Desolate Angel (8 page)

If Maggie noticed, she said nothing. Indeed, she never even looked at Danny at all. She drove in silence, ignoring his frantic chewing and slurping. It wasn’t that she had given up on Danny, I realized. She had never considered counting on him in the first place, never weighed it for an instant. I felt ashamed at the possibility that I had once been worthy of such treatment myself. Had Danny gotten worse, or had we unknowingly shared in this sort of dismissal before? I’d had no perspective while alive, no awareness of what others thought of me, or maybe it was more like no interest in what others thought of me. In many ways, I had been dead even back then.

But there was something more to Maggie’s ability to shut out Danny and, indeed, the rest of the world with preternatural concentration. She had trained herself to reject all unbidden thoughts, I decided, perhaps as protection against a painful memory. A failed marriage, perhaps. A professional failure of her own? I could feel nothing from her that might guide me toward an answer. She kept all but the present de terminedly at bay.

When they reached the center of campus where the student dorms were located, Maggie dropped Danny off without comment. He had a mustard spot on his left shoulder as he climbed from the car and he smelled like he’d been ga toring on a barroom floor. Great. Law enforcement was about to make another good impression on young people. But what could I do?

I stayed with Maggie.

I had never seen a person act with so much single-minded purpose before. And whether it was brilliance or self-preservation, it enthralled me. I could not stay away. She radiated a brightness that drew me to her and paled all else.

She started at the parking area far down the hill, searching the sidewalks and grass in a grid pattern, her eyes never wavering as she sought evidence that might lead her closer to the identity of the girl’s killer. It was almost an hour before she left the busy lower area and started up the path that led to the top of the hill. The hillside was rimmed with occasional stands of trees that slowed her even further. She took out a flashlight and scrutinized the base of each tree she passed, examined the underside of each bush, seeking a primary site for the murder but finding nothing. An hour later, she was far above the campus, in sight of the officer guarding the crime scene above. I was her shadow, searching the ground with her, mimicking a meticulousness I had rejected when alive.

We reached the crime scene, but Maggie did not stop; she had covered every inch of it already. She waved at the guard as she passed and he saluted her in return, a sign of his respect for her dedication. She followed the path upward into the forest above the field where the young woman’s body had been found. As Maggie investigated a patch of trampled bushes just off the main path several hundred yards from the hilltop, our peace was abruptly shattered. I was flooded with a sense of doom so acute it felt as if the world had inverted and the very earth had moved through me in doing so. I was left with a choking, cold, all-consuming sensation that both smothered me and stripped me bare. I was stunned into inaction, frozen by an unseen source of pure evil.

Yet I saw no one there.

Maggie continued her search along the forest floor, examining broken branches and trampled leaves, oblivious to the feelings that overwhelmed me. The first wave of sensation passed, but my conviction that evil was present lingered. I sniffed the air carefully, trying to determine where the feeling was coming from. A shadow passed behind a sycamore that guarded one edge of the grove. I was there within seconds but found no one. Yet I knew the force was human, not a lingering essence, but human.

There was someone else in the grove with us.

I had seen dark shapes often since I had died; they lived just outside my peripheral vision, a tribe of distorted skulls, grasping limbs, visible only in black outlines of deformed bodies that grew, then melted into the shadows before I could fix them in my sight. But they were real, and they were of my netherworld. That much I knew.

This was different. This was a man.

The evil passed behind me now, manifesting as an icy draft on the back of my neck. A foul, decaying smell filled my being. I turned around in a circle, slowly, hyper-vigilant of all I saw.

I saw no one.

But I knew that he could see her. And he would remember her face.

Maggie was bent over the roots of a tree, examining nicks in its gnarled surfaces, pushing aside leaves with her hands, unaware that she was not alone. I waited, completely still, suddenly certain that a fourth presence had joined us, this one less human than the other.

I was confused by the signals that assaulted me. Smell, noise, touch, empathy. My hearing had grown acute over the past few months and I imagined I could hear a rapid heartbeat nearby—or maybe I really could hear it. Or was it my own remembered pulse? No, it was real. It was someone’s heartbeat, someone very much a human. I detected a light snick-snick, no more than a whisper: feet creeping over dry leaves. A corporeal presence. Very human. And very much a danger to Maggie.

A human who remained hidden, watching Maggie and waiting.

But waiting for what?

Maggie knelt near the base of a large oak tree and ran her fingers over the bark. She took a penknife from her pocket and pried an infinitesimal bit of matter from under a groove in the gnarled surface, bagging it carefully. She backed away from the tree with deliberate steps and walked slowly in a circle around it, her eyes never leaving the trunk, her vision focused about three feet off the ground. She did not disturb the carpet of leaves pushed up against the base of the tree, but tiptoed carefully outside of its range.

As she moved behind the trunk, I saw him at last: a man, hiding behind a nearby tree. I could not see his face in the shadows, but I could tell that he was tall. Tall and very, very still.

Before I could react, before I could so much as move an inch, the man made a sound as if he were choking. He took off through the trees, pushing through bushes and fallen branches in his panic, without regard for the noise he was making, or for Maggie, who drew her gun the instant she heard him and took off in pursuit, her courage rising without hesitation.

I followed, wondering how I could be of help, but stopped abruptly when I saw Alissa Hayes standing in the spot where the man had waited. Her face was sad, but her eyes glittered with something close to triumph. She looked at me. Our eyes held. Contact. I understood:
the man had seen her.
I realized it in an instant. The man waiting to hurt Maggie had seen Alissa Hayes. That was why he had taken off running. He had seen her and the sight of her had terrified him. Because he had known her. And known that she was dead.

