by Alan Russell
“It appears that Helen was here,” he said. “She must have taken the dog with her.”
“Maybe they’re only out for a walk.”
Unconvinced, he replied, “Maybe.”
Rachel followed him into the loft. She had attended several of Helen’s exhibitions, but had never been inside any of her residences. While she walked around examining Helen’s loft, Cheever turned his attention to a piece of paper. He was still looking at it a minute later when Rachel came up and stood at his side.
“What do you make of this?” he asked.
Helen had used the back of a large, white mailing envelope as scratch paper to draw on. There was a penciled sketch of a sickle, as well as a bulbous-looking knife. Both objects appeared to be bloodied. Faces lined the four corners of the envelope. Behind one of the faces were deep shadows; behind a profile of another was the sun. The face in darkness glowered; the one in light looked angelic. The two other faces weren’t as easy to read; one looked determined, almost obsessed, while the other was watchful. In the middle of the sketch, encased between several boxes, were the numbers 7867.
“Helen’s scribbles,” Rachel said. “I often supply her with a pad during her sessions with me. She talks and scribbles at the same time. Sometimes I compare her messages. What she says on paper doesn’t always match what she’s telling me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Her hand often conveys a different story than her mouth.”
“Do you trust her sketches more than her answers?”
“I find it helpful to examine both.”
“How fast could she have sketched something like this?”
“A minute or two.”
Rachel went back to looking at the drawing. “I think all four faces are Helen’s,” she finally said. “I believe the face in darkness, the angry face, belongs to Cronos. If Cronos is loose, I would approach Helen very, very carefully.”
“You think she’d be out of control?”
Rachel shook her head. “I think she’d be dangerous. Cronos isn’t like any of the other alters. It’s not a case of Eris wanting to come out and cause mischief and trouble. Cronos exists to hurt. He comes out to lord over others, to dominate with force, to punish.”
“What about the other faces?”
“I’m fairly certain that the one who looks grim and resolved is Nemesis. She’s not as unpredictable as Cronos, but can be every bit as deadly. Nemesis is out for justice, or what she perceives to be justice. That often means she emerges to avenge and pursue that cause with vigor. I think there’s some ambivalence in Helen about these forces being unleashed. You can see that in Pandora, the third face. She’s watching everything that’s happening. Notice how her eyes are looking everywhere. She’s worried. Judging by all the tremors and squiggles and lines and distortions in this sketch, it appears that Helen’s world is coming apart and Pandora knows that only too well.”
Cheever looked at the sketch again, took notice of the waves and twists for the first time. He had just assumed they were artistic doodads. Now he could see how they added tension to the sketch. There was this sense of an impending eruption. Cheever was reminded of one of those Van Gogh self-portraits where it looked as if there was so much turbulence going on inside him that his head appeared to be in danger of exploding.
“You didn’t identify the last figure,” he said.
“She’s in profile. I can’t be sure.”
“Guess.”
“It could be a partial portrait of the face Helen is looking to find, her after picture that’s still not complete. You’ll notice she’s in the sun. No more darkness, nothing hidden.”
That sounded and felt right to Cheever. The sun and Helen’s profile were the only parts of the sketch that weren’t somehow distorted.
“What significance do you think there is in her drawing the sickle and the funny-looking knife?”
“I could only hazard the vaguest...”
“Disclaimer accepted.”
“Zeus emasculated Cronos with a sickle. It could symbolize that event.”
“Or symbolize someone set to challenge a tyrant?”
“Possibly.”
“Or even a father?”
“That too.”
Cheever scrolled through his cell phone directory, found Professor Troy’s number, and then pressed call. He waited for four impatient rings, then had to hear out a message before being able to speak loudly.
“Dr. Troy, this is Detective Cheever. Please pick up the phone. I’d like to talk with you about a potential emergency.”
Cheever waited for several seconds, then started to deliver the same message again when the machine cut him off. He called back a second time and spoke even more loudly, but still the professor didn’t get on the line.
