A Passing Curse (2011) (35 page)

“I’ve got to call his mother,” the Chief said and stared at the mountains, moving his eyes until they stopped on the castle. He would not look at Reese. He shook his head and walked away.

Next came heavy breathing up the stairs followed by a sparse man in his fifties, wearing a grey suit flaked with dandruff and a fedora that was sweat stained and lumpy, not to mention thirty years out of date. He lugged an ancient camera, a 4 x 5 Speed Graphic with bellows between the lens and the body of the camera, an old press camera.

“Where is it?” he asked Reese.

Reese opened the door. The smell was there now.

“I just finished here yesterday, taking pictures and prints,” he said and stuck out a thin arm. “Kenneth Perry.”

Perry was the crime lab, he guessed, the entire crime lab. He took fingerprints, blood samples, pictures. He could take molds of tire tracks, foot prints, and compare the rifling marks on bullets if he read the forensics manual close enough. Any DNA sampling would be done by the state. He looked cranky and tired and unkempt, and like most single men, he looked selfish. He couldn’t imagine Perry being married.

Perry dipped his head. “I don’t know any of the new ones.”

Reese was not listening. If he could look beyond the body and the smell, if he could concentrate, he might find his way out of this. This was not the time to swing wild.

Perry set up the small tripod he carried clipped inside his jacket.

“If I wanted to take these kinds of pictures everyday, I would have stayed in the city,” Perry said. “I worked for the coroner in San Francisco, once.” His hands flicked over the adjustments of the tripod until it was set, then he hefted the camera on top. “He was young.”

“Why is the bolt still on the door?”

“The priests haven’t fixed it?”

“It’s evidence.”

“Evidence? I know who broke it.” Perry fiddled with the camera, trying to ignore him. “The priests broke the door down when they saw the blood. Had nothing to do with the murder.”

Reese kept himself from shaking Perry and asking why he hadn’t searched the bolt for scratches or marks that might answer how Father Ramon’s killer left the room. He was afraid that Perry would tell him Ramon had committed suicide. But it didn’t matter. He doubted Perry was thinking clearly now that he was back in the same room with another body, a dead cop. Perry, like everyone else on the force, was in way over his head.

Perry took the first picture, the flashbulb popping, Thomkins elongating in the shadows.

Perry moved the tripod around the body, slowly shooting. For each picture he changed the flashbulb and the plate. Two cracked leather bags hung from each side of his belt. He’d snap one picture, take out the old bulb with a rag, still hissing, drop it into the left hand bag, then a fresh bulb from the right hand bag and into the pie pan reflector.

The flash glinted off a cigarette lighter and a gargoyle in the far corner. He remembered the gargoyle had been used as a book end by Father Ramon. He’d seen Thomkins using the lighter. Dusty impressions marked the wall. The back of the gargoyle’s head was flat and white. Tapping on the walls? Looking for a hollow spot? A secret door? He kicked the heavy sandstone. Is that why Thomkins had been killed? No. He wondered if Ajax was sending him a message. Or was it something else? Someone else?

Perry set up in the corner, snapping pictures of the black running suit, the torn running shoes, the shredded, bloody-white underwear. To the right the flash turned blue. A small automatic pistol. Walther PPK. .380 auto. Not much stopping power from a distance. A face gun.

The pistol’s slide was back, held open by the follower of an empty clip. He shined his Mag-lite on the far wall and counted four copper splatters about waist high.

In all, he counted seven brass casings within a three foot circle. Thomkins had held his ground.

A flashbulb highlighted four slugs, mushroomed and bent, on the floor. Four minus a seven-shot clip was three. He searched the rest of the floor, saw nothing, and walked outside. Someone was carrying lead.

She stood in the glare of the vanity lights, considering her puffy face. She rubbed a sleep line on her cheek, trying to make it disappear but failing. The day would come when the sleep lines stayed. She shrugged. There was no room in her life for vanity. She’d been dealing with the old and the ancient all her life. People do not get old, not really. Rocks get old, people don’t.

She shook her head. At least he wasn’t some guy she’d picked up in a bar. True, she’d met him in a graveyard, but that was understandable, especially since she hung out in graveyards a lot more than she hung out in bars.

