Along Came a Demon (5 page)

Lindy looked up at me and for the briefest of moments before her gaze sank again, although I know I imagined it, I thought I saw hope in her eyes.

I put on my cheerful face. “A friend is making some calls, so it shouldn’t be long now.”

I hunkered down in the grass next to her, folding my arms on my knees. In mid-November the grass was yellow and leaves almost covered the corners of the yard where they had drifted. I should get out there soon with the leaf blower. The harsh winter sun blazed down. I unzipped my jacket.

I didn’t question Lindy about Lawrence, but she needed only a modicum of interest from me to start rattling on about him. I sat back and absorbed it.

Lindy and Lawrence celebrated his sixth birthday on November 9th. He attended the Saint Mary Frances Catholic School down on Monmouth Avenue. Considering she devoted her life to helping the sick and aged, I don’t understand how Mary Frances’ name ended up on a kid’s school. In summer, Lawrence attended the summer program there while Lindy worked. He was smart, and she never had a problem getting him to finish his homework. He liked hamburgers and ice cream and all the other child-popular foods, but his favorite was Cobb salad, which I thought unusual for a little kid. He often played with the other apartment kids in the play park behind their building in the evenings and at weekends, while Lindy sat on the bench. They went to the movies and the skating rink, and went bowling a couple of times, but bowling was new to Lawrence and he didn’t know yet if he liked it.

He was hospitalized with severe bronchitis when ten-months-old and spent two weeks in Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Their family physician was William Haskey at Clarion’s Fourth Street Clinic.

Well, there should be plenty of records on this boy and hopefully I’d find some of them in Lindy’s apartment. Although, according to Mike, there was nothing to indicate a child lived in the apartment, the police don’t thoroughly investigate the home of a person who dies of natural causes. I meant to make a careful search and find what they missed. I needed something to get Mike off his rear end and on the trail of young Lawrence.

When she wound down I said, “I’d like a picture of him. Do you have an extra key to your place, under a mat, or a planter, or on the lintel maybe?”

She shook her head, but her wet hair didn’t move; it clung to her head as if glued on.

I got to my feet. “It’s okay. I can probably get in.”

She rose up with me. “I’ll come with you.”

Damn!
If Mike was right and no trace of Lawrence remained in the apartment, she would see his stuff was gone. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. You’ll just get upset.”

“
I don’t think I will.” She looked past the trees to the apartment block. “In fact, I have a strange feeling I should be there. And I want to be surrounded by Lawrence’s things.”

Uh oh!
I would not be able to concentrate with a hysterical spirit bugging me. I tried to stop her. “Lindy, I don’t want to have to tromp over to your apartment if we need to talk.”

But no, she walked away from me. She got ten paces before she stopped.

“
Funny. I can’t go any further.”

I got ahead of her. She stared at the ground. “My feet won’t move.”

Oh great
! I didn’t want her to leave my yard right then, but I definitely didn’t want her stuck here. “Let’s experiment, huh? Try going in another direction.”

So we walked around together. Lindy could walk along the side of my house to where she stood when I first saw her, she could walk through the orchard among the trees, but she couldn’t go more than twenty feet away from the house. She couldn’t get near the wall.

Defeated, she folded her body to sit beneath the cherry tree.

Well, nothing I could do about it. I headed for the house.

I had no idea how to go about breaking into a building, so I called Mike, ignoring Jack and Mel for the moment.

“
I won’t believe nothing of Lawrence is in their apartment till I see for myself.”

“
Well, it’s not a crime scene, so I suppose there’s no harm letting you take a look. But the manager may have already cleared out the place.”

“
Damn! I hope not.”

“
I’ll give him a call. Give me a few minutes.”

Mike called me back five minutes later. “He hasn’t got to it yet, so I let him know you’ll be by.”

I was relieved. If Mike had said no and I tried to barge in anyway, I would be in it deep when he found out. And I was determined to get inside Lindy’s apartment, one way or another.

