The Ferryman (34 page)

So far, nothing at all.

While it was still light out, he had been able to read the sports page and a film magazine he'd brought with him. Now that it was dark, though, Kindzierski simply sat and stared at the house up the street. The window was down and the night had grown cool. His light jacket was just enough so that he was not cold, and the air felt good on his face, helped keep him awake.

The coffee, though, wasn't helping. He had more than two hours to go before Simmons would arrive to take a shift on surveillance, and he did not want to have to leave his post to piss, so he was nursing the huge mug.

Boredom was the biggest enemy on a surveillance gig. Kindzierski knew that from long experience. A couple of times, on past details, he had actually fallen asleep briefly. Fortunately, both times he had woken up pretty quickly and hadn't missed anything vital, as far as he could tell.

As he sat and watched Bairstow's house, he fought to avoid falling asleep a third time. With the quiet neighborhood and the pleasant weather, though, it was a tough fight. The only thing that saved him was that as soon as it began to get dark, the frequency of cars down Briarwood increased, people coming home from work. Each time a fresh set of headlights lit up his windshield, Kindzierski went on alert, and a bit of adrenaline shot through his system.

But, so far, none of those cars had been Bairstow.

It was his case, and Kindzierski couldn't get the kind of manpower he would have needed to stake out both of the people he wanted to keep an eye on—Bairstow and his girlfriend, Janine Hartschorn—so he had been forced to choose. Instinct made him go with Bairstow. Hartschorn had a stalker, maybe that was true, but twice, someone had supposedly tried to off her boyfriend.

Kindzierski didn't have the first clue as to what was actually going on, but he had a very strong suspicion that at least one if not both of them knew a hell of a lot more than they were letting on. Maybe the Hartschorn woman had a stalker; maybe she didn't. Bairstow could be the guy, might even have trashed his own place, but he sure as hell had not run himself off the road. He hadn't killed Spencer Hahn, either.

At the moment, though, Kindzierski was mainly concerned with only one part of this bizarre tangle of interrelated events, and that was the disappearance of Ruth Vale. He had a pretty good idea Ruth Vale was dead, but if he was wrong about that, he would need to find her soon.

So he sat and sipped at his coffee and tried to keep his eyes open as the cool breeze carried the rich scents of spring into the car.

As it neared seven thirty, the flow of after-work traffic onto Briarwood dropped off to nothing. Despite the cool night, Kindzierski began to feel warm all over, and several times his eyes fluttered to stay open. His head began to bob as he tried to stay awake.

“Shit,” he muttered as he sat up straight.

Though he was trying to quit—and knew it was more likely he would be noticed if he smoked in the car—he pulled a partially crumpled pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and lit up.The nicotine gave him an instant rush and he stretched a bit. After a moment, he turned the key backward in the ignition, not wanting to start the engine but needing at least the temporary company of the radio. He did not want to drain the battery, so he would not leave it on for long. But a few minutes of classic rock would help him clear his head.

As he fiddled with the search buttons, trying to find a station to his liking, headlights washed across the windshield and he could hear the sound of an engine approaching. More than one, actually.

Kindzierski ground the cigarette out in the ashtray and slid down slightly in the seat so he could just see over the dash. Beneath the streetlights, he saw that the first car was the rental Bairstow had been driving. Both vehicles pulled into the teacher's driveway, and then Kindzierski got a good look at the second, a mid-nineties-model SAAB.

Doors opened. Bairstow and Hartschorn got out of the rental, then went around to the trunk where the woman retrieved a small suitcase. The driver of the other car was a petite woman with her blond hair cut short. Though he could not make out her features very well in the dim light from the streetlamps and from that distance, Kindzierski figured from what he could see that it had to be Annette Muscari. Bairstow and Hartschorn had been at her birthday party the night Spencer Hahn had been murdered.

The Muscari woman opened the back door of her SAAB and took out an overnight bag.

