The Vision (21 page)

Just let the killing be done. Did society feel responsible? No. Did the police feel responsible? They sometimes did their jobs, occasionally made an effort to find the killer, but they had as much contempt for victim as for victimizer
_;
and none of them lost sleep over it. So let the killing be done. Forget it, Mary. Maybe she thought she was something special. Was that it? Unconsciously she might think that because of her psychic powers she couldn’t die. Well, she could. Like all the rest of the tender, sweet young girls who thought they, too, would live forever. She would be as vulnerable, as soft against the knife as all the others had been. So she should stop. Go away from this. If she forced the issue, if she pursued the case, she might have to die. She was standing in front of a juggernaut. She was in the path of a force she didn’t understand, a force that drew its greatest strength from the past, from an event that was twenty-four years old.

In the darkness, holding her as she slept, he wept at the thought of life without her.

 
 
Although sunrise was not far away, his flashlight was the only relief from inky blackness. His footsteps were the only sounds in the deserted arcade. He crossed the large main room. In summer it was filled with pinball machines and electronic games. Now the floor was bare, the main room empty. He entered the stairwell above which hung a large sign: THIS WAY TO OBSERVATION DECK.

The enclosed stairwell of the tower of Kimball’s Games and Snacks was narrow, cold, and dirty. It had not yet been repainted for the next season. His flashlight played off yellow-white walls that bore a thousand stains: children’s handprints, streaks of spilled soft drinks, names and messages scrawled in pencil and felt-tip markers.

The wooden steps creaked.

When he reached the walled platform at the top of the winding stairs, he switched off the flashlight. He doubted anyone would be watching at this hour
_;
however, he didn’t want to risk drawing attention to himself.

Dawn was nothing but a thin, lustrous purple line on the eastern horizon, as if a razor had been drawn lightly across the skin of the night.

He stared out at the harbor.

He waited.

In a few minutes, from the corner of his eye, he caught movement in the air. He heard the flutter of wings.

Something roosted in the crossbeams of the peaked roof, rustled for a moment, then was silent.

He stared into the crouching shadows above and trembled with pleasure.

Tonight, he thought. Tonight, the blood again.

He could feel death all around him, a thick and tangible current in the air.

To the east, the wound in the sky grew wider, deeper. Morning oozed into the world.

He yawned and wiped the back of one hand across his mouth. He would have to get back to the hotel soon, get some rest. He hadn’t slept much in the past few days.

Three times within the next ten minutes, the sound of wings came again. On each occasion there was a temporary commotion in the rafters, and each time silence swiftly returned.

Eventually anemic light filtered through congealed masses of storm clouds and gradually painted the harbor, hills, and houses of King’s Point.

He was filled with a deep sense of loss. With light came depression. He functioned best in the blackest hours. Always had. But recently that was increasingly true. He felt at home in the night.

Overhead the highest rafters remained shrouded in shadows. The inside of the roof—a hollow, inverted funnel—was fifteen feet high
_;
and even at noon darkness clung to its upper regions.

Dim as it was, morning had arrived
_;
and now his flashlight wouldn’t be noticed by anyone below. He switched it on and pointed it up into the hollow roof.

This was what he had come to see: bats. A dozen bats or more. Clinging to the wooden rafters. Wings folded tightly around them. Some with eyes shut. Some with open eyes that gleamed iridescently in the beam of light.

The sight exhilarated him.

Tonight, the blood again.

 
 
At nine o’clock that morning Lou called Roger Fullet. “I’m sorry to have to bother you on Christmas.”

“You’re never a bother. Besides, you just saved me from a tedious little chore. The electric train went off the track and all the cars came uncoupled. If I talk to you for a few minutes, I’ll get back to the layout after junior’s got everything put back together.”

“I’ve learned something very interesting about this Berton Mitchell case.”

“Such as?”

“Apparently, Mitchell’s wife and son were murdered.”

“My God, when?”

“Five years after what he did to Mary.”

