“A little,” he replied, approaching Veronica after regaining his feet.
“I’m Eleanor Lee,” she said, extending her hand. “Principal of Clearpoint School.”
Veronica shook Lee’s hand, introducing herself and then Alex, who finally looked away from the four boys in order to also shake the principal’s hand.
“As I told Mr. Palmer, I can’t express how sorry I am for what happened to Seth today,” she said. “These boys have earned the harsh punishment they’ll each be receiving. Seth has overcome his own problems from an earlier time and his behavior has been excellent for quite a while now. His grades have picked up, too.” She looked at Seth. “I hope you see this incident for what it was, Seth—a cowardly act of sheer stupidity. Please don’t let what happened to you cloud your thinking. We’ve got a great group of kids at this school. No one’s caused you any trouble for a long time. I hope you remember that.”
Seth nodded, “Okay.”
“Veronica’s going to take you home now,” she told him. “But these four boys have something to say to you.”
Principal Lee turned toward the four eighth graders who hadn’t taken more than a few steps further into the room. Seth noticed their eyes shifting from the floor to occasional nervous-looking peeks at Alex. As the Principal called each boy’s name, they approached Seth and apologized. Glancing at Alex first, as if he was the head of the school, they spoke loud and clear when they said, “I’m sorry.”
After the fourth boy, Ramiro, spoke, Veronica thanked Principal Lee and told her Seth would return tomorrow. Lee shook Veronica’s hand again to say goodbye, then turned toward Alex.
“It was nice to meet you, too, Alex.”
When he shook her hand, he said, “I wanna do somethin’ before I leave, okay?”
“What is it, Alex?” Veronica asked, looking worried. “Everything’s taken care of.”
Staring at the four boys for several moments, Alex redirected his gaze toward Seth as he walked over to him. Removing his watch from his wrist, he said, “I want you to have this.”
Seth couldn’t believe it. Alex was giving him his really cool watch that he liked so much.
“Really?” Seth asked, wide-eyed. “Why, Alex?”
“You wanna know why?” he asked. “You got two flags on it, right? The American flag and what else?”
“Mexico,” Seth answered.
“That’s right, my man. Mexico. So think of it this way. You’re the American flag, I’m the Mexican flag.” Alex looked at the eighth-grade boys before turning his gaze back to Seth. “Maybe now you’re gonna remember. No matter where you are and what time you got, you and me is always together.” Alex pulled Seth’s arm toward him and fastened the watch around his wrist.
“Wow,” Seth replied, exhaling the word. “Thanks, Alex.”
Alex stepped back and nodded his head at Seth. Turning his attention to the four boys, he said, “You speak Spanish?”
Each of the boys nodded their head and said that they did.
“Bueno,” Alex remarked. He walked up to the boys, who fidgeted, looked away, and seemed more nervous than ever. “I didn’t do too good in school,” he said, “and I’ve paid for it. But I learned me some things on the street they don’t teach here, so remember this: ‘Te enceño el camino, porque yo ya lo caminé.’”
Seth watched as the boys nodded their heads. He looked at Veronica and saw her smiling at Alex.
“What does that mean?” Principal Lee asked.
“I’m showing you the way because I’ve already walked it,” Veronica answered.
“Alex has been through a lot in his life, Eleanor. I just think he’s trying to use his experience to talk some sense into these boys.”
Lee smiled. “Thank you, Alex.”
“Come on, Seth,” Veronica said, “it’s time to go.”
“I’ll walk you out, Veronica,” said Lee. “You four boys stay right here.”
Alex put an arm around Seth’s shoulder. “Let’s get outta here,” he said. As they neared the hallway, Alex looked at him with a look of reassurance. “Ain’t nobody gonna hurt you no more, Seth. Not while I’m around.”
“Thanks, Alex,” he said quietly, wishing he could do the same for his friend—yes, his friend, whose life would always be in danger as long as he was in a gang.