She hadn’t said good morning or good-bye to him when he left. She’d played possum, avoiding him, not sure, for once, what to say. He’d left without trying to wake her. At least he wasn’t a complete jerk. A jerk would have woken her from a deep sleep to jabber about how good he’d been, how wonderful it had all been, maybe knock-off a morning quickie. She’d had her share of them. A jerk would have also sneaked off without saying good-bye.

She picked up her toothbrush. It was still wet. He’d used it. Somehow that broke into some new intimacy that went beyond sex and annoyed her slightly. Wasn’t it funny how the average street whore would blow a stranger but balk at kissing him? Well, that was a hell of an analogy.

She washed off the toothbrush, thought about calling room service for a new one, but loaded it and brushed her teeth. She reflected on Reese’s general detachment. He’d seen too much: too much violence, too much misery. The shit and the shits of the world. He’d become adept at distancing himself from people, from caring. He was basically a hermit. A monk among the people, not secluded but very remote. Reese took his hermitage with him wherever he went.

He’d put up a wall to save himself, but the wall had isolated him, and like most lonely people he didn’t realize how lonely he was. He’d claim, if asked, that he was not lonely at all, he was merely alone. Which, now that she thought about it, was exactly what she would say.

He was familiar to her. His charisma - the way he moved, thought, and spoke - tugged at her. It was as if she’d known him from childhood, not as a presence, nothing tangible, but something bothering her below the surface, waiting there. When she’d first seen him, it was if a part of her had returned.

But, she also recognized, disturbingly, a convergence. Her, Reese, and Ajax, she could not forget about Ajax, the three of them coming together for what she did not know. But it was nothing good.

She dressed in beige heavy twill pants and a khaki shirt with large pockets and epaulets, work clothes.

She pulled the small plastic bag out of her dresser drawer, wanting to smell the jasmine scented hair again. She held the bag up to the light. Dust. She opened the seal. Still the scent, ever slight, of jasmine and orange, now mixed with a dusky, arid smell. She flushed the toilet and dropped the gray powder into the swirling funnel. Dust to dust, she thought. World without end. Amen.

She opened the bottom dresser drawer and nodded. The sandal was still there, still intact. Of course, the sandal was made of cowhide.

She slapped Duran’s book on the table, opened it, and pulled up a chair. She flipped to the back of the book, the portraits of the local big shots. She studied the portrait of Father Delgado. The lips thin, the forehead high and aristocratic, a touch of the sadistic. A dead ringer for Ajax.

Reese had not been impressed with the likeness, but then Reese didn’t care how old Ajax was. Old age was not covered in his statutes. He wanted to arrest Ajax for murder and conspiracy to destroy the world. No - “arrest” wasn’t the right word. Her putative lover had no intention of arresting anyone. Reese was beyond the niceties of the law.

Ajax had freely admitted he was related to Father Delgado, but had the admission been to cover his bizarre likeness to a man who, if alive, would be 250 years old? So they looked alike. So what? Of course, Ajax had forgotten to mention that his long-lost relative had also been suspected of being a vampire. Even Professor Hamsun, a plodding academic, thought Delgado and Ajax were one and the same.

She closed the book. If you discounted that Ajax had a succession of relatives more or less identical to himself, then the only answer was that he was older than he claimed to be, a lot older.

She stood on the sidewalk for a moment, taking it in. The Santa Barbara courthouse rose sedately above the palm lined street, a Mediterranean structure complete with balustrades, too many arches, tile roofs, and a clock tower. She walked through the huge arched door and followed the signs to the elevator and rode it one floor down. The Hall of Records, located in the musty basement, smelled of wax, lubricating oil, and too many secrets. A clerk, who appeared slightly retarded, stared at her, sentinel-like, over the counter.

She tried to communicate with the moon-faced clerk for three minutes. He was not quite sure what she wanted. He moved his lips with some difficulty. “You want to look at the deeds held by Ajax Rasmussen?”

“I’ll make it easy,” she said. “Give me anything with Rasmussen’s name on it.”

The clerk was creepy and pale, a little guy with a rat mustache and wet eyes. His tie, green and white checks, circled loosely around his skinny neck. She’d been wrong about him being retarded. He was only acting stupid. Not much of an act, but he was hiding something.

“I can’t just punch a button and come up with information on a computer screen,” he said. “I don’t have a computer. We aren’t modernized yet. Not up to speed.”

