured she would cover the distance in less than twenty minutes—all the way from the exposition’s main gate, where she had just given her statement to the officer in command of the scene, to the City Hall Station, more than two miles away.

She was thankful that the officer had no idea that he was interviewing the young woman who had just penetrated the all-male police training school and kept up with the boys. The wig helped to protect her. Men see your hair and your tits. No doubt he would have seized upon the opportunity to make an example of her.

Fortunately, he seemed to be in a hurry to go off and deal with the crime scene itself rather than stay and talk to her. It never seemed to cross his mind to suspect a young lady like herself. She was the essence of respectability in her Gibson Girl disguise, a loyal civic volunteer who coddles and entertains the city’s much-needed visitors. Truly, a good girl.

She was gone from there in a matter of minutes. The main gate’s office was opened up for her while the guards used the telephone to call for a body wagon and to notify the precinct captain of this most inopportune crime. Vignette was amazed to see that just as she was walking away, two officers bearing a stretcher with a completely covered body emerged from the grounds. They carried it to a waiting flat wagon.

They’re moving her already?

She decided it must be because this thing happened right on the exposition grounds, and so they were dealing with it at top speed. She was permitted to use the main gate’s telephone to attempt her call, so she took out the slip of paper on which Randall had written out his “telephone exchange number.” The term itself gave her a feel of nails across a blackboard. It was the occasion of her very first telephone call.

She got no answer—which perfectly summed up Vignette’s opinion of telephones, right there. Here, she finally had a reason to call this contraption that was only in their house because it was so important that Randall be available for emergencies—and there was no answer. The whole idea of being able to reach him broke down, anytime he was not standing around waiting for the damned thing to start ringing.

Yet she could not deny the wonderful feeling of relief. She had made a fair attempt to reach him using the new technology, but been spared actually having to present him with the terrible news.

She had made the call in a trance of shock, with no real idea of what to tell Randall if he actually picked up his end of the thing. For all her terrible thoughts and dark wishes against the Eastern…against Miss Freshell, she knew that this idea of marriage was a big thing to him. The poor guy actually thought that this woman cared about making his life better.

Like any man, he was so busy trying to conquer the illusion that Miss Freshell set up for him that he never realized how she was maneuvering him into situations, putting him in harm’s way. And it was all for a story, a book, and for whatever it was that she thought would come from that. It seemed clear to Vignette that the woman would have thrown Randall away, married or not, once she was done with him. But now she had gone and gotten herself tragically killed, and Randall’s fancy illusion of romantic love was about to be cut to pieces before the truth of it revealed itself to him, as it would have eventually done. His image of her was now frozen in time, and he was about to suffer the loss of something far more precious than the real Janine Freshell. The fact that the one he was actually losing existed only in his imagination would do nothing to assuage the pain.

Vignette could feel nothing over Miss Freshell’s death, other than the horror of the murder itself. And she knew that Randall would try to swallow the shock and the pain, try to be stoic. That, she thought, would be like walking on broken legs.

And so she at least had to be the one to reach him with this. There was nothing she could do to soften the news itself, but she could at least be there. It was unbearable to think of him suffering through it alone.

She paused at a street corner to let a horse-drawn milk wagon trundle past. A man also stood at the curb waiting, a few feet away, and he took the opportunity to smile at her. She gave him a curt smile in return, but just before she turned away again, he ogled her from head to toe and back up. Then he looked right back into her eyes and smiled again.

She did not say a word, but simply radiated her contempt. The fool receded into the shadows. Vignette kept going at a ground-covering stride.

Where was Shane? It would be better for him to be there with her when she told Randall. But he either was not home or he also planned to avoid answering the telephone. It only reaffirmed her distaste for the entire telephone system. Here they were in the Age of Miracles and she was back to
moving things around
by using nothing more than her feet.

The most likely place to find Randall, or at least to hear some news about where he was, would be the City Hall Station. Vignette pressed her walking pace until she was moving as fast as her clutched skirt and heeled boots would allow. There was enough cash in her pocket for a taxi, but she welcomed a chance to burn off the jitters that were overpowering her. She could hotfoot it down the wide sidewalks as fast as a taxi moved on the chaotic streets, anyway.