“You’ve got to be wrong.”

“Did you check to see if there were separate morgue files for the wife and son?”

“No. But even if there are, everything of importance should be duplicated in the Berton Mitchell file.”

“Doesn’t the
Times
make mistakes?”

“We’re loath to admit it. But occasionally things don’t get done right. Who killed the Mitchells?”

“Mary doesn’t know.”

“Nineteen years ago?”

“That’s what she says.”

“It happened here in L.A.?”

“I gather it did. Do me a favor?”

“I’m not working today, Lou.”

“The
Times
doesn’t shut down altogether on holidays. There are people working. Can’t you call in and have someone check this out for me?”

“It’s that important?”

“A matter of life and death.”

“What all do you want to know?”

“Everything about the murders... if they took place.”

“I’ll call you back.”

“How long will it take?”

“Maybe two hours.”

Roger called back in an hour and a half. “There was a separate file on the murders of the wife and son. The story wasn’t cross-filed as it should have been.”

“It’s nice to know even you big city slickers can be wrong.”

“This is really a sick one, Lou.”

“Tell me about it.”

“After Berton Mitchell committed suicide, Virginia Mitchell and her son, Barry Francis Mitchell, rented a small house on the west side of Los Angeles. Judging from the address, I’d say it couldn’t have been more than a mile from the Tanner estate. Nineteen years ago, on October 31, Halloween, at two o’clock in the morning, someone used gasoline to start a fire that nearly burned the place to the ground with the mother and son inside.”

“Fire. That’s the death I fear most.”

“This has ruined my appetite for Christmas dinner.”

“I’m sorry, Roger. I had to know.”

“That’s not the worst of it. Although the bodies were badly burned, the medical examiner was later able to deduce that mother and son were stabbed to death in their sleep before the blaze started.”

“Stabbed...”

“Virginia had been stabbed so often in the throat that she’d been pretty much decapitated.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“The son, Barry... was stabbed in the throat and chest. Then...”

“Then what?”

“His genitals were cut off.”

“There goes my dinner, too.”

“Before the fire burned it out, that place must have looked like a slaughterhouse. What kind of man could do all of that, Lou? What kind of maniac would be so gruesomely thorough?”

“Did they ever solve the case?”

“Never arrested anyone.”

“Did they at least have suspects?”

“Three of them.”

“What were their names?”

“I didn’t bother jotting them down. Each of them had an alibi, and each alibi eventually checked out.”

“So their killer might still be alive and loose. Were the police sure of the bodies?”

“Sure of them in what sense?”

“Identities.”

“I guess they weren’t burned beyond recognition. Besides, the house was occupied by Virginia and her son.”

“The woman’s body was probably Virginia’s. But isn’t it conceivable that the dead man they found was her lover and not her son?”

“They were killed in different bedrooms. Lovers would have been found together. And if Barry was alive, he’d have come forward.”

“Not if he was the killer.”

“It’s not impossible.”

“Nothing’s impossible, but—”

“Barry would have been twenty-one when the house burned that night. Maybe almost twenty-two. Roger, isn’t that a bit old for a boy to be living with his mother?”

“Hell, no. Lou, we didn’t all rush out to grab our piece of the action at sixteen, like you did. I lived with my folks until I was twenty-three. Why are you so anxious to believe Barry’s alive?”

“It would make things easier to understand down here.”

“You’re too good a newsman to try to reshape facts to fit some preconceived notion.”

“Yeah. You’re right. I’ve run into another stone wall.”

“What’s the story with this Mary Bergen? What are you involved in?”

“I’m afraid it’s going to be very messy. I don’t want to talk about it yet.”

“And maybe I don’t want to hear about it either.”

“Go play with your train.”

“Somehow I’m no longer in the mood for play. Take care of yourself, Lou. Be careful. Be damned careful. And... Merry Christmas.”

