At Evers’ office, Miss Kowalski, dressed in a blue skirt suit and heels, was waiting outside the locked door, which the police had secured with tape the night before. While Sanchez showed her his police ID and made a few commiserating noises, I ran an SPP on her. Although she read as dazed, absolutely stunned at what had happened, and sorry for her former boss, most of her worry seemed to be directed toward finding a new job and an income. I couldn’t blame her. Sanchez ripped the tape free of the door.
“You can open up now,” Sanchez told her.
Kowalski nodded and took her keys out of her pocket. Once we were all inside, she sat down behind her desk in the front room.
“Mr. Evers’ accountant will be in at two o’clock,” she told Sanchez, “to look at financial matters, so if you need to speak with him—”
“I do,” Sanchez said. “Was your boss in debt?”
“I don’t know.” She spoke carefully, choosing words. “He always paid me on time, and as far as I know, the rent here wasn’t in arrears. But I got the impression that he was worried about his cash flow.”
Heroin’s not cheap, I thought to myself, especially the snortable Persian white.
“I’ll come back to see the accountant, then.” Sanchez glanced my way with a little nod to give me the okay to speak.
“When Evers left here,” I asked, “was he meeting someone?”
“Yes,” Kowalski said, “over at the Ferry Building. For a drink, he told me, but I don’t know which bar exactly.”
“Do you know whom he was meeting?”
“I don’t, which is strange. Usually he told me who and whether or not I could interrupt him by phone if I needed to. I do know that the person was a man. Mr. Evers said something like ‘I’m meeting him at four.’” She paused to hit a few keys, then swiveled the monitor around so we could all see it. “Here’s his appointment list for yesterday. I can show you the entire year so far.”
“Can you give me a printout of that?” Sanchez said. “A couple of copies would be good.”
“Certainly, sir. He also received two calls on the landline here after he left for the day. I had the unit set to record. Do you want to hear those?”
“I sure do,” Sanchez said. “If there’s anything else you can tell me—”
“I will, and as soon as I think of it.” She paused, her mouth slack. “He was a good boss. He always treated me like a person, you know? Some bosses don’t.”
The phone calls told us nothing of interest. While Miss Kowalski was printing out Evers’ appointments, the Homicide forensics team arrived. Sanchez handed me one copy of the printout, then made it clear that we could leave. Since the Forensic team was milling around, he followed us out into the quieter corridor.
“One last thing,” I said to him. “Have you interviewed the two women that Evers named as members of his group?”
“I haven’t had time.” Sanchez hesitated briefly. “I suppose you still want to talk with them.”
“Well, if it’s possible. I don’t want to poach on your territory, but it looks like you have your hands full here.”
Ari started to butt in, but I silenced him with a scowl. I’d cultivated Sanchez for just this opportunity. I didn’t want Ari’s lack of manners to spoil it.
“Yeah, ’fraid so.” Sanchez said. “Report back to me, will you?”
“Of course, and thanks! You know, I’m wondering if they should be kept under surveillance—for their own sakes, I mean. Do you think it’s possible that the person Evers met for that drink threatened him somehow? Or frightened him so badly that he thought suicide was his only way out? If so, they might go after his associates next. Just a thought on my part, of course.”
“A good thought, though. I’ll detail a couple of men to keep an eye on those two ladies, yeah. Especially the one he called Sweetie.” Sanchez suddenly grinned at Ari. “Not that I know how you got that information.”
“Of course not,” Ari said and grinned in return.
Sanchez went back into the office. We turned down the corridor. Standing by the elevator was a dark-haired young man in a pair of khakis, a white shirt, and a blue tie, an ordinary enough person to be in so large a complex, even on Saturday. He glanced at us, then away, in a perfectly casual manner. Unfortunately for the deception, though, a thin line of bluish light outlined his head and shoulders. I sketched a ward and threw. He grunted once like a wrestler slamming onto the mat, then disappeared in a fireball flash of azure.
