Walter Cole called me as I was driving from the city.
“I’ve got more news,” he said. “The ME has confirmed the identity of the remains found in Garcia’s apartment. It’s Alice. Toxicology tests also revealed the presence of DMT, dimethyltryptamine, in a small section of tissue that was found still adhering to the base of her skull.”
“I’ve never heard of it. What does it do?”
“Apparently it’s a hallucinogenic drug, but it has very particular symptoms. It causes feelings of paranoia and makes users hallucinate alien intelligences, or monsters. Sometimes it makes them think that they’re traveling through time, or onto other planes of existence. Want to hear something else that’s interesting? They found traces of DMT in Garcia’s body too. The ME thinks it might have been administered through the food in his kitchen, but they’re still running tests.”
It was possible that Alice had been given the drug in order to make her more cooperative, allowing her captors to masquerade as her saviors once the effects of the drug began to wear off. But Garcia had been fed DMT too, perhaps as a means of keeping him under some form of control by ensuring that he remained in a state of near-constant fear. The dosage wouldn’t have to be high: just enough to keep him on edge, so that his paranoia could be manipulated if required.
“I’ve got one more thing for you,” said Walter. “The building in Williamsburg had a basement. The entrance was hidden behind a false wall. It seems we now know what Garcia was doing with the bones . . .”
∗ ∗ ∗
It was the NYPD’s Forensic Investigation Division that found the basement. They had taken their time, going through the building floor by floor, working from the top down, checking the plans for the building against what they saw around them, noting what was recent and what was old. The cops who broke down the wall found a new steel door in the floor, nearly forty square feet and secured with heavy-duty locks and bolts. It took them an hour to get it open, backed up by the same Emergency Service Unit that had responded on the night Garcia died. When the door was open, the ESU descended a set of temporary wooden stairs into the darkness.
The space beneath was of the same dimensions as the main steel door, and some twelve feet deep. Garcia had been hard at work in the hidden space. Garlands of sharpened bone hung from the corners of the basement, meeting in a cluster of skulls at each corner. The walls had been concreted and inset with pieces of blackened bone to the halfway mark, sections of jawbones, femurs, finger bones and rib jutting out as though discovered in the course of some ongoing archaeological dig. Four towers of candleholders created from marble and bone stood in a square at the center of the room, the candles held in skull-and-bone arrangements similar to those I had discovered in Garcia’s apartment, with four chains of bones linking them, as though sealing off access to some as yet unknown addition to the ossuary. There was also a small alcove two or three feet in height, empty but clearly also awaiting the arrival of another element of display, perhaps the small bone sculpture that now rested in the trunk of my car.
The ME’s office was going to have a difficult task identifying the remains, but I knew where they could start: with a list of dead or missing women from the region of Juarez, Mexico, and the unfortunates who had disappeared from the streets of New York since Garcia’s arrival in the city, Lucius Cope among them.
I drove north. I made good time once I cleared the boroughs, and arrived in Boston shortly before 5 P.M. The House of Stern was situated in a side street almost within the shadow of the Fleet Center. It was an unusual location for such a business, audibly close to a strip of bars that included the local outpost of Hooters. The windows were smoked glass, with the company’s name written in discreet gold lettering across the bottom. To the right was a wood door, painted black, with an ornate gold knocker in the shape of a gaping mouth, and a gold mailbox filigreed with dragons chasing their tails. In a slightly less adult neighborhood, the door of House of Stern would have been a compulsory stop for Halloween trick-or-treaters.
I pressed the doorbell and waited. The door was opened by a young woman with bright red hair and purple nail polish that was chipped at the ends.
“I’m afraid we’re closed,” she said. “We open to the public from ten until four, Monday to Friday.”
“I’m not a customer,” I said. “My name’s Charlie Parker. I’m a private investigator. I’d like to see Claudia Stern.”
“Is she expecting you?”
“No, but I think she’ll want to see me. Perhaps you might show her this.”
I handed over the box in my arms. The young woman looked at it a little dubiously, carefully removing the layers of newspaper so that she could see what was inside. She revealed a section of the bone statue, considered it silently for a moment, then opened the door wider to admit me. She told me to take a seat in a small reception area, then vanished through a half-open green door.
