The Frighteners (17 page)

“There has been a destructive force unleashed on this town such as I have never seen.” Dammers waved a fistful of files as he spoke.

“I know,” Bannister said blankly, looking at nobody in particular. He seemed to have picked up Dammer’s trait of avoiding eye contact, such was the state he was in.

“We have a body count of twenty-six.”

Sheriff Perry raised his eyebrows. “That’s one hell of a bunch of people,” he said. “We get less than that at most Thursday Rotary lunches.”

“You’re a very dangerous man, Mr. Bannister,” Dammers said.

“Wait a minute,” Perry cut in. “You’re not suggesting that Frank is responsible for killing twenty-six people?”

“You’re way out of your depth, Sheriff Perry,” Dammers said. “Please leave.”

“I’ll leave when this local matter is officially declared a federal case,” Perry said. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Dammers, the Constitution of the United States says that rights not specifically granted to Washington are reserved for the states. And that includes the right to investigate murders that don’t involve state lines, federal officials, or the abrogation of someone’s civil rights.”

“You don’t want to butt heads with me, Perry,” Dammers said. “This is bigger than the Constitution of the United States.”

“That’s what Nixon said—before they ran him out of office,” Bannister chimed in.

“Frank Bannister is my prisoner,” Perry insisted.

Red with rage, Dammers reached into his jacket and pulled out his FBI badge. He held it aloft while staring, as was his habit, at the floor.

He said, “By the power invested in me by the president of the United States, I am telling you to get the hell outta this room.”

Perry frowned, but stood and headed for the door. “This isn’t the end of it, Dammers,” he said. “I’ll be talking to the town attorney and will get back to you.”

He left the room, slamming the door behind him. Dammers slid his badge back into his jacket and paced the room.

“Have you ever heard of Nina Kulagina?” he asked.

“On March ten, 1970, Nina Kulagina used her mind power to stop the beat of a frog’s heart. The record of this experiment is in the form of a cardiogram currently held in the files of Professor Genady Sergeyev in Leningrad. As Sergeyev interpreted the cardiogram, the heart seemed to experience a sudden flare-up of electrical activity. The heart imploded, the arteries burst, and all because Nina Kulagina wanted the animal dead.”

Frank slowly looked up at Dammers.

“I don’t kill people,” he said tersely.

“There are many other examples throughout history,” Dammers insisted. “There was a child who could start fires, a psychic who could predict a death to within minutes, an Obeya priest who could cook a fish by talking to it.”

“I’ve always dreamed of having the ability to erase my signature on checks after I’ve cashed them,” Bannister said.

“This is not a joke,” Dammers said.

“Wouldn’t you like the ability to start your car by thinking about it? Telekinesis is fun to think about and the stuff of much legend, but all in all it’s the Clever Hans Effect.”

“Who is Clever Hans?” Dammers asked, suspecting a spy or worse.

“A horse in nineteenth-century Germany whose master honestly believed he could do math by tapping with his hoof. This was not a circus sideshow; it wasn’t a money-making enterprise at all, just pure science. Well, it took them years, but they finally worked it out that Clever Hans was getting unconscious cues from his master. He couldn’t solve the problems when he couldn’t see his master.”

“Get to the point,” Dammers snapped.

“The point is that if you take Madame Kulagina out of her salon, or wherever she operated from, in Leningrad, and put her in Times Square, her mental powers plus a token would get her on the subway. Most parapsychology, paraphysiology, call it what you will, is—and my apologies to Clever Hans—horseshit. What I have encountered—what I encounter every day, even when I don’t want to, is the afterlife, and whole religions have been built around
that.
It isn’t bending spoons, Special Agent Dammers.”

Dammers sighed, then looked Bannister in the eye for a fleeting moment before returning his attention to the checkered pattern on the floor. “You’re a murderer and I won’t let you weasel out of it.”

“Most of the billions of people on this planet believe in an afterlife,” Bannister said. “I simply am in the position to know what it looks like. I see what comes after death, Dammers. I don’t kill people.”

“There’s a part of me that believes that,” Dammers said. “But there’s another part of you, Frank, that’s out of control—your destructive impulse.”

“I have seen a figure in a cape,” Frank insisted. “I have seen it reach into people’s chests and squeeze their hearts.”

