The Devil in Gray (11 page)

And she lifted her face, and smiled at him. And then her head slowly burst apart like a pumpkin, so that he was lacerated by flying teeth and splattered in blood
.

He had looked up this file so many times before, but it still baffled him and it still hurt. Case number CZS/448/3251, Catherine Meredith Meade, aged twenty-nine years and two months. Right at the top of the report were several color photographs of the crime scene. That familiar bedroom at 318 West Broad Street, with its pale duck-egg walls. The dark blue woven throw, dragged to one side, and the cream-colored pillows that looked as if somebody had splashed a bucket of dark red dye all over them. Cathy's body, on the floor, one leg twisted behind her, her white nightshirt speckled all over.

It had happened at 1:30 on the morning of February 7. Decker had been called out to a suspicious drowning on Brown's Island. While he was away, somebody had entered his apartment either by picking the lock or using a passkey. There was no sign of any forced entry. The perpetrator had gone directly to the bedroom, approached the bed, and fired three soft-nosed slugs that blew Cathy's head to pieces.

Cathy had been all smiles and sunshine. Even her previous boyfriend—although he had been desperately upset to lose her—still adored her. The only possible explanation for the killing had been that somebody had been gunning for Decker, and had mistakenly shot Cathy in the darkness—or else they had shot her to teach him a lesson that he would never forget.

The time that it happened, Decker had been involved in a complicated series of homicide investigations in the Jackson Ward. He had suspected that the murders were connected with a vicious power struggle between two of the ward's most ruthless criminal organizations, the Strutters and the Egun. He had persuaded three witnesses to give material evidence against Queen Aché the leader of the Egun. But when Cathy was killed, Decker had been so grief-stricken that he had been forced to take six months' sick leave, and his witnesses had all contracted irreversible amnesia.

So why were all these thoughts of Cathy coming back to him now? He couldn't understand what they meant—the nightmares, the waking hallucinations, that bizarre business of the fruit-and-chicken face on the chopping board? He scrolled down through the incident report. Maybe he had been reminded of Cathy's death because Cathy's killer had left absolutely no evidence—just like the killer of Alison Maitland and George Drewry. Cathy's killer had even avoided detection on the video monitors in the lobby, in the elevators, and in the corridor right outside their apartment door. No suspects were ever arrested, and the case was still open, though inactive.

Decker was almost ready to leave when Cab came in. “How's it going?” Cab asked him.

Decker smeared his hands down his cheeks. “No place, fast. I think I'm going to call it a night.”

Cab walked around his desk and looked at his computer screen. “You should let that lie. No point in picking your scabs.”

“I don't know. I keep having these weird thoughts about Cathy and I'm wondering if my brain's trying to tell me something. Like, maybe there's some kind of connection between what happened to her and what happened to Alison Maitland and George Drewry.”

Cab laid a hand on his shoulder. “You're a good cop, Martin, but don't start getting all inspirational on me. Don't lose sight of what matters, and that's the evidence.”

“Maybe you're right. It's just that, in this case, I think the most important evidence is that there
is
no evidence.”

Cab turned his head away and let out a violent sneeze. As he was stentoriously blowing his nose, Decker's phone rang. He picked it up and said, “Mackenzie?”

“Hi, Lieutenant. It's Jimmy Freedman, down in the sound lab. Listen, I cleaned up that 911 call from the Maitland case. Thought you might be interested in hearing it.”

“Sure. Give me a couple of minutes.”

From behind his handkerchief, Cab gave him a wave, which indicated that he could go.

Jimmy was furiously chewing gum. “I went through it with Bill Duggan from the phone company. He's the Stephen Hawking of line faults. He even
talks
like Stephen Hawking. He said that Alison Maitland's 911 call was interrupted by an EMP.”

“A what?”

“An EMP—electromagnetic pulse. This induces kilovolt potentials that can burn out integrated circuits, interfere with telephone systems, or randomize computer data.”

“I get it,” Decker said, trying to sound as if he did. “So what causes it, this EMP?”

“Usually a flux compression generator, which is an explosive used to compress a magnetic field.”

