Death Watch (19 page)

S
urely, this couldn’t be the answer. A Sunday school story? Sydney held the Bible to her chest, hugging herself, bracing against the cold Chicago wind, but more than that, against the chill of reality she felt creeping into her life.

Billy Peppers, The Rev, was trying to recruit her as an evangelist. Sydney had been in church often enough to recognize the elements of a call to service. Billy would next zap her with guilt with a long, bony finger, then they’d sing
Just as I Am,
and he’d give an invitation—a call to commitment, pressing her to make his message her message. Only, she wasn’t ready to walk the aisle. While this was the most fantastic death watch story she’d heard, it was just that, a story told by an unwashed, homeless man from the streets of Los Angeles, a preacher with prison credentials.

She could just imagine Helen’s reaction if she phoned in this story. Or Hunz’s reaction. Or Cori’s. They’d think she was nuts.

It was obvious Billy Peppers was good at his profession. He had a preacher’s arsenal and knew how to use it. Knew where to aim and when to fire. But a reporter was not your typical church congregant. A good reporter should be able to sidestep the emotional arrows to get to the truth.

“Why now?” she asked him.

Billy was feeling the drop in temperature, too. He pulled close his jacket and folded his arms. “We’re approaching the end of history. It’ll be different than what has gone on before. History has always focused on political, economic, and social events. It’s time for the spiritual to come to the forefront. Soon spiritual events will overshadow everything else. This is but the first step.”

“Massive, worldwide deaths just to get people thinking about spiritual matters?”

“What’s more spiritual than life and death? At birth, the spark of the spirit animates us; at death, it leaves the body.”

Sydney shifted uneasily, crunching rocks beneath her feet. “Let me try it out on you,” she said. “This is what you’re asking me to do. You want me to go on the air and report that Satan and God had a discussion, the result of which, Satan has been granted the power of life and death, and as a consequence we have Death Watch. My source? A homeless suicidal man with pictures of angels plastered all over him.”

“Oh, no!” Billy cried. “God didn’t hand Satan the power of life and death. God is and always will be the giver of life.”

“But people are dying!”

Her emotions rose to the surface as she said this. She couldn’t help it. Cheryl and Hunz and Josh were dying!

“All men die, Sydney,” Billy said. “The only thing that has changed is the timing.”

“So you’re telling me there’s no hope.”

Billy’s face became radiant. “With God there’s always hope, Sydney! That’s the whole point. This time Satan didn’t accuse one good man; he accused God of delaying the end of days needlessly, that Christians no longer believe in the power of salvation, that God’s grand plan had proven itself a failure, that even if a Christian knew his neighbor was dying, he’d do nothing to save him, I mean truly save him, for all eternity. And so God said to Satan, ‘All right, do your worst. Only for every death watch notice you give, you must inform two Christians.’”

Sydney’s reporter senses quickened. “Two notices? Anything else?”

“The death watch notice has to be delivered in some form of printed content with an accompanying verbal contact.”

Billy knew about the confirmation!

“You’re saying there’s no way to break the death watch cycle?”

“Of course there is. God is the source of life. Not just for eternity, but for the present.”

This was unreal. Sydney stared at him. He’d tossed a lifeline in her direction and she wanted to grab it, no matter how improbable, even though her mind, her reporter’s instinct, told her it was an illusion.

She remembered the colored picture of Joseph and his multicolored coat her Sunday school teacher would hold up while telling a Bible story about him and his brothers. She remembered the flannel-graph figures of Jesus and a boy and his lunch of loaves and fish which they fed to five thousand people on a hillside. What was she supposed to do? Use flannel-graph figures on the evening news?

But then, put a scientist on the ledge and have him tell her how he developed a microscopic search-and-destroy submarine that was smaller than a human hair and that could hunt down and neutralize nanobots that had been injected into a person’s bloodstream, and she’d rush to the cameras, wouldn’t she?

You ‘ve bought into a closed system based solely on measurable phenomenon. If you can’t see it, or measure it, or understand it, it doesn’t exist.

Was it so inconceivable that the realm of the spirit could affect life and death? Was human existence solely physical, affected only by the realm of science?

“So if someone who has received a death watch notice,” Sydney said, “if that person is led to God . ”

“The death watch contract would be broken,” Billy said.

“As easy as that?”

“You should know there’s nothing easy about salvation. If you’ve forgotten that, you need to read the gospel tract you were given at the mission.”

He knew about that too? Sydney felt her pocket. The tract was still there.

“An angel told you?”

Billy laughed. “No. I know Lony. He doesn’t let anyone leave the mission without giving them a gospel tract.”

Sydney wanted to believe. More than anything she wanted to believe. It made sense, didn’t it? Or had this street preacher just tapped into her Midwestern culture and sold her a bottle of snake oil?

