Hallowed (21 page)

I heard the words, “Ah, there he is,” crystallizing from the dark ether surrounding me as I regained consciousness.  It was the first time in my life that I had ever passed out and I was totally disoriented.

“Where am..? What..?” I tried to lift my head but felt the gentle restraint of a cold compress on my forehead.  The image of my mother came into focus above me.  She managed a smile through the creases of anxiety on her face.

I glanced around at the equipment lining the walls of the confined space and realized that I was on a gurney inside the EMT vehicle I’d seen earlier.

I felt someone stroke both my legs roughly.  “You okay, kiddo?”  It was Dad.

“Shit.  Can’t believe I did that.”  It was the first time I can remember cursing in front of my parents, and under the circumstances, not a word was said about it.  “Sorry about that.”

“We’re just glad that you didn’t bump your head on the way down.”  This from Uncle Hank.  One glance at him and I could tell he was having one of the longest nights of his life.

“Yeah, it’s a good thing she caught him, huh?” a strange voice interceded.

Mom gave a stern look to whoever had said this and then turned back to me.  “You sure you’re feeling okay, baby?  I think they should take you over to the ER just to check you out.”

“No,” I snapped emphatically and gave my mother a little nudge with the hand that I had just regained control of.  “I want to know why you guys were arguing about me in the hallway.”

How I had known I was the subject of conversation, I don’t know, but from the look I was getting from my mother I was sure that I’d guessed right.

“Your father and I agree that you should be kept out of this as much as possible,” she replied, circumnavigating my question.  “For your own safety.”

“Kept out of what?” I protested.  “Dad?”  I sat up on my elbows and this time, no one attempted to restrain me.

Dad stood outside the doors of the EMT unit at the foot of the gurney where I lay.  He was giving Mom one of his “I told you so” looks. Mom simply glared back at him.

“There was some talk that you should be in the room during our inter… our conversation.  Both your mother and I agree that it would be a bad idea, and judging from your initial contact with the sus… with her, I would say that my fear was justified.”

“What’s she suspected of doing?”

Obviously, irritated at himself for the slip, Dad set his lips and shook his head.  “Kathy, I want you and Paul to go over to Pat’s house and wait for me there.”  He turned, grabbed Uncle Hank roughly by the arm, and started away.  And with that, our interview was over as far as he was concerned.

I ducked under my mother’s arms and was at the door of the ambulance before she could stop me.  I was half aware of the increased number of police cars and unmarked sedans since I’d last been conscious.  Red and blue strobe lights lit the faces of uniformed and suited men milling around with a sense of purposelessness.  Several barricades had already been erected with the expectation of a crowd, but thankfully none had gathered yet.

“Dad, if I can help with this, you have to let me!”

He stopped, but didn’t turn around.

“Paul?”  My mother tried to cut me off but this time I wasn’t going to be stopped.  I waved her away and she must have seen the Graves stubbornness in that action, because she sighed and dropped her shoulders.

“You have to understand,” I called out to him.  “I want to do something to stop this!  You’ve got to understand the frustration I’m feeling, not being able to do anything!  You were my age once.  Well, you helped her when you were my age, didn’t you!”

Uncle Hank whispered something to him, and Dad pulled away with annoyance.  “Why don’t you just work on getting her down to the station,” he snapped at his brother.

Uncle Hank sighed and started back toward the church.  There were several men in cassocks, one I recognized from sight as the man who gave all the special Holy Day masses, Bishop Boudreaux.  He was dressed all in white, his hair silver.  It was the sight of this man more than the extra police presence that drove home the seriousness of the situation.

Dad finally turned.  He looked as angry as I’d ever seen him, and as he started toward me, I wondered if I’d finally stepped across that line of respect a son was supposed to show his father.  I actually gripped the edge of the ambulance door in preparation for whatever was coming.  He locked eyes with me and I fought the urge to lower my own.

“You want to help?”

I continued to look him in the eye and nodded.  “That’s all I want to do.”

“Then I want you to go watch over your mother and your girlfriend.”

It was the first time that someone had actually said the words “your girlfriend,” but at that moment, it didn’t register with me.

I climbed out of the ambulance and dropped down to sit on the bumper, watching as my father started back to the rectory.  In the distance, I could see the church and the stone crucifix standing atop it.

Something in the back of my mind struggled and finally broke free.

I rushed after my father, my mother yelling at me to come back.

He turned to me, a look of patience long lost on his face.

“It’s all religious related,” I nearly screamed.  “Everything!”

“What are you..?”

