Before There Were Angels

by Sarah Mathews

  “Get me an iPad, will you?” asked Zack.

  “Come along and you can get anything you like, Zack,” I answered magnanimously.

  “I’m not coming. I’m not going to stand in line for hours that’s lame. Can you get me one?”

  “I want to get an Apple computer for work.”

  “You can get that anytime and put it against your taxes. I’ll pay you.”

  “With what?”

  “You already owe me $50, and the iPads are $99, Mom says.”

  “And what about the other $50?”

  “$49.”

  “$99.99, so $49.99. I think we can call it a round $50.”

  “OK, then. Deal.”

  “I didn’t say I would do it.”

  “But you will, won’t you?”

  “And what will you do?”

  “I’ll be here. Studying.”

  “Studying?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Won’t you be lonely?” I asked sarcastically.

  “Doubt it.”

  “What if one of the ghosts turns up?”

  Zack rolled his eyes. “Ghosts … not again!”

  “Won’t you be nervous, all by yourself in this haunted house?”

  “No, and I’ll have George.”

  I shrugged. “What the hell …”

  “Thanks, Luke.”

  “Will you get me an iPad too?” asked Stevie, always anxious to have whatever Zack was getting.

  “Your mom wants to get a Christmas tree. If you want an iPad each, one of you is going to have to come with us.”

  “OK, then,” conceded Stevie, “but I don’t see why Zack should get an iPad if he isnt even there.”

  “You know Zack. And it will be fun.”

  “Suppose so.”

  * * *

  We went to the newly-opened Target in the Metreon Center. The deal was that we had to line up from about six at night outside the doors of Target to be two of the first hundred people to claim an iPad for $99.99 at nine o’clock when the doors opened.

  Belle was going to buy a Christmas tree and maybe some Egyptian cotton sheets. For electronics or anything originally priced at over $1,000, you could only have one special offer item each. For other items, you could buy as many as you could get hold of.

  Even at 6:00 p.m. there was a line that stretched away around the corner into the Yerba Buena Gardens and we had to make a judgment call as to whether it was worth staying. It was an outside chance but we decided to go for it, not wishing to accept defeat.

  At 9:00 p.m. the doors opened and Stevie and I raced each other (and everyone else) to the Electronics Department right at the far end of the shop and ended up in the line opposite Household, speculating as to whether we would make it, reassuring ourselves that we would.

  Stevie produced a PSP. Much to Belle’s disgust, the boys had managed to wheedle out of her almost every electronic game device that existed. She wanted them to read books, claiming that gaming machines were for losers, but in this respect Zack and Stevie were confident that they were anything but losers, refuting Belle’s argument by declaring dismissively that the only people at school who were considered losers were those who read books. Sure, it helped if you played football, and that they did - well.

  It was good to be alone with Stevie for a change. He rarely spoke to me normally. He may even have resented Belle leaving Robert and then getting stuck with me, not that he was ever hostile towards me, only evasive. He immediately got into his game, while I pulled out my laptop and did some work.

  “I’m bored,” Stevie said.

  “It is boring,” I confirmed.

  “Anything to drink?”

  “Coke.”

  “Thanks. Anything to eat?”

  “Pizza.”

  “Thanks.”

  I looked at the tense faces in the line around me. “This is amazing,” I said. “I have never seen anything like it.”

  “We did it two years ago,” said Stevie. “In Phoenix. It was worse there. We had to stay in the store until four before we could pay and leave. Zack wanted a Wii. Mom was pissed. She said Wiis were only for pussies. ‘Call me a pussy, then,’ Zack said. I got my iPod, this one,” he added, pulling his iPod out from his pocket and surveying it admiringly.

  “I’ve never seen you two on the Wii.”

  “We never use it. Mom was telling the truth when she said it was for pussies. Zack just wanted it because Mom didn’t want him to have it. Zack and Mom were always fighting then, Mom and Dad too. It’s a lot better now.”

  This was the first compliment I had ever had from Stevie or Zack, a night of firsts.

  “Thank you.”

  Stevie looked at me, surprised. “It’s so much better with you and Mom. You don’t argue. You love each other. We can do our own stuff and not worry all the time about what’s going to happen.”

  I moved to hug him but he kept his distance. We weren’t there yet - maybe never - but it was going in the right direction.

  * * *

  We weren’t out of the store until nearly 1:00 a.m., with me carrying a seven foot high artificial Christmas tree - the City of San Francisco was begging everyone not to buy real ones. Stevie carried the iPads and Belle had the sheets.

  After waiting in another line, we managed to get on the California Street cable car which took us most of the way home, but it was after 2:30 before we got there.

  As we approached the house, we could hear George barking, somewhat frantically, I thought at the time.

  “George is glad to have us home,” said Belle. “Zack probably hasn’t fed him.”

  I unlocked the door and Stevie rushed in ahead of Belle, shouting, “Zack, I’ve got it, I’ve got it”, only to be blocked by George who leapt up at him and scrabbled at his chest - very strange behavior for George.

  “Zack!” Stevie called again, and stopped. He dropped both iPads onto the floor.

