“…that cocksucker,” the black man continued to chant, getting louder.
Duncan finally sat down next to Kincaid, and, speaking very softly, said, “Please understand my position. This isn’t an issue of confidentiality. The photographer hasn’t been charged with a crime. I simply want to find out everything I can concerning the accident that my daughter suffered at your school this afternoon. However, if I do find sufficient evidence to suggest that this Kodak provocateur acted inappropriately, negligently or criminally, and that you or someone else at the school had knowledge of indiscreet acts committed by him prior to his contractual employment with Jefferson Elementary, then your days of haunting lunch rooms and wiping snotty noses will be over. Now, I can get the info from you, or I can acquire it independently. If I’m forced to do the latter, however, I’ll be rather upset. And seeing how I don’t really like you anyway, I might vent my frustrations in a manner that might only be described as something ... unpleasant.” Duncan stood. “It’s your call.”
Head craned, Kincaid turned his eyes back to the shrimp-happy chef, who was now either greatly alarmed over the blazing skillet in his hand or just excited to be flambéing the scampi. Hard to tell.
Kneading his package of pumpkin seeds like a manic child with Play-Dough, Kincaid said, “Are you threatening me, sir?”
Duncan smiled. “In every sense of the word.”
Finally, reluctantly, Kincaid reached into the inner sanctum of his jacket and withdrew a pen and a business card, upon which he shakily wrote a name.
Wise move, Duncan thought. Still, he felt a bit saddened that he wasn’t going to be forced, after all, to drag this gnomish principal/English teacher to the roof and dangle him like a participle over its edge.
“Here,” Kincaid said, handing Duncan the card. “The man’s name is on the back. If you’ll contact my secretary, Ms. Annison, and explain to her the situation, I’m confident she’ll be most helpful in finding you his address and phone.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “She’s normally there until five, so you have plenty—”
“Thank you,” Duncan said, already through the door. Then he abruptly stopped, turned. “Any idea why my daughter would think her name is Katherine Bently?”
Kincaid thought for a moment. “No. Should I?”
“You don’t have a student by that name?”
Kincaid brought his trembling hands together and rested his chin on his fingers. “No, I’m afraid the closest thing we have is a Denise Benton.”
“Thanks,” Duncan said. “Oh, for what it’s worth, I really do appreciate you sticking around like this. Amy will be glad to know that you did.”
“Not at all,” Kincaid replied, his eyes indicating otherwise.
7.
COMPUTERIZED AXIAL TOMOGRAPHY (CAT) was stenciled in big white letters across the double doors. In the waiting area, Juanita Santiago paced like a caged cat, treading up and down the full length of the waiting room, her rubber thongs smacking wetly against the buffed tile.
Rachel sat in a burgundy chair, studying her upturned hands. She was so engrossed with her subjects that she might have been a palmist rendering her own reading, searching specifically for that one line or juncture that might reveal the medical reason for her daughter’s admittance.
“Pardon me for saying, Mrs. McNeil,” Juanita said, “but why does Señor Duncan not stay to comfort his very own child in her time of need? Is he not a concerned father?”
Juanita, having tried picking Amy up from school as arranged, had rushed to the hospital after learning of the accident from Amy’s homeroom teacher.
A rosary was clutched tightly in her right hand.
“He had an important errand to run,” Rachel said, still preoccupied with her palms. “Besides, Amy’s going to be fine. There’s no reason we should all be here acting like expectant fathers.”
“Well, at least there is dinner for him in the oven,” Juanita sighed, secretly hoping a large piece of Kielbasa sausage would lodge in his uncaring wind pipe just long enough to see him flopping like a mackerel on the kitchen Linoleum.
“Juanita?” Rachel said, holding out her palms. “Do my hands look funny to you?”
Juanita clutched Rachel’s hands and stared at the lines and bifurcations like a lost motorist. Finally, she shook her head. “They are not funny. You have beautiful hands, Mrs. McNeil. Smooth like a baby’s bottom.”
