Water To Burn Part 2

"Yeah, I bet. I'll talk to someone else."

The officer escorted us across the road to the concrete esplanade. A sergeant, a formidable-looking African-American guy of about forty, met us. We showed our IDs again.

On the half circle of view area, near the steps that led down to the actual sand and water, two women had their arms around a third, who stood hunched over, sobbing, with her hands covering her face. Two men stood protectively on either side of a teenage boy, who was shivering despite the heavy blanket wrapped around him. His red hair hung in wet tendrils around his face. Everyone wore heavy jeans or slacks and sensible thick jackets.

"It doesn't look like anyone planned on going into the water for a swim," I said.

"They didn't," the sergeant said. "A rogue wave."

"What?" Ari said. "It's high tide, but the sea looks calm enough."

"Yeah. It's strange, all around. Here, I'll let you talk to the preacher."

A youngish white man, wearing jeans and a parka, open at the throat to display a black shirt with a churchman's white collar, hurried over when the sergeant beckoned to him. He introduced himself as the Reverend Tom Wilson of a local Baptist church. He had a long narrow face and pale blue eyes that at the moment looked half full of tears.

"Can you stand to tell me what happened?" I said.

"The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away," Wilson said, but his voice shook. "Blessed be the name of the Lord! It's a terrible thing. I can't believe it happened, and here I saw it myself."

I made a sympathetic noise.

"Our church also runs a Christian school," Wilson went on. "We brought a group of kids out here for a nature walk."

"Those are the children waiting in the bus?" I said.

"Yes. The police agreed that they didn't need to stand out in the cold. Anyway, we kept everyone on the sand, no wading allowed, even." He swallowed heavily. "I've lived in the Bay Area all my life. I know what the riptides and such are like."

"Very dangerous, yeah," I said. "Did the missing girl run into the water?"

"No, not at all. Brittany and Cody there-" He nodded in the direction of the shivering boy, "-had gotten a few yards ahead of the rest of us, but only a few. The wave, well, it seemed to come out of nowhere, this great rush of water, like a green wall. Look, you can see the damp patch on the sand, over there to the south of us."

I looked and noted the darker sand, a stretch maybe twenty feet long and a good ten feet beyond the soaked firm sand of the tide line. Ari pulled out his cell phone and walked a couple of yards away to snap photos of it.

"It pulled both children into the sea, I take it," I said.

Wilson nodded. "Cody managed to get out again. Brittany didn't."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

Wilson choked back a sob. "The oddest thing, though." He glanced at the huddled group behind him, as if rea.s.suring himself they were still safe. "The wave, it was like it had tentacles or hands. It was reaching for our kids, I swear it, with strands of seawater. I could feel a malignancy in that wave. Satan, I suppose, bent on murder." He gave me an odd twisted smile, all pain and black humor. "The police think I'm crazy. Do you?"

"No," I said. "I don't think it was Satan, but if you say you felt something malignant, you could be right. I don't know yet, but I'm not dismissing what you say."

"Thanks." He gulped for breath, then turned away. "It meant to take them. I swear it."

I let him go back to his flock. Ari rejoined me.

"I've seen enough," I said. "Let's get out of everyone's way."

We crossed the highway, but at the head of the path down, I glanced back at the ocean. I saw, just for a brief moment, the figure of an enormous woman standing on the sea. The fog wrapped her with gray mourning clothes, and a dead child lay across her outstretched arms. I knew then that the girl had drowned.

CHAPTER 2.

BY THE TIME WE RETURNED TO OUR PARKED CAR, I was so cold that just getting into the driver's seat felt like putting on a fur coat. I slid the keys into the ignition, then sat rubbing my icy hands to warm them up before I tried to drive.

"That wasn't a coincidence, was it?" Ari said.

"What wasn't?"

"Our happening on this accident."

I contemplated the question while I buckled my seat belt. "I'm not sure," I said. "It's just luck that we were so close when the chopper went over. But something's been prompting me to get down to the water all day."

Ari stared out the windshield for a moment. "I see," he said. "You know, I've had quite enough of flat hunting."

"So have I. Let's go over to Eileen's. She won't mind if we're early."

"I need to go back to the apartment first and change."

"Why? You're already wearing a suit. You look fine."

"That's not it. I can't keep this jacket on all evening to hide the shoulder holster. I need to get a smaller weapon."

Some men change their clothes to suit an occasion. Ari changes his gun.

While Ari rummaged through his half-unpacked luggage, I checked my messages on both my landline and my cell phone, and a good thing I did. My sister Kathleen had called to tell me that I could bring Ari to the party on Sunday, since he was back in town. Either Eileen had called her, or we'd mentally overlapped. My immediate reaction: Party? What party? A frantic search of my memory turned up the data that Kathleen had, a couple of weeks before, when I was enmeshed in the most dangerous case of my career, invited me to a pool party. Kathleen has never been known for her good timing.

I walked into the bedroom to see Ari putting his shoulder holster and semiautomatic pistol away in the bottom drawer of my dresser, where I kept my underwear.

"Symbolism?" I said.

He looked at me as if I'd spoken in Martian. "What?" he said. "This is the only drawer that locks."

"Just a joke," I said. "Don't let it bother you."

He had a tiny pistol that fit into a holster that slid under the waistband of his slacks. Before he stowed it, though, he held up the gun.

"This is a Sig Sauer P232." Ari sounded like a parent introducing a child. "It carries seven shots. Not many, but adequate in an emergency."

"Gosh, that makes me feel so much safer."

