Odd Thomas - Страница 22

I opened a bottle of good Merlot and poured while she held the wineglasses.

This was why earlier I had not finished the glass of Cabernet: As much as I love Little Ozzie, I would rather drink with Stormy.

We don't eat in this perch every evening, only two or three times a month, when Stormy needs to be high above the world. And closer to Heaven.

"To Ozzie," Stormy said, raising her glass in a toast. "With the hope that one day there'll be an end to all his losses."

I didn't ask what she meant by that because I thought perhaps I knew. By the affliction of his weight, there is much in life that Ozzie has been denied and may never experience.

Citrus-orange near the western horizon, blood-orange across the ascending vault, the sky darkened to purple directly overhead. In the east, the first stars of the night would soon begin to appear.

"The sky's so clear," Stormy said. "We'll be able to see Cassiopeia tonight."

She referred to a northern constellation named after a figure of classic mythology, but Cassiopeia was also the name of Stormy's mother, who had died when Stormy was seven years old. Her father had perished in the same plane crash.

With no family but her uncle, the priest, she had been placed for adoption. When in three months the adoption failed for good reason, she made it explicitly clear that she didn't want new parents, only the return of those whom she had loved and lost.

Until the age of seventeen, when she graduated from high school, she was raised in an orphanage. Thereafter, until she was eighteen, she had lived under the legal guardianship of her uncle.

For the niece of a priest, Stormy has a strange relationship with God. There is anger in it-always a little, sometimes a lot.

"What about Fungus Man?" she asked.

"Terrible Chester doesn't like him."

"Terrible Chester doesn't like anyone."

"I think Chester's even afraid of him."

"Now that is news."

"He's a hand grenade with the pin already pulled."

"Terrible Chester?"

"No. Fungus Man. Real name's Bob Robertson. The hair on his back was standing straight up like I've never seen it."

"Bob Robertson has a lot of hair on his back?"

"No. Terrible Chester. Even when he scared off that huge German shepherd, he didn't raise his hackles like he did today."

"Loop me in, odd one. How did Bob Robertson and Terrible Chester happen to be in the same place?"

"Since I broke into his house, I think maybe he's been following me around."

Even as I spoke the word following, my attention was drawn to movement in the graveyard.

Immediately west of St. Bart's is a cemetery very much in the old style: not bronze plaques set in granite flush with the grass, as in most modern graveyards, but vertical headstones and monuments. An iron fence with spearpoint pickets surrounds those three acres. Although a few California live oaks, more than a century old, shade portions of the burial ground, most of the green aisles are open to the sun.

In the fiery glow of that Tuesday twilight, the grass appeared to have a bronze undertone, the shadows were as black as char, the polished surfaces of the granite markers mirrored the scarlet sky-and Robertson stood as still as any headstone in the churchyard, not under the cover of a tree but out where he could be easily seen.

Having set her wineglass on the parapet, Stormy crouched at the hamper. "I've got some cheese that's perfect with this wine."

If Robertson had been standing with his head bowed, studying the engraving on a memorial, I would still have been disturbed to see him here. But this was worse. He had not come to pay his respects to the dead, not for any reason as innocent as that.

With his head tipped back, with his eyes fixed on me where I stood at the belfry parapet, the singular intensity of his interest all but crackled from him like arcing electricity.

Past the oaks and beyond the iron fence, I could see parts of two streets that intersected at the northwest corner of the cemetery. As far as I could tell, no marked or unmarked police vehicle was parked along either avenue.

Chief Porter had promised to assign a man at once to watch the house in Camp's End. If Robertson hadn't been home yet, however, that officer could not have established surveillance.

"You want crackers with the cheese?" Stormy asked.

Crimson had seeped down the summer sky, closer to the horizon, staining the western swathe of bright orange until it narrowed to a swatch. The air itself seemed to be stained red, and the shadows of trees and tombstones, already soot-black, grew even blacker.

Robertson had arrived with nightfall.

I set my wineglass beside Stormy's. "We've got a problem."

"Crackers aren't a problem," Stormy said, "just a choice."