“Explosive? Ah, you mean like a bomb?”

“Exactly. They even call them ‘pulse bombs.' They're pretty simple to build if you have a basic knowledge of electronics and demolition. The military have developed even more powerful ones, which use high-power microwaves. They dropped them in Iraq to take out Saddam's communications systems.”

Decker said, “That's very interesting. The only trouble is, there was no explosion that day in the immediate vicinity of the Maitland house. In fact—so far as I know—there was no explosion that day anywhere in the Metro Richmond area.”

“Well, that's right.”

“So what caused this particular EMP, if it wasn't a bomb?”

“Bill was puzzled by that, too. But he reckons that it must have been some kind of natural phenomenon. A sunspot, maybe.”

“So, actually, we're none the wiser?”

Jimmy looked upward for a moment, as if there were an answer printed on the ceiling. Then he looked down again and said, “No, you're quite correct. We're not.”

“You said you managed to clean the tape up. Is it any clearer?”

“Hear it for yourself.”

He hooked on his earphones and flicked a row of switches. Decker heard the first blurt of noise, and then the emergency operator saying, “Emergency? Which service?” This was immediately followed by a deafening crackle, and a man's voice screaming, “Help me! Oh, God, help me!”

Decker looked at Jimmy and Jimmy raised an eyebrow. “You hear that? That sounds distinctly like a fire burning. A bonfire, or brushwood, maybe. Maybe the guy's screaming because he's going to be burned.”

Decker said nothing, but he felt a deep sense of foreboding, as if the floor were slowly creeping away from him, beneath his feet.

“Yes, ambulance—” That was Alison Maitland. “Urgent—bleeding so bad!”

Then more crackling—closer, sharper, and a man's voice calling, “Muster at the road, boys! Muster at the road!”

More crackling, more screaming, and then a heavy crunch like a falling tree. Decker raised his hand and said, “Thanks, Jimmy. That's enough. That's very helpful.”

Jimmy blinked at him in surprise. “You don't want to hear the rest?”

“That's okay. I don't have to.”

“What? It makes some kind of sense?”

“I don't know. Maybe.”

Jimmy stared at him. “Are you
okay
, Lieutenant? You look kind of—”

“Fine, Jimmy. I'm fine. I'm absolutely fine.”

As soon as he opened his apartment door, he became aware of a smoky, perfumed aroma, like incense. He hefted his revolver out of its holster, cocked it, and cautiously pushed the door a little wider. The smell could have been coming from the apartment below, where a young married couple regularly burned incense (they were either potheads or Buddhists, or both). But it seemed too intense for that.

Sliding his back against the wall, he made his way along the corridor to the kitchen. He jabbed his revolver into the open doorway, but the kitchen was empty. He crossed to the other side of the corridor and carried on sliding toward the living area.

There was nobody there, but three sticks of incense were smoldering in a small sand-filled urn that he usually used as an ashtray. And on the wall behind them, in jagged blood-red letters that were over two feet high, somebody had scrawled
SAINT BARBARA
.

Decker slowly approached the lettering and touched it with his fingertips. It was still wet. It had the consistency of blood, but he couldn't be sure that it actually was, and he certainly wasn't going to taste it. He walked crabwise across the living area until he reached his bedroom door. It was about two inches ajar. He stopped, and listened, but all he could hear was the muffled sound of traffic outside, and the burbling of a television in the next apartment.

He took a deep breath and kicked the door wide open. His bedroom appeared to be empty, although he ducked down and checked under the bed, and then threw open his closet doors. Nobody there.

It was then that he heard a trickling sound coming from the bathroom. He edged his way toward the door and pressed his ear against it. It was a small, steady trickle, more like a faucet left running than anybody washing their hands. He carefully grasped the doorknob, and then, when he was ready, he flung the door open.

The bathroom was empty, too, except for his own reflection in the mirror. But the hot faucet hadn't been turned off properly, and the washbasin was streaked with scarlet. It looked as if somebody had quickly rinsed their hands and then left.

