Mickelsson's Ghosts (98 page)

Lawler was saying, “Warren would hardly be interested in ghosts for their
own
sake, and I doubt very much that he'd be interested in
folklore
either. That just doesn't seem to
fit.”
He sank into thought, then raised his right hand, pointing upward. “Suppose, just for the sake of argument—” He was squinting now, compressing his lips. His pudgy hands smoothed the hankie in his lap. Mickelsson smiled, then puffed at his pipe and waited. “Suppose the legend was created as a
cloak
for something—to keep people away from the house. But what? That's the question. What were people not to find
out?”

“I
don't know,” Mickelsson said, keeping his tone deferential. “Who'd be kept away from a house by stories that it was haunted?”

“Perhaps not nowadays,” Lawler admitted, “though I'm told this is rather odd country, full of superstitions, even covens of—witches? At any rate, such a thing might
once
have worked—twenty years ago, say.
Something
must lie behind these ghost stories.”

“Maybe the house really is haunted,” Mickelsson suggested.

Lawler laughed, a sudden chortle that made his feet jump, and seemed not even to consider the possibility that the remark might be in earnest. He sat forward a little, so that the couch cushion sagged beneath him, ready to topple and drop him to the floor. For the first time he met Mickelsson's eyes squarely. Lawler was excited, engaged, like a child playing cops and robbers. “What do you know about the house, Pete?”

Mickelsson shrugged, but thoughtfully. It struck him that, though probably nothing would come of it, it might be a good idea, in fact, to run through the whole thing with Lawler. Who knew? Perhaps the man's famous intelligence might throw light on the whole strange business. “Not much,” he said. “I'll tell you what I can.” He pulled at the pipe, considering where to start, then began, “I know the house was owned, before I bought it, by a woman doctor named Bauer, and I know that for years she had a feud of sorts with a man named Thomas Sprague. He was a relative of the Spragues who lived here before the doctor; in fact he claimed he was their heir. I think it's the Spragues who lived here who are supposed to be the ghosts.” He glanced at Lawler. “The feud between the doctor and Thomas Sprague flared up in earnest when Sprague's daughter died in an operation performed by Dr. Bauer—something about an anesthesia reaction. The feud went on—malpractice suit and so on—until Sprague himself died a little while ago … two weeks, maybe; I've
completely lost track.” He looked down, suddenly troubled about something, but he couldn't identify it. He gave up the search and told Lawler about the fire and how Sprague had not been in it, how the walls had been torn up, according to Owen Thomas, and how Sprague had been found days later (or weeks?) in a snowbank, cuts all over his body, one of them the cause of death. Lawler listened with his eyes closed, his large, squat body tilted forward, motionless except for his breathing. “I also know,” Mickelsson said, “that there's a legend—I don't know if it's true—that the house was once owned, long ago, by Joseph Smith Jr., the founder of Mormonism.”

Lawler's eyes opened wide. “Interesting!” he said. “Warren was a Mormon
apostate.
I assume you knew that?”

“No,” Mickelsson said. His scalp prickled.

Lawler nodded, closing his eyes again. “Interesting. I don't suppose … going over the house as you've done … you
found
anything?”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“I'm not sure myself, of course,” Lawler said. “But it might be a ‘lead,' as they say. If there were something here that the Mormons would not want the world at large to be
aware
of—”

“I see what you mean.” Odd that he hadn't thought of it himself. But of course he'd been thrown off by the fact that the ghosts were real—if they were, if they were not more tricks of a diseased mind. He backed off from the thought, then leaned forward, frowning hard, resting his elbows on his knees, and told Lawler of the night visitors, the people who'd torn his house apart, thrown out the cigarettes and liquor. “They
could
have been Mormons,” he said, “though on the other hand—”

Lawler sat tapping his fingertips together. “Suppose it was something like this,” he said, nodding thoughtfully to himself. “Suppose Warren was on to something. Suppose, for example, he was close to discovering clear proof of the fraudulence of the Mormons' sacred texts.” He chuckled rather grimly.

“They must have found whatever it was, then,” Mickelsson said. “Anyway,
I
haven't found it.”

