If Angels Fall (35 page)

Everything flowed. Beautifully. The Zodiac would
applaud him.

Time to move on. Time to teach a new, painful lesson,
one that would transcend his work with Franklin, one tempered with rage for the
new fuck.

Shook pulled on a pair of gloves and went to the
corner newspaper box, returning with two fresh editions of the
Star
.

He went to his bed, a huge steel-framed monstrosity
from a St. Louis hospital that had burned down. He unscrewed the middle hollow
bar from the head and carefully tapped out several rolled-up Polaroids
snapshots of himself with Tanita Donner. None one had seen these pictures. And
no one knew of the tantalizing clue he had left police before he dispatched the
little prostitute to paradise.

Shook traced gloved fingers tenderly over the photos
before selecting two. He ripped the Nunn abduction story from the first
newspaper and scrawled a note over the text, using a blue felt-tip pen like the
Zodiac. He folded the clipping, put it in a plain, brown envelope, scanned the
phone book, then addressed the envelope to Paul Nunn.

He made an identical envelope and addressed it to
Danny Becker’s family. Then Shook left his room, taking the subway to Oakland,
where he would drop the two letters in a mailbox.

Another yank on the leash.

The Ayatollah Komeini
glowered at Reed.

EYE OF THE HURRICANE. AMERICANS HELD HOSTAGE AT THE
U.S. EMBASSY IN TEHRAN. EL SAVADOR TEETERING, MOUNT ST. HELENS SPEWING ASH AND
ROCK. SOVIET INTERVENTION IN AFGHANISTAN. All there in black-and-white,
bleeding on the front page.

1980.

All there except for Keller’s tragedy. Wrong page?
Reed checked the skyline. Wrong date. He hit the advance button on the Minolta
and whisked through time along a microfilm torrent of photographs, headlines,
and advertisements. The take-up reel buzzed. It was late.

He stayed at the paper after reading the old
Star
clip on Edward Keller’s boating tragedy. Alone in the news library searching
the past. Reels of microfilm newspapers and opened news indices were piled next
to him, signposts to Keller’s case. The
Star’s
clippings were a start.
He was also going through the
Chronicle
and the
Examiner
for
their takes, looking for something extra, any vital piece of information that
would...what? Connect Keller to the kidnappings?

He had a beard and looked like the guy in the fuzzy
home video footage. And there was something strange about Keller, something
that just didn’t sit right.

Be careful, Reed. This ain’t no movie. Hunches are
mean, wild horses. You rode one last year and ended up with your ass getting
stomped. The memory of Wallace’s widow slapping his face still stung. Wallace’s
little girl clinging to her father’s leg hours before his put his mouth around
a double-barreled 12-gauge.

“Leave my daddy alone!”

You’d better be damned careful. The reel clicked and
stopped. This is it. BILL RODGERS WINS THE BOSTON MARATHON. MOUNT ST. HELENS
ERUPTS. Photos of an anguished President Carter and the wreckage of U.S.
Helicopters in the desert where eight Americans died in the failed rescue of
the hostages. And Keller’s story. A small item, inconspicuous. Below the fold:

BUILDER’S 3 CHILDREN LOST IN FARALLONS TRAGEDY

Three children are missing and feared dead after a
family sight-seeing excursion ended in tragedy yesterday near the Farallon
Islands.

Nine-year-old Pierce Keller, his sister, Alisha, 6,
and their brother, Joshua, 3, are presumed drowned after the small boat
chartered from Half Moon Bay by their father, Edward Keller of San Francisco,
capsized in a storm southeast of the islands.

“The search for the children will continue through
the night and tomorrow,” a U.S. Coast Guard official said. The chances of
finding them alive were “remote,” he said.

“The weather was severe and none of the children
had life jackets. We found the father on a buoy, suffering from extreme
exhaustion and hypothermia.”

Keller is recovering in San Francisco General
Hospital. He is the owner of Resurrection Building Inc., one of northern
California’s largest contracting firms, specializing in the construction of
churches. An official with the company was too distraught to comment when
reached by the
Chronicle.

No other details were available.

Resurrection Building? Churches? Keller built
churches?

Interesting. Explained his religious ranting. Reed
punched the photocopy button. As the Minolta hummed, he searched the San
Francisco phone book and the current state directory of companies for a listing
for Resurrection Building. Nothing. He searched the phone book and city
directory for Edward Keller’s listing. Nothing.

He pulled the story from the copy tray and read it
again. Then he snapped through his notes from his interview with Keller.

“I know that soon I will be with my children again.
That I will deliver them from purgatory. God in His infinite mercy has revealed
this to me. Every day I give him thanks and praise Him. And every day I wage
war against doubt in preparation for my blessed reunion.”

Reed went over the passages several times.

He removed his glasses, chewing thoughtfully on one
earpiece.

“I will be with my children again.”

He sifted through his papers for Molly’s article on
the FBI’s psychological profile of Danny Becker’s kidnapper. The quotes leaped
from the page: “—traumatized by cataclysmic event involving children—lives in
fantasy world stimulated by alcohol, drugs or religious delusions...” Religious
delusions.

And there was another key about the suspect, the FBI
had told Molly. Reed scanned her story. Here it was. Yes. They always followed
the news coverage of their cases to learn what police knew and to enjoy
feelings of invincibility, superiority.

