If Angels Fall (9 page)

Uncle Miles loathed it. “It costs too damn much money and serves no
purpose, Ellen.” He complained during their final trip together.

Throughout the drive the older boys taunted Kate.

“You never smile. Why don’t you stay in San Francisco. You piss us
off.” Quentin, the oldest, was fifteen and love killing pigs.

“Yeah. Why don’t you go and live in the stupid graveyard, you like
it there so much? Huh?” Lewis, Quentin’s sidekick, was thirteen.

Aunt Ellen told the boys to stop. At the cemetery, after Kate visited
her parents’ headstone and gathered leaves, they started back to the car. The
boys fell behind Kate and started up again.

“we’re going to leave you here.” Quentin grinned. His eye spotted
the dark earth of a freshly dug grave nearby. He nodded to his brothers. In an
instant they picked her up. Quentin held here ankles, his brother had here
arms. “No Quentin, Please!” Her leaves floated to the ground. The boys carried
her to the open grave.

They dropped her into the grave and looked down on her from its
mouth, laughing and showering her with dirt. “Welcome home Kate.” She lay on
the cool dirt, watching them. Dead silent. Aunt Ellen screamed and screamed as
Uncle Miles lifted her out.

“You are all alone now, child,”

Uncle Miles had laughed it off. A joke, Kate, only a joke. She was
ten. Aunt Ellen studied the horizon. When they got back, Kate took her sewing
shears into the bathroom and sliced them across her wrists. She ached for her
mother and father, wanted to be with them. She closed her eyes and lay in the
tub, remembering the grave.

Quentin, who liked watching her through the bathroom keyhole, found
her. Just in time, Aunt Ellen knew Kate had to be rescued. So for the next four
years, Dr. Brendan Blake had helped Kate climb out of hell. And at fourteen,
she decided to become a beacon to those bereaved of light. There was enough
money in her parents’ estate for her to attend Berkeley.

Now at thirty-five, Kate Martin was a tenured
professor at San Francisco Metropolitan University’s Department of Psychiatry,
where she was the focus of a small academic sensation. It was rumored that her
research into the impact on parents bereaved of their children through
unnatural death could lead to a university bereavement studies center.

For nearly a year, fifteen volunteers, all parents of children
who had been killed, met on campus every other Saturday to discuss their
private torment. The corporeal and psychological toll of each child’s death was
also measured in journals the parents keep.

Kate looked fondly at Angela Donner. The study was
born with the murder of her-two-old daughter, Tanita Marie. Police had told
Kate about a non-profit support group that was working with Angela Donner. Kate
offered counseling, to help her cope with Tanita’s murder. Then she became
convinced more in-depth empirical studies were needed on the impact of children
who had died unnaturally.

She submitted a proposal for a research project, but
the university’s bureaucracy moved at a glacial pace. Despite cutbacks, she knew
funding existed. She lobbied the research committee. Eventually the committee
members threw up their hands and found her some money-a fraction of what she’d
requested-but enough for one year. Through the police, victims’ groups,
personal ads, and notices posted around the campus, she found volunteer
subjects for the project.

Now, with less than eight weeks remaining, when the
study was beginning to bear fruit, the plug was going to be pulled. Kate was
concerned. Patterns were emerging. She’d observed three, possibly four, distinct
cycles, and in one case, an extremely unusually phenomenon that exceeded guilt.
She was on the verge of understanding it and needed another year. But she would
not get another cent from the university. Despite accolades from some
colleagues, her request for more funding was denied and her work deemed
redundant.

“Previous studies have clearly shown us the cycles you
claim to have found, Katie.” Dr. Joel Levine, the dean of psychiatry, advised
her to wrap up her research, as he cleaned his glasses with his tie. “You can’t
perpetuate this artificial healing process for your group. It’s not fair to
them. Some in the department believe you’re using your subjects as a
cornerstone for a bereavement center. Write your paper, or a book, then move
on. Go out on a date. You know, you’re far more attractive than you allow
yourself to be.”

Kate’s face reddened with fury, the same way it did at
the faculty Christmas party, when the eminent Dr. Levine, married father of
four children, groped her breasts and suggested they slip away to “fuck like
rabid mink” in the back seat of her Volvo.“Go to hell,” she hissed before
slamming his office door, startling an undergraduate in the hall who dropped
his books.

As today’s session ended, Kate steepled her fingers
under her chin and informed the group that she had written to
The San
Francisco Star
about the project with the hope that a sensitive article
would give them positive exposure, and perhaps inspire the additional funding
they needed to continue. She had violated university policy, but she didn’t
give a damn. It was a matter of survival.

That night, alone in her Russian Hill apartment,
taking in her view of the Golden Gate, Kate agonized over her decision. Had she
done the right thing? Or was she reacting to Levine’s insult? She sipped a
glass of white wine and continued reading files. She worried about each member.
Most were healing, but she feared for those who might not recover. Ending the
study now would mean irreparable damage. Anniversaries and birthdays were
approaching-the most difficult times. It was coming up on one year since
Angela’s daughter was stolen and killed. She was going to have a rough time.
Then there was Edward Keller, her most unusual case.