“Mmm,” Lawler said, nodding, closing his eyes again. “The trouble with that is the fire up at the Thomas Sprague house. If I haven't misunderstood you, that took place
after
the search of your house.”

“I don't follow,” Mickelsson said.

Lawler remained motionless except that his arms went out to the sides in a gesture of something like impatience. “It may have been just a coincidence, that's possible,” he said. “But first your house is searched, and then, it seems, this Thomas Sprague's house is searched: searched so thoroughly—torn apart, as you say—that it had to be burned, presumably in the hope that the evidence of its having been torn apart would be destroyed. Or perhaps burned to hide evidence that the old woman had been murdered, as no doubt Sprague himself was murdered—possibly tortured first—before or afterward.”

Mickelsson shuddered.

Lawler too seemed uneasy, shifting restlessly, furtively scratching himself, as if mere thought might bring the murderers nearer. “What it suggests would seem to be this,” he said, grimacing, closing his eyes again. “They could find nothing here, when they searched your house, and it occurred to them that whatever it was they were looking for—whatever Professor
Warren
had been looking for, in his attempt to discredit the religion he'd turned against—might have been found by the Spragues who lived here before the doctor and given by them to the man who was supposed to be their
heir,
the man whose house burned.” He opened his eyes part way to judge Mickelsson's reaction.

Mickelsson shook his head, thinking of the two humble Mormons who'd come to his house, then of the horde of gentle, horse-faced people he'd seen baptized in the river. “I don't believe it,” he said. “It just doesn't seem—”

Lawler tilted slightly forward. “Then why was Thomas Sprague's house burned? Who cut his throat?”

Mickelsson started, his blood turning to ice. “Wait a minute!” he said. He stood up, needing to pace. “Michael Nugent was found with his throat cut.” He shot a look at Lawler. “Does anyone
know
it was suicide? Was there a note? I don't think I heard of one.” His next words came more quickly, and he paced again, pushing his hands down into his pockets, the pipe in his right fist. “He was a friend of Professor Warren's. If whoever killed Warren got the idea that Warren had talked with Nugent … And listen to this.” His strides became longer, more purposeful. “Nugent's friend Randy was run into on his bike, almost killed.” He felt a tingling sensation, a faint dizziness like rising fear as he told Lawler about the black kids at the house where Randy Wilson lived, or had once lived. If Nugent had in fact been murdered, no wonder they hadn't been eager to tell Mickelsson where he'd find Randy.

Suddenly Mickelsson stopped in his tracks, his stomach knotting, acid filling it as if poured from a bottle. He remembered the old car in his vision of the bicycle accident, the same well-kept old car he'd seen parked in front of Donnie's the night he'd killed the fat man—the same car now parked in front of Mickelsson's house. He stood perfectly still, heart slamming.
That
was why the fat man had been there in his apartment when it seemed he couldn't be; it was another fat man he'd looked down on from Donnie's window and seen getting out of the car that night—another fat man whom Warren, as his wife had heard him say on the phone, was afraid of. Mickelsson's mind shied back and he looked again at Lawler, childlike in his black suit, his eyes closed to slits. There could be no doubt. He himself had told Lawler that Nugent was Warren's friend. He himself, he saw in increasing horror, had guided Lawler to Randy Wilson.

His face, he knew, had gone ashen. Lawler studied him, then sighed and, with evident reluctance—the hands moving slowly, like an underwater movement—drew something from his pocket. It was Mickelsson's watch, his gift to the boy in the hospital. Lawler dropped it gently on the glass-topped table and, in answer to the shocked question on Mickelsson's face, just perceptibly nodded, like Brahman when he grants a request. Mickelsson looked at the shotgun beside the door, but too late. In his right hand, as if he'd had it there all along—no doubt he'd slipped it from under the handkerchief—Edward Lawler held a snub-nosed pistol.

“End of preliminary inquisition,” Lawler said gently, faintly smiling. “Yes, your surmise is correct. I am a Son of Dan.”