“Who was it?”

Frank shook his head.

“Who was it!” Dammers yelled.

“Death,” Frank said quietly.

“Who?”

“Death. The Grim Reaper. The Soul Collector. There are dozens of names.”

Dammer’s face remained impassive. “I can communicate with the other side,” Frank said slowly. “You of all people should appreciate this. I can see spirits. I don’t know why and I don’t always understand it.”

If Bannister expected understanding or even patience, he was to be disappointed. For Dammers snapped, “You think you’re so unique, don’t you, Mr. Bannister? In my business I deal with your type every other week.”

Frank buried his head in his hands. A feeling of hopelessness swept over him.

“This death figure, this Reaper, is nothing more than a homicidal alter ego who satisfies your compulsion to kill,” Dammers continued. “Every time you decide to take somebody out, a fictional death figure suddenly appears and does the job for you.”

“That Freud 101 explanation leaves out the little detail of how I squeeze the life out of people’s hearts without leaving marks on their bodies,” Bannister said into his hands, knowing Dammers wouldn’t care anyway.

“I don’t know
how
you do it . . . yet,” the agent said.

“It’s pointless talking to you,” Frank moaned.

“This Reaper is your rational mind’s way of absolving yourself of guilt. How else could you deal with killing your wife?”

“No!” Frank said, looking up. “I didn’t kill Debra. I couldn’t kill Debra. I adored her.”

“When did you start seeing spirits—after Debra’s death?” Dammers asked.

Frank nodded. “It has something to do with surviving a trauma.”

“You blew her away, Frank.”

“Why would I do that?”

“You had just had an argument with Jacob Platz.”

“And that prompted me to kill the woman I adored? For one thing, Jake loves arguments. He thrives on them. He tries to have at least one good one a day. And if I got so upset after arguing with him, why wouldn’t I kill
him?”

“There’s no predicting the homicidal mind,” Dammers said. “You killed your wife, and that was the catalyst that caused your psyche to collapse.”

“No!” Frank said again, yelling this time.

“Let’s take the case of Ray Lynskey. You have an argument with him—”

“I missed a turn and ran onto his lawn by accident,” Frank said.

“Yes, you seem to have a problem with that. Three hours later he’s dead. And about Magda Ravanski. We know you didn’t like her.”

“No one liked her.”

“But only you killed her. And what about Barry Thompson?”

“Who’s that?”

“The man in the toilet. What did he do to you, Frank? Did he piss on your blue suede shoes?”

Frank had been, for a while, angry and frightened. He saw no way beyond that state. He felt more helpless than at any time since Debra died. What a mess I’ve made of my life, he thought. No money in the bank and only ghosts for friends. He buried his face in his hands again and began to tremble.

“Why are you shaking, Frank?” Dammers asked warily.

Bannister didn’t reply.

“You’re doing it now, aren’t you?”

Frank was too upset to think of something to say, and shaking too much to talk anyway.

“You’re trying to kill me!” Dammers shouted triumphantly. “Well, forget it, Bannister . . . It won’t work.”

With that, Dammers ripped his shirt open, revealing a sheet of dull, beaten metal across his chest. “I’m wearing a lead breastplate!” he gloated.

He slammed the files he had been carrying down on the table.

“We have twenty-six unexplained deaths here,” he shouted. “I think you are linked to every one of them . . . Let’s start talking, Frank.”

Thirteen

L
ucy nosed her car through the old hospital gates, but instead of turning into the Bartletts’ driveway, she parked her car out of sight behind an abandoned service building. Sitting beside her and still invisible to her, Ray said, “Where are you going? I thought you were going to the house. I was married to you, babe. You always had to have the spot closest to the mall entrance. Remember how you’d make me drive around for half an hour to find the closest spot?”

She got out of the car and he followed, slipping through his door with a move that got better each time he practiced it. Carrying her medical bag, Lucy walked around the outbuilding and across a patch where the old pavement was crisscrossed with cracks through which grass and dandelions grew.

“This is some place here. I know some guys who should get the contract to do this driveway. Lucy, honey, you can’t keep shutting me out. I still have a lot to offer.”

She strode up toward the front door of the Bartlett House with Ray tagging along, still trying to sell himself to her.