  “Hey,” I said, “you’ll break them,” but Belle was pushing past me with panic in her eyes, sensing there was something very wrong.

  Zack was in the hallway. Silent.

  To be more precise, he was a couple of feet above the hallway, hanging from a rope strung around the banister of the upstairs landing.

  For the first time in his short life, he was not playing any sort of joke or prank on us.

  He was not playing at all. He wasn’t anything anymore except a body hanging from a rope with an agonized expression in his eyes and his blue tongue lolling out.

  Belle rushed at him. “Oh my God!” she shrieked, this time as a Catholic, this time in irreparable despair.

  ;We are not supposed to live to bury our children,’ as my own mother used to say.

  Stevie was stock still, staring. In that moment he had lost everything that mattered to him in the whole world, including himself.

  Chapter 13

  I ran into the kitchen, seized a carving knife, rocketed up the stairs, bumping against Zack, and cut him down from the landing.

  You have to do something even when there is nothing to be done.

  Belle went straight to his body and cradled his shoulders and his head on her knees. I could see that she fervently wanted to sob but the force of the shock was holding her back.

  Stevie stood there, the two iPads still on the floor, the Christmas tree on the steps outside.

  I pulled out my cell phone and called 911. Ambulance. Police.

  “What condition is he in?” the voice asked after eliciting the basic information.

  “He looks like he’s dead but send an ambulance anyway.”

  It was impossible to believe he was dead, Zack of all people. Our minds and our hearts were fighting; our hearts were fighting for him to be alive despite all the evidence lying before us.

  The police and the ambulance were both with us within five minutes.

  The ambulance crew went straight over to Zack’s body and eased Belle away, running tests for which there could be only one outcome. They br
ought in a stretcher and strapped Zack to it, removing him to the ambulance with resolute precision after one of them had carefully brought the Christmas tree inside with a shake of his head, either for Zack’s chances or in the face of the tragic symbolism, or both.

  Another ambulance attendant immediately addressed himself to Belle, examining her as she resisted.

  “I want to go with him in the ambulance,” she said.

  “No question,” he replied.

  For a second Belle assumed that he was saying that there was no question of her going with him, whereas what he had meant was the opposite, so there was a frantic confusion.

  “Come on, Ma’am,” he whispered to her. “The ambulance is leaving. You can ride in the back with him.”

  This time Stevie let me hug him. He folded into me, sobbing, “Why?”

  “I don’t know, Stevie. I don’t know why.”

  “How could he do it? Why did he do it?”

  “He didn’t,” I assured him firmly. “Zack did not do this.”

  He looked up at me, startled but recognizing the truth in my words. “Who did it?”

  “I don’t know. I only know that Zack didn’t. He wouldn’t. He never would have. He loved you far too much, your mom too.”

  A policewoman wanted to lead Stevie off while they questioned me but Stevie wanted to stay with me.

  “Let him hear what I have to say,” I said. “It will be horrible for him either way but he wants to be with me.”

  The cop wanting to interview me demurred and we shuffled into the sitting room where George came to join us, his head on his paws in front of us.

  “Can you tell me what happened?” the cop asked.

  “I really don’t know,” I said. “We were doing Black Friday at Target, Belle, Stevie and I. Zack wanted to stay behind -“

  “Do you think he was planning this?” the cop asked quickly.

  “No. I don’t think he ever planned this.”

  “When did you get back?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  We went through all the details. It was not the slightest consolation that we had a watertight alibi, all three of us, because that wasn’t the point anyway. The question hanging there, so to speak, was whether Zack had killed himself or whether he had been murdered.

  “Your wife left her previous husband last year?” That was a weighted question leading down a whole avenue of assumptions. “Did Zack show any signs of depression?”

  “No, never.”

  He looked at Stevie who watched him dumbly.

  “Did Zack ever seem sad about leaving his father and coming to live in San Francisco without him?” the cop asked Stevie gently.

  Stevie shook his head.

  “I never saw the slightest signs of depression,” I said. “Depression was about the last thing anyone would have associated with Zack.”

  “At school, was Zack ever bullied?”

  The idea was so ludicrous that I actually laughed abruptly and Stevie laughed too.

  “Zack wasn’t the kind of kid who was ever going to be bullied. He might have bullied others, Stevie can probably answer that one, but I would say it would have been impossible to bully Zack.”

  “Stevie …”

  Stevie teared up. “Zack wasn’t a bully.”

  “Stevie and Zack were very, very close,” I said. “Stevie can tell you everything about Zack, and everything he tells you will be the truth.”

  “So what do you believe happened?” asked the cop after taking further notes.

  “I really haven’t got a clue.”

  “Have you ever been threatened?”

  “Belle, my wife, Zack’s mother, has. She recently received two death threats, one by e-mail, the other through the mail slot of the front door.”

  “Did you report these to us?”

  “Yes, a month ago.”

  “Where?”

  “The local station, here.”

  “Do you remember the name of the officer you reported this to?”