She opened his file. An anniversary was coming up for
him. She flipped through her notes, handwritten on yellow legal pads, biting her
lips, So many deaths in one incident. He was the most withdrawn group member.
The others were referrals from police or victims’ groups, Keller was a walk in.
He came to her office after a newspaper ad. A sober man with a whispering
voice, he embodied pain.

His three children had drowned together in a boating
accident. He nearly drowned trying to save them. He believed their deaths were
his fault. So did his wife, who left him six months later. His grief went
beyond guilt and remorse. Kate worried about him. Privately, she advised him to
get independent therapy. He was consumed with their deaths, even though they
had died so many years ago. It might as well been yesterday. His was an
abnormal case of sustained grief reaction. He relived the tragedy over and
over, condemning himself, begging for another chance. She came to one page that
reminded her vividly of the night he stunned the group. She had written his
words verbatim: “On certain nights, an energy flows through me, it’s hard to
describe, it’s extremely powerful, but I sometime believe I can bring them
back, that it really is possible.” Flagging the note with an asterisk, she’d
jotted “Delusional” next to it. She flipped back to the beginning of Keller’s
file and checked the anniversary date of his children’s deaths. It was coming
up. How was he going to survive?

Kate yawned, set her work aside, and switched on the
late night TV news. The top story was the kidnapping of Danny Raphael Becker.
Next came footage of a helicopter hovering over the area, police officers
searching the neighborhood, some with dogs, Inspector Somebody saying that the
police have no leads, frightened parents vowing to keep their children indoors.
A picture of Danny Becker was shown for several seconds, and latter a picture
of Tanita, the reporter saying the police cannot rule out the possibility of a
link between today’s case and Tanita’s murder, which remained unsolved. Kate
feared for Angela. There was also some controversy over the Sunday school
teacher who proclaimed his innocence, then committed suicide after he was named
as a suspect in Tanita’s murder. There was file footage of the man’s widow
slapping the reporter who wrote the article for
The San Francisco Star
.
Kate groaned. She had forgotten about the scandal over Tanita’s case. What was
she thinking? Why didn’t she write the
Chronicle or Examiner?
What had
she gotten herself into?

As the news droned, she thought of Danny’s parents,
Angela Donner, and the people of her group. She switched off her TV, stared out
at the San Francisco skyline. More Victims. Always more victims. Suffer the
little children to come unto me, the malevolent deity.

She smelled mothballs and fresh, cold earth.

You are alone now, child.

I can bring them back.

Tom Reed
was ninety minutes away from deadline when he returned to the
star’s
newsroom.

Bruce Duggan, the weekend night editor, leaned back in
his chair, entwining his fingers behind his head. His glasses rested atop his
forehead, which had encroached upon his hairline. His black eyes peered from a
wrinkled face that had settled into a permanent frown after twenty-five years
in news. “Anybody else get the father, Reed?”

“No. It’s our exclusive. Cops sealed the house. The
family is holding a press conference tomorrow.”

Duggan thought, “Put the father up high. The art is
strong. It’s going A-1. Wilson filed a sider on Donner and some background for
you. I’ll ship it to you. Work in the Donner murder. Is there a link?”

“Nothing official yet.”

Duggan replaced his glasses and resumed working at his
computer. “I’ll need it fast to make first edition.”

At his desk Reed entered his personal code and his
terminal came to life, requesting a story. He typed “KIDNAPPED.” A black
blinking cursor appeared, ticking off seconds on a blank screen.

Several floors below in the a paper’s basement, a crew
of pressmen readied the
Star’s
Metroliner presses. Less than an hour
after they started rolling, sixty circulation trucks would rumble from the
loading docks into the night, delivering a pound of information to three
hundred thousand homes in the Greater Bay Area.

Reed’s story would be on the front page, above the
fold.

The third paragraph of the story described police
combing the area, that an expanded full-scale search for Danny and his abductor
was to resume Sunday at sunrise. Reed studied his notes for the strongest
quotes from Nathan Becker, flagging the exclusivity of the interview:

“It happened so fast. I had only taken my eyes from
him for a few seconds,” Nathan Becker, 35, told
The
San Francisco Star
minutes after he stopped his southbound BART train to
chase the man who kidnapped his son...

Reed brought in Sydowski, identifying him as the
primary detective in the Donner case, who was now helping on Danny Becker’s
abduction, and disclosing that Sydowski had refused to link the two cases.

Reed glanced at his watch, typed a few commands, and
captured the background written by Wilson. It began:

Last year two-year-old Tanita Marie Donner’s body
was stuffed into a garbage bag hidden under a tire deep in a secluded wooded
area of Gold Gate Park. Her killer remains free.

“Excuse me?”

Tad Chambers, an eighteen-year-old copy runner, stood
before Reed, tapping a pen on his palm. “I’ve got this woman on hold who really
wants to talk to you. Asked for you specifically.”

“Take her name and number.”

“She won’t leave her name, says it’s about the Donner
murder.”

The Donner murder? Probably a crank. He’d received
dozens of nut calls last year when the story broke. Today’s news of the Becker
kidnapping was exciting the crazies; He should talk to her, just in case.
That’s how he had gotten the Wallace tip.

“Okay, put her through.”

Tad disappeared across the newsroom. Then Reed’s line
rang.

“Reed.”

“You wrote about the girl murdered last year, Tanita
Donner?”

“Look, I’m on a deadline. Please give me your name and
number and I’ll call you right back.”