If Angels Fall (16 page)

Reed asked questions and made notes.

“I’m wondering, why did you choose this field,
psychiatry?”

She tugged at the cuffs of her blazer. “That’s
something I’d prefer not to discuss, if you don’t mind. It’s personal.”

“I see.”

“The real inspiration for the study came when I was
asked to help the two girls who found Tanita Marie Donner last year.”

“That was you?”

“Yes. It was then that I asked police if any help had
been offered to Tanita’s mother. I began seeing her and the idea for the group
and the research was born.”

“What about Angela Donner? What’s happened to her?”

“She’s a participant in the group.”

“Really?”

Martin nodded.

“Your letter says fourteen volunteers participate in
sessions.”

“Yes.”

“Are they aware of your coming to us for a story?”

“Yes. Most of them support it.”

“Tell me something about the deaths of the children
here.”

Martin removed a file from her briefcase and began
recounting fourteen tragedies. In some instances, the children had been killed
in front of relatives, or died in their parents’ arms, or their bodies had been
discovered by them. When she was finished, Reed was engrossed.

“I’d like to sit in on the next session and profile
some the parents. The program is about them. Their stories would convey the
importance of your work and its impact on their tragedies.”

“I’ll start making calls tonight,” Martin said,
passing Reed a page with the time and place of the next session. “Going
directly to press, as I am doing, is a violation of the department’s policy.
I’ve put my job at the university on the line.”

Reed’s eyebrows shot up.

“This program is invaluable and I’m determined to save
it. Not for me—for the people who are being helped by it.”

“I understand.”

They shook hands. Martin snapped her briefcase closed,
smiled, and left. Reed sat alone in the room, thinking.

He removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes. His head
ached. Yet things were brighter with Ann. And he was sure he had inadvertently
found Tanita Donner’s mother.

Last year, after Tanita’s murder, her mother had
dropped out of sight. Now, with the anniversary of Tanita’s murder coming up,
the press would be looking for her. In the wake of Danny Becker’s kidnapping,
they’d be more determined. But he knew where Angela Donner was. And soon, with
a little luck, he would be talking to her. Martin’s work was secondary.
Angela’s story juxtaposed with Danny Becker’s case, would make a great read.

And, there was more.

He had covered many of the cases Martin described,
reciting the names he knew. He’d get the library files before he went to the
session. The guy whose kids drowned before his eyes had to be one of the worse.
Reed couldn’t recall it. He’d do some digging on that one.

On good days,
warm memories of his wife yielded Sydowski sufficient will to
propel his life another twenty-four hours. On bad days, like this one, when he
felt alone and could not accept the fact that she was gone, he contemplated his
Glock.

Take the eternal sleep and find her. Be with her.

What time was it back east? The luminescent hands of
his watch glowed 1:29 A.M. Three hours later where his daughters lived. Too
late to call. Wearily he found his way through the darkness. He knew his house,
every tick and creak of it. In the kitchen, he snapped on the light and heated
some milk for cocoa.

It had been six years since he saw the monitor above
Basha’s hospital bed flitter, then flat line. The young doctor and nurse
rushing in, telling him to leave. Battling against a killer no one could
stop-not even him.

The beast slowly ravaged Basha’s nervous system with
muscular rigidity, condemning uncontrollable tremoring upon a gentle woman who
had dance at her daughters’ weddings. It consumed her by degrees, devouring a
piece at a time. She could not feed herself, she could not have intelligible
conversations, she could not go to the bathroom without help. Ultimately she
wore diapers. The final insult: she could not be trusted to hold her infant
grandchildren. She watched through her tears and he cared for her. A couple of
times he swore her bed was empty, she barely visible under the rumpled sheets.
Carrying her emaciated body, her fragility terrified him. She weighed nothing.
She was dying in his arms.

Waiting in the hospital hallway the night they tried
to save her, a strange thing happened. Sydowski heard her call his name. Once.
Her voice was young, strong, wondrous. He was amazed. No one else heard her.
How could it be? He remembered his daughters beside him, wailing. Then the
young doctor, the one with an earring in his left lobe, appeared from Basha’s
room and was standing before him.

“I’m very sorry, sir. She’s gone. We did everything we
could.”

Something was indestructible cleaved inside, forcing
him to hold his girls to keep them from coming apart. The young doctor touched
Sydowski’s arm and those of his daughter.

The milk for his cocoa had come to a boil.

They would sit in the living room. She would be
embroidering something for the babies. He’d be reading. Often he would discuss
a case with her and she’d make a suggestion about an aspect he overlooked. He
respected her insights. For he had one true partner, it was she.

Since she died, he felt uneasy being home alone. The
girls’ rooms were empty reminders of happier days. He shuffled around the
place, chasing after her scent. It was still in the house, the fragrance of
lilacs. Once he found a strand of her hair in her vacant side of their closet.
His immediate reflex was to put it in an evidence bag, as if he could solve the
crime of her death. Instead, held it in his palm and wept.