  “No.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  I forced a smile. “Don’t cops all look the same …? Thirties somewhere, dark glasses, average build. He told us how to file for a restraining order if we could figure out who it was who was threatening us, at the Court House on McAllister.”

  “Could you?”

  “The person we thought mostly likely to be sending death threats was my ex-wife because she has threatened Belle before, but she is in England as far as we know. There was also a murder here three months ago, and they … you … haven’t arrested the woman believed to be responsible for those four deaths,” I didn’t mention the dog this time, out of respect, “but what possible motive could she have for killing Zack, even if it were physically possible for her to do so. Zack and Stevie were … are … twelve, but both of them are strong and Zack was headstrong too. Unless she drugged him, I cannot see how she, or any woman, could possibly have done this. Well, I suppose she could, but there would at least be evidence of an almighty struggle. I haven’t looked around the house yet but I haven’t seen any immediate signs.”

  “And he didn’t call you on your cell phones? Did you have them with you?”

  “We had our cell phones with us, all three of us, and no.”

  “Mine was turned off,” Stevie interjected. He pulled it out of his pocket and turned it on. There was a terrible pause while it intoned, ‘Metro PCS, hello, hello, hello. Wireless for all’, and we waited for any pings to announce that there was a message pending.

  It pinged.

  One missed call - from Zack’s cell phone.

  One voicemail.

  This was horrific. Macabre.

  “I think I had better go and listen to it in another room,” suggested the cop. “Would you tell me your security code for your voicemail, Stevie?”

  “1,2,3,4.”

  “Thanks.”

  The cop got up and left the room.

  He came back ashen-face, which I would guess is rare in a cop. “There was a message,” he said. “It was a call for help.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No, he only said one word. ‘Help!’”

  “And that was it?”

  The cop shook his head. “Not quite it but that was the only thing he said.”

  “What else was there?” I asked.

  “Not now,” cautioned the cop.

  Stevie’s eyes were wide open. He didn’t ask to hear what the rest was.

  * * *

  The cop and I went to the kitchen to listen to the message from Zack, leaving Stevie briefly alone in the sitting room, patting George distractedly as George watched him with concern.

  The cop handed me the phone. “Are you sure you are ready to listen to this, Sir?”

  “I’m ready,” I replied, steeling myself.

  I clicked on the voicemail icon and entered the 1,2,3,4 security code.

  Rustling came from the phone, then “Help!” from Zack sounding beside himself, a tone of voice I had never heard from him before, then what sounded like a woman’s voice laughing in the background before the message was cut off abruptly.

  I played it again. Was it a woman’s laugh or a girl’s? Could I get any sense as to whether she was American or English, or any other nationality?

  I frowned and played it again, and again, and again - fifteen, twenty times.

  I could make no sense of it.

  I was still re-running the message when the cop we had seen down at the station to ask about the restraining order, and the murders in the house, entered the room, introducing himself as Luiz Martinez.

  “I am really sorry for your loss,” he started.

  I inclined my head.

  “There was a voicemail left,” the first cop explained to him. “Mr. Parsons has been trying to identify a woman’s laugh on the recording.”

  “A woman laughing?” Martinez repeated.

  “Yes, there is a woman laughing but it is so short that I c
annot make any sense of it. I told you a month ago we were getting death threats, quite possibly from my ex-wife, but I cannot say it was her laugh.”

  “You also said you met a ghost here, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. If you remember you sent us down to the library to look up the San Francisco Chronicle reports on the murder, and the ghost I met looked exactly like Jess DeGamo, the woman victim.”

  “I’m sorry, I do not remember the details. You saw this ghost and then she left - it was something like that, wasn’t it?”

  “It was actually more than that,” I explained. “We didn’t give you the full details because we thought you would think we were insane if we did, but she actually walked past me up on the landing,” I pointed through the ceiling of the kitchen, “and she disappeared into our bedroom at the top of the stairs.” I adjusted the trajectory of my finger to trace her progress. “I couldn’t find her in the bedroom but later I returned there and looked for her under the bed. She was there, looking straight past me as if she was hiding from somebody and trying to work out where they were.”

  “She was hiding under the bed?” Martinez seemed suddenly engaged.

  “Yes.”

  Martinez stroked his jaw. “Now that is interesting. A freak show but interesting. I don’t think I told you but Mrs. DeGamo came down to the station before she was killed to report that her husband’s ex-wife, Martha DeGamo, had broken into their house on numerous occasions, and on one occasion she had been in the house and hidden under the bed to escape her.“

  “I never knew that.”

  “There was no way you could have.”

  “No, there was no way I could have. Nobody told us what had happened. That is why we came to see you.”

  “Let me listen to the voicemail.”

  Martinez proceeded to listen to the recording another ten times but he could make no sense of it either beyond, “It almost sounds like a young girl. Martha used to put on this young girl’s voice, they said. She sounds triumphant.”

  “She does.”

  “You should change all your locks. Did the owners change the locks, do you know?”

  “No. We never asked.”

  Luiz Martinez looked hard into my eyes. “Change them tomorrow. CSI are already in the house. I’ll go and talk to them.”