Of Saints and Shadows (1994) (2 page)

Kids.
Right!
They had to be twenty-two or -three. So what did that make him? Hell, thirty-three was young.

When he met Julie, Roger fell completely head over heels, shit-eating grin, fool-for-your-stockings in love, and they got married a year later. They laughed and worked, made love and worked, lived and worked. Then they tried to have kids, and that was the one thing that didn’t work. He and Julie had not had sex for two months. He very badly wanted a drink. Things change.

When he pulled open the oaken door of the bar and grill, Roger thought, not for the first time, that maybe he’d find something more in the Publik House than a cold one. He had never cheated before, and had never imagined he would be ready to start. Things change.

Behind the bar there floated a young woman with beautiful green eyes and long auburn hair. Her name tag identified her as Courteney MacGoldrick, which Roger thought suited her.

What little light existed within the small, Colonial bar and grill was supplied by small candles on the tables that looked like they were supposed to keep the bugs away, and a lamp on either end of the bar. It was romantic all right. And dark enough so that you could sink into a corner if you really wanted to. Usually he did, but tonight he made a beeline to the bar and, on an inspired whim, ordered a Guinness.

Miss Courteney MacGoldrick, bartender extraordinaire that the little lass was, brought it to him right away, and served it with a beaming smile. A smile that elicited a strange reaction in Roger.

He completely lost his nerve.

In fact it was a half hour, and the top of the third Guinness, before he got up the guts to strike up any semblance of a conversation with her. He noticed she had a lull in her work, and he had been watching her compact form move back and forth behind the bar for long enough. He mustered up every ounce of courage in his gradually numbing body and spoke.

“So,” he said. “How’s it going tonight?”

And as she opened her mouth to reply he prepared to leave promptly before her words cemented his belief that he had made a complete ass of himself.

“Not bad,” she said cheerily. “How ’bout you?”

Oh, my sweet Lord in Heaven! Small talk. One of America’s greatest inventions.

They talked for quite a while. After about five minutes he started to get nervous again. A couple of guys sat down at the end of the bar, and he realized she would have to serve them in a few seconds. Now or never.

“So,” he began again. “Can I buy you a drink when you get off of work?”

A heartbeat.

And another.

At least the damn thing was working.

“Do you think your wife would appreciate that?”

“My . . .” he began, and then felt rather than remembered the ring around his finger. Feeling about as stupid as it gets, he laid a twenty on the counter, picked up his briefcase, and without further ceremony scurried out of the bar with his tail between his legs.

Outside, he began to smile. Just the corners of his mouth at first, and then it broke into a wide grin.

A chuckle, a snicker, a giggle, and then laughter.

It felt good to laugh, even if it was at his own expense. Courteney MacGoldrick, without even knowing it, had probably just saved his marriage.

Fuck it
, Roger thought,
we’ll adopt.

On his way back to the garage, he stopped for a moment to grab a cup of Java in the Capitol Coffee House. Then he was on his way, blowing into the hole torn from the plastic cover. He unlocked the garage and went in. He was whistling again, a song that had been bludgeoned to death by Boston radio, and he still could not remember the name of it. That was Julie, she was great with stuff like that. He walked up the paved slope toward his car, one of the few left in the garage. It was a Honda Accord. He often told Manny that all the expensive cars left early. Manny always laughed.

He was still whistling as he put his coffee down on the roof of his car so he could reach the keys. He unlocked the door, tossed in his case, and climbed in. He let the car warm up for a moment and turned on the radio. He smiled. It was that same damn song, a good omen, he thought. But it was ending, so he still could not catch the title. He began to fiddle with the dial again, when someone rapped on the driver’s-side window, scaring the shit out of him. He banged his knee on the underside of the dash.

At the window was a man all in black, except for the white square at his collar.

A priest?

Also interesting was the cup the priest was holding out to him. Not the “cup of my blood” to be sure; this one had stylized letters on it that read
CAPITOL COFFEE HOUSE
.

His own coffee, which he had left on the roof of his car. Feeling foolish for the second time that night, he rolled down his window.

He took the cup (gave it to his disciples) and said, “Thank you, Father.”

And then he saw what the priest held in his other hand. It was pointed at his head.

When Manny stepped out into the garage, he saw the man in black standing next to Roger’s car. Roger was in it, and the car was running. He started to walk toward them. Manny’s car was beyond Roger’s and he could say good night. He did not recognize the other man. The tall man, all in black, who lifted his arm.

His hand held a gun. His finger pulled a trigger.

At point-blank range, the bullet’s entry was fairly clean, but its exit was as messy as they get.

“NO!” Manny screamed, and cursed himself for it.

The man whirled, and Manny stood in shock as he glimpsed the patch of white amid the black garments. A priest. The guy was a priest, or dressed like one.

The good father pointed his gun at Manny’s chest and put a bullet in it.

The killer began to walk toward the maintenance man’s prone form, but the sound of an engine filled the garage. It was a car coming up from the lower level. Time for him to go.

Later, when the police arrived, Manny was still twitching, not as dead as the priest would have liked. In the late Roger Martin’s car, blood and coffee settled into the upholstery.

It was going to leave quite a stain.

