Angel City (25 page)

“Close your eyes. Continue to breathe.”

Remnants of blue light still excited the receptors of Harper's optical nerves, and he saw the light as long threads stretching from the other side of the universe. He felt radiance sparkle in his blood, and a burst of pure light pumped through his form and into his eyes. He settled back against the stone wall, inhaled deeply. The voice coached him along.

“That's it. Now, keep breathing as you open your eyes, but don't look directly at the lamp. Do you understand?”

Harper nodded.

“Good. Open your eyes.”

A blue-tinted glow swelled throughout the cavern and gave it shape. High dome, coves cut into the walls. He was in the middle of the cavern, his back against the central pillar. No sign of Astruc or his pal, no sign of the reliquary box.

Two men kneeling in front of him.

Both of them wearing night vision goggles fitted with infrared illuminators; both of them with gas masks over their noses and mouths. One of the men was setting a pressure bandage to the palm of Harper's left hand and wrapping it in gauze. He had a Belgian SCAR submachine gun hanging from his shoulder. The other one held a respirator over Harper's nose and mouth. He was looking at his watch, counting seconds. He was the one speaking English.

“We can't give you morphine with the gas, but we need to stop the bleeding. This will hurt.”

Harper nodded.

The medic lifted Harper's forearm, rested it on his leg, and ripped apart a pressure bandage. He stuffed the cotton pad into Harper's right palm, wrapped the gauze strips around the crumpled fingers. And it did hurt like hell. Harper gritted his teeth, sucked hard at the gas. Didn't stop the pain, but with radiance saturating his blood, he couldn't have cared less.

Harper saw a third man crouching at the entrance of the cavern. Night vision gear over his eyes, MAC-10 submachine gun in his hands, targeting up the passageway. Harper's eyes focused on a fourth man, a Micro UZI hanging at his side. He was the one holding the small blue light. Harper saw their rough, dirty clothes. The kind that hadn't been washed in a week, maybe never. Harper mumbled through the respirator.

“The tramps from under the bridge.”

They didn't answer.

Harper shot another glance at the mismatched weapons. They weren't French police.

“Who are you people?”

The one holding the respirator over Harper's mouth, the one speaking English, said, “You don't need to know who they are. I'm the only one you need to know. Continue to breathe.”

Harper looked at him. SIG strapped to his side, killing knife hooked to his belt.

“Who the hell are you?”

“Sergeant Gauer. Special Unit Task Force of the Swiss Police.”

Took a second to click. The man behind the wheel of Inspector Gobet's Merc during the Lausanne job. Ex–Swiss Guard, the one who made a head shot from a kilometer and a half with a sniper's rifle.

“Inspector Gobet's driver?”

“I've been tracking you since l'Église de Saint-Germain-des-Prés.”

Harper looked at Sergeant Gauer's clothes again, analyzed his voice.

“You were the tramp on the steps. The one reading from
Purgatorio
. You thanked me for dropping a coin in your hat.”

“Affirmative.”

“What the hell are you doing in Paris?”

“What's it look like? Saving your ass. Now shut the fuck up and breathe.”

Harper rested his head against the pillar, took another deep breath. Images began to flash through his eyes. He turned his head, saw the curled form on the cavern floor. Lambert . . .
Jesus.
Harper reached for him. “Gilles.”

Both men held Harper down. Sergeant Gauer checked his watch.

“Sixty more seconds of gas.”

“It's enough, I can fire up my eyes now. His soul needs to see my eyes.”

The tramp slammed Harper into the pillar.

“J'ai vous dit. C'est trop tard.”

“Let go of me, there's still time.”

Gauer slapped Harper's face. Harper took a sharp breath.

“Continue to breathe, and listen. It's too late, his soul has separated from his body. It's too late.”

“What?”

“Astruc set off an explosive charge at the top of the corridor. A ten-meter section collapsed. It took us three days to tunnel through. Gilles Lambert has been dead that long.”