Who was he? I followed Maggie through the trees, but I was too late. She was hurrying back down the hill, gun holstered, talking into her cell phone.

“I lost him,” she said to someone on the other end. “He just disappeared on me. It was weird.” She listened for a moment. “I don’t know. It could have been a curious student who panicked.” She was silent. “No, I’m sure of it. There’s rope marks and poly threading caught in the bark. With signs of a struggle beneath. I think he kept her there for a while.” She listened intently. “Just send the whole crew. We can’t afford to miss anything. I’m thinking this guy likes his work.” She paused and frowned. “Sure, I’ll call him. He’s here somewhere on campus, tracking the victim. No, I understand. It’s not a problem.”

Maggie hung up and slowed as she reached the trees where she had discovered the signs of a disturbance. She did not enter the grove again and I felt a sense of relief. She stood in the sunlight instead, head tilted up to catch its rays, its warmth an antidote to what she had imagined among the dark shadows. After a moment, rebalanced, she called Danny on her cell phone and told him what she had found. He came huffing and puffing up the hill fifteen minutes later, his shirt soaked with the sweat of an alcoholic forced into physical exercise.

“I found where he kept her,” Maggie said as she held up an open palm, warning him to stop at the edge of the grove. “Or at least one of the spots. Bag-and-tag is on its way.”

“One of the spots?” Danny asked.

“There’s not a lot of blood.” Maggie frowned. “We’re missing something.”

“Well, I IDed her,” Danny replied, as if that settled the whole matter and they could now all go home to bed. He flipped open his notebook. “The dead girl is a junior named Victoria Meeks. Roommate hasn’t seen her since before the weekend. Thought she was away with a new boyfriend. I showed her a photo from the scene and the roommate is certain. It’s her.”

“Victoria?” Maggie asked. And then she did a curious thing: she searched the sky, her eyes tracing the contours of each cloud as if they held an answer for her. “Victoria Meeks.”

“Roommate called her Vicky. She’s local. Mother lives in town.” Danny stowed his notebook away. “So she was killed here?”

“She wasn’t killed here. Just held here.” Maggie sounded certain.

“Why?” Danny asked, looking around. “There’s a quarry right over that hill with a million hidden spots. He could easily have tortured her and dumped the body over there. We’d never have found it.”

Maggie’s voice was soft as she nodded toward the grove. “It’s beautiful in there, that’s why. It’s almost like a church. The light filters through the leaves like stained glass. And farther up the hill, you can see for miles.” She looked at Danny. “I think he just thought it was a beautiful spot for what he had in mind.”

Danny looked perplexed. He stared at the trees, his brain working out the pieces. Alissa Hayes emerged from the shadows right in front of him, her pale body barely visible in the bright sunlight. She passed through the living, unseen by them both, though Maggie cocked her head and stared at the air between them. She had sensed something, I knew, but not enough.

Danny was, as always, oblivious. He looked right through Alissa Hayes, still not seeing her, still not understanding that he had failed her—and that I had helped him fail.

Chapter 9

“Her mother’s listed as next of kin,” Danny explained as Maggie directed the forensic team to the site in the grove. “She lives pretty close to here. I can run over and let her know.”

Yeah, and stop at a bar on the way. I knew Danny.

Maggie blinked as she took in Danny’s rumpled appearance, the mustard stain on his shoulder, the odor of alcohol and sweat that clung to him. “I’ll do this, Danny.”

“You sure?” he asked. “ ’Cause it can be tough duty.”

“I’ve done it before.” She hesitated. “Is the mother a widow?”

“Looks like it. No father was listed on her papers.”

“Then I need to do it. Consider it women’s work.”

“Suit yourself.” Danny yawned. “This hot sun makes me sleepy.”

Maggie left Danny in the parking lot of the station house, scratching his armpits in the warmth of the winter afternoon, yawning without apology, the dead girl named Victoria Meeks and her mother already forgotten.

I stayed in the backseat of Maggie’s car, ashamed for Danny—and even more ashamed of myself for having played a part in what he had become.

Maggie did not notify the girl’s mother alone. Instead, she made a phone call, then detoured to a shabby apartment complex filled with old people. Danny and I used to call it D. B. Heights, because so many dead bodies were reported from there each year, frequently bloated to unrecognizable form by how long they had lain, dead and unnoticed, on a bathroom or living room floor. I’d harbored a fear that I might end up there myself one day had Connie ever made good on her vow to throw me out of the house if I kept drinking. I guess that was one fear that death had erased.

Today, the complex looked like Shangri-la. Indeed, anywhere would have been paradise with a sun so bright in the sky, clouds so pure, air so clean. It was the best of winter, a gift to the living. Yet here I was, the dead, enjoying it more than anyone. It was enough to make me feel alive. That had been happening to me more and more over the last month. I had come to notice the beauty of the physical world, the times when it left behind human misery and struck out on its own to prove that this was still a generous planet, one that was far too bountiful and forgiving for the likes of human beings.

Maggie stopped at a neatly maintained duplex near the entrance. It was painted slate gray and rimmed with beds of winter foliage that bloomed with a hardiness that mystified me. After a moment, the door opened and Morty, the beat cop I had disparaged for so many years because of his apparent lack of ambition and his willingness to walk the same neighborhood his entire career, came down the steps wearing his full dress uniform, right down to a pristine shine on his shoes. He was dignity personified. His white hair gleamed against the deep blue of his hat. He looked more like a chief than a street cop.

He knew Maggie well. “Hello, Rosy,” he said as he climbed inside her car. “Need me again, do you?”