[Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski 01.0] If Angels Fall

by Rick Mofina

  The professor dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

  Sydowski and Turgeon exchanged glances.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  By Monday afternoon, Reed was atop Russian Hill, approaching a Victorian mansion overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. A gabled roof topped its three stories, twin turrets, and colossal windows. The open front porch was edged with ornate spindled railing, and the clipped lawn was rimmed by a wrought-iron, spear-tipped fence.

  Would he find answers here? Anything that would bring him closer to Keller? So far, the house was the only lead he and Wilson came up with after digging all of Sunday and this morning. No matter what they tried, quietly using their sources in a number of agencies, scouring the Internet, they could not nail a good address for Keller. He was invisible.

  Even Professor Martin provided little help. Coincidentally, she popped by the Star that morning to thank Reed over coffee in the cafeteria for the feature on her group. Reed made time for her because he wanted to know more about Keller, but he was careful not to tell her about his suspicions. And if Martin had any, she kept them to herself.

  “Tom, I just wanted to thank you. After your article ran, we received pledges of support and calls from bereaved parents searching for help. I thought your reporting and writing was sensitive.”

  “Don’t thank me. Say, what did Keller think?” Reed was casual.

  “I don’t know. He’s so private. Why do you ask?”

  Reed shrugged. “No reason. I mean, he really didn’t like me.”

  She was wearing a summer dress and sandals. Almost no makeup. She was attractive, Reed thought. “I’m glad you left him out of your story. He has a lot of pain to deal with right now.”

  “Don’t we all Kate?”

  Reed’s cell phone rang. He had to go.

  Standing to leave, he asked Kate to put him in touch with Keller again. He wanted to apologize. She would, only she did not have a number or address for him. It was curious. Maybe she had taken his number down incorrectly, or there was a mix-up. Anyway, none of the others knew him or where he lived. And something strange had happened.

  “He stopped coming to the sessions after you visited the group.”

  “Really? It was because of me?”

  “I don’t know. It could be a number of things. I mean, I don’t know much about him beyond his loss of his three children. And I’m worried because the anniversary is coming up. I’ve been trying to find him. I believe he gave me a phony number to protect his privacy. If I locate him, I’ll let him know you would like to see him again. I owe you.”

  It was Molly Wilson who called Reed. She had tried finding Keller’s wife, Joan Keller. Joan Webster, if she was using her maiden name. She checked the DMV, voters’ registration, everything she could think of. Nothing.

  As for Keller, only a San Francisco post office box and two other addresses surfaced from all their checking. One was for the bungalow that the Kellers rented for a couple of years in Oakland during the late 1960’s. Wilson knocked on some doors, went through old directories, trying to find old neighbors, see if Keller kept in touch with anybody. Nothing.

  They were missing something obvious. What was it? Reed reflected, coming to the last address, their last hope for a lead: the mansion on Russian Hill. He pushed open the unlocked gate, entered the yard, and gazed at the house where Keller had lived with his wife and children twenty years ago. Before their lives were destroyed.

  No one answered the bell. Reed waited. Rang again. He heard the clank of metal on stone and went around to the side, where a woman was on her knees, tending a rosebush. Property records showed the owners were Lyndon and Eloise Bamford, who bought it from Carlos Allende, who bought it from Keller about a year after the tragedy. The robust woman appraising Reed appeared to be in her sixties. She had the attractive, intelligent face of a lady who was not easily intimidated.

  “May I help you?” She patted a trowel against a gloved hand.

  “I’m looking for Eloise Bamford.”

  “You found her. Who are you?”

  “Tom Reed, a reporter with The San Francisco Star.”

  “A reporter?” She stood and accepted his card.

  “Sorry to interrupt you. I was hoping you could help me.”

  Sensing something behind him, Reed turned and faced an uneasy Doberman. “I have identification if you would care to see it?”

  Eloise Bamford smiled.

