Disconnection (33 page)

“I have so much to tell you,” she murmured in his ear.

“They know, Sela,” Chloe said from the door. “They already know.”

“Why can’t they speak to me?” Sela asked.

“Who says they’re not?”

Sela looked at her parents and saw the love on their faces. At that moment she knew that love never died. All traces of fear and detriment began to flee fled. She now understood what it meant to truly
move on
.

The light began to fade, and Sela knew it was time to go. Chloe stretched her hand and Sela took it, and the two girls stepped through the door. Sela looked around one last time at her parents, but they had already disappeared into the air of glitter and dust.

“I made you something,” Chloe said, handing Sela a small object.

Sela looked inside her hand. A bullet rested in her palm.

In the distance, she heard a phone ringing.

T
he phone bothered Harold Applegate, Dean could tell. If a nuclear bomb had fallen on the bayou, the reverend could have not been more surprised. His eyes widened while the music played, and he looked around him furiously
“No,”
he whispered to himself through lips that were growing ever so scalier, and teeth that were growing ever so sharper and longer. “I destroyed you,” he whimpered, his eyes searching the night for the direction of the ring.

Not a Led Zeppelin fan
, Dean guessed as he watched the crucifix the reverend held over him waver with the shaking of his hands. Dean used the reverend’s unsettled disposition to his advantage and lifted his leg high in the air, kicking the cross out of the crazy man’s hand.

The cross landed with a thud nearby. Dean stretched one free hand to retrieve it, but the reverend was closer. He reached over and grabbed the cross, but Dean, using every strong soccer-playing muscle in his leg, kicked the object out of his hand again, and the crucifix went flying into the water.

“You fucking Jewish piece of shit!” Harold screamed.

“Harold Applegate!” Detective Lewis Kline screamed from nearby. “Let that boy go!”

The reverend arched his neck wildly in the direction of the detective. “I’m not finished with you, Lew.” He laughed menacingly, throwing his head back with glee. “I’m not done by a long shot, partner!
Twiddle-dee-dee!”

With those words, Lewis screamed again, so shrill and with so much agony that it was hard for Dean to hear without feeling the man’s pain.
What in the world was the reverend doing to the detective?
Dean wondered.
And how, and with what?

The reverend turned his head and focused his attention on Dean again. “Sorry, Jew boy,” Harold said, a sly grin growing on his disgustingly encrusted lips. “But I’m afraid that crucifix you knocked in the water was your one ticket out of a painful death. Never mind, though. I think I’ll enjoy killing you slowly.
Twiddle-doodle-doh.”
The reverend threw off his white turban.

Dean watched in panicked horror as the reverend metamorphosed into the monster that had been inside him all along. Horns grew out of the front of his forehead. Savagely sharp teeth daggered down his scaly lips, and his eyes glowed with the light of all the fires of hell. His ears grew large and pointed, sticking straight up to heaven in mocking salute. The white robe unraveled around him until it withered off, and he was suddenly standing naked over Dean with the whispery threads of black hair breeding from an impossibly large chest that was growing larger every second. The smell of rotten fish grew in leaps and bounds in the air, and Dean had to stop himself from gagging from the stench.

Dean squirmed under the monster’s hold, knowing that this might well be the last moment of his life.

But the phone still held the monster in its sound. The creature was unable to fully concentrate his evil on his two victims—the one he had pinned to the earth’s floor, and the man that was bleeding to death in the nearby foliage.

“That sounnnnnnddddd,” the monster screamed. “Whereeeee is it?”

Dean watched as the monster wailed above him, his hairy, beastly hands covering his face in imitation of an Edvard Munch painting while the song played on in the distance.

The monster growled and grunted, restless and full of rage.

Pains began to shoot through Dean’s body, small at first, and then larger, until it felt like he was being poked by rusty nails on every inch of his flesh. He rolled his head to the side and groaned. The Jewish biology student from New York determined that there was no need for the monster to inflict any more wounds to his person, for he was sure that he would die no matter what. On either side, blood flowed around him, creating its own river that might, if he remained bleeding so openly, become comparable to the size of the Mississippi.
Face it
, Dean told himself, his eyes slowly
closing, you’re a goner
.

And then he saw Sela, and his eyes flew open again.

Sela had risen from her spot beside the bayou, and now she stood over the unseeing monster. In one hand was the cell phone, the source of the monster’s agony. In her other hand, the gun Dean had found in the church, the one the crazy guy had used to steal the ambulance.

I’m sorry, Sela
, Dean thought.
You tried your best, babe, but the gun has no bullet
.

Sela winked at Dean when she pulled the trigger.

One shot rang through the night, and the monster’s face transformed into shock and rage. His yellow eyes descended into Dean as a shadowy foam of black dissolved from its body, changing the hairy beast into a man again, into the body of a middle-aged reverend that slumped and fell across Dean’s bloody lap.

S
ela sat in a chair in a blue room, a baby grand piano beside her. Morning light poured in from the window behind her, lavishing the room with a healthy glow. Sela reached up to touch the bandage on her forehead, making sure she was not bleeding. In an hour or so, she would have to redress it. Her hand fell lower to a gold cross around her neck, a gift a local church had given her after they had heard that it was due to her help that the Fishhook murders had been solved.

