The Dark Man (23 page)

I’m late getting to Melanie’s condo in the Pearl District of Portland. My direct flight from Norfolk International was delayed due to mechanical issues, so we had to deplane. I sipped free scotch in the Billion-Mile Member Lounge for about an hour and a half, then was sufficiently tipsy enough to pass out and sleep all the way home. I needed it after the previous night’s war against—well, shit, I want to call that right-hander Azeraul, even though that’s not its name.

As I parallel park my Wrangler—it’s essential to have a boxy, compact vehicle while you’re trying to park in this city—it occurs to me that Louisa Craghorn’s spirit never actually said, “His name is Azeraul.” The demon was enraged enough to insist that it wasn’t, too, which very well could’ve been a complete lie. Although, I suspect that we would’ve gotten an entirely different reaction out of him if it
had
been his name. I’m talking, like, a two-year-old throwing a temper tantrum, lying on the floor and stomping its feet, only this would be an ancient demon slinging a couch like it’s nothing more than a sippy cup of juice.

I’m disappointed that I had my own tantrum and gave Detective Thomas the audio tapes before I took the time to convert them to files I could listen to on my laptop. The investigation is a huge, intense, emotional blur, but I seem to recall Louisa’s spirit saying something about love and
her
.

I keep referring to the right-hander as a he, but who knows, maybe it’s been a female demon all along. You hear it often in the natural world: the female of the species is deadlier than the male.

Don’t piss off the mama bear.

Could be that the same goes for the
super
natural world.

It’s possible, I guess. Remains to be seen.

The truth of the matter is, I’m not necessarily looking forward to going up against that festering cesspool of evil again anytime soon. I need to recharge my own batteries.

Is there a better way to do that other than unconditional doggie love?

I submit that there is not.

I walk up the brick steps to Melanie’s front door, breathing in that damp, mossy scent of Portland, and before I even rap my knuckles against the red-painted wood, I can hear Ulie’s snorting and scrabbling claws on the tile just inside her entrance. Melanie’s voice follows, and it’s amusing to hear her say, “Ulie! Ulie! Who’s here? Daddy’s home!”

The scrabbling claws intensify, Melanie eases the door open around him, and that beautiful mutt has his paws on my chest and is licking underneath my chin before I can speak to my ex-wife. “Wow,” I say, once I manage to get him back down on all four legs. “How come
you
were never that excited to see me when I got home?”

Melanie is wearing a cut-off tank top, running shorts, and her hair is up in a ponytail. She looks amazing. She’s always looked amazing, but maybe after Mike’s revelation, I’m seeing her differently—or seeing her like I used to, like the Melanie from wardrobe that made my pulse race years and years ago. She squashes my moment by saying, “I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count all the reasons, Ford.”

I can tell she’s joking—with some truth hidden behind it—but yeah, it still burns. I hide it by asking how Ulie did as he prances around me, tail wagging so vigorously that his entire bottom shakes. She gives me the rundown, and it’s pleasant, cordial, but I don’t see anything hidden in her eyes that would suggest she is still in love with me.

Then again, I suck at reading people. Live ones, that is.

She tells me it’s late, she has to be at the news station at 4:00 a.m. where she does hair, makeup, and wardrobe for two local morning anchors, and that she’d happily watch Ulie again if I needed her to. She hands me his things—chew toy, peanut butter bulb thingy, his doggie bed, and a backpack full of food and his favorite treats. I feel like I’m picking up my child after a court-ordered weekend visitation with Mom.

Melanie tells me to have a good night and starts to close the door. I hesitate for a beat and then decide to go for it. Nothing ventured, right? I launch my hand out and catch it before she closes it completely. “Wait, can we, um, can we talk for a second?”

She opens the door fully, eyes narrowed, giving me a confused look.

“Do you think you’d … How about a drink one night this week, Mel? You up for it? Hit up McNamara’s Pub like we used to do?” I’m strongly aware of the awkward, pleading smile on my face, but I can’t shove it into anything resembling smooth. So I wait, my heartbeat creating massive craters on the inside of my chest as she arches an eyebrow.