  “No, you look the part. Go away, Larry,” she ordered the dog. “We’ll go to the back porch. I’ve just made lemonade.”

  They sat in exquisite cane chairs and Reed admired the Bamfords’ backyard. It was a sloping garden, with an oasis of large trees, dells of ferns, and fiery-red rhododendrons, pathways lined with rose-covered, stone retaining walls.

  Reed sipped pink lemonade and told Mrs. Bamford--who insisted on being called Eloise--about the bereavement group feature and his hunt for Keller. He did not reveal his fears about Keller, keeping his urgency out of the conversation, hoping Eloise might jump in.

  She didn’t.

  As he continued, Reed was drawing the conclusion he had hit another dead end. He showed Eloise the articles of Keller’s tragedy. She read them while he absorbed the garden’s tranquility.

  “Yes, I remember the case and the Allendes.” She gave the clippings back to him. “They were from Argentina. Sold the house to us after a year. Couldn’t stand to live here anymore. Sad.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Too many ghosts.”

  Reed nodded.

  “Of course you know how Joan Keller died?”

  She was dead? “I was trying to find out.”

  “Suicide. Here. Not long after the children drowned.”

  He had never found any stories about that, nor an obit.

  “Joan Keller’s death was what led the Allendes to sell. They didn’t know the Kellers’ history until someone around here mentioned it. Mrs. Allendes couldn’t bear to stay in the house. They sold it. Moved back to Argentina. I think he was a diplomat.”

  “The tragic history of the house didn’t bother you?”

  “Not really.”

  Eloise wanted to know why Reed would come to the house looking for Keller when he hadn’t lived in it for such a long time.

  “It’s because I can’t find him. I know it’s a long shot, but I thought you might have a current address for him. Do you know him?”

  “Not at all.”

  “I see.” Reed was at a loss. “I just thought coming here might help me find him. After the story on the university’s research, Keller seemed to vanish.”

  “Like a ghost himself.”

  “I suppose.” Reed thanked her for her lemonade and time.

  “Why do you need to find him?”

  “I need to talk to him about his tragedy. The twenty-year anniversary is coming up. The Star wanted a memorial feature.”

  “Mmmmm...” Eloise kept turning Reed’s card over.

  “I’m curious,” Reed said.

  “It’s part of your job.”

  “How did Joan Keller die?”

  Eloise sipped her lemonade and looked out at the garden for a moment, watching a pair of swallows preening in the birdbath.

  “She hung herself in the attic sometime after her children drowned. She was a tormented young woman.”

  How would she know? Reed nodded. A sweet-scented breeze caressed them as Eloise tapped his card in her hand.

  “Some of the family’s things are still up there.”

  “Things?”

  “In boxes. The Allendes never touched them. I don’t think they ever used the attic. We just shoved the stuff into a corner, thinking somebody would claim it one day. We tried to locate Edward Keller ourselves years ago. No luck.”

  Reed understood.

  “Would you like to look at it? It might help you.”

  The air in the attic was stifling.

  Stained-glass octagonal windows filtered dusty beams of light to a crumpled tarp in
a dark corner. The floorboards creaked. Eloise stopped under an overhead joist bearing a faded “X”.

  “The insurance people or police marked the spot where she tied the rope and stepped from a chair.”

  Reed paused. He could have reached the beam if he wanted.

  “And over here”--Eloise pulled back the tarp, stirring up a dust storm that made Reed sneeze--“is what Edward Keller abandoned. All this was theirs.”

  It was a small warehouse of boxes, crates, and furniture. Reed opened a trunk. A chill passed through him. It was filled with children’s toys. He found a valise filled with papers and sifted through them. Mostly bills and invoices for the house. Eloise went to a small desk, rummaged through a drawer, and pulled out a thick leather-bound book with yellowing edges. It smelled musty.

  “This was her diary. You’ve never known such abject sadness.”