The room in which I sat was relatively unadorned, and a little down-at-the-heels. The carpet was worn and frayed and the wallpaper was wearing thin at the corners, heavily marked by the passage of people and the bumps and scrapes it had received during the movement of awkward objects. Two desks stood to my right, covered in papers and topped by a pair of sleeping computers. To my left were four packing crates from which piles of curly wood shavings poked like unruly clown hair. A series of lithographs hung on the wall behind them, depicting scenes of angelic conflict. I walked over to take a closer look at them. They were reminiscent of the work of Gustave Doré, the illustrator of The Divine Comedy, but the lithographs were tinted and appeared to be based on some other work unfamiliar to me.
“The angelic conflict,” said a female voice from behind me, “and the fall of the rebel host. They date from the early nineteenth century, commissioned by Dr. Richard Laurence, professor of Hebrew at Oxford, to illustrate his first English translation of the Book of Enoch, in 1821, then abandoned and left unused following a disagreement with the artist. These are among the only extant copies. The rest were all destroyed.”
I turned to face a small, attractive woman in her late fifties, dressed in black slacks and a white sweater smudged here and there with dark marks. Her hair was almost entirely gray, with only the faintest hint of dark at the temples. Her face was relatively unlined, the skin tight and the neck bearing only the slightest trace of wrinkles. If my estimate of her age was correct, she was wearing her years well.
“Ms. Stern?”
She shook my hand. “Claudia. I’m pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Parker.”
I returned my attention to the illustrations.
“Out of curiosity, why were the lithographs destroyed?”
“The artist was a Catholic named Knowles, who worked regularly for publishers in London and Oxford. He was quite accomplished, although somewhat derivative of others in his style. Knowles was unaware of the controversial nature of Enoch when he agreed to undertake the commission, and it was only when the subject of his work came up during discussions with his local parish priest that he was alerted to the history of the scripture in question. Do you know anything of the biblical apocrypha, Mr. Parker?”
“Nothing worth sharing,” I replied. That wasn’t entirely true. I had come across the Book of Enoch before, although I had never seen the actual text. The Traveling Man, the killer who had taken my wife and daughter, had made reference to it. It was just one of a number of obscure sources that had helped to fuel his fantasies.
She smiled, revealing white teeth that were yellowing only slightly at the edges and the gums.
“Then perhaps I can enlighten you, and you can in turn enlighten me about the object with which you introduced yourself to my assistant. The Book of Enoch was part of the accepted biblical canon for about five hundred years, and fragments of it were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Laurence’s translation was based upon sources dating from the second century B.C., but the book itself may be older still. Most of what we know, or think we know, of the fall of the angels comes from Enoch, and it may have been that Jesus Christ himself was familiar with the work, for there are clear echoes of Enoch in some of the later gospels. It subsequently fell out of favor with theologians, largely because of its theories on the nature of angels.”
“Like how many can dance on the head of a pin?”
“In a way,” said Ms. Stern. “While there was at least some acceptance that the origins of evil on earth lay in the fall of the angels, their nature provoked disagreement. Were they corporeal? If so, what of their appetites? According to Enoch, the great sin of the dark angels was not pride, but lust: their desire to copulate with women, the most beautiful aspect of God’s greatest creation, humanity. This led to disobedience and a rebellion against God, and they were cast out of heaven as punishment. Such speculations found little favor with the church authorities, and Enoch was denounced and removed from the canon, with some even going so far as to declare it heretical in nature. Its contents were largely forgotten until 1773, when a Scottish explorer named James Bruce traveled to Ethiopia and secured three copies of the book that had been preserved by the church in that country. Fifty years later, Laurence produced his translation, and thus Enoch was revealed to the English-speaking world for the first time in over a millennium.”
“But without Knowles’s illustrations.”
“He was concerned about the controversy that might arise following its publication, and apparently his parish priest told him that he would refuse him the sacraments if he contributed to the work. Knowles notified Dr. Laurence of his decision, Laurence traveled to London to discuss the matter with him, and in the course of their discussions a heated argument arose. Knowles began casting his illustrations into the fire, the originals as well as the first copies. Laurence snatched what he could salvage from the artist’s desk and fled. To be honest, the illustrations are not particularly valuable in themselves, but I am fond of the story of their creation and decided to hold on to them, despite occasional requests that they be offered for sale. In a way, they symbolize what this house has always set out to do: to ensure that ignorance and fear do not contribute to the destruction of arcane art and that all such pieces find their way to those who would most appreciate them. Now, if you’d like to come with me, we can discuss your own piece.”