“Basically, I’m an open, flexible guy . . .”

He had been looking at her, but when they got closer to the front steps, he turned and looked for the first time at the house. When finally he saw it he skidded to a terrified halt.

“Holy shit!” he exclaimed.

For in his emanation eyes, the Bartlett House was dripping, roof to foundation, with ghost blood. This latter is a globular, red luminous mass, which at that moment was oozing from cracks and windows and spreading down over the entire front of the house. To Ray, the Bartlett House resembled a huge, weeping sore.

“Honey, don’t go in there,” he yelled, but Lucy was already halfway up the front steps.

“Death lives in there!” he shouted as she slipped inside the front door.

Lucy did as she was told and waited inside the unlocked front door until her patient came down the stairs. Patricia Bartlett descended slowly and warily, like a deer approaching a watering hole where wolves also drank. Lucy noticed the woman taking special note of the carpet and the wallpaper as she walked, almost as if she expected something to jump out at her. Nothing did.

Still, when she got to where Lucy waited, the woman seemed scared out of her wits.

“Dr. Lynskey?” she said.

“I’m Dr. Lynskey.”

“I’m Patricia Bartlett. I’m go glad you could come. It’s been so long since I’ve had a checkup, and I guess you know I don’t get out much.”

“All I know is that life has been hard for you,” Lucy said.

“You mean you didn’t hear the stories, the gossip?”

“I’m a doctor, Patricia,” Lucy said. “I believe in the science of medicine. I’m here to help you because you were afraid to come to my office. Where can I examine you?”

“Come into the living room,” Patricia said, and led Lucy there.

The Bartlett living room was a veritable museum of Victoriana. Every oddly shaped and overly ornate brass and cut-glass lamp produced during that period seemed to have found a home there. There also were two cuckoo clocks, a grandfather clock, a spinet covered with doilies and dried flowers, a love seat the upholstery of which depicted lovebirds and willow trees, and a couch with lion’s-paw feet and well-worn cushions.

Patricia Bartlett sat on the love seat with her hands folded primly in her lap, looking skittish. Lucy opened her bag and, sitting beside the woman, listened to her heart and lungs and took her blood pressure.

“I’m tired all the time,” Patricia said. “I feel dizzy and not able to concentrate. I can’t even read a book.”

“How long has it been since you had a physical examination?” Lucy asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. Years, I guess.”

“How many? Two or three?”

“No . . . it’s been at least ten.”

“You should have an annual physical,” Lucy said. “Including a mammogram. And a Pap smear every three years. Can’t you get down to the doctor’s office?”

“No. I’m not supposed to go out of the house.”

“Says who?”

“My mother. She knows what’s best for me.”

“Does she? Well, your pressure is one forty over ninety-two. That’s a little high. It could account for some of the dizziness.”

“I . . . I think it has gotten a lot worse since Mother increased my medication,” Patricia said.

“What medication?”

“I take lots of pills.”

“Where do you get these pills if you haven’t been to see a doctor in ten years?” Lucy asked.

“Mother gives them to me?”

“Patricia,” Lucy said, “is your mother a doctor?”

“No. Of course not. She’s just my mother.”

“Let me see the pills your mother gives you,” Lucy said. “Where does she keep them?”

“Upstairs, in her room.” Patricia was beginning to look a bit like a girl who was telling tales out of school.

“Would you take me there?”

“Okay.” Patricia looked around nervously. “But we can’t let mother know you were there. She’d be furious if she knew you were here at all. She doesn’t let anyone in to visit me.”

“My God,” Lucy said. “If you were a child, this kind of treatment would qualify as abuse. You’re a grown woman. Why do you put up with it?”

Sheepishly, Patricia said, “I guess you don’t know about that trouble I had when I was young.”

“With Johnny, yes, I know about it. So what? You were exonerated.”

“What does that mean?”

“The court said you didn’t do anything wrong.”

Patricia smiled; it was a happy-little-girl sort of smile.

“You just hooked up with the wrong guy.” Lucy rolled her eyes and sighed. “It can happen to any girl.”

Looking around her as if she expected her mother to jump out of the shadows at any moment, Patricia Bartlett led Lucy up the stairs to her mother’s room.