The Hell You Say (11 page)
“Grampy”?
“Do they know where you live? Maybe they’ve already found it.”
I didn’t actually believe that. I had trouble with the idea of this vast conspiracy of evil, but I felt the panic vibrate all the way down the line. He covered the mouthpiece and held a quick, ragged discussion with Wanda.
“If they --” His voice cracked. He tried again. “If they’ve found out, we need to know.”
The minute hand of the clock on my desk clicked onto the six. Eleven-thirty. I listened to Angus breathing noisily on the other end. He sounded like he was about to cry.
“How do I get in?” I asked at last.
“There’s a key in the dragon planter on the back porch.”
“Terrific,” I said briefly. “No one will ever think of looking there.”
64 Josh Lanyon
“Are you going to do it?”
“What exactly am I doing? Retrieving a letter that has the location of your secret hideout?”
His voice wavered. “Why are you mad at me?”
“Because you knew --” My voice shook. I cleared my throat and said, “Because you knew about the body in Eaton Canyon. Because you’re involved in a goddamned murder --
and I helped you --”
He slammed the phone down.
I pressed Call Return. The number flashed on the screen. Up north somewhere, judging by the area code. I scribbled the number. Then I called Jake’s cell. It was busy. I pressed pound to leave a message.
“It’s me.” I explained briefly, recited Angus’s phone number. “He asked me to pick something up for him at his place. It’s eleven-thirty now. I should be over there by twelve, if you want to have a look around without a warrant.” I pulled the address out of my Rolodex, read it over the phone, and hung up.
* * * * *
For laughs, I walked to the front and tried the door. It was locked. I decided that was a good sign. I went around to the side gate. It was also locked, fastened by a padlock on the other side of the tall wooden gate.
I weighed alternatives while keeping an eye on the neighbor’s house. The windows next door were dark, so either no one was home, or everyone was in bed. I didn’t fancy getting snagged for burglary by a Citizen’s Watch zealot. I suspected Angus might not stay around long enough to back my story.
It was a reasonably sturdy gate. I decided it could likely take my weight. I grabbed the top board and swung myself up. I balanced briefly, the fence groaning in alarm. I jumped, landing in tall grass and weeds.
That had been easier than expected. I went around the corner of the house. The patio was a cement slab with a metal canopy. There was a selection of withered plants in pots of various sizes. I didn’t need to use my flashlight thanks to the dramatic full moon, and the fact that the dragon planter had been painted in Day-Glo paint. Red eyes glowed eerily from the shadows. I poked around in the dirt and dead twigs, found the key, and opened the sliding glass door.
I stepped inside. The place stank of cigarettes, marijuana, garbage…
The Hell You Say
65
“Hello?”
The sound of my voice was startling in the emptiness of that house. I’d never been anywhere that felt so cold, so devoid of life.
I turned on the nearest lamp.
The room looked shockingly ordinary. No horned goat image painted on the walls, no altar festooned with black candles.
The shag carpet looked like Rice-A-Roni, and there was an assortment of furniture ready for the Goodwill, although, come to think of it, that was probably where Angus had purchased it. The coffee table was littered with music magazines and bills. There were several books on astrology, including a copy of The Devil’s Disciple by Garibaldi.
There was also a copy of The Satanic Bible. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise at the sight of the ominous scarlet pentagram on that stark black cover.
After a moment I shook off my inertia, telling myself not to be an ass. I quickly shuffled through the papers scattered across the coffee table. No letters. I glanced around the room.
Not a single picture on the wall. Now that truly was weird.
I made tracks for the kitchen. It was disorderly, but not dirty, despite the persistent reek of garbage. A phone book lay open on the table. I glanced at the yellow pages: locksmiths. Was that significant?
Next to the fake oak cabinets was a bulletin board with photos of Angus and Wanda --
Wanda in a giant sombrero, her face smeared in whipped cream. Birthday party, California style. There were a couple of postcards, a schedule of classes that neither of them was attending. That was about it.