I followed her through the green door and down a corridor that led to a workshop area. Here, the secretary with the red hair was checking the condition of some leather-bound books in one corner, while in another a middle-aged man with receding brown hair worked on a painting illuminated by a series of lamps.
“You’ve come along at an interesting time,” said Claudia Stern. “We’re preparing for an auction, the centerpiece of which is an item with links to Sedlec, a quality that it shares with your own statue. But then, I imagine that you knew this already, given your presence here. Might I ask who recommended that you bring the bone sculpture to me?”
“A man named Charles Neddo. He’s a dealer in New York.”
“I know of Mr. Neddo. He is a gifted amateur. He occasionally comes up with some unusual objects, but he has never learned to distinguish between what is valuable and what should be discarded and forgotten.”
“He spoke highly of you.”
“I’m not surprised. Frankly, Mr. Parker, this house is expert in such matters, a reputation painstakingly acquired over the last decade. Before we came on the scene, arcane artifacts were the preserve of backstreet merchants, grubby men in dank basements. Occasionally, one of the established names would sell ‘dark material,’ as it was sometimes known, but none of them really specialized in the area. Stern is unique, and it is rarely that a seller of arcana fails to consult us first before putting an item up for auction. Similarly, a great many individuals approach us on both a formal and informal basis with queries relating to collections, manuscripts, even human remains.”
She moved to a table, upon which stood the statue found in Garcia’s apartment, now carefully positioned on a rotatable wheel. Her finger flipped the button on a desk lamp, casting white light upon the bones.
“Which brings us to this fellow. I assume Mr. Neddo told you something of the image’s origins?”
“He seemed to think that it was a representation of a demon trapped in silver sometime in the fifteenth century. He called it the Black Angel.”
“Immael,” said Ms. Stern. “One of the more interesting figures in demonic mythology. It’s rare to find a naming so recent.”
“A naming?”
“According to Enoch, two hundred angels rebelled, and they were cast down initially on a mountain called Armon, or Hermon: herem, in Hebrew, means a curse. Some, of course, descended farther, and founded hell, but others remained on earth. Enoch gives the names of nineteen, I think. Immael is not among them, although that of his twin, Ashmael, is included in certain versions. In fact, the first record of Immael derives from manuscripts written in Sedlec after 1421, the year in which the Black Angel is reputed to have been created, all of which has contributed to its mythology.”
She slowly turned the wheel, examining the sculpture from every possible angle.
“Where did you say you found this?”
“I didn’t.”
She lowered her chin and peered at me over the tops of her half glasses.
“No, you didn’t, did you? I should like to know, before I go any farther.”
“The original owner, who was also probably the artist responsible, is dead. He was a Mexican named Garcia. Neddo believed that he was also behind the restoration of an ossuary in Juarez, and the creation of a shrine to a Mexican figurehead called Santa Muerte.”
“How did the late Mr. Garcia meet his end?”
“You don’t read the papers?”
“Not if I can help it.”
“He was shot.”
“Most unfortunate. He appeared to have considerable talent, if he made this. It really is very beautiful. My guess is that the human bones used are not old. I see little evidence of wear. The majority are from children, probably chosen for reasons of scale. There are also some canine and avian bones, and the nails on the ends of its limbs appear to be cat claws. It’s most remarkable, but probably unsalable. Questions would be asked about the provenance of the child bones. There is the strong possibility that they may be linked to the commission of a crime. Anyone trying either to buy or sell it without involving the authorities would leave him- or herself open to charges of obstructing the course of justice, at the very least.”
“I wasn’t trying to sell it. The man who made this was involved in the killing of at least two young women in the United States, and perhaps many more in Mexico. Someone arranged for him to come north to New York. I want to find out who that might have been.”
“So where does the statue fit in, and why bring it to me?”
“I thought it might pique your interest and allow me to ask you some questions.”
“Which it did.”
“I’ve been holding one question back: What can you tell me about the Believers?”
Ms. Stern killed the light. The gesture allowed her a moment to compose her features and to hide partially the expression of alarm that briefly transformed them.
“I’m not sure that I understand.”