He pursued death for a living: tracked it, waded into
it, bagged its aftermath, and arrested the guilty. Professionally and mentally,
he was prepared for every case, but nothing, not the course work, not the
street time, not the scenes, prepared him for Basha. Death had turned on him
and raked its claw across the web of his existence, leaving it in tatters. He
could not reconnect. He had fallen into a black hole and feared he would never
find his way out. Maybe he was dead too? Maybe this was his hell? Death
haunting him with the memory of his wife in the faces of corpses. The murders
he could not clear. Tanita Donner. The slash across her little neck. The flies.
The maggots. Her eyes. Her tiny, lifeless eyes. Open. Staring at him. Pleading.
What had she seen in the last moments of her life?

Enough of this.

Get past it. He was alive. Among the living. And he
was hungry. He went to the refrigerator and pulled out some egg bread, sweet
butter, onion, and fresh kielbasa he bought at the Polack deli in the mission.
He’d pay dearly with heartburn later, he told himself, biting into his sandwich
and sifting through the
Chronicle’s
sports section. The Giants were
doing well, sitting atop the division with a .651. Outperforming the A’s. He’d
tease the old man.

He’d never understand Johnny Sydowski’s Polish
stubbornness. Eighty-seven-years old, living alone by the sea in Pacifica. Why
did he refuse to move in with him here? It would be easier to get to the ball
games at the Polish Hall. They could share a beer and enjoy each other’s
company. The old man liked it where he was, so what the hell? Sydowski folded
the paper, finished his sandwich, and his cocoa, put the empty plate and mug in
the sink before leaving to check on his birds.

His love for breeding and showing canaries blossomed
after a friend gave Basha a singing finch as a gift twenty years ago. He liked
its song. It made him tranquil. He bought more birds. His collection thrived.
He joined bird fanciers’ societies, entered competitions, and built an aviary
under the oak tree in his backyard.Basha made curtains for the windows and it
looked like a tiny cottage from a fairytale. Inside, the paneled walls were
adorned with ribbons, trophies, and mementos. Would he make the Seattle show
next month? He pleasantly accepted the drive up the coast. It depended. If they
found Tanita Marie Donner’s killer. Or Danny Becker’s body.

The velvety cooing of sixty canaries soothed as he
inspected their seed and water supply. Tenderly, he picked up a nest of four
fledglings, fife fancies. Seven days old and looking good. No bigger than a
toddler’s finger. Delicately Sydowski placed one in his hand, caressing it with
his pinky knuckle while its wee beak yawned for food. He felt its warmth, its
microscopic heart quivering and he thought of Tanita Marie Donner and her
murderer.

Did he feel the warmth of her delicate neck, her heart
pulsating?

Sydowski was exhausted, could barely keep his eyes
open. He returned the fledglings, locked up the aviary, returned to the house,
trudged upstairs, and went to bed, hoping to fall into a sound sleep before his
heartburn started.

A cobra
with its hood flared and fangs bared coiled around Virgil Shook’s left forearm,
while a broken heart engulfed in flames burned on his right. Terror and
torment.

The twin forces of Shook’s life were manifested in the
tattoos conjured up by a killer in exchange for sex years ago in a Canadian
prison. The cobra’s head swayed gently, ripe to strike as Shook ladled chicken
soup for the destitute shambling along the food line at the shelter of Our Lady
Queen of Tearful Sorrows Roman Catholic Church on upper Market. Whispers and
blessings mingled with clinking cutlery and the tap of hot food dispensed on
donated plates.

If these broken, rotten burdens only knew who they
were blessing. If they only knew who he really was. It was sweet. Shook inhaled
the aroma of his power with that of roasted meat as one by one they came before
him extending their plates, bowing their heads.

Like them, Shook haunted the city’s streets and came
to the kitchen often. Today he was upping the ante in his game with the priest.
Today was Shook’s first as a volunteer. Oh, how he loved it. Here he received
sanctuary, blessings, and absolution.

He was savoring the irony of it, seeking his confessor
among the crowd when he glimpsed a little treasure. A tiny temptress. Shook
gauged the object of his attention. Four years fresh from the womb, he figured.
She arrived before him, holding her bowl. He swam in her pure blue eyes,
plunged his ladle-deep into the urn. His lips stretched into a predatory grin
awakening the scars on his cheeks and revealing a jagged row of prong-like
teeth.

“What’s your name, sunshine?”

“Daisy.”

“Daisy? My I love to pick daisies.”

The little flower giggled. Accepting her bowl, her
fingers brushed his. A butterfly’s caress that thawed his blood. Best not
flirt, short eyes. So tender. He knew what she craved. So tender. Best fly
away.

Shook bit down on his lip. His migraines were hitting
again.

A brain-rattler had knocked him on his ass last week.
The need to love again was overwhelming. It had been nearly a year since the
last time. Since Tanita. Now, Danny Becker’s kidnapping made it dangerous to go
hunting. How much longer could he take this? He was tiring of his game with the
priest. He needed to hunt, to prove the city belonged to him. Scanning the
shelter, he located Daisy among the far flung tables and indulged in a bold,
ravenous stare, assessing the possibilities until he was nudged by the
volunteer beside him.