Inheritance: A Novel Part 36

"Oh. I didn't know."

He shrugged.

"It is true then." There was awe and terror in her eyes. "You are meant to inherit this power."

"That's what I'm told."

"Paul, I am very scared. Your father possesses great power. Power far beyond my own. Even from the grave he is powerful. But your father is a dark man, Paul. A bad man. I think he has corrupted the power that he inherited from my Abuela, the power he intends to pa.s.s on to you. He is using what he knows to do horrible things."

Paul sighed. "What are you saying, Magdalena? My dad is Darth Vader?"

"I...I do not understand."

"You know, big dude, black helmet, sounds like James Earl Jones? Is that what you're trying to say, that my dad is strong in the dark ways of the force? I guess that makes me Luke. Who does that make you? Are you supposed to be my Obi-wan Ken.o.bi or my Yoda?"

She looked thoroughly confused.

"I do not know what you mean. I do not know these people."

"Are you kidding me? You've never seen Star Wars? Who in the h.e.l.l hasn't seen Star Wars?"

"Paul, I am being very serious with you. You have seen the visions. You have seen your father. You know the power is real."

"Yes, I know it is."

"Paul, I am very scared. My Abuela taught me how to use this power when I was little girl. She told me it was meant to heal. It is used to strengthen the soul. So long as all things are in balance, it can accomplish anything."

"Yes, that's part of it."

"Part of it, yes. But your father, Paul. He has done many horrible things. He has murdered many men. He has taken that which is good and strong and balanced and made it a force for wickedness." She hung her head, like a spy who's just been made to talk, a heretic admitting her crime. "He made me raise the dead, Paul. Do you have any idea what a great transgression that is?"

She looked down at her hands and he could tell she was willing them to stop shaking.

She looked back over her shoulder, then down at her hands again. "Paul," she said. "You are not alone in this. Others are trying to help you. But they cannot do it alone. Your father is too powerful for that. In the end, fighting him will be up to you. To do that, you have to find something to help you stay in this world. He will try to lead you into his world; you must fight that. You need to center yourself in this world. Find something worth holding on to, because the dead will take you over when you quit being a part of this world."

"Well, that certainly sounds serious," he said.

She looked shocked by his flippancy. She stared at him for a long time, and as he stared back at her, he could see the knowledge of what was going to happen dawning within her.

She swallowed hard.

From somewhere behind her came the sound of windows breaking. She jumped to her feet and spun around to face the noise. Paul kept his seat. He looked at his fingernails and waited.

"Oh my G.o.d," Magdalena said.

"Something like that," Paul answered.

The backdoor blew open. Paul heard the sounds of bare feet walking over broken gla.s.s on the hardwood floor. He heard the moans of the dead coming closer. They were stepping out of the shadows, taking shape as they stumbled from the kitchen to the living room.

Magdalena saw them and gasped. There were four of them. Each man was completely nude, their chests bearing the Y-shaped st.i.tching of an autopsy. Their bodies had the faintly yellow tint of dead flesh. Their eyes were completely vacant. Paul had attended an autopsy as a cadet and he knew the doctors bagged all the organs that had been slopped out of the torso into plastic trash bags and then stuffed the bag back inside the body before st.i.tching it up. The memory came back to him now because the dead man who was first through the door had a sc.r.a.p of trash bag sticking out from one corner of the Y-shaped seam in his chest.

Magdalena turned on Paul and her eyes were pleading for help. She said, "But he hasn't turned you yet. You can't do this. You have to protect me."

Paul stared back at her with cold indifference. A small part of him did feel uneasy, but that part was buried deep down, and it couldn't compete with the thundering echo of his father's voice coming out of that wall of static.

"Please," she said.

Paul's expression didn't change.

Magdalena shook her head no, like it wasn't fair, then ran for the front door.

She never made it.

The dead moved fast. They swarmed over her like piranha on a sinking carca.s.s. From his place on the couch, Paul listened to her screams. He could hear the dead men tearing her apart, ripping into her with their hands and their teeth, and then, with awful suddenness, all was quiet-save for the sound of wet body parts being tossed onto the hardwood floor.