In front of Sela sat Mr. and Mrs. Applegate.

Sela took a deep breath and began, “Like I said, Mr. and Mrs. Applegate, I didn’t know your daughter very well. We mostly just talked on the phone from time to time. I know there’s nothing to comfort you in your time of mourning.”

She paused, letting her words make an impact. “I don’t know much about God or the afterlife or anything like that. I guess I always believed that religions were like road maps—each one has different directions to get you to the same place. But I saw your daughter when I was unconscious. And I can say with all the honesty in my heart—Chloe is in a safe place. And she loves you very much, and she’ll always be around you to protect you, no matter what.”

Sela smiled then, a genuine smile of faith and hope. The husband and wife smiled back at her and took each other’s hands. “Thank you,” Mrs. Applegate said. “It means a lot that you came here. I know I wasn’t very kind to you the first time we met.”

“That’s in the past,” Sela replied, remembering all too well the night she used the lame excuse of a missing textbook to gain entry into the Applegate home. “I just wanted you to know—there’s more happiness out there. You shouldn’t let that die with your daughter. I should know. My parents died when I was a child, and I always let that get in the way of everything I wanted to do in life. But it shouldn’t, because I’ve missed out on so much.”

Mrs. Applegate nodded. “Yes. Yes, you’re right.”

Mr. Applegate cleared his throat. “We’re going to Ireland next week. Chloe always liked Ireland. We hope that it will help.”

“It will,” Sela assured him. “Trust me. Oh, just one other thing.” Sela reached into her pocket and pulled out Chloe’s cell phone. It looked brand new, as if it had just come out of the warehouse. Sela reached over and set it on the coffee table. She felt certain that this time, the phone would not come back to her.

Her father took the phone. “Thank you,” he said. “But how did you have my daughter’s phone?”

“She lent it to me,” Sela said, feeling in some way that she spoke the truth.

Some time later, Sela stepped out the door into a chilly December afternoon. Detective Kline was leaning against his Tahoe parked against the curb, waiting for her with a cigar dangling between his lips. Sela noticed that she did not flinch when she saw the smoke rising from his mouth.

Sela walked up to him. “God, that was difficult,” she said.

Detective Kline cocked his head.
“That
was difficult?”

“Well, there’s difficult and then there’s difficult,” Sela replied, shrugging.

Detective Kline nodded, bending over to stub his victory cigar out on the sidewalk. Standing up straight, he said, “I talked to my partner. He said they’ve made more arrests regarding the Fishhook murders since I finished my shift this morning. The tally’s up to a hundred now.”

“Good God,” Sela said, shaking her head. “I don’t believe it.”

“All of a sudden, I can believe anything,” Detective Kline murmured, looking up at the gray sky. “What are you going to do now, Sela?”

“New York. Dean.”

“I see. Is he recovering well?”

“As well as can be expected. He already told his parents that I was coming. Forewarned them, really. I think they’re more willing to accept me, especially since I played a part in saving their son’s life.” Sela smiled faintly.

“What about your back?” Lewis asked.

Sela reached around and wearily touched the Fishhook scar on her back. The wound no longer hurt, but the doctors had told her that it was there to stay, unless she could afford some major plastic surgery. Sela didn’t have the money—not the money for surgery, anyway. She planned on starting school next spring. She hadn’t decided her major—maybe forensic science. Dean said there were plenty of good schools in New York if she was interested in that kind of thing.

So, her money would go to college, and she would just have to live with the scar for now. She did not mind too much. Her fate could have been worse.
Like Mandy’s
, she thought. An overwhelming sadness washed over her.

“I guess I’ll have to live with it; the scar, I mean,” Sela finally answered.

“I suppose there are worse things,” said Lewis, as if reading Sela’s mind.

Sela nodded. “I have nothing left here, detective. Everyone I love is dead, except my grandmother, and she’s in Hammond. I’m not going back there. What about you?”

The detective let out a frustrated sigh. “My wife and I are talking about moving to Metairie, as soon as my …” The detective paused, looking for the right word. “… colon is healed.” He seemed to blush with the admission.

Sela unconsciously pressed her hand to her forehead once more. “Metairie’s not a bad place to live,” she said.

“Well, nothing’s set in stone yet.”

Nothing ever is
, Sela thought.

The detective took his car keys out of his pocket. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?” he asked.

Sela nodded. “Thanks, that would be great. I need to head back to my apartment. I have some packing to do.”

“Hop in.”

Sela opened the Tahoe’s passenger door and stepped inside. The detective cranked the engine and the SUV cruised down the street, moving forward at a medium pace, leaving the Garden District and all of its ghosts behind.

IT WAS ALWAYS QUIET WHEN Joe wasn’t there, but there was a deadness to the quiet today. Seventeen-year-old Sirena stood in the entrance holding the door to the trailer open behind her. He was often gone when she got home from Jefferson High she reassured herself, but she knew today was different. She sensed it this morning in his attitude and his blank face. In the fact that he didn’t get angry when she took too long in the bathroom. He wasn’t going to have to put up with her tardiness for much longer.