  Her handwriting was elegant, clear, from a fountain pen. He flipped the pages. The secrets of her life. It began on her sixteenth birthday. Her small-town-girl disappointments and dreams. Her exciting first meeting with Edward Keller. “Deliciously handsome tycoon from San Francisco,” she wrote. “What a catch he would make!” Reed flipped to their marriage, the children. Joan’s concerns evolving into frustration and anger at how Edward never had time for the children, missing birthdays, holidays. The mansion was a gilded cage. Their marriage was strained. Edward had become intoxicated with success. She begged him to make time for the children.

  They needed more of their father, not more money.

  Reed thought of Ann and Zach.

  He flipped ahead to the tragedy, and was stunned by her final entry.

  “I can no longer live. The investigators say the children never had life jackets on, that Edward took them out, despite being warned of a storm coming. I blame him. I can never forgive him. Never. It should have been a joy for him, not a chore. He killed them! And he killed me! I hate myself for not realizing how vile he is, for trusting him with my children. They were never his! He should have drowned, not them. It should have been him. Not my children. They are gone. They never found their tiny bodies. He promises to bring them back. Rescue them. The fool. All his money cannot bring them back. I can’t live without my children. Pierce. Alisha. Joshua. I must be with them. I will be with them. I love you my little darlings!”

  Those were her last words. Probably written in the attic.

  Reed closed the book. Stunned. It was Gothic.

  They never found their tiny bodies.

  He promises to bring them back.

  “Is the material helpful, Tom?”

  Eloise was sitting in a chair, patting her moist brow, drinking lemonade. Half in shadow, half in light, she looked like some kind of soothsayer oracle. Reed had been too engrossed to notice the half hour that had passed. “Uhm, sorry, yes! Eloise. It’s very helpful. Sorry to take so much of your time.” He stood.

  “Glad this old stuff is of use to someone.”

  “May I borrow this diary?”

  She cast her hand about the Kellers’ belongings. “Take whatever you need and just call me if you want to look at anything again.”

  In thanking her, Reed gave her another business card. They laughed. He jotted down her number and left, clutching the book.

  Joan Keller’s diary contained a few revelations that could lead him to Keller. But it wouldn’t be easy and there wasn’t much time to work on them. The anniversary of the drownings was only days away.

  Once out of sight of the mansion, he trotted to his old Comet.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  Keller was following the path of his exalted mission.

  Pursuing the third angel. The conqueror of Satan.

  Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus. Snip. Snip. Snip.

  The doubters were closing in. Snip. Snip. And he still faced many obstacles in his final step to the transfiguration.

  He remained calm.

  I am cleansed in the light of the Lord.

  The time has come to transform himself. Snip. The doubters had photographed his face and were searching for him. But he did not worry, trimming his hair, his beard, lathering his face. Soon all would know him as the enlightened one, the chosen one, anointed to reveal the celestial promise of reunion with his children.

  Along his glorious path, he never challenged the mysterious ways of deified love. Michael Jason Faraday was the third angel, or so he thought, until the nine-year-old Oakland boy had moved to London with his family a few months ago. At first Keller could not understand it. He was certain Faraday was the third angel. The signs were correct. His age, his birthday. Keller had studied him, kept a vigil. But before he could make contact, he was gone.

  On the eve of the transfiguration, the third angel vanished.

  What was the message?

  It had to be a divine test of faith.

  Keller had remained steadfast. Like Christ in the desert. He did not succumb to temptation, to doubt. God would light his path to destiny.

  And he did.

  A couple of weeks from the transfiguration, the mortal identity of the true third angel was revealed to him. It took Keller some time to absorb the holy sign. It became crystalline a few days ago, during his morning reading of the Scriptures. He now knew who the third angel was. He had little time to find him.

  Keller finished shaving, then made a few phone calls, talking politely, jotting down notes. He put on a white shirt, tie, and suit, checked his old leather briefcase. It was empty except for one business card--that of Frank Trent, of Golden Bay Mutual Insurance. Trent was the man who had handled the death claims for his children twenty years ago. Keller tucked the card in his breast pocket and took the briefcase with him before looking in on Gabriel and Raphael.

