Bones of the Barbary Coast (Cree Black Thrillers)

by Daniel Hecht

  She watched for a few more minutes, sneezing in the dust. Then she rigged one of the extension cords and plugged in another lamp. She positioned it in the doorway to the wolfman's chamber so that Ray's growing crater was bathed in light.

  Complicit, she thought. Accessory. Whatever.

  60

  CREE'S CAR WAS not at Ray's and there were no lights visible in the windows. Bert drove up to the entrance door, not caring if Ray saw him. He opened the truck door and stood out of it to look over the place. The muffled sound of barking came from inside. He waited to see if Ray would show, but after three minutes of muted dog hysteria no one opened the door and no light showed. Bert climbed back into the truck and drove away.

  He tried her cell phone again, knowing it was pointless, then decided to swing by the motel on the off chance she was there, maybe taking an early night after carousing with Scarface. But when he pulled into the courtyard parking lot, her car wasn't there. He got out anyway, went up the stairs, knocked at her door. No sound, no light. Curtains across the window, air circulation not running.

  He checked nearby streets in case she'd parked outside the motel lot, but didn't see her car. After that he just drove aimlessly for a time, not sure what to do.

  The streets of San Francisco: foggy tonight, charming as ever yet also urban and hard, so familiar after all these years. He knew the hills and the roads that wound around and up them through the pastel neighborhoods, he knew the alleys. His world for over thirty years now. He felt oddly nostalgic and wondered if that meant it was all ending, or if he could salvage something after all; if with a murder to pin on Ray he could escape. For the moment he was empty of direction, the mood was darkness tinted by the acid light of streetlamps. He lit a cigarette, took some solace in it, then fumbled a music CD into the dash player without looking to see what it was. Louis Armstrong. Not quite right, but there were some great numbers on this one. "Wonderful World" had always broken his heart and it did now. This was his town. At least once upon a time.

  Then it occurred to him that maybe Cree was at his place, that'd be ironic, looking for him while he was out searching for her. Or maybe she'd lost his cell number and had left a message on his machine. Driving with one hand, he dialed his own number and punched in his remote code to listen to the messages.

  There was only one, from his lieutenant: "Bert. Check in with me when you hear this message. If you get this after midnight, plan on coming directly to my office at eight tomorrow morning."

  So there it was. That was the beginning. Jack would inform him of the questions surrounding Nearing and Koslowski and that MCD was interested. He'd ask Bert some pointed questions, advise him to procure counsel, then place him on suspension. Jack would be cautious and scrupulously neutral and do it by the administrative book. Then he'd turn him over to MCD.

  Fortunately there was the knife. Bert would show him the pictures, prove there was some justification. Good justification. They'd make allowances for bad procedure. Ray would be in no position to complain, especially since he apparently hadn't been badly hurt and he'd bunged up a pair of cops. Even the most tight-assed brass took a visceral exception to that, even if the cops in question had overstepped. There were always ways to finesse things, procedural means to sweep details under the rug.

  Louis had gone into a snappy number and Bert's confidence inched up. But then it got smacked flat by another thought: Ray might have gotten rid of the knife by now. Of course he had! He'd know Bert would have seen it when he broke in, would have looked into it. The knife was long gone by now, probably thrown out Ray's van window off the Golden Gate Bridge.

  Bert didn't have any justification or evidence. What he had was a couple of photographs of some knife on some bureau at some location. Without the knife, picked up during a warranted search, there was nothing on Ray at all.

  So that kind of decides it, Bert thought. That decides what's left. What's next.

  The realization actually soothed him. Simplified everything. He felt reconciled and empowered in a way he couldn't name. It was like a high of some kind. The streets above Market flowed by and he observed them with huge affection. He punched the backtrack button on the CD player, all the way to "Wonderful World" and it was glorious. Louis's honey and gravel voice. The gravel made it believable, like the singer had had to go through something hard to get to the sweetness, and it was worth it.

  He got back to his own street, took a turn at the cul-de-sac, scanning the curb and looking up at his stairs in the hazy gloom. No sign of Cree. Where would she be? Why wouldn't she answer her phone? Cell service could be locally spotty due to the hills, but generally it was okay.