But where had this somebody gone? The bathroom window didn't open, apart from a small louvered skylight, and nobody could have passed him on the way in. He dragged back the shower curtain, just to make sure, but there was nobody there, either.

He turned off the faucet, holding it with only two fingers, in case there were fingerprints on it. He put the plug in, too, to prevent any more of the gory-looking contents of the basin from draining away.

He looked at himself in the mirror.
You're not losing it, Martin. You're as sane as everybody else, and you can prove it
. But apart from the incense and the scrawling on the wall, there was an almost palpable sense that somebody had been here, going from room to room, disturbing the air.

He went back to the living area and snuffed out the incense. Then he stood and stared at the lettering.
SAINT BARBARA
. What the hell was the significance of Saint Barbara? Cathy had whispered her name in his nightmare, and now here it was again, in letters that could have been blood.

He searched the room again, prodding his revolver into the drapes, even though he knew that he wouldn't find anybody. Then he locked his front door, fastened the security chain, and holstered his Anaconda. He picked up the phone and dialed directly through to Lieutenant Bryce in forensics.

“Helen?”

“Lieutenant Bryce went home about an hour ago. Can I help?”

“I hope so. This is Lieutenant Martin. Do you have anybody free to take some fluid samples at Nineteenth and Main?”

“What kind of fluid samples?”

“Blood, it looks like.”

“Is this a crime scene?”

“I don't know. To tell you the truth, I have no idea
what
happened here.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He dreamed that he was running through the briars again, barefoot. The fires were much closer now, and he could feel the heat on his back, like an open furnace. Sparks were showering over his head and dropping onto the underbrush up ahead of him, so that he had to fight his way through bushes that were already blazing.

“Muster at the plank road, boys!” somebody was shouting, his voice hoarse with smoke. “Muster at the plank road!”

He kept his left elbow raised to protect his eyes from thorns and branches and to shield his cheek from the heat. A spark settled on his shoulder, eating through his shirt. He swatted it off, but it was still painful, and he could smell scorched cotton and burned skin.

He had a rough idea that the plank road was off to his left, about a quarter of a mile, but the woods in that direction were burning fiercely and he could hear men screaming as they were overtaken by the flames. Instead, he headed off to the right, hoping to be able to circle around the fires and reach the road a little farther up. He tried to hurry, but the underbrush was even thicker here, and he had to leap and scramble like a hare.

What was even more frightening than the approaching fire was the feeling that somebody was catching up with him, hurrying through the thickets as black and fluid as a shadow. And he knew that this somebody was intent on killing him—not angrily, but cold-bloodedly, and gruesomely, inflicting more pain than anybody could imagine.

He quickly turned his head. He could see a silhouette only a few yards behind him. A tall silhouette, with flapping wings. Its coattails were snagged by the briars, but that didn't seem to slow it down at all, and he could hear its boots crackling through the bracken.
Oh, Jesus
. He simply didn't have the strength to jump any farther. His clothes were tangled in the bushes and his hands and feet were ablaze with thorns.

He stopped, gasping, and the silhouette rushed into him, knocking the breath out of him. He found himself in suffocating darkness, in a cage of bones, struggling desperately to get himself free.

“
Can't breathe!
” he screamed. “
Can't breathe!
”

He found Father Thomas in the diocesan garden at the back of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart, his sleeves rolled up, weeding. Father Thomas stood up as he approached, a plump, pink-faced man with a bow wave of white hair.

“Lieutenant Martin! My goodness! It's been quite a while since we saw
you!
”

Decker looked around. “This is some garden, isn't it?” The flower bed that Father Thomas was tending was bursting with cream and yellow roses, and their fragrance was so heady that it was almost erotic.

“We do our best.… I always think that to keep a beautiful garden is like saying a thank-you to God, for granting us such earthly delights.”

Decker had come to the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart at least twice a week in the days after Cathy had been killed. He had knelt for hours inside its cool, echoing interior, under its high gold-relief ceilings, and tightly closed his eyes and prayed that it was still January, and that her murder had never happened.
Oh, God, can't you just wind back the clock?