The Haunted Air

  "What was she like?" Gia said. "What did she like besides horses?"

  "You want to know?" he said, pushing himself out of the sofa. "That's easy. I'll let you see for yourself."

  He walked around the sofa and motioned Gia to follow. She found him standing over a black trunk with brass fittings. He pulled it a few feet closer to the window and opened the lid.

  "There," he said, rising. "Go ahead. Take a look. That's all that's left of my little girl."

  Gia knelt and looked but didn't touch. She felt as if she were violating someone, or committing a sacrilege. She saw a stack of unframed photos and forced herself to pick it up and shuffle through them: Shots of Tara at all ages. A beautiful child, even as an infant. She stopped at one with Tara sitting atop a big chestnut mare.

  "That was Rhonda, Tara's favorite horse," Portman said, looking over her shoulder.

  But Gia was transfixed on Tara's clothing: a red-and-white checked shirt, riding breeches, and boots. Exactly what she'd been wearing at Menelaus Manor.

  "Did… did she wear riding clothes a lot?"

  "That's what she was wearing when she disappeared. In colder weather she'd wear a competition coat and cap. Made her look like the heiress to an English estate. God she loved that horse. Would you believe she'd bake cookies for it? Big thick grainy things. The horse loved them. What a kid."

  Gia glanced at Portman and saw the wistful, lost look on his face and knew then he'd had nothing to do with his daughter's death.

  She flipped further into the stack and stopped at a photo of Tara beside a trim, good-looking man in his thirties. Their hair and eyes were matching shades of blond and blue. With a start she realized it was her father.

  "Yeah, that was me. I was Portman then, now I'm portly man." He patted his gut. "It's all the meds they've got me on. Name an antidepressant and I've tried it. Every one of them gives me these carbohydrate cravings. Plus the only exercise I get is moving around this place." He waved his hand at the tiny apartment. "Which, as you can imagine, isn't much."

  "You said you worked for Chase?"

  "'Worked' is right. Not a big job, but a solid one. I made decent money. And I was planning on getting my MBA, but… things didn't work out."

  Gia flipped to the next picture. Tara standing beside a slim, attractive brunette.

  "That was Dorothy," Portman said.

  "Her mother."

  Portman shook his head. "She took Tara's disappearance harder than I did, which is pretty hard to imagine. They were best buds, those two. Did everything together. Dot never recovered."

  Gia was almost afraid to ask. "Where is she now?"

  "In a hospital room, hooked up to a feeding tube."

  "Oh, no!"

  Portman seemed to go on automatic pilot as his eyes unfocused and his voice became mechanical. "Car accident. Happened in 1993, on the fifth anniversary of Tara's disappearance. Ran into a bridge abutment on the LIE. Permanent brain damage. Because of the speed she was going, the insurance company said it was a suicide attempt. Our side said it was an accident. We met somewhere in the middle but it still didn't come near covering her ongoing medical expenses."

  "What do you think happened?"

  "I don't know what happened, but what I think is between me and Dot. Anyway, I couldn't afford to pay for all the care she needed—I mean I couldn't lose the house because I had to think of Jimmy who I had to raise all by myself then."

  "Jimmy?"

  "Flip ahead a few photos. There. That's Jimmy."

  Gia saw Tara next to a dark-haired boy with a gap-toothed smile.

  "He looks younger."

  "By two years. He was five there."

  "Where is he now?"

  "In rehab. Booze, crack, heroin. You name it." He shook his head. "Our fault, not his."

  "Why do you say that?"

  "Jimmy was six-and-a-half when Tara disappeared. We forgot about him when that happened. Everything was Tara, Tara, Tara."

  "That's understandable."

  "Not when you're six. And then seven. And then eight-nine-ten, and your family life is an ongoing wake for your sister. Then at eleven he loses his mother. I'm sure he heard the suicide talk. And to him that meant his mother had abandoned him, that her grief over her dead daughter was greater than her love for her living son. He was too young to understand that maybe she hadn't thought it through, that maybe it was the worst day of her life and some crazy impulse took control."

  Gia saw his throat working as he looked away. She couldn't think of anything to say except, You poor man, that poor boy. But that sounded condescending, so she waited in the leaden silence.