It was about five more minutes to the station house, she figured. But then what would she say to Randall? Dread caused a wave of nausea to nearly topple her. She paused and held on to the top of a metal fence, gasping for air. There was an image pasted across the front of her imagination, a picture of Randall being struck by this news.

If she revealed to him a few of the choice things that Miss Freshell told her, she might be able to stop him from pining away for her. But it would still do nothing to soften his grief. It would simply convert it from the shock of losing her into the grief of discovering that her love had been a concerted illusion.

She could feel worry carving itself into her muscle and her skin while she strode down Van Ness Avenue and neared the City Hall Station. In the course of that short distance she had already resolved one simple thing about this disaster of a night: She could never tell Randall the truth about, to hell with it, the Eastern Whore. It was too ugly.

She had to be the one to do this. Even if she found Shane beforehand, she could never throw the chore onto him. If he tried to break the news, he was likely to get rattled and start to stutter. In the meantime, Randall would be left sitting there with the suspense killing him. How in the hell could she put her boys through that?

No, she had to do it—which immediately confronted her with the question of exactly what
was
the best way to stab Randall Blackburn in the heart? The question swirled around her like bloody water circling a drain.

IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWING

THE PACIFIC MAJESTIC THEATRE—SAN FRANCISCO’S FINEST

F
ROM THE MOMENT
Shane felt the glass blade pressed into his skin, already cutting him, he was back inside his little converted sleeping space in the kitchen pantry. Once again he was a skinny twelve-year-old, frozen in abject terror while the monster outside the wooden pantry doors spent a day and a half killing his adoptive mother and two adoptive sisters. Every cell in his body sensed on some primal level that he possessed no strengths, no knowledge, no skills whatsoever to respond. He knew in his bones that he was helpless.

He felt himself pulled under a large, shaded area covered by an outdoor roof. When he glanced upward, he saw that they were under the marquee of the Pacific Majestic Theatre.

It was here that his sense of time and place began to return. That left him staring into the face of his attacker, who had spun him around to face him. Shane saw in that instant that he had been right about the man. It was the lone customer from the restaurant.

“Why’s this place unlocked?” their attacker demanded in a whisper, hissing like a snake. “You two left it that way, didn’t you? Out for a walk during a late rehearsal or something?”

Shane tried to answer him, but his lips felt as if they were asleep, tingling and numb, uncontrollable. So he responded by shaking his head, hating himself for not feeling any bravery at all. The paralyzing fear was all too familiar.

The attacker poked the glass blade at Duncan a few times, trying to get his attention. But by now, Duncan appeared to have no idea what was going on. He was off somewhere in a world nobody else could know.

Shane noticed that when he looked back and forth from the attacker to Duncan, there was more than a little similarity. The attacker looked for all the world like a younger version of Duncan. Maybe thirty, thirty-five years. Same large frame and naturally muscular mass. An impressive-looking individual.

The attacker had removed the blade from his throat, leaving only a shallow cut so far, and the sense of paralyzing fear finally began to leave him. He felt a flash of prayerful thanks that his pants were still dry.

Strength poured back into his muscles. It felt wonderful to feel his legs stabilize and to sense their power returning. The impression of being a little boy dissipated. In its place rose up the happy realization that this time, while he was not as strong as the attacker, Shane was almost certainly the smarter of the two. For the first time since the assault began, he felt a spark of hope.

The man had lifted a battery-powered electric torch from an usher’s station and turned it on. Its beam was narrow, but strong enough to light their way along the floor.

They were near the bottom of the aisle at the foot of the stage when Duncan stopped, stiff as a pole, fully alert. He cocked his ears and stared hard into the darkness.

“What’s that?” the showman murmured. “Did you see it? Who’s out there?” he softly called.

Their tormentor ignored it and resumed driving them up onto the stage by jabbing the air with the blade and repeating, “Move, move, move!” Otherwise, he was telling them nothing.

Shane’s eyes began adjusting to the faint ambient light coming through the upper draft windows; pitch black thinned to a translucent gray. He could see well enough to tell that the theatre was empty, but for them.

Duncan jumped again. “There!” He cupped his hand to his ear. “Someone’s moving. You hear that?”

