The Messenger: A Novel (20 page)

T
yler stood at the bedside of Mrs. Mary Cleeves, who was about to die in Olive View Hospital, in Sylmar. He had helped her communicate with her daughter, who stood on the other side of the bed, weeping. But Mrs. Cleeves’s next words were for Tyler.

You’re troubled, aren’t you?

Is Adrian back?
he asked.

You already know the answer to that question.

What does he want?

You know the answer to that, too.
She paused, then said,
It’s so difficult to make decisions when one’s loved ones are in danger, isn’t it?

Amanda’s in danger?

Everyone who lives is in danger, Tyler Hawthorne. Even you.

Wait! What danger is she in?

I think you already know. Here’s something that will help you: Take good care of that dog. Now, I’ve got to be going. Thank you for helping me and all the others.

She died. Her daughter began to cry harder.

Would it be too much to ask,
Tyler raged silently,
to allow one of these people to give me a complete message?

Silence answered him.

He left the hospital, greeted Shade warmly, and bestowed praise and attention on him. He let him out of the van on a leash—an unnecessary device in Shade’s case, one Tyler used only to prevent legal problems, and to provide some comfort to people who feared large, black, rather ferocious-looking dogs. Near the hospital, Shade briefly took an interest in an area that Tyler knew had once been the site of a tuberculosis sanitarium.

They got into the van, and Tyler called the house. Alex answered and said that Amanda had been in the library most of the day. “Want me to transfer the call to her there?”

“No, I don’t want to disturb her,” he said. “Just…”

“I’m keeping an eye on things, Tyler. I won’t let you down.”

“I know. You’ve done a remarkable job all the way around—and under difficult conditions.”

“Not at all. You’d be surprised by how peaceful it is around here this afternoon. Especially now that Rebecca’s out on her own. Ron and Brad keep making up rude nicknames for each other, but that’s all by way of male bonding.”

“You’re very understanding.”

“Me? I grew up as a tough guy’s only child. One-hundred-percent tomboy.”

“I have a feeling that Ron would say, ‘Not quite one hundred percent.’”

She was still laughing when they ended the call.

He drove Shade to the corner of Bledsoe and Foothill, where a cemetery dating from the 1870s stood. They walked around the outside fence for a while, but again Shade seemed only mildly interested. He gave Tyler a look, one that seemed to say, “Are we done here?”

“All right, but I’m just trying to follow orders. ‘Take good care of that dog.’ Not that I find the duty unpleasant, mind you. And I’m sorry if I’ve been distracted lately.”

Shade looked off at the horizon, avoiding Tyler’s gaze. Nearly two centuries in the dog’s company led Tyler to interpret this as a signal of disappointment or disapproval.

“Forgive me, I’m just a stupid human.”

Shade looked at him and wagged his tail.

“You really don’t need to agree so readily to that.”

Shade wagged his tail harder, then romped over to the van.

“Home it is, then,” Tyler said.

As they got into the vehicle, Tyler asked, “Should I tell her?”

Shade gave a sharp bark.

“Easy for you to say. I don’t know how to begin to talk to her about this.”

Shade stared at him.

“All right, all right. I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it, just that it would be difficult.”

Tyler found Amanda in the library, perched on a rolling shelf ladder, removing a slender volume from one of the upper rows of books. A stack of some of his oldest books was piled on a table. Shade’s reaction when they entered the room told him the ghosts were present, apparently hovering in midair somewhere behind her.

Amanda looked down when she heard him enter and smiled, her pleasure in seeing him written plainly on her face. This was, he thought, part of what attracted him to her—she did not hide her feelings from him.

All the turmoil he had been caught up in over the last week eased for the moment. He stood just inside the doorway, watching her, savoring his own sense of happiness and well-being. When was the last time he had felt anything close to it?

She was glad he was home, and he was equally glad to be here with her. A simple thing, he supposed, but a pleasure he had not shared with another person before Amanda had come into his life.

“Sorry I was gone so long,” he said. “What are you doing?”

“Research, in my limited way.” She made a face and began her descent. “I’m not sure it could even be called
researching
.” She sat at the table and gestured to him to take the chair next to her. “I can’t even
identify the languages half of these books are written in. But the pictures in them make me think the ghosts were right about them.”

“Back up a moment—researching what?” he asked.

“Dogs. Cemetery dogs. I asked the ghosts for help. They’re really excited about this one,” she said, holding up the book she had just retrieved. “It took me a while to figure out that they wanted me to go up the ladder.”

“I’m sure Shade must be flattered that you’re going to all this effort.”

“Oh, well—forgive me, Shade, but I was trying to see if there was something about the new dog.”

He froze. “New dog?”

“Yes! The one that’s been coming around my house.”

He felt himself pale.

“Tyler? What’s wrong?”

“You’ve seen the dog? It looks like Shade?”

“Could be his twin. Slightly smaller than he is, I think, but not by much.” She described seeing the two dogs at the same time. “But it ran off into the woods.”