CHAPTER FORTY
‘I’m an alcoholic, Veronica,” Kevin admitted, facing her on his couch. “That’s what I tell them at the A.A. meetings I’m attending again, that’s what I’ve told Seth, and that’s what I’m telling you. I’m lucky to be alive and I’m not going to blow it another time. I love you and I want you back in my life.”
Veronica offered a small smile, staring in silence for several moments. “I don’t know yet, Kevin,” she replied. “I need more time. This last week has been a painful one.”
“I thought I was going over the cliff that night,” he said. “What a pathetic legacy that would have been. I’ve changed, Veronica. Just give me a chance to prove it, okay?”
“I want to believe you, Kevin,” she said. “But talking about it is the easy part. You lied to me before and it’s hard on me to think you might do it again.”
“It’s up to me to win your trust back,” he said. “I know that. The same thing goes for Seth. I want to make things right with the both of you. And I will.” Kevin took Veronica’s hand and squeezed it. “Thanks for joining us for dinner tonight. I’m not the only one who missed you around here.”
“So what’s this discovery you wanted to talk to me about?”
“I wanted to get your opinion about some research I’ve been doing,” Kevin explained. “I’ve been wondering if I should talk to Lieutenant Atkinson about it, but part of me keeps thinking I should keep it to myself.”
“What kind of research?”
“I may have found some clues about the heart attacks,” he said. “Something about the killer that hits close to home.”
“Why would you keep something to yourself if it can help find the killer?”
“You’ll understand my reluctance after I explain,” he replied. “I’ve told you about Warren’s love of Edgar Allan Poe, but it seems that the person causing the heart attacks has a passion for Poe just like he had, thinks just like he did. It’s so identical that it’s eerie.”
“Like what, for instance?”
“I have to go back to the day when Warren was killed. I went to his home that morning to pick up my Dodgers ticket. I had fallen behind at work and had a deadline to meet, so I was going to meet them at the game…”
* * *
“Sorry we can’t drive to the park together,” Kevin said, sipping coffee while his brother sliced bagels. “I have to go over those tapes of the gangbangers I interviewed.”
“Nice bunch of guys you’ve been talking to,” Warren replied, rolling his eyes in a manner that suggested he thought otherwise. “They remind me of a line from Poe; ‘There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart’. That’s how they make me feel.”
Kevin shook his head. “Man, you sure grab those lines out of the air, don’t you? Which one is that from?”
“The Fall of the House of Usher,” he answered. “I really mean it, Kevin. Those jerks have no conscience whatsoever. You know why they chill me to the bone? Because their hearts are made of ice.”
“That’s why I wanted to write these articles. People need to be reminded of what’s going on.”
“They’re no better than the rats in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’. “They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart’.”
Kevin smiled, enthralled by his brother’s instant recollection of anything Poe. “Sick hearts, icy hearts, clammy hearts. Man, you’ve really got a thing going with the ‘ol ticker this morning, don’t you?”
“So did Poe, I guess. He brings out the passion in me li
ke no other.”
“So who are the Dodgers playing tonight?”
“The Reds,” he answered. “Your ticket’s in my jacket by the front door.”
Kevin walked out of the kitchen, spotted the jacket on a table, and lifted it by the collar. Reaching into the pocket, he removed not only what he came for, but something else that had gotten trapped inside the folded half of the ticket. Looking closer, he perused the predominately white, nondescript business card containing corny diagrams of stars and moons. “Madame Sibilia, Psychic,” he whispered, reading the name on the back. He recalled that Warren had planned to visit a psychic before he left. Keeping the card in his hand, he reentered the kitchen.
“So what astonishing prognostications did Madame Sibilia come up with?” he asked, showing the card to Warren. The rapid transformation of his brother’s expression from tranquil to troubled caught him by surprise. “Man, look at you,” Kevin remarked, fighting back a grin. “Let me guess. She told you about that U.S.C. rejection.”
Warren didn’t answer for several moments, staring at Kevin. “Where’d you find that?” he asked.
