Hang Wire (7 page)

Ted looked around like he was expecting Alison to be standing behind him, behind the couch in his apartment. The feeling that he wasn’t alone was still there from last night. In the dead air that followed Alison’s voice, it sounded like there was someone else on the line, whispering into his ear.

“Ted?”

“Where are you?”

“Still at the Asian Art Museum. Meeting went fine.”

“Oh,” said Ted. “Sorry. Great, I’m glad.”

“So, lunch?”

“If lunch comes with coffee, then count me in.”

“See you in twenty.”

“See you,” said Ted. Alison disconnected. Ted kept the phone to his ear, listening, his other hand massaging his forehead. But there was no one there. Then he put the phone down and watched a whole troupe of spandex-clad aerobics junkies do synchronized cycling on their machines as the camera panned and zoomed like it was the finale of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Ted heaved himself off the couch. A shower. Coffee. These were, right now, his two most favorite things in the world. Throw in some sunshine for good old vitamin D and some fresh air to blow the cobwebs away, and he’d be back in business. And, really, starting his thirty-eighth year with a hangover – of sorts, anyway – seemed entirely appropriate.

He tossed the phone onto the couch and headed for the bedroom, unable to shake the feeling that his head felt like it was made of lead. Heavy, slow, like his neck couldn’t support it properly and if he moved it too quickly it would wobble. Maybe it would fall off.

Between the living area and the bedroom was a dining area, another red maple table, the bigger brother of the coffee table, square in the center. There were some papers, and Ted’s laptop. As Ted passed it, he saw the laptop was on. It showed an empty white window, a new document opened in his word processor.

Not empty. There were lines of text in a column. A short sentence, the font italic. Repeated again and again. Ted stopped, leaned on the back of the nearest dining chair, and stared at the screen.

Ted reached forward, swiped his fingers on the trackpad, scrolling down the page. The text went on. And on.

Ted withdrew his hand and the scrolling stopped around page sixty-four.

He rolled his lips, unsure. He didn’t remember falling asleep on the couch, and he certainly didn’t remember sitting down and typing the fortune out on his laptop beforehand. But he remembered the restaurant, the bang and the flash, and the paper strips raining from the ceiling. Alison hadn’t mentioned the fortunes. In fact, nobody did, not in the immediate aftermath. Ted wondered if, lying where he had, he was the only one who had seen. Seen how there was nothing up on the ceiling of the Jade Emperor except rolling black clouds, how the paper was falling, falling like autumn leaves. How when he looked up again, once he was upright, there were no black clouds, nothing but a black ceiling and green lanterns swinging on their short chains.

Ted closed the laptop’s lid and went to take a shower.

It was a bright morning and it was going to be a hot day, Ted could tell. San Francisco had a peculiar little microclimate, the way it was surrounded by water on three sides. A day could blow hot and cold and hot again, sunshine in one part of the city and chilly fog somewhere else. And then things could swap over.

But not today. Today it felt different, at least to Ted. He wondered why he was so sure, but he was, so that was that.

“What’s up?”

He looked at Alison as they walked down Howard Street, coming up to the Moscone Convention Center. The flags were flying, and a fleet of taxis was in steady rotation outside the front of the complex. Something big was in town, but nothing that Ted could remember. Which meant the blog wasn’t covering it, which meant it was something boring like a medical conference. You know, important stuff.

“What’s up?”

Alison laughed. “You’re
smiling.
You’re not supposed to smile. At least not in public. You must be feeling better.”

“Oh,” said Ted, and he realized that yes, he was smiling. The sun was warm on his face and for a moment he felt like he could leap a tall building in a single bound. “I told you I was OK.”

“You did,” she said, and she looped her arm through his. They slowed their pace as they came to the big intersection at Howard and Fourth. Three police cars, lights and sirens blazing, hurtled through the intersection. Ted and Alison watched as the cars pulled up a block to their left. There were more police down there, several cars and a van. Cops were walking around, along with some men in black bomber jackets and blue baseball caps.