“We have to find it,” he said, coming to his feet. “We should look for it immediately.”

“Tyler—wait. Please, tell me what’s wrong. Do you think Adrian wants that dog?”

“That’s just one of my fears. But yes—it’s possible he knows there is another cemetery dog in the area, and if he does, he will definitely try to make it his own.”

He started for the door, but Shade suddenly blocked his way.

“Shade, what is it?”

“Um…the ghosts keep pointing toward the books,” Amanda said.

Shade wagged his tail.

“Now?” he asked. “Under the circumstances, don’t you think books can wait?”

Shade stared at him.

“All right, all right.” He went back to the table.

Amanda handed him the book from the upper shelf. “Do you know what this language is?”

He sat beside her and looked at the text. “I think it may be Euskara.”

“Of course. I should have recognized it right away. What the hell is Euskara?”

“Basque. Linguistically unique—it doesn’t seem to be related to any other language.”

“Do you read it?”

“No.”

“Oh. But you told me about being able to read texts to break the curse on the ring…”

“Let’s hope that works again. Perhaps it depends on the book rather than the reader,” he said, slowly turning its pages.

“Magic books, eh? Well, why not? This one is amazing—I glanced at the illustrations. The book is full of beautiful woodcuts. I could swear some of them are pictures of Shade.”

“I think that’s why I bought it. I admit I haven’t looked through it since then, though.”

“Do you have a Basque dictionary?”

“Sorry, no.”

“Basque country is near the border of Spain and France, right?”

“Yes, although the Basque have been scattered across the world.”

“I just wondered—well, for a couple of reasons. Alex mentioned Navarre as one of the places Eduardo visited.”

“Right—and she mentioned that he had stayed there a little longer than elsewhere.” He looked at the book with new interest.

“I also wondered about the book—because it seems as if it was published privately, by someone in Los Angeles.”

He glanced at the title page. “Yes. But that’s not so strange. There have been Basque enclaves in Southern California for many years. In Los Angeles, Orange County, Bakersfield, and other places. Similar to hundreds of thousands of other people, lots of Basque men came to California during the gold rush.”

“So they were miners?”

“Some were, but many then turned to raising sheep and cattle—they
fed the miners. You could usually make more money selling supplies to the miners than being one.”

“Were you a miner or a supplier?”

He smiled. “I tried both, but I spent most of my time in the West as a doctor.”

“A doctor!”

“Don’t look so impressed. I wouldn’t try my hand at it now. When I first came to America, the requirements for a medical education were quite different from what they are today. Then, it just took a few months of study and an apprenticeship. I had decided on the profession even before I immigrated.”

“I suppose a doctor could move around a lot?”

“Yes. And I was often called to the bedsides of the dying.”

“This was before anesthesia, right?”

“And so much more. I tried to help my patients as much as possible, but when I think back…” He shuddered. “Let’s just say things have come a long way since then.”

“Something else to be thankful for.”

He tried to let go of his anxieties about her, about the new dog, about the ghosts, tried to open his mind to whatever the pages might offer. Shade insisted he stay here—why? Because of Amanda, the ghosts? No, he told himself, feeling worry return—relax, let go.

Shade moved beneath the table and laid his head on Tyler’s feet. The ghosts were gone, then. As he studied the pages, he realized Amanda was right—the animal in the prints looked a great deal like Shade.

A familiar sensation came over him, and he began to understand the sense, if not the word-by-word meaning of the text. “This seems to be presented as a folktale. It’s about a ghost dog known as ‘Wraith’ that was seen in local cemeteries. There were many indications that the dog was a ghost. No one could get close to it. Its black coat allowed it to disappear into darkness. No one knew who fed or cared for it, or where it lived during the day. But at night, it was known to protect graves from any who would try to rob or vandalize them. It was thought to have a special friendship with the dead. Once or twice it was seen in a home or
a church. Some said that its appearance outside a cemetery presaged a death.”

“I knew it was about a dog like Shade! I mean, they obviously made some stuff up, but it’s a dog like him, isn’t it?”

Shade got up and sniffed at the book.

“Well, Shade, did you ever know this Wraith?” Tyler asked.

Shade wagged his tail.

“I guess we needed to know this other dog’s name,” Tyler said, then frowned. “Which can only mean there’s no human, no Messenger available, to introduce us to it—it’s without a companion.”

“I wonder what became of that person?”

“Hard to say. All I know right now is that Adrian wants that dog.”

“And he also wants that ring back?” she asked.

“Yes, without a doubt. Given what Brad said about him, I suspect Adrian’s not yet mobile. He would have no need of these henchmen, and he wouldn’t be hiding in a foul-smelling basement.”

“So the dog isn’t his yet?”

“No. He’d be preening in broad daylight. But very likely he did send Daniel and Evan to look for the ring, and perhaps to search for some of his other former belongings.”

