Jillian, meanwhile, had stepped back away from the bed and the body of Leanne Kruger. The way they had planned it, she was supposed to be supplying a chanting background now — just something that would sound vaguely Middle Eastern to heighten the atmosphere. Fain glanced over and saw her standing transfixed. Even without the chanting she looked impressive standing there, straight and silent in her long gown of midnight blue. Fain felt a twinge of pride in his costuming.
The air in the bedroom became smoky and hard to breathe as the candles sputtered and popped, emitting their peculiar rancid odor. Once Richard Kruger moved to open the window, but Fain motioned him back. He felt he was on a roll now and did not want anything intruding, not even fresh air.
The sweat ran down his face and soaked the black turtleneck, pasting it to his body. Fain lost track of the passage of time. The multicolored diagrams on the parquet floor grew ever more convoluted. He used both hands now, letting the fine streams of color spill freely to trace their own designs. He had no idea what he was drawing, had no time to think about it.
Gradually he became aware of a humming in his ears. It grew louder and modulated into a chant consisting of strange unworldly sounds. Fain glanced over to see if Jillian had remembered her part but saw her standing silent, her mouth grimly closed. He realized then that the chanting came from his own throat. There were no words as such that he recognized, but the sound had an oddly soothing effect on him, so he made no effort to stop.
Finally, he was finished. An area six feet wide all the way around the bed was completely overdrawn with the arabesque markings of blue and red and black and green and yellow powders. Fain had somehow managed to move nimbly about the bed without smudging one of the delicate lines. The muscles of his back and upper arms cried out with the tension of the hours, yet a powerful exhilaration coursed through his body like a hit of pure cocaine.
The others stood or sat in various attitudes of exhaustion. Rosalia and the young medical attendant slumped in chairs against one wall. Richard Kruger, his suit coat discarded and tie pulled loose, sprawled on a couch at the far side of the room. Elliot Kruger had pulled a chair to a position just outside the border of Fain’s mystical diagrams. He sat there, leaning forward, the candlelight accentuating deep shadows on his face. Jillian had maintained her rigid stance, her dark eyes watchful.
It was time, Mac sensed, to close the show. He had used the last of the powders he had brought along; several of the candles were sputtering. His throat was dry, and his muscles ached.
He stepped carefully around to the side of the bed, away from his audience. He spread his arms, forming a huge black cross. In the strongest voice he could muster, he repeated the one powerful incantation Le Docteur had given him that he remembered clearly and verbatim.
“Ralé. Méné. Vini.” Call. Bring. Come.
The guttering flames of the candles seemed to flare, giving the room a sudden unnatural brightness.
“Ralé. Méné. Vini.”
A loud bang from the window. Rosalia awoke and screamed, cutting it off instantly with a hand over her mouth. The medical attendant started so violently his chair clattered to the floor. Elliot Kruger gasped and stood up. Richard rose from the couch and took one step toward the bed before he froze. Jillian’s hand went out in reflex toward the window, where the sash swung free of the casement, letting in a cold, wet wind. Only Fain held his position — arms outstretched, head high, eyes cast down now on the inert body of the woman on the bed.
“Ralé. Méné. Vini.”
For an agonized ten seconds there was not a sound, not a breath, not a blink, in the candle-lit bedroom.
Then the dead woman opened her eyes.
Chapter 8
Hallucination.
It had to be. A trick of the lighting, combined with his exhaustion and the lack of oxygen in the room. It had to be. Thus spoke McAllister Fain’s weary brain. What he had just seen happen could not have happened. A dead woman does not open her eyes and look around.
But this one did. Leanne Kruger’s eyes, a clear, pale green, had snapped open and looked directly into his for one terrible moment. Then her head shifted on the pillow, and she found her husband.
“Elliot,” she said, “it’s cold in here.”
The voice was whispery and dry from disuse, but the words were clear. The woman on the bed tried to raise herself to a sitting position but fell back.