  Finally Joe Portman sniffed and said, "You know, you can keep hope alive for only so long. When we hit the five-year mark and no Tara, we had to… we had to accept the worst. Maybe if I'd been with her more that fifth anniversary day, Dot might have got past it, and she'd still be up and about today. But everything must have looked too black to go on—maybe just for a few minutes or an hour, but that was enough. So now Jimmy was motherless and his father still wasn't paying attention to him, what with all that Dot needed." Portman rubbed his face, as if massaging his jowls. "Jimmy's first bust—the first of many—was at age thirteen for selling marijuana and it was all downhill from there."

  Gia felt a growing knot in her chest. The pain this man, this family had been through… no wonder he was on medication.

  "Then I learned I had to divorce Dot."

  "Had to?"

  "To save the house and—so I hoped at the time—to save Jimmy, I had to divorce her. That way she'd be without support and could qualify for welfare and be covered by Medicaid. The irony of it is, if I'd waited a couple of years it wouldn't have been necessary."

  "You mean they changed the law?"

  "No." He smiled, but it was a painful grimace. "I stopped going to work. Jimmy was in a juvenile detention center at the time and I was alone in the house, and I just couldn't get myself out of bed. And if by some miracle I did, I couldn't leave the house. I kept the shades down and the lights off and just sat in the dark, afraid to move. Finally the bank let me go. And then I lost the house, and wound up on welfare and on Medicaid, just like Dot."

  Almost numb from the torrent of pain, Gia placed the photos back in the trunk and looked around for something that might elicit happier memories. She picked up a short stack of vinyl record albums. The cover of the first featured a close-up of a cute red-haired girl with a wistful stare.

  Gia heard Joe Portman let out a short laugh, not much more than a "Heh."

  "Tiffany. Tara's favorite. She played those records endlessly, from the moment she got home."

  Gia flipped the top one over. She remembered Tiffany, how she toured shopping malls at the start of her career. What were her hits? She did new versions of old songs. Hadn't she redone an early Beatles tune? Gia scanned through the song list…

  She gasped.

  "What's wrong?" Portman said.

  "Oh, nothing." Gia swallowed, trying to moisten her dry tongue. "It's just that I'd forgotten that Tiffany remade 'I Think We're Alone Now.'"

  "Oh, that song!" Portman groaned. "Tara would sing it day and night. She had a great voice, never missed a note, but how many times can you listen to the same song? Drove us crazy! But you know what?" His voice thickened. "I'd give anything in the world—my life—to hear her sing it again. Just once."

  If Gia had harbored any subconscious doubts that the entity in Menelaus Manor was Tara Portman, they'd vanished now.

  She dug deeper into the trunk and came up with a plush doll she immediately recognized.

  "Roger Rabbit!"

  Portman reached past her and took the doll, He turned it over in his hands, staring at it with brimming eyes.

  "Roger," he whispered. "I almost forgot about you." He gave Gia a quick glance. "I haven't been in here in a while." He sighed. "The movie came out the summer she disappeared. She made me take her three times, and I swear every time she laughed harder than before.
Probably would have had to take her a fourth time if…"

  He handed back the doll.

  Gia stared at its wide blue eyes and felt tears begin to slip down her cheeks. She quickly wiped her eyes, but not quickly enough.

  "I'll be damned," Portman said.

  "What?"

  "A reporter with feelings. I can't tell you how many reporters I've talked to since 1988, and you're the first who's ever shown any real emotion."

  "Maybe they were more experienced. And maybe this hits a little too close to home for me."

  "You've got a daughter?"

  Gia nodded. "She's eight… and she just discovered Roger Rabbit on video. She loves him."

  The tears again. Gia willed them back but they kept flowing. What happened to Tara Portman—plucked out of a happy life and killed or worse. It was too cruel, just… too cruel.

  "Don't you let her out of your sight," Portman was saying. "Stay on top of her every minute, because you never know… you never know."

  Terror spiked her. Vicky was far away, at camp. Why on earth had she let her go?

  But she couldn't raise Vicky in a bubble. Part of her wanted to, but it wouldn't be fair.