“A drink?”

“Yeah. Just to catch up.” The words trip out of my mouth. I feel like I’m sixteen years old, asking Amy Hemmings to prom, who not-so-politely told me, “Get the hell away from me, weirdo.”

Melanie cocks one hip to the side and rests a hand there. “I guess we could. I’d have to ask Jeff to see if he cares, but it shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Who’s Jeff?” I ask, more incredulous than I intend. Mostly because his name is an atomic bomb in my stomach.

“Actually, it’s funny. I’ve been calling him ‘Jeff from the control room’ like you used to call me ‘Melanie from wardrobe.’ We’ve been seeing each other for a couple of months now. I should really get you two together because he’s seen every episode of
GC
at least three times. I made the mistake of telling him we used to be married, and now he won’t stop quoting your lines from the show. If I hear ‘see you on the other side’ one more time, I’m going to vomit.”

The only thing I can manage to say is, “Oh, right,” and I’m intensely aware of the typical Portland rain that has begun to fall.

“He won’t mind, I’m sure.”

“Yeah, uh, okay. You check in with him, and I’ll give you a call.”

Feeling thwarted and defeated, while being jealous enough to fight for what I want, both at the same time, is an odd sensation. Like wearing your shoes on the wrong feet.

“Night, Ford. Nighty-night, Ulie. Auntie Mel will see you again soon!”

I can’t even begin to explain how sad I am to hear her say “Auntie” instead of “Mama.”

I should’ve known better.

It’s a long night of restless sleep. Too much snoozing on the flight home, too many thoughts running around inside my head, and too much love from an excited pooch who can’t relax and stay in one spot for more than five minutes. I consider putting him in doggie jail, meaning out in the garage for a while, but I haven’t seen him in a couple of days and I don’t have the heart. Rather than fighting my insomnia, I get up, brew a pot of coffee, and sit down at the kitchen table, laptop open in front of me. I send a note to Jesse down in Albuquerque telling him to take the day off tomorrow, that I’ll review the rest of the backlogged e-mails.

What I’m hoping for is another revelation from someone like Hamster Hampstead telling me that they recorded their Papa Joe talking about Chelsea and saving some people. It’d be nice to have the distraction. New evidence. Something to point me in any direction other than Melanie’s true north. I also curse Mike for getting my hopes up and partially wonder if he made it all up just to get me in a lighter mood before he pitched the documentary.

I find nothing of the sort. Instead, I sift through and personally answer about a hundred and fifty e-mails, thanking viewers for being friends and fans, before I find anything of interest, and it’s not exactly what I’m looking for.

It’s a short note from Caribou, the waitress at that crab shack, thanking me profusely for the flagrant tip I left her and how it was such an honor to serve her television idols. As thanks, she included an attachment; it’s a picture of her wearing nothing but a
Graveyard: Classified
bandana and high heels.

There’s a single ray of sunshine. Oh, happy days.

I save it in a buried folder called “Taxes 2015” along with a few thousand similar pictures, and then drain the last of my coffee. Out my window, high up here on the hill overlooking Portland proper, the sun nudges through the clouds to the east.

Finally, I’m bushed, even with a pot of coffee screeching its tires throughout my veins. My lonely, abandoned wasteland of a king-size bed sounds like a good idea, and I think again about what Mike said.

A man needs someone by his side.

“Ulie,” I say, waking him up where he’d been dreaming and twitching on the floor. “You just earned a spot on the bed.”

His ears perk and he hops to his feet.

“But we’re not going to make a habit of this, got it?”

He snorts. Plain as day, that’s the dog version of, “Yeah, right, whatever you say.”

