Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  19

  IT WAS TEN thirty by the time Cree emerged from the lab and into the empty corridor. It had taken longer than expected to measure and mark the bones and to hear what Horace had to tell. He had explained at some length the conflicting indicators that made it so hard to determine an age for the wolfman, but mainly he'd talked about Uncle Bert. Bert and Cameron Raymond.

  She pushed the elevator button and listened to the distant sounds of the machinery responding far above. She considered whether that could have been the noise she'd heard earlier but felt too numb to decide. Mostly it was fatigue, but she felt bruised, too, the feeling she'd sometimes get after working out with Joyce in the dojo, of having been hit too hard, too often in an unguarded place: no marks yet, but you know it'll show by tomorrow.

  Outside, she left the lights of the entryway and turned into tree shadows cut with shafts of streetlight. The air smelled moist and good, a sweetness that she realized was probably just the natural scent of the world in the absence of the odor given off by boiling corpses.

  Horace had again advised her to be cautious when walking through campus, and now as she came around a dense stand of trees and shrubs the mottled darkness inside seemed to shift. In a moment she was past it, listening hard without turning her head. But there was no brush of leaf or other sound of movement. Still jumpy when she reached the parking lot, she scanned the expanse of pavement before moving on toward her car. It was reassuringly empty, her Honda SUV an island near the middle. Three empty rows behind sat a little silver BMW, a couple of rows straight ahead a purple minivan in the tree shadows at the edge of the lot, neither of them near enough to permit a sudden attack. She crossed to the Honda, waiting until she was almost in its shadow before opening the door with her remote. Then she was inside. She checked the back, then locked the doors.

  She started the engine and when the lights came on she jumped as they illuminated someone leaning against the purple minivan, watching her. She hadn't seen him in the shadows. For an instant his eyes were so pale in the headlights it was as if he had no corneas, or had reflecting eyes like an animal's.

  Cameron Raymond.

  He raised one hand to doff an imaginary hat to her and then just stood wincing into the headlights. Hands tingling, Cree put the car in gear and rolled in a circle that brought her abreast of him from ten feet away.

  She rolled down the window. "What are you doing here, Ray?"

  "Waiting for you." He smiled with what seemed truest radiance and leaned back against the side of the van. Cree got another shock as she saw that the rear window was full of dogs: three toothy faces, watching her through breath-fogged glass.

  "Why? What do you want?"

  "I want to talk to the woman I met in the plaza. The woman with brass to be so up-front with a scar-faced stranger." His divided face seemed utterly without guile.

  After what Skobold had told her, she certainly did need to talk to him, but she was exhausted and still jittery. She watched him dubiously as she tried to decide why seeing him here awakened such a feeling of unease. Except for the e-mails to Bert and maybe that icy look at the plaza, there was no real reason to be afraid of him. Unless Bert's theory was right.

  "I didn't mean to startle you," Ray called softly. "If it's any help, you scare me, too."

  He followed her to an International House of Pancakes, where they took a booth at the corner, ordered decaffeinated coffee, and watched each other warily across the table.

  "Ray, I'm pretty beat, so I need to cut to the chase here. What did you want to talk to me about?"

  "The wolfman. You said you wouldn't mind some ideas that might help you in your research."

  "Great. But I think we've got some more pressing issues to discuss. Why are you sending Bert those e-mails?"

  If he was surprised she'd figured it out, he didn't show it. "Bert owes. I don't mean to me. He owes it to himself to acknowledge what he is."

  "You're taunting him. Trying to make him angry. Don't do it."

  "No! I'm doing him a favor!" A wry grin warped the big scar. "Returning a favor, actually. Call me a flamingly naive optimist, but I keep thinking it's never too late to face the truth."

  "Ray. Do you have any idea of how far I am from understanding one word you're saying? Horace told me what happened, what Bert did. Is that what you're talking about?"

  "You're tired. This could require a long answer—you up for that?"