Ted felt Alison’s grip on his arm tighten. He looked down at the top of her blonde head, and she said, “It’s happened again.”

Clementina Street, left of Fourth Street, was cordoned off, and Fourth itself was down to one lane, the police directing a growing crawl of traffic. Yellow police tape snapped and flickered in the breeze. There were people there already, just a small group of pedestrians, some in suits, perhaps convention center attendees from just across the street. There were some in orange vests and hardhats, construction workers from a nearby apartment building right on the corner of Clementina.

Ted and Alison joined the edge of the group. Ted could see another two police cars down the closed-off street, and an ambulance, its red and white paintjob instantly recognizable from just the night before.

Ted felt his heart kick, like he needed to get away, a moment of
déjà vu
so strong it made him feel sick. Perhaps it was just seeing the ambulance there. For all he knew, it
was
the one he’d sat in just hours ago.

Alison pulled on his arm. “You OK?”

Ted frowned, confused, and then nodded. “Yeah. It’s just… you know.” He looked down the street where people in uniforms were milling around. They couldn’t see anything. Nobody could. But everybody knew what was going on.

“I know,” said Alison. “You don’t think anything like this would happen in your town. Right in your home, where you live. It’s like –”

“Like it doesn’t feel like your home anymore,” said Ted. “I know.”

“That’s four now.”

“
Jesus
,” whispered Ted. His head pounded.

Of course it had happened before. Several times. San Francisco, like an unfortunate number of other cities across the United States, knew what it was like to have a serial killer in their midst. There was David Carpenter, the so-called Trailside Killer, back in the late Seventies, although he hadn’t committed his crimes in the city itself. The San Francisco Witch Killers, early Eighties. And of course the Zodiac Killer, responsible for five deaths and a series of cryptic letters sent to the local press. Unsolved to this very day.

And now a new name to add to the list: the Hang Wire Killer. Unsolved, ongoing, three deaths –
four
, now – each the same: the victims were founded hanged in quiet streets or back alleys in the city, dangling from fire escapes or lampposts, strung up with a thin steel cable. And the press sure did love a nickname. The Hang Wire Killer had arrived.

“Doesn’t make any sense,” said Ted.

Alison squeezed his arm. “Never does.”

“I mean,” he said, turning to Alison, “why the wire? Why not rope? Wire is heavy, resistant. It would be awkward, difficult to do it with wire. Doesn’t make any sense.”

“They’ll catch him.”

Ted snorted, and Alison gave him a sharp look that made Ted frown and shake his head. “Don’t get me wrong, I hope they will,” he said. “But remember the Zodiac Killer. That guy is still out there.”

Alison returned her attention to the crime scene. Clementina Street was narrow and quiet, but they were right next to the convention center. Someone must have seen or heard something, surely? This part of town would have been busy, even late.

“Come on,” said Ted, gently pulling at Alison’s arm. “There’s nothing to see and nothing to do. We just have to let the police do their job.”

“You’re right,” she said as they walked away. “We’re lucky, in a way.”

“Lucky?”

“The blog,” said Alison. “Lucky that we only cover community events and local news.”

“Roller-skating dogs.”

“Exactly. Roller-skating dogs. I’m not sure I could handle reporting on something like this.”

“Real news,” said Ted. He glanced at the flags fluttering outside the convention center as they walked back along Fourth, to the intersection. The offices of the blog were just a few minutes away. “Important stuff.”

“Hmm?”

Ted smiled as the crossing light went green. “Nothing,” he said.

— INTERLUDE —

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

“For the last time, Mr Duvall, we’re leaving. It’s over, finished. The circus is breaking up. Each of us is going his separate way, never to see nor speak to the others again. We have to do this. It’s over, Mr Duvall.
Over
.”

There was no arguing with Mr R S Barnett. He was the boss, the ringmaster, the manager, the accountant. He was everything. The Great Barnett Show was more than just his creation, his livelihood. It was his life.