  A bad thought came to him. Ray would want to hit back at Bert for the first thing and now Nearing and Koslowski. No way would Ray let that pass. But exactly what would he do? It would be devious, like the e-mails, clever. What would be the worst?

  Cree. Ray would figure that out. He'd do something to Cree.

  Bert's gut clenched and squirmed like some cold snake was uncoiling in there. His arms and hands felt a spray of ice on their skin, adrenaline goosed by near-panic as he admitted he had no way to find her.

  But then an idea appeared in the dark of the cab, and he grabbed at it and suddenly he knew exactly where she was. He knew it for a certainty, even though he had no basis for it. Or it was just gut instinct. Or the guidance of fate, you knew it when it came to you. He turned the truck around and began the ten-minute drive to the house in Pacific Heights.

  61

  A BIG SECTION OF bricks fell away from up near the ceiling. Ray jumped back as it hit the floor and shattered and the chamber filled with a new gout of masonry dust. He stumbled out of the little room, coughing, put his face into his shirt.

  Even through the dust, Cree could see there was a hole. A hollow darkness on the other side.

  They both stared at it. A slight pressure of air wafted out of it, gently moving the dust cloud out into the larger room. Neither of them said anything for a few seconds. Their eyes met. Then Cree turned away and headed to the hall doorway.

  "I guess I'll round up some more extension cords," she called back.

  She ended up making two trips upstairs, bringing back a pair of fifty-foot cords, another lamp, two pairs of rawhide gloves, and two pairs of contractor's kneepads. They put on the protective gear, and then Ray gave the wall a few more shots to widen the gap. At last another section fell, leaving a ragged oval hole three feet wide from ceiling to about waist height.

  Cree brought in the lamps, laying out the cords behind her, and they shone them into the hole. The brick-walled tunnel was about six feet wide. A mound of loose brick and masonry and boards filled it from wall to wall to within a few feet of the ceiling. Above the rubble a deep gash stretched back into pitch black, exhaling a gentle breath of cool, humid air scented with mold and earth.

  "Are we sure we want to know what's in there?" Cree whispered.

  "I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."

  Ray was covered in orange dust that had stuck to his sweat and had smeared in streaks when he'd wiped his face. With his eyes on fire below the streaked orange forehead, he looked like some tribal person, a shaman engaged in some unfathomable rite. His chest pumped from exertion and excitement and Cree could feel his heartbeat from two feet away.

  "I mean, maybe it's not a happy story here, Ray. The wolfman, Lydia—maybe it's not going to turn out to be . . . you know. Whatever you're hoping for. You prepared for that?"

  Ray coughed hard, hacked up orange spit. "Only one way to find out."

  He clambered into the opening, raking bricks and chunks of concrete back and to the sides to provide more clearance. Cree crawled behind him, advancing and positioning the lights, managing the cords, waiting, following as Ray dug and shoved forward. Sharp edges of masonry and boards poked at her arms and legs, clinking and shifting as she crawled.

  After about ten feet, the mound tapered toward the floor and they could sit uprig
ht on the uneven slope. They tugged the cords up and beamed the lights into a wider corridor that was completely free of debris. The hallway ended about thirty feet back at another brick foundation wall, where a solitary wooden chair and tiny side table stood. Doorways led to rooms on either side, nicely framed and trimmed.

  The ceiling was ribbed with heavy beams capped with stone slabs. In places, plant roots hung down between gaps, tattered curtains of dark mesh. Here and there, waterfalls of gray-green moss coated parts of the side walls, indication that after a hundred years the terrace had sprung a few leaks. But otherwise it was perfect. Hans had done a masterful job.

  Ray's exultant mood had softened. Even in the glare of the lights and the hard cut of shadows, he now looked subdued. He started clattering down the rubble slope, then stopped to look back at her. He reached out to touch her lightly, one gloved finger on her arm.

  "What?"

  "Mainly, thanks."

