If Angels Fall (34 page)

Something as
big as an elephant was inside Gabrielle’s head beating to get out.
It hurt.

She tasted something horrible in her mouth, like
vinegar and medicine. Open your eyes. Can’t. They’re too heavy. Maybe they’re
stuck shut. Lying on something soft. A bed? Where is she? It didn’t smell like
her room. Her house. It’s smelly here, like something rotten, like a scary
place. Where was she?

Squeak-creak
.

Where is she? What happened? The party. Joannie
Tyson’s birthday party at the park. The carousel. Butterflies in her stomach.
Rhonda King throwing up. Gross! The man outside the bathroom. Jackson. He found
Jackson. A quick secret peek in his truck. Want a soda? You spilled some
but—the wet cloth—can’t breathe—Jackson barking—the cloth dripping
medicine—fighting—kicking.

Squeak-creak. Squeak. Creak.

Don’t open your eyes!

Something—someone touched her cheek. A soft warm hand.
Small.

Please. Please. Please. Don’t hurt me.

She had to open her eyes. Had to. Okay. A little boy.
On his knees looking down at her. A boy who was smaller than she was, staring
at her. She blinked at him and sniffed. The boy looked sad.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Gabrielle Nunn. Who are you?”

“Danny.”

“Where am I? Have you seen my dog, Jackson?”

Danny didn’t answer.

“Where’s Mr. Jenkins? He knows my dad.”

Danny just stared at her.

“Where is this place?”

Danny said nothing.

Gabrielle sat up and looked at him until a tiny light
of recognition glimmered on her face. “You’re the little boy on TV, the one who
got kidnapped—you are!”

“Where’s my daddy?” Danny said. “Can I go home now?”

Newspapers covered the basement window. It looked dark
outside. Were those bars, like jail? A dim bulb hung from the ceiling, like in
Gabrielle’s dad’s garage, painting the grungy, cracked walls in a pale light.
Where’s the TV? Were there people who can take her home? Where was Jackson?
Where was Mr. Jenkins? She was confused. She didn’t like this place. There were
three mattresses, ripped, with stuff coming out of them. They smelled. Why
three? The door was closed. Garbage and stuff plastered the floor. Yech!

“Danny,” she asked, “who lives in this place?”

He just sat there, his face dirty and white, like he
was sick or sleepy or something.

“I don’t like this place. I want to go home now,” she
said.

Danny offered her a chocolate-covered, vanilla cream
cookie.

“It’s got a bite already.” She didn’t touch it.

Danny bit into the cookie.

Gabrielle knew she was with the boy who got kidnapped
and had his picture on TV everywhere. The boy everybody was looking for all
over the place. Suddenly she realized a terrible thing.

She was kidnapped, too!

“Danny, where is this place?”

He just stared.

“What’s going to happen to us now?” she asked.

Danny’s fingers were sticky from the cookie. He was
really littler than she was. His chin crumpled and his eyes clamped shut and he
began crying in a ragged voice like he had been crying forever. Gabrielle
wanted to cry, too, but something inside took over. Big kids look after little
kids, they told you in school. Gabrielle put her arm around him.

“Don’t cry, Danny.” She sniffed. “My daddy will take
us home.”

“I want to go home, now.”

“Me, too. I wonder who lives in this place?”

Danny pointed a tiny finger to the door. “The man who
took me.”

Squeak-creak. Squeak-creak
. He was out there!

Gabrielle’s stomach bounced. Gooseflesh crawled along
her arms.

Squeak-creak. Squeak-creak
.

She hated Mr. Jenkins, whoever he was. He had tricked
her. He lied. Where was Jackson? He must have stolen Jackson from her. He was a
bad man. She was in trouble now. Her mommy and daddy told her never talk to
strangers. No matter what. But he had Jackson and said he knew Daddy.
No
matter what.
She broke the rules and it was all her fault. Mom and Dad were
going to be mad. She had to tell them she was sorry she broke the rules. They
would come and get her if she told them everything. Maybe she wouldn’t be in
too much trouble. Gabrielle knew what she had to do. She had to tell her mom
and dad. But how?

Telephone.

If you ever get lost, Gabrielle, just call home.

She would call home right now.

“Where is the phone, Danny?”

He pointed to the door. “Out there.”

Squeak-creak. Squeak-creak.

She was scared. She looked around the room again.

“Danny, you sure there’s no phone in this room?”

“Out there.”

Gabrielle stood, she was a little dizzy. Maybe she
should just sit here and wait. No! She had to do it. She had to, so she
wouldn’t be in trouble. She had to phone home. And she had to pee.

Squeak-creak. Squeak-creak.

The grease-stained burger boxes and bags crumpled as
she moved to the door. What if the man was watching from a spy hole, ready to
come in at any second? The wrappers, napkins, empty drink cups, boxes, and bags
rustled. Something squished. Yuck. A half-eaten burger. Stale ketchup bled
under her shoe. In the far off corner some wrappers were moving.

By themselves.

Gabrielle froze.

The bags moved a little, trembling like something was
gnawing on them. Gabrielle watched. Maybe it was Jackson? What else could it
be? It had to be Jackson. Gabrielle cut a path to the corner.