“That’s good, Boss!” the attacker grinned. “You’re starting to wake up! Here he is, ladies and gentlemen!”

Duncan did not react to him at all. He just kept staring into the darkness, straining to hear.

“Enough of that now!” the younger man bellowed. His voice took on a load of venom. “You haven’t said hello to me, Boss.” He turned to Shane with a sour grin and added, “I call him Boss around the theatre.” He threw in a little wink, then turned back to Duncan.

“In fact, you haven’t even looked at me, J.D. That’s hardly common courtesy, is it?”

“Do you ever just call him ‘Dad’?” Shane quietly asked.

The attacker stopped in his tracks. He spun to him, swinging the light onto his face. Shane winced when the narrow beam caught him straight on and flashed on the back of his eyes. He raised a flattened hand to his eyebrows.

“A
noticer
!”

The attacker turned to address the empty seats. “We got ourselves a
noticer,
ladies and gentlemen! What are the chances of that, in such a small group? This theatre only holds a thousand or so.”

“Why wouldn’t I notice you?”

It took the man a moment to register the question. “Why?” He lifted his arms. “Look!”

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? Look at me! I’m unnoticeable!” His face forced a dry sneer. “Or hadn’t you noticed?”

“Actually, I think that you look sort of like a younger version of him,” Shane replied, pointing to Duncan, the shadow watcher.

The attacker stared at Shane the way he would at a talking horse. He did not appear to know how to reply.

Shane advanced the conversation for him. “He never mentioned having a son.”

The son whirled on him and shouted, “Stuff that! You stuff that right back down!”

“How long has it been since you’ve seen each other?”

“I said stuff it! You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I think that this is your father, standing here. It’s a natural question to wonder when you last saw each other.”

Now the son stood quiet for moment, studying him through a suspicious squint. When he finally spoke up, he sounded, for the first time, like a rational man.

“Who the hell are you?”

Shane made a conscious effort to keep his voice full and strong. “My name is Shane Nightingale.”

“All right, Mr. Nightingale, what do you do?”

“I wait on tables at The Sea Mist restaurant down the street.”

The son burst out laughing. “Well, J.D. always did like to hobnob with the big shots!”

He turned to J.D. with a sneer. “Maybe you should be the one to tell Mr. Nightingale why I don’t call you ‘Daddy.’ Eh, Boss?”

J.D. gave no indication of hearing anything they said. He remained fixed in the shadows, wide-eyed, muttering under his breath while he studied the darkness. “Gone now. Whoever it was.”

Shane wondered what would beguile the man’s attention away into darkened corners, with the immediate threat just a few feet from him. The son had the same relentless stare that Shane had been forced to learn so well in the Nightingale house, to the point that all these years hence, he could not help seeing all of the various levels of that same energy. He found it in most every set of eyes that he had looked into, since that day. In the nine years since the Nightingale murders, he had absorbed the habit of meeting people’s eyes for a moment upon greeting them, but then keeping his gaze on neutral things as much as possible after that. It was his primary social handicap.

Now, a single glance into the son’s eyes was enough to justify despair. Whatever was on his mind had murder at its core. The quality of his energy could not lead anywhere else.

And at that moment, the details of this man’s objections no longer made any difference at all. The story would be revealed, or it would not, and it would have a cause, as all things do. None of that helped him with the maniac in front of him.

The unhappy son poked at them and gestured toward the stage. When Duncan did not respond, his son shoved him into motion. Shane joined in. They would be up on the stage in twenty seconds, but Shane saw no rational reason for going up there at all. It made no difference what purpose their captor thought he had in mind for them. By now Shane had regained as much of his strength as he was going to get back, under the circumstances. He was slowly losing blood.

His adrenaline-soaked senses caught the faintest tinge of wood smoke. It was familiar enough, in an age not yet electrified. Distinct from the oily odor of lamp smoke, the bitter dust of coal heat, or the acrid smell of electrical fire—none of these were in the aroma. He was glad for that much; any of them was a sure sign of disaster.

Wood smoke: The trace smell reminded him of wooden matches. Such a distinct scent could hang in the air for half an hour. It did not necessarily mean trouble, but there was the question of its origin.