He swept his arm behind him. File shelves full of cardboard boxes stuffed with manila folders went back for twenty yards beneath the dark low ceiling. “Do you know how long it would take to put all that on a hard drive?”

“You’re filed alphabetically aren’t you? Or is everything just dumped?”

“Dumped? Nothing is dumped. We have a file system.”

“You have property deeds and tax records filed under the address, Right? Then you have them crossed referenced under names as well? Maybe social security numbers?”

“I don’t have time right now,” he snapped.

“You’re not exactly busy.”

“I’m on a break,” he said. “Then I have to go upstairs and eat lunch.” He squared his shoulders. “Come back tomorrow.”

He was on a break and then he was going to eat lunch? “It’s must be nice working for the government. It must be nice taking the tax payers money. And the benefits.”

“I get by.”

“What time tomorrow?”

“Oh, anytime tomorrow,” he said grandly, “I can turn you loose back there. Tomorrow, you can look at anything you like.”

And by tomorrow he would have moved the files she was looking for. She waved good-bye and walked back to the elevator and punched the button for the lobby. Ajax was covering his tracks. Why? If he was innocent, as she’d been telling Reese, then what did he have to fear?

In the lobby, historic murals spread across high walls. One featured Cabrillo’s famous landing, him standing at the prow of a Spanish man-of-war, amidst furling flags and blaring trumpets. On the beach, priests held crosses and kneeled with the Indians. The Indians looked relieved, no doubt savoring the opportunity to be raped, plundered, wiped out.

The picture should have been of the disoriented, sweating and diseased Spanish staggering ashore. The Indians cowering in the bushes, looking as if their worst nightmare had arrived.

A stern, matronly type sat at the information desk. Her name tag said Helen. Behind her was a map in relief of Santa Barbara County. The ocean, lakes, and creeks were made of blue painted glass. The mountains were plaster-of-paris painted light green. Puffs of cotton on toothpicks formed clouds.

Helen seemed determined to inform. “May I help you?”

“Just admiring the painting.”

Helen canted, “Captain’s Landing was painted in 1936 by Henri Caldemar. It was part of the National Recovery Act. President Roosevelt paid starving artists to paint murals inside government buildings. Some of our greatest murals date from that time. Henri Caldemar later became world famous.”

She smiled at Helen. A stairway to her right led down to the basement. A painted hand pointed the way. A small sign said, no admittance. If she tried to open the door, Helen would either call the cops or give her the history of the stairway. Helen droned on about the significance of the NRA.

Before she could think of a diversion to occupy Helen, a huge yellow bus stopped outside at the curb. The door whooshed open. A troop of kids tumbled out the door. Salvation.

Helen immediately quit talking to her and straightened her collar. She took the pencil from behind her ear and eyed her fresh victims. The kids, probably sixth graders, wearing bright clothes with various company logos, a wall of advertisements, rushed up the steps.

When the wailing and chattering kids surrounded the information stand, it was all Helen could do to keep from smiling. Rusty quickly slipped away. The door was unlocked. The top of the stairway was dark. It smelled of mold and dust. She stifled a sneeze in her hand. She felt the tug of spider webs and brushed them off her hair. She made her way down the stairs.

The clerk was huddled in the far end of the basement under a single light bulb. He pulled a handful of manila folders out of a cardboard box. He walked into his office, put the files inside a gray cabinet, and locked it.

With a self-satisfied smile, he grabbed a small brown bag, more than likely his crummy lunch, and walked toward the elevator. She stepped back into the shadows. He passed four feet in front of her. When the door of the elevator closed, she started breathing again.

In his spare time, which meant all the time when he wasn’t helping Ajax, the clerk had been working on a portable cd player. Tools and electronic parts were scattered on the desk. She wedged a screwdriver into the cabinet and popped out the drawer. She counted five manila folders and took them all.

The room in the acute care clinic was bright. The weatherman had promised a beautiful day in the desert basin of Los Angeles. The night before, Mojave winds had blown the smog out to sea. An old man, with a full head of gray hair and paper thin skin, lay slightly elevated in the hospital bed. His eyes were closed. Blood vessels, dark blue, pulsed across his eyelids. His head rested on its side. He was softly snoring. His lips slack, a barren smile, a far off memory.