  Gia replaced Roger in the trunk and rose to her feet. She felt lightheaded. "I… I think I've got enough now."

  "You'll send me a copy?" Portman said.

  "Sure. If I sell it."

  "You'll sell it. You've got heart. I can tell. I want it published. I want Tara's name out there again. I know she's gone. I know she'll never come back. But I don't want her forgotten. She's just a statistic now. I want her to be a name again."

  "I'll do my best," Gia said.

  She felt terrible about lying to him. There'd never be an article. Scalding guilt propelled her toward the door to escape this hot smelly box where the walls seemed to be closing in.

  Portman followed her. "Do you know what Tara might have been, where she could have gone? She could sing, she could play piano, she could ride, she was smart as a whip and she loved life, every moment of it. She had two parents who loved her and a great life ahead of her. But it was all snuffed out." He snapped his fingers. "Just like that. And not by some freak accident, but on purpose. On purpose! And what about Jimmy? Who knows what he could have been? Better than the junkie he is now. And what about me and Dot? We could have grown old together, had grandkids. But that's never going to happen." His voice broke. "You let people know that whoever took my Tara didn't kill just a little girl. He killed a whole family!"

  Gia only nodded as she stepped into the hall, unable to push a word past the invisible band that had a death grip on her throat.

  5

  "So, Freddy," Eli said. "I understand you think I'm crazy."

  Strauss had stopped by with news about his investigations—he tended to prefer to report in person than on the phone—but Eli was more interested in straightening out this popinjay vice cop who thought he had all the answers.

  Strauss stiffened. "I never—" The wiry cop turned toward Adrian and shot him an angry look. "I see someone's been shooting his mouth off."

  "Just as you wanted him to do, am I correct?"

  "Listen, you gotta understand—"

  "What I understand, Detective Strauss, is that you are a faithless man. I offer you virtual immortality and how am I rewarded? By you whispering behind my back. I'm of half a mind to disband the Circle and continue on by myself, as I used to."

  "You can't be serious!" Strauss said. "Just because of a little remark I happened to—"

  "More than a little remark! It challenges the integrity of the Circle!"

  Eli could tell by Strauss's expression that he didn't want to be held responsible for breaking up the Circle. One could only imagine what the other members would do to him. But a defiant look came over his face. He straightened his narrow shoulders and glared at Eli.

  "I ran checks on you, Eli," Strauss said. "Hell, I ran half a dozen on you, from every angle, and nowhere does it say you weren't born in Brooklyn in 1942."

  Eli smiled. "I've had centuries of practice hiding my origins. I'm very good at what I do."

  "And so am I. And ay, don't think some of the others ain't thinking the same thing as me. You tell us you've lived this charmed life for over two hundred years, how you're as good as immortal as long as you keep performing the Ceremony, and then some guy strolls up to you and stabs you with your own knife."

  "I told you—"

  "I know what you told me, but what am I supposed to think? What's anyone supposed to think?"

  What indeed? Eli thought.

  He had to put a stop to this. Immediately.

  He turned to Adrian. "Go to the kitchen and get me one of the carving knives."

  Adrian gave him a strange look but did as he was bid and returned with an eight-inch Wüsthof-Trident Culinar carver. It looked small in Adrian's huge hand. Eli took it from him, gripping it by the dull edge of the carbon steel blade, and proffered it to Strauss, stainless-steel handle first.

  "Take it."

  Strauss looked uncertain. "Why?"

  "Just take it and I'll tell you."

  The cop hesitated, then reached out and took the knife. "Okay. Now what?"

  Eli unbuttoned his shirt and bared his chest. "Now, you stab me."

  "Eli!" Adrian cried. "Have you gone crazy?" He turned to Strauss. "Don't listen to him! It's the painkillers! He's not—"

  "Et tu, Adrian?" Eli said, feeling a pang of regret. Didn't anyone have faith anymore? "You don't believe me either?"

  "Of course I do!" He looked flustered now. "It's just—"

  "Do it, Freddy. Do it now. I demand it. And after you see that I'm perfectly all right, you can tell the rest of your faithless crew that you're the crazy one, not me!"

