Cemetery of Angels (19 page)

“I dreamed that I was dead,” she said. “The children were dead, too. We were all being buried and… “

He looked at her coldly, as if in shock, the same way he had looked at her that horrible night in Connecticut after she’d staggered home. Then an expression of sympathy swelled onto his face.

“Poor baby,” he said. “What were you watching on TV last night? Or what were you reading?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yeah? Well, we can find out real quick.”

He reached to the bedside. His hand went around three paperback books. He examined them as she leaned back on her pillow.

“Oh, this is great,” he scoffed. “Shows you the sweet dreams you get from these guys.” He read the authors’ names aloud.

“Stephen King. Dean Koontz.” He found a novel titled
Ghosts
and flung it angrily across the room, depositing it with a direct hit into a waste basket. He shook his head. He had always hated the author. “Figures,” he said. “I wish you’d stop reading that sick morbid crap.”

“I haven’t even looked at those books,” she said. “I put them there a few days ago, and I haven’t even looked at them.”

“Well, don’t. Why don’t you read the phone book instead?”

“Bill. I was so scared,” she said.

He looked at her with something that passed for understanding. And finally he said the type of thing she wanted to hear.

“Don’t you know,” he answered, enveloping her in a full embrace. “I’d never let anything happen to you or the children. Never. Someone would have to kill me first.”

Immediately, there followed another creak. It was out in the hallway this time. Just out of view. It was so loud that they both looked in the direction of the noise.

Compared to their bedroom, the hallway was dark. And just as kids envision monsters under their beds or in their closets, Rebecca suddenly entertained the fantasy of something horrible, something unspeakably bloodcurdling from another strain of existence suddenly oozing into view in the doorframe.

She had the same feeling as when she had first seen the man in the parking lot. Her thoughts ran away with her. “
He’s going to rip into my flesh. He’s going to exsanguinate me. He’s going to
… “

She could almost picture it. Her eyes were there. Set and trained. So much so that Bill looked also. Then his hand went to her chin. He turned her head so that she had to face him.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” she whispered. “I don’t see anything.”

“That’s because nothing’s there,” he said.

He spoke with the voice of a methodical, logical man. An architect, used to using precise formulae and numbers to support both theories and buildings. She sighed. Tired and frightened. Her hands were sweating. Leaking like old faucets.

“Nothing’s there, and I’m going to prove it,” he said. He started to get up from bed.

“Bill!” She clutched him. “Bill, no! Don’t go out there!”

“I want to put an end to this,” he said. “And I’m going to.”

“Bill, no! Stay in here!” He was defiant. He pulled from her.

“If there’s anything out there, I’m going to kick its ass,” he promised. He turned. Her hands went to her face. Her husband went to the door then stopped. He looked around. He stepped into the hall. He took two paces toward the children’s rooms. She heard him stop and continue.

The sound of his footsteps came back toward the bedroom door. For a split second, she wondered who would appear at the doorway. Bill or… ?

“Happy?” Bill asked as he reappeared. “There’s nothing here.” She exhaled a long breath. She settled slightly.

“Now don’t panic,” he said. “I’ll be back in sixty seconds.”

He checked on the children in their bedroom. Unlike their parents, they were sleeping soundly, Bill reported when he returned. She sat upright against her pillow, the pillow against the wall. She put a hand on her husband’s hand.

“Billy?” she asked.

“Becca!” he snapped at her angrily. “Don’t call me that!”

“Don’t call you what?”

“Billy.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did! I hate that name! You know that! What’s going on here with you?”

She trembled very slightly and shook herself. He was right. Not only had he always been uncomfortable with the name, but she had never wanted to use it for him. Something about it sounded wrong. So where had it come from? What had made her call him that? Not only did she hate her husband’s outbursts of anger, but she feared them. She had always dreaded that there was something malevolent lurking beneath the surface of his psyche. And she hoped she would never learn what it was.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Bill walked to the window. He looked out. He took several deep breaths.

“You don’t have to apologize,” he said. “You’re upset. I have to understand when you’re upset.”

“The dream was just so real. So terrifying,” she said.