HIS MEMORY IS LIKE A TORNADO ACROSS time, touching down to pick up a single event or person and carrying it away until it is dropped in favor of something else. Most of the events are catastrophes, most of the people are dead. When he wants to think of something pleasant, he has to concentrate. But such is the nature of memory, and of time.

His name is Octavian. But it isn’t, really. Or at least, it was not always. He has been a prince, a warrior, a monster, a murderer, a wanderer, and a thief. Now he can only observe and remember.

And sometimes he can help.

The radio alarm clicked on at 9:30
P.M.,
but Peter Octavian had been awake for almost half an hour. He hit the snooze with none of the annoyed reluctance that usually accompanies such an act. He was in a good mood. He had something to do tonight. Not as if he usually had trouble finding something to do, but he always preferred that it find him. Often the nightly news was his only source of entertainment, and that he loved. It amused him so to see the bickering between nations and individuals. He had become quite good at predicting events long before they happened. One of his favorite observations was that “history repeats itself.”

Everyone said it.

So how come nobody was intelligent enough to be able to put that axiom to use?

Ah, well, they never had been.

Change. The more you fought against it, the faster it came. Inevitable as . . . well, as taxes anyway.

Peter stood up from bed and walked in darkness to the shutters that hid the outside from him, and him from it. He opened them and looked out. The moon and the stars were very bright, effectively illuminating the street eight floors below. He opened the window a bit and let the cold air in, sucking it into his lungs. Snow; tomorrow, maybe tomorrow night.

He left the window open and walked to the bathroom. Eyes shut, he flicked on the overhead lights. He yawned and stretched. Already naked, having slept that way, he stepped into the shower and pulled the curtain. He loved the steam and the hot water, and the chill that he knew would run up his spine when he got out. He had left the window open for that purpose. The shower was a strange thing for Peter. He hardly sweated, so he never smelled particularly bad. His hair looked clean without washing. But this could not prevent his hair from becoming disheveled as he slept, so he washed it.

He rinsed his long brown mane and stepped out, anticipated chill giving him a shiver. He toweled dry and went to the mirror, blew dry his hair, and pulled it into a ponytail, slipping an elastic around it. As he brushed his teeth, shining the smile that had won thousands of hearts (but when was the last one?), he could hear the radio in the other room. The snooze timer had given up, and the deejay was yattering about something.

“Just about a quarter to ten in the city, and a chilly thirty-one degrees right now outside WZXL. Here’s a little reminder from yours truly that you’ll be in big trouble if you don’t pick up some sweets for your sweetheart. And, with a little reminder of their own, here’s the Spinners with ‘Cupid.’ ”

He rinsed his mouth and glanced up. The mirror image checked him out. He looked pretty good . . . for his age.

He smiled at his own joke. The same jokes seemed always to amuse him, and probably always would.

He stepped out of the bathroom, still naked, and shut off the radio. The phone rang and he began to get dressed as the answering machine picked up on the third ring.

“Octavian Investigations. No one is here at the moment, but if you leave a message and your telephone number, someone will get back to you as soon as possible.”

“Peter. Frank. Just calling to check in. I spoke to Ted Gardiner earlier, but the cops haven’t got a clue. If you need anything from me, please call.”

Peter pulled his brown leather bomber jacket over the blue cotton oxford shirt, effectively hiding his armpit holster. Inside the holster was his .38. If it was good enough for Spenser . . .

Really, though, it was for show. If he had to hurt somebody, it was just as easy, and generally more satisfying, to do it with his hands. The part of him that craved that satisfaction frightened and revolted him, but he refused to deny its existence.

To overcome something, he knew, one must first accept it. So he did. But he kept a tight rein on that atavistic urge.
Very tight.

Tonight he was on a personal job. Frank Harris was a friend, one of the few Octavian could claim, and his only daughter had disappeared. Peter knew better than most what it was like to lose someone, he’d lost plenty over the years, and he’d do whatever could be done.

Frank had given him little enough to work with. Janet Harris worked for a big Boston law firm as a paralegal. Six days earlier—that would have been Wednesday—Janet left work at her usual time, went to her usual bar with her usual friends, and left early with an unusual but far from extraordinary headache.

Six days was a long time. Trail could be awfully cold by now.

The cops, as usual, had done no more and no less than what was mandatory and then gave up the girl for lost. They figured she had run away with the milkman, or some such, and had unofficially quit on Monday night.

It was Tuesday, and Frank and Peter had spoken three times during the day. Normally, Octavian would have been up by 5:30, but he’d been out of slate for a few days—and out during the day—and he’d needed some rest. He probably would have woken up earlier if Frank hadn’t kept interrupting his slumber. But how do you explain such an unnatural need for rest?

Now it was 11:00
P.M.,
and Peter walked into the Publik House, the last place Janet Harris had been seen.

The first things to draw his attention were the eyes of Courteney MacGoldrick, which were giving him a very vigorous appraisal. Caught in the act, she blushed slightly, but did not look away. He kept his eyes locked on hers as he crossed the room and gave her a long-practiced, lopsided grin.

The grin won her over, but it wasn’t the only thing she noted. His eyes were gray, flecked with silver, which gave them a slightly hypnotic quality. His six-foot-four frame was wiry, and he carried himself like an old western gun-fighter. His face was ageless, but most people’s best guess, and Courteney MacGoldrick’s, since she happened to be thinking about it right then, was that he was probably in his early to midthirties.