All the while I searched, the quiet chill of the place gnawed at me. I began to feel like I was being watched. Every time the house creaked -- and sometimes when it didn’t -- I snapped to attention, staring about myself uneasily.
If I hadn’t already told Jake I would be there, I’d have walked out a dozen times. As it was, I’d been inside about eight minutes when I decided I’d had it. I would wait for Jake out front in the Forester. For that matter, I didn’t even know if Jake had got my message. He likely hadn’t. He hadn’t called me back. He was probably home in bed, sound asleep, right now. Which is where I would have been if I had any sense at all.
As I crossed the living room, heading for the glass door, it occurred to me that the sour sick smell that hung over the place like a pall was stronger from the hall that led to the bedrooms.
I stood rooted in the intersection of rooms, my mouth dry with dread.
Thank you and good night, I thought. At the same instant, I realized that I couldn’t walk away. Never mind the ethics of the situation, I’d touched the front door knob, the 66 Josh Lanyon
sliding glass door, the lamp -- and those were the articles I knew for sure would retain fingerprints. The articles I remembered touching.
I could be wrong, I reassured myself. I was often wrong. More and more often, it seemed lately.
But I knew I wasn’t wrong. Not this time. Not about this.
I turned down the hallway. It felt like when you’re trying to run in nightmare. Despite the adrenaline overdrive, my footsteps dragged as I paced the length of the hall. I poked my head around the doorframe.
Moonlight poured from the back window onto the thing sprawled on the bed. White, limp, and streaked with dark: a body.
“No,” I said. “No. No fucking way.” My voice sounded shocked and loud. Way too loud.
Too loud for the room, too loud in my head. I clamped down on it.
Dimly, I made out the giant circle scrawled on the wall above the headboard. Circle with a five-point star, and in the center, a terrible symbol -- the calling card of a high-ranking demon.
The Hell You Say
67
I retreated a step, then a few more, walking backward because -- crazily -- I was afraid to turn my back on the body in the bedroom. I reached the living room without falling over anything. I stood there, white noise filling the space usually needed for thinking.
The glass door slid open behind me. I spun around, blood thundering in my ears. I don’t do surprises well.
Jake slipped inside, got one look at my face, and was across the floor in two strides. His hands closed on my arms. He said close to my ear, “Don’t pass out.”
“I won’t.” I thought I said it aloud, but maybe I was just thinking it. My face seemed to be pressed into his shoulder. I breathed him in. He smelled like the night and like deodorant soap; he smelled alive.
After a few moments he gave me a shake. “Adrien? Come on, baby. Pull yourself together.” He gave me another joggle, this one less patient. “Is it Angus?”
I shook my head.
He put me away from him, moving past. I heard the bedroom light click on. Light spilled down the hallway. I tottered the last steps to the couch, dropped into the sagging cushions, practiced taking long, calm breaths.
While You Were Out, with special guest Charles Manson.
After a couple of minutes, Jake dropped into the chair across from me. I glanced at his face. Nice to know I wasn’t the only one sick with horror.
“I think it might be the girl from the bookstore,” he said.
“Velvet?” I was aghast.
Jake looked confused. “The one you called Kinsey. The blonde.”
Kinsey. Right. Where did I get Velvet from? That was a weird jump.
68 Josh Lanyon
“Who’s Velvet?”
I shook my head.
He was silent. Then he said abruptly, “Did you see the symbols over the bed?”
“Not clearly.”
“Could you handle another look?”
I stared at him.
He explained, “I think they match the carvings in the tree where we found the Zellig kid. I think, but I’m not sure, that they match the stuff painted on your doorstep. Would you be able to tell?”
Why did he have to know right that minute? Why the fuck couldn’t he wait till he looked at the photos himself?
I gave him a long, unfriendly look, forced myself to get up. I walked back to the bedroom.
How had I not instantly recognized that smell for what it was? I swallowed hard.
Jake followed. As feeble as it sounds, the fact that he stood at my shoulder did bolster me. I kept my gaze focused on the wall, not looking at what lay beneath, but Jesus Christ, the thing was written in blood -- her blood.