“Can you really talk to angels?”

Billy looked at the pictures on his clothes. “I chose pictures that look like them, because after a while the image fades in my mind.”

He bent down and reached inside the shoe box.

“This one’s my favorite.”

He pulled out a ceramic angel, its white wings flashing in the bright lights.

Billy started to straighten up. His foot slipped. His arms waved. To keep from falling, he had to grab the ledge, releasing the angel. It flew over the side of the building.

Below, there were screams.

Billy caught himself, but the angel tumbled for ten stories, smashing to smithereens on the sidewalk. Billy looked down at the white remains of his favorite angel. He was shaking.

“Oh, this is crazy. This is crazy,” he said. “I put the pictures on me to remind myself that I have angels watching over me. I’m scared to death of heights. Oh, this is crazy.”

Sydney held out her hand. “Then come down,” she said. “Why did you climb up there in the first place?”

“We had to get your attention.”

We. Again with the
we.
Despite his obvious sincerity, and his story—well, the jury was still out on that one—it was the speaking in plural that made him sound like an insane man.

“Well, you got it. I’m here. Committing suicide doesn’t do much for your credibility.”

“I’m not a suicide.” He said it most emphatically.

“Then prove it. You’ve delivered your message. Your work is done. Now you can come down.”

Billy thought about that. “Yeah. I like that. I’ve done what they asked me to do, haven’t I?”

He started to get down.

Behind her, in the darkness, Sydney could hear the shuffling of feet in gravel. The instant Billy’s foot stepped down off the ledge, they’d grab him.

But Billy didn’t step down. He cocked his head. Listened. Then he straightened himself and turned, facing the deadly side of the ledge. He looked straight ahead, toward the runway.

As he stood there, his face changed. His cheeks, which had been quick to ball up into a laugh, fell; as did his jaw. He blinked several times. His eyes glassed over with tears. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, but Sydney saw it.

He hung his head.

“Billy?”

For several moments he stood there, wind whipping, cold. He shivered. Shuffling his feet, he turned his head to Sydney.

“You go,” he said.

“Billy, take my hand. I’ll help you down.”

“I don’t think so. I need to hang around here a little while longer.”

He spoke with somber resolve like someone who had just received disturbing news.

“It’s the angels, isn’t it? Billy, did an angel just speak to you?”

Sydney scanned the air in front of him and saw nothing.

“Billy?”

“Take the shoe box,” he said. “There’s another angel in it. It’s broken, but I want you to have it. The Bible too. The front pages, the blank ones. I wrote everything down I just told you on them. Maybe it’ll help.”

“Billy, step down from the ledge. I have someone I want you to meet. Someone with a death watch notice. You can tell him what you told me. He’ll listen to you. In fact, let me put you on the air. Let me interview you. You can tell everyone. The networks will pick
it up. We even have connections with EuroNet. Let me help you get your message out.”

But Billy was no longer listening to her. He stood straight, his face into the night, his toes over the edge.

“Billy!”

A pair of hands grabbed Sydney’s shoulders from behind, pulling her away. She wrenched free, grabbing the Nike shoe box.

Then there were more hands with stronger grips and Sydney St. James was escorted off the roof of the Hilton Hotel.

S
ydney St. James stepped from the hotel lobby. As she did, she turned and looked up. They hadn’t grabbed Billy yet. He was still on the ledge, staring off into the distance.

A mob of reporters on the opposite side, cordoned off by the police, shouted questions at her.

“What did he say to you?”

“Did he tell you why he was going to jump?”

“Did you try to talk him out of jumping?”

Sydney wanted to shout back at them that Billy wasn’t a suicide jumper, but now she wasn’t so sure. Something changed up there. One minute it was happy Billy, positive-preacher Billy, God-has-everything-under-control Billy. The next thing she knew, Billy was wearing the expression of a condemned man and his toes were curled over the ledge.

Hunz came running up to her.

“What did he say? Anything useful?”

“He knew about the confirmation call.”

Hunz thought about this a moment. “He could have heard about it from someone. That was a good litmus test earlier, but now I don’t know, too much time has passed.”

“He says everyone who’s been given a death watch notice has had confirming notices sent to two different acquaintances.”

“Two? That doesn’t ring true. No one has been informed of my death watch notice.”

“That we know of,” Sydney said.

“True. That we know of. But if they’d heard something, why hadn’t they contacted me?”

It was a good question. Why hadn’t they at least called to see how he was doing?

“Who does he say is behind it? How are the deaths being carried out?”

Sydney glanced down. She knew the question was coming. All the way down the steps, into the elevator, through the lobby, she knew the question was coming. But she had yet to reach a conclusion as to what to tell him. While she didn’t know Hunz well, she knew he didn’t have Midwestern go-to-church roots. Even with her background, she found Billy’s story hard to believe. What would it sound like to a man with no church background?

