Haunted Humans Part 6

"Didn't I? I . . . was having kind of a delayed reaction, I guess."

"She fainted after she hung up the phone," Morgan said.

"Mrs. Griffin, did you see this man?"

"I certainly did," said Afra. "Saw and heard him. Talking trash to D.J. down the stairwell, nasty stuff, like religion only twisted."

"Can you describe him?"

"A tall fella with a good pair of shoulders on him, at least six feet high, maybe more. He had short dark hair, thick black eyebrows, kind of a narrow face with hollows under the cheekbones. Big hands. He was wearing a green coat that covered up his other clothes, but he had leather shoes, not tennis shoes or whatever they call those things that come in those lurid shades. And he ran away right quick when he saw my gun."

"Your gun?"

Afra got her gun out of the drawer again. The officer made a note.

"Have a sniff," Afra said. "Haven't fired it since my nephew took me target shooting six years ago."

Officer Vance duly sniffed the barrel and handed the gun back to her. "Exactly why did you bring the gun out in the first place?"

"Well, I've got a responsibility to my tenants. I keep track of most things that go on here. I had a very bad feeling about that young fella. He waltzed right in here without so much as a by-your-leave, climbed the stairs, came clattering back down, headed for the bas.e.m.e.nt just like he knew where it was. I don't know.

My alarms just went off."

"Do you pull your gun often?"

"First time since about three years ago. There was a squabble in one of the apartments. A man was whaling on his wife, and she was screaming. I called the police, but they didn't come fast enough to suit me, so I went up there and showed him my gun and told him to git. Which he did. And of course she got right after him; they left together the next week." She looked at the policeman. "It's not like I wave this thing around promiscuously. Just when I need to."

"I see," he said drily. "All right, I think I'm ready to go look at the apartment."

Morgan stood and tugged D.J. to her feet. "Ready for this?" he whispered. He wore Saul's sneer again.

She felt angry. She wasn't sure Morgan could control his ghosts, but she thought, from what Clift had said earlier, that Morgan had some say in who was acting. Why was he siccing Saul on her? Clift, Gary, Morgan, any of the rest of them would have been better, even Mishka or Shadow.

Saul's smile widened. "Yeah, give it to me, baby," he whispered, his hand squeezing hers with steady on-and-off pressure, thumb pressing into her palm, a stand-in for s.e.x, his leer told her.

"Not now!" she muttered, jerking her hand out of his and stalking around the table to the door. She led the officer and Afra and Morgan upstairs, then fumbled for her key, realized she had left her purse in the bas.e.m.e.nt, had dropped it when she grabbed the mop. "d.a.m.n," she said.

Morgan reached past her and tried the doork.n.o.b. It turned and the door opened.

"Okay. From now on, don't touch anything else, all right?" said Officer Vance.

Maybe there had been a perfect print on the doork.n.o.b, D.J. thought. d.a.m.n. She led Vance in and pointed to the red spraypaint. The message was still there. For a moment she had been afraid that it had disappeared and Vance would think the whole thing was some kind of moronic stunt. But it was still there: "Only you can purify me. Only through your blood will I be saved." Chase's sprawling bold "O"s and "I" pegged the phrases down.

"What does it mean to you, Ms. Hand?" Vance asked.

"I --" Chase had a magic chant that came out of him when the lovemaking was at its most intense. D.J. had never had a traditional religious upbringing, so she wasn't sure exactly what the chant meant. When he said it she was usually pretty far gone into her own sensations, but now she remembered it: "You are my redemption, you are my savior, you renew me and cleanse me, through you I find the kingdom of heaven and I am born AGAIN, oh, oh, wash my sins away. . . . "

Later she had thought about it even though she didn't want to. It reminded her of movies about the Catholic church: confession, then penance and -- absolution, was it? Chase had never confessed to anyone; but maybe he knew he'd done something wrong. Maybe he thought of D.J. as a cure for his badness.

It had taken her more than a year to get over the nauseated feeling she got every time someone expressed even the slightest s.e.xual interest in her.

"I think it means he wants to kill me," D.J. said in a thin voice. "He never used to think about me as the-- the sacrifice, but I betrayed him . . . . I helped them put him away . . . . "

Saul slipped his arm around her and pulled her up against him. She glared at him, her best melt-b.u.t.ter-at-five-paces sizzler, and he grinned and winked at her.

Dimly she realized that she was never nauseated by Saul or even scared of him.

Only furious. She dug her elbow into his side, and he relaxed his grip but didn't let go of her. "I helped them put him away," she said in a stronger voice, anger underlying it. "And he should have stayed there. How did he get out?"

"I can't go into detail," said Vance. "But he did escape. He's considered armed and extremely dangerous. Since he's found you here, it might be best if we took you into protective custody."

"Yes," said Morgan, in Gary's voice.

"I'm packed and ready," said D.J. She frowned. "Does this mean I can't go to work?"

"He knows where you work."

"Oh, yeah. d.a.m.n! I'll have to call my boss."

Officer Vance said, "Is there anything else you can tell me about his habits that might lead us to him?"

"He drives a Volkswagen bug," said Saul. "We heard it leaving after Afra chased him off."

Vance's eyes narrowed. He studied Morgan for a moment, then shrugged. "Thanks."

He turned to D.J. "Let's get your things."

"They're in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

They left the apartment and headed downstairs again, Vance leading the way, followed by Afra, Morgan and D.J. in the rear.

D.J. caught Morgan's arm and slowed him, letting the others get ahead of them.

"How come you guys have been letting Saul maul me?" she whispered.

"He makes you mad, and that's better than scared," muttered Clift.

"p.r.i.c.k!" she whispered.

For a second, Clift looked wounded, but then Saul came back, with his nasty grin. "Hey, baby," he murmured, "I know this body ain't much to look at, but I got techniques that could keep you happy."

She felt heat in her cheeks.

"You look great in red," he whispered and laid his hand on her blush.

For a hot furious second she glared at him without moving away. Then something inside her crumbled and she stepped closer, putting her arms around him, pressing her face into his chest. He was crazy. He was haunted. He was probably very bad for her. Maybe she was really bad for him. Morgan was confused enough as it was without some kind of love life.

And yet. In the midst of this crashing chaos, with whatever fragile recovery she'd made since leaving Chase threatening to tear apart, here was wavery Morgan, standing as stable as he could. Even Saul was comforting, in a perverse way. And almost exciting. Which made her want to tum in her enlightened woman's card and hide her face from anybody with self-respect.

"Hon," murmured a woman's voice, tinted with a slight Southern accent and higher than the female voice D.J. had heard from Morgan before, "we can do this later.

Maybe we should try not to be too weird right now."