The Haunted Air Part 52

Jack ran a finger over the gouges. "Looks like Dmitri was none too gentle in digging them out."

"Yeah, I noticed those before. I wonder what he did with them?"

"Maybe he used them as grave markers."

"Maybe he wanted to make the place more hospitable to demons," Charlie said. "They can't bear the presence of a cross."

In an effort to head off another argument that wasn't going to settle anything, Jack grabbed a pry bar and held it up.

"What say we take down the rest of the paneling?"

"Why bother?" Charlie said. "Probably just more of the same."

Jack jabbed the straight end of the bar through a section of paneling and felt the tip strike the stone beyond. He reversed the bar, shoved the curved end into the opening, and ripped away a chunk of the laminated wood. Despite the nagging tug of discomfort in his flank, it felt good. Sometimes he liked to break things. Liked it a lot.

"Maybe not. We look hard enough, we might find that some of these blocks aren't mortared like the others. That they slide out and there's some sort of hidey hole behind them. Who knows what we'll find there? Maybe what's left of Tara Portman."

Charlie said, "It's not Tara Portman, I tell you, it's a-"

"Wait." Lyle held up a hand. "Something's happening."

Jack looked around. He hadn't heard anything.

"What?"

"Don't you feel it?"

Jack glanced at Charlie who looked just as confused.

"Feel what?"

Lyle turned in a slow circle. "Something's coming."

Then Jack felt it too. A chill, a sense of gathering gathering, as if all the warmth in the room were being sucked into its center to drain away through an invisible black hole there, leaving a steadily growing knot of cold in its place.

Cold stabbed Jack high on his right thigh, so cold it burned. He clutched at the spot and felt a frozen lump in the pocket. The key ring! He clenched his teeth as he dropped to his knees-G.o.d, it hurt-and clawed at the pocket, reaching in, trying to grab the key ring but the skin of his fingers stuck to it like a wet tongue to a frozen wrought iron fence. He peeled his fingers away, losing some skin, and yanked at the fabric, pulling it out, inverting the pocket. Finally the Roger Rabbit figure appeared and tumbled toward the floor.

But it never landed. Instead it dipped and then rose and darted toward the center of the cellar. There it hovered in the air. Jack saw a rime of frost form along the figure's limbs, then the head, finally engulfing the trunk.

A high keening wail began to echo the air, growing in pitch and volume as Jack pushed himself back up to his feet. The frost thickened on the Roger Rabbit figure, and Jack thought he heard the plastic creak and crinkle as it became brittle from the intense cold.

Suddenly the wail became a screech of rage as Roger's head snapped off and hurtled across the cellar. It struck one of the granite blocks and shattered into powder that scattered and swirled like drifting snow. Then an arm snapped off and flashed in the opposite direction, just missing Charlie's head. Jack ducked as an arm narrowly missed him.

More pieces flew as the frenzied screech rose in pitch and volume. And then there were no more pieces and yet still the enraged howl rose until Jack had to cover his ears. The sound became a physical thing, battering him until...

It stopped.

As suddenly as the sound had begun, silence returned. The sense of presence presence dissipated as well until Jack felt that the cellar was again occupied by just the three of them. dissipated as well until Jack felt that the cellar was again occupied by just the three of them.

He shook his head to relieve the ringing in his ears. It didn't work.

Lyle and Charlie looked shaken, but Jack felt oddly calm. Deadly calm.

"What the h.e.l.l h.e.l.l was that all about?" Lyle said. was that all about?" Lyle said.

"Yeah," Charlie said. "What'd you have in your pocket? Looked like that cartoon rabbit..."

"Roger Rabbit."

"Yeah."

Lyle snorted a laugh and shook his head. "Roger Rabbit. Just the sort of thing to drive the average demon into a frenzy."

Charlie took a step toward his brother. "Warning you, Lyle-"

Jack jumped in. "Tara Portman's father told Gia that Tara was a Roger Rabbit fan. I was wondering if that key ring might be hers."

"Judging from what just happened," Lyle said, bending and rubbing his finger through the powdery remains of one of Roger's legs, "I think she answered you with a very big yes yes."

"That she did," Jack said, nodding. "And she also identified her killer."

