35

“You think this place will be ready in time, Ernie?” Martin asked.

He was calm and confident. “I don’t see why not. The grand opening isn’t until midnight.”

“But there’s so much still to do.” Both pairs of eyes scanned the ballroom. The facade of the Notre Dame cathedral was largely in place, but some of the surrounding decorations were in pieces on the floor, waiting to be assembled. Exposed scaffolding occupied a corner of the room. “I hear the hunchback is still experimenting with his makeup. And what’s with these bells?” He gestured toward the huge six-foot bells that were being hoisted into place at the front of the cathedral. “Those mothers are huge. And heavy. Why would the hotel lay out so much for bells?”

“You can’t do The Hunchback of Notre Dame without bells.”

“Hey, I been meaning to ask-what were you doing in the ventilation shafts last night?”

He stiffened. “Last night?”

“Yeah. I saw you crawling out of that shaft over at the north end of the casino. I didn’t even know that was big enough to get into. What were you up to?”

“One of the patrons reported smelling smoke. I didn’t detect it myself, but I thought it best to be certain.”

“Huh. Well, they never covered that when I came on. Maybe you can show me how to get in there later tonight.”

He touched the syringe in his pocket. He could take this man out if necessary. Quickly and quietly. “Tonight would not be a good day, what with all the work going on. Perhaps after the Halloween celebration.”

“Good point. Okay.”

His hand relaxed. Just as well. Another dead security officer would draw more attention to the hotel-and he had directed too much attention here already. “If you’ll excuse me, I, uh, need to check on something in the storeroom.”

“You’ve been spending a lot of time in there lately.” Martin chuckled. “You got a naked girl up there?”

He smiled. “Yeah. Four of them.”

He left the ballroom and headed for the elevator bank. There was still much to be done, so many arrangements to finalize. Everything had to be right, just perfect. But soon he would be able to cordon off the ballroom so he could finish his preparations. Rachel would not participate willingly, but the other three would, and they would help him with her. He had put so much time and effort into this, not just with the offerings, but everything. Obtaining the C4 on the Vegas black market. His unbroken brown study of radio signals and electronics and incendiary agents. Everything that was required.

The hotel had spent thousands advertising this event, generating publicity for the grand reopening of this ballroom. But they would be celebrating ever so much more than those dullards imagined.

This celebration would be a cataclysmic event. An apocalypse for some, an ascension for others. The end of days.

“No, it can’t wait until tomorrow!”

I pounded my fists together for emphasis. I wasn’t trying to threaten the man-well, actually, I was, wasn’t I? If I couldn’t convince him of the urgency of the situation one way, I was prepared to try another.

“But today is a very special day,” Bloomfeld insisted.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“All our resources are taxed to the limit.” This guy had annoyed me when I was investigating the first crime scene and he hadn’t grown on me any in the interim. He was probably perfect for micromanaging the organizational details of a hotel but he was useless to me. “Our hotel is booked to capacity. Our Halloween celebration is generally considered the best anywhere. Thousands of people come to the Transylvania from all over the world.”

Patrick stepped between us. “I don’t give a damn about your tourists getting their ghost and ghoul fix. Four girls have been kidnapped.”

“My staff is already being pulled six ways at once,” Bloomfeld continued.

I shot him the harshest look I could muster. “I’m chasing a serial killer here, a killer who-unless he’s stopped-is going to try something very bad tonight, probably at midnight, which is less than three hours away. I think that’s a little-”

This was where Bloomfeld did his best to pretend he had a backbone. “I have a responsibility to my guests. They expect a party that-”

“I’ll cancel the damn party if you don’t cooperate with me! I’ll shut the whole hotel down.”

He froze, his face more horrific than any of their gargoyles. “You can’t do that.”

“I can and I will. I won’t let another girl die because you were too busy entertaining to help. Now you can deal with me, and we can go through your security contractor’s employment records, or I can shut the whole joint down. What’s it going to be?”

As if he had a choice. I held all the cards. And I had to admit-it felt good to be effective again, to be back on top of my game. Or getting that way.

Bloomfeld started gathering the records.

“Great technique,” Patrick said quietly. “Where’d you study, Nazi Germany?”

I suppose I should’ve been more respectful to Bloomfeld, since we were in his office in his hotel. Well, next week, I’d send him a Hallmark. Right now, I had a job to do. And some lives to save.