I reached for the door frame, and he startled me by catching my wrist.
“Try not to touch anything.”
That didn’t register. The fact that he gripped my arm hard enough to leave his own fingerprints didn’t register.
“I think it’s the same.” The voice didn’t sound like mine.
He let me go. I turned, found my way back to the couch. I put my face briefly in my hands, trying to scrub away the picture in my brain. I’ve seen bad things, but that was the worst, by far.
Jake came and stood over me.
“He set you up. You do realize that?”
I lifted my head. Blinked at him. “Huh?”
“Your pet nutcase. Angus.”
“You think Angus killed her?”
“If he didn’t, he sure as hell knows who did. He didn’t accidentally pick tonight to send you over here.”
I tried to remember the details of my conversation with Angus. “He was terrified.”
“That fits.”
The Hell You Say
69
Did it? Maybe it did. Angus knew about the Eaton Canyon murder. I didn’t want to believe he had been involved in that, but it was hard to explain his knowing, yet not being incriminated. Why wouldn’t he have gone to the cops? What excuse was there?
It was over anyway. He had Angus’s phone number. In a matter of hours, Angus would be arrested for murder. At the least, he would be brought back and questioned. Maybe that was just as well, because this had to end.
I became aware that a long silence had fallen between Jake and me. I glanced at him.
“Have you called it in?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know what to do about you.”
“Say again?”
His expression was bleak. “How do we explain your presence here?”
I shrugged tiredly. “Angus asked me to swing by and pick up his mail.” I wondered if Angus would be willing to back that story once he was officially under suspicion for murder.
“And I called you because I knew --”
I got it at last. How did I know of Jake’s interest in the case? How did I happen to have his cell phone number? And why had Jake come sneaking over here at my offer of an unofficial peek into Angus’s home? The answers to these and other obvious questions inferred a personal and intimate acquaintanceship between me and Jake.
He said slowly, as though he were thinking aloud, “It’s reasonable that you could have called me. I could have come to the bookstore following up a lead.”
“What lead?”
“Okay, scratch that. You called me when the kid disappeared. We met during the Slasher investigation, and when this happened you gave me a call. You were concerned about the kid, and I gave you my cell phone number and told you to call me if you heard from him.”
It was fascinating, in a painful and weird way, to watch him try to rationalize away any reason for a personal link between us. To cover the fact that he had been friends -- and occasionally more -- with a gay man.
“Then what?” I asked with a strange detachment. “You came over here and found the…her?”
“Why not?”
“What about my fingerprints?”
“What did you touch?”
70 Josh Lanyon
I told him. He shook his head dismissingly. “It’s hard to lift latent prints from rough surfaces like terra cotta and unfinished wood. Even getting them off a curved surface like a door knob is tricky.”
“They can do it with chemical processing.”
“Yeah.” I spotted the tinker-toy wheels turning. “But I don’t want to risk destroying the perp’s prints. Anyway, your fingerprints aren’t on file, and there’s no reason for you to be printed now.”
He spoke confidently, working it out as he went along. Contemplating him from what seemed like miles away, I felt kind of hollow.
“Is it worth the risk? We’ll have a shitload of trouble trying to explain why we lied, if your story doesn’t hold up.”
His eyes flicked to mine. “Or even seriously interviewed,” he said as though I hadn’t spoken. “There’s a good chance I’ll catch the case. I’m part of the occult-killing task force.”
Oh, good. Promotion ops for Jake.
I planted my hands on my thighs, pushed myself to my feet. “Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out,” I said politely. “Is there any reason for me to hang around?”
He shook his head. I’m not sure my words actually registered.
“Can I leave by the front, or do I need to climb over the back wall?”
“Hang on.” Pulling a hanky out of his pocket, he went to the front door and gingerly opened it, touching the knob as little as possible. Opening the screen door, he stepped out, studied the street, and then turned back to me. “It’s clear.”