  "Probably not. But go ahead anyway."

  He was seventeen when Bert Marchetti ruined his face, twenty-three years ago. At the time he lived with his mother; his father had died in a fishing-boat accident five years earlier. Ray had finished high school a year early, but his girlfriend was still in school and he had decided not to go to college right away. So he still lived at home and still hung with some kids from school, mostly guys who'd graduated ahead of him and were doing what he was: killing time, making up their minds about their lives only very slowly.

  He spent that first summer after graduation drinking, smoking dope, writing poetry, necking with his girlfriend, experimenting with photography, and doing stupid things. Once he and the guys went to the Golden Gate Bridge and climbed down into the superstructure under the roadway, where they got so drunk they were afraid to climb back out and had to spend the night clinging to girders, throwing up into the black water far below. Another time they stole the car of somebody one of the guys didn't like, drove it down the coast highway, and rolled it off a cliff a few miles south of Pacifica. They waited for it to burst into flames the way every car did in the movies, but it just bounced off rocks and landed upside down in the shallow surf, inert. Fun anyway.

  By late summer, they had found a thing that got them off, which was to surprise each other, outdo each other, with the risks they took and the excesses they indulged in. It was better than any drug. The more spontaneous and unexpected, the harder the adrenaline kick and the better the high. The thrill came from going seriously beyond the norms, definitively breaking the rules; the only problem was, once you'd done something a few times the thrill began to fade. You had to keep raising the stakes.

  So one time they were out walking, five of them, feeling reckless. They jumped up onto a parked car and ran over the tops of a whole block's worth, denting the roofs and hoods, a juvenile delinquent classic. Then they scooted a few blocks away and walked around until they heard the sirens. A few minutes later, on the spur of the moment, Nick and Jonah conceived the brilliant idea of robbing a corner grocery store. Half the fun was doing it under the noses of the police, who they figured would be tied up with irate car owners. Ray and the other two were leery, but they posted themselves outside to make sure the getaway was clear, or whatever they thought they were doing. Inside, Nick and Jonah grabbed the old lady at the register. They didn't have any weapons, but they shook her and knocked things off the counters, and a minute later they came tearing out with a handful of cash. The five of them ran. They were four blocks away, arguing about how to divide the spoils, when the first squad car pulled up.

  They scattered. Ray cut between two apartment buildings, came out on the next street, ran to the right. He sprinted to the corner and slammed full-tilt into a police car that screeched to a stop right in front of him. Before he could even get up, this big cop jumped out, grabbed him, threw him against a parked car. Ray panicked and fought back and when he did the cop went crazy, smashing him up against the car so hard his head went through the glass of the side window. The more Ray fought, the harder the cop went on him, smashing his head against the door frame, grinding him, sawing his face on the broken edge of the window. He was afraid the glass would cut his throat, but the harder he tried to straighten, to hold his neck and face away from the slashing edge, the more the cop took it as his resisting. Even after Ray went slack, pleading, the guy kept shaking and sawing him, tearing away pieces of his temple, his cheek, the inside of his mouth, the side of his tongue. Finally some other cops came and made the big one stop. They arrested Ray and
called an ambulance.

  It made the newspapers. Bert Marchetti's administrative review cleared him of wrongdoing, so Ray's mother filed a civil suit. Ray testified, Bert got raked over the coals for a few weeks, but it didn't fly. The jury agreed that Ray's injuries were unfortunate, but there was no way to prove that Bert had used excessive force under the circumstances. The exact events were Bert's word against Ray's. The other cops who'd pulled Bert off Ray had gone mum.

  For his part in the robbery, Ray went to juvie court, got a year of probation. His skull had been fractured, jaw splintered, skin and flesh slashed to bone. He went through several phases of surgery, after one of which he contracted one of those drug-resistant staph strains, which ate away some more of his cheek before it was stopped.

  Cree tasted her coffee, but the cup had been sitting so long it was tepid and unpalatable.

