The Astral (14 page)

The mourners were getting into limousines and cars, a black-suited man directing traffic. The girl had disappeared. Colley was right: it would be suicide to try anything in this crowd, in broad daylight, and no quick way to escape. Anyway, whatever instinct had guided him to this place had faded into nothing. That tingling sensation he sometimes got was gone.

He slammed the glove box door shut. “Let's go,” he said. “There ain't anything here for us.”

But there had been. He was sure of it.

* * * *

Without asking, Jack drove from Forest Lawn to San Marino, to the Huntington Museum, one of their favorite spots in the long ago past. Catherine had always considered the Huntington a gem. Unlike, say, Hearst Castle, which was, if one were frank, a showing-off place, the Huntington had clearly been designed as a home, in which one could actually imagine living, if on an admittedly grand scale.

There was the main art gallery too, with
Pinky
(“Too precious,” she had pronounced it) and
Blue Boy
(better, “But he's an arrogant little brat, isn't he?” Jack opined) and Catherine's favorite,
Mrs. Siddons as The Tragic Muse
, all browns and golds and velvet folds that begged you to reach and touch them. The famous actress in her over-dramatic and wonderfully self-absorbed pose was, as Catherine had once put it, an olden and artful version of the vanity license plate.

Today it was the gardens that drew them. The rain had fled, leaving a pale December sunshine, the air brisk and pleasant, the sky a Chamber of Commerce dream.

There were several gardens to choose from, all meticulously maintained, all worth contemplating: a Shakespeare garden, planted with the various herbs and flowers mentioned in his writings, each with its name plate to say what and where (“I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows,”
A Midsummer Night's Dream
). There was a desert garden, a meandering walk that led through large areas planted in cacti and other desert flora; and a little bamboo “forest” as well, and a long neatly clipped lawn lined with statuary.

They passed these by in silent agreement and took instead the arbor covered walk that led to the Japanese Tea Garden. In spring, clouds of lavender wisteria blossoms would mass overhead, their scent driving bumblebees and hummingbirds into a happy delirium, but for now the naked branches twisted and matted together like sticks dropped in some Giant child's game.

At the end of the walk a mother demonstrated a temple gong, a long thick wooden pole suspended by ropes in front of a bronze disc. While her two children watched fascinated, she pulled the pole back and released it. It struck the disc and a deep bass note echoed balefully.

“Ring it again,” the little girl cried, and “Let me, let me,” shouted the boy.

“Well, just once, and not too hard.” The mother smiled an apology at the handsome couple strolling her way. Not that they would mind, she supposed. When you were in love like that, everything was wonderful, wasn't it?

Just past the temple gong, struck now with a determined ferocity by the little boy, wide steps led down to the postcard-perfect Tea Garden. Even in winter its little rolling hills were a vivid green. A stream, man made to look perfectly natural, meandered through them and in its dark water jewel-colored Koi darted among lotus leaves. A high arch of a bridge in glossy scarlet crossed the stream—for show only, there was a less spectacular span for actual stream-crossing—and on the opposite bank a path led to the farthest hillside where open shoji panels invited the eyes into a reproduction of a classical Japanese home.

It was an enchanting place that seemed to have been dreamt up and created especially for lovers. Hand in hand, they followed the stream's path, laughing at the Koi who swam into the shallows of the bank and mouthed their pleas for food, mindless of the signs that forbade their feeding.

They stopped at the foot of the scarlet bridge, roped off to bar trespassers. Catherine eyed the perilously steep ascent.

“You have to wonder how the geishas got up and down them in their sandals, don't you,” she said. “And they did it so gracefully. I think I should have to crawl.”

“Not exactly how one imagines Madame Butterfly's entrance,” a voice said at her elbow.

She turned, and gasped. “What are you...?”

Roby Chang's penetrating glance swept over her and to Jack's puzzled expression, and back to Catherine again.