Chapter
Four

Jack and Mel were all around me like there were more than two of them. “Well?” from Jack. Mel hopped up and down in agitation.

So I told them about it as I went in the pantry and reached to the top shelf for a small canister I kept there. They followed me to the kitchen counter, all bated breath and widened eyes; metaphorically speaking. Skipping over the fact a little boy was missing, they zeroed in on what they considered the most intriguing aspect of Lindy’s case.

“
But that means… .” from Mel.

“
Demon,” Jack provided.

“
Or -” Mel began, voice all fluttery.

I cut her off. “Or nothing. No vampires. No werewolves. No pixies or trolls or djinns.”

“
You call them demons, but you don’t know what they actually are.” Jack planted himself in front of me as I removed the lid from the can. “They could be anything.”

“
Does
Gorge
mind you calling him a demon?” Mel asked.

I did Jack the courtesy of going around him, not through him. “I don’t. Not to his face.” I tightened my jaw, exasperated. “You know it’s just a term I use. As Jack says, they could be anything.”

Mel had an unholy fixation with Gorgeous Gorge. “Anything so cute can’t be a demon.”

I shook my head with irritation. “You’ve never met Gorge.”

“
I’d like to.”

As if I would invite a demon in my house.

“
I did see his photo in the newspaper once, and he is
cute
!”

I would never call a demon cute. Incredibly handsome. Charming. Deadly. Not to be trusted. According to Lynn, they did not blatantly lie, but could do so by omission when it suited them. And you could ask them a question and they answered in such a way that, without exactly lying, they didn’t give you the truth.

Although Gorge owned his small antique shop, he didn’t need a business; he didn’t need the income it provided. Lynn told me demons have no interest in possessions. They were all about sensual gratification. They fed off us, off our arousal, and it gave them an incredible high. They didn’t harm people they used, although they certainly could. Their victims were not hurt, they were compensated by sharing the sensations the Otherworldy themselves experienced. It could be an exquisitely rewarding relationship. Or so Lynn told me.

Lynn told me a lot about demons which later proved less than factual.

I dug in the canister and put a handful of steel filings in each pocket of my Levis. Not much in the way of protection, but I had something better as backup. If a demon killed Lindy, I was not going near her apartment unprepared.

Jack hung over my shoulder as I got my Ruger SR9 from the kitchen drawer, made sure the safety was on and looked for the holster. I own a hip holster, but I prefer the angle-draw shoulder holster. The Ruger is slim, and light enough for concealed-carry, and the magazine is double stack, holding seventeen rounds. The frame is impact-resistant polymer, but the sides and barrel are stainless steel. I figured if I had to shoot a demon, and missed, I could batter it with the gun.

I didn’t buy the gun with battering demons in mind. As a woman living alone, I believe in the right to defend myself. I believe in
my
right to bear arms. And because I also believe I should be able to go anywhere in my town and not fall victim to some drugged-out mugger, I have a concealed-carry permit. And although I’m no markswoman, I generally hit what I aim at, or the State of Utah would not have given me a permit.

I found the holster on the hall coat-stand, under my suede coat. Jack watched me fasten it and snug in the Ruger. “Now you’re frightening me.”

“
Ooh! Jackie’s scared to
death
!” Mel sang.

Jack shook his head. “You think you’re so damn funny. You’re not.”

“
Funnier than you, deadboy. I can tell a joke we haven’t heard like a million times.”

“
Really?” Jack’s hands went to his hips. “Let me have it.”

Mel’s head jutted forward. “If only I could. I’d let you have it … right where it hurts.”

Jack beckoned with crooked fingers. “Bring it on, baby.”

As they argued, I crept past them and out the backdoor.

A ten-foot-high redbrick wall surrounds my orchard on three sides, which makes the place kind of stick out, because no other properties in the area have high walls. A few old maple and sycamore rear up behind the wall and beyond them the apartment complex raises its head.

It was not here when I moved in. Just a matted, humpy old field and a few trees. The way land was at a premium in the area, I should have known someone would build eventually.

