Zigzag (19 page)

From the Dark Ages onward, all sorts of sorcerers and sorceresses joined in the Sabbat, or Witches' Sabbath, to perform black masses and attempt to summon demons and make covenants with Satan. Human life was cheap in those days, and in the centuries that followed; people vanished without much effort to find out what had happened to them, especially when members of the nobility indulged in the black arts—human monsters like the Marquis de Sade, Gilles de Rais, Madame de Montespan.

There didn't seem to be much doubt that devil worship continues to exist in these so-called enlightened times. Communicants, as they were called, were still being drawn into witch cults by the freedom to indulge in forbidden practices under the guise of ritual: sexual orgies, blood sacrifices, the black mass communion of drinking of real blood instead of consecrated wine, reading scripture backward, hanging crucifixes upside down. Crazy shit, as Tamara would have termed it. The communicants were of three general types: those who weren't smart enough to know better, those who got a sick thrill out of sacrilegious ceremony, and those who were addicted to orgies and/or ritual killing. Which had Antanas Vok and his wife been? I wondered.

By the time I quit reading, I was having some second thoughts about cashing Peter Erskine's retainer check and going ahead with the investigation. This case was like nothing in my experience. Grotesque, disturbing. I could still see that damned black host, still feel it unclean in the palm of my hand—a genuine symbol of evil. It was as if it had left a permanent invisible stain. Ridiculous thought, brought on by too much imagination and heightened by my Catholic upbringing, but it lingered nonetheless.

I wrestled with my feelings, and professionalism won. When I make a commitment, I honor it. I kept remembering the palpable tension and fear in Marian Erskine, too—fear for her husband's life, fear of being at the mercy of unknown forces. The one sure way to dispel her superstitious concerns about revenants and the powers of darkness was to prove the threat human by exposing the person or persons behind it.

Still, I had the nagging thought that I'd gotten myself into something I didn't completely understand and that one day, no matter what the outcome, I would come to regret it.

 

6

Tamara had already pulled up some of the information I'd requested when I arrived at the agency the next morning. It was only nine o'clock, so she must have come in early. She looked tired, her dark brown face drawn and the whites of her eyes streaked with faint red lines. Not getting enough sleep. And not eating much or well; she'd lost more weight recently than was good for a young woman with her large-boned body. Overwork, and the second difficult breakup with her cello-playing boyfriend, Horace Fields. But there was nothing I could say or do about it. She was as independent as they come. The only advice from me she'd take to heart was the professional kind, and sometimes only after an argument.

“Not too much on the Voks—wife's name Elza—or the accident that you don't already know,” she told me. “The reporter is a dude named Lenihan, first name Joseph. Only he doesn't and never did work for the
Mercury News
. Freelancer for any newspaper or other publication that'll run one of his creature features.”

“His what?”

“Far-out stuff. You know, weird happenings, unexplained phenomena, that kind of thing.”

“Sort of like Charles Fort.”

“Who?”

Young people today: no sense of history. “Never mind.”

“Well, anyway,” Tamara said, “if he wrote up the hospital revenge incident, none of the mainstream print media would touch it. Might've gotten it into some supermarket sheet, but if so I couldn't find a reference through any of the search engines.”

“Potential legal problem even if real names weren't used.”

“Right. But the good news is that Lenihan also writes a creature-feature blog called ‘Oddments' and he posted a long piece there. You can say pretty much anything you want online if you don't cross the libel line. No names in the piece, but there're enough details to ID what he's writing about. You'll see. I printed it out for you.”

“Good, thanks. Anything else?”

“A little on the Erskines, yeah,” she said. “Still working on the other stuff you asked for. All I've got so far is the name of the hospital—South Bay Memorial.”

“What should I know about the Erskines?”

“Not much that I can see. Marian Erskine's estimated worth is around fifteen mil. Inherited money—her father was an electrical engineer, invented some kind of device that he patented and sold to the aerospace industry for megabucks back in the seventies. She's fifty-one, married and divorced twice before she hooked up with Peter Erskine. He's lasted the longest so far—six years. No children. Longtime member of a group called the International Psychical Research Society; makes an annual four-figure donation to it. Used to be proactive in charity work before her heart attack.”