“We have to talk,” she said.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

They met by arrangement at a Big Boy restaurant in Burbank. By the time Jack and Catherine got there, Chang had already established claim to a large booth set apart in one corner and was fending off the efforts of the hostess to seat a family of four there instead.

They ordered breakfast. Just coffee for Catherine and Jack, and an astonishing order of food for Chang: pancakes (a full stack), eggs over easy, both bacon and sausage, and hash browns.

“All the basic food groups,” Chang said. “Calories, caffeine, sugar, and grease.”

They made small talk until the food came and the waitress had satisfied herself that these three wanted nothing more.

“Just a little privacy, if we may,” Chang said, with a smile that took any sting out of the remark.

“Now,” Chang said when the waitress had gone, “Who's first?”

Catherine had already decided on her way there that she would tell Chang everything. She began to talk, in a low voice that, Chang noted approvingly, wouldn't easily be heard at a neighboring table. Not that anyone appeared to be listening, but you could never be sure. And it wasn't a story that ought to be overheard.

The everydayness of their surroundings made Catherine's recital all the more fantastic. She told of astral spirits that soared through space and fiends that skulked in shadows, while around them a dissonance of voices rose and fell and dishes clattered. The scent of searing flesh, the aroma of fresh baked bread, wafted by them and a ghost of old grease haunted everything. At a nearby table a couple argued in sibilant whispers and at another a trio of children squealed and laughed in carefree delight. A baby cried. Against this backdrop of commonplace, the pages of Catherine's eerie story turned.

Chang ate as she listened without comment. She found herself thinking of The King. He would nail her to the cross on this one. Astral projections? Angels with messages? And a pair of killers, molesting a little girl in a dream.

Yet that much, at least, was not fantasy. Really, none of it appeared to be, however bizarre it sounded. At least, when Catherine Desmond talked of those two, her anger was real, her sincerity evident. Certainly she believed the story she was telling. This was no made-up fantasy hatched in a morbid mind still grieving for a lost child.

But could
she
believe it? Grief did strange things to one's thinking. And why, she wondered, couldn't I get a nice, normal case with axe murders and incest and nothing bordering on the supernatural?

Catherine had finished. She sat waiting for the agent to respond. Chang hadn't interrupted once. Her expression had remained throughout one of guarded neutrality. Catherine and Jack exchanged glances. He shrugged.

Chang wiped up the last of the syrup and pushed her plate aside.

“And that's all of it?” she asked. “I don't suppose you'd want to give me a demonstration of this, this gift of yours, would you?”

“It doesn't work quite like that. Physically, I would still be here, sitting right where I am.”

“But your—what did you call it—your Ka, would be across town?”

“Yes, it's my Ka, my spirit, whatever you want to call it, that travels.

“But she'd look like she had simply fallen asleep,” Jack said. “And, I have to tell you, I have seen her when she travels. She's appeared in my office, a couple of times, when she wasn't physically there.”

“There is one thing I forgot to mention,” Catherine said. “I don't know if it will make any sense.”

“Nothing else has, what difference can it make?” Chang asked dryly. “Go on, let's hear it.”

“When they were with that little girl, I heard the one I call The Bear, say, ‘trash can.' It was such an odd thing to say, wasn't it?”

“Trash Can?” Chang's head came up, her eyes sharp on Catherine's face.

“Yes. Does that mean something?”

Chang smiled. At last something she could sink her teeth into. “Trash Can Paterson,” she said. “I've been wanting to catch up to that bastard.”

She motioned to the waitress for the check, and shook her head when Jack reached for his wallet, “No, this is on the bureau. At the least, my boss is going to find this fascinating. Let me talk to him.”

And maybe get myself tossed out of his office; and out of a good job while I'm at it, she thought, but did not say aloud.

* * * *

To her surprise, The King did not toss her out and did not laugh. He heard her through without a word and leaned so far back in his chair she thought it would surely overturn, his hands folded behind his head, eyes ceiling-ward, unlit cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The silence was agonizingly long.