Harper worked the timeline of human death. Four hours: skin turns purple, waxy. Twelve hours: full rigor mortis as the body tries to hold on to the soul. Twenty-four hours: body temperature equals surroundings, cell death complete. Thirty-six hours: rigor mortis fades, soul abandons form, dust to dust.

“Can't be. I was just talking to him. He'd just taken his last breath.”

Fifteen seconds ticked by. Sergeant Gauer closed the valve on the gas tank, removed the respirator from Harper's face. The cavern reeked of rotting meat. Harper gagged and spit.

“What the hell?”

The tramp across the cavern, the one holding the small blue light, moved close to Gilles Lambert's body and rolled it over. Harper saw the swollen limbs and distended stomach, the discolored skin.

“I don't get it.”

“What's to get? You were talking to an empty corpse.”

Harper saw the smears of fresh blood over Gilles Lambert's dead eyes. He looked down at his own bandaged hands. He flashed the scene through his eyes. Like something out of a horror flick.

“Christ, what the hell was I doing?”

Gauer looked at the dead man, then Harper.

“From the looks of it, I'd say you were reaching way above your pay grade.”

I

K
ATHERINE HAD BEEN SITTING WITH
M
AX FOR THE LAST HOUR.
He was in his crib, on his back, his blue-green eyes watching shadows moving over the walls and ceiling of his bedroom. He'd always been a sound sleeper. Give him a bath, dress him in his jammies (Shaun the Sheep jammies tonight, the ones he wanted), and lay him down with a bottle at seven. Ten minutes later, he was down for the count. Not a peep for twelve hours. But since Portland, three days ago, he would lie in his crib for hours before sleeping.

Not like he was upset.

Not like he was anything.

He'd just stare at the never-the-same shadows, babbling to himself now and again. And not baby kind of babbling, Katherine thought. No, this was more like the little guy was talking to the shadows. And damn if there weren't a few times when it seemed Max would tip his head as if hearing the shadows talk back.

Earlier in the day, Katherine called the doctor in Portland to talk about it.

“What kind of shadows are they?” the doctor said.

“What do you fucking mean, ‘What kind of shadows are they?'” Katherine replied.

“Where do the shadows come from, Ms. Taylor? How are they made?”

“Security lamps in the back garden, bleeding through the evergreen trees outside the window,” Katherine explained.

“So have the lamps and trees and shadows always been there?”

“Yes, but they never kept him awake at night. And now he's talking to them.”

The doctor told her not to worry. Just exploring his imagination, he said. Perfectly normal. Important thing is not to show any distress, but to let him think it's a game.

Katherine was relieved and spooked at the same time. Relieved that Max was “normal,” spooked to think that if Max's imagination was anything like hers lately (especially the part where she imagined Max was communicating with shadows), then therapy and/or medication might be in order.

She expressed that concern to Officer Jannsen.

Officer Jannsen rattled off a thesis-length description of Jean Piaget's theory of cognitive development in children. Something about young children's brains constantly being rewired to organize and interpret sensory data into schemata, aiding in the cognitive representation of self. Katherine had no fucking idea what Officer Jannsen was talking about. But the lecture did end with, “So relax, Kat.”

Katherine was telling herself those very words when she remembered:
teasing shadows.
It was what Marc Rochat called the shadows in the high corners of Lausanne Cathedral. And she remembered Marc in the belfry of Lausanne Cathedral, greeting the shadows in passing, or scolding them for their teasing ways. For a moment, she saw him. Long black overcoat, black floppy hat on his head, lantern in his hand, pointing to the wiggly, dark, high-above things and telling her, “Because they're the teasing kind of shadows. They like to play in the cathedral. Sometimes they leave the door to the tower open and sometimes they chase after echoes. They're very friendly shadows.”

He faded from her eyes.

She looked up at the ceiling, saw the shadows in Max's bedroom. She laughed to herself. They really did look like the teasing kind of shadows. She looked at Max.

“Is that what you're doing, honey? Playing with the teasing shadows?”

Max didn't answer. His eyes stayed locked on the ceiling.

Katherine tickled his belly. “Don't you dare ignore Mommy Dearest . . .”