“Either he’s a heavy sleeper,” Cheever said, “or he’s out, or...”
Cheever didn’t finish the thought. “You have any idea about the numbers written in the boxes?” he asked.
“Multiple boxes,” she said.
“Pandora’s boxes?”
“Possibly. Or it could just be doodling, the kind of thing we all do. Make boxes and stars and the like.”
“Do the numbers mean anything to you?”
“No.”
“Was Helen in the habit of writing down numbers on her other sketches?”
She shook her head. “Not that I remember.”
Cheever found himself shaking his own head. Still, there was something familiar about the numbers. 7867.
The numbers suddenly kicked in. Cheever grabbed his cell and made another call.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE
“Stop. For the love of God, stop.”
“Is this the place?”
“I don’t know. How could I possibly know?”
“How could you possibly not?”
“It was twenty years ago,” he said.
Cronos reached for his collar, ready to pull the old man through the chaparral again. Jason Troy was already bloodied from being dragged through the chamise and manzanita. The underbrush had opened cuts on his face and arms, had added to the beating he had already suffered.
“No,” Troy begged. “I think it was further down the wash. It was just above two or three scrub oaks, if they’re still around.”
Cronos shoved him forward. Jason Troy stumbled but didn’t fall. It was better not to fall. He had learned that already.
The sky had cleared, but it was still difficult to navigate through the chaparral by moonlight. Roots clawed at feet and branches pulled. It was as close to a jungle as could be found in Southern California. They pushed through a stand of laurel sumac, were pinched by manzanita, and then came out to a small opening. The arroyo appeared as a crack through the chaparral defense, an opening of sand and worn fissures and exposed red rock. Above and to the side of the wash were two scrub oaks.
Jason Troy sobbed in relief. “Eureka,” he said. “From the Greek. ‘I have found it.’ Archimedes...”
The slap in his face stopped his lecture. Tears welled up in his eyes.
“Dig.”
“I have no shovel...”
“Dig.”
Professor Troy didn’t contradict that voice. It came from his daughter’s mouth, but it didn’t belong to his daughter. He made his way up the incline, went about ten yards past the oaks. He hoped they were the right oaks, but was afraid to voice any doubts. He had known better than to select an area anywhere too near the wash line, afraid of what the rains and erosion might expose. He looked around, made his best guess, then dropped to his knees and started his digging into the soil. His tears started falling, moistening the tough earth. He wiped sand and dirt out of his mouth. His shoulders shook, but he didn’t sob aloud. He remembered how it hadn’t been easy before, even with a shovel. Then, as now, they had seemed so far from civilization. But that was illusory. Sounds of the outside world sometimes carried into the elfin forest. An approaching car could be heard.
&nb
sp; “Company,” Cronos said.
For once, he sounded pleased.
CHAPTER
FORTY
It wasn’t until they were in Cheever’s Taurus speeding along the downtown streets that Rachel asked her question: “Where are we going?”
“Kate Sessions Park,” he said. “In Pacific Beach.”
Cheever didn’t volunteer any other information. His attention was on his driving, and whatever he was driving toward. The Taurus hit eighty miles an hour on the on-ramp to Interstate 5, and then the speedometer climbed even more when they gained the freeway itself. Cheever turned on his brights, warning off the vehicles ahead of them. Rachel remembered her drive away from death earlier in the evening and shivered. Cheever must have noticed.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“That’s my question,” she said.
“You’re contagious,” he said, but didn’t make that sound like a bad thing.
“I’m wondering what we’re racing toward. I’m trying not to be afraid.”
“Macaws,” Cheever said.
“Macaws?”
“When the nurse told me she’d seen those ‘big parrots’ outside of your house, I figured she needed glasses. I didn’t expect macaws to be in your neighborhood. And when you’re not looking for something, there is a good chance you won’t see it, even if it’s right under your nose. I should have seen it before.”