“You son of a
bitch!”
Mickelsson whispered. A blush shot up into his face and adrenaline made his brain crackle. His lips felt puffy. He almost rushed the man, indifferent to the toy-like gun, but confusion checked him, a bundle of stupid doubts and questions that stopped him more effectively than a bullet could have done. He doubted that all this was real: he'd had psychotic episodes, he occasionally saw ghosts; so perhaps in fact he was imagining all this, or twisting actuality signals into something surreal; fantastic gloss. He had other questions too, dozens, but one stood out: he could not remember for sure whether or not it was the case that a Son of Dan was what he'd thought at first, a member of the old assassination squad of the Mormons. It was a ridiculous question, he saw when his mind cleared—of course they were—but by then the confusion had stopped his initial impulse. If he were to rush Lawler now, he would have to do it by courage, and that was not so easy. As if on its own, independent of his will, his brain began to calculate odds, seek out the ways of cunning. He remembered the lesson of a hundred cheap movies. Stall, let the murderer in his monstrous pride tell his story, and at the last minute, with a sudden blast of stereo trumpets and frenetic violins, some rescuer would come crashing through the window, pistols blazing, karate-boots flying. He knew it was absurd, no rescuer would come, but his wisdom ran behind his brain: he was already stalling.

His chief emotion, strange to say—and even as he felt it he recognized its strangeness—was not fear for his life or horror at life's bleakness or even disgust that a man could so completely seem one thing and in fact be another, could to that degree despise all other people's values—but sorrow at the waste. Michael Nugent's fine, eager mind had been thrown away like a thing of no worth, a dead mouse from a trap; and then gentle, strikingly beautiful Randy Wilson. (He remembered how the boy would fade back, looking at walls and doors, giving Nugent and Mickelsson privacy; he remembered the shine of tears in the black boy's eyes when Mickelsson had seen him at Binghamton General.) And before that, Professor Warren had been wasted—a man Mickelsson had never known, but surely a creature of some worth in the world, a chemist who'd been bright enough and earnest enough to get Nugent's attention, and newly married to a woman who had evidently loved him. How could one
do
such things? Mickelsson checked himself, drawing his elbows in like a man rebuked. He himself was perhaps no different, really, from the fat black adder on the couch. What did he know of the ex-thief he'd killed, some mother's son, anyway, his head crammed with the same two billion neurons (or whatever it was) as anybody else's. So he told himself, but Nugent's face rose before him and Mickelsson's stomach jerked. He clenched his teeth and fists.

“Keep your hand out of your pocket!” Lawler said sharply.

“I was just getting a Di-Gel,” Mickelsson said. He had trouble with his voice. His lips were dry and thick.

Lawler meditated, eyes narrowed more, then nodded. He watched carefully as Mickelsson reached in and drew out the package. “You smoke too much,” Lawler said, “and
drink
too much. You're as much a killer as I am.” He faintly smiled.

“If that comforts you, good,” Mickelsson whispered. He changed his mind about the Di-Gels and dropped them back into his pocket.

With his left hand Lawler reached for the couch-arm, preparing to help himself stand up. “We won't discuss it,” he said. “As you know, we have work to do.”

A little stupidly, Mickelsson echoed, “Work?”

“We have a search to make,” Lawler said. Now he leaned his left hand onto the glass-topped table, balancing himself as he straightened up. “I'm afraid we have to tear your lovely house apart.”

“You're crazy!” Mickelsson said. His slow-wittedness astounded him. How could he not have known that this was coming? The same instant, as Lawler's hand rose from the table, Mickelsson saw—snapping into focus like some object in one of his son's photographs—the old box with its few remaining keys. Instantly the color of the room changed, as if he were gazing through a curtain of blood. The box, of course! The Mormons hadn't known what they were looking for, if it was Mormons who'd searched his house; Lawler himself had suggested that, and it made sense. They had known only, as perhaps some roving gang of kids knew, too, and as no doubt Professor Warren had known, that the house contained something. He remembered now, dimly, that someone had spoken to him—the U.P.S. man—of a legend concerning buried treasure. Mickelsson almost laughed; in fact he was in the act of raising his hand to point at the box when he understood the rest. The box of keys was worthless, that was obvious enough; the Mormons' secret was perfectly safe, if it had ever been safe. But if Lawler were to learn that that mouldy black box was the object of his quest, his work here would be finished, along with Peter Mickelsson's usefulness. Almost before the thought was clear in his head, Mickelsson had looked away from the box, careful not to lead Lawler's eyes to it.