Max squealed with delight.

“. . . or she might have to tickle you forever.”

Max kicked his legs and laughed. She bent down and kissed his forehead.

“You know, I knew someone once. He talked to shadows, too, and he had lots of imaginary friends. They all lived in a cathedral. And some of his friends were lost angels.”

Max stared at her, as if hypnotized by the sound of her voice, not even blinking.

She remembered the first time he looked at her that way. He must have been two months old, and it totally freaked her out. She called Officer Jannsen, thinking something was seriously wrong with him. Officer Jannsen told Katherine that Max had lived inside her body for nine months, and that from twenty-four weeks, he not only heard her voice, but
felt
her voice vibrating around him, especially the sound of vowels. And that outside the womb, now, certain sounds in Katherine's voice created a harmonic wave that resonated in the thalamus region of Max's brain, like a tonic note of a musical score.

“Your voice is like no other voice in the world to Max, it always will be,” Officer Jannsen said. “Of course he's going to stare at you sometimes. He's looking to you to guide him through his imagination. You should tell him stories.”

“I read him stories all the time.”

“No. I mean stories from your own imagination. Tell him those stories.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“What about?”

“Doesn't matter. It's more about the sound of your voice. It's magical, it's mysterious to him.”

Katherine raised an eyebrow.

“This time you're making it up.”

“What?”

“The whole harmonic vibration thingy.”

“Actually, research on the impact of sound on fetuses is well documented. The rest of it, the part about the harmonic resonance of your voice impacting the thalamus region of Max's brain, that's my own theory.”

“You're kidding.”

Officer Jannsen wasn't kidding. And staring at Max just now, Katherine thought Anne Jannsen was not only pretty damn smart (and pretty enough to make Katherine melt just thinking about her), but right. The expression on Max's face said he was hanging on the very sound of Katherine's voice.

“So what do you think? You want me to tell you a story about the angels hiding in the cathedral?”

“Angeh.”

“Yeah, angels.”

“Angeh.”

“Come on, you can say it: angels.”

“Angeh.”

“I know, that
L
sound is kinda tough when it gets stuck in the back of your throat. Let's try it in French.
Les anges.
”

“Weezangeh.”

“Weezangeh? What the heck is a weezangeh? Come on, say it properly and I'll tell you the story of the lost angels in the cathedral.”

Max kicked his legs and giggled. “Weezangeh.”

“Okay, okay. What was I thinking that French would be easier? It's French, for cripes sake.”

“Fensh.”

“Exactly. We'll stick to English. Ready?”

“Goog.”

“Okay. Here we go. Once upon a time . . .”

She stopped, had a thought.

“Wait a sec, wait right here. I'm going to get something so I can really tell you the story about the lost angels. Okay?”

“Fensh.”

Katherine tickled Max's tummy, and he giggled and kicked again.

“Whatever. I'll be right back.”

She walked through the adjoining doors into her own bedroom. On the dressing table, near the window, was an old lantern and a black floppy hat. Some of the things left to her in Marc Rochat's will, and presented to her in two large cardboard boxes by Monsieur Gübeli at the end of his visit to Grover's Mill. She remembered Gübeli's driver slowly opening the trunk of the limousine to reveal the cardboard boxes as if they were lost treasure. And she remembered before he left, Monsieur Gübeli said, “I trust these simple things will serve to remind you of the goodness and kindness that was Master Rochat's nature, madame.”

Katherine got the boxes home and, not knowing what to do with them, she took them to her bedroom. She stared at the boxes a long time before opening them. And when she did, there was a musty smell that sent her flying back to the little room between the bells high above Lausanne, higher than the Alps on the far shore, higher than the whole world. She found Rochat's sketchbooks and one hundred candles in one box . . . his hat and lantern in the other. When she picked up his hat, tears welled in her eyes. She pressed the hat to her breasts.

“Jesus,” she said.