But his satisfaction at solving the mystery was marred by the unanswered question of how and why he'd come to be involved.

12.

Gia sat in a pew three-quarters back from the altar under the vaulted ceiling and waited for peace.

She'd taken a slow walk from Sutton Square down to St Patrick's Cathedral. She wasn't sure why she'd come, hadn't consciously headed this way. She'd simply gone for a walk as a break from painting and found herself on Fifth Avenue. She ambled past St. Pat's and then doubled back to visit, hoping to find some of the serenity and inner peace religion was supposed to bring. So far it remained elusive.

The sense of isolation was welcome, though. Here in this huge, stone-wrapped s.p.a.ce she felt cut off from the bustling reality just beyond the tall oak doors and insulated from the need that called to her from that house in Astoria.

She sat alone and watched the gaggles of tourists wandering in and out, the Catholics blessing themselves with holy water and lighting candles, the rest standing around and gawking at the gothic arches, the stations of the cross s.p.a.ced along the side walls, the larger-than-life statues, the giant crucifix, the gilded altar.

The images drew Gia back to her years in Our Lady of Hope grammar school in Ottumwa. Not a particularly Catholic town, but then Iowa wasn't a particularly Catholic state. There'd been enough Catholic kids to fill the local church school though, and keep the nuns of the convent busy as teachers. Of all that black-robed crew, she best remembered Sister Mary Barbara-known to all the kids as Sister Mary Barbed-wire. Not because she'd liked the nun; quite the opposite: she'd scared the h.e.l.l out of Gia.

Sister Mary Barbed-wire had been the Catholic equivalent of a Baptist h.e.l.lfire preacher, always harping on the awful punishments awaiting sinners, all the horrors the G.o.d of Love would inflict upon those who disappointed Him. Everlasting suffering for missing ma.s.s on Sunday, or failing to make your Easter duty. Little Gia bought the whole package, living in terror of dying with a mortal sin on her soul.

Luckily Our Lady of Hope hadn't had a high school; that allowed Gia to escape to the secular den of iniquity known as the public school system. But she'd still remained a practicing Catholic, attending CCD CCD cla.s.ses and CYO dances. cla.s.ses and CYO dances.

Sometime during the eighties, however, she drifted away and never returned. Not that she stopped believing in G.o.d. She couldn't buy into atheism, or even agnosticism. G.o.d existed, she was sure. She was also pretty sure He didn't care much about what went on here. Maybe He watched, but He certainly didn't act.

To her child's eyes the Old Testament G.o.d had appeared stern and imposing; now He seemed like a cranky, petulant adolescent with poor impulse control, creating cataclysms, sending plagues, striking down an entire nation's first-born males. She found the New Testament G.o.d much more appealing, but somewhere along the way the whole redemption and d.a.m.nation thing had stopped making sense to her. You didn't ask to be born but once you were you had to toe the belief line or spend eternity suffering in h.e.l.l. Easy to believe back in the Old Testament days when He burned bushes, parted seas, and sent commandments on stone tablets. But these days G.o.d had become remote, no longer weighing in on human affairs, yet still demanding faith. It didn't seem fair.

Of course, if You're G.o.d, You don't have to be fair. You hold all the marbles. What You say goes.

Still...

Gia had tried to come back to the church after Vicky was born. A child should have some moral foundation to build on, and the church seemed a tried and true place to start. In the back of her mind too had been the idea that if Gia returned to the fold, G.o.d would protect Vicky.

But Gia couldn't make it work. And it was terrifyingly obvious that G.o.d did not protect children. They died from brain tumors and leukemias and other cancers, from being run over, shot, electrocuted, dropped from buildings, incinerated in house fires, and in other uncountable, unimaginable ways. Clearly innocence was not enough to earn G.o.d's protection.

So where was G.o.d?

Did the Born Agains have it right? Jesus was their personal savior who watched their every move and answered their prayers? They prayed to Jesus that their old jalopy would start on a cold morning and if it did they praised Him and gave Him thanks for the rest of the day. Gia couldn't get comfortable with a view of G.o.d that turned the Creator of the Universe into some sort of cosmic errand boy for His True Believers. Children were starving, Tara Portmans were being abducted and murdered, political prisoners were being tortured, wives were being abused, but G.o.d ignored their pleas for relief in order to answer the True Believers' prayers for good weather on the day of the church picnic. Did that make sense?