Mr R S Barnett was shutting the circus down. It was hasty, thought Joel. A bad decision, the wrong decision. The circus was a wonderful thing, full of lights and music, life, laughter.

“Mr Barnett, please,” said Joel. He held his hands out, pleading, to Barnett’s retreating back. To his credit, Barnett stopped, sighed, and turned around.

“For God’s sake, Joel,” he said. “There’s been a murder. We can’t go on. We can’t.”

The Great Barnett Show. Full of life, and laughter.

Full of death and screaming.

The night was cold and the sky was clear. Joel lay on the grass in the middle of the dark carnival, stared at the stars, wondered what he was supposed to do now. In his waistcoat pocket, the Double Eagle his daddy had given him felt heavy and cold. His imagination, of course. But it was his lucky coin, and when he carried it his daddy walked with him.

Maybe the lucky coin was trying to tell him something.

A star fell, high above the circus, a cat scratch of white against the heavens that faded almost as quickly as it appeared. And then another, larger, brighter, flaring for a second. And then it too was gone.

Falling stars. They were either good luck or bad, depending whose folklore you followed. Joel hadn’t grown up with much in the way of folklore, or religion. When his daddy marched to war and never came back, it didn’t seem much like there was a god smiling down on His creation.

Or maybe there was, and maybe it was a cruel and capricious master and the world and the people in it were merely toys, a distraction.

Joel wasn’t sure he believed that. He didn’t believe in much.

Not since the voice had started whispering in his ear.

Well, no, it wasn’t a voice, he thought as he stared at the starry sky. It was a feeling, like there was someone over your shoulder, leaning in to mutter secrets. A breath in the ear and a tickle of hair. But there was nobody there. Joel was alone – always had been, ever since his daddy had left – and there wasn’t a voice, not really. It was the
memory
of a voice, like he’d been told something long, long ago in a conversation that had never happened, and then it swam back into his mind, making him dizzy like a dose of the
déjà vus.

It had started in Oklahoma. The thing he found, buried in the ground. The thing that had come from far, far away – from the stars, perhaps. Although he wasn’t really sure how he knew that for a fact, not really.

Maybe there was something in the stories about falling stars bringing luck. Good or bad, maybe both. Comets too. Comets were omens, portents, inscrutable somethings that arced across the sky, seeding cold evil from stars wherever they traveled.

It had told Joel how to build the machines. There was no instruction, no command; Joel just knew what he had to do, and he had an urge to do it like he had an urge to eat or drink or breathe or sleep. It was part of him. It had told Joel to cut the stones from the cave until he had two shining jewels, the red gems which were now the eyes of the carved wooden monkey which sat as the centerpiece of the carnival’s star ride, the great carousel.

Joel turned his head on the grass, and looked toward the carousel. It was dark and still, but in the center he thought he could see the eyes of the monkey glowing softly in the night. Then he blinked and the red light was gone, and he returned his attention to the sky above.

He never staked his claim in Oklahoma. He abandoned the territory. Traveled to Philadelphia, although he didn’t know why. Found Mr R S Barnett, although he didn’t know why. Started building the machines, started painting them with stars and planets and moons and comets. Didn’t know why, but he knew he had to. Carved the gems out of the cave rock. Carved the monkey.

The moon was rising, brightening the sky, blotting out the stars. That annoyed Joel. He wouldn’t be able to see any more falling stars.

The machines were carnival rides. Barnett had paid for them, given Joel a workforce, funded a workshop. It was simple enough to Joel. He knew just what to do and how to do it. Barnett had been happy. More than happy. No one in the whole wide world would have pleasure machines like his new circus show. Barnett had thanked Joel, given him money, offered him a partnership.

But Joel didn’t need money. He had no interest in the business of the place. All he had interest in was his machines and their running. His machines, and the power that lived within them. Like a hermit crab in a new shell.