It didn't last long, hardly five minutes. When the dead pa.s.sed through the living room, bound for the backdoor, one of them was dragging Magdalena's left leg. There was a long, ropy piece of tissue hanging off the severed end, painting a thick blackish-red smear across the floor.

The dead man dropped the leg in the middle of the floor and walked out the backdoor with the others. They faded into nothingness as they stepped outside.

Paul watched them go and that static voice inside his head told him it was time for him to vanish as well.

Chapter 17.

Paul drove to the Eastside Substation, showered, and changed into his uniform. He barely remembered the drive. The entire evening was a dim blur, vague images moving behind a red veil. He knew he had built a stick lattice. He remembered the feeling that had come over him as he touched the wall of static that appeared in his vision, but that was the last clear thing he could remember. Everything after that, from leaving Magdalena's house to the start of his shift and the six calls they'd made so far, was a blur.

Mike said, "You want some?"

He was holding up something that looked like a giant pork rind. They were at The Cave again. Paul had barely touched his burger.

"What is that?" Paul asked.

"Chicken fried bacon," Mike said. "You want some? It's a heart attack waiting to happen, but this s.h.i.t is good."

Paul shook his head. "You really eat that?"

"h.e.l.l yeah. Don't worry about the heart attack part, Paul. They put EMS on stand-by every time somebody orders this. Try it."

"No thanks."

Mike shrugged and took a bite. "Suit yourself."

"44-70," the dispatcher said.

"d.a.m.n it," Mike said. He keyed up his radio. "Go ahead, 44-70."

"44-70, make the south entrance of the Morgan Rollins Iron Works and contact 85-07. He's standing by."

"85-07?" Paul said. "Who's that?"

"Homicide," Mike said. "Remember, Homicide is the 85 series?"

"Yeah, I guess." He rubbed his eyes, trying to force himself to think. "Sorry. Just tired."

Mike gave him a worried look.

"44-70."

"Yeah, yeah," Mike said. He keyed up his radio. "44-70, I copy, ma'am. Who is that by name, please?"

"Homicide is all he said, 44-70. He requested you and your partner by name though, sir."

"Great. Well, pull yourself together there, sleepyhead. Let's go see what Homicide wants."

For the past week, Keith Anderson had been working his way through mountains of paperwork. He and his team had gone through every doc.u.ment of government record that mentioned the original forty-five murder victims and every report mentioning David Everett. They'd gone back through every report Bobby Cantrell ever wrote. They poured over autopsy reports and crime scene photos and anonymous CrimeStoppers tips and patrol-initiated field contacts, and so far, they had a big handful of nothing.

None of their leads amounted to anything useful. None of the strange, ritualistic behavior they had seen matched anything in any of the law enforcement information clearinghouses-federal, state or otherwise. The only thing he did have was a mounting pile of handwritten to-do lists and a page of stick figure diagrams with Paul Henninger in the center. It made him feel like a blind man trying to grope his way out of a maze.

But in all the rush to gather information, in all the long, endless hours spent thinking about unspeakable crimes, the one thing he hadn't done was revisit the initial crime scene. He had been over the photographs and blueprints of it countless times, but he hadn't actually seen it since that first night. And that gave him an idea. He still needed to talk to Paul Henninger alone, and Paul was working the area around the Morgan Rollins factory. He was going to need a patrol escort while he explored the scene, so why not call Henninger and kill two birds with one stone? Talking to Paul in that environment might put him in the right frame of mind, certainly more than another trip downtown to Homicide would. So he made a call to the East dispatcher and had Paul and his partner meet him at the south entrance to the factory. By the time they arrived, he was waiting by the trunk of his car, flashlight in hand.

Anderson shook hands with Mike Garcia first. "How you been, Mike?"

"Good, sir. You?"

Anderson shrugged. "Fair, I guess. Busy."

"I bet. You mind telling us what we're doin' out here?"

"Just wanted to go over the scene again." He extended his hand to Paul and said, "How are you, Officer Henninger?"

"I'm okay," Paul said.

Anderson studied the younger officer, and couldn't help but feel a little intimidated by his size. He was a wall of almost pure muscle, and his hand completely swallowed Anderson's. It wasn't much of a stretch to see this kid playing college ball. Maybe even in the pros. But he looked tired. Anderson could see black shadows under his eyes, and that bruise on his forehead was still there. He must have taken a h.e.l.l of a hit to get a mark like that.

