The Devil in Gray (14 page)

“I felt like somebody really
shoved
me,” she said, straightening her cap. “Somebody shoved me but there was nobody there.”

“I know,” Decker said. “The same thing happened to all of us.”

“But what was it?”

“We don't know yet. It's some kind of trick. Don't worry, we're on top of it. I'll need to talk to you later, if you could give me your names.”

“
Lieutenant!
” Hicks called out, and Decker could hear the distress in his voice. “Lieutenant, you'd better come take a look at this!”

At that moment, the door to the elevator bank was flung open and two of the hospital security guards came running toward them, followed by three male paramedics and a nurse.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Cab said, “This is getting very unfunny.”

Decker took off his glasses and polished them with his garish red and yellow necktie. “At least we have a clear idea of what we're up against.”

“Oh, you think so? We're up against some kind of invisible guy who can only be seen by a young girl with Down's syndrome? What's clear about that? I can't even give any details to the press.”

“I don't see why not. Maybe there are some other people out there who have the ability to see him. You know, maybe Sandra isn't the only one.”

“You really think I'm going to announce that we're looking for somebody we can't see? You must think I'm desperate for early retirement.”

Decker put his glasses back on and shrugged. “I still think it might help. If what this guy can do is a trick, or some kind of mass hypnosis, then there could be somebody out there who can tell us how it's done. Then again—if he's a genuine supernatural phenomenon, there could be somebody out there who knows how to track him down and do whatever it is you have to do to supernatural phenomena to stop them from disemboweling people.”

“Who? Father Karras?”

Hicks said, “No—I agree with Lieutenant Martin. I think people are pretty open-minded about weird stuff these days. Like, you know, poltergeists and demonic possession and shit.”

Cab dragged out his handkerchief and loudly blew his nose. “I can't do it. The chief will go nuclear. The city manager's daughter went missing a couple of years ago and I called in a psychic detective. And then I made the mistake of mentioning it to Roger Barrett at WRVA.”

“
Kaboom!
” Detective Rudisill remembered, with relish.

“Exactly.
Kaboom
. Can you imagine what the chief would do if I put out a public appeal for hypnotists and mentally challenged children and exorcists? She'd have my balls for her Sunday-best earrings.”

“Okay, Captain,” Decker conceded. “We still have a couple of orthodox lines of inquiry to follow up—like we're looking into the Maitlands' family histories, and Major Drewry's, too.”

Cab said, “All right … see how far you get with your regular inquiries. After that—if you still think we need to involve the media—come back and talk to me first. Don't give me any nasty surprises.”

“I wouldn't dream of it, Captain. But—one more thing. We need to reinstate Sandra Plummer's close protection.”

“All right. I think I can find a way to justify that.”

“Oh—and one more thing. Are you still planning to go to Charlottesville on Tuesday afternoon?”

“Why are you always so interested in my movements, Martin?”

“No particular reason. I just like to know where you are, you know—in case things get exciting.”

Outside in the parking lot, he met Mayzie. It was early evening now, and the sky was golden.

“Hi, Mayzie,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders. “I've been meaning to call you. You're right. We really have to talk.”

Mayzie twisted herself free of him. “I've decided I don't want a baby after all,” she retorted.

“
You've
decided? Don't you think
I
have any say in this?”

“You told me you didn't want to be a father.”

“I know … but I don't know. I'm kind of warming to it. I could take him fishing. I could teach him how to play five-card stud.”

“How do you know we would have a boy?”

“He
must
be a boy. Do I look like the kind of guy who'd have
girls?
”

“Decker, you're a head case. What happened in the men's room … you were like a mad person. I don't want to have children fathered by a mad person.”

“I had a—
thing
, that's all. Kind of, like, a hallucination. Overwork. Not enough sleep. Too much coffee.”

“Decker, you can't change my mind.”

He had reached his car. He caught hold of her arm and stopped her. “Have you been to a clinic yet? Talked about it? I mean the medical implications?”

“Why should I go to a clinic?”

He frowned at her. “You're not going to try and do it yourself, are you?”

“I don't know what you mean.”

“The abortion. It could be really dangerous, doing it yourself.”

“I'm not pregnant, Decker.”

“You mean you lost it?”

Mayzie shook her head. “I'm sorry. I was stupid. I thought it might bring us closer together, if you thought that I was going to have your baby. You don't know what I feel about you, do you? You don't care, either. I see you flirting and sleeping around with any girl you can get your hands on, and that hurts. That really, really hurts.”

Decker lowered his head and ran his hand through his hair. “I'm sorry, Mayzie. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you. I've been hurting so much myself that I—well, I guess I got into the habit of it. I totally forgot that other people have feelings. That
you
have feelings.”

He took hold of her and held her close, but they both knew that their affair was finished. After a while she wiped her eyes with her fingers and attempted a smile.

“He would have been a great little guy,” Decker said. He punched his fists in the air as if he were having a playful fight with a five-year-old. “I would've called him Decker Martin Junior. Have to carry on the great family name.”

Mayzie kissed his cheek and then walked away across the parking lot. Quite unexpectedly, Decker found it difficult to swallow.

He collected Hicks by the front entrance and they drove to 4140 Davis Street, where the Maitland house was cordoned off by yellow police tape wound around the front railings. They let themselves in and walked into the gradually darkening hallway. The floors and walls were still stained with Alison Maitland's blood, and the air was filled with a thick, sweet stench like rotten chicken. Blowflies were crawling up the windows and buzzing around the ceiling, and Hicks had to bat one away from his mouth.

“Jesus,” he spat. “When are they going to clean this place up?”

“When we've found what we're looking for,” Decker said. He went through to the breakfast area and looked around. “I don't know what the hell we're trying to find, but let's try to think backward.”