THEY SAT IN Lou’s living room, listening to music—and waiting for something to happen. Mary couldn’t imagine a grimmer Christmas. She and Max weren’t even able to exchange gifts. The things he had gotten her were at the stores where he’d left them to be wrapped, and as she’d become preoccupied with this case, she’d had no opportunity to go shopping for him.

Her spirits lifted when Alan called at three o’clock to say he was in San Francisco at his friend’s house. He’d tried the number in Bel Air, and the housekeeper had told him to call Lou. He was worried, but she understated the gravity of her situation and calmed him. No sense ruining his Christmas, too. When Alan finally hung up, her spirits sank again
_;
she missed him so much.

Because no one had eaten breakfast or lunch, Lou served an early dinner at five o’clock. Chicken Kiev on a bed of rice. Cylinders of grilled zucchini filled with spinach pate. Tomatoes stuffed with hot cheese, bread crumbs, and peppers. There were baked apples for dessert.

No one was hungry. They picked at their food. Mary didn’t even taste her wine. By six o’clock they were finished.

Over coffee Mary said, “Lou, do you have a Ouija board?”

He put down his cup. “I have one, but I haven’t used it in years.”

“Do you know where it is?”

“The spare bedroom closet, I think.”

“Would you get it while Max and I clear the table?”

“Sure. What are we going to do with it?”

“I’m tired of waiting for the killer to make the next move,” she said. “We’re going to try to force the issue.”

“I’m all for that. But how?”

Max said, “Sometimes, when Mary can’t recall the fine details of a vision, she can prod her memory with a Ouija board. She doesn’t get answers from the spirit world, mind you. The things she wants to know are things she’s forgotten. They’re buried in her subconscious. Not always, but often enough to make it worthwhile when nothing else works, the Ouija board provides her with a pipeline to her subconscious.”

Lou nodded with understanding. “The answers the board gives actually come from Mary.”

“Right,” Max said.

“But I don’t consciously guide the trivet,” she said. “I let it go where it wants to go.”

“Where your subconscious wants it to go,” Max said. “You do influence the trivet with your fingers, but in a way that you’re not aware of.”

“I suppose,” she said.

Lou put a few more drops of cream in his coffee and said, “So the Ouija board acts like a lens.”

“Exactly,” she said. “It focuses my attention, my memory, and my psychic abilities.”

Lou drank his coffee in three long swallows and stood up. “It sure sounds interesting. Anything’s better than sitting around waiting for the ax to fall. I’ll be right back.” He hurried out of the dining room and down the hall toward the spare bedroom.

Max and Mary stacked the dishes and silver-ware in the kitchen sink. She finished wiping off the glossy pine dining table just as Lou returned.

“One Ouija board, as requested,” he said.

Mary went into the living room to fetch her notebook from the sofa where she’d left it with her purse.

Lou said, “Got to clean out that spare bedroom closet one of these days. The board was literally buried in crap.”

“Literally?” Max said, amused.

“Well, it was under at least a hundred issues of
The New York Review of Books.
”

“Ouch,” Max said. “You set me up for that one.”

Lou took a note pad and pencil from the kitchen counter and sat down at the table. He was prepared to record each letter that the Ouija board gave them.

Mary opened the board on one corner of the table. She placed the felt-footed trivet on it.

Max sat down, laced his fingers, and cracked his knuckles.

She opened her spiral-bound notebook to a page filled with her handwriting.

“What’s that?” Lou asked.

“Questions I want to ask it,” Mary said.

She pulled up her chair and sat down at a ninety-degree angle to Max. She put the tips of her fingertips on one side of the plastic triangle. Max put his fingertips on another side of it
_;
his hands were nearly too large for the game.

“Start easy,” Max told her.

She was tense, and that was not good. The trivet wouldn’t move an inch if her touch was too heavy. She took several deep breaths. She tried to make her arms limp. She wanted her fingers to feel independent of her—loose, soft, like rags.

Max wasn’t as nervous as she was. He didn’t appear to need any preparation.