“Your jacket pocket. I thought it was the Dodgers ticket.”
“I guess I haven’t opened that pocket since I returned from New Orleans.” Warren shook his head. “Call it my way of trying to forget what she told me that night.”
“Oh, come on, Warren!” he scolded. “Enough already. How does a bright, educated man like you fall prey to these phonies? You’ve always taken this stuff way too seriously.”
“Didn’t we have this talk in New Orleans?” he asked. “The real question should be why not believe? There’s been too much verification of people who have predicted things, sensed things they couldn’t possibly have known, for you to be so adamant about the way you feel.”
Kevin smiled. “All right, then. Tell me what the amazing Madame Sibilia said. I’ll judge for myself if you’re only half nuts or certifiably insane.”
“There’s nothing funny about this, Kevin. I can only hope that the woman was, as you say, a phony. I can only hope…” His voice trailed off. Warren poured the coffee before continuing. “The main reason I went searching for a reading was to find out about my chances at U.S.C. After rejecting several other psychics that were closer, and for reasons I still don’t understand, I ended up at Madame Sibilia’s. We did a Tarot card reading. She told me different things, most of them depressing and worth forgetting. But what I’ll always remember is her prediction of my death, and how I’d become a kind of ghost, ‘wandering’ she said, with a ‘spiritual restlessness.’”
“Your death?” Kevin said, his eyes opening wide. “A ghost?” He rubbed his hands over his face and looked at his brother, incredulous. “Are you fucking kidding me, Warren? Psychics are supposed to tell you good stuff, aren’t they? Prophecies of romance, or of money, right?”
“She described choosing a light of some kind,” he said. “Different and darker than that bright-light-to-Heaven thing.”
“Oh, and now there’s another light?” he asked. “And you’re going to choose that one? For what reason, may I ask?”
“In her words, ‘to violate someone.’”
“To violate someone? Why would you want to do that?
“Revenge.”
Kevin remained silent, not knowing what to say about something so ridiculous.
“Her prediction made it appear like I’d be killed and have a vendetta of some kind,” Warren explained. “I’d be able to control people’s minds and do evil deeds. Something like that.”
“Did you ask her how this mind control thing works?”
“According to her, a decent person can become villainous in the afterlife by assimilating a memory of something wicked and acting upon it. When she explained that the memory could be from ‘reality or imagination’, some passages of Edgar Allan Poe crossed my mind.
“I’m not surprised,” Kevin said. “Like that story you mentioned earlier?”
“The Fall of the House of Usher? That one doesn’t capture his creative imagination for torment like The Pit and the Pendulum, or for unique acts of violence like The Tell-Tale Heart, but now that you mention it, Usher does conjure up a tasty twist. The story centers on Roderick Usher’s losing struggle against madness.”
“So instead of killing someone, you’ll drive them mad instead?” Kevin asked, amused.
“Keep in mind that Usher’s sanity is just about gone when he dies at the hands of his murdered sister seeking vengeance against him. If I were to stay true to the story, driving someone crazy wouldn’t be enough. They’d die in the end.”
“This is a really weird conversation we’re having, Warren.”
“That line I quoted earlier about a ‘sickening of the heart’ is actually a descriptive phrase about the narrator’s dark feelings for the decaying house and surrounding landscape. But when I was talking about your gangbanger friends before, I was referring to the same sense of foreboding I get when I see them congregating on streets near school. Wouldn’t that be sweet vengeance, indeed,” he said, “for someone to be able to scare the shit out of those macho assholes? To have somebody sicken their hearts for a change?”
Kevin sat there shaking his head. “Did you ever ask Madame Sibilia how the hell a living person knows so much about death? Wouldn’t that have been the sensible thing to do instead of getting your balls all tied up in a knot?”
Warren bit his lip and offered a slight nod of his head.
“Yes, I suppose so,” he said. “But there was something so…convincing about her. She even talked about someone close to me having health problems. She was right, of course. Michelle had gotten cancer and died.”