Hicks covered his nose and his mouth with his hand. “Wish I hadn't eaten those breakfast links this morning. After seeing that poor guy hanging by his guts …”

“I never knew that intestines were so strong, did you?” Decker remarked. He opened the glass doors in the hutch and looked inside. “Then again, when you think about it, you have to boil tripe for hours.”

“For Christ's sake, Lieutenant.”

Decker opened all the kitchen drawers and closed them again. He even peered into the ovens.

“We looked there,” Hicks said, his voice muffled behind his hand. “We looked
everywhere
.”

“I know, sport. And you couldn't find the evidence that you were looking for. But maybe you were looking for the wrong kind of evidence.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well … Mayzie just gave me a hard time, you know? She made me understand how bad I was making her feel … when all the time I was only worried about
me
, and the way I felt. Maybe we ought to be thinking about our perpetrator, and what it was about the Maitlands that annoyed him enough to murder them.”

“Come on, they were two ordinary, harmless people.”

“That's the way
we
see them. But maybe the perpetrator saw them different.”

He went back into the hallway, still looking around. A large oil-painted landscape in a heavy gilt frame was hanging by the front door. He lifted it away from the wall so that he could check behind it.

“Already did that,” Hicks said.

Decker mounted the stairs. Over a dozen paintings were arranged on the wall—views of Richmond and Mechanicsville and Newport News, as well as portraits of smiling children and dogs. There were some photographs, too: sepia pictures of houses and gardens, and group portraits of the Maitland family in the nineteenth century, all in their frock coats and stovepipe hats and crinolines.

Decker reached a group portrait on the turn of the stairs. He examined it very closely, and then he unhooked it and took it down from the wall. “Look at this,” he told Hicks. “First Army Corps at Richard's Shop on Catharpin Road, May fifth, 1864, Major General M.L. Maitland commanding.”

He took the picture up to the landing and switched on the light so that he could see it more clearly. It showed about twenty-five Confederate officers and men, stiffly posed on a plank road, with a wooden store in the background and overhanging trees. Two of the officers were holding horses, one of which had moved while the photograph was being taken, so that it appeared blurred and ghostly. One of the officers had moved, too: a tall man who was standing a little apart from the others on the right-hand side, at the back of the group. Unlike the others, who were dressed in tunics, he wore a greatcoat. He also wore a slouch hat, which appeared to have a black and ragged cloth knotted around it. Decker could see that he was heavily bearded, but because he had turned his head away during the exposure, it looked as if his face had melted.

“Jerry Maitland told me that Sandra's drawing of the So-Scary Man reminded him of somebody, but he couldn't think who. But look at this guy … what do you think?”

Hicks frowned at the photograph with his hand still clamped over his nose and his mouth. “I see what you mean. But this picture was taken over 140 years ago.”

“Of course it was. I'm not suggesting that any of these people are still alive. But something lives on, doesn't it? The spirit of the Old South.”

“I don't follow.”

“Maybe the So-Scary Man has been dressing up as an officer in the First Army Corps and killing people who were connected with the Civil War in some way.”

“Why would he do that?”

“How the hell should I know? But it's possible that he's deluded himself into believing that he
is
an officer in the First Army Corps. Some of these Civil War nuts—well, they're nuts. Look at Billy Joe Bennett. I was talking to him once and he was getting all worked up about different sorts of frogs.”

“Frogs?”

“No, I didn't know either. Frogs are those loops they use to hang their bayonets from their belts. I mean, we're talking about
obsession
here. These people dress up in uniform and they stage mock battles, with carbines and everything. They trade cap badges and medals and cooking pots and all kinds of junk. We're only talking about one step away from full-blown lunacy.”

“Well … I guess you could have something there. After all, George Drewry was an army man.
He
might have had ancestors in the Civil War, too. But what about
Alison
Maitland?”

“Let's see if we can check her family tree, too. Meanwhile, let's get this photograph back to the lab. I want it blown up and enhanced. And let's put a couple of guys on the Internet … let's see if they can log on to any Civil War Web sites and chat rooms. Maybe they can come up with some kind of pattern of behavior, or even some names.”

They searched the rest of the house, but after an hour Decker concluded that they weren't going to find anything else of any interest. He stood in the Maitlands' bedroom while the last light of the day gradually faded, and thought that there was nothing so sad as a once-happy house where people had been violently killed. Even Alison Maitland's pink satin nightdress was still there, neatly folded on her pillow.

“Come on, Hicks,” he said. “Only ghosts here now.”

They went out and closed the front door behind them. Hicks stood on the porch, held onto the railings, and took in three deep breaths. “That smell … I don't think I'll ever get used to it.”

Decker slapped him on the back. “The day you get used to it is the day you're ready to quit.”

On the way home, Decker called in to see Eunice and Sandra Plummer. They lived downtown on Twenty-seventh Street, at the top of a shabby old brown-brick apartment block that was scheduled for redevelopment. Inside the lobby the building smelled strongly of wax polish and dead flowers. The elevator clanked and rattled like a medieval instrument of torture.

Eunice let him in. “Thank you for stopping by, Lieutenant,” she said, tightly, although it was clear that she wasn't very pleased to see him. “Sandra's having her supper right now.”

She led him through to the living room, which was crowded with antique furniture. The mustard-colored wallpaper was fading, and the rugs were worn through to the strings, but the apartment had high ceilings and original cast-iron fireplaces and there was a view over the neighboring rooftops toward the sparkling lights along the waterfront. The window was ajar so that Decker could hear the traffic and the chugging of a tugboat.

Sandra was in the kitchen in a pink robe and slippers, eating cereal. Decker gave her a finger wave through the open door and she waved back at him and flushed in embarrassment.