  "Fifty-eight bucks," Ray said.

  "What?"

  "That's how much Nick and Jonah took from the register. Fifty-eight dollars."

  As he'd told the story, she could see him relive it, looking very much the injured, scared, disillusioned teenager. She didn't let her sympathy show.

  "I hated him," he went on. "For years I blamed Bert for everything that was wrong with my life. For the first year, I was just going to kill him—seriously, I planned it all out. But between court and surgery I didn't have a chance, and then after a while I began to see things differently. I'd think about the grip of his hands on me, the weight of his body, that energy, I can't describe it, it's like the . . . rage of the whole world poured through him. And I knew I had to figure that out. How a man could have that feeling in himself. Whether I had it, too."

  "Why do you think he did you a favor?"

  "Because he made me think about all this. I wasn't 'normal' anymore. But I discovered that I hadn't been normal, would never have been normal even if Bert hadn't ruined my face. I readily admit I hate his fucking guts. But I also recognize that he's the one Who showed me who I really am."

  Cree nodded as the pieces started to come together. "So, sending him the e-mails, that's, what . . . returning the favor by showing him what he really is. Showing him the beast within."

  He smiled, pleased with her.

  "Why now? Twenty-three years later? The wolfman's bones?"

  "Suddenly there was the perfect metaphor! Honestly, I'd never quite thought of it that way. With his retirement coming up, he'd have to be in a reflective frame of mind. I figured if ever there was a learning opportunity for Bert, this was it. 'Here's the real you, Bert. Like what you see?''

  She closed her eyes and rubbed her forehead, suddenly very tired. "Ray. I don't think Bert is the metaphor type. You are catching my tone of understatement here, right? The symbolic value of your perspective is not going to make a large difference to his personal development."

  He grinned. "Can't teach an old dog new tricks?"

  "This is not at all funny. He's in a difficult personal transition right now. If he figures out it's you, he'll . . . I don't even know how to say it. He'll make war on you."

  His expression told her it had been a mistake to warn him. Cameron Raymond was clearly not planning to let Bert Marchetti get away with hurting him, ever again.

  "You know about his daughter?" she asked.

  "His lost daughter. Yes, Horace has pleaded that case ever since I've known him. Dear Horace. Forgive and forget. Sweetness and light. Harmony everywhere."

  "Doesn't that make a difference? He was out of control, like you say, he was outraged at the world. You certainly received a very disproportionate share, but he took it out on everybody, trust me. And I believe he knows that about himself now."

  Ray shook his head. "No. His daughter's abduction didn't create what's inside Bert. It just let it loose. Let him express it. Gave him an excuse."

  She reached across the table and grabbed his hand with both of hers. When she first touched his skin, the hand leapt like a startled animal, but she gripped it tightly, hard enough to hurt. She was going to command him to listen. She was going to say that Bert was a harmless old man now, lonely and full of regrets, and that any pain or self-recognition he owed had probably been accomplished as well as it was ever going to be. But what happened was his hand turned in hers so that it faced hers palm to palm and lightly returned her grip. And she hesitated about what to say and then they were just looking down at their hands entwined like it was a phenomenon of some importance in its own right.

  After a moment she took her hands back and wrapped them around her coffee cup.

  "Ray, I'm curious about your perspective on all this, and I'd enjoy talking with you again—I think about a lot of the same things, I suspect we have a lot in common. But right now, I want you to tell me you'll quit provoking Bert. Or educating him about his true nature. Please."

  He looked puzzled. "What more did you think I was going to do? I made my little point. I never had an encore planned."

  Cree nodded, letting herself feel some small relief. They both sipped cold coffee; Ray stared into the darkness through the window, some thought or feeling pulling him into a different place.

  "So, what were you going to tell me about the wolfman? You said you had some research ideas for me?"

  Ray looked startled at the question, a man who had come back suddenly from some place far away. "Right. But I think it's my turn to say 'another time.' It can wait. I've already kept you up way too late. Give me a call if you want—I'm in the book."