“I’m sure it was, Becca,” he said. “But it was also only a dream.
Comprenez
?” She nodded.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she said.

“About?”

“About this house,” she said. “I never had dreams like this before. I never had feelings like this. It’s like free-floating terror.”

“Honey,” he said. “I’m willing to work on this ‘till death do us part.’ But remember? You know? The incident in Connecticut? The one we agreed not to talk about unless you wanted to?”

“Uh huh.”

“You’re going to have post trauma stress. Both Dr. Miller and Dr. Einhorn warned you about this, right?”

“They warned me.”

“You have to recognize the stress when you feel it,” he said. “It’s your job to help dispatch it. You have to control your own mind.” She lay back down in bed.

“From Dr. Einhorn’s lips to yours,” she said.

“Only because I love you,” Bill said.

“Hold me?’ she asked.

“Of course.” She settled back under the covers and settled into her husband’s arms.

“Tell you what I’m going to do,” he said. “I’m going to let you go to sleep with the light on. After you’re asleep, I’ll turn it off.”

“I’m getting like a child,” she said. “Afraid of the dark.”

“Just answer me one thing,” he said. “Was there anything about the incident in Connecticut that you never told me?’ he asked. “Anything you’ve subsequently remembered that I don’t know?”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “Why?” A moment passed. Then he hunched his shoulders.

“I’m just trying to understand,” he said. “Just trying to help.” She gave his hand a squeeze in appreciation.

A few moments later, despite his promise, Bill was sleeping soundly.

Rebecca killed the room light and managed to sleep. But she woke toward 5:00A.M. The bluish suggestion of dawn crept into the bedroom from outside.

“And where does dawn come from?” she found herself musing.

And then she was aware of something else. Something that could not possibly have been there, but which she saw, anyway. She found her eyes focusing on unmoving scenes in the darkness, human forms that weren’t there and other phantoms of her imagination. Several times she wanted to throw the light on to have a better look. But Bill’s arm was across her. And anyway, she remained too frightened to move.

Even when one of those figures came right next to where she was lying, she did not move. It was a man’s figure, and it seemed to incline over the bed in a feathery, ethereal way. She felt as if she was in a trance, because this was, without question, the scariest thing that had ever happened to her, even scarier than the incident in Connecticut.

She was seeing a ghost. Or that was what she thought. He was bringing his face close to hers in the darkness, she kept telling herself that it was her imagination, and she was certain that it was not.

Yet, she felt no fear. There was something comforting and familiar about the ghost. Yet she could never have explained it to anyone.

She closed her eyes to dispatch the phantoms. And this method seemed to work, for the next thing she knew her clock radio was on, it was 6:15 A.M., daylight was outside — with all its warmth and comfort — and she had survived the night.

Ed Van Allen sat in his office at the detective bureau and glanced at the empty desk across from his. Where was Alice, he wondered. Where was Alice?

Detective Alice Aldrich was as close to a partner as Van Allen had. She was one of the new generations of detectives, or at least that’s how Van Allen thought of her. Female, obviously. Frizzy dark hair. A free spirit who had grown up in Van Nuys and had quizzed well as a recruit. Spent a couple of good years as an undercover narc in Long Beach. She was cute. Five-eight, nice figure. A bright woman.

There was something about her that made drug dealers want to trust her. Made them want to brag to her in their clumsy attempts at seduction. She had put handcuffs on so many big shots that she had outgrown Long Beach and applied to join the LAPD.

She had quizzed well again and the city had hired her. She did four years on a beat then aced the detective’s exam. She hated the concept of partners as much as Van Allen did, and, like Van Allen, liked the Lone Ranger route. So they chose to work together officially, which meant they were actually partners, which further meant that they didn’t work together much at all, except to bounce ideas off each other.

Alice was New Age and bright, with a little Generation X-Treme added in. She liked to read, go to foreign movies by herself, skate board, play roller hockey with the guys, and had taught herself Spanish. At one point she had had a male admirer named Fred who was living in. Then Van Allen didn’t hear Fred’s name mentioned for a few weeks. He inquired about him, and Alice said simply that Fred was “gone.” No further explanation. But she always had male admirers and was picky. Van Allen liked that.