“Let’s go somewhere we can talk,” she said.

Sydney looked around. The police were done with her. No one was paying attention to her. Her debriefing had lasted the amount of time it took to walk down ten flights of stairs. They tried to take Billy’s shoe box from her. After showing them what was inside, they let her keep it. In all likelihood, the man on the other end of Caplan’s walkie-talkie had already filled him in.

Hunz looked around. “Yeah, let’s get out of here,” he said.

Leaving wasn’t going to be easy. To get back to the terminal and transportation they were going to have to go through a sea of media for the second time tonight, only this time Sydney had no disguise.

Hunz offered her the crook of his arm. “Just hang onto me,” he said. “I’ll plow the way.”

Sydney hooked her arm in his.

They ducked under the yellow police tape and hit the first row of screaming reporters. Immediately Sydney was buffeted by the strength of the human current, and she was nearly knocked off balance. She clung to Hunz with all her strength, clutching the Nike shoe box, which was tucked under one arm.

Cameras and microphones were shoved in her face. Highpowered lights blinded her. It was all she could do to put one foot in front of the other and keep from stumbling.

A second later, they were completely engulfed.

“He’s gonna jump!” someone cried.

The next instant, the current that threatened to engulf them changed course, the way a school of fish suddenly changes direction as though controlled by a single mind.

Hunz and Sydney turned back.

The area went dark as cameras and lights swung away from them and toward the building.

Ten stories up, Billy Peppers stood tall, feet together, arms extended outward. Military-garbed figures could be seen creeping toward him from both sides. One of them had his hand stretched out. He was talking, though no one could hear what he was saying.

Billy appeared composed. His face showed no emotion. His eyes were fixed forward on the distant horizon.

He stood like that for what seemed an eternity. His shirt and pants legs flapped in the wind, as did the angel pictures, their corners flapping furiously, as though the angels were trying to take flight.

“Billy, no . ,” Sydney muttered.

Billy looked down at her as though he’d heard her speak. He couldn’t have; she barely heard herself.

They locked eyes.

It was one of those moments where distance is irrelevant. Two people making contact with nothing but a gaze; two minds, two hearts, joined by such a powerful link that everyone else, everything else, becomes muted colors without sound or substance, and the universe is reduced to that moment.

Sydney knew she had him at that moment. She knew he wouldn’t jump. The fear of heights she’d seen in his eyes before was gone. The anxiety, the urgency, gone. All that was left was serenity. Peace. She took comfort in that. He exuded the confidence of a man who had successfully completed a difficult task, who deserved a rest.

Her heart caught in her throat.

Rest. Billy had resigned himself to rest.

Eternal rest.

Billy, no!

With her eyes she willed him to live.

Billy smiled at her.

With the ease of stepping across a threshold, as casually as a person steps from one room to the next, Billy Peppers stepped off the ledge.

The crowd screamed with a single voice.

Every chin was lifted. Every eye riveted on the man who had just done the unthinkable.

With outstretched arms, Billy did a swan dive, no, an angel dive from the roof of the Hilton Hotel. The rush of wind ripped at his clothes, leaving a trail of angel pictures to flutter to the ground behind him.

He plummeted, looking more like a rag doll than a man.

Sydney couldn’t bear to watch, but neither could she turn away. Then she noticed the strangest thing.

The rippling of Billy’s clothing changed color from the dark green and blue of the fabric, to pale imitations of the original, then to white, finally to yellow and orange and red. The flapping fabric resembled a thousand tongues of fire.

They spread across him, curling up along the edge of his arms and torso and legs, so that after a moment or two, he looked like a NASA shuttle reentering the earth’s atmosphere in a fiery blaze.

Two orbs appeared on either side of him. Brilliant white, luminescent. They took shape. Human form, arms outstretched, but also wings.

Billy’s angels!

They flanked him. His descent began to slow, though the flames. showed no sign of dissipating, until Billy hung midair, suspended between earth and the sky, ablaze with fire, held in the arms of angels.

So engulfed was he in flame that his body had nearly lost its shape now, but his face and eyes were still recognizable, and functioning,
for they looked for Sydney and found her; and, as before, silent communication passed between them, accompanied by a huge, toothy grin.

Billy was happy. Young and vital. Boyish. Like a kid on an amusement park ride.

Then, in a sudden burst, he was gone, as were the angels. For a moment, residue, like a million fireflies, lingered, then it too was gone, and all that was left was the night, and the wind, and the glare of camera lights reflected in the glass building.

“Ooohhhhh!”

The assembled crowd let out a groan.

It wasn’t a sound that accompanied fireworks. But a punch-in-the-gut groan.