  His smile looked strained as he put down some money, stood, started to walk away, caught himself. "No, actually, there is one thing you might want to think about. Something that struck me in a book I was reading. This old Inuit man up in Canada, a famous hunter, was talking about living among wolves. He said, 'It's not the wolf you see that's dangerous. It's the wolf you don't see. The wolf you don't know is there.'''

  He gave her a look as if this was vastly significant and then spun away and was gone.

  20

  SHE WASN'T EVEN going to try for the wolfman's ghost tonight, Cree decided.

  She unlocked the door and stepped into the dark house, surprised at how easy and welcoming it felt, how nice to be back, even at a quarter to one in the morning. It had been a troubling day, and disappointing on the research front, but an idea had occurred to her that suggested one slender possibility, too. It was about something Hernandez had mentioned when she'd visited the house on Tuesday: Yes, the heavily wrapped furniture scattered through the upstairs had come with the place and was period stuff; for these historical houses, he said, coming with a few original furnishings greatly enhanced the value. He and his crew had wrapped up the five larger pieces and a handful of old photos—just a few old portraits and the typical scenes that people put on their walls to provide a touch of historical ambience.

  Of course, there was no guarantee that any of the furniture or curios actually descended from Hans Schweitzer's time, and she certainly didn't expect to find a photo of the wolfman. So what was she looking for? She wasn't sure. A name, a date, a telling photo, a letter? The peripheral dynamics of the case—Ray and Bert's troubled history—were increasingly disturbing, and she felt an urgent need to make progress, to close the investigation out before anything went awry. But she needed one more link, one more piece of information that would open up new avenues of inquiry. Maybe some accidental conveyance from the house to her, from past to present, would make the difference.

  There was only one piece in the first upstairs bedroom, a looming, shapeless mass of plastic and duct tape that she assumed was a wardrobe. She put her flashlight in her teeth and began peeling tape. Hernandez had done a good job: It took ten minutes just to be able to lift aside the front layers. When she'd loosened enough to open the doors, she stood under a rustling canopy of plastic and played her light over every section of the interior, looking for a maker or owner's label, graffiti, anything. But aside from the scent of old wood and a whiff of mothballs, it was empty. She probed for a false bottom or
hidden compartment, but found no indication of one. It took another five minutes to tape the coverings back in place.

  She peeled a bureau in the next bedroom in the same way, and got a little thrill when she opened the top drawer and found several glassed frames separated by bubble wrap. The items behind the glass were clearly quite old. Predictably, the first was a photo of a cable car, with a few faces looking from the open arches of the roof and a uniformed conductor posed uncomfortably at one end. There were no notations on the photo or the back of the frame.

  She carefully studied a grainy photo of what looked to be a prequake downtown commercial building, but found nothing more rewarding than a flavor of the time and place: wide-skirted women on the sidewalks, a horse-drawn streetcar, men in bowler hats. Market Street, 1883, according to a handwritten notation on the back.

  The last was a photo portrait of some dowager dressed in Victorian finery, one hand in her lap and the other resting on a Bible placed strategically on a marble-topped side table. Her bulldog face pouted in a haughty expression, and the hand on the Bible was crusted with rings; the inscription on the back of the frame told Cree she was Elvira Huntington Pierce, 1887. Huntington had been a famous name in that era, Cree recalled, one of the "Big Four" richest and most influential men in the city; she wondered if Elvira was one of that clan.

  There was nothing in the other drawers. Cree wrapped up the bureau again, sneezing in the dust that sifted from the plastic. She wondered if she'd be better off going to the basement after all, then figured she'd follow through and give the pieces in the master bedroom a look.

  The young woman's face riveted her the moment she lifted the photo free of its bubble wrap. The portrait was one of three nestled in a magnificent rolltop desk in the big bedroom—a small photo in an oval mat not much bigger than Cree's hand; the gilt frame looked worn and nicked.