By eleven P.M., I had winnowed it down to five names. Five possibles who fit most of the criteria. The women were eliminated, of course. All the men of the wrong age group. Everyone who was physically too large to be Edgar. I classified them by economic group, by educational background, by family relationships. Anyone who listed a parent as a Person To Contact in an Emergency was eliminated. And in the end, I had five names.

One of them was Edgar. I was certain of it. But which one?

I peered at the pictures, the files, everything that was known about them. Darcy hunched over my shoulder. I had seen this man, damn it. I had talked to him. I should be able to pick him out of a photo lineup. Shouldn’t I?

Three of them were private security, where we had focused this search, but I was also considering a part-time tennis instructor and an actor who worked in the evening Spookapalooza show playing Edgar Allan Poe. I phoned Madeline and told her to run Net checks on all of them-to learn as much as she could as quickly as possible. I instructed Bloomfeld to round up all the suspects. And I let my mind do what it did best. From here on out, I knew finding Edgar would not be a matter of logic or analysis. Intuition had to take over. My instincts had to tell me which of these men kidnapped Rachel. And how to get her back.

The more I dwelt on it, the more I gravitated toward the three security officers. The tennis dude wore a uniform of sorts, but was it a uniform that instilled trust? Would Annabel, the MIT student, have given him the time of day? Judging from his photograph, he was a cute guy, not much older than she was. But somehow, I just didn’t believe it.

The actor who played Poe was an obvious choice-too obvious. If his Poe connection were that apparent, would he have given us the Poe-derived clues, the quotations, the literary death methods? I had seen this guy on television once or twice since the Poe connection was leaked, being interviewed as a local expert on “the Dark Bard of Baltimore.” No, he was way too high-profile. I didn’t buy it.

And then there were three. Damon William Cantrell. Jeffrey Henry DeMouy. Ernest Lee Abbott.

“What do you think, Darcy?”

Darcy stared at the pictures. His brain was in motion, I could tell that. But this wasn’t what he did best, was it? When he met them, he might notice the telltale smell of perfume or the stain of a certain kind of ash found only in Sumatra or whatever. But what could he do with a photo?

“I don’t think I like this one,” Darcy said. He pointed to the file photo of Cantrell, but I noticed he wasn’t actually looking at it. “His hair is like John Wayne Gacy’s hair.”

“Anything else?”

“Did you know that John Wayne Gacy is considered the most successful American serial killer? He made even more deaths than Ted Bundy.”

“Anything else?”

He tapped another picture, the one of Abbott. “I think that maybe I have seen him before.”

“Really? Where? In the hotel?”

His face twisted up. “I don’t remember,” he said-words I never expected to hear coming out of that mouth. But such was the irony of being autistic. He could remember chapter and verse about anything he read. But he was useless with faces. Some researchers thought autistic people didn’t really even see faces, their expressions and distinctions. Just a pink blur. Which would explain why they were so poor at picking up on visual clues, facial expressions, and body language.

Darcy was not going to pick the lucky winner.

“Where is Patrick, anyway?” I said. I wanted to get his opinion on this, before Bloomfeld arrived with the suspects. “He should be back by now.”

“I’ll go look,” Darcy said. He probably realized he wasn’t much help here. So he would be of use another way.

And I continued to stare at the pictures. Will the real Edgar please stand up?

I have to find Patrick Susan wants me to find Patrick and she’s so worried and scared about her niece Rachel who seems nice but I hope she doesn’t like Rachel more than me or she can like us both and is Rachel like her baby because I want her to have real babies and maybe she won’t maybe she won’t if something happens to Rachel like Mommy never had any more babies after me and Dad tells people that they couldn’t but they could I know they could Mommy told me they could but they weren’t going to because I was a difficult boy and they didn’t want any more difficult boys. We have to stop the Bad Man because he hurt those girls and he hurt Susan and he might try to hurt more people and it’s not right to hurt people. I would never hurt anyone. Hurting is bad.

I can’t find Patrick there are so many people in this gambling room and so much smoke I hate smoke I don’t know why people smoke it’s bad for you and it’s disgusting and it should be illegal it makes my eyes hurt so I went into the ballroom with all the weird decorations. I couldn’t see Patrick but I saw this guard guy and he was in a big hurry and I don’t know why I even looked at him except he was carrying an axe and that seemed weird and then I looked at him some more and I wasn’t sure if I knew him I never know if I know people but he smelled like someone I knew his smell was familiar and then he said something and I heard his voice and I remembered the guy on the street and all that talk about how tall he wasn’t except then he had a mustache and a different color hair and glasses and he looked different but he said something again and I knew it was him.

He must be the Bad Man.