“What?” Ari shook his head and blinked. “That light—”
“Was a Chaos illusion exploding,” I said. “Did you see the guy standing there?”
“No. All I saw was a flash of light.”
“Oh, yeah? There must have been a lot of power behind the critter for you to see anything at all. Tell you what. Let’s take that other elevator back at the far end of the hall. I’m getting a strong SAWM.”
“A semi-automatic . . .” Ari let his voice trail away
“Warning Mechanism, yeah. I’d just as soon not be in the same small enclosed space with whatever’s causing it.”
The location indicator over the elevator’s bronze doors showed a car coming up to our floor. I never saw Ari draw the gun, but he was holding his Beretta, braced in both hands. He swirled around to aim at the elevator doors with the gun pointing to a spot at the height of a man’s chest.
“Get back,” he said. “Step back along the corridor.”
I did. The car came to a stop. The doors slid open. I heard a faint burbling sound quickly stifled. The closest I could come to identifying it was the sound that an aerator makes in a fish tank. The elevator car looked empty, but my alarm was still going off.
“Do you see anything in there?” Ari said. “I don’t.”
“No,” I said. “Let’s not take chances anyway.”
The doors slid shut, and the car began to descend, just as if an invisible hand had pressed the right buttons. Look, O’Grady, I told myself, it’s more likely that a person on a lower floor just put in a call for the car. Oh, yeah? myself answered. Fat chance.
“Should we warn Sanchez?” Ari asked.
“It’s not after him, whatever it is. Besides, would he believe us?”
“No.” Ari holstered the Beretta. “Very good, then. Let’s go.”
As we walked down the long corridor to the other elevator, Ari kept his right hand hovering above the gun’s approximate location. Every now and then, he turned and looked behind us. Maybe because of that, maybe not, we reached the other elevator safely and rode down to the underground garage without incident. I was real glad to drive out into the sunlight.
Since I was carrying my notebook in my shoulder bag, we had the phone numbers of the other two coven members with us. While I drove out California Street, Ari called the first woman on his cell phone and made arrangements to interview Mrs. Celia LaRosa. As always on the steep hills of San Francisco’s downtown, the traffic moved so erratically, what with Muni buses and double-parked delivery trucks, that I had to concentrate to avoid being sideswiped. I missed about half of what Ari was saying, though I did hear him mention Inspector Sanchez before he ended the call.
“LaRosa sounds terrified,” Ari said. “She told me to come straight over, because she and her husband are about to leave for France.”
“A planned vacation?” I said.
“Not sodding likely. I can’t say I blame her for wanting to leave town after what happened to Evers.”
“Ah. That’s why you warned her to notify the police. Think she will?”
“If she’s smart. She didn’t sound stupid.”
The LaRosas lived on Washington Street, several blocks west of Divisadero, in a restored Victorian house, painted in tasteful greens and grays, and set back behind a luxury in the city: a few yards of lawn. The husband opened the door, a man of about sixty, skinny but not abnormally so, with a thick shock of gray-brown hair and a tidy mustache. He made sure to scrutinize both our IDs before he stepped back and let us c
ome into the wood-paneled foyer.
“My wife’s real upset,” he informed us.
“I don’t blame her, sir,” I said. “Evers’ suicide must have come as a real shock.”
“It was, yeah. First Elaine, now this! I’m glad they sent a woman officer.”
Mrs. LaRosa received us in the living room directly off the hallway, a long narrow room that, judging from the stillvisible seam about halfway along the pale cream ceiling, had been knocked together from two Victorian parlors. Rose velvet overstuffed furniture sat around an Aubussonstyle flowered rug. At the street end of the room was a bay window and at the other, set back in the pale blue wall, was a niche, tiled in dark green art nouveau tiles, that had originally held a gas heater. On the floor inside it stood a flower arrangement, yellow-and-white blooms around a central spray of red gladiolas.