“Heart attack? When was that?”

“Three months ago. Bad one—she nearly died.”

No wonder she looked as she did, why Erskine was so solicitous and disapproving of her cognac drinking. Alcohol coupled with nervous tension and undue excitement is a potentially lethal combination in a heart patient. But I wondered why neither of them had mentioned the coronary to me. Too painful and too personal a subject, maybe. And irrelevant to the task I was being hired for.

“Peter Erskine,” Tamara said. “Age thirty-six. Born and raised in Los Gatos. No prior marriages. Went to work for a brokerage firm in Silicon Valley straight out of high school, worked his way up to a low-level sales position. Met Marian Erskine at a charity tennis tournament at one of the country clubs down there—he plays and so did she before the heart thing. Not long after they were married, he opened his own business—stockbroker and financial advisor—with her backing. Doesn't seem to've made much of a success at it. Has an office with one employee in Menlo Park.”

“He's a good-looking guy. And she's considerably older and in poor health. How good is the marriage?”

“You mean is he the type to put his balls in other courts?” I winced at that, and she grinned. “Well, I don't know, I didn't do any digging along those lines. But if a young guy's not getting much at home, wouldn't be any surprise if he went out prowling now and then. Real careful like, though. Wouldn't want to lose his meal ticket.”

“Don't be so cynical.”

“Hah,” she said.

I took the thin sheaf of printouts she handed me into my office and sat at my desk to go over them. I skimmed through a couple of brief newspaper accounts of the fatal freeway accident. Erskine's version, that Vok had caused it by inattentive driving, was corroborated by witnesses. Vok had been taken to and had died in South Bay Memorial Hospital, the reason for that destination being twofold: it was relatively close to the scene of the accident and it had a trauma unit.

The background info on the Voks was scanty, evidently all that was available; Tamara is nothing if not thorough. He'd been fifty-two, his wife forty-nine, at the time of their deaths. Both of Lithuanian descent. Antanas (Lithuanian for
Anthony
) Vok had been born in the Baltic state and immigrated to the U.S. with mother and father, now both deceased, at age twelve, and as an adult had become a naturalized citizen; Elza Vok had been born in this country. No children. Next of kin unknown. They'd lived at 1936 Dillard Street #4 in San Jose, where he'd worked as a butcher for one of the medium-sized supermarket chains and she as a cleaning woman. Nothing on their religious beliefs or alleged cult ties, of course. Devotees of witchcraft and black magic don't advertise the fact.

The printout on our clients contained a few more details, such as Peter Erskine's office address and the name of his sole employee, a woman named Melanie Vinson, but none that held my attention. Joseph Lenihan's blog write-up did.

The header on it was “Dead Men Rise Up Never?” The tone of the piece was a curious mix of flip-hip—the kind of wry light touch reporters gave to “silly season” stories back in the day—and serious occult-themed speculation. Lenihan's style, I supposed, for all his blog entries. No names were used, as Tamara had said, just terms such as “accident victim of European descent” and “prominent Peninsula resident.” Antanas Vok's last words to Peter Erskine were quoted verbatim: “I will return from the dead and destroy you as you have destroyed me. You will die a death far more terrible than mine. This I vow in the name of Satan, my lord and master, with whom I have made an eternal covenant.” The passing of the black host was also mentioned in some detail.

Lenihan went on to say that, according to the unnamed “reliable source” he'd gotten this information from, the recipient and his wife were “consumed with terror and immediately fled the room” and that later they had “refused all requests for an interview about the incident.” He then wrote: “Subsequent investigation revealed undeniable evidence that the dead man worshipped the devil and took part in Satanic rituals and blow-your-mind sex orgies.” And finished up with: “Is it possible that a dead dude in league with Lucifer can wreak vengeance on the living? Only time will tell.”

Assuming the Vok quote was accurate, and it probably was since Lenihan also knew about the black host, the “reliable source” had to be somebody who was in the hospital room at the time. The nurse Erskine had mentioned? Or had Lenihan managed to track down the tall, heavyset, stoic party related to or acquainted with the Voks?