He recognized me too and I made a joke about did he have any more good puzzles I could solve and he didn’t and I could see he was going to hit me just like the kids at school used to hit me and I should’ve done something about it. I should’ve stopped him but then I would have to hit him and it isn’t right to hit people it isn’t right and I don’t want to hurt anyone and I didn’t do anything and then he took the other end of the axe and he hit me and I fell down and then there was nothing.

“Please,” Rachel gasped. “I can’t stand it anymore. It hurts.”

“Only for a little while, my dear. Soon it will all be over.”

She’d been hanging upside down for far too long. Blood rushed to her head, making it throb so intensely she could barely think. “Where’s Tiffany? And the others. Where did they go?”

“They’re such dear girls, so eager to please. Nothing I ask is too much.”

“Because you’ve tortured and brainwashed them.”

“Rachel!” He tightened the ropes around her wrists and ankles, making sure she was secure. “Don’t speak like that. I’ve told you what is at stake. I’ve explained to you about the Ascension, about Dream-Land. About my sweet Virginia. The whole majestic plan.”

“I don’t want any part of your plan!”

He took her chin-upside down before him-and held it in his palm. “Would you prefer to be like the other heathens, those who remain on this plane and melt into nothingness? Or would you be translated into a Golden Age?”

“I would rather be at home in clean clothes.”

“Don’t be petty. Why can’t you see what I can see?”

“Because I’m not insane.”

He clamped the chloroform-soaked cloth over her nose and mouth, his hands shaking with rage. She was unworthy, but that spirit would soon be gone, replaced with that of his lost Virginia, and once he and she were reunited, nothing else would matter.

I was practically out of my mind when I finally heard the doorknob click. It was barely half an hour before midnight. Did they not understand? Midnight was the dreamtime, according to Poe. Later would be too late. Especially for Rachel.

Bloomfeld had two men trailing behind him whom I immediately recognized from their file photos. Two suspects. Two Edgar possibles.

But only two.

“Apologies,” Bloomfeld said. He could be quite polite, once you put the fear of death into him. “Couldn’t find the third officer.”

“We need him,” I said.

“We’ll find him in time, I’m sure. He’s supposed to be working in the ballroom, but no one could locate him. It’s already packed in there-hundreds of Halloween revelers. Ran into your partner, though, that FBI man. Sent him into the crowd to find the guy while I brought you these two.”

I stared at the photo of the missing security guard, Ernest Lee Abbott. I mentally added a mustache, changed the hair, put dark glasses on him.

“He’s normally very reliable. That’s why we asked him to help with the crowd control. Everyone is doing the work of three.”

I could imagine the man’s lips moving, his face. His eyes taking that somewhat menacing, somewhat sorrowful expression that told so much about him.

“If you want, I’ll go back to the ballroom and look some more. He’s probably behind the cathedral, helping with some last-minute crisis. Whose idea was it to do the Hunchback, anyway? I always thought it was too literary. Kids today, they don’t know anything about French literature. They probably think-”

“Hunchback?” I closed my eyes and let my mind wander again, but this time, it went straight to the source. The key clue. The one that hadn’t fallen into place before.

I haven’t been this scared since the day we rented a video just after my parents- That was what Rachel had said, during that brief phone call. Everyone thought she was terrified, babbling, me included. But we were wrong. Rachel is a tough girl, a smart one.

She was trying to give me a clue.

What was the movie? What was the damn movie?

Of course.

We’d rented The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Disney version. The first day I brought her home. After her parents were killed.

“Take me to this ballroom,” I said, rising out of my chair. “Now.”

Bloomfeld stuttered, “B-B-But I rounded up your suspects-don’t you want to interrogate them?”

I shook my head. “It’s the other one. Abbott. He’s Edgar.”

By the time I made it to the ballroom, I still hadn’t found Patrick, Darcy hadn’t returned, and it was barely ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes.

Rachel! I wanted to scream out her name, but I knew that wouldn’t help, not in this earsplitting chaos. Please, God, don’t let me be too late. Don’t let me be too late.

Even though the Halloween party had not officially started, the ballroom was packed. I could see where Bloomfeld might’ve had difficulty finding one security cop in this swarm. I might have trouble finding myself in here. At least half the partygoers were in costume, many of them masked. If Edgar was one of them, how would I ever find him?

Think, Susan. Think!

He wouldn’t be out here mingling, would he? He has some tremendous master plan in the works, something wonderful, something terrible. Something involving Rachel. He couldn’t have her out here, whether she was costumed, dead or alive. Could he?