He didn’t elaborate on what “it” was, only reached for his radio and turned the frequency to Northern Division’s dispatch. Cheever picked up the microphone, identified his unit number and name, and was acknowledged by the dispatcher and told to go ahead.
“This is a Code Three,” Cheever said. “I’d like all available units to proceed to Kate Sessions Park in Pacific Beach. Repeat, this is a Code Three to Kate Sessions Park.”
The dispatcher’s voice was the only one to answer Cheever’s call. “Do you want me to put out an all-units call, Detective?” she asked. “Another Code Three just came in and has all available units tied up.”
“That’s not necessary,” he said. “I’ll be waiting at the entrance to the park unless the situation dictates otherwise. I’m driving an unmarked gray Taurus, license Two Sam Adam Victor Seven Four Zero.”
After his transmission was acknowledged, Cheever turned the radio down low.
“What’s a Code Three?” Rachel asked.
“It’s a hot call. It gets priority. Cops give it an emergency status.”
“Did the other units hear you?”
“They heard. And it’s on their computer.”
“But right now they’ve responded to another Code Three?”
He nodded, not taking his eyes from the road. She could only guess at their speed. The Taurus’s speedometer only went to a hundred, and they were over that. The car was shaking.
“I still don’t understand what all of this has to do with macaws,” she said.
“Nothing, really. They’re just sort of a symbol. The birds popped in my head when I realized what the numbers seven-eight-six-seven translated to.”
“I’m still short that explanation also.”
“They’re the last four digits in the Carnation Fund’s hotline. But most places they were just printed as S-T-O-P. Helen called the number and said she had information. She insisted upon the meeting that’s about to happen.”
“I’m still lost.”
“Helen, or Cronos, or Nemesis, or whoever, wants to confront Bonnie Gill’s murderer. She’s called Rollo Adams out.”
“The developer?”
Cheever nodded. “His paid operator admitted he’s on his way to Kate Sessions Park. Helen would have known that. She told the operator she could describe the murderer, but pretended she didn’t know who he was. Rollo’s had a busy day. He attacked you earlier tonight.”
Rachel wanted to tell Cheever to slow down. If he was right, they were racing toward the man who had tried to kill her. That was the last direction she wanted to be headed. Rachel stifled the impulse to ask Cheever to drop her off along the way. They weren’t driving along at breakneck speed to get to Adams, she remembered. It was Helen they were trying to reach. But still, she couldn’t help but hope that police cars would be waiting for them at the park.
“When you told me your assailant left his mask on,” Cheever said, “that made me think. Why did he do that? From what you said the mask was saturated with pepper spray. It must have been stinging like hell. There was a reason the mask wasn’t removed. Rollo was afraid someone might see him, recognize him.”
Cheever slowed the Taurus down to seventy-five miles an hour, took the Grand exit with squealing tires.
“The Carnation Fund,” he said with disgust. “The fox in charge of the henhouse. I assumed the group was a bunch of amateur do-gooders. But Adams had his reasons for supplying the fund with its own telephone number and paying for a twenty-four-hour hotline. From the beginning he made sure the police weren’t the first referral and that Crime Stoppers wasn’t brought in. Adams wanted control of all the early information. It was his way of ensuring his safety. He was even privy to our investigation. That’s how he knew to identify himself as Cheever over the intercom at your office. He had heard others call me that.”
“But why did he kill Bonnie Gill?”
Cheever shook his head. “I don’t know. Not yet. On the surface of things it doesn’t make sense. But then neither did all those macaws flying around your backyard. Dig enough, and answers are found.”
Answers, she thought, or bodies? Rachel didn’t voice her fears. There was a red light at Garnet, but Cheever drove through it and headed west. Rachel tried not to look at the blur of storefronts along Garnet. Cheever braked hard just before Lamont, then turned right, the wheels of the Taurus squealing at the assault. The commercial district quickly turned to residential—or geological. They passed by the streets of stone, Felspar and Emerald and Diamond and Chalcedony and Beryl. Rachel noticed her clenched hands stood out like white patches in the darkness.