“Former? Will he see it that way?”

“I don’t care. Adrian’s descendants and others who lived on his estate paid a high price to ensure that he couldn’t reclaim those items.”

Amanda paced. “I wish I had known all this when I saw the dog this afternoon.”

Tyler carefully turned a few pages in the book, then took a long look at one of the prints, which showed a woman standing beside the dog. The woman appeared to be slightly disfigured by a mark or scar near one eye. Almost a replica of the scar on Amanda’s brow. He waited, hoping that some part of the accompanying text would become clear to him. It did not.

He turned the page, unsettled. Shade protected him. Was he keeping Amanda from her own protector? Keeping Shade from a companion of his own kind?

“Shade has been watching the woods at night,” he said. “I thought it was because of ghosts—even before you told me about your ghosts, Colby mentioned that the woods were haunted. Now I wonder if the dogs have been trying to get together.”

“But the fence stopped Wraith?”

“If it’s a cemetery dog, fences are no real barrier.”

She shivered, then straightened her shoulders. “Well. Let’s go looking.”

“Are you afraid? Would you rather I looked for it alone?”

“A little, I guess—but I want to come with you. I’m more curious than scared.”

“As you probably know, there’s a gate leading from the fence into the woods. I’ll get a pair of flashlights and we can look around. Whatever we do, we have to make sure Adrian doesn’t get his hands on that dog.”

A
s he drove, Evan complained about Adrian, which was nothing less than what Daniel expected. Still, it added to his depression. He looked out of the passenger-side window, hoping Evan would get the hint and shut up.

He had no real hope of that. Or of anything else, he realized. Even when he had been in prison, he had not felt so trapped. There, at least, he knew he would eventually get out.

As they continued up the now familiar road, he began to think of this woman they were after. What would become of her?

He shook himself, as if to throw off the thought.

Why should he care?

Hadn’t bothered him to beat the crap out of Brad. That rich little snot. This was just another superwealthy useless bitch.

He heard Evan mention the word “gun” and refocused his attention. “What did you say?”

“Brought a gun. Picked it up this afternoon while I was running errands for His Royal Roachness.”

“Are you nuts? You know what he said about guns! They’re too noisy, they’re not subtle enough. You can take a girl without a gun, can’t you?”

“I know Adrian wouldn’t approve, but hell if I’m gonna try to stop that dog with a knife.”

“Guns make noise,” Daniel repeated.

“I’ll risk having to explain a few pops out of a gun if it keeps that dog from setting me on fire.”

Daniel knew Evan well enough now to realize that argument would be useless.

Daniel wondered if a bullet could stop the dog. If the dog came charging after him, he wasn’t so sure he would try to resist meeting Eduardo’s fate. Let the dog come at him. Let it free him.

As Daniel thought this, Evan made the turn up onto the canyon road where the woman lived. In a few miles, they would be near the place where Eduardo had died.

He felt a jolt of fear. Daniel quickly began to murmur a prayer, then stopped as he became aware of what he was doing. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Strange. He hadn’t prayed since he was really little. Where had that come from?

He glanced nervously at Evan to see if he had noticed his reaction, but Evan was still talking about how much he hated the way Adrian looked now.

A Lexus passed them. Evan called the driver a dickhead, but the car was too far ahead by then for the driver to have heard him.

Other cars came down the canyon road. “Lot of traffic,” Daniel said.

“Too many cars. We’ll never pull this off with this many people around. As usual, he’s screwed up the planning. He has no idea what the outside world is really like. We’ll have to wait. If he wasn’t such a control freak…”

Daniel tuned out the complaints and focused on their surroundings. They had previously scouted out most of this road, so when they came to a narrow strip of asphalt marked
PRIVATE DRIVE
, Evan turned down it and stopped just out of sight of the road. Farther down the drive, still nearly hidden from their view by tall eucalyptus and pines, was a darkened house.

Evan parked, lowered the windows, and turned off the engine. He turned off the headlights and the two of them sat listening, watching for any sign of life from the house. It remained silent and still, and no lights
came on. Daniel pulled a map of the area from the glove compartment. They didn’t need it, but if someone should ask what they were doing there, they would claim to be lost, looking for a street in the next canyon over.

After a few minutes, Evan lit a cigarette.

“I thought you quit,” Daniel said.

“I did. Started again today.”

“You know that’ll kill you.”

“I can only hope that’s true, but I doubt it. I’d prefer cancer to whatever Adrian has in mind for us.”

“You think maybe he’s going to try to kill us?”

Evan rolled his eyes. “
Maybe? Try?
I have no doubt that’s exactly what’s going to happen to us.”

“He needs us as his slaves.”

“Does he? Once that creepy-crawly thing has strength in his legs and a little bit of skin on him, we’re goners.” He took a deep draw on his cigarette and stared ahead in moody silence.

Daniel went back to his own thoughts. He could not shake the memory of Eduardo and the dog.