While I was trying to crawl into Edgar’s brain, I saw Chief O’Bannon enter the ballroom. I showed him the photo of Abbott.

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“Damn straight.”

He smiled a little. “Good girl. Knew you could do it.”

He took the left side of the room and I surged into the right. I saw the great facade of the cathedral of Notre Dame at the far end of the ballroom, a focal point for all the festivities. I moved toward it. I’ve never been to Paris, but it looked pretty damn real to me, except that it wasn’t quite finished. There was still some scaffolding, several raised platforms on wheels, off to the side. The ballroom was festooned with confetti and orange and black ribbons and banners. And where was the hunchback? He would emerge later, I guessed, probably from the top of the cathedral, ringing those four huge bells, two on each side of the central spire.

I moved toward the cathedral. It seemed like the place Edgar-Abbott-was most likely to be. And I knew Rachel had seen it before, right? That was the whole point of the clue.

Someone dressed in a jester costume fell into me, tumbling backward. I went for my gun. Jesus, was I on edge. I shoved him out of the way and tried to plow a trail through the dense horde. They were getting increasingly crazed, ebullient, nutty, which I suppose was to be expected as the clock approached midnight. I could smell alcohol breath every which way I turned. It made me sick.

Which was certainly a good sign.

Eventually I forced my way to the back of the room. It was a high-quality cathedral, made of some kind of molded fiberglass, stained to the proper shade of gray. Someone had spent some real money on this. After trying several false apertures, I found a door on the far side that worked.

I stepped into the cathedral, such as it was. It was dark back here, darker than I liked. The cathedral touched the ceiling and, despite the openings for the bells, little light crept through.

This was his place. I knew it, as sure as I’d ever known anything in my life. I could feel it.

I drew my weapon. I’d let IA argue later about whether I had cause or not. Right now, I wanted a gun between me and him.

I stepped into the darkness, marking a path I thought was parallel to the front of the cathedral. The entire area was small, close, silent. And dark. Did I mention that it was dark?

I took baby steps, inching forward, fighting the desire to rush ahead. I wanted to find Rachel. I had to find her before it was too late. But Edgar had proven how dangerous he could be, how smart. I had to be careful. I couldn’t save her if I were dead.

I kept moving forward, one dark step at a time.

Till I saw someone.

At first, I couldn’t make out who it was. His face was masked by shadows. He was sitting on the floor, looking up at me.

“Patrick!”

He was staring with a strange, vacant expression on his face. I holstered my gun and ran toward him. “Patrick!” I said, grabbing his arm. “Patrick! What are you-”

I gasped.

His head fell forward into my lap. Just his head.

I screamed like a siren, like a child at a horror movie, like the weakest sister who ever lived. Blood spilled all over my turtleneck, my pants. The head fell to the floor but didn’t roll. It just impacted with a sickening splat and lay there, staring up at me. It had been sliced clean-by a pendulum? I wondered-at the base of the neck.

My God, my God, Abbott killed Patrick, he killed him, and if he killed Patrick-

An even deeper horror clutched at the base of my spine.

It was so unlike him to be gone so long…

“Darcy!” I turned and ran back the way I came, feeling stupid, feeling powerless, terrified. He’d gotten to Patrick, he’d gotten to Patrick but please not Darcy please please please not Darcy…

That was when the bells began to ring. Did that mean it was midnight? Even with all the noise out front, the ringing of the huge bells was deafening. I was just beneath them, and the unrelenting clanging seemed to crush my skull. It was oppressive and mind-numbing. Why would the hotel want to-

I looked up.

My heart stopped. I couldn’t breathe. My fingers were cold, as if all the life had been sucked out of me.

Rachel!

Because the apertures were recessed, it wouldn’t be visible from out front, but back here I had a clear view of four young girls strung up one to a bell, tied to the clappers, dangling head-down. Swinging back and forth. Their heads smashing against the sides of the bells.

“Rachel!” I shouted, even though I knew she couldn’t possibly hear me. Even if she were alive. If the sound was killing me down here, what must it be doing to them?

“Rachel!”

I forced my brain to calm, slow down-think! There must be something I could do. The bells had to be activated by some sort of mechanism. I needed to find the controls. Maybe I could ask someone. If not, I could climb up on that scaffolding out front…

I raced toward the door. And I had almost made it when a hand burst out of the darkness. It grabbed me by the throat and slammed me against the wall. Before I could react, his other hand took my gun.

“Hello, Susan,” Edgar said, smiling. “Good to see you again.”