The fashionably slender Mrs. LaRosa, wearing a pair of beige slacks and a pale blue blouse, perched on the edge of an armchair. Her champagne-colored hair in a perfect short coif and the location of her eyebrows, way too high on her forehead, made her seem older than she probably was. She should have waited a few more years for that first face-lift.
“Come in.” Her voice shook on the words. “Do sit down.”
Ari and I sat on the rose settee. Mr. LaRosa stood protectively behind his wife’s chair. Ari took the notebook out of my bag, a pen out of his shirt pocket, and prepared to act like the assistant.
“I’m sorry to bother you at such a troubled time,” I said.
Mrs. LaRosa forced out a smile and waved a feeble hand.
“I need to know when you first met William Evers,” I went on. “And why you joined his occult study group.”
“Damn nonsense,” Mr. L muttered. Mrs. L ignored him.
“Evers handled my divorce,” Mrs. LaRosa said. “This is my second marriage. As for the group, Elaine Politt was a good friend of mine. We belonged to the same bridge club. I joined because of her, not Evers.”
“I see. Can you tell me anything about this Brother Belial?”
Mr. L snorted and coughed like a man hoping for an okay to interrupt.
“Very little,” Mrs. L frowned and paused. “He was very tall and very thin, but he was always robed when we all came into the room, so I never caught a glimpse of his actual face. He always wore a stocking over his face, you see, like the bank robbers do, and then of course he had the hood of his robe pulled forward.”
“Bank robber’s about it,” Mr. L put in. “I’m sorry, my dear, but you know what I thought of those people.”
She winced and twined her fingers together. I figured that I knew, too, and that he’d been right. Aloud, I said, “Evers mentioned that there was something odd about Brother Belial’s voice.”
“Yes, it was very deep and very slow. You know, there were times when I wondered if he were a human being, he talked so oddly.”
In the depths of my mind a little voice whispered, “Bingo!”
“I suppose that sounds silly,” Mrs. L continued. “But you know, about his face, at times I wondered if he had one.”
“Can you expand on that?” I said.
“Well, it was probably just the stocking he wore.” She squirmed in her chair like a schoolgirl who’s forgotten a crucial answer on a test.
“Your impressions could be valuable,” I said. “No one will make fun of you.”
“Thanks.” She gave me a weak smile. “But you know, it never looked like he had features, facial features, I mean. His head seemed to be this smooth—” She gestured with her hands, a motion that defined a cylinder. “This smooth, well, thing under all the cloth.”
“A mask, maybe?” I said.
“Or some sort of helmet.” She looked away, then shuddered. “It made a very unpleasant impression.”
Ari leaned forward and asked, “Did you know about the heroin traffic?”
“I did not!” Her nostrils flared, and her blue eyes opened wide. “I never would have stayed if I’d known that awful man was selling drugs.”
“Which awful man?” Ari said.
“Well, both of them, really, Doyle and Johnson, but—” She paused again, and her hands began to shake even though she’d twined them together. “You’re the officer who killed one of them, aren’t you?”
“I’m afraid so,” Ari said. “In the line of duty and all that.”
“You deserve a medal,” Mr. L put in. “In my opinion, anyway.”
Mrs. LaRosa’s facade cracked. Tears ran down her cheeks, tears gray with eyeliner that plowed little furrows into her foundation. LaRosa leaned over, put his hands on her shoulders, and rubbed them while he murmured a helpless “there, there, I’m sorry” over and over.
“I’m not upset over Johnson.” Mrs. LaRosa choked out the words. “I keep thinking of Elaine, dying like that, and she loved him so much, Doyle, I mean, she really did, and he killed her.”
She turned half away, then reached inside her shirt to pull a tissue out of her bra with delicate fingers. I waited until she’d gotten herself back under control.
“If there’s anything else you can remember about Belial,” I said, “when you’re feeling less stressed, please call Lieutenant Sanchez. He’ll see that I get the message.”
“I’ll do that, yes.” Mrs. L forced out a smile. “I do want to know the truth about this. I feel so foolish, now, that I trusted them.”
