Love Is in the Air (10 page)

Nothing at all. Sal hung her head, defeated. There would never be the chance to put Maria’s spirit to rest.

Forever, she would carry a sense of…

What was on the screen? At the bottom of the page, tiny blue letters shimmered beneath the autopsy reports, asking if she would like to “map it.”

If Sal wasn’t mistaken, ME reports didn’t usually have that feature.

Biting her lip, she moved the mouse over the link. Her rational mind told her it was impossible that her laptop wanted to help her find Maria’s killer. However, if she could accept the beast, in all his horrible glory, her computer’s sentience really wasn’t that hard to swallow.

With a wince, Sal clicked the mouse. Not only did her laptop map the deaths, but with unnatural swiftness it marked each murder site in bright red.

The points formed a spiral. Sal had seen the pattern before. Back in Biology 101. A predator circling its prey. The beast zeroed in on Golden Gate Park.

No wonder the deaths didn’t make any epidemiological sense. It wasn’t a tiny virus doing the killing, but a beast. A creature that coveted something within the park. But what could it need there? She didn’t think the animal cared much for a couple of miles of rollerblading paths, world-class museums, and free outdoor concerts.

With a few keystrokes, Sal brought up the park’s history. Was it a forgotten battleground? What horrible event drew the beast to it?

Unfortunately, the park’s founding and early years were pretty boring. Yes, transforming acres and acres of sandy wasteland into a lush urban playground was a technical feat that would be admirable even now, but not exactly the stuff of dangerous legends.

Where was the blood and horror?

Maybe the beast’s interest was more current than that? Sal scanned the Park’s stats—the number of Pan Handle pickup basketball games, the California Academy of Sciences’ renovation, and the fact that Stow Lake had been reopened to boaters. All of which, as a frequent visitor to the park, she already knew. No, she was going to have to dig deeper.

But wait…

CHAPTER 29

Sal scrolled back up to the list of the Park’s employees. Rodrick Hernandez, Head Groundskeeper. Where did she know that name from? Hadn’t she just read it?

Flipping through the autopsy reports, Sal found the connection. Poor Rodrick was the second-to-last victim. That couldn’t be a coincidence. If they weren’t random, then it meant that there was some purpose behind their selection. Which meant that all of her assumptions had been wrong. She had taken it for granted that the body count had piled up from people in the wrong place at the wrong time, like Maria. What if the beast had not only purpose, but intent as well?

Quickly, she Googled the rest of the names. Sure enough, over half of them were connected to the park. From the first death, a Park tour guide, to the latest victim, who ran the Golden Gate Treasure Hunt, each had become more and more intimately involved with the Park.

Especially this last, a Gregory Hutchinson, or as he preferred, “Hutch the Dutch.” He ran a society, over two thousand members strong, that searched for Golden Gate Park’s lost legacy, its statuary.

Sal studied the Hunt’s website. Golden Gate Park’s patriarchal first superintendent, John McLaren, didn’t feel that man-made art had any place in a natural area. Unfortunately, the City’s elite decided that one very public way to display their Gold Rush wealth was to donate fine art, most of them being sculptures, to the Park. The City Commission, fearful if they declined the gifts they would anger the very citizens that they needed to fund their salaries, just couldn’t say no.

This left the old Scotsman with a quandary that he eloquently solved.

Instead of “throwing” the art out, he elected to “plant” it out. Sure, he would place the donated statues in the park, but then using heavy foliage, McLaren simply overgrew the sometimes massive sculptures, returning them to the earth from which they arose.

To date, the Society had recovered over two hundred pieces of art, but there were still another fifty or so unaccounted for.

While the subject might be fascinating under other circumstances, Sal became frustrated. What in the hell did the beast need with some old marble? Nearly to the end of the document, she found it. Gregory’s last entry in the Treasure Hunt’s blog.

“Greetings, fellow adventurers! It is my proud pleasure to inform you that I am confident that at long last I have determined the grid location of the infamous Emanuel Church murder weapon. Still encrusted with the dead girls’ blood, the small statue of the Archangel Michael was buried by McLaren himself, deep in the park. This weekend I plan to finally unearth this treasure and bring it to light! Keep on digging!—Greg.”

