Good Lord, Deliver Us (5 page)

Exhausting that line of thought, Z
made a mental shift.

Tonight.

Quick work, hiring a ...
poltergeist expert ... on such short notice. (Maybe ghost
hunters
did
advertise in the Yellow Pages.) .....

A more reasonable possibility was that
Ashlock had already been down the ghost hunter route when Calder
had slipped him Z's name. Covering all bases, the Chancellor's call
to Scherer had opened Ashlock's eyes to the possibility of hiring Z
to burn down the house -- the quickest way to make the "ghost"
problem disappear. Z's honesty blocking that path -- Ashlock had
simply gone back to the original plan of hiring a ghost hunter to
discredit the whole idea of a ghost being in the offending
house.

The Vice Chancellor was certainly
right about one thing. Ghosts were just the sort of "vitally
important" subject that "in-depth" TV journalism liked to cover. Z
could see TV people putting on pressure to have the house preserved
until a series of "specials" had wrung the fun out of it. A length
of time unacceptable to a man on the "rise" like
Ashlock.

So, Calder thought there was something
wrong with the deal, did he? That made two of them, doubling Z's
need to take precautions by scouting ahead.

Z rolled his wrist. Looked at his
watch. Saw it was almost 12 o'clock.

Nearly noon and not that
hot.

Or the building's air conditioner was
working better today.

Or Z's watch had stopped at just
before midnight last night, Z raising his watch to his ear to hear
its asthmatic ticking.

A quick P B and J sandwich from Z's
lunchtime sack leaving Z with the afternoon to take whatever
"ghostly" precautions seemed necessary.

* * * * *

The 1 o'clock drive to 2609 E.
Franklin was pleasant enough, the open windows of the little
Cavalier providing the evaporation to keep Z cool in spite of the
day's heat. Or it could be that Z felt ... comfortable ... because
he wasn't on his way to yesterday's meeting where he'd thought he'd
be facing an academic giant. (An outside possibility was that Z
felt fine because he liked detective work, the "ghost job" about to
get underway.)

It was a fifteen minute
trip over the new stretch of I-35 connecting Gladstone to Liberty,
the odors coming through the window the same as before: hot
pavement and dry straw, straw that the highway department had
spread up the sides of the raw cuts they'd made through the hills
to "flatten" the rolling land for the new road, the straw anchoring
grass seed sown in the bare spots. (Z tried
not
to notice the diesel odor of
truck exhaust, the scorch of overheated tires, or the non-odor of
carbon monoxide sifting through the floorboards from Z's rotted
muffler.)

Strange, how driving the same route a
few times last year (then again yesterday) had made the distance
seem shorter.

Thinking about the tricks
your mind could play on you (Z reviewing job-related information to
take his mind off the stiffness in his cramped knee,) mental
mistakes called even the most honest eyewitness testimony into
doubt. Was it a green or a blue car that ran the light and killed
those nuns? Two people standing side by side on the corner would
give you different colors of the car they both "saw" speeding off.
Nor were people's recollections any better after they'd had time to
reflect, people "remembering" what they
should
have seen!

Which, now that Z was on
this line of thought, was what was wrong with the Scherer bust. The
cops who'd been following that rental vehicle at a distance had hit
it soon after discovering it parked under an overpass, finding the
van stuffed with marijuana. After that, no less than three
witnesses had come forward to swear they'd seen the Betterton woman
at the wheel of the rental as she passed them by, not five minutes
earlier. Satisfied he could place her in the van (even though the
police found nobody there when they raided it,) Scherer had proudly
arrested her. Did it in person in order to take total credit for
the bust, his plan to use that take-down to become Mr. Drug Fighter
in the next Clay County sheriff's election. After
that
victory, run for
... anything he wanted.

It was Z, hired by the Betterton
family, who had done the legwork that proved the woman was
elsewhere at the time. So neat a bit of detective work that Scherer
had never forgiven Z for it. Case closed.

Memory time over, Z left I-35 by
spiraling down Exit Ramp 13 to take the old access road into
Liberty, Z staying on it until the road changed its name to North
Elm -- a wide, tree-lined boulevard that drifted into town through
old, but well-kept, two and three-story residences.

Following Elm until it took him past
the square and through the eastern part of Liberty, Z turned right
at the front of the campus, then left again on the road below the
bluff.

Passing the wedge of college buildings
on the Bateman hill (so far up on top that Z couldn't see them
through his side window,) Z flanked student parking at the back,
continuing until he'd cleared the football stadium and an open,
grassy space beyond, the street forking at that point, the left
branch what he was looking for.

It was when veering onto Franklin that
Z was surprised to discover ... what looked like "no-man's-land" in
WW I -- gouges in the earth, no trees, no houses.

Of course! The soccer field. The place
looked like a battleground because both sides of Franklin had been
ripped up by bulldozers, some houses gone so long the land they'd
stood on had been rain-washed flat, scraggly weed-clumps taking
hold here and there in the bare dirt. Other plots were littered
with hardened clods, uprooted trees, and smashed-up homes. Most
lots had what looked like open graves at their centers -- these
"graves" the exposed cellars of demolished homes.

Ahead, maybe two blocks (though it was
hard to tell where the blocks had been,) Z saw a couple of houses
still standing.

That's right.

A couple. Two, like Calder said. Side
by side to the left of the road. Leaning inward in a vain attempt
to comfort one another in their grief for fallen
comrades.

No other "targets" available, Z
continued to drive toward the houses -- going slowly, dodging
chunks of concrete tumbled into the road as a result of
demolition.