“You believe her?” he asked finally.

Chang took a deep breath. This was the plunge. She could laugh and tell him she thought Catherine Desmond was a nutcase and she was only passing the story on to keep him totally filled in. Or, she could put several years of hard-earned respect on the line.

“I do,” she said. “I don't pretend to understand it, but I really think she's telling us the truth. And Trash Can Paterson is no fantasy, certainly. He's slipped out of two seemingly certain convictions, and has been out of sight since then. And this sounds like his sort of doings.”

He continued to stare at the ceiling. She resisted an impulse to look up, though it had begun to seem as if she might as easily find her solution there as anywhere else. So far, it was the rare case with no arrows pointing her the direction to go.

“Gabronski,” The King said after another painful silence.

“Sir?”

“Gabronski.” His chair came down with a thud and he looked straight and hard at her, the way he did when he had made up his mind to something. But what, she wondered? “Never heard of him?”

“I don't think...oh, you mean
Doctor
Gabronski? The so-called L.A.P.D. psychic?”

“He's really not L.A.P.D., but he did help them with the Boulevard Strangler a couple of years back. Led them right to the scene of the crime, didn't he? Caught the bastard with his skivvies at half mast and the army at attention, the way I heard it.”

“Yes, sure, that was the story at the time, though I have to admit I thought the media was hyping it up a bit. But anyway, that's kind of a marshy area, isn't it? Isn't Gabronski, well...?” She faltered.

“Christ, he's a fruit loop. That's no skin off our butts, is it?”

“No-o-o. But, are you suggesting...well, do you think...?” She picked her words carefully. “Would the Bureau actually use somebody like him in a case?”

“Has used. And not somebody like him. Him. A couple of times, as a matter of fact.”

She was genuinely astonished. “I didn't know. Never heard.”

He shrugged that off. “It was all very low key, no publicity. He didn't give us very much, a couple of leads, minor ones that helped a bit. It was kind of a draw for us. Which is why we never gave the story out.”

“And you're suggesting,” she said, tentatively, because she didn't want to come out of this conversation looking like a complete idiot, “maybe I should have him take a look at what we've got here.”

“It couldn't hurt anything, could it? We've got a woman who says she's shipping herself through space, and landing on top of these bad guys. Right out of a Stephen King movie. Not my bag and not yours either. This Gabronski might have some ideas we can use. And it's kind of down his alley, isn't it?”

“Yes. That's certainly true.” Her tone of voice was anything but convinced. She had her own reasons for disliking the suggestion but she kept them to herself. If the King noticed her lack of enthusiasm, he took no heed.

“Anyway, if we keep it quiet and it doesn't pan out, we're no worse off than we are now. Why don't you take this Desmond woman to see the good Doctor? Maybe the two of them together can pinpoint for you where this Paterson is, when he's not in outer space. And try not to let them both vaporize out of your sight, okay?”

“Where...?”

“See Renner, he handled the last case with the Doctor. In the meantime,” he picked up the altered drawing of Trash Can Paterson, “send these pictures to Desmond, and the boyfriend, see how close Phillips came to what she thinks she saw, see if she wants to make any alterations.”

“Are we going to use them?”

“I'll think about that,” he said.

Chang recognized his tone. The session was over, the issue settled. She got up from her chair but before she could reach the door, he stopped her.

“You understand, Agent Chang, if you get a location, we're going to need something more than a psychic vision to convince a judge to sign a warrant.”

“I understand, sir.”

“Good. Just keep that in mind.”

Great, she thought as she walked toward her own office, now I've got not one but two ghost chasers to deal with. Crapola.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“I thought you didn't believe in this stuff?” Jack had to shout to be heard over Bob Segar, singing “Old Time Rock 'n' Roll” at a considerable volume. They were in Chang's red Bronco on the freeway, heading at a thrilling speed toward Mission Hills, the roar of the traffic and the wind through the opened windows competing lustily with the music and rendering conversation difficult.