"No need for sarcasm! This holster's specially made for the Israeli army." He stroked the nasty little thing. "You should carry a weapon like this in your bag. I'll get one for you."

"I will not carry a firearm. Sorry. No way."

"I know you have another way to protect yourself, but-"

"There are no buts. No guns."

He rolled his eyes, then picked up his suit coat. For a moment he frowned at it.

"What's wrong?" I said.

"Do you have a sewing kit?"

"Uh, no. Why?"

"The lining in my jacket's torn again." He held up the jacket and demonstrated by turning the left sleeve inside out. The lining had frayed badly right at the seam shared by the sleeve and shoulder.

"I usually just take stuff like that to the seamstress at the dry cleaner's," I said.

"I need to do it myself."

"Why?"

"Because they always ask questions. The fraying's from the hammer of the Beretta in the shoulder holster. It rubs. I don't like to advertise that I carry a firearm."

"Oh. Well, when we're at Aunt Eileen's, ask her. She'll mend it for you, and she's good at keeping secrets."

"She'd have to be, in your family. Which reminds me. Does everyone in your family know about your real job?"

"No, just the trustworthy ones. Eileen and Jim, obviously, and the two boys. And Sean and Al. Father Keith. I think Dan suspects."

"You trust Brian and Michael?"

"Of course. Michael has plenty to hide himself, and Brian's a closemouthed kid by nature as well as nurture. He knows better than to blab family secrets. We all learned that young."

"Good," Ari said. "I should certainly hope you've not told Kathleen."

"I haven't, no. She never makes sure her brain's engaged before she puts her mouth in gear. And there's no reason for Jack to know anything. Ditto Maureen and her kids."

"But you trust the Houlihans."

A slight edge to his tone of voice put me in warning mode. He was probing, I suddenly realized, though I didn't know why or for what.

"Sure," I said. "Why wouldn't I?"

"I was just wondering how much I could say in front of them. They seem like the sort of people who can keep a secret, but I wanted to verify that."

"Okay. I wouldn't tell them anything about your other job, though."

"I certainly wasn't planning on it. No need to burden them. Oh, by the way, what does Jim do? I'd like to be able to chat with him."

"He works for the Muni, the bus system. He started out as a driver, but he's a supervisor now. He's a lot smarter than he acts, you know."

"I rather suspected that. Good. I know something about the underground and things of that sort from my time in London."

He smiled so blandly that my suspicions deepened. He had a logical reason to ask about the Houlihans, I supposed, but I changed the subject anyway. "Do you have something in that sample case of yours that measures radioactivity levels?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact. Why?"

"Is it small enough to take along to Aunt Eileen's? I'm worried about Michael sneaking through that world gate. He's got a girlfriend over in the trashed version of the United States."

"The hooker?"

"Yeah."

"And she'll have s.e.x with him?"

"Yeah."

"Then I don't need the rad counter." Ari paused for a smile. "Of course he's going over to see her. I'd be more worried about diseases than radiation. I'll talk to him about condoms."

"Good idea. Better you than me." And d.a.m.ned if I didn't blush.

Aunt Eileen and her family, which now included my brother Michael, lived on the other side of the city, about halfway up the main hill of the Excelsior district, which slopes up from the outer reaches of Mission Street. It's a neighborhood of single-family homes built on top of longago truck gardens and small farms. Eileen and Jim Houlihan's house started life as a cottage on one of the farms, then expanded over the years with the neighborhood. Unlike most of the solid two-story stucco houses around it, it faced the street on a double lot and spread out in a weird formation. The north end had three stories, the south end, two, but the middle, the orginal construction, only one.

Various neighbors had made snide comments over the years about this ramshackle, pulling-down-the-propertyvalues place, but little did they know just how peculiar a construction it was. Just as well, too. Knowing they lived next to a psychic gate to some other level of the universe wouldn't have done much for their peace of mind.

I found a spot to park the rental car right in front of the Houlihan house, or to be precise, at the foot of the steep slope that led up to the house. When we got out, I glanced across the street and saw a youngish man standing on the sidewalk and looking our way. One of the neighbors, or another Chaos spy? On the pretense of stretching, I sketched a Chaos ward and sent it sailing across the street. It hit him with absolutely no effect. Only one of the neighbors, then, idly curious. Dealing with Fish Guy had left me paranoid. If the Chaos forces could generate spies that looked like ordinary human beings, they could be lurking anywhere, in crowds, wandering down the street, standing around in grocery stores, anywhere.

"What's wrong?" Ari said. "You've gone a little pale."

"Just some evil thoughts. I'll explain later."

As we climbed the brick steps up from the street, I could hear faint rock music leaking from the upper story of the house. When Aunt Eileen opened the front door, the music blasted out. She was wearing one of her typical outfits, a bright red circle skirt with a fuzzy poodle applique at the bottom, a white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and leopardprint flats.

"Both boys are home, huh?" I had to yell to be heard.

"Yes," she yelled back. "I'll tell them to turn it down, not that they will-much."

"I'll go do it," Ari said in a too-brief pause in the music. "They'll listen to me."

"It's so nice having you back." Eileen reached up and patted him on the cheek. "Thank you."

The music cranked up again. Ari smiled at her fondly, then strode across the long white living room to head for the stairway up. The exchange of smiles bothered me. I took it as another stake in the picket fence of domesticity that the family kept trying to build around me. Still, the music upstairs stopped, suddenly and permanently after a single bellow from Ari.

"He does have his uses," I said.

"I'd say so," Aunt Eileen said. "Come into the kitchen, dear. I'm just putting the finishing touches on dinner."