Cemetery of Angels (33 page)

The muscular, starkly featured man in the dark brown suit and open collar who stepped from US AIR 324 from Las Vegas at Los Angeles International that Sunday afternoon was a man with a mission. And this time, he would need to complete it. Having just blown in excess of twenty thousand dollars in the Nevada gambling halls within the last forty-eight hours, he needed to get back to his work.

At the airport, he took a shuttle bus to one of the better car rental bureaus. He produced a credit card in the name of Peter O’Neill and obtained a perfectly anonymous white Chevrolet for three days. There was a young Vietnamese woman behind the counter. She found the man so unattractive that she was frightened of him.

But he spoke to her courteously, accepted the car she assigned him, and thanked her. Then he drove into Los Angeles.

At one of the anonymous large hotels that catered to conventions, the man kept the identity of O’Neill tucked away in his wallet. Then, he produced a second set of licenses and credit cards and registered under the name of Harold McDuffie. He engaged the registration clerk for a few moments in conversation about the insurance business, a topic that assured that the clerk’s attention would glaze over. Then he placed five hundred dollars in cash on deposit, enough to guarantee two nights’ stay.

“I wonder if you would check if there’s mail for me,” the new arrival said after signing the guest slip. The clerk disappeared for a moment and returned with one piece of mail for a Mr. McDuffie. It was a small four-by-six manila envelope, sealed tightly with heavy tape. Had anyone bothered to notice, the envelope bore a local postmark. It had arrived three days earlier.

The man accepted his key and went to his room. He had only one suitcase. He carried it himself. He was pleased with the room. He unpacked within a few minutes. He had two extra shirts and one extra sports jacket. There were a few extra pairs of underwear and a heavy pair of black sneakers, best for moving around at night. There was also a heavy wool shirt of a dark navy color, a black turtleneck, and dark indigo jeans. The man had left his other clothing at an airport locker in Las Vegas. He would pick up his things on his way back East.

There was a small knapsack in the suitcase. It contained the man’s working equipment. He donned a pair of gloves and sat down on the edge of the bed in his hotel room. He opened the knapsack and removed the contents, making a final check over his professional equipment.

There wasn’t much. A screwdriver. An up to date California license plate, recently stolen from a parking lot in Northridge. And a six-foot strand of rope, recently removed from a home not far from the Hollywood Bowl. There was also a local street map of Los Angeles. The map had some markings on it in ink.

The man set the map aside for a moment and picked up the rope. He tested it. Very strong. He pulled it hard. It had no give to it. It would make a dandy garrote.

He took the rope into the bathroom. He worked with it for a moment and made a noose out of it. He was more than adept at constructing a perfect hangman’s knot.

He tied one end of the rope to the crossbar that held the shower curtain. He braced the bar with a powerful arm and felt the strength of the noose on the other extremity of the rope.

He was pleased. This was an excellent instrument of execution.

The man returned to the sleeping area and placed the rope back in the knapsack. He sat down again on the edge of the bed and mentally went through his plan. He would need to complete his assignment within the next day. He would wait for a single telephone call that would give him the proper time. At that hour, he would switch license plates on the rental car so that no one would be able to place him in the area of his crime.

He opened the map and read the directions written on it, showing the easiest route to 2136 Topango Gardens. Attached to the map was a photograph of the recently refurbished Queen Anne house at that address.

He memorized the route. He had been in Los Angeles before, so the directions were not mysterious. He would have no trouble following them.

Why not take a quick drive by the area today? Case it. But don’t get too close. One never knew how the bungling police could inadvertently tangle up the best-laid plans of execution.

The man took the elevator down to the hotel garage. No one was there. Everything was going perfectly so far, as smooth as undisturbed ice in February. He stepped into his car and started it. Then he was out into the late afternoon.

The sun came out a few moments later as the man drove west on a busy Wilshire Boulevard. When he got to the intersection with La Cienega, the sun was intense. So he reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and pulled out his sunglasses. They were wraparound, and he liked to think that they gave him a particular air of menace.

Not that he needed it.

Fewer than three miles away, Rebecca Moore sat in her bedroom and listened to the quiet of the house around her. No mysterious music creeping into her home or her heart from places unknown. No creaking of floorboards or inexplicable ticking in the walls. Nor was there the sound that she really longed to hear. The sound of her children’s voices. The sound of her family.

Outside the day was sunny, but still. She rose from where she sat on the bed and went to a window. She pushed aside the curtain and glanced out.

Two weeks had expired since Karen and Patrick had vanished. Nothing new had happened in the last ten days. Rebecca could see the results at the end of her driveway. For the first time, there was not a single reporter keeping a vigil outside 2136 Topango.

She felt lonely. She pulled out her cell phone and called Melissa. But the call jumped to voice mail. Melissa had caught on to some private tutoring gigs in American Civilization during the last week, and Rebecca had seen less of her. Not that she didn’t call in or come by at least once a day. She was that type of friend.

Rebecca pulled her hand away from the window. The curtain silently glided back into place. She turned and walked to the bedroom door. She stood in it for several seconds.

Then she raised her eyes and looked to the turret room. Where was Ronny now? Who was Ronny? She looked forward now to her session on Monday with Dr. Lim. Maybe that would yield some answers.

Meanwhile, further questions besieged her. Why did the ghost appear only when he desired? She wondered if the spirit could be summoned. Was there something she could do to provoke him into coming?

And who the devil was he, anyway?

It was nearly 5:00P.M. Kicking around this old house waiting for something to happen was driving her crazy. How could she hold on to her own sanity much longer? Why did Bill have to spend so much time at his office? And why was she starting to feel herself turning against her husband?

Resentment? Distrust? A different way of handling the tensions of Karen and Patrick’s disappearance? She didn’t know. There were so many things she didn’t know.