Chang slowed and aimed the Bronco at an off ramp. “It's one thing if a guy handles a piece of someone's clothing and thinks he can sense where that person is, which is what the doctor did with the Boulevard Strangler. It's a big leap from there to people popping in and out of the woodwork. And I don't know personally if there's really anything to this guy or not. I'm just saying, he may be able to give us some advice.”

Catherine certainly hoped so. She was more convinced than ever that Paterson was stalking her on an astral level, but she knew that Jack was unconvinced. What was the point of arguing? Unless this Doctor Gabronski had something to offer, what on earth could anyone do about Paterson's stalking? If any help was to be forthcoming, it probably would not be of this earth—and that was as puzzling to her as everything else connected with this business.

They drove a mile or so on a curving side street, winding for several minutes up into gently rolling hills. Chang turned into a drive with an ivied gate and a sign reading Happy Acres. A button on the gatepost produced a muffled voice. Chang identified herself and after a pause, the gate swung open and closed quickly behind them.

“A rest home?” Catherine asked.

“Hospital. Very private, very expensive.” The drive snaked past neatly manicured lawns to a massive faux Tudor house. Gravel crunched beneath their feet as they walked to the wide steps that led to a heavily carved wooden door.

A white-suited orderly, looking more like a football lineman than a nurse, opened the door a few inches, his thick body blocking the doorway. Chang flashed her badge. He stepped back without glancing at it and swung the door wider to let them in, and closed it carefully behind them, the lock snapping noisily into place. “This way,” he said.

It might have been a private residence, though certainly a very grand one. The high-ceilinged hallway was a checkerboard of black and white marble. At nearly its midpoint a tall Christmas tree glittered, seemingly trimmed in ice that turned out to be, on closer inspection, scores of crystal ornaments: Bacarrat, Orrefors, Lalique. The landscapes on the walls would not have embarrassed The Huntington, and French tulips languished in ornate vases on mahogany tables, their perfume a vast distance away from the antiseptic smell of the ordinary hospital.

It all had the look of a stage set. Catherine half expected the actors to make their well rehearsed entrances from the doors on either side, set the drama in motion, but the hallway was empty, their footsteps echoing dully on the marble. Where, she wondered, were the patients?

Their guide opened a door and stepped aside. “Wait here,” he said, and left them. Again there was the snap of a lock as the door closed. Elegant or not, the hospital was certainly security conscious.

It was a very pleasant room, at least. A profusion of green plants, hanging spiders and pots of dracaena and philodendron and houseleek softened what otherwise might have been an oppressive grandiosity. A small fire burned on the grate, and a table before it had been set with a silver Georgian tea service and cups Catherine guessed to be Crown Derby. The chairs grouped around the tea table were tufted leather and looked authentically antique and stiffly uncomfortable.

She walked to the leaded glass window in the far wall. It overlooked a sloping lawn and a perfectly maintained garden abloom, even in this winter season, with flowers. Citrus trees, lemon, she thought, or orange, lined a high wall that sheltered Happy Acres from any curious eyes.

Chang joined her at the window and noted the security cameras atop the wall. “How the other half lives,” she said dryly.

They swung around as the door opened again and two men entered. The taller of them, rapier-thin, clean-shaven, came forward to shake hands. “I'm Doctor Ederle. And this is Doctor Gabronski,” he said, introducing his companion.

Doctor Gabronski was a tiny, elfish man with long white sideburns and a beard that gave him a Santa-Claus look, an effect enhanced by the little round belly that strained at a snugly closed vest of red, and the lively, intelligent eyes that sparkled merrily at them through thick glasses.

“So very delighted you could come,” he said, beaming around at them.

The introductions done, Doctor Ederle gave them a look, not quite wary, but weighing. He glanced again at Gabronski, and made to go. “I'll leave you to your chat. You'll call me, Doctor, if you need me?”