A statue used to bludgeon someone to death, now Sal could see how the beast might be interested in that. With nimble fingers, she brought up a search on the Emanuel Baptist Church murders. The deaths were the work of San Francisco’s purported first serial killer. A medical student, Theo Durrant, seduced, then beat to death, two young churchwomen.

The hideous crime had brought turn-of-the-century San Francisco to a halt. And to have this act against nature occur in a church? The press was sensational enough that it would have given Court TV a run for its money. Even though the murder weapon was never discovered, it only took the jury five minutes to convict Theo and sentence him to death by hanging.

How did the sculpture end up at the Park, then? Following several more links, she found the answer. After the church’s patronage steadily declined after the murders, the Archdiocese closed the sanctuary and sold the property. During the church’s demolition, a workman found the bloodstained statue crammed between two joists.

Now the church had a problem. With Theo long dead, the police had no use for the object, and how could the Archdiocese move the religious icon to another church, so tainted? And destroying it? That was out of the question. Donating the foul icon to the park became the perfect solution.

But where did McLaren bury the statue? She went back to the Treasure Hunters’ site. They usually tracked the lost art by the date of donation and the schedule of plantings. It seemed that McLaren tried to bring more and more complexity to the Park’s ecosystem by constantly introducing new foliage to see what worked best in the sandy soil.

Therefore, Greg and his fellow hunters had focused their search to the areas of the Park in 1916 that were planted with fast-growing species. The technique had proven extremely accurate and accounted for them locating over two hundred other items. However, this time they came up empty. Until this last entry, which implied that Greg had found a new method.

Leaning back, Sal stared at the screen. She might have discovered
what
the beast was after, but she needed to know the
where.

She clicked back to the picture of Mr. McLaren. A stocky immigrant from Scotland, he looked like he had just gotten off the boat from his homeland. Tweed jacket and cap, with a tartan vest, the Park supervisor seemed the pragmatic sort. Then why hadn’t he followed his usual pattern and buried the statue under the fastest-growing foliage?

A smile spread as Sal zoomed in on the highlander’s walking stick. The handle sported a meticulously carved Uriusg, a half-man, half-goat creature. Sal recognized it, since the Welsh equivalent were the Bendith, fickle fairies who could bless crops or blight your fields. Her father had told her bedtime fables of how you either made peace with their folk, or suffered the consequences. The Uriusg were the same, only they inhabited forests rather than meadows.

So McLaren not only carried the infamous Scottish pragmatism with him on his journey to the new land, but he brought his people’s superstitions as well. If he thought the statue to be evil, he might turn to his folklore to counteract its effect. Rapidly, Sal researched Scottish plants and their mythical properties.

The Bourtree popped out at her. It was a type of elderberry that reportedly had great protective powers to banish evil. McLaren couldn’t have wished for a better omen.

She went back to the Park’s exhaustive horticultural index. There, on page seventy-eight, she found the entry. Plant: Bourtree. Quantity: one. Quadrant: 16-A49.

Flipping to the Park’s detailed map, she found a little cross marking where it had been planted.

Sal knew the statue’s final resting place.

Though the real question became, did the beast?

CHAPTER 30

Sal crept across the sprawling greenbelt that surrounded the Stow Lake Boathouse. Mist clung to her and somehow seeped through three layers of clothes. The fog moved in thick swirls in a slow, sensual ritual, as if it sought to seduce the ground beneath it.

At times it was so thick that the world became nothing more than a gray canvas. When the fog did thin, the full moon overhead cast a silvery light that nearly matched an overcast day. She used these sparse moments to check her footing. The dewy grass was slick, and her cross-trainers weren’t meant for nighttime stealth.

Damp and scared, her impulsive plan to warn Tyr of the beast’s plan felt foolhardy. In her urgency to intercept Tyr and relay all that she had learned, Sal had forgotten the vastness of the Park, how junglelike it became after dark. Forget about the beast, there were real muggers here, just waiting to prey on the lone jogger.