“I found a symbol carved inside a skull in Garcia’s apartment. It was a grapnel. According to Neddo, it’s used by a group of some kind, a cult, to identify its members and to mark some of its victims. The Believers have an interest in the history of Sedlec and in the recovery of the original statue of the Black Angel, assuming it even exists. You’re about to auction off a fragment of a vellum map that is supposed to contain clues to the location of the statue. I would imagine that would be enough to attract the attention of these people.”
I thought Ms. Stern was going to spit on the ground, so obvious was her distaste at the subject I had raised.
“The Believers, as they term themselves, are freaks. As I’m sure Mr. Neddo informed you, we sometimes deal with strange individuals in the course of our work, but most of them are harmless. They are collectors and can be forgiven their enthusiasms, as they would never hurt another human being. The Believers are another matter. If the rumors are to be credited, and they are only rumors, they have existed for centuries, and their formation was a direct result of the confrontation in Bohemia between Erdric and Immael. Their numbers are small, and they keep a very low profile. The sole reason for their existence is to reunite the Black Angels.”
“Angels? Neddo only told me about one statue.”
“Not a statue,” said Ms Stern, “but a being.”
She led me to where the man with receding hair was working upon the restoration of the painting. It was a large canvas, about ten feet by eight, and depicted a battleground. Fires burned on distant hills, and great armies moved through ruined houses and scorched fields. The detail was intricate, each figure beautifully and carefully painted, although it was difficult to tell if what I was seeing was the battle itself or its aftermath. There appeared to be pockets of fighting continuing in sections of the painting, but most of the central area consisted of courtiers surrounding a regal figure. Some distance from him, a one-eyed leader rallied troops to himself.
The work had been placed upon an easel and surrounded by lights, almost like a patient in an operating theater. Upon the shelves around it stood microscopes, lenses, scalpels, magnifying glasses, and jars of assorted chemicals. While I watched, the restorer took a thin wooden stick and scored it with a penknife, then pushed it into cotton and rotated it to create a cotton bud of the required thickness. When he was satisfied with his creation, he dipped it into a jar of liquid and began carefully applying it to the surface of the painting.
“That’s acetone mixed with white spirit,” said Ms. Stern. “It’s used to clean away unwanted layers of varnish, tobacco, and fire smoke, the effects of pollution and oxidation. One has to be careful to find the correct chemical balance for every painting, because the requirements of each one will be quite unique. The intention is to achieve a strength sufficient to remove dirt and varnish, even paint added by later artists or restorers, without burning through to the original layers beneath. This has been, and continues to be, a particularly painstaking restoration, as the anonymous artist used an interesting mixture of techniques.”
She pointed to two or three areas in the work where the paint appeared exceptionally thick.
“Here, he has used oil-free paints, giving his pigment an unusual consistency, as you can see. The impasto—the thicker areas of paint—have accumulated layers of dust in the grooves, which we’ve had to remove with a combination of acetone and scalpel work.”
Again her hands danced across the work, almost but not quite touching the surface.
“There is also a great deal of craquelure, this web effect where the old pigments have dried and degraded over time. Now, let me show you something.”
She found a smaller painting, depicting a solemn-looking man in ermine and a black hat. Across the room, her secretary abandoned her work and moved over to join us. Apparently, Claudia Stern’s master classes were worth attending.
“In case you were wondering, this is the alchemist Dr. Dee,” she explained. “We are due to offer this for sale at our auction, alongside the painting upon which James is currently working. Now, let me adjust the lighting.”
She turned off the large lights surrounding the paintings, using a central switch. For a moment we were in semidarkness, until our corner of the room was suddenly illuminated by an ultraviolet glow. Our teeth and eyes now shone purple, but the greatest change was visible upon the two paintings. The smaller work, the depiction of the alchemist Dee, was spattered with specks and dots, as though the entire work had been attacked by a demented student of Jackson Pollock. The larger painting, though, was almost entirely clear of such marks, apart from a thin half-moon in one corner where the restorer was still working.
“The dots on the portrait of Dee are called ‘overpaint,’ and they show the parts where previous restorers have retouched or filled in damaged areas,” said Miss Stern. “If one were to perform the same experiment in almost any great gallery in the world, one would witness the same effect on most of the works present. The preservation of works of art is a constant process, and it has always been so.”
Miss Stern lit the main lights once again.