“Why’d she want to meet him here?” Cheever asked aloud. “It’s not public. It’s going to be dark. It’s as if she wanted to put herself in danger.”
Rachel’s voice was calmer than she would have expected. “That’s not how Cronos would think. He sees himself as stronger than anyone. I believe his personality evolved out of Helen’s identification with an aggressor. Cronos thinks he’s all-powerful. Cronos commands. He has no compassion and has no qualms about inflicting pain upon others. It’s significant that Cronos is the only male in Helen’s repertoire. I suspect that when Helen becomes Cronos she, in many ways, becomes her abuser. But I also know that Cronos is more than that. He’s this powerful but terrible father figure in Greek mythology. She becomes that myth.”
“Myths die hard,” Cheever said.
But not mortals, Rachel thought as they drove through three stop signs. Cheever didn’t even slow for them.
“If Cronos is out,” Rachel said, “then we have more to be worried about than Rollo Adams. Cronos is the most volatile of all Helen’s personalities.”
Cheever nodded. “I’ll be careful,” he said.
“We should wait for backup.”
She kept changing his “I” into “we.” At another time Cheever would have welcomed that, but not now.
“If the police aren’t already at the scene,” he said, “you’re going to have to stay in the car and wait for them.”
“No.”
“They’ll need someone to explain what’s going on. That only makes sense, Rachel. You know it does.”
Her mouth was opened to say no again, but she didn’t say anything.
The Taurus climbed up a hill that signaled the ascent to the park. There were no reassuring police beacons at its entryway. There was only darkness. Cheever pulled the car over just before the park entrance. He turned off the ignition and put his keys into Rachel’s hand. For a moment he paused, squeezing her hand, then he released the hold.
“K
eep the doors locked,” he warned.
“Be careful.”
He stepped out of the car and moved off into the night. She tried to follow him with her eyes, but he quickly disappeared. It was as if he had been swallowed up by the underworld. Try as she might to surrender that image, she could not.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
In the distance Cheever could hear a dog barking. Cerberus? There was only one road in and out of the park. On both sides of the lane were greenbelts with vast stretches of lawn. Cheever decided to investigate the dog’s baying. He walked the lower path, the trail taking him alongside a copse. It was a decidedly roundabout way to get to the park’s eastern parking lot, but Cheever figured it was a route where no one would be able to see him.
The dog’s increased frenzy made Cheever reconsider his indirect approach. Why was the animal so agitated? From a distance, Cheever could see that there were two vehicles in the parking lot, a pickup truck and a sedan. The lighting was too poor for him to make out anything else. Cheever decided to cut across the grass field and work his way up the slope. He stayed low, his back hunched down, his knees close to the ground. He knew it would make more sense to wait for backup, but he didn’t slow down, didn’t give in to the pain and strain put on his posture or the temptation to rest. Helen could be in trouble.
He approached the rise, crawled the last few feet up. The grass was wet enough that it soaked his shirt and pants. A shiver ran the length of his body. When it passed, Cheever raised his head above the crest of grass until he was eye level with the road. He had come out about fifty yards west of the two vehicles. They were parked side by side. Although there didn’t appear to be anyone in them, or near them, the damn dog was still raising a ruckus. Someone or something was pushing the dog’s buttons, but Cheever still couldn’t see anything—
The attack came from his blind side. He heard something at the last instant, turned his head just as the foot caught him under his jaw. His neck whipped back and he fell backward. He tried to immediately get up, but had to fight both his assailant and the incline. Cheever was kicked a second time in the face, a blow that connected with his left eye. He tried reaching for his gun and just managed to clear it from his holster when it was kicked out of his hand. He rolled on the ground, desperately patting the grass around him, but couldn’t find the gun. His back was stomped and his ribs kicked. Though gasping for air, he still fought back, turning over just as a leg was being swung at him again. He pushed up and kicked out, dropping his attacker, and then threw himself on the toppled form. He threw a punch, connected, and was throwing another when he realized who was beneath him.
