The Haunted Air Part 53

As they'd worked Jack had told them how he'd come into possession of Tara Portman's key ring-leaving out names, of course, and sidestepping mention of his knife fight with Eli Bellitto.

Lyle began counting off on his fingers. "First you meet Junie Moon, you bring her here, you step across the threshold, and awaken Tara Portman. Two days later someone hires you to watchdog someone he says is his brother but who you later learn is an only child. In the course of guarding the brotherless man you snag a key ring off him which just happens to belong to Tara Portman." He shook his head. "Talk about wheels within wheels."

And no more coincidences, Jack thought glumly, wondering at the purpose behind all this. And why was Gia involved? This whole situation was giving him a very unsettled feeling.

Lyle pried a Frisbee-size remnant of paneling from a two-by-four stud and scaled it onto the growing junk pile at the back end of the cellar.

"But just having Tara's key ring doesn't make this guy her killer. He could have found it on the sidewalk or picked it up at a garage sale."

Jack wondered how much he could tell these two. Since they lived on his side of the law, he decided to trust them with a little more.

"What if I told you that I saw him s.n.a.t.c.h a kid while I was watchd.o.g.g.i.ng him?"

Charlie gave him a wide-eyed stare. "You frontin' me, right?"

Jack shook his head. "I wish. And if that's not enough, this guy has a whole cabinet full of kids' junk. Like a trophy case."

"Oh, man." Lyle had a queasy look. "Oh, man. What happened to that s.n.a.t.c.hed kid?"

"I uns.n.a.t.c.hed him."

"Yo! Yo!" Charlie pointed a waggling finger at Jack. "The Vietnamese kid! That was you?"

"I'd rather not say."

"It was you!" Charlie grinned. "You a hero, G."

Jack shrugged and turned back to the stud he'd been prying loose from the blocks. Words like "hero" made him uncomfortable. Like "art," it tended to be thrown around a little too easily these days.

"You'd've done the same. Anybody would have." He s.h.i.+fted the talk away from himself. "I'll bet anything there's a link between this guy and the late, great Dmitri Menelaus. If I'm right, I'm afraid we can count on finding more than just Tara Portman's remains down here."

Which would work right into Lyle's PR plans.

Lyle leaned against the wall. "A serial killer." He didn't sound happy.

"More than one," Jack said. "A ring of them maybe. If I can establish a link with Dmitri..."

"What then?"

He found a groove between two blocks behind the two-by-four and slipped the pry bar into it. To the squealing accompaniment of protesting nails and the crackle of splintering fir, he wrenched the stud free with a vicious yank.

"A few people are going to wish they'd never been born."

Lyle stared at him. "Someone hire you to do that?"

"No."

Jack still wanted to know who'd hired him to watch Eli Bellitto, but no, no one would be paying him for what was going to happen to Bellitto and his crew.

"Then why're you going after them? I thought you were a pay-or-play guy. Fee for service, and all that. Why the freebie?"

"Because."

"That's not an answer."

"Yeah, it is."

"Praise the Lord!" Charlie said. His eyes glowed like a miniature sun had lit in his head. "Praise the Lord! You see what's goin' down here, don'tcha?"

Lyle said, "I'm almost afraid to hear this."

"Jack, you an instrument of G.o.d."

"Yeah?" He'd been called a lot of things since he'd started his fix-it business, but never that.

"True that! The guy hired you to hound this killer? A messenger from G.o.d, yo. He point you at the killer so you be there when that little kid need you."

"Really. What about all those other kids this guy's done? The ones like Tara Portman and who knows how many others?"

"Dawg, don't you see? G.o.d sent you here to even the score."

"You think so," Jack said.

Lyle laughed. "Hey, that's one a.s.s-backwards G.o.d you've got there, bro. Where was he when Tara needed him? I mean, he's not paying attention. If he was, there'd be no score to even. Too little, too late, if you ask me."

Charlie glowered at his brother. "Didn't ask you."

"And what happened to this demon you were talking about?" Lyle said. "First you tell us we've got a demon sent by Satan, and now we've got Jack sent by G.o.d. Which is it?"

Jack wanted to tell Lyle to ease up on his brother, but it wasn't his place. What was it with Lyle anyway? He seemed wound as tight as that clock Jack had bought yesterday.

"That's it." Charlie threw down his pry bar. "I'm outta here."

"No way. We have a deal. Two days."

"Yo, I ain't standin' here listenin' to you trash the Lord. Blasphemy wasn't no part of the deal."

Jack watched them, wondering what the h.e.l.l they were talking about.

Lyle held up his hands. "All right, I'm sorry. My bad. I was out of line. It's been a tough day. Truce, okay?"

"Truce sounds good," Jack said. "Let's keep at this. We've only got a little ways to go before it's all down."

"A'ight," Charlie said. "We keep at it."

"If we're going to do that, can we change the music?" The endless progression of cuts from Miles and Bird and now Coltrane was getting on his nerves.

Lyle frowned. "Don't tell me you don't like 'Trane."

"I guess I'm not cool enough for jazz. Or maybe not smart enough."

"How 'bout Gospel?" Charlie said with a sly grin. "I got a whole collection upstairs."

Jack leaned on the wall. "You know... if it's got words and melody, I'm willing."

"Why not a break from music?" Lyle said. "Just the sound of men hard at work."

Jack attacked another stud. "I can handle that."

After a minute or so Jack sensed eyes on the back of his neck and turned to find Lyle doing his stare-squint thing again. This was the third or fourth time he'd caught him.