A sudden loud flapping-fluttering startled me.

Turning to see three pigeons swooping into the belfry and to their roost in the rafters above the bells, I bumped into Stormy as she rose with two small containers. Crackers and wedges of cheese spilled across the catwalk.

"Oddie, what a mess!" She stooped, set the containers aside, and began to gather the crackers and cheese.

Down on the darkening grass, Robertson had thus far stood with his arms at his sides, a slump-shoulder hulk. Aware that I was as fixated on him as he was on me, he now raised his right arm almost as if in a Nazi salute.

'Are you going to help me here," Stormy asked, "or are you going to be a typical man?"

Initially I thought he might be shaking his fist at me, but in spite of the poor-and rapidly fading-light, I soon saw that the gesture was even less polite than it had seemed at first. His middle finger was extended, and he thrust it toward me with short, angry jabs.

"Robertson's here," I told her.

"Who?"

"Fungus Man."

Suddenly he was on the move, walking between the headstones, toward the church.

"We better forget dinner," I said, drawing Stormy to her feet with the intention of hustling her out of the belfry. "Let's get down from here."

Resisting me, she turned to the parapet. "I don't let anyone intimidate me."

"Oh, I do. If they're crazy enough."

"Where is he? I don't see him."

Leaning out, peering down, I couldn't see him either. Apparently he had reached the front or the back of the church and had turned a corner.

"The door at the bottom of the steps," I said, "did it lock behind us automatically when we came into the tower?"

"I don't know. I don't think so."

I didn't like the idea of being trapped at the top of the tower, even though we could shout for help and surely be heard. The belfry door had no lock, and I doubted that the two of us could hold it shut against him if, in a rage, he was determined to open it.

Grabbing her by the hand, pulling to impress on her the need for urgency, I hurried along the catwalk, stepping over the cheese and crackers, around the bells. "Let's get out of here."

"The hamper, our dinner-"

"Leave it. We'll get it later, tomorrow."

We had left the lights on in the tower. But the spiral stairs were enclosed, and I couldn't see all the way to the bottom, only as far as the continuously curving walls allowed.

Below, all was quiet.

"Hurry," I urged Stormy, and without using the handrail, I preceded her down those steep steps, setting a pace too fast to be safe.

NINETEEN

DOWN, DOWN, AROUND AND DOWN, I LED AND SHE followed, striking too much noise from the Mexican-tile steps, unable to hear Robertson if he was climbing to meet us.

At the halfway point I wondered if this haste might be an overreaction. Then I remembered his upraised fist, the extended finger, the glowering photos in his study.

I plunged even faster, around and around, unable to block from my mind the image of him waiting below with a butcher knife on which I might impale myself before I could stop.

When we reached the bottom without encountering him, we found the lower door unlocked. I opened it cautiously.

Contrary to my expectations, he wasn't waiting for us in the softly lighted narthex.

Descending the tower stairs, I had let go of Stormy's hand. Now I seized it again to keep her close to me.

When I opened the centermost of three front doors, I saw Robertson climbing the church steps from the sidewalk. Although not racing toward me, he approached with the grim implacability of a tank crossing a battlefield.

In the apocalyptic crimson light, I could see that his creepy but previously reliable smile had deserted him. His pale-gray eyes borrowed a bloody cast from the sunset, and his face wrenched into a knot of murderous wrath.

Terri's Mustang waited at the curb. I wouldn't be able to reach it without going through Robertson.

I will fight when I have to, against opponents who dwarf me if I must. But I turn to physical conflict neither as a first resort nor as a matter of misguided principle.

I'm not vain, but I like my face just the way it is. I prefer that it not be stomped.

Robertson was bigger than me, but soft. Had his anger been that of an ordinary man, perhaps pumped up by one beer too many, I might have confronted him and would have been confident of taking him down.

He was a lunatic, however, an object of fascination to bodachs, and an idolizer of mass murderers and serial killers. I had to assume that he carried a gun, a knife, and that in the middle of a fight, he might begin to bite like a dog.