“I feel so weak,” she said. Then, looking around, she asked, “Who are these people?”
Elliot Kruger moved swiftly to his wife’s side, while the others remained frozen where they stood. Rosalia began to whimper. Richard Kruger made inarticulate sounds in his throat. Jillian Pappas seemed to emerge from a trance and turn her gaze for the first time fully on Mac Fain.
To Mac’s eyes the scene shifted and blurred then as though the room had been submerged in murky water.
His stomach lurched, and there was a buzzing in his head. Darkness leaked in at the edges of his vision.
• • •
The next thing he saw was the face of Jillian Pappas looking down at him. Behind her was the young medical attendant. Mac looked around and saw he was lying on a couch in a bedroom much smaller than the one where Leanne Kruger had lain. From the damp darkness at the uncurtained window Fain could tell that it was still night and still raining.
Jillian looked at him with a mixture of concern and awe in her dark eyes. She spoke in a hushed sickroom tone.
“Are you okay, Mac?”
“I guess so.” He looked past her at the white-coated attendant. “Am I?”
The young man wore the same odd expression as Jillian. He bobbed his head up and down and said, “I think you just fainted.”
Through an open door Fain could see people moving about in the hallway.
“What’s going on?” he said.
Before anyone could answer, an angry-looking man with a cropped gray beard and tiny glasses came into the room.
“I’m Dr. Auerbach,” he said, glaring down at Fain. “I want to know what went on here tonight.”
Mac pulled himself to a sitting position. “I was just asking the same thing.”
“Your name is McAllister Fain?”
A nod.
“I’ve just come from the Krugers’ bedroom,” said Auerbach, “and I don’t believe what I saw there.”
It all came back to Fain then. Those pale green eyes, bright and searching and unmistakably alive. The woman moving, speaking. Jesus, he thought, if that’s what the good Dr. Auerbach saw, no wonder he didn’t believe it.
He stood up and massaged his arms. His brain raced ahead, seeking the best path to take, the best way to deflect trouble and capitalize on this remarkable event.
“What, specifically, did you want to know?” he asked the doctor.
Dr. Auerbach’s mouth opened and closed several times before any words would come. Finally, he got out, “How could you have known that Mrs. Kruger was not really dead?”
“I didn’t know anything of the sort,” Fain said, beginning to feel more like himself.
“You had to,” snapped Auerbach. “It was suspended animation of some sort. Catatonia. Hypnosis, maybe.”
“Is that your diagnosis?” Fain said.
“No, certainly not. I’d have to do a complete examination to tell exactly what has occurred here medically.”
“Well, then?”
“Mr. Kruger refuses to allow it.”
“I wonder why.”
“Sir?”
Fain studied him. “Wasn’t it you, doctor, who examined Leanne Kruger at the time of her death?” He let the faintest emphasis fall on the last word.
“I was her doctor,” Auerbach said, his face reddening under the beard.
“Ah, well.”
“I assure you that my examination at the time was complete and the records are in perfect order.”
“I have no doubt of that,” Fain said.
After a pause Auerbach said, “I’d like to s
ee your credentials, sir.”
“Sure.” Fain slipped a business card from his wallet and passed it to the doctor.
Auerbach read the card, looked up at Fain, read it again, looked back again. Finally he said in a slow, strangled voice, “‘Master of the Occult’?”
Fain shrugged modestly.
The doctor’s neck swelled as he breathed rapidly in and out. “And how much did you charge Mr. Kruger for this … this …” Words failed him, and he gestured helplessly in the direction from which he had come.
Fain answered him coolly. “Do you want to tell me what your fee was for pronouncing her dead?”
“You’re being insulting.”
“Good, I was trying to be. Now maybe you get the message that the financial arrangements between Mr. Kruger and me are confidential.”
“Well, what I want to know is — ”
Fain stabbed a forefinger, surprising the doctor to silence. “Hold it. I’ve had enough of your cross-examination, doctor. Four months ago you signed Leanne Kruger’s death certificate. Now it looks like your diagnosis was, to put it kindly, premature.”