“Just so, just so, thank you.” Doctor Gabronski's shiny baldpate bobbed up and down.

“I've had tea prepared,” Doctor Ederle addressed their visitors, “And if you need anything else, or you have any difficulties, the bell is right there by the door.” He nodded briefly once more in Gabronski's direction. “Doctor,” he said, and took leave of them.

Gabronski had shown a marked deference for his colleague, but now he grinned with the glee of a child at a party and rubbed his hands together delightedly. “Well, well,” he said. He gestured toward the waiting chairs and the highly polished tea service. “Shall we have some tea?”

Chang, who felt these days as if she had stumbled down a rabbit-hole, was tempted to ring the bell by the door and ask if she couldn't have a shot of Jack instead. She dismissed that idea as quickly as it had come, however. This was one case where she most definitely did not want any hints of unprofessionalism to pop up down the road. “Nothing for me,” she said.

Catherine took tea, and Jack declined, and they sat in a semi-circle near the fire. It was a cozy setting, the chairs more comfortable than they had looked, and Catherine felt quickly at ease with their host, so that, when he grew serious and prompted her with, “Now then, I understand you have rather an unusual story. Suppose you tell it to me from the beginning,” she found herself repeating her strange tale without hesitation.

Gabronski listened attentively, only nodding his head occasionally to encourage her. When she had finished, he graciously refilled her cup and contemplated the fire for a brief moment.

“And you've come to me,” he said, his eyes going from face to face and settling on Chang's, “to see if I can give you any insight into this, what did you say his name was, Paterson?”

“Well, yes, that too,” Chang said. “But, mostly, we wanted to see what you made of Mrs. Desmond's magic act.”

“Oh, not magic, certainly,” Catherine objected quickly. “Though I'm not quite sure what to call it either. Doctor, you don't think I'm crazy, do you?”

His eyes twinkled with amusement. “Crazy? No, absolutely not. But it is a singular story, isn't it? I don't think I've heard one like it before. Tell me, if you will, what do
you
think has happened? Is happening? You must have given it some thought.”

Catherine nodded and thought for a minute. “First of all, I think that I did die when I was shot, or very nearly died, at least. And I think I was sent back by someone—some
thing—
to try to stop these men. What I don't understand is, why me? I'm no kind of hero and I haven't any weapons to use against them. Even the astral projection, it doesn't accomplish much, does it? I mean, yes, I was able to interfere on one occasion, but there must surely have been others I didn't even witness. And when I am there, I have no physical presence. What I mean is, why was I picked for this? Why not a man, someone physically strong? Or a police person? Why not Agent Chang here?”

“Agent Chang would have had herself committed before this point,” Chang said, and added quickly, “Sorry, Doctor, I don't mean to be flippant.”

“The point is, why did she choose me?” Catherine persisted.

“By ‘she',” Gabronski said. “I take it you mean this individual who appeared to you, first at the hospital, and later, you think, in a flower shop.”

“It was a woman, both times. At least, she appeared as a woman. But I have sort of thought...well, do you think...might she be an angel?” She couldn't help feeling a little silly asking such a question, and she was aware that Chang stiffened slightly when she heard that word, but the Doctor took it in stride.

“An angel?” He spread his hands. “I couldn't say. That's a fairly modern concept, in any case, that of the sweet-voiced angel, the smiling cherub. The Old Testament angels were warriors, mostly, quite fierce and not at all sweet. When Abraham's angel revealed itself, Abraham swooned in terror. And the cherubim were set outside Eden like a swarm of wasps to guard against Adam and Eve's returning. As for Lucifer, well, we need only recall that he was an angel himself before he fell from grace. Nothing cute about any of them. I shouldn't think your visitor was anything like those. But, spirit, yes, someone from beyond this existence, I think that's evident. Someone, it would have to be, very concerned, someone who loved you very much on this plane, and carried that love, that concern, through to the other side.”