“Do you know what a ‘sleeper’ is, Mr. Parker? In our business, it is an object whose value is unrecognized by an auction house, and that subsequently passes into the hands of a buyer who realizes its true nature. This battlefield painting is just such a sleeper: it was discovered in a provincial auction house in Somerset, England, and bought for the equivalent of one thousand dollars. It’s clear that the sleeper has not been restored at any point in its existence, although it appears to have been kept in relatively good condition, apart from the inevitable effects of natural aging. Yet there was one large area of concealment in the bottom right-hand corner, noticeable once the overpaint was revealed by the ultraviolet light. Originally, sections of this work had been crudely worked upon to conceal some of the detail it contained. It was uncovered relatively easily. What you are seeing here is the second stage of the restoration. Take a step back and look at that area with a new eye.”
The bottom right-hand corner showed the bodies of monks, all of them wearing white, hanging from the wall of a monastery. Human bones were stacked like kindling beneath their feet, and one of the monks had an arrow in the center of his forehead. A grapnel had been painted upon the front of each monk’s robes in what appeared to be blood. A group of mounted soldiers was riding away from them, led by a tall armored figure with a white mote in his right eye. Human heads dangled from their saddles, and their horses wore spikes upon their foreheads.
If the bearded figure was their leader, it was to one of his men that one’s eye was immediately drawn. He was not riding a horse, but instead walked alongside his captain, bearing a bloodied sword in his right hand. He was a fat imp, gross and deformed, with a great goiter or tumor at his neck. He wore a tunic of leather plates that failed to conceal the enormity of his belly, and his legs seemed almost to be collapsing under the weight of his body. There was blood around his mouth, where he had fed upon the dead. In his left hand he held aloft a banner bearing the symbol of the grapnel.
“Why was this hidden?” I asked.
“This is the aftermath of the sacking of the monastery at Sedlec,” said Miss Stern. “The killing of the monks during a period of truce was first blamed upon Jan Ziska and his Hussites, but this painting may be closer to the truth. It seems to suggest that the killings were the work of mercenaries, operating in the confusion of the aftermath and led by these two men. Later documentary evidence, including the testimony of eyewitnesses, supports the artist’s version of events.”
She spread the index and middle fingers of her right hand to indicate the bearded rider and the grotesque figure cavorting beside him. “This one”—she indicated the fat man—“has no name. Their leader was known simply as ‘the Captain,’ but if one is to believe the myths surrounding Sedlec, he was really Ashmael, the original Black Angel. According to the old stories, after the banishment from heaven, Ashmael was shunned by the company of the fallen because his eyes were marked by his last glimpse of God. In his loneliness, Ashmael tore himself in two so that he would have company in his wanderings, and he gave the name Immael to his twin. Eventually, they grew weary and descended into the depths of the earth near Sedlec, where they slept until the mines were dug. Then they awoke, and found the world above at war, so they began fomenting conflict, playing one side off against the other, until at last Immael was confronted and cast down into molten silver. Ashmael immediately commenced searching for him, but when he reached the monastery the statue had already been spirited away, so he avenged himself on the monks and continued his quest, a quest which, according to the tenets of the Believers, goes on to this day. So now you know, Mr. Parker. The Believers exist to reunite two halves of a fallen angel. It is a wonderful story, and now I plan to sell it in return for twenty percent of the final price. In the end, I am the only person who will profit from the story of the Black Angels.”
∗ ∗ ∗
I was home before midnight. The house was silent. I went upstairs and found Rachel asleep. I didn’t wake her. Instead, I was about to check up on Sam when Rachel’s mother appeared at the door and, putting a finger to her lips to hush me, indicated that I should follow her downstairs.
“Would you like coffee?” she asked.
“Coffee would be good.”
She heated some water and retrieved the ground beans from the freezer. I didn’t speak as she went about preparing the coffee. I sensed that it wasn’t my place to begin whatever conversation we were about to have.
Joan placed a cup of coffee in front of me and cradled her own in her hands.
“We had a problem,” she said. She didn’t look at me as she spoke.
“What kind of problem?”
“Someone tried to get into the house through Sam’s window.”
“A burglar?”
“We don’t know. The police seem to think so, but Rachel and I, we’re not so sure.”
“Why?”