  " For . . . ? "

  "I don't always handle my . . . situation so well, sometimes I spin off into bad places. But you've done good things for me. It's like all this, the wolfman's skeleton, you, the church report, this place . . . it's all perfect. Is there a word for the opposite of paranoia? Where you think the world is conspiring to do you good? This all, you—it's what I needed. You most of all."

  Cree rocked with that for second, trying to see it as he did. Talking to a dead man. "Thank you, Ray."

  He looked troubled. "But I wanted to explain one thing. This whole problem with Bert—I know it's my fault, the e-mails. I was out of control. I . . . vacillated from decisions I'd made for myself. I wanted to explain that to you."

  "You know I'm glad to hear about it."

  "There's only one established environmental risk factor for brain tumors. You know what it is?"

  Puzzled, she thought back to her graduate school neurology courses. "Radiation exposure, isn't it? So . . . your job? Fifteen years of—"

  "No. I'm very, very careful. And the doses we use nowadays are a fraction of what they used to be. But there was a time when I got dozens of head X-rays, over a period of months. Back when I was seventeen, Cree. That's the most likely etiology on this one. See what I'm saying?"

  She saw it. Whatever violence Bert intended against Ray was unnecessary in more ways than one. There was a strong probability that Bert had already fatally wounded him, twenty-three years ago.

  Ray's forbearance was astonishing and tragic and beautiful. And goddamn everything, she thought hopelessly. Tears sprang to her eyes and two rolled down her cheeks. Not just for Ray, for Bert, too, and everyone.

  Ray was watching her closely, his dust-rouged face now more like some kid's poor attempt at a Halloween tiger. Without thinking about it, she untucked her shirt and used the clean hem to wipe the dust off his face.

  "You should see yourself," she chided him hoarsely. Two more tears hurried down her cheeks and she smeared them away. "Both of us. Shit. There. Better." She finished with him, then pushed him away. She gathered up her light and clanked and rattled down the slope.

  The first of the four doorways led to a small square room that was set up as a bedroom. The walls had been plastered and papered, and even with the paper discolored and hanging loose in places Cree could easily visualize the room as it had been. There were framed paintings on the walls, a bureau with a mirror, a bed frame with nicely carved headboard and four lathed posts around a rectangular heap of decayed cloth that had once been a mattress and bedding. A china basin stood on the bureau, an oil lamp on the bedside table. It smelled old in here, earthy and mildewed, and with the room lit unevenly by their lamps, it all had an archeological feel. Archeology in some time-warped, parallel universe, Cree thought: They'd opened an Egyptian tomb and found a Victorian bedroom.

  "Not a dungeon," Ray whispered. "They put effort into making this room pleasant. Normal. What does that say about who he was?"

  "It might say more about who Hans and Lydia were."

  Ray nodded. They moved across the hall to find an amazingly intact Victorian sitting room. Again, the walls were mildew-darkened but wallpapered. A painting in a carved frame showed a landscape: Through the shotgun spray of mildew, they could still make out rugged coastal bluffs rimmed by trees, waves foaming against outlying rocks. At some point a piece of Hans's ceiling had fallen, leaving a pile of broken stone in the middle of the floor. Cree got a jolt when her light picked out a glistening white curve among the rubble, but when she toed it free she found it wasn't a section of skull after all, just the belly of a broken bone china water pitcher. The divan frame held another mound of decay, but the wooden furniture was fine. On a small table, photo portraits of Hans and Lydia stood propped in little wooden brackets, and a small, leather-bound Bible lay with a ribbon bookmark protruding.

  "I think he was human," Ray said. "I think they helped him be human. I think they tried to give him as good a life as he could have."

  "Could be." She stayed noncommital because she couldn't bear to encourage or discourage him. He wanted the wolfman to have been human and treated like one. The same way Skobold wanted every cruelty to be the result merely of unintended consequences. The way Cree believes you just have to untie the knots, that's all that keeps us from becoming the good and free beings we're intended to be. The way we're all always hoping.