"Do you find me attractive, Lyle?"

Lyle blinked. "Not at all. You're not my type."

"Then why do you keep staring at me?"

Lyle glanced at Charlie, then back to Jack. "If you must know, I'm trying to bring you into focus."

Jack's turn to blink. "You want to run that by me again?"

"When I look at you you're... fuzzy."

"Maybe you ought to invest in some gla.s.ses."

"It's not like that. I look at Charlie here and I see him bright and clear. I look at you and your features and most of the rest of you are clear and sharp, but around the edges... I don't have a better word for it than fuzzy. fuzzy."

Jack had to smile. "Is this a character a.s.sessment?"

"It's not funny, man." Lyle's eyes held a haunted look.

"When did it start? I didn't notice you staring at me when we were meeting with the Greek."

"It wasn't happening then. Maybe it's this house. I know it's done some weird s.h.i.+t to me."

"Yo, like what?" Charlie stepped forward, staring at his brother, the animosity of a moment ago giving way to brotherly concern. "This got to do with you canceling all those sittings?"

Lyle nodded, his haunted look growing. "Something's happened to me. I think it was that blood bath yesterday. It... did something to me."

"Like what?" Jack said.

"I can see things, know things I have no way and no right to know."

He told them about the morning's sitters, about seeing one woman's runaway husband, about another's lost pet-dead pet, roadkill on Twenty-seventh Street. He couldn't contact another's dead wife; yeah, she was dead but she was gone gone. No messages from beyond her grave.

"It's as if someone or something's playing games with me. Some of the powers I've been faking all these years... I really seem to have them now. At least while I'm in this house."

"And I look fuzzy to you." Jack didn't know what to make of that, but he didn't see how it could be good.

Lyle nodded. "Not when we were down at Kristadoulou's, but here, in the house... yes. There's more. With the sitters this morning... I think I could have handled what I was seeing and feeling from them if that had been all. But I was seeing into their futures as well. At least it felt like I was, but..." He shook his head. "I don't know. What I was seeing didn't seem right or... possible."

"You got that right, bro," Charlie said. "Only G.o.d can peep the future."

Again that haunted look in Lyle's eyes. "I hope you're right, because if what I saw has any validity, there's not much future left."

"What's that mean?" Jack said.

Lyle shrugged. "Wish I knew. The three sitters today... when I touched them I saw what their lives would be for the next year and a half or so, and they were each different up to a certain point, but after that it was all the same: darkness. And when I say darkness darkness here I don't mean just the absence of light, I mean a cold, hard, here I don't mean just the absence of light, I mean a cold, hard, living living blackness that just seems to gobble them up." blackness that just seems to gobble them up."

Jack's gut gave a twist as he remembered someone he loved talking about something very similar, telling him with her final words about a coming darkness that would soon "roll over everything," how only a handful of people would stand in its way, and that he'd be one of them.

Could Lyle's darkness be the same?

"When did you see this happening?"

"Not long," Lyle said. "I got the impression with all three of them that it happens in less than two years."

"Three random people," Jack said, "all buying it around the same time, in the same way. Maybe the explanation could be this new second sight of yours has a limit, or..."

"Or one h.e.l.l of a cataclysm is heading our way."

"Praise G.o.d!" Charlie said, his eyes glowing again. "It's the Rapture! You seen the Rapture! It's like when G.o.d takes the faithful to heaven, leaving the rest behind in the darkness! Those sitters you touched, Lyle, they ain't been saved-if they were they wouldn't be foolin' 'round with no spirit medium. You touched lost souls, Lyle."

"If that's what you want to believe-"

"The End Times! Reverend Sparks been talkin' 'bout all the signs pointin' to the end comin' soon! Praise G.o.d, he's right!" He held out his hand. "Here. Touch me, bro."

Lyle didn't actually move, but he seemed to shrink back. "Hey, Charlie, I don't think so. And anyway, I thought you didn't believe in this stuff."

"Who can figure how G.o.d works?" Charlie stepped closer. "The Book say the dead'll rise come the End Times. Maybe this is where it starts. Come on, Lyle. Try me."

Jack watched Lyle hesitate, then reach toward his brother's outstretched hand. A shock of alarm shot through him, urging him to warn Lyle off, tell him not to do it. But he bit it back. Lyle and Charlie were brothers. Where was the harm? What could happen?

Lyle's fingers gripped Charlie's in a firm handshake. The two stood staring into each other's eyes.

"Well?" Charlie said.

Lyle's mouth worked, then he let out an anguished cry. His eyes rolled back as he sagged to his knees and started coughing. He clutched at his throat with his free hand as if he were choking.

"Let go!" Jack shouted to Charlie.

"Can't!" Charlie's eyes were wild as he pulled at Lyle's fingers, trying to loosen them. "He crus.h.i.+n' my hand!"

Lyle was kicking and writhing now, looking like a man in his death throes. This was scary as h.e.l.l. Jack stepped forward, ready to help Charlie break contact, when Lyle suddenly quieted. His rasping breaths stopped for an agonizing moment, then restarted with a cough and a gasp. Finally he released Charlie's hand and slumped the rest of the way to the floor.

Jack bent over him. "Lyle! Lyle, can you hear me?"

Lyle rolled over and opened his eyes. They looked dull, bloodshot. He looked around and blinked as if he'd just stepped out of a cave. His gaze came to rest on his brother standing over him, frozen in shock.