Yet when she considered the Born Agains she knew-only a few, but good people who seemed to practice what they preached-and saw their serenity, their inner peace, she envied them. They could say, "Let go, let G.o.d," with a true, unshakable confidence that G.o.d would take care of them and everything would work out in the end. Gia wanted that tranquility for herself, craved it, but the ability-perhaps the hubris-to believe she mattered to the Creator of the Universe and could have His ear remained beyond her.

At the other extreme was the G.o.d who ignited the Big Bang, then turned His back and walked away, never to be seen again.

Gia sensed the truth lay somewhere between. But where?

And where did Tara Portman fit in all this? Had she come back on her own, or had she been sent back? And why? Why did Gia feel this connection to her?

Gia sighed and rose. Whatever the reasons, she wasn't going to find them here.

She stepped out into the bright afternoon suns.h.i.+ne and headed home. When she reached Sutton Square she ran into Rosa, the Silverman's maid. Their townhouse was two doors down from Gia.

"Did that policeman find you?" Rosa said. She had a broad face and a thick body, and was dressed in her after-work street clothes.

Gia's heart froze. "What policeman?"

"The one who knock on your door little while 'go."

Oh, G.o.d! Vicky! Something's happened!

She fumbled in her bag for her keys. "What did he say? What did he want?"

"He ask if you home. He ask if you leave you little girl home alone when you go out."

"What?" She found the keys, singled out the one for the front door. "Did he say why he wanted to know?"

"No. I tol' him no, never. I say little miss away at camp. He ask what camp, I say I don' know."

Gia's knees weakened with relief. For a moment there she'd thought the camp had sent a cop to deliver terrible news about Vicky. But if he hadn't even known she was away...

Wait a minute. What was he doing here then? Why was a cop asking about Vicky?

"Rosa, are you sure he was a cop?"

"Oh sure. He have cop car and..." She moved her hands up and down the front of her body. "You know..."

"Uniform?"

"Uh-huh! Tha's it. All blue. He was cop, yes."

"Did you happen to see his badge number?"

The maid shook her head. "No. I no think to look." She narrowed her eyes. "Now that I think, I don' remember seeing no badge."

"Did he mention me or Vicky by name?"

"No... I don' thin' so."

"Thank you, Rosa." Gia missed her first try on inserting the key, made it on the second. "I'm going to look into this."

Once inside the first thing Gia did was call the camp. No, they hadn't called the NYPD. Vicky and everyone else at the camp were fine.

Next call, her local precinct, the Seventeenth. No, they hadn't had any calls to send someone over to Sutton Square. He might have come from another precinct, but no one could say why.

Gia hung up, relieved that Vicky was safe, but unsettled by anyone, cop or not, asking about her daughter.

Had he been an impostor? No, Rosa had said he'd arrived in a cop car.

Gia thought of Tara Portman. What if Tara had been picked up by a police car? A cop saying her mother had been hurt and he'd take her to her. Vicky would fall for that. Any kid would.

Whoever the cop was, he hadn't learned anything other than the fact that Vicky was away at camp. And he didn't know which camp because Rosa couldn't tell him.

She wanted to call Jack, but what could he do? He was the last person on earth to have an inside line into what the NYPD might be up to.

All she could do was pray that- Gia frowned. Pray... that was what you did when trouble came knocking. Even if you'd lost your faith, old habits died hard.

She'd pray that it was all a mix-up and the cop had the wrong address.

That would do until Jack got home.

13.

"Let me see if I've got this sequence down right," Lyle said.

They had just about all the paneling stripped from the wall now, and were working on the bracing studs. They still hadn't found any loose stones. Every one so far had been mortared tight to its neighbors.

Something about these stones gave Jack the creeps. They gave off an alien vibe that made him want to cover them again, hide them from human sight. They didn't belong here, and it almost seemed they knew it and wanted to be back where they'd come from-Romania, wasn't it? The ones that had had their cross inlays ripped out were the worst. The empty pockets looked like dead eye sockets, staring at him.