Alice complemented Van Allen nicely. Alice Aldrich. “Double A,” he called her.

She was the type of woman, he mused, well, the type he’d like as a wife if he remarried. This was about as dangerous a thought as a detective could have during working hours, so he spent a good deal of effort suppressing the notion.

And this morning, in her absence, staring at Double A’s silent desktop, Van Allen embarked upon an unpleasant journey across the top of his own desk.

There were further wrinkles in the car thief case. The Guatemalans were entering a not guilty plea and had asked for a hearing on whether the evidence obtained against them was illegally obtained.

Van Allen had spent the better part of two months trying to nail this crew. He had followed the proper investigative procedures to the letter, and now they were claiming racism and an illegal arrest. And some white middle class lawyer, the type of guy whose new car became their booty, was helping them do it, all at public expense.

Van Allen ran his hand across his eyes. What a system! What a world! People claimed cops were cynical, and yet there he was every day trying to make sense and sometimes even justice out of such things.

Something else had surfaced, also, this one tied in with the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department. A stickup suspect who had been hitting convenience stores across Sunset Boulevard had been busted. Could Van Allen come over and take a look at the suspect? He sure fit the profile of a guy Van Allen had been chasing for similar strong-arm stickups in 2008.

The funny coincidence about him was that while the suspect had been away visiting his aunt in Minnesota, the stick-ups in LA had ceased. They had started again four days after his return to California, or at least that was the way West Hollywood Sheriffs had put together the chronology.

Then there was Van Allen’s new pal: “Billy.”

Or, more accurately, the tomb with the big stone angel on top of it and his missing remains. Martinez had checked the cemetery records that morning and informed Van Allen that the tomb had been of one silent film actor named Billy Carlton.

Carlton had enjoyed being known around town as “Billy.” Just ‘Billy,’ Martinez explained. So, beneath that striking gravestone he had hoped to rest exactly the same way. As Billy.

Van Allen had no quarrel with that. If only the old actor’s remains could have stayed put, he would have had no quarrel with the Cemetery of Angels at all. Oh, heck, he thought to his own amusement, Billy probably would have been happy to have stayed in the ground, too. Probably wasn’t even Billy’s choice to come back up and join us. Now, Van Allen pondered, if I were a corpse, and I came up out of the ground after several decades, where would I go? Disneyland? Dodger Stadium? Pink’s on La Brea for a chilidog? Mel’s Diner?

Van Allen was getting goofy, and he knew it. Too many Jerry Garcia tunes on his own time, he told himself with no attempt at seriousness whatsoever. But he was at work now, and it was time to concentrate.

So his thoughts became more serious. Mercifully, the press hadn’t caught on to the tomb desecration yet. In Van Allen’s worst nightmares, he saw that overturned granite angel on the front page of every two-bit tabloid in the country.

Just what he needed. He prayed that those Salvadorans would keep their mouths shut. Why couldn’t the angel just flutter back into place? Maybe he should see a priest, Van Allen mused. An intellectual Jesuit with some real clout Upstairs.

Father Karras, where are you?

Nah, he quickly decided. Wouldn’t do a thing. And furthermore, he, Van Allen, was an atheist, not a Catholic. He wondered next whether God answered the prayers of atheists. If The Almighty answered Unitarians, Van Allen mused, why not non-believers?

He smirked. And when he felt his thoughts rambling too far in that direction, he knew he was overtired and preoccupied. He went out to the 7-Eleven and got himself a large cup of coffee. Nothing like a good Cuppa Joe to get a man thinking right again.

Van Allen returned to his office. He set aside the file on the Guatemalans. The case irritated him. He picked up a sheet of paper that had just been faxed to him while he was out on his caffeine run.

The page was from the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The dudes who gave out the Oscars.

Ah, he thought. This was what he had been waiting for. The page was a listing from an index of men and women who had worked in American films since the first bit of celluloid had passed before a camera. Van Allen read it with interest: