Dark to Mortal Eyes (20 page)

At the foot of the grand staircase, the officers stopped. The parlor doors were open.

“What have we here?” Lansky’s boots clicked across the parlor’s hardwood floor toward a painting on the east wall. A vision of surreal drama and color, the canvas ruled the room. With hands on hips, Lansky peered at the engraved plate on the gilded frame.
“The Lady in Dread,”
he intoned. “Did you choose this yourself, Mr. Addison, a gift for your wife’s new surroundings? Creating some sort of shrine, is that it?”

Marsh knew the words were meant to provoke him but reacted nonetheless.

“A shrine? Hey now! I didn’t buy that, don’t know anything about it.” Marsh regretted that he had delayed ordering a piano. But this? Where had it come from?

“Like the bloodstains,” Graham said. “You just don’t know.”

“That’s correct!” Marsh saw Rosie enter the room, felt bolstered by her elderly face. “Maybe she knows what it’s doing here.”

“Why, it arrived soon after these gentlemen,” she told him. “Delivered by a woman in a station wagon with the backseats folded down and, if memory
serves, the logo of an art gallery emblazoned on the door. A delightful girl. Sweet-faced. She showed me an invoice verifying a delivery to this address, scheduled for today’s date.”

“And you signed for it? Without checking with me?”

“It was ordered and paid for in your name, sir. What was I to do?” She surrendered an ivory envelope. “The girl presented this as well, said it contained the painting’s certificate of authenticity and a note of appreciation for purchasing through her gallery. A commendable touch, I thought. It’s not yet been opened. The writing’s beautiful, don’t you think?”

Marsh weighed the parchment in his hands and admired his name in calligraphy. Then he noticed the subtext, nestled within a swooped tail of ink.

Three letters: CCD.

“Scooter?” He was here somewhere. Had to be.

Josee rechecked the number on the hospital-room door, then considered the possibilities. Her head became a cave of reverberating doubts and concerns. Why had she left him on his own? Had that creature found him here? She envisioned him helpless in the bed with his bandaged face. Scooter was vulnerable at this time, no better than fresh meat
—fresh sustenance on demand
.

She stepped deeper into the room’s bars of sunlight. She needed answers.

“Hola.”

She jolted. Where had the voice come from?

“You Josee?” A short Hispanic nurse with hair gathered into a tight knot entered from the attached bathroom.

“That’s me.”

“He no here,” said the nurse, with a finger pointed at the bed.

Josee met the woman’s sympathetic eyes. She took a step. “Where is he?”

“He say, tell you to meet him.”

“Scooter? You’ve seen him? He’s okay?”

“
Sí
. He no look the same. He—”

Chief Braddock, flushed with anger, flung open the door. “What do you think you’re doing, making me chase you down the hall? Don’t you run from me, Josee. Don’t you abuse the charity I’ve shown.”

While he assessed the situation, the nurse’s eyes fell to her work. She took a stack of towels into the bathroom, busied herself with straightening and restocking. To Josee, her movements appeared fluid and unhampered by those watching her; she seemed used to the notion of blending in unseen.

“Where’d he go?” Braddock approached the bed, gripped the sheets, and peeled them to the foot of the mattress as if to unmask a threat. “You hear me? You understand me, nurse?”

“
Serpiente
here,” she told him as she refilled a soap dispenser.

“A snake? You saw a snake?”

“Sí,
señor. Verde
—green. By window.”

“Green?”

“With fire eyes.
El diablo
.” She kissed the crucifix around her neck. “
Jesús Cristo
, have mercy.”

“Okay, I can see this is going nowhere. What about the patient? Where’d he go?”

“Sí. He go.”

“Where?”

The nurse wadded a towel, stuffed it into a laundry bag. “He no here.
No aquí
.”

“ ‘No aquí.’ Gee, thanks, that’s a lot of help.” Braddock wrung the bed-sheets in his fist, flung them down. He mumbled, “What planet do these people come from? Doesn’t anyone in this country speak American anymore?” He looked under the bed, checked the closet, the bathroom. Josee heard shower curtain rings jangle on the rod before he reappeared and fired an order at her. “You wait here,” he said. “No, I can’t force you, but I’m asking you not to budge, you hear me? I’m gonna go find out what the devil’s going on.”

As the door swung shut behind him, the nurse signaled to Josee. Her tone was hushed. “Diablo, sí. Serpiente—it want your man. This no good.”

“Did he say anything else to you?”

“Scooter?
Sí
. He want me give you message,
comprende?
”

“Comprende, yes.” Josee shored her foot against the door. “Quick. Please tell me before the chief gets back. What’s the message? What’d he say?”

“You meet him. Afternoon. He say you know where.”

“Scooter told you that?”

“Sí.”

“But I don’t know where. That’s all he said? You’re sure?” Despite the nurse’s nod, Josee saw misgiving brim in the wide brown eyes. “Why’d he leave?” Josee wanted to know. “
Porqué?
”

“Diablo … serpiente. It watch him by window.”

“You saw it? With your own eyes?”

“
Sí, en pleno día
. It make sound … 
hsss!
I try to help, but your man much afraid.”

“You said he doesn’t look the same. Why? Did he get bit again?”

“Bit? How you know this? Doctor say food poison.”

“That’s not true, not totally. We did eat some fish sticks that were a day past due, but he was attacked after that. Saw it happen myself.”

“You speak truth.” Touching the corners of her own eyes, the nurse said, “I see he have wounds. But doctor—he no want to worry the people.”

“Maybe they
should
be worried.”

“
Sí, señorita
. Fire eyes. Scooter needs help. You also.” The nurse rummaged in the laundry bag. “Aquí. This why your man no look the same.” Gathered in the wadded towel that she’d brought from the bathroom, locks of nut-brown hair spoke of Scooter’s last-minute desperation. Thin facial hair topped the pile. “I bring him … razor. Other clothings.”

“He cut his hair? And his beard? Omigosh, Scoot, you must’ve been scared out of your mind. So,” she asked the nurse, “where did the snake go? El serpiente?”

“It go”—the nurse rubbed her fingertips together, then let her hands spring open—“go
rápido. Sí
, Josee, you be careful. Poison
muy fuerte.
” She placed a hand on her own heart. “Scooter—he in trouble, I think.”

“I have to find him.”

“You hear me,
por favor. Ten cuidado
 … be careful.”

“I hear you. Okay, I got it.”

The nurse removed her crucifix, pressed the object into Josee’s hand. “You take. Remind you about Jesús Cristo.”

“For me?”

“
Sí
, for you.” A soft hand moved to Josee’s cheek.

She drew back, but the gesture felt sincere, and warmth radiated from the nurse’s bronze skin. “Just a reaction,” Josee said in meager apology. “Thanks, you know, for the necklace.
Gracias
.” She let the leather cord fall through her fingers, touched the rugged figure carved from myrtlewood. Though the Savior’s half-clothed body was twisted on the cross, stretched on the archaic instrument of agony, his eyes, even on this small scale, seemed to radiate compassion. “Listen, this is yours. I can’t take it from you. I mean, it’s nice of you …” She looked up. “Hello?
Hola
?”

Mystified, she wandered into the bathroom and out, but there was no
sign of the nurse. Grasping the myrtlewood cross, Josee surveyed the room and saw that she was alone with towels bunched at her feet and sheets mounded on the bed.

Without a sound, the woman had vanished.

Over the years Josee Walker had met her share of accusers. They’d take one hard look at her, point sanctimonious fingers, then turn their backs while she fought off the loneliness that scorched her cheeks and charred the corners of her eyes.

Black: the color of an old skillet. The color of her loneliness.

She knew Jesus wasn’t the type to write her off, to put a gun to her head and demand perfection as a family prerequisite. She also knew she was a sinner—didn’t take a genius to figure that out. Didn’t everyone have faults? As a girl, she had confessed and asked forgiveness, choosing to join God’s family of love. She didn’t know what to expect from a family, but anything would beat the bits and pieces she’d experienced. Torn photos and memories. Closets and angry words.

God’s family, she discovered, could be just as cruel.

She soon felt as if … well, as if she’d been put up for adoption. Again.

Now, in the stillness of Room 223, Josee gripped the myrtlewood cross to her chest and looked skyward. “I want to believe you’re here,” she breathed.

Josee, I never left you
. The voice was still, small. Felt, rather than heard.

Armed with a fusillade of old accusations, she started to challenge this claim. Then her mind replayed yesterday’s encounter—the serpentine vapor and those eyes of flame exploding and evaporating into the thicket’s thin air.

Something had stopped it. Or someone.

“Thanks,” she whispered. “Guess I owe you that.”

She wished she could thank the nurse as well.

In the Corvallis Public Library on this quiet Thursday morning, Beau waited at the computers for an e-mail. Could be a while, he’d been warned. Maybe
all day. He had his thoughts to keep him company. That Addison lady, she wasn’t bad lookin’—except for the swollen lip he’d given her. He could still see her look of shock, the brave little thing biting back her tears. Well, she might not be feeling so high and mighty now, stuck in the dark, no way to take a whiz. She’d smell like a bum by the end of the day.

“Serves you right. You think your diamonds’ll save ya?”

In his hand, her earrings sparkled. A pair of teardrops.

Beau glanced over the partitions to make sure no one was watching. Per instructions, he had ditched the van at a condemned shack on the outskirts of Philomath and ridden the bus back into Corvallis. Had anyone missed him over the last thirty-six hours? Yeah, right. His father was away on business; his mother was on her third marriage and living in central California; his high school friends were trapped in classrooms and looking forward to tomorrow night when they could stockpile Halloween candy and egg their teachers’ houses and stay up late watching horror flicks.

Not that he’d be with them. Not one of them had invited him to a party.

Skee-reeech!

Well, he’d have the last laugh. Ha! If ICV’s plan pulled together, his former classmates would be watching his face on the news instead. Yeah, buddy, he could hear them now. “Isn’t that Beau Connors?”

“You ever suspect he’d do something like this?”

“Isn’t he the one those jocks messed up and threw into a locker, found him the next morning sniveling like a baby?”

Pressure exploded in Beau’s head. His arms whipped back like broad wings and threw him back in the library chair so violently that he hit the floor and turned heads. He ground his palms against the high-pitched squawks in his ears.

“Sir, do you need me to call someone? Are you all right?”

On his knees, he scrambled from the librarian’s touch. Pocketed the earrings.

“Maybe you should step outside, get some fresh air.”

“Leave me alone!”

Beau staggered down the library’s front steps, fleeing curious eyes but wanting to stay close so he could recheck his e-mail. Mr. Steele’s instructions might arrive at any time. One of two phrases: “Game Adjourned” or “Pawn
Sacrifice.” If he was told to sacrifice, Beau would walk into the police station tonight and turn himself in for Kara Addison’s kidnapping. When they matched the ravine’s evidence with his jacket and shoes, when he waved these teardrop earrings, they’d go ape wild.