“Exactly,” Rachel said, a bit troubled. “It’s as if…all of my lines are fading away.”
“It is those creams and lotions you use,” Juanita said. “A couple of more years and you will be a teenage girl again.” The she added, “Unless you put them back in a hot, soapy sink of dishes.”
Rachel looked up reprovingly. “That‘s not going to happen.”
Then, almost direly, Juanita said, “Señor Duncan, he fire me soon, you see.”
“Over my cold, dead body,” Rachel promised. Then she leaned close and whispered, “My God, I screwed up making macaroni and cheese last Thursday night when you were at bingo!”
“Si,” Juanita gloated. “And you burned the pan, too. It’s no good now.”
Perpetually strutting in arrogance more befitting a Queen than a maid, Juanita Santiago had never experienced the burden of having too many friends. In fact, she practiced the art of intimidation daily. But once past the initial urge to run like hell, one could begin to perceive a powerful wisdom beneath her effrontery, potent enough to vindicate her, to forgive her brazen disposition. Most people, however, never took the few extra minutes to detect this.
Duncan was one of those people, the impatient kind. And in the nearly nine years Juanita had spent in his house—the thousands of hours spent feeding him and his family, taking care of his daughter, washing his dirty drawers and cleaning up his messes—he’d never once taken those few extra minutes to get to know her.
Although, she had to admit, her first impression of Señor Duncan was not exactly fleeting. He was a man with secrets. Crippling secrets. From the moment their eyes first met, she’d more than just intuited this: she literally beheld it like she would a monsoon-driven rain nettling her cheeks. She’d kept those mistrusts stored in the cellar of her soul; locked up and preserved like award-winning jams.
Her mission in life was to safeguard his daughter whom she had vowed to protect more than thirty-five years earlier, at the tender age of sixteen. Of course, she’d never informed the McNeils of this. She was a lot of things, but loco wasn’t one of them.
Those many years ago, in the tiny town of Chinipas, Mexico, the Virgin herself had appeared from the fourth pinewood pew in Our Lady of Guadalupe, a disintegrating church in the center of what was her equally decaying birthplace. The Radiant Mother had bestowed upon her a revelation of such earthly cataclysm that had she not already been on her knees, it would have surely driven her there.
In this apocalyptic vision, broken glass oceans issued forth the legions of hell. Multitudes of winged demons swarmed out from the gigantic cracks and fissures that craggily traversed to all horizons. And beneath these aerial armies lay a child, so terribly alone on that vast expanse of glass; the only casualty in the War of wars. But this potent metaphor was not lost on Juanita, for she understood that this seemingly lone victim, in truth, epitomized all mankind.
Weeping, curled like a fetus at the base of the altar, she then received her instructions from the Blessed Mother.
Her appointed mission was not messianic, was not to warn the backsliding masses to repent, that Armageddon was fast upon them. It was a more narrowly focused one, to look after a little girl named Amy, to keep her out of harm’s way. Be her sentinel.
The Marian apparition then changed into the image of that chosen girl, one aged ten or twelve, with a sweet, beautifully innocent face. The theory behind this designed manifestation, Juanita felt, was so that she would recognize the girl when finally confronted with her. This had shaken her considerably and continued to for a great long time, as she had not wanted her mem
ory entrusted to what was obviously going to be a custodial responsibility of biblical proportions.
From then on, up until the glorious day when she and Amy finally found one another, Juanita had delighted in daily self-flagellation. Merciless throughout all those years, she’d whipped herself with popular morality tales, aided to deeper depths with the honed, stalwart blades of religious parables, then deeper still by the enduring, perennially whet sabers of scriptural parallels until, finally, her psychological state of mind had become so horrendously avulsed, her soul so variegated with the scars and welts of self-pity that the Devil himself might have convalesced her wounds with a salve to rival Heaven’s own had he to endure even one more second of her insufferable mewling.