Agreeing with her would have been too rude, even though I wanted to. I stood up, and Ari followed. “We’ll leave you alone now,” I said. “Thank you for the information. And remember, if you think of anything to add, no matter how trivial it seems, please call homicide detective Sanchez down at the Police Department.”
“We will,” Mr. LaRosa said. “You can count on that. And they can always reach us by phone, even in Provence. I’ll leave the numbers before we go.”
We showed ourselves out. While we walked uphill to the spot where we’d parked, Ari stayed silent. Once we’d gotten into the car, he turned toward me.
“Do you think Belial was a human being?” he said.
“You’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you? At the moment, no, I don’t. The question is: if not, then what?”
“I don’t suppose there are actual demons involved in this case.” He paused to buckle up his seat belt. “Um, is there such a thing? As demons, I mean.”
“Well, it depends on how you define demon. What looks like a demon to some people might be a perfectly natural being in its own world. For all we know, Chaos masters live on some other world.”
“You’re having a joke on me, aren’t you?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Father was right.” Ari rolled his eyes. “I should have been an insurance adjuster.”
“You couldn’t carry a gun everywhere if you were an insurance adjuster.”
“I’ll admit it; that was one of the things that influenced my decision. But these Chaos masters. I’m assuming they’ll bleed if I have to shoot one.”
“As far as I know, yeah. But then, I don’t know much.”
“How reassuring.”
I smiled and started the car.
I’ve always hated the term “Chaos masters.” It sounds like something from a golf tournament. For all we know, these “masters” don’t exist as sapient beings. We may simply be personifying little vortices or knots of energy that strive to break up stagnant situations and other overloads of Order gone wild. The energy, however, is definitely real. It can form waterspouts and whirlpools of disruption that suck in the vulnerable and force them to do things that, left to themselves, they’d never even consider.
Like jumping into the bay fully clothed.
Still, in this particular case, we faced someone, human or not, who could pull a stocking over his face and put on a ritual robe. Whether he was a master or a minion—in fact, whether he was a “he” in any sense we’d recognize as a gender—were big questions.
We continued searching for answers that afternoon by interviewing t
he coven member called “Sweetie,” or, in more ordinary terms, Caroline Burnside. She lived in the Cole Valley neighborhood on the uphill edge of the old Haight-Ashbury. As usual, parking there proved to be an aggravation and a half. Eventually, we found a spot of sorts. I could just squeeze the rental car between a monstrous black SUV and a pickup truck.
“By the way, I’ll be getting the new car on Tuesday,” Ari said. “I’m not sure if it’ll be easier to handle or not.”
“Am I going to be allowed to drive it?”
“Oh, yes. I made sure to ask.”
We walked a couple of blocks to Burnside’s address, a big white corner building housing a pair of flats above a laundromat. As we headed for the street door, I noticed an obvious unmarked squad car, black and bulky, parked nearby. A man in a sports jacket and open-throated white shirt sat behind the wheel and read a newspaper. Ari glanced his way.
“Sanchez’s man, I assume,” he said.
Since Ari stood between me and the car, I could throw an unobtrustive Chaos ward. It bounced off the car door with no effect. “Yeah,” I said. “Must be.”
When we rang the doorbell, Caroline Burnside buzzed us in. A narrow flight of stairs, covered in ratty brown carpet, led up to the landing where she stood waiting. I’m not sure what I expected Sweetie to be, but it wasn’t the amazon who greeted us. Dressed in a black tunic, caught with a silver concho belt at the waist over a long black skirt, she stood at least six feet tall, and was heavyset without being fat, with broad shoulders and long legs. She had a shoulderlength mop of curly blonde hair which she wore pulled back from a square, strong-jawed face. Her voice, however, was high and girlish, though I put her age at about forty.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Karo. That’s what everyone calls me, Karo like in the syrup.”
Hence the nickname of Sweetie, I assumed. Ari and I brought out our IDs, which she inspected with some care.
Water to Burn Page 8