“They didn’t set the motion sensors off. The sensors weren’t disabled either, so we can’t figure out how they got to the house. And this is going to sound crazy, I know, but it seemed as if they were crawling up the exterior. We heard one of them moving on the outside wall behind Rachel’s bed. There was another on the roof, and when Rachel went into Sam’s room, she says she saw a woman’s face at the window, but it was upside down. She shot at it and—”
“She what?”
“I’d taken Sam out of the room, and Rachel had set off the panic button. She had a gun, and she shot the window out. We had it replaced today.”
I hid my face in my hands for a few moments, saying nothing. I felt something touch my fingers, and Joan took my hand in hers.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I know that sometimes it might seem like Frank and I are hard on you, and I know you and Frank don’t get along too well, but you have to understand that we love Rachel, and we love Sam. We know that you love them too, and that Rachel cares about you, and loves you more deeply than she’s ever loved any other man in her life. But the feelings she has for you are costing her a great deal. They’ve put her life at risk in the past, and they’re bringing her pain now.”
Something caught in my throat when I tried to speak. I took a sip of coffee to try to dislodge it, but it would not be moved.
“Rachel has told you about her brother, Curtis,” said Joan.
“Yes,” I said. “He sounded like he was a good man.”
Joan smiled at the description.
“Curtis was pretty wild when he was a teenager,” said Joan, “and wilder still when he was in his twenties. He had a girlfriend, Justine, and, boy, he drove her crazy. She was much gentler than he was, and though he always looked out for her, I think he kind of frightened her some, and she left him for a time. He couldn’t understand why, and I had to sit him down and explain to him that it was okay to cut loose a little, that young men did those kinds of things, but at some point you had to start behaving like an adult, and rein in the young part. It didn’t mean that you had to spend the rest of your life in a suit and tie, never raising your voice or stepping out of line, but you had to recognize that the rewards a relationship brought came at a price. The cost was a whole lot less than what you got in return, but it was a sacrifice nonetheless. If he wasn’t prepared to make that sacrifice by growing up, then he had to just let her go and accept that she wasn’t for him. He decided that he wanted to be with her. It took some time, but he changed. He was still the same boy at heart, of course, and that wild streak never left him, but he kept it in check, the way you might train a horse so you can harness its power and channel its energy. Eventually, he became a policeman, and he was good at what he did. Those people who killed him made the world a poorer place by taking him from it, and they broke so many hearts, just so many.
“I never thought I’d be having that conversation again with a man, and I understand that the circumstances are not the same. I know all that you’ve gone through, and I can imagine some of your pain. But you have to choose between the life you’re being offered here, with a woman and a child, maybe a second marriage and more children to come, and this other life that you lead. If something happens to you because of it, then Rachel will have lost two men that she loved to violence; but if something happens to her or to Sam as a consequence of what you do, then everyone who loves Rachel and Sam will be torn apart, and you worst of all, because I don’t believe that you could survive that loss a second time. Nobody could.
“You’re a good man, and I understand that you’re driven to try to make things right for people who can’t help themselves, for those who’ve been hurt, or even killed. There’s something noble in that, but I don’t think you’re concerned with nobility. It’s sacrifice, but not the right kind. You’re trying to make up for things that can never be undone, and you blame yourself for allowing them to occur even though it wasn’t in your power to stop them. But at some point you’re going to have to stop blaming yourself. You’re going to have to stop trying to change the past. All of that is gone, hard as it may be to accept. What you have now is new hope. Don’t let it slip away, and don’t let it be taken from you.”
Joan rose and emptied the remains of her coffee into the sink, then placed the mug in the dishwasher.
“I think Rachel and Sam are going to come stay with us for a little while,” she said. “You need time to finish whatever it is you’re doing, and to think. I’m not trying to come between you. None of us is. I wouldn’t be having this conversation with you if that was the case. But she’s frightened and unhappy, and that’s not even taking into account the aftermath of the birth and all the confused feelings that brings with it. She needs to be around other people for a time, people who’ll be there for her round the clock.”
“I understand,” I said.
Joan placed her hand on my shoulder, then kissed me gently on the forehead.
“My daughter loves you, and I respect her judgment more than that of anyone else that I know. She sees something in you. I can see it too. You need to remember that. If you forget it, then it’s all lost.”