The most recurring Bible story, she recalled, had been that of the Pharaoh’s daughter, when she’d found Moses on the river, floating in an arc of bulrushes. Juanita (her appointed mission having felt for so long punitive by comparison) had always been quick to remind herself, though, that there was a very sound and legitimate reason why her appointed package couldn’t have been sent to her as effortlessly. That reason being her own sinful nature. Oh, sure, the Pharaoh’s daughter had been full of sin, too. But that was a time long before the birth of Christ, and it just went to figure that God overlooked a lot more back then.
It wasn’t until many years later when her searching was ended; when her employment agency called and asked if she’d like to be interviewed for a housekeeping position. That one phone call and she’d been relieved from the relentless task of searching for that child’s face wherever she went. Oh, how she’d searched so diligently, so devotedly, all those years.
One simple phone call, but hardly routine. Received at seven a.m. on the seventh day of the seventh month.
Later that same evening, she’d interviewed with the McNeil family. During introductions, she’d learned that the child’s name was, indeed, Amy. Upon that affirmation, she began showering the poor thing with gushing affection. It had taken all she had to keep from kneeling before the bundled form and weeping.
It wasn’t long into the informal interview when she sensed Señor Duncan’s fear of her, and it was likewise during this time that her distrust of him was born. She’d since learned that Rachel had the “final say” in the matter, and had hired her despite Duncan’s protests. She’d also since learned that when Rachel McNeil had the “final say,” God Himself couldn’t have carved the pronouncement any deeper in stone.
But now she didn’t know what to think of Señor McNeil; hadn’t for a good year or so. He was a mysterious and certainly troubled man. Of this she was sure. But evil? Evil enough to do his own daughter harm? She now doubted it. Something had begun many months back to persuade her otherwise. Nothing tangible, nothing that he’d said or done, only a nagging feeling that maybe she’d been spending far too much time and energy suspecting her employer. The deep, troubling secrets she intuited from the man, she had to finally admit, were probably not worthy of her longstanding suspicions.
No, it was now arguable that Señor Duncan was not Satan incognito. He was just an asshole with issues.
She continued to pace, driven by fear. Earlier that morning, something had occurred within her, a sense of heightened alert, as if someone had climbed to the crow’s nest of her mind, waving frantically to the rest of her being, her soul, signaling the approach of doom on the horizon.
Polishing her rosary, she mumbled, “Va haber un desmadre.”
Yes, all hell was going to break loose, she was sure. And soon.
*****
Juanita continued to pace.
Rachel, no longer intrigued with her hands, was leafing through a two-year-old edition of People magazine when a young man in a blue and white uniform walked up to her. He was one of the paramedics she’d seen earlier in the ER. He was still wearing a troubled face.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but are you the mother of the little girl we transported from Jefferson Elementary?”
“Yes,” Rachel said, “I am.”
“May I talk with you?” He glanced nervously around. “Privately?”
“Keep the chair warm for me, Juanita,” she said, grabbing her purse.
The paramedic placed a gentle hand on Rachel’s elbow and led her, somewhat urgently, into an elevator.
Descending from the seventh floor, neither spoke. By the time they’d reached the lobby, Rachel was surprised the medic hadn’t chewed his lower lip bloody.
The air was still hot despite the sun’s position, which teetered like a steel orange on the Pacific Ocean. It was the last week of September, and was promising to be the start of one of the hottest and muggiest autumns this city had ever seen. But LA wasn’t the only place suffering third degree burns. Nearly the whole country was in the midst of a tenacious heat wave.
He pulled a pack of Camels from his shirt pocket. Offering a cigarette to Rachel, he said, “Nasty habit, huh?”
“What’s this all about?” she said, accepting. Dave Schilling was stenciled on his name tag.
“I’m not crazy,” he whispered. “And my partner won’t back me up. He refuses to talk about it.”
“Okay,” Rachel said “Talk about what?”