Anderson said, "You know, I've been doing some research on those goats you told me about. The Angoras."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Turns out you were right about it being a common livestock animal around these parts. Apparently, Texas leads the nation in mohair production. I was kind of surprised about that. You know, it being so hot down here. Don't the animals ever just keel over and die from the heat."

Paul shrugged. "I suppose it happens."

"Of course, it may be they're just used to this kind of climate. The information I found said they're one of the oldest known breeds in existence. Started all the way back in the Middle East, and it is hot as h.e.l.l there, too. Did you know there's mention of them as early as the time of Moses?"

Paul didn't answer. Anderson watched him, and he could sense the younger officer bringing up a defensive wall. He backed off a little. He smiled and tried to look disarmingly dumb.

He said, "So, I bet you guys were probably trying to get something to eat, weren't you?"

Mike laughed.

Anderson said, "Yeah, I thought so." He took out a small digital camera and said, "Come on, we'll make this quick. You ready to go exploring?"

They were inside the superstructure now, walking the catwalks. Anderson stopped at the foot of a ladder that Paul and Mike had scaled without difficulty and groaned at the prospect of going up it. They hadn't made it very far, and already he was breathing hard and sweating.

He wondered how anybody, especially a bunch of browned out heroin junkies, could have possibly moved through the rusted tangle of bent steel and collapsed walkways that he was looking at now without killing themselves. Pipes and wires and hulking pieces of busted machinery seemed to poke out in every direction, and the place was a maze of dark, blind alleys. Some of them were part of the original superstructure, but others had been made by the hundreds of junkies who had called this place home. When he got near the top of the ladder Mike offered him a hand up and he took it. They were perched on a two foot wide metal ledge. Behind him was the ladder. In front of him was a twenty foot drop off. At the bottom of the drop off was a dangerous looking pile of metal rods and rusted sc.r.a.p that reminded Anderson of some kind of metal insect monster trying to crawl its way up from an abyss.

"Thanks," he said.

He dusted the rust off his pants and tried to look like this was the kind of thing he did every day.

"You guys make many calls in here?"

"Sometimes," Mike said. "Suspicious person calls, mostly."

"Who calls them in? There're no houses around here."

"Different people," Mike said, and shrugged. He found a clear path into the superstructure on a walkway a few feet above them. He jumped up first, then gave Paul and Anderson a hand up. "Probably just people pa.s.sing by on Morgan Rollins Road. If you keep going south past the factory the road comes out onto Walters Avenue. It's a straight shot to the freeway from there."

"Yeah, but how do you see them from all the way down there? I barely saw a thing when I was down there waiting for you guys."

"You'd be surprised," Mike said. "In the moonlight, you can see people up on these catwalks without too much trouble."

"I'll take your word for it, I guess."

They moved on in silence after that, climbing through and over the debris until they reached the inner network of corridors that led to the circular chamber where Herrera had died. Provided he had his bearings right, they were also pretty close to the spot where Bobby Cantrell died. Some of what he was seeing looked familiar from the crime scene photos. Ahead of him were four corridors. The one to his far left went nowhere. He could see that from where he stood. The one to the right of that led to a catwalk that skirted around the circular inner chamber. It was on that catwalk that they'd found David Everett. The two on the far right both led to the circular chamber, but he was more interested in the one to the extreme right because that was the one Cantrell and Herrera had taken the night they died.

He pointed it out to Mike and Paul. "That one leads to where we want to go."

"Okay," Mike said. "If you say so."

Anderson looked at Mike. "You've been here before, haven't you?"

"I don't come in here unless I have to. Usually we just drive by and hit the place with our spotlights. That's about all it takes to get the junkies off the catwalks."

Anderson raised an eyebrow at him. "Good to know things haven't changed since I was on patrol."

"What are you looking for anyway?" Mike said.

"That's a good question," Anderson said. He turned his light down one of the corridors and took a couple of steps into it. "I don't really know what I'm looking for. I hardly ever do. If something grabs me, I pay attention. You know?"