  The cords made it to the farthest doorways with only a few feet to spare. The left room was badly water damaged, and heavy mats of roots hung down like funeral curtains from cracks in the stone ceiling. There were humps of rotting wood mixed with black spongy material, what might once have been upholstered chairs, and a sprawled collection of boards and moisture-swollen black blocks that had been a bookshelf and books. Cree felt Ray's frustration rising. He ripped away the hanging roots, kicked and grappled through the rubble, picking up objects and then tossing them down impatiently. In another minute he hurried out and across the hall to the last of the rooms.

  She followed him reluctantly, unwilling to find Lydia, afraid again of what might be there. What was she thinking? Shackles on the walls? Human bones with canine tooth marks on them? Why was she so on edge and morbid about this? Maybe it was just too dark down here, too damaged, too old and too long secret.

  Ray adjusted his electrical cord and went in, but Cree hesitated in the corridor as she heard a sound from the direction of the Schweitzer house. That clinking sound of bricks sliding against each other. It made her heart race in a way that revealed how much tension she'd been holding back all this time.

  She turned off her light and stood in the darkness, staring back at the distant cleft of light made by the lamps they'd left in the bones' chamber. She didn't see any movement, didn't know what she was expecting to see.

  "Cree," Ray called. "What are you doing? Get in here! Jesus, you've got to see this!"

  But the shifting clink and clatter came again and for some reason it really put her teeth on edge. She turned on her light again and headed back down the hallway. Maybe just bricks moving, disturbed by Ray and her. Or rats—there had to be rats down here. She walked back toward the opening to the Schweitzer house, then stopped abruptly as her trailing cord snagged on something and yanked the lamp out of her hand. It fell and the bulb popped and then she was lost in blackness. The walls rushed in, smothering. Desperately she turned to check the rectangle of light at the far end, Ray's lamp, then spun again as she heard clattering again, much closer.

  The light in the narrow gap above the rubble mound was eclipsed by a big moving shadow. It was the shape of a man clambering on all fours over the uneven debris barrier, moving awkwardly but purposefully. After another second a circle of light blinked from the shadow form, a flashlight beam that briefly lit the side of Bert's determined face before it struck Cree and blinded her.

  62

  BERT SAW HER face in his flashlight beam and felt both relieved and betrayed. He scrambled the last few feet, ignoring the pain in his shins and knees, then half-fell down a slope of shifting rubble into a
more open space. Some kind of underground warren, a catacomb beneath the terrace. Cree must have figured out something with the wolfman and then she and her freak boyfriend had gotten rash and opened up the wall.

  He got to his feet and drew his Beretta and held it alongside the flashlight with his wrists crossed. He put the light full on Cree, then angled it down a bit as she winced and put a hand up to cover her eyes.

  "Where is he?"

  She didn't answer but the involuntary tick of her head made him look past her, to the rectangle of light at the end of the hallway, forty feet away.

  "Cree, he's a killer. Go back into the house, get in your car. Get out of here and let me handle this."

  "You've got it wrong. He's not what you think he is."

  "You don't know crap about what he is! Guy's a freak. A murderer. Get back here and let me handle him. Do as I say I don't want you hurt."

  "Nobody's going to be hurt!"

  Bert saw the light change at the end of the hall and he brought his flashlight and gun up again. Cameron Raymond came out of the doorway with a contractor's lamp in his hands. From here it looked like his eyes reflected.

  "Cree?" Ray called. He put up one hand to block Bert's light.

  "Ray, it's Bert. He's got his gun. He—"

  "Don't fucking move, Ray. Move and I shoot a hole in your ugly face."

  Ray's light clattered to the ground and went out and then he was just gone. Bert started down the hall, but Cree got in front of him. When he swept his arm at her to get her out of the way, she dodged and grabbed his forearm and was back in his face.

  "Bert, you stop. You stop. He's not a killer."

  He shook off her grip, but he hesitated. She was still in front of him, and he couldn't catch his breath he was so mad: pissed at Cree for letting it come down like this, for complicating it, for taking Rays part. He took a step back and brought both arms up in front of him again, flashlight in Cree's face, gun aligned with the beam. She fell back a couple of steps, still blocking the middle of the tunnel.