Muscari was not alone, either. A tall man in a long black coat emerged from the passenger side of her car. This was new, and Kindzierski narrowed his eyes and cursed under his breath because he could not really make out the man's features. Muscari's boyfriend, maybe.

The man in black opened the rear passenger door and pulled out a small case as well. It was getting stranger by the moment. The women both lived nearby, in the same city even. Unless they were all having some kind of fucked-up sex party, Kindzierski could not imagine why they would all stay overnight at Bairstow's house.

The four walked up to the front steps together. Bairstow pulled out his keys and unlocked the door. As he did, the man in black turned to say something to Hartschorn, and Kindzierski got a better look at him. At his throat, the man wore the white collar of a Roman Catholic priest.

Kindzierski grunted softly in surprise. “Now, what the hell is
that
about?”

 
To Janine, stepping into the foyer of David's house was always a little like stepping back in time. Despite the damage that had recently been done to it, the house was truly beautiful, and her memories of it were comforting. Though it had been violated, even worse than her apartment and Annette's had, the house felt safe to her somehow.

“It's a lovely place, David,” Father Charles said as Annette closed and locked the door behind them.

“Thank you, Father.Though I have to confess, most of the furnishings were picked by my parents years ago. I just sort of keep it up as best I can.”

Father Charles peeked into both of the front parlors, then went to stand by the grand staircase. “You grew up here, I know. But doesn't it ever seem too big for one person? I think I would get lonely in a place as big as this, by myself.”

A twinge of sadness touched Janine and she glanced at David. He gazed back at her and a silent communication passed between them; he had never wanted to be alone in this house. More than anything, he had wanted to marry her. If she had not left him for Spencer, they might have been living here as a family even now, perhaps with children. None of this would have happened. She might never have lost her child.

But there was no blame in their tacit acknowledgment of that hard truth. David was not accusing her of anything. It was simply that they both now wished things had been different.

A small, ironic grin touched his features as he glanced back at the priest. “There have always been ghosts in the house, I guess. But up until now, they've been good company.”

Father Charles did not seem to notice the awkwardness of that response, entranced as he was by his exploration of the house. He wandered off into the kitchen.

“Dibs on the turret room,” Annette announced.

“God, you'll be freezing up there,” Janine said. “It's not
that
warm yet.”

David grabbed both their bags and moved toward the stairs. “Actually, Elf, I'm thinking maybe we should all stay on one floor.The closer the better.”

Janine expected Annette to fire off a volley of innuendo in response, but she said nothing. Her silence was disturbing. They were all afraid. Janine knew that. But she wanted to pretend as best she could that they could face this thing without crumbling. It was important for her to fake it, at least to herself.

 
After David had settled his guests in—Father Charles and Annette in the other bedrooms on the second floor and Janine in with him—they gathered in the dining room. The priest carried a stack of books he had retrieved from the rectory, as well as his small personal phone book. Among the books were Greek histories and mythologies, as well as several comparative theologies and a three-volume set on the belief in an afterlife.

“What are we looking for, exactly? ” Annette asked.

Father Charles paused thoughtfully, his brow furrowed.After a moment he shook his head. “I wish I could narrow it down for you, but, really, anything on Charon. If there's a story or reference to him that indicates a weakness or how someone might avoid traveling across the Styx, that's the kind of thing we want. Even if it sounds ridiculous, it might have a deeper meaning from which we can draw something.”

He stood and watched as they began to pick through the books, and tried not to reveal his own fear and anxiety. More than that, though, he tried to hide from them the awe that he felt at what they were dealing with ... and what it meant.

In some way he was still trying to fully grasp this horror, the vicious creature who had visited erotic dreams upon Janine and had raised revenants from dead souls to torment David. . . . In some way, it proved to him that there was indeed a God.

As a priest, he had always had faith.