“Martin’s cousin was Jewish and the second girl was Hindu, right, because her father was from India.  I’ll bet the third victim was Muslim.  Am I right?”

My father was staring at me in alarm, not anger.

“The killings were somehow motivated by the religion practiced by the victim.”

My father gave me the sort of frown reserved for acid reflux, glanced over his shoulder toward the crowd gathered at the church, and guided me firmly by the arm away from the entrance.  “First of all, where did you hear all this?”

“Nobody.  It just came to me.  The Middle-Eastern kid, he was beheaded.  That’s a ritualistic method used by Muslims, right?  And the way they found the second girl, wrapped in a burial shroud and burned, that’s a Hindu practice, right?”

My father’s expression wavered between surprise and anger.  “You’ve been through my office, haven’t you?”

I lowered my head and nodded, then looked suddenly up again when I realized that he hadn’t downplayed my theory.  “So, did I guess right?”

“I thought I noticed my notes were a little disorganized.”  My father cast a troubled glare at me, but they quickly softened again.  “You just hit on the strongest theory we’re working from right now.”  For a moment, breaking through the conglomeration of unreadable emotions on his face, I saw a clear look of pride there.  My father was proud of me!  Then just as quick as it appeared, it was gone again.  His eyes hardened and he added, “Of course, you didn’t get any of this from me.  Got it?”

As we started back toward Mom and the ambulance, he gave me a smile that was one-part annoyed and one-part impressed.  “You and Claudia have been very busy.”

“Dad, we’ve been taking this very seriously.  I really think I can contribute something here.”

It was then that he disconnected.  He gave a firm shake of his head.  “No, Paul. Out of the question.”

“Did she say why I should be in the room?”

He gave me a patient smile of amusement.  “Son, I can guarantee you right now, she’s not who she claims to be.  She just wants to ride the celebrity bandwagon.  We get a few of these types at every high profile investigation.  Unfortunately, we have to treat them all as if they might be a serious lead instead of a waste of precious time.”

“You think she’s pretending to be the Tatum girl because of your connection to the investigation?”

“That’s exactly what I think, Paul.”

I studied the face of my father.  “But what if she is?”

His face tensed--something I wasn’t used to seeing on Mount Rushmore.

He put a hand on my shoulder.  “Paul, go with your mother.  As soon as I know something, I will let you know.”  He gave me a squeeze and started back into the rectory.

“Dad?” I said it in such a low tone, that he had no choice but to turn around one last time.  “You never answered my question.  Why did she say I should be in the room?”

He sighed heavily and shook his head.  “One of the first things you’ve got to learn about police work, Paul, is that until something is proven to be factual, it’s hearsay, and that’s something you cannot repeat to anyone, especially if its real intent is to cause agitation and confusion.”

I watched him walk away and tried to understand the meaning of those ominous last words.

Mom must have already explained the situation to Claudia and Mrs. Wicke, because by the time we got to the Wicke’s house, a bed had already been made for me on the fold-out couch in the living room.  Mom was set-up in the upstairs guestroom down the hall from Claudia and Pat’s rooms, which Mrs. Wicke used as her office.  Claudia’s mom had offered to take it, on the grounds that it was a mess with all of her papers and books, but when Mom refused to displace Mrs. Wicke from her own bed, she finally relented.

Animated and full of questions, Claudia sat with me in the kitchen as I explained everything that had happened that day, carefully leaving out the part where I pass out… and the singing which preceded it.

“Why did she want you in the room with them?”

“It’s only hearsay,” I answered with irritation.  “So he won’t tell me.”

“If she’s not this Tatum girl, then who is she?  Why would she be pretending to be someone who she’s not?”

“And if she is the real deal, why is there a death certificate on file for her?”

“Are you kidding,” Claudia replied.  “Anything can be faked for a price.  The question is why would she need to?”

I considered the answer to that.  What must the life of this woman have been like?  Was it so difficult that she would need to completely cut all ties to her former life and start all over again?

“No wonder your father had the deputies go and fetch you, Paul.”

I glanced up at her.  She was studying me with those piercing crystal balls of hers.  “This is getting a little bizarre.  I need to do some research on this Tatum woman tomorrow.”

I was starting to worry about my father for the first time.  He had made himself a target, and as a result, had put the rest of us in harm’s way.  In addition to the pressure of identifying the killer in time to save the life of the next anonymous victim, all this must have been weighing pretty heavily on him.  The resurrection of his old smoking habit didn’t seem like such a shocking thing anymore.

The drinking, though.  That worried me.