And so the time picked him. Shane slowed his pace to a shuffle, turned to Duncan, and went to work. He pretended to be speaking to the showman, but when he shouted at the top of his voice, using every ounce of his vocal power, the intent of every word was aimed at the big man with the glass sword.

“My father didn’t even bother to kill me! He just rubbed me out of his life! He walked away like a mongrel walks away from its own puke.”

That put the brakes on. Their assailant stopped along with Shane, while Duncan stopped with the lack of momentum. And initially, at least, the younger version of Duncan did not protest. His attention was not engaged, yet, but his expression showed annoyed impatience. That meant that a door was open, no matter how small, or for how brief a time. If Shane could sink a hook into the opening before it slammed shut again, he could possibly drive the man to an hysterical explosion—one in which his own emotions might provide enough distraction to create an opportunity to finish him off.

He pressed on, without giving the brief flicker of interest a chance to fade from the attacker’s eyes.

“He wasn’t just famous!” Shane shouted to Duncan while watching Duncan’s twisted progeny from the corner of his eye. “The man had to
feel
famous! He had to be the biggest news in the room, no matter what, no matter where!”

He felt it more than saw it; a slight wave of confused disinterest passed over the son—that shot had missed. Shane tried again, throwing one out that could catch his opponent on either the literal or symbolic level.

“He never even knew I was alive! And the day he finally saw that I was alive, was the day he decided to
wipe me out
!”

Shane saw the brief facial spasm that flashed across their assailant’s face. Bull’s-eye.

“Why don’t you tell me something I don’t already know?” he snarled at Shane, even while his eyes shifted to Duncan. For an instant, Shane disappointed himself by dropping his concentration long enough to notice that the smell of smoke was getting stronger.

One thing at a time,
the words went through him, just the way Randall always said it. He threw his focus back onto their unstable host.

“He made you the garbage bucket!” Shane hollered back, and this time it was directly to him, ignoring Duncan. “He soaked up everything good and left you with nothing but the dregs.”

No reaction.

“He’s only your father the way a dog in the alley is a father!”

That one set off a little spark of the son’s interest. Shane drilled into it, taking a risk with facts.

“He never even gave you his
name,
for God’s sake!” That one hit the son like a spike. Shane caught an involuntarily swallow.

A bastard, then, with the expected load of a bastard’s resentment. He noted the younger Duncan’s terrible teeth, his mottled skin, his yellowish, rheumy eyes. There was a range of sore points to explore.

“You grew up on your own, from when you were small. On the street. You didn’t know anything about a showman named James Duncan.”

“J.D.!” the son corrected him, with a strange grin popping onto his face. “You have to call him ‘J.D.’! Very important!” He gave up a malevolent chuckle.

“Unless you call him ‘Boss,’” the son went on. “He doesn’t mind that one at all.” Just as abruptly, he dropped the grin and raised the glass edge. “Now keep moving. We’ve got a show to attend.”

The attacker was only a few inches taller than Shane, and a good sixty pounds heavier. He stank of criminal intent: the sour smell of fear, the animal musk of unwashed skin, rotting teeth, and mouth blowing death breath for two yards in every direction. His body appeared to have been street-hardened into a piece of walking pig iron. One glance was enough to convince Shane that a direct attack would leave him badly the worse.

He had to hold silent for a moment and let J.D.’s progeny feel his power, here. Feed him an easy win. Watch for any sign that it might cause him to lower his guard.

After all, something had been gained already. The emotion in the younger Duncan’s reply had hinted of some good pay dirt.

Shane was getting closer. It was like navigating blind, following a smell. And with the thought of smell, there was the smell of smoke, back again, tapping at his attention a bit harder now.

There was too much of it not to notice, but not enough to see. Shane had no idea whether it figured into young Duncan’s plan, but the bastard son appeared to be completely unaware of the unmistakable tinge to the air.

Shane hoped that this meant he was severely distracted by whatever roiled his mind at that moment. Shane could look for a way to use that to his advantage.

Now he could feel that he would be able to shove his fear far enough down inside of himself to put forth a convincing façade of confidence. The illusion was all he needed; Shane’s twenty-one years of life had already been enough to convince him that all bullies were cowards. Therefore, he did not need to die fighting this one; he only needed to convince him that he was quite
willing
to die—so long as Sonny Boy died with him.