People turned their heads, sickened.

It didn’t make sense. What had just happened was the most amazing thing Sydney had ever seen in her life. Her skin was still tingling. What was wrong with these people?

Ten floors above, men in military garb leaned over the ledge with face-twisting grimaces. They turned away, shaking their heads.

There was similar head shaking among the people on the ground. Camera lights flicked off. A suffocating pall hung heavy in the air. People looked as though they were sick to their stomachs. They avoided eye contact with each other and walked away.

All except Hunz. He fought his way through the retreating crowd. Sydney lost him for a moment when he bent over as though he’d dropped something. He resurfaced and rushed past her.

“Where are you going?” she cried.

His eyes set on something, and determined strides carried him forward. Sydney hurried after him.

The Chicago news station had a van parked a short distance away—white, with a satellite dish on top. The station’s call letters were printed in red slanted block letters on the side panel, along with smiling male and female images of their prime-time newscasters and the slogan “Bringing the Windy City News It
Can Use.” The back of the van was open. Hunz charged into it like he owned it. Sydney ran as far as the steps, but couldn’t seem to bring herself to go any farther. She stood outside, looking in.

There were three workers inside the van. None of them had paid any attention to Hunz, their eyes glued to a monitor that was rewinding the videotape of Billy’s plunge. Between the workers’ bodies, Sydney glimpsed the video image of Billy Peppers midair, parallel to the ground, arms outstretched, but he was falling upward. His feet touched the ledge and he stood upright atop the building.

Rewind completed, the man controlling the playback punched a button. The tape began to play forward.

Everyone’s attention was on the monitor. One of the men shifted positions, blocking Sydney’s view, making it impossible for her to see from outside the van.

She glanced around. No one seemed to be paying any attention to her. She had to see the playback—the flames, the angels, everything—but to barge uninvited into another station’s van?

The first step was hard. After that, she didn’t remember any of the other steps. The next thing she knew, she was standing behind Hunz watching the playback monitor.

On the screen, Billy leaned forward and fell. Everything happened much more quickly than she remembered it. And to her astonishment, much differently!

Billy plummeted, his shirt and dreadlocks whipping, his deadly course straight and true and unhindered. The playback recorded no flames. No glow. No angels. No slowing. Nothing but air separated Billy from the ground, and not for long.

“Ooohhhhh!” The men in the truck echoed the earlier cry in the street.

“That’s gotta hurt,” one of them said.

They grinned at each another. That’s when they realized they had company.

“Hey, who are you? You guys cops or something?”

“That’s the chick on the roof!”

“Are you spying, man? That’s really low!”

“Get outta here!”

Without a word, hunched over, Hunz turned to follow Sydney. With curses hitting them in the back, they climbed out of the van. The door slammed shut behind them.

Sydney was stunned. Not by the crew’s outburst, but by what she’d seen on the replay. In a way it made sense, but then it didn’t. At least now she understood the crowd’s reaction. They saw Billy fall to his death. But she saw fire, angels, and what looked like pixie dust. They watched him die. She watched him…what? What did she see? Or had she really seen what she thought she saw? Had she imagined it?

“Something troubling you?” Hunz said.

The understatement of the millennia,
she thought. Was she the only person who had seen angels rescuing Billy?

“Yes…yes, something’s troubling me!” Without explaining, she ran back to the sidewalk entrance to the Hotel Hilton, ten stories directly beneath Billy’s position on the ledge.

“There!That’s my problem!"sheshouted. “There’s no body. If Billy Peppers hit the ground, where’s the body?”

A uniformed police officer overheard her.

“They just carted it off,” he said.

“That quickly? Not likely,” Sydney said.

“How long do you think it takes to load a stiff into a truck?” the policeman said.

“But this is a crime scene!”

“A suicide. Happens all the time. That yo-yo tied up the hotel’s clientele way too long. You think we’re gonna leave him lyin’ around the rest of the night? We’d get calls up the wazoo from every guest on this side of the hotel. Not good for the city. Best for all concerned that he disappear quickly.”

Feeling desperate, Sydney scanned the area. The place where Billy’s favorite ceramic angel had met its doom had been swept clean. “I don’t believe you,” she said. “You’re covering up.”

The officer laughed at her. “You reporters are all alike. A guy jaywalks and you see a conspiracy. Sheesh.” He continued on his way, shaking his head.

Sydney turned to Hunz. “What did you see?”

“What do you mean?”

“Simple question. What did you see?”

She was in his face. She had to know. Never in her life had she doubted herself like this or felt this edgy. At the moment reality was a greased pig and she couldn’t get a grip on it.

Hunz wasn’t helping. He looked at her as though the cheese had slipped off her cracker.

“The video playback in the van?” he said. “That’s what I saw. Why? What did you see?”