She must have been standing there for several minutes, she realized, when she became aware that her eyes hadn’t moved. They were set upon the half open door to the turret room.

She was aware of movement. A change in the lighting. A shadow crossing the floor. She couldn’t see into the room because the door was blocking her vision. But something had moved.

She walked across the hallway and approached the room. She arrived at the door and listened.

Music? That old time piano tinkling?

No.

A voice? A heartbeat? A child’s cry?

No. Not that, either.

In fact, nothing. Dire silence.

She pushed the door open. The hinges uttered a little tortured wail, but the door gave way easily. Rebecca braced herself, waiting to see at least one human figure standing before her. But again, there was none. And now she realized what she had seen affecting the light in the room. It was the sunlight through the wavering branches of the large tree outside the window. That or a cloud passing over the sun.

Or so it appeared.

She stepped into the room.

“Anyone here?” she asked softly. “Can anyone hear me?”

She would have given ten years of her life to have heard Karen or Patrick answer. She walked to the center of the room then turned in every direction. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was trying to lure the ghost into communicating.

“Come on,” she said aloud, her words echoing in the quiet house. “Someone? Talk to me. Make yourself known.”

Silence answered, a painful ironic silence because now silence was exactly what she did not want. There was too much silence in her life now. The silence from a husband who seemed to ignore her. The silence from the FBI and LAPD, who seemed to accuse her, but never resolved her case.

“I want to see you,” she said aloud. “Whatever spirit is in this room. Whatever soul haunts this house. Whoever you are, whoever you were… Please… Come forth. Make yourself known.”

A creak responded in the attic above her. A creak that made her heart soar but which led nowhere.

She stared upward, toward the ceiling. “Ronny?” she asked. “Come on. Please.”

She cocked her head. She listened more intently than ever.

Oh, how she wanted to hear that piano music now. Lord, how she would have liked to have felt that strange sense of something invisible sweeping by her.

She looked at the wall. The bold letters beneath the paint:
You are in danger.
In her mind, it was still there, its origins still mysterious as ever.

Had it been meant for the children? Or for her? She thought of how her husband had tried to convince her that she had imagined it. Then a thought came to her from somewhere: she was only midway through this ordeal. And perhaps the biggest part was yet to be played.

“Ronny?” she asked aloud. “Did you just give me that notion? Did you send me a thought?” There was another creak over her head. A response? Or a tick in the old floorboards.

She felt a shiver.

“Am I crazy?” she asked aloud. “Anyone? Come forward. Please.”

Then another image was upon her. That of herself as a mad woman, wandering from room to room in a rattling old house, complaining of voices and spirits only known to her. She had seen such deranged ladies in the streets. They wore tattered, once expensive winter coats during the summer heat. Their glasses were crooked, their lipstick askew, and they talked to people unseen, rambling on and on over real or imagined grievances from decades past, asking for spare change from anyone whose eye they caught, arguing with the long-dead.

Was this her future, she wondered. Would she lose her children and would the loss send her tumbling downhill into just such madness?

“No, Rebecca.”

She almost jumped. “What?” she answered.

Again the house was still. But that answer had been as clear as a bell. She had heard a voice.

Out loud? Or in her mind? She wasn’t sure.

It had been a male voice. Human. Or ghostly human. Whatever. She had heard it! She knew she had. Or was this, too, part of the incipient lunacy?

“Talk to me!” she demanded, her voice loud and vibrating through the turret room and the still hallway beyond. “Where are you? Say something again!”

“You will be safe.”

“Who are you? If you’re the spirit who has my children, I want to see you again! I want to see them!”

The silence that answered was so complete that Rebecca already wondered whether she had imagined the entire exchange.

“I demand to see you!” she said next. But her demand was not met. She waited several seconds for more to be forthcoming, but none was.

She moved to the window, watching the day turn into evening. Her eyes traveled across the backyard of her home. Her gaze hit the wall and lifted over into the cemetery.

She saw the same vision that nuisance of a detective had had when he had stood in the same place. She felt herself in his shoes, retracing his visual path.

She felt another thought forming inside her, but couldn’t grasp it yet. It was as if she were mentally trying to sort out an accumulation of letters on a page, letters that made no sense until rearranged into the proper order.

A silky whispering answer, a deathly voice riding on a breeze:

“Yes. That’s correct”.

“What’s correct?” she demanded.

The voice was like a murmur now, a whisper from every direction. She continued to look out the window. Her line of vision danced among the old tombstones in the cemetery. The old stone markers stood like little sentries, a small army of guards.

Guarding what? What was going on in her head?

“Keep looking…!”

“For what?” she answered.

“
Rebecca. Look!”

“At what?”

Her eyes settled upon something strange in the cemetery. Something big and gray and misshapen that appeared to be lying on its side.

A heavy breathy whisper came to her this time, as from an invisible pair of lips not far from her ear. Lips that could kiss or caress or share a secret.

“Yes! Go!”

“What?”

“Go!” the husky voice demanded. And within the room where she stood there was an angry thump. Like the weight of a man who had jumped into the air with heavy boots and had come down hard on the wooden floor.

“Go to the cemetery! Now!”

This time she didn’t know whether she had imagined the conversation and the demand. But she did know she would obey. She ran from the room and down the stairs. She left her house through the front door and was again relieved to see no one with a notebook or camera or microphone.

She went to the street and jogged to the end of the block. She turned and continued toward San Angelo.

The gates to the cemetery were still open. She passed through them. She saw no attendant or caretaker. She looked past the armada of tombstones and grave markers and could see the roof of 2136 Topango Gardens beyond the rear wall of the cemetery. Her home. She hurried forward, as if there were some element of time involved in this timeless place.

She walked in the direction of her house, which also took her toward the overturned marker she had seen from the turret room.