I told her about my epiphany that each victim was a member of a different religion and that Dad had told me that it was the theory that they were currently working from.  She went quiet.  Soon after, I caught her humming the melody of Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water,” and I knew better than to interrupt her.

“But where does the ankh come in?” she finally murmured.

“Or the tarot card?”

“Well, tarot is associated with the occult and divination but not a particular religion and neither is the ankh.  In fact, Egyptologists have never really agreed on where the ankh originally came from.”

“Do Hindus use the ankh for religious practices?”

“No,” she snapped then began nibbling the corner of her lip.

“One thing’s for sure, neither of them have anything to do with their native family religion,” I concluded.  “Sadie Nayar was Hindu and Kalim Al-Sahim was Muslim, and as far as I know, Muslims don’t use tarot cards.”

When her eyes focused again, she leapt forward and pecked me on the mouth.  “I think you may have hit on something!”

I whipped up a batch of chocolate syrup on the stove just to have something to do besides sit under Claudia’s glaring spotlight and answer questions.  We poured it over Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla ice cream and plunked down next to each other on the fold-out bed to watch
The Exorcist
on cable TV.  That’s the only way to watch that movie.  Unedited.

We hadn’t even gotten to the first appearance of Father Merrin, (that iconic scene of the great Max Von Sydow taking that dark lonely walk up to the McNeill house with the eerie light shining down from Regan’s room), when Mom came downstairs and announced that it was time for bed, and what exactly did we think we were doing watching TV in the same bed.

“Watching TV,” I answered.

“Do you want to join us?” Claudia added diplomatically.

“No,
I’m
going to bed, Claudia.”  That was Mom’s I’ve-had-just-about-enough-of-your-smart-mouth tone.  “And you should too.”

Before Claudia could respond and make the situation any worse, I stepped in and told her, “It’s almost over.  This is the best part.”

Mom glanced at the screen.  The demon was mocking Father Karras by speaking with the voice of his deceased mother.  She made a face and turned to Mrs. Wicke, who was marching down the stairs.

“Claudia!  Up!”

“Fine!”  Claudia leaped up with a sound of exasperation and flopped down into the recliner.  “Happy?”

A look passed between Mrs. Wicke and my mother and they went into the kitchen, talking in low voices so that we couldn’t hear.

Claudia couldn’t resist saying as loud as possible: “They’re afraid we’re going to make out to the soundtrack of
The Exorcist
!”

“Yup, I don’t know about you, but projectile vomiting always puts me in that mood,” I murmured under my breath.

Claudia cackled and threw a cushion at me.

I hooked the cushion back at her.  She caught it and whipped it right back at me, then snatched another one from the floor where it had been discarded and leapt at me, attempting to smother me with it.  I promptly wrestled her back down and reversed the maneuver, putting the pillow over her own face.  We struggled like that for a few heated minutes until my face was inches from hers.  We were both red-faced and breathing heavy from the exertion.  Claudia’s eyes were wide with mixed emotion as I hovered over her, my lips so close to her own.

She twisted out of my grip and gave me one last playful shove to let me know that she wasn’t too upset before retreating to the recliner again.

She sat there, looking clueless.  Maybe she was.  Maybe it was a girl-thing, that circumstances like this could be purely innocent, watching TV at midnight together in a fold-out bed and expecting the fellow next to you to keep his hands to himself, but it sure as hell wasn’t working for me.

Keeping my dark thoughts to myself, I turned my back to her and faced the wall, a classic pouting maneuver that I had mastered as a child of five.

Claudia swung her legs down to the floor and started up the stairs.  “Maybe I should be going to bed now.”

“Fine.”

“Goodnight.”

I shut the TV off and tossed the remote over onto the coffee table.

I heard her footfalls grow more and more distant as she mounted the stairs and drew further and further away from me and then disappeared completely.

After about ten minutes, Mrs. Wicke and Mom said their “good nights,” and disappeared upstairs as well, the usual kiss from Mom conspicuously absent.

I changed into the t-shirt and bottoms I had retrieved from home and lay there in the darkness thinking of the girl that was only a matter of feet away, directly above me, and completely out of my reach.  I couldn’t go up there and staying here was driving me insane.  Right now she was probably changing into the nightgown I had briefly glimpsed the other night in the yard.  Being this close to her wasn’t better than being separated blocks from her.  It was worse.  I glanced at the watch on my wrist and realized that a scant fifteen minutes had gone by since she had left me.  It felt like two hours.

Finally, I gave up on ever getting any sleep that night and turned the TV back on.  When I stirred again, I realized that I must have drifted off because it was two hours later.  I shut the TV off and fell back under.