The “undeniable evidence” verifying the devil worship was given as “a bone-freezing collection of grimoires, drawings of pentagrams and other black magic symbols, correspondence describing blood sacrifices, and other weird de Sade type stuff.” Some of the titles of the grimoires, or manuals for invoking demons and spirits of the dead, were listed:
Malleus Maleficarum. The Golden Bough. The Book of Eibon. The Grimoire of Pope Honorius.
And two in German, which apparently Vok had been conversant in:
Die Walpurgisnacht im Westphalialeben
and
Den Nederwelt von Renaissanischer Zeit.

How Lenihan knew all this wasn't stated, though there was a sly inference that he'd managed to gain access to the couple's apartment after Vok's death, just long enough to view its contents and take some notes. Whether he'd also appropriated any of the books or other items was an unanswered question. He did say that all of the evidence “mysteriously disappeared shortly afterward,” the inference there being that he'd gone back for a second look and found the apartment cleaned out.

That was all. Anything more I would have to try to pry out of Lenihan himself. If I could get him to talk to me in the first place.

The address Tamara had found for him was in Santa Clara, north of San Jose; she'd also gotten his telephone number. A page of background info told me he was forty years old, unmarried, and—no surprise—a pothead with one arrest for possession, another plus a hand-slap conviction for minor dealing. Writing creature features was apparently an avocation; his main source of income came from repairing computers for college students and others who couldn't afford topline service, work he did from home.

I pulled the desk phone over and tapped out his number. The voice that answered said, “Lenihan's Service, at your service,” in a slow and mellow drawl, as if he might already be a little stoned.

I gave him my name, nothing more, and asked if he'd be home for the next couple of hours. He said, “No plans to go anywhere. Computer problem? I specialize in PCs, but I do Macs, too.”

“We can discuss the problem when I get there. Hour, hour and fifteen minutes okay?”

“Any time. I'll be here.”

 

7

Santa Clara is another upscale South Bay community, not as affluent as Atherton but still a desirable nesting place for what's left of the upper middle class. It's also the new home of what used to be the San Francisco 49ers. I say used to be because many of the homegrown city dwellers like me who loyally supported the team at Kezar and Candlestick for decades were none too happy with the move forty-three miles south to the glitzy new, superexpensive, poorly situated Levi's Stadium—a stadium that could have and should have been built on available city land next to AT&T Park in downtown S.F.

Sure, winning the bid to host the 2016 Super Bowl was a major coup for the organization and a financial boon for San Francisco despite the South Bay location of the game. But that's not enough to mollify me and many of the other faithful in the city and the North Bay. If anything, it makes the move seem even more of a defection, a fan-base shift that amounts to a collective slap in the face of the old guard. As far as we're concerned, the ownership should be forced to drop
San Francisco
from the team name and replace it with something generic and more honest—the Golden State 49ers, for instance, following the lead of the pro basketball franchise when the Warriors quit playing their games in the city back in 1971.

As fashionable as most of Santa Clara is, it has its pockets of lower-income housing. Joe Lenihan lived in one of these, in a nondescript apartment house not far off the 101 freeway. His unit was on the second floor, rear. I rang his bell, identified myself when his voice came over the intercom, and he said, “Come on up; door's open,” and buzzed me in.

The front section of what was probably his apartment's living room had been turned into a kind of business anteroom by the addition of wall-to-wall blue curtains. The space was crammed with two tables and two chairs facing each other across the larger table. A couple of desktop PCs and a laptop wearing name tags sat on the smaller table, evidently repaired and awaiting customer pickup.

A couple of seconds after I entered, the curtains parted and I had my first look at Joe Lenihan. He wasn't what I'd expected any more than Peter Erskine had been. The image I'd had was of a bearded, somewhat scruffy neo-hippie reeking of pot smoke. He was the antithesis of that: clean-shaven, with gray-flecked brown hair trimmed short and clear hazel eyes; dressed in a loose sport shirt and corduroys that were old and somewhat frayed but clean. And not even a stray whiff of marijuana came from him or from behind the curtains. You'd think that at my age and as many years as I've been in business, I would know better than anyone not to fall into the preconceived-notion trap.