∗ ∗ ∗
The Black Angel walked in the moonlight, through tourists and residents, past stores and galleries, scenting coffee and gasoline on the air, distant bells tolling the coming of the hour. It examined the faces of the crowds, always seeking those that it might recognize, watching for eyes that lingered a second too long upon its face and form. It had left Brightwell in the office, lost among shadows and old things, and now replayed their conversation in its head. It smiled faintly as it did so, and lovers smiled too, believing that they saw in the expression of the passing stranger the remembrance of a recent kiss, and a parting embrace. That was the Angel’s secret: it could cloak the vilest of feelings in the most beautiful of colors, for otherwise no one would choose to follow its path.
Brightwell had not been smiling when earlier they had met.
“It is him,” said Brightwell.
“You are jumping at shadows,” the Black Angel replied.
Brightwell withdrew a sheaf of copied papers from the folds of his coat and placed them before the angel. He watched as its hand flicked through them, taking in snatches of headlines and stories, and with each page that it read its interest grew, until at last it was crouched over the desk, its shadow falling upon words and pictures, its fingers lingering upon names and places from cases now solved or buried: Charon, Pudd, Charleston, Faulkner, Eagle Lake, Kittim.
Kittim.
“It could be coincidence,” said the angel softly, but it was said without conviction, less a statement than a step in an ongoing process of reasoning.
“So many?” said Brightwell. “I don’t believe that. He has been haunting our footsteps.”
“It’s not possible. There is no way that he can know his own nature.”
“We know our nature,” said Brightwell.
The angel stared intently into Brightwell’s eyes and saw anger, and curiosity, and the desire for revenge.
And fear? Yes, perhaps just a little.
“It was a mistake to go to the house,” said the angel.
“I thought we could use the child to draw him to us.”
The Black Angel stared at Brightwell. No, it thought, you wanted the child for more than that. Your urge to inflict pain has always been your undoing.
“You don’t listen,” it said to him. “I’ve warned you about drawing attention to us, especially at so delicate a juncture.”
Brightwell appeared about to protest, but the angel stood and removed its coat from the antique coat stand by its desk.
“I need to go out for a while. Stay here. Rest. I’ll return soon.”
And so the angel now walked the streets, like a slick of oil trailing through the tide of humanity, that smile darting occasionally across its face, never lingering for more than a second or two, and never quite reaching its eyes. Once an hour had gone by, it returned to its lair, where Brightwell sat patiently in a shadowy corner, far from the light.
“Confront him if you wish, if it will confirm or disprove what you believe.”
“Hurt him?” said Brightwell.
“If you have to.”
There was no need to ask the last question, the one that remained unspoken. There would be no killing, for to kill him would be to release him, and he might never be found again.
∗ ∗ ∗
Sam lay awake in her crib. She didn’t look at me as I approached. Instead, her gaze was fixed raptly on something above and beyond the bars. Her tiny hands made grabbing motions, and she seemed to be smiling. I had seen her like that before, when Rachel or I stood over her, either talking to her or offering her some bauble or toy. I moved closer, and felt a coldness in the air around her. Still Sam didn’t look at me. Instead, she gave what sounded like a little giggle of amusement.
I reached across the crib, my fingers outstretched. For the briefest of moments, I thought that I felt a substance brush against my fingers, like gossamer or silk. Then it was gone, and the coldness with it. Immediately, Sam began to cry. I took her in my arms and held her, but she wouldn’t stop. There was movement behind me, and Rachel appeared at my side.
“I’ll take her,” she said, her arms reaching for Sam and irritation in her voice.
“It’s okay. I can hold her.”
“I said I’ll take her,” she snapped, and it was more than annoyance. I had been called to scenes of domestic arguments as a cop and seen mothers latch on to their children in the same way, anxious to protect them from any threat of violence, even as their husbands or partners attempted to make up for whatever they had done or had threatened to do, once the police were there. I had seen the look in those women’s eyes. It was the same as the one that I saw in Rachel’s. I handed the baby to her without a word.
“Why did you have to wake her?” said Rachel, holding Sam against her and stroking her gently on the back. “It took me hours to get her down.”
I found my voice.
“She was awake. I just went over to look at her, and—”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s done now.”
She turned her back to me, and I left them both and undressed in the bathroom, then took a long shower. When I was done, I went downstairs and found a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, then headed into my office and rousted Walter from the couch. I’d make a bed there for the night. Sam had stopped crying, and there was no sound from upstairs for a time, until at last I heard Rachel’s soft footfalls on the stairs. She had put on a dressing gown over her nightshirt. Her feet were bare. She leaned against the door, watching me. I couldn’t say anything at first. When I tried to speak there was again that tickling in my throat. I wanted to shout at her, and I wanted to hold her. I wanted to tell her that I was sorry, that everything would be all right, and I wanted her to say the same to me, even if neither of us was telling the entire truth.