Keller told Reed that he had read his stories about
Danny Becker and Tanita Marie Donner.

Reed rubbed his tired, burning eyes.

“You know you are crazy to be here at this hour,
Reed.” Molly Wilson’s bracelets chimed as she breezed over to him, brandishing
a first-edition copy of that day’s
Star
.

“Let me see that.” Reed took the paper, still wrm and
moist from the Metroliner presses.

“You should be in a bar, Reed. We own the front page.”

The double-deck forty-point headline screamed:

SERIAL CHILD-KILLER STEALS SECOND CHILD

“I didn’t believe the night desk when they said you
were working in here. What the hell are you up to at this hour?”

Wilson bent over behind Reed, her hair playing against
his shoulder. He caught a trace of her Obsession.

“Let’s go have a beer. Photo guys are saving a table
at Lou’s.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’ll pass? Why? What’s so important here?”

Reed looked at Wilson. Deciding to confide in her, he
got up and shut the library door.

“This is between you and me. It doesn’t leave this
room, Molly.”

He returned to his chair. Wilson sat on the table.

“Remember, I joked to you about this Keller guy from
the bereavement group when you were doing up the FBI profile?”

“Yeah.”

“Before I go any further, read this.” He handed her
his notes from Keller, the old clippings from the tragedy twenty years ago, and
her article on the psych profile. It took less than two minutes for her to
ingest everything. Next Reed handed her working prints of the police composite
and a still from the blurry home-video footage of the suspect in Golden Gate,
then Henry Cain’s contact sheet of the pictures he shot of Dr. Martin’s
bereavement group. Although Edward Keller didn’t want his picture taken, Cain
took it. Secretly. Most photographers would have. It’s an unwritten rule in the
business. You never know when you’ll need a photo of a certain person. Like
now. Wilson held the contacts up to the light and squinted through a loupe at
the one-inch-square shot of Keller.

“Holy fuck, Tom. Put dark glasses on Keller and he
looks just like the composite. What do you think?”

“he’s got to be a suspect. There’s got to be something
there.”

Wilson pulled up a chair, sat next to Reed, and began
picking through the papers. “What do you think is going on?”

“I think he could never come to terms with the drowning
of his three children. Something snapped inside and he grabbed Danny Becker and
Gabrielle Nunn as surrogates.”

“What about the Donner case? Where does it fit in?”

“I’m not sure. So far it’s different. I mean in that
case a body was found. Maybe something went wrong with that one, or it’s not
related. I don’t know anymore.”

“Look at this!” Wilson underlined the ages of Keller’s
children when they drowned, then drew a line on a blank piece of paper, writing
three-year-old Joshua Keller’s name on one side of the line. Opposite Joshua’s
name she wrote, “Danny Raphael Becker, 3”. Under Joshua, she wrote, “Alisha
Keller, 5”.  Across the line she wrote “Gabrielle Michelle Nunn, 5”.

“Look at the old stories Tom. Gabrielle will be six by
the anniversary of the tragedy, the twenty-first.”

“That’s right.”

“Something else. These names”—Wilson circled Raphael
and Gabrielle—“these are angels’ names.”

“I thought that too. Are you sure?”

“I’m lapsed Catholic. I wrote a high school paper on
angels.”

Reed studied the names, thinking.

“Angels. Maybe to him the kids are angels or
something.”

“Maybe guardian angels?”

“Maybe. It would fit with the profile. I mean we’ve
got him on the traumatic cataclysmic event with children.”

“Right, the drownings.”

“And we’ve got him on religious delusions.”

“Church building, Scripture spewing, grief-stricken
nut who is stealing kids with angel names who are the same age as his dead
children.” Wilson shook her head.

“What?”

“I don’t know, Tom. It’s just so incredible.”

“Not really, Molly. Look, remember I did that feature
on the woman who posed as a maternity nurse and walked out of an East Bay
hospital with a newborn?”

“It was a good piece.”

“Well, the FBI’s research showed that a key motivator
for child abductors—and it’s mostly women who do newborn hospital abductions—is
the need to replace a child. So it’s not unreal. And I’m thinking, this could
be the same thing Keller is going through.”

“Yeah, but for twenty years, Tom? We’re making a leap
here.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Okay, so it fits. So why not go to the police? Why
not tell Sydowski about your theory? Let him check it out.”

Reed stared at her, saying nothing. Her suggestion
made perfect sense, but he couldn’t do it. Wilson knew.

“It’s because of what happened last time you played
your hunch, right? You’re a little gun-shy?”

“Something like that. What if I tell Sydowski, and he
goes to Keller and it turns out he’s not the bad guy at all? Keller’s in a
counseling group, the anniversary of his kids’ deaths is coming. What if the
police spook him and he loses it or—“

Reed couldn’t finish the thought.

“You don’t want another suicide.”

Tom rubbed his face. “I may have been wrong about
Franklin Wallace, Molly. It’s been haunting me. I just don’t know.”

“I don’t think you were wrong there. Wallace had
something to do with Tanita’s murder. Maybe it was a partner crime.”

“Okay, say I was right about Wallace. But I went
through so much shit with that. It cost me so much. I’m torn up with this.”

“But what if Keller is the one? There’s so much at
stake here. The kids could be alive.”