Catherine took a sip of tea that had grown cold and thought about what he had said. “A woman who...,” she started to say, but he interrupted her.

“Not necessarily, that's the point I was getting to. You are here before me at this moment, a woman, a young woman. If I may be permitted, a beautiful woman. But your soul is neither woman nor man, young nor old, beautiful nor ugly. Those are perceptions of our senses. We live in a physical world and it is our senses that make that world what we call ‘real' to us, but this visitor is not a sensory reality, she is only an illusion projected to you by, as I say, someone who carried great love for you into the beyond, or someone with a powerful need to see these crimes redressed.” He thought a moment. “Is your mother alive?”

“Very much so,” she said with a smile.

“Father, then?”

“No, he passed away about ten years ago.” She had a sudden, bitingly vivid memory of her father, sitting with her in a little boat on a summer afternoon, fishing without any great purpose, and telling her stories of his wartime adventures—mostly fictitious, as it turned out, but entertaining nonetheless. Yes, there had been a great love there, back and forth. She could see that he might well come from beyond to guide and protect.

She frowned. “But, if my father wished to come to me, to give me messages, help, why not simply project the image of himself?”

The Professor shrugged. “Perhaps to make it easier for you to accept initially what he had to say. If your dead father had appeared to you, you would have been sure immediately you were hallucinating, you would have rejected out of hand whatever he had to say, attributed it to your injury, or the drugs you were being administered. That he was real, that his message was real, was probably the last thing you would have credited.

“But a woman...we tend to trust women more, I think, than we do men, logically or not. And a doctor...well, we put confidence in what a doctor tells us, don't we? If I were making a visit from the other side, and wanted you to take me seriously, I think I might very well have chosen the same appearance. Mind you, I can't know. I can only offer what seems to me an explanation.”

“All very interesting,” Chang said, “But I can't see that this helps us any, other than your endorsement of Mrs. Desmond's experience. The question is, what do we do now? How do we make use of this...well, what would you call it, this gift she's been given. I'm not saying I buy it altogether, but if you're both right, then it had to have been given to her for a purpose, to use. But how?”

Gabronski studied Catherine carefully. “I think I should like to see you do a projection.”

Catherine's throat went dry. “If you feel it will help,” she said. “But, I can't always do it at will. It sort of comes and goes.”

“I was thinking....” He hesitated. “I wonder if under hypnosis...if you would not object?”

“I'm not sure that's wise,” Jack said quickly. He did not voice what was really troubling him: if Catherine's phantom stalker were really only a figment of her imagination, what might it wreak upon her in a hypnotic trance, the conscious mind and its protective capabilities lulled to sleep?

“You're concerned for her well-being, of course, as I am also. The advantage of hypnosis is, if there is any kind of threat to Mrs. Desmond, I can simply and immediately bring her back. Safer, I think, than what you have been doing. And there are some suggestions I can plant, for making this easier to do in the future, for instance. And most especially, for protecting herself.”

“In that case, yes,” Catherine said with determination, swallowing her anxiety.

“Catherine,” Jack started to say, his personal fears not at all lessened, but she shook her head firmly.

“Let's do it,” she said.

Jack bit his tongue. More and more he felt as if he were on the sidelines in a game he little understood, with rules unknown to him.

His heart ached for Catherine; he wanted to take her away from this whole business, so far away that it could never reach her again, help her to mend, to forget the past. Only—and this thought came unbidden to mock his fears—he knew perfectly well that she would not go. And that, he thought, was where the real problem lay. There was something not altogether innocent in Catherine's alleged connection to Paterson; a passion beyond what was altogether rational, something that instinct told him was dangerous.

Gabronski took a few minutes to set the stage. He closed heavy draperies over the windows and dimmed the already dim lights further, and brought a footstool for Catherine's feet. “No need to lie down, the chair will be fine. So long as you're comfortable?” He lifted an eyebrow.