But this was more than faith. This was truth. At first he had thought that it made a mockery of his priesthood, made all the Roman Catholic dogma he was supposed to preach into nothing more than a flight of fancy. But while they had driven around, gathering clothing and books, and then driven over to David's house, something else had occurred to him. This meant not that what he had always been taught was bullshit, but that it was completely and totally true. And so was everything else.

What it meant for him, for his vocation as a priest, his calling ... Father Charles could not say.

Let's live through this, and then I'll figure it out,
he thought as he watched them begin to page through the books he had brought.

“I'm going to make those calls I mentioned,” he said. “If I can manage not to come off like a complete lunatic, I hope to learn something.”

All three of them laughed politely, but they were already intent upon their research, driven by their fear. There had to be an answer, a way to escape or destroy this creature. And they knew they had no choice but to find it.The other option was unthinkable.

 
Annette could hardly concentrate on the book in front of her. She kept having to reread paragraphs or even entire pages.The sting of the cuts on her skin was a distraction, but not because of the small pain they gave her. Rather, they were a reminder that created a constant undercurrent, a buzzing in her head like static on the radio, that brought her back to the shower.To Jill.

Not Maggie, but Jill.

She understood what was going on. Theoretically. But in her heart she knew that the woman ... the girl ... whatever this being was that had made love to her and tried to kill her and then transformed itself into water ... she
knew
that Jill felt something for her.That
Maggie
felt something. Charon had ordered her to kill Annette, and Maggie had refused.

In her heart, Annette knew that was true, and it only made the pain worse. She ached more deeply than she had ever imagined possible, not because her love for this woman had been so profound—it hadn't had time to become that—but because of the tragedy of it all. The dead girl's pain, David's pain, and Annette's own. And Janine's as well; she could not forget Janine. No matter what she herself had been through, Annette knew that Janine had suffered most of all.

There in David's dining room, with what remained unbroken of the crystal and china on display in beautiful cabinetry, a dark wooden table that gleamed with polish before them, lights sparkling in the chandelier above, they seemed an entire world away from the terrible events at her apartment. And yet somehow
this,
the normalcy of this room, seemed like the dream to her, and the terror and grief that echoed in her mind seemed like the waking world, the reality that they would be forced to return to all too soon.

The thought made her shudder.

“Hey,” Janine whispered.

Annette looked up to find both of them, her best friends, watching her.

“You doing all right?” David asked gently. “I mean, considering?”

“Considering?” Annette replied with a grim chuckle. “All things considered, I think I'm doing fucking smashing, don't you?”

They all smiled tiredly at the dark humor in her voice. David shook his head, looked at her another moment, and went back to his book. Janine gazed at her a moment longer, and Annette could see the love in her eyes. The warmth of it was almost more than she could bear. There was no use wondering what the world would have been like if things were different, but still, nothing meant more to her than what she saw in Janine's eyes just then.

They had all lost far too much recently, and yet they had survived. She had an idea that the one thing none of them could survive the loss of was each other.

A thought whispered across her mind and she glanced again at David. After a moment, he seemed to feel her gaze on him and looked up.

“Annette?”

“Sorry,” she said. “I was just thinking about Ralph, you know?”

“What about him?”

“Well, he came back for you, didn't he?” Annette said. “I mean, think about it. I know you're hurting, David, with all this shit. But Ralph was dead. Who knows how it happened, but somehow, over there, maybe when he was passing over or whatever ... somehow he knew what was going on.”

“Maybe Charon approached him,” Janine suggested.

Annette nodded.“I'll bet he did. Everyone thought you two hated each other, David. Everyone except Father Charles, that is. So maybe Charon asked him, ‘Hey, Ralph, come help me fuck with David Bairstow and you can hang out on Earth a while longer.' But the thing is, Ralph told him to screw, then found a way to come back as a ghost or phantom or whatever and
warn
you. I've just been thinking that ought to count for something, y'know? All these people are haunting you, but we all have relationships that turn bitter in our lives, we all fuck up, make enemies we never even understand how we made.