Then she lifted the lantern from the box. There was the stub of a candle inside, topped with a blackened wick. Katherine trembled. It would have been the last candle Marc Rochat had set alight, she thought. And staring at it, she remembered how he'd died horribly and painfully to save her. She had always thought he did it because the brain-damaged and crooked little man had believed she was a lost angel. But in the end, before he died, he knew the truth. That she wasn't an angel; she was a hooker on the run. And now, holding his lantern in her hands, something he treasured, she knew the real reason he died to protect her: The crooked little man loved her. She cried her eyes out that night. And when she stopped, she lay his hat on the dressing table and set the lantern next to it. She tried to look at the sketchbooks, but she couldn't. It was too much, too soon. They'd have to wait till another day.

Katherine blinked, wobbled a bit with déjà vu.

She was still standing at the adjoining doors between the bedrooms. She looked back at Max in his crib. He was sitting up now, his hand reaching through the bars of the crib and holding on to Monsieur Booty's tail. The cat had emerged from one of his hiding places to jump on the stool next to the crib for another round of manhandling by Max. Sometimes Katherine imagined the cat didn't hide at all. She was sure the beast simply materialized from nothingness at will. And if that turned out to be the case, she wouldn't be surprised. Not one bit.

“Boo,” Max said.

“Sorry, I got a little distracted. You guys wait there, I'll be right back. Then we'll do the story.”

There was a knock on her bedroom door.

“Kat, it's Anne. Can I come in?”

“It's open.”

Officer Jannsen opened the door and poked in her head. “All's well?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you up to?”

“Um, nothing. I'm hanging out with Max. Why?”

“I was going to ask you down for a cup of tea.”

“That time already?”

“Afraid so.”

“I'd like to stay with Max till he goes to sleep.”

“Kat, he's okay. You can monitor him from downstairs.”

“I know, but I'd rather stay. Why don't you make a cup of tea for yourself and me and come back? We'll both hang out with Max. I was going to tell him a story.”

“What kind of story?”

“About lost angels. Hiding in a cathedral.”

Officer Jannsen gave an expression somewhere between pleasant surprise and
holy fucking shit
. Katherine put her hand on her hip.

“What, you don't think I can tell my own kid a story I made up myself?”

“Kat—”

“Lemme tell you something: I'm sure I can tell a better story than your story about gods from the Great White North who get all pissed off with each other and turn into volcanoes.”

“That's not what—”

“And lemme tell you something else: You wouldn't believe the stories I had to tell to make guys think I wasn't just loving it, but
really
loving it. Actually, forget that part. Point is, I'm going to tell my son a story. You can chaperone if you want. Make sure I don't scare the crap out of him.”

“You don't need me to chaperone, Kat. And I was only thinking it sounds like fun. And I'd like to hear this story myself.”

“Really?”

“
Oui
, really.”

“Okay. Go get the tea, then.”

Officer Jannsen ducked out the door . . .

“Anne?”

. . . and back in again.

“What?”

“Does Control monitor Max's room when I'm up here?”

“Pardon?”

“You know. Do they keep an eye on me with him?”

Officer Jannsen stepped into Katherine's bedroom, closed the door behind her.

“Where is that question coming from, Kat?”

“My mind. What's left of it.”

Officer Jannsen crossed the room, stood close to Katherine.

“Video and audio is only operational when he's alone in his room.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“No reason. Just asking.”

Officer Jannsen reached up and combed her fingers through Katherine's hair.

“We keep an eye on things, you know that. We can check every room in the house if we have to. But never when you're in one of the rooms, and never when you're alone with your son.”

“Okay.”

“I'll brew the tea.”

“Okay.”

Officer Jannsen left the room.

Katherine looked back through the doorway. Max was still holding on to Monsieur Booty's tail. They were both looking at her, waiting.

“Weezangeh.”

Mew.

“Yeah, yeah. Just had to tell Obergruppenführer what I was up to. Where was I with you guys? Never mind, I remember. I'll be back.”

She walked to the dressing table, sat down in front of the mirror. She picked up Rochat's floppy black hat and set it on her head, tucking her long blond hair up into it. It was a perfect fit.