“Now just a minute — ” Auerbach sputtered.
“I’m not through yet,” Fain said, holding him with the gray-eyed stare. “If you made a damn fool of yourself, that’s tough, but it’s not my problem. What I am saying to you, Dr. Auerbach, is get off my case. Now.”
Auerbach glared until his glasses began to cloud over. His face reddened as he forced the words out. “You’ll be hearing from me, Fain.”
“I’m in the book,” Mac told him.
Auerbach stormed out into the hallway. When he was gone, Jillian came over and stood close to Fain. “Weren’t you a little rough on him?”
“He was beginning to piss me off. I never have liked doctors much.”
“Do you think he’ll make trouble?”
“What kind of trouble can he make?” Fain snaked an arm around her waist and squeezed. “He’ll be too busy checking his malpractice insurance to give me any static.”
Fain let go of Jillian and turned toward the medical attendant, who had watched the exchange, wide-eyed, and stood now as though paralyzed.
“Are you okay?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” the young man said. “May I say that I’ve never, ever, seen anything like that before.”
“I don’t suppose too many people have,” Mac said.
He turned back toward the door as Elliot Kruger entered. It was a younger, more buoyant Elliot Kruger than the old man who had sat hunched forward in the chair at his wife’s bedside, dying himself by inches. He came toward Fain, his eyes shining with renewed vigor.
“Mr. Fain, I don’t know how you did it. I don’t think I want to know. But I have no words to express my gratitude. You have restored my wife to me.”
Mac Fain knew when to keep quiet. This was one of those times. He dropped his eyes modestly.
“I told you what I was willing to pay,” Kruger continued. “I stand by that. You have given me back the most important part of my life. However you want the payment to be made — ”
“No need to discuss that tonight,” Fain said. “There will be time.”
Dr. Auerbach came back into the room. He had his bag in one hand and a raincoat over his arm. “Elliot,” he said, “I have to talk to you.”
“Not now,” Kruger said brusquely.
“As long as I am your doctor, I feel it’s my duty to warn you — ”
“You are not my doctor. Not anymore.”
Auerbach stared at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re dismissed. I no longer want you treating me or my wife. I’ve already called someone else in.”
“Elliot, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Perfectly. Now, please excuse us.”
The two men faced each other until Auerbach dropped his gaze. He turned away and left the room.
“Sorry about the scene,” Kruger said.
Mac waved off the apology.
Kruger’s expression softened. He said, “Leanne would like to see you.”
“Of course.”
Kruger led the way out into the hallway and back to the huge master bedroom. The window was closed again. The candles had been extinguished and the lights turned up. The colored powders on the floor around the bed had been swept into a neat brownish mound.
On the bed under a silk coverlet, her face pale but tinged with pink, her hair soft and vibrant at her shoulders, lay Leanne Kruger. The tubes had been removed from her arms, the pump wheeled away from the bed. She raised a delicate hand and held it out toward Fain.
He crossed the room toward the bed. Rosalia edged past him as he approached. As they passed, she made the sign of the cross on her breast.
At the edge of the bed, Mac reached down and took Leanne Kruger’s hand. He was surprised by the strength of her grip.
“Mr. Fain,” she said, “I understand I owe you a good deal.”
He smiled down at her, saying nothing.
“I have no idea what’s happened to me,” she said. “In my mind, this should be Halloween, but they tell me it’s the end of February. I seem to have misplaced several months.”
Mac found his voice. “You remember nothing from all that time?”
“Nothing. Not even a dream. Usually I’m a good dreamer. And I always remember them. This time, nothing.”
“Maybe it’s better that way.”
Their eyes locked for a long moment. Mac had the uncomfortable feeling that the woman was looking into his soul.
“Maybe so,” she said. With a smile she released his hand. He turned at a sound from the doorway and saw that Rosalia had returned. She was carrying something white and furry that wriggled in her arms.