Yet here she was, sneaking into the Park, angling toward the boathouse, the only structure even close to the bourtree. Ever since parking Richard’s SUV on Fulton Avenue, her bold plan felt more and more ludicrous. How could she think to outwit the beast and his hunter?

Heady with the thrill of deciphering the beast’s plan, she had snuck into the closet, grabbed Richard’s hiking pack, and then taken the SUV keys while he slept. She left a note blaming her unwritten charts for her absence, in case he awoke. Which Sal hoped he didn’t, since she wasn’t quite sure how she would explain the grass stains and soaked sweater.

Slowing, she approached the boathouse. It was mainly used to store paddleboats, a traditional San Franciscan family pastime. During the summer, if you wanted to hear the excited squeal of children and the corresponding laughter of parents, you came to Stow Lake. Now there was only the hush of the swirling fog, sending out its tendrils between her legs, seeming a thick carpet before her, only to disperse with each footfall.

She tried the boathouse’s side door. Locked. She tested a window.

Locked as well. The only cover left was a breezeway protecting a bunch of stacked barrels. Sal shimmied between them, holding her breath at the crinkle of the plastic tarp.

Sal stopped abruptly, heart pounding in her ears, trying to wish the sound away. Had anyone, make that anything, heard her? It took a few heartbeats for her to compose herself and tackle the tarp again. After several more panicked starts and stops, she was finally hidden. Tugging back a tiny corner of the tarp, Sal looked to the west, to the bourtree.

She couldn’t make out the individual tree amongst the oaken forest that spread out before her, but she had memorized its location from the Park’s map. She had even used Richard’s electronic compass to confirm her calculations.

The elder tree with its gruesome secret was located over that rise and deep within a grove of century-old oaks. Had she been braver she might have followed the compass out into that woods to see for herself, but Sal remembered her panic last night in the burgundy hallway. The fear that knocked her knees together. Even thinking about the beast’s growl made her lips quiver. No, the boathouse would do just fine.

That was when she heard a low, warning growl. Her body flattened against the boathouse’s wall. Sal could feel the tongue-and-groove structure against her back. The rough, unfinished wood pushed through her sweater. If only she could will herself through the barrier.

For the beast approached.

CHAPTER 31

It had never occurred to Sal that the beast would still be in the vicinity. For some reason, she had assumed it would already be acres away, deep within the oaken forest, hunting its prize. But she could hear him.

And feel him, for his guttural language spoke directly to her belly. It entangled her intestines, knotting them until she felt ready to burst. Despite the fact she couldn’t see the beast yet, the gray, neutral fog had taken on a sickly red pall. The beast neared, step- by-step, closer to her hiding place.

Sal tried to hold her breath, but fought a losing battle. An exhale and sharp inhale brought it another step closer. The beast’s path led right past the boathouse. She had no illusions that the tarp could keep her hidden from him. He was a beast after all, on a hunt, only now she would become his prey. A little snack before he claimed his prize.

Ever so carefully, Sal tried to back away, putting the boathouse between her and the beast, when a hand wrapped around her neck.

“Silence,” Tyr hissed.

She might hate the man’s edicts, but Sal felt glad that her breath no longer rattled like a reed in the wind. She also appreciated that the crackle of the plastic had vanished, leaving only the quiet murmuring of the lake. Sal knew she couldn’t speak, but what else would she say besides “thank you”?

The red glow grew until it filled her vision, then Tyr shifted his weight, blocking her view. No, he wasn’t blocking her view, but the beast’s. His wide frame all but concealed her. Their bodies crushed together as his hand rested up her neck. Their rib cages moved as one.

Sal wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that she could hear the beast’s movements so near, yet not see him. The creature drew so close that she could feel his breath washing over them in hot waves. Then the beast paused, sniffing at the air. Only inches away. Those claws surely ready to strike them down. To let their blood.

Could Tyr’s Praxis really keep them safe?

Her heart raced, yet there was no external evidence of her panic.

A moist footfall. Red light bathed the barrels. How could the beast not see them?

Tyr pulled her even closer, pressing her cheek against his chest. Sal didn’t resist being swallowed by his presence. The leather, sweat, and musk were now hers as well. His hand cradled her head, seeking to protect her, but what good would it really do if the beast attacked?