  Strauss hefted the knife, his gaze flicking back and forth between the blade and Eli's chest. Eli had no fear. He knew he was invulnerable to injury from Strauss or Adrian or anyone else except the mystery man. And this would prove it.

  Strauss stepped closer, his lips set in a tight line. Eli closed his eyes…

  "Don't!" Adrian cried. "Eli, listen to me! What if the man who attacked you interfered with your invulnerability? What if the wounds he inflicted somehow put your powers on hold until they're renewed by another Ceremony?"

  "Don't be ridiculous!"

  "It's a possibility, isn't it? Nothing like this has ever happened to you before, right? Do you really want to risk it?"

  Eli went cold as Adrian's words seeped in. No… it couldn't be. It was unprecedented. And yet, so was what happened Monday night. If what Adrian said were true…

  I have to perform another Ceremony right away! Before the window of this new moon closes!

  He glanced at Strauss and noticed a new uncertainty about him.

  Do I dare?

  Yes. He had to.

  "Perhaps you're right, Adrian. But the only way to find out is to see what happens after Freddy stabs me." He looked Strauss in the eye. "Go ahead, Freddy. This will be an experiment."

  "Uh-uh," Strauss said, shaking his head and backing away. "Too risky. I'm not experimenting myself into a murder rap."

  "Thank God!" Adrian said, and slumped against a wall.

  Eli felt exactly the same but couldn't show it. He simply sighed and said, "Perhaps you're right, Adrian. Perhaps we should try to perform the Ceremony as soon as possible."

  "But there's no time!" Adrian said. "The Ceremony window is three nights before and after the new moon. That means we have to secure a new lamb—"

  "By Friday night," Eli said. "In a way that can't ever be linked back to us." It seemed impossible. But he had to remain calm, and above all, appear calm. "We'll ask around the Circle for any good prospects. In the meantime…" He turned to Strauss. "Any progress on finding our attacker?"

  Strauss shook his head. "Nope. But I did track down that broad who made those comments last night."

  "Excellent. So glad to see you contributing something positive for a change. How did you find
her?"

  "Pretty easy, actually. Gregson got me a copy of the unedited videotape. Seems they had the lady on camera when she said it but she blew off signing the release. Nice looking babe, by the way. We got lucky 'cause the cameraman followed her right to the cab she left in. I got the cab's number, made a few calls, and found out it dropped her off at home."

  "Marvelous," Eli said. He'd put this woman on the back burner, but now he was remembering what she'd said and his anger flared anew. "Who is she?"

  Strauss pulled out a note pad. "Name's Gia DiLauro. Works as some sort of artist. But things don't add up with her. I ran a check on her state income tax and she doesn't make the kind of money that would put her anywhere near the ultra-tony neighborhood she lives in."

  "An artist, hmmm?" Eli said. "Well, we'll find out where she sells her paintings or who she works for and see that her showings and sources of income dry up. That'll be for starters. Then—"

  "She's got a kid," Strauss said.

  Eli caught his breath. A child. Oh, this was too good to be true.

  "Go on."

  "It's another of the weird things about her. She's got a daughter she claims as a dependent but the kid's got a different last name: Westphalen. Victoria Westphalen."

  "And her age?"

  Please say under ten, Eli prayed. Please.

  "Eight."

  Silence in the room as the three men exchanged glances.

  "Eight," Adrian breathed. "That's… perfect."

  More than perfect, Eli thought. If they could get hold of the child in time, she could become the lamb for the next Ceremony. And her sacrifice would offer the lagniappe of crushing her bitter-tongued mother.

  How wonderful. The mere possibility made his blood tingle.

  "Find out everything you can about this child, Freddy. Everything. Immediately. We don't have much time."

  6

  Jack reached the office of Kristadoulou Realtors a little ahead of schedule. Since it was on Steinway Street he'd decided to get a two-fer out of the trip by stopping by his Queens mail drop on the way. He rented boxes in Hoboken and Manhattan as well, but every two weeks they forwarded all his mail to the Astoria drop. With a pair of manila envelopes under his arm, he figured he'd kill the ten minutes to appointment time by checking out the hood.