“Here, pup,” she cooed, lifting a large bag just as a
giant rat with ketchup dripping from its mouth flew at her, coming so close she
felt its tail slap against her palm!

Gabrielle screamed, jumped back, falling.

A vanilla cream cookie whizzed by the rat’s head.

“Go away!” Danny shouted, reaching into his bag for
another.

Gabrielle scurried to Danny. Together they fired
cookies at the rat. It had touched her. She was scared.

The door swung open.

Mr. Jenkins. Only, he didn’t look so friendly now. A
big silver cross was swinging from his neck. He spotted the rat, disappeared,
and returned with a baseball bat.

“Vermin!” he screamed, bring the bat down swiftly,
missing the rat. It squealed, the bat went
clank
and garbage scattered.

He yelled, swinging the bat down again.

The fierceness of the man’s attack frightened the
children more than the rat did. His eyes were huge, popping out of his head,
the white parts as big as eggs. His hair wild like a nest o angry snakes.
Spittle clung to his beard.

Keller swung again, making a wet, squishing sound. He
laughed, his bat dripping with the blood of the rat. Gabrielle screamed. Keller
looked at her.

“It is done,” he said, moving toward the children.

Keller’s expression changed. Raphael and Gabriel were
before them. He saw their auras.

The light of one million suns shone upon him.

His rage was replaced by rapture. Like a victorious
battle-weary soldier, he laid his foe at the throne. The bloodied, pulpy
carcass, fur and mangled intestines, lay inches from Gabrielle and Danny.
Gabrielle stifled her sobs, trying not to look.

“W-We want to go home, now. Please Mr. Jenkins,” she
pleaded.

Keller did not hear her.

“You have come, Gabriel. God’s emissary. You have come
to me!”

“Please, Mr. Jenkins! Let me phone my mommy and
daddy!”

Remembering the bat, Keller lifted it to his face,
examining the blood with fascination.

“I am cleaned in the light of the Lord. I have tasted
the blood of my enemies. None shall defeat me, for my mission is divine and I
am truly invincible.” He moved his fingers over the blood-slicked club. “I am
cleansed in the light—I have tasted the blood of my enemies.”

“My mission is divine. I am truly invincible.”

Gabrielle pulled Danny tight to her.

Keller went upstairs to the bathroom and ran the bath
water.

God had answered his prayers.

One more angel and the choir would be complete.

Then the transfiguration would begin.

Wiping the tears from his face, he stood and kissed
his crucifix.

It was time for the second baptism.

If Virgil Shook
worshiped anything in this world beyond himself it was the Zodiac,
the personification of power.

The Zodiac was the hooded executioner who had murdered
five people in the Bay Area during the late 1960’s and mocked police in the
cryptic letters he wrote to newspapers. His cunning eclipsed the best minds of
the SFPD and the FBI. He owned the city, mastered its fear, yanking it by a
leash at his leisure. The Zodiac was a visionary, a seer who knew that when he
died, his victims would be his slaves and he would be a king in paradise.

They had never captured him. Shook signed.

For a time last year, like the Zodiac, he had sipped
from the cup of power. He had enjoyed Tanita, the little prostitute. Loved her
to death and forced the city to tremble in the wake of his omnipotence. He had
manipulated Franklin Wallace, outsmarted police, and taunted the priest with
his confessions, spitting in the face of his God, compelling him to genuflect
to the power of The One.

That was then. Now the city was under the spell of
another. A new player was reaping the harvest of Shook’s work and Shook was
enraged.

Who did this new fuck think he was?

Shook snapped off the late-night TV news after
absorbing the reports of Gabrielle Nunn’s abduction in Golden Gate Park. The
horror in Nancy Nunn’s face had seared him. Her pain should have been his to
relish. Yet he watched mournfully from afar, like a starving wolf contending
with the mark of a new predator.

Shook paced his dirty flophouse room, oblivious to the
opera of sirens piercing the foul of night air of the Tenderloin. If he was
going to be immortalized like the Zodiac, it was time to up the ante. Time to
teach the challenger a lesson in a way even more thrilling than it had been
with poor little Franklin Wallace, when he plucked him like a harp, savoring
the danger of it to the point of arousal.

Franklin? It’s me.

Oh Lord, don’t call me at home like this. Lord
don’t!

They know, Franklin, he lied. They know about
Tanita. Me. You.

NO!

They know everything. And the press knows, too.

No!

They found the pictures of you with her in Dolores
Park. They are coming for you soon. You know what that means.

No!

Remember our pact, Wallace. We must pay for our
sins. We both know that.

But, Virgil, I—

Think of your family, the insurance.  They won’t
pay if you’re connected to anything criminal, Franklin. They are coming for
you.

Wallace was sobbing, a sickly, man-child kind of
weeping.

Virgil, please! I don’t know what to do.

You do know. We both know. Good-bye, Franklin.

Virgil—No, wait.

May God have mercy on you, Wallace.

Shook fired the blank from the .22, dropping it
with the phone on the floor. Wallace screamed through the earpiece, his voice
tiny, distant. An hour later, Shook stood safely out of sight near Franklin’s
house, smiling to himself when that fool he called at the Star appeared on
Franklin’s doorstep, like an obedient lapdog.