“I was just tired,” she said. “I was surprised to see you back.”
Despite all that Joan had said, I still wanted more.
“You acted like you thought I was going to drop her, or hurt her,” I said. “It’s not the first time, either.”
“No, it’s not that,” she said. She moved toward me. “I know you’d never do anything to harm her.”
Rachel tried to touch my hair, and to my shame, I pulled away. She started to cry, and the sight of her tears was shocking to me.
“I don’t know what it is,” she said. “I don’t know what’s wrong. It’s—you weren’t here, and someone came. Something came, and I was frightened. Do you understand? I’m scared, and I hate being scared. I’m better than that, but you make me feel this way.”
Now it was out. Her voice was raised as her face contorted into an expression of utter hurt and rage and grief.
“You make me feel this way for Sam, for myself, for you. You go away when we need you to be here, and you put yourself in harm’s way for—for what? For strangers, for people you’ve never met? I’m here. Sam is here. This is your life now. You’re a father, you’re my lover. I love you—God Jesus, I do love you, I love you so much—but you can’t keep doing this to me and to us. You have to choose, because I can’t go through another year like this one. Do you know what I’ve done? Do you know what your work has made me do? I have blood on my hands. I can smell it on my fingers. I look out of the window and I can see the place where I spilled it. Every day I glimpse those trees, and I remember what happened there. It all comes back to me. I killed a man to protect our daughter, and last night I would have done it again. I took his life out there in the marshes, and I was glad. I hit him, and I hit him again, and I wanted to keep hitting him. I wanted to tear him to pieces, and for him to feel every second of it, every last iota of pain. I saw the blood rise in the water, and I watched him drown, and I was happy when he died. I knew what he wanted to do to me and to my baby, and I wasn’t going to let that happen. I hated him, and I hated you for making me do what I did, for putting me in that place. Do you hear me? I hated you.”
Slowly, she slid to the floor. Her mouth was wide-open, her lower lip curled in upon itself, tears falling and falling and falling, misery without end.
“I hated you,” she repeated. “Don’t you understand? I can’t do this. I can’t hate you.”
And then the words ceased and there were only sounds without meaning. I heard Sam crying, but I couldn’t go to her. All that I could do was reach out to Rachel, whispering and kissing as I tried to quell the pain, until at last we lay upon the floor together, her fingers on my back and her mouth against my neck as we tried to hold on to all that we were losing by binding ourselves to each other.
∗ ∗ ∗
We slept together that night. In the morning she packed some things, put the baby in the child seat in Joan’s car, and prepared to leave.
“We’ll talk,” I said, as she stood by the car.
“Yes.”
I kissed her on the mouth. She put her arms around me, and her fingers touched the back of my neck. They lingered there, and then were gone, but the scent of her remained, even after the car had disappeared, even after the rain came, even after sunlight faded and darkness rose and the stars scattered the night sky like sequins fallen from the gown of a woman half-imagined, half-recalled.
And through the emptiness of the house a cold crept, and as I fell into sleep a voice whispered:
I told you she would leave. Only we remain.
A touch like gossamer fell upon my skin, and Rachel’s perfume was lost in the stink of earth and blood.
∗ ∗ ∗
And in New York, the young prostitute named Ellen woke from her place beside G-Mack and felt a hand upon her mouth. She tried to struggle, until she felt the cool of the gunmetal against her cheek.
“Close your eyes,” said a man’s voice, and she thought that she recognized it from somewhere. “Close your eyes and be still.”
She did as she was told. The hand remained over her mouth, but the gun was moved away from her. Beside her, she heard G-Mack start to wake. The painkillers made him drowsy, but they usually wore off during the night, forcing him to take some more.
“Huh?” said G-Mack.
She heard five words spoken, then there was a sound like a book being dropped upon the floor. The hand was removed from her mouth.
“Keep your eyes closed,” said the voice.
She kept her eyes squeezed shut until she was certain that the man was gone. When she opened them again, there was a hole in G-Mack’s forehead and the pillows were red with his blood.