The first house coming up was what his
Mother would have called a bungalow or maybe a Cape Cod, a house
with a tiny porch covered by a peeked tar-paper roof, the sides of
the house shingled a faded brown. Under normal circumstances, a
home that would look .... cozy. Instead of mournful. Instead of
resembling one of the last two ragged leaves clinging to a
late-fall tree.

Slowing, Z picked out the battered
metal numbers above the porch: 2607.

Making the house coming up,
2609.

Continuing to drift, Z looked ahead to
the house next door (the last on the block,) a house deserted:
weeds growing in the yard; a knee-high, used-to-be-white, picket
fence across the front, the wire fence-gate open, sagging, the
house built on the pattern of a small ranch, its warped clapboards
a paint-chipped white.

Z pulled up to park.

Normally -- particularly in "open
surveillance" situations like this -- Z would have gotten right
out, gone up to the boxy "ghost house," and knocked on the
door.

Getting no answer would be his excuse
to look in the windows to see what he could see.

It was just that, this time, there was
no need to approach the house.

There wasn't much he could learn by
looking in the windows, after all, the house build on a standard
floor plan. To the right was the usual, one-car garage, its badly
warped door pulled down. There would be a tiny living room behind
the front door. At the back-right of the living room, a plaster
archway would lead to a short crossing hall providing access to two
bedrooms, the larger one to the left behind the living room.
Straight ahead would be a tiny bath. Right of that, a large kitchen
with an eating area that served as a dining room. The smaller
bedroom would be behind the garage.

No attic.

Possibly a basement or, at least, an
old-fashioned root cellar.

Z had seen houses like this before.
They were all alike.

As Z sat in the car with the afternoon
heat "raining" through the Cavalier's steel top -- wanting to leave
but unable to do so -- he finally had to admit to himself he was
avoiding this "fixer-upper" because there was something he didn't
like about it.

Was it because it reminded him of the
cramped house where his mother had her final illness? Except that
this house was a cube instead of a rectangle and built of wood
instead of limestone. Judged objectively, the only resemblance
between the houses was in Z's twisted memory.

Damn, memory!

There was no help for it. To do his
duty as a professional, Z had to go up to the house.

Opening the car door, using both hands
to pry himself out of the small driver's seat, straightening to
stand, Z was struck by the dagger of the sun's direct
rays.

Recovering, slamming the tinny door,
he set out across the badly cracked pavement, his nose tortured by
the oily smell of tar cooked on the street's "solar" griddle, the
road soft underfoot. Blistering. Sticky.

Stepping up on the unkempt parking, Z
crossed the weed-grown, crazed brick crosswalk, going through the
open gate to pick his way up the house's octagonal tile
path.

At the porch, climbing the splintered,
wooden steps, Z knocked on the door.

No answer, of course, his knock's
reverberation seconding what he'd assumed: that the place was ...
empty.

Antique deadbolt lock on the door.
Crude, but effective for its day.

The knocking over, Z backed off the
porch to walk around the left side of the house and down the
burnt-out side yard, pausing to take a hand-shaded look into what
had to be the living room, moving on to a bedroom window, only to
discover that the inside of the house was set up the way he'd
envisioned it.

Beyond that, it was too dark in there
to see anything much ... except that there was little left to
see.

Nothing remarkable out back either,
the backyard, like the residence itself, in the middle of the "war
zone" of smashed houses.

Something shiny catching Z's eye, he
bent to inspect the house's sloped-flat, overlapping cellar doors.
Found that the reflection came from a cheap combination lock
clicked through the double doors' rusty, but solid,
hasp.

Finished with the cellar doors, Z rose
to examine the back door, finding it "protected" by a standard
spring lock -- easiest thing in the world to jimmy.

Z grinned.

To one-up the ghost
hunter, Z would finesse his way past the well-protected
front
door; get some
respect by showing off his lock-picking skills.

Until then .....

The heat hurrying him, salty sweat
sliding from the runnels along his forehead, Z completed the
circumnavigation of the house, cutting back across the abandoned
yard before crossing the street to the sun-struck
Cavalier.

Squeezing himself into the steamy
little car, ignoring the heat buildup of the thinly padded seat, Z
ground the car's small engine into life, popped the automatic into
drive and slipped on past 2609.

Pulling up in a wide spot
ahead, Z U-turned the Cavalier to ease back the way he'd come, it
occurring to him he
could
do something to make this Liberty trip more than
a complete waste of time.

"Someone" had reported there was a
"ghost light" at 2609, that "someone" in the only other house in
sight.

Figuring to pick up background
information, driving past 2609, Z stopped in front of
2607.

Again with no way to "blend in," all Z
could do was get out and struggle up 2607's front walk.

No reason to rush, Z needing time to
decide who he wanted to portray in order to prompt a friendly chat
with the person answering the door.

Still thinking about an alias, he
pried himself out of the car, rounding the front bumper -- hamming
it up shamefully -- and strained his leg over the concrete curb,
all the while keeping his eyes open.

The house at 2607 had no fence, just a
yard -- not too well-kept, a blind man "seeing" these last two
houses were slated for demolition.

He'd need an excuse for knocking on
the door, of course; meaning he had to choose which of his
billfold's fake identity cards he'd use to impress the occupant
(forged cards like these available to friends of Johnny
Dosso.)

For instance, no sign of a dog argued
against flashing his dog catcher credentials. Anyway, who'd
complain about a barking dog in what had become nowhere?

Ah! An old house in an old
neighborhood. Probably meant old people, old folks tending to be
religious ....