  Mid-afternoon. They were sufficiently sedated. He locked the basement door, then the house, and walked into the brilliant sunlight, a well-dressed, respectable-looking businessman on a Holy Mission. After twelve blocks, he hailed a cab.

  Veronica Tilley yearned for her family and friends in Tulsa.

  “I am a fish out of water here. A stranger in a strange land,” she would tell her husband, Lester.

  His face would crease into a smile. “Now, now, Ronnie. Just make an effort to experience the city, gather some memories. It’s only for two years. Hang on.”

  “Of course, I’ll hang on, Lester. What choice do I have? I am just telling you I miss Oklahoma. It doesn’t shake like California.”

  Lester’s eyes twinkled. “We’ll be home soon.”

  Veronica had agreed to Lester’s two-year transfer to San Francisco because she realized he had to satisfy some deep-seated manly need. He’d devoted twenty-three years to his company, all of them in Tulsa. The boys had gone off to college, and the middle-age jitters were getting to him. Younger managers did well by taking out-of-state postings. Lester had to prove he could run with the young bloods.

  But Veronica was lonely in San Francisco. She missed her position as secretary-treasurer of Tulsa’s Historical Society. She longed for their house in Mapleridge, hated that they had to lease it and rent in San Francisco. For her, coming here was like going to outer space. Earthquakes. Weirdos. The other day on the Mission Street cable car, a man wearing a print dress, pearls, and rouge on his cheeks, sat beside her.

  Gawd. And now this. She puffed her cheeks and exhaled.

  Veronica was miffed. The couple who owned the house they were renting had just informed them that they were going to move back after ninety days. Ninety days! People didn’t do things like this in Tulsa. After just settling in, she and Lester had to find another house to rent. And in this market! Here she was running around, checking with agencies, newspapers, searching for a suitable place. Oh, she was glad the young couple had reconciled. There was a little boy involved. But Veronica was also ticked. She told Lester they should talk to a lawyer, but he insisted it would be best if they found another place and let the young couple get on with their lives.

  Veronica circled one of her choices in the c
lassifieds: “Furnished. Alamo Sq. Restored 12rm Vict. Hot tub. View antiques, 3 frplcs.” Must be heavenly because it sure was expensive--$3900.

  The doorbell rang.

  Veronica peeked through the curtain. A salesman of some sort was standing on her doorstep. He seemed harmless. She opened the door.

  “Good afternoon. I’m Frank Trent from Golden Bay Mutual.”

  “Yes...?”

  “I’m here for Mrs. Ann Reed.”

  “Ann Reed? Boy they don’t waste any time.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Talking to myself. Sorry, they haven’t moved back yet.”

  “I’m confused. This is the address for Ann Reed?” Keller knew the family had moved. And he knew the Lord would help locate the third angel. “The policies for her and her son, Zachary, have lapsed.”

  “Life insurance?”

  “I’m a new agent. I’ve yet to meet her and it’s imperative I get her signature today on clause changes.” He tapped his briefcase.

  “We’re only renting their house. They’re moving back in ninety days. Why don’t I take your card and have her call you?”

  “That’s kind of you, but I will be out of town on business for three weeks by this afternoon and I fear I may miss her. It’s vital that I get her signature today.”

  Veronica studied the stranger. He seemed okay.

  “Do you have a card?”

  Keller reached into his breast pocket and handed her Frank Trent’s card. Veronica held it thoughtfully.

  “Come in.”

  She went to the telephone table in the hall, flipped through her address book, punched in a number. The line rang and rang, unanswered.

  “Nobody’s home,” she said.

  “Well I just don’t know what I’m going to do.” Keller frowned.

  Veronica didn’t really want to give out Ann Reed’s address in Berkeley, but she didn’t exactly feel beholden to her either. What could be the harm? She copied Ann Reed’s address and number from her book.