“Every family has someone with a health problem, Warren. That’s a pretty safe thing to say, if you ask me.”
“Remember when I told you that I was going to visit Michelle’s parents before I came home? Madame Sibilia mentioned them by their names, Kevin. How could she have known that?”
“They all have tricks up their sleeves. And she sounds like she was good at it.”
“That’s a typical answer that I don’t buy at all,” Warren said. “If you had been there you wouldn’t be so cavalier about the whole thing, trust me. I didn’t even let her read me the final card, the one that would supposedly tie everything together. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.”
Kevin finished his coffee and walked over to place the cup in the sink. “I’m guessing you won’t mind if I take the card?” Kevin asked.
“Hell, no,” Warren replied. “I would have ripped it up anyway.” He looked puzzled. “Why do you want her card?”
“I figure if I’m ever in New Orleans again, Madame Sibilia will be someone I’d like to look up.”
“Yeah, right,” Warren replied. “You? Mr. Nonbeliever?”
“I wouldn’t be going for a reading, Warren. I’d give her a piece of my mind, okay? I don’t happen to like psychics telling my brother he’s about to become Casper the Unfriendly Ghost.”
Warren smiled. “Well, so far so good. I was walking around feeling paranoid for a while, but as you can see, I’m still here.”
* * *
“That phrase, ‘sickening of the heart’, comes from one of the stories Warren mentioned,” Kevin told Veronica. “The Fall of the House of Usher. I read through it to see if I could make any connections.” Kevin reached for the book and angled it toward Veronica. “I want to show you something.” Turning the pages to the beginning of the story, Kevin’s finger moved through the opening few paragraphs until he found the line he was looking for.
“Here it is,” he said. “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart.” Kevin raised his head and looked at Veronica. “That’s the line he quoted when he talked about how gang members make him feel, and how he wished they could be made to feel the same way.”
“There could be a relationship between Poe and the murders,” she said. “But this doesn’t prove anything.”
“That’s why I’m hesitant to discuss this with Lieutenant Atkinson. Either I’m overreacting or I’ve hit on something that nobody’s thought about yet. It’s as if the murderer is carrying out Warren’s exact wishes.”
Kevin removed Madame Sibilia’s business card from his pocket and showed it to Veronica. “Unlike my brother, it’s hard for me to give credence to people like this,” Kevin said. “But she predicted his death, didn’t she?”
“Strange that there’s no address on the card,” Veronica said.
“You want to hear something really strange?” he asked. “Atkinson told me to keep this information to myself, but since I’m talking to you about all of this I think you should know the rest.” Kevin turned his attention back to the page they were looking at before. “It’s the specific phrase, ‘there was an iciness’ that I keep coming back to. That’s because every autopsy has shown that the hearts froze at one point. Can you believe it? They froze.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
Kevin recited the line again from the book. “There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart. So let me ask you, could the ‘iciness’ from Poe’s story have anything to do with the heart attacks? Until I hear an answer that makes sense, which I haven’t, I’ll say anything is possible.
Veronica shook her head. “This is getting really weird.”
“There’s one other common thread, but I haven’t found a connection yet,” he said. “Atkinson told me each victim has been found with a jelly-like material over one of their eyes that makes it look blue.”
“Do they know what it is?”
“Last time I talked with him about it he told me the test results show nothing unusual; as if there isn’t anything there at all. At this point I’m sure they’ve put samples of that stuff under every kind of test, but I haven’t heard anything different.”
Kevin turned back to the table of contents, studying the titles of the various works. “I never read much Edgar Allan Poe so I don’t know a lot about his stories,” he said. “I want to see if I find any lines about strange looking blue eyes. I’ll start with ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’, because that was Warren’s favorite. The Fall of the House of Usher didn’t mention anything, but I remember Warren quoting a line from The Pit and the Pendulum so that’s another possibility.”
The Poe Consequence Page 26