On the countertop, my cell phone sits next to a half-eaten bagel and an empty coffee mug. The ceramic body of it is plain white, while the handle is sculpted in the shape of a provocatively posed naked woman. It’s a hideously fantastic gag gift from a detective I worked with in the past, and I don’t know why, but coffee tastes better coming out of it. The mug itself becomes a trigger object for my thought processes—Caribou in all her naked glory, a detective—and it makes me think about Detective Thomas back in Virginia Beach.

I check the clock over the stove. It’s a quarter to six, meaning it’s a quarter to nine back on the east coast. He’ll be up and at the office by now. My brain feels like I’m thinking through that sludge on the bottom of a riverbed, which is why I consider calling him to apologize. I’ve had enough time to calm down, and I’ll admit that I probably went slightly diva on him back at the station. Dude was just trying to do his job. Been there, yeah?

This whole line of thinking sets off my synapses and they go tumbling along like dominoes.

Dominoes that lead to the word ‘Azeraul’ in my mind.

I look at Ulie sitting patiently at my feet. “So we’re back to that again, huh? This demon-not-demon bullshit?”

He chuffs and flops onto the kitchen floor, exposing his belly as he rolls over and closes his eyes. Smart dog. He can sense I’m not going to bed any time soon.

It’s not out of the ordinary for a demon to lie. I absolutely
know
this and have been privy to it on a number of occasions. So, I’m not sure why I just blindly accepted the word of that assmuncher back at Craghorn’s. It seemed serious enough to be offended, yet that’s not necessarily proof that it’s telling the truth.

I hop up from the table and head over to a small library of demon and spirit guides stashed on a living room shelf. Ten books total, ranging from two hundred years old to being published three months ago. You never know when you’re gonna need to look up some ancient demon to uncover his weak spots. Helps quite a bit when you’re tackling these things with some electronics, holy water, a crucifix, and a middle-aged bald guy named Mike Long. That’s not counting the crew, of course, but in the heat of demonic battle, those guys are nothing but doughnut-gobbling, coffee-chugging cannon fodder.

I flip through each guide—some priceless, some barely worth the paper they’re printed on—being dainty with the ancient ones and hasty with the others. Brother Luther’s
Guide to Demons of the Realm
. Herr Bonn’s
Twelve Levels of Demonic Ranks
.
Life of the Hereafter
.
How to Battle Evil
.

A half an hour passes and nothing comes up.

Nothing. Not a goddamn thing.

Maybe the right-hander in Craghorn’s house was telling the truth.

I slam the last book closed and trudge into my kitchen, totally wiped out, fed up, and mentally berating myself for wasting time instead of sleeping. Even Ulie is completely zonked. His snoring sounds like a Harley swallowed a chainsaw.

I flop down at the kitchen table again, ready to give up, but the laptop is open, and Google is sitting there right in front of me. “Why not?” I mumble. It takes every last ounce of available energy to type the name into the search bar, then it occurs to me that I might not even be spelling it correctly.

I take a shot with the following: A-Z-E-R-A-U-L.

It’s what I imagined it would be all along, and that’s close enough. If not, then yes, Google, your creepily telepathic alternate suggestion will probably be correct.

There’s always a chance that someone has heard that name before, so it’s worth a look, but there’s no way I’m going to sit here for too long browsing through cult blogs and obscure movie references if that’s what it comes to. This is nothing but a half-court, half-hearted, buzzer-beater shot before I head into the locker room.

Game over, bro. I’m tired. Man, am I tired. I do the clicky thing on the mousey thing and make the search happen, hardly able to keep my eyes open and then—

“What the—”

On the screen, listed in the search results, accompanied by a picture, is a different kind of demon.

She’s tan, with frosted hair pulled back in a crisp, efficient bun, and looks positively radiant in a gold-sequined evening gown, holding a matching clutch at her waist. She’s at a charity event of some sort, according to the caption.

Who?

Ellen
Azeraul
Gardner. Wife of the former mayor.

The deceased former mayor who was supposedly having an affair with Louisa Craghorn.

Dear God in Heaven. It’s all connected.