A tall wrought-iron gate bisects my wall. I used to imagine previous owners of my house taking their dogs through there for their morning walk among the trees, then across the field. I went that route myself to reach a small, family owned corner-store called Marvin’s Mart until it fell victim to the apartment complex.

I started off in the dusk. The woods were not very deep and the lamps from the street ahead penetrated through the trees. The air was crisp and cold, permeated by wood smoke, and I would have seen a lot more stars if not for the glow from Clarion behind me. Leaves crunched under my feet; one more good wind and those remaining on the trees would come down. The leaves turned early this year and looked crispier, and I wondered if the past summer’s drought had something to do with that.

In a couple of minutes, I was standing on the curb, looking across the street at the three-story apartment complex.

To give them their due, whoever designed the complex tried to make it blend in with the area and the old east bench homes. Built of honey-colored brick with steeply pitched slate roofs, oak doors and window frames, it looks older than it actually is. The main block faces east, with a wing extending at each end, surrounding a beautiful expanse of lawn trisected by cobblestone paths. The sidewalks surrounding the entire complex are likewise cobblestone. At each corner, where the wings join the main block, an arched passage goes through to the rear of the complex.

Borders of shrubs and annuals had been tidied up and mulched for the winter, but I remembered how pretty they looked in spring, summer and early fall. I waited for two cars to drive past, then crossed the street.

As is often the case, the manager’s apartment is on the ground floor just off the main entrance. The manager, a small, balding man, was not at all interested in me or why I wanted to get inside Lindy’s apartment. Yes, Lieutenant Warren called him and here was the key. He kept looking back over his shoulder at his TV as he spoke to me, and the door shut in my face before I took more than one step back.

I went outside and through one of the passages to the back. I looked over a nice little play area for the kids and a fenced-in swimming pool, now covered, the gates locked. I wanted to get to Lindy’s apartment from the rear, to see if I could spot anything odd on the backstairs going up.

The top floor apartments boast wrought iron balconies. A lot of them had plastic chairs, a potted plant or two. Lindy’s balcony was bare.

I used the key, stepped inside, and with my left hand searched the wall for a light switch. Strip lighting on the ceiling and recessed globes above the cabinets illuminated the kitchen in stark detail. Small, but very nice, with plenty of oak cabinets going right up to the ceiling, a built-in gas stove near the sink, dishwasher, trash compacter, and a free-standing refrigerator against the outside wall. The kitchen was very neat, with only a microwave, a few canisters, a can opener, a coffee maker, and a jug containing utensils precisely arrayed on the single counter. The dishes were still in the dishwasher - clean. A small oval antique dining table with two chairs just managed to fit in near the backdoor.

An arch gave into the living space. This room was a good size. A couch and matching armchair in soft beige leather. A small antique buffet with a few tasteful knickknacks. A forty-two-inch plasma TV on a small unit. An end-table between the chair and couch. A small antique roll-top desk. A couple of very nice reproduction Constable prints on the walls.

The air was stuffy and warm, the scent of rose potpourri cloying. I looked inside the home entertainment unit and sorted through a few DVDs. None of them were for kids. Opening up the desk, I found utility bills bound with rubber bands, notepaper, envelopes and various other documents, but none of them had anything to do with a little boy named Lawrence Marchant.

A short hall went from the front door past the living room to the bedrooms and bathroom. The bathroom was fairly basic with tub and showerhead, sink, toilet, medicine cabinet over the sink, and the counters were a pale green marble which almost matched the tiled floor in color. Unused rose and honeysuckle candles sat in the windowsill. I checked the cabinet and found the usual self-medicating pharmaceuticals and feminine hygiene products. No kiddie bubble baths or Disney toothbrushes. No bath toys lined up on the rim of the tub. The tub was mildly scummy and a bottle of baby oil had tipped over to leave an oily trail down the inside. A few items of clothing draped a small stool, with Lindy’s thong on top of the pile.