Dave lit her cigarette. “Ya know, I’ve seen some bizarre things in this city,” he continued in a low voice. “A car wreck so bad there were intestines splattered across a billboard thirty yards from impact. A hobo whose face was eaten off by two Chihuahuas as he lay passed out in an alley. A crazy old woman who choked to death on her pet hamster.” He stared at the noisy interstate that ran adjacent to the hospital. He took a drag off his cigarette, inhaled deeply. “Shit,” he laughed nervously, “and we were able to save the hamster.”
She glanced sidelong at the medic. “Excuse me, but isn’t that just an urban legend?”
“No,” he said, “you’re confusing that with Richard Gere getting caught with a gerbil up his ass. That’s an urban legend.” He stared at her, nonplused. “Isn’t it?” Then he shrugged his shoulders and clucked. “Oh hell, lady, in this city, if it’s not one orifice, it’s another.”
“Name’s Rachel,” she said patiently. “And what do these experiences have to do with my daughter?”
He turned a pair of mystified eyes to her. “What I saw and heard today was totally unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.” He flicked his half-finished cigarette to the ground, crushed it beneath his shoe. “At one point while your daughter was inside the ambulance, she began…seizing. Nothing full blown, like a grand mal, just some minor shaking. Anyway, as I was holding her down, trying to listen to her heart and lung sounds, she grabbed hold of my stethoscope. The second she did, I heard the strangest voice. It was like I’d tapped into a kind of, of telepathic conversation between your daughter and...”
“And...?” Rachel nudged.
“And God,” he finally said. “I mean, the voice was so out there that it couldn’t have been…human.”
“And what did He say?” Rachel said. There was a genuineness, a sincerity about him that kept her from rushing back inside to find a pair of burly guys in white coats.
“It wasn’t a He—it was a She.”
Chalk up another one for women’s lib, she thought. “Alright, what was She saying?”
“‘He knows where you’ve flown.’”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s what the voice kept saying, over and over. ‘He knows where you’ve flown.’”
“Who knows where who’s flown?”
Dave shrugged. “I was kind of hoping that you’d know, or at least have a hunch. You see, the reason I’m telling you this is because I interpreted it as a kind of warning. It didn’t necessarily sound like one, but I felt it was a warning.” He stared at his shoes. “Man, my ass is history if you talk to anybody about this.”
“My lips are sealed,” she promised. “You said it was a conversation. What was my daughter saying?”
“‘It hurts, it hurts.’ And she kept clawing at her back, too,�
�� he said, demonstrating the awkward scratching, “as if something was really irritating it. Burning it, maybe.”
“That’s it?” Rachel said, as if that wasn’t enough.
“No,” he said, shakily lighting another cigarette. “Now comes the weird part.”
Rachel’s jaw actually dropped. “The weird part?”
“Just as we pulled up to the hospital, Kathy jumped—”
“Amy,” she corrected. “Her name is Amy.”
“Really?” David said, confused. “Her teacher said her name was Amy, too, but as we were getting her into the ambulance, your daughter told us quite lucidly—well, she insisted!—that her name was Kath—”
“I know, I know,” Rachel nodded pressingly, “but continue.”
“Well, she—Amy—jumped up from the pram just as we pulled to a stop in front of the ER. She placed both hands on one of the two rear windows of the ambulance and…and a picture appeared, a moving picture, as if the glass had somehow turned into a...” Slumping against the wall, he exhaled loudly. “You’re not buying any of this, are you?”
“I’m trying,” Rachel said. “What did you see in the window?”
“There was a man sitting in a chair. It was like I was looking right into his living room. He was busy with his hands. At first I thought he was crocheting, or something like that, but then he stood up, and in his hands was a set of wings. Like a prop, you know? Angel wings someone might make for a Christmas play? But they looked real enough. Too real. And they were big. Maybe from a swan? Anyway, the scene disappeared as we pulled her away from the doors. I only saw half his face.”
“Angel wings?”
“I know it sounds crazy, ma’am, but, on my mother’s grave I swear to you—”
“I believe you,” she said, surprising herself. Something about it made sense to her, though she hadn’t the vaguest idea why.
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