The smile of the woman on the bed brightened. She held out her arms toward the maid.
“Pepe! Oh, Rosalia, you brought my little Pepe. Come here to your mommy.”
Rosalia carried the squirming poodle to the bed and set it down on the coverlet. As Leanne reached for the dog, it jumped back and bared its little teeth in a growl.
“What’s the matter, baby?” Leanne said. “You know Mommy won’t hurt you.”
Stiff-legged, the little dog backed out of her reach, the fur bristling at its clipped neck. It continued to growl menacingly until Rosalia moved in and scooped it off the bed.
Leanne looked after Rosalia with wide, hurt eyes as the maid carried the poodle from the room.
Elliot Kruger hurried to her side. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “This has been quite a trauma for all of us. Give the dog a chance to get used to having you back and he’ll be all over you just like before.”
“I’ve never seem him act like that to anybody,” Leanne said, looking toward the door.
Kruger forced a laugh. “You can’t blame him too much. Matter of fact, I’ll probably need some time myself to get used to the idea.”
Leanne turned back toward her husband, and her face relaxed into a smile. “We’ll see about that,” she said.
Fain eased out of the bedroom and returned to where Jillian waited for him. “Are you ready to go?” he said, then added, “Our work here is done.” He meant it to be comically overdramatic, but somehow the humor was lost.
“What was wrong with the dog?” Jillian asked. “The maid came past here, chasing it down the hall.”
“Who knows? Wouldn’t you be upset to see somebody you thought was dead sit up and talk to you?”
“I would, and I am.”
Elliot Kruger came back in and cleared his throat for attention. Mac and Jillian turned toward him.
He held out a check to Fain. “I’m sorry this is only made out for half of what I owe you now. To tell the truth, I, well, I wasn’t anticipating such spectacular results.”
“That’s understandable,” said Fain. “I’ll have the balance delivered to you by messenger as soon as my son draws up the draft.”
“No hurry,” Fain said.
&
nbsp; He slipped the check casually into a side pocket without reading it. Jillian watched him curiously.
Kruger looked eager to get back to his wife, but he hesitated. “Is there anything at all I can get you now?”
“Maybe a ride home,” Fain said. “I’m a little tired.”
“Of course. I’ll have Garner outside with the car right away.” He hurried out.
When Kruger had gone, Fain turned to grin at Jillian. “How about that? A multimillionaire falls all over himself to do things for me. Gives a man a whole new perspective.”
“I can see that,” Jillian said.
Rosalia came in carrying Fain’s satchel. “Mr. Kruger said I should give you this,” she said. “I put the candles in — what was left — and the powders I put in a plastic bag. They’re all mixed together now. I couldn’t help it.”
“That’s all right,” Fain said, taking the bag from her. “Thank you.”
Rosalia led them downstairs to the main entrance.
Richard Kruger stood at the door, watching them. He stepped in front of Fain and spoke through tight lips.
“I don’t know how you did what you did in there tonight, but if you’re pulling some kind of con on my father, I swear to God I’ll make you pay for it.”
Fain gave him the intense gray stare until the other man backed off, seeming to shrink under the scrutiny.
“If you think I have done anything illegal or dishonest, you go ahead and prove it. In the meantime, stay out of my way. Tonight you only saw a sample of what I can do.”
• • •
When they were seated in the back of the Rolls, heading east on Sunset, Jillian said, “What did you mean by that?”
“What?”
“That stuff you told Richard about he ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Just shaking him up a little bit. I don’t have to take crap anymore from people like him and that society doctor. And you know what? It feels good. Damn good.”
He took Kruger’s check from his pocket and held it up so he could read in in the light of the passing traffic. He whistled softly.
“The whole ten thousand?” Jillian asked.
“One-zero-zero-zero-zero,” Fain read aloud. “And more to come. Honey, this is only the beginning. No more cheap seats for McAllister Fain. From here on it’s first-class all the way.”
Carrion Page 7
