Garden of Evil Read online

Around her, in a circle, had been fastened eight pure-white Persian cats, each with at least four nails through their bodies, so that their legs were splayed out like hers. The whole grisly arrangement of girl and cats had the appearance of a ritualistic black-magic symbol.

  But on the ceiling? In a college classroom? For the past few days, the entire college had been undergoing cleaning and refurbishment for the new semester. Jim couldn’t even begin to imagine how anybody could have done it, or when, without being seen or heard. Or, for God’s sake, why.

  He stood staring up at the girl and the cats for nearly half a minute. He felt totally numb. He had seen all kinds of apparitions and spirits in his life, but he had never seen anything like this.

  Very slowly, he walked backward toward the door, lifting his cellphone out of his inside coat pocket as he did so. Just as he reached the door, however, it burst open, and the girl with the scraggly hair and the pink T-shirt pushed her way in.

  ‘This is the right room, yeah? Special Class Two?’

  Jim immediately turned around pushed her back out again, so that she collided with the spotty red-haired boy who was right behind her.

  ‘Out!’ he told them. His voice was much higher than he had meant it to be, almost a scream.

  ‘What? We was told to come in and find our classrooms!’

  ‘Out! Something’s happened. You can’t come in. Go back outside for a while and wait until I come to talk to you.’

  ‘What’s happened? What?’

  ‘I don’t know, to tell you the truth. I don’t have any idea.’

  He gave her arm a last push, firmly but gently, and then he closed the door, and locked it. He could see the lanky African-American boy peering in through the circular window, his nose flattened against the glass.

  ‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ Jim repeated, under his breath, and then he dialed 911, and said, ‘Police?’

  TWO

  ‘Lieutenant Harris told me about you,’ said Detective Brennan, with a thumping sniff. ‘You remember Lieutenant Harris? Retired now. Runs the pro shop at Rancho Park Golf Course. Nine bucks for a bucket of balls.’

  ‘How could I forget him?’

  ‘You know what he told me? “If anything really weird ever happens at West Grove Community College, you can bet your ass that the first name that comes up will be Rook.” Those were his exact words.’

  ‘I hope you’re not trying to suggest that I had anything at all to do with this.’

  Jim was sitting at a paper-cluttered table in the faculty room. Dr Ehrlichman’s secretary Rosa had brought him a mug of strong black coffee, but he still felt badly shaken. All he could think of was that dead girl’s alabaster face, with a skein of blood slowly sliding out of the corner of her mouth.

  The police had arrived within fifteen minutes of his calling them. Now the college parking lot was crowded with five black-and-white squad cars and two Humvees, as well as four assorted panel vans from the county CSI, the LA Coroner’s Office and the Department of Animal Care and Control; and TV trucks from KABC and Fox 11 News.

  All five hundred and sixty students and most of the faculty had been sent home, leaving Dr Ehrlichman pacing up and down the corridor in frustration, a diminutive king, like Lord Farquaad in Shrek.

  ‘You didn’t happen to see nobody around who didn’t have no legitimate business being there?’ asked Detective Brennan. He was a big, sallow man, with skin like candle wax, who looked as if he never went out in daylight. He had an iron-gray widow’s peak and glittery near-together eyes, which made him appear to be permanently suspicious. He was wearing a crumpled khaki suit with pants that were two inches too short for him, and saggy beige socks. His belly hung over his belt.

  Jim put down his coffee mug and shook his head. ‘I didn’t see anybody at all, apart from Ms Colefax. And let’s face it, nobody could have nailed that girl up on to the ceiling on their own. Not to mention all of those cats. They would have needed two or three guys at least, and some kind of a platform.’

  ‘Maybe it’ll help when we can identify her,’ said Detective Brennan. He took out a crumpled Kleenex and fastidiously began to unfold it.

  ‘Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. I certainly didn’t recognize her.’

  Detective Brennan blew his nose and then folded up his Kleenex again. ‘I hate this spooky shit. You don’t know how much. Couple of weeks ago we had a call from the Whispering Palms Hotel. The chambermaid went into one of the rooms to turn down the beds and found two heads lying on the pillows. Two heads, a man and a woman. We still don’t know who they are or where the rest of them’s at.’

  He paused, and made a gesture toward the ceiling. ‘But this . . . this is a hundred times more spookier. I really hate this shit.’

  Jim said nothing. To him, it was more important to understand why the girl and the cats had been nailed to the ceiling like that, rather than how. He was sure that the way in which they had been arranged was symbolic, but he couldn’t begin to think what it symbolized. He had seen pentacles and spirals and inverted crosses. But a girl smothered in whitewash and surrounded by eight white cats?

  Just then, there was a soft knock at the faculty room door.

  ‘Come!’ said Detective Brennan. But the door remained closed, and nobody answered.

  After a while, there was another knock. Soft, again, but insistent.

  Detective Brennan went across the room and opened up the door and said, ‘Yes?’

  A tall, skinny boy was standing outside. He had long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, and a very pale, angular face. He was quite handsome in a bloodless, bleached-out, hippie-ish way. He was wearing a loose white open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and loose white linen pants, and Jesus sandals. Over his shoulder he was carrying a white canvas bag, like a gunny sack.

  He said, ‘Excuse me, sir, I’m looking for Special Class Two.’ Jim would have placed his accent as Louisiana or Mississippi – Deep South, anyhow. Soft, like his knocking at the door, but insistent.

  ‘College is closed for today, son,’ said Detective Brennan. ‘Didn’t nobody tell you that when you was coming in? They should of.’

  ‘Closed?’

  ‘There’s been an incident. You’ll see it all on the TV news.’

  ‘We don’t have a TV, sir. My father doesn’t approve.’

  ‘Oh. Well, you’ll read all about it in the papers.’

  ‘We don’t have any papers delivered. My father—’

  ‘Your father don’t approve of papers, neither. I see. Well, no news is good news, that’s what they say, ain’t it, although I don’t see no harm in the funnies.’

  Jim said, ‘Wait up. Let me guess. You’re Simon Silence, right? And your father is the Reverend John Silence.’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s absolutely correct, sir.’

  Jim stood up and walked across to the door. ‘In that case, welcome to the wonderful world of mass education. You and I should be meeting each other tomorrow morning, if and when the police have finished combing the college for forensic evidence. My name is Mr Rook and Special Class Two, that’s my class.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, sir. I’ve never been in a class before. Well, I’ve never even been in a school before. My father taught me, mostly, although I did have outside tutors for physics and math. I’m sure that I’m really going to enjoy it.’

  ‘You are? Good. I’m glad about that. But before you get too ecstatic, why don’t you wait until you meet your classmates? Even I haven’t met them yet.’

  ‘Go on, kid,’ said Detective Brennan. ‘Push off home now, come back tomorrow.’

  Simon Silence ignored him, and said, ‘May I just ask you one question, Mr Rook?’

  ‘OK, go ahead. What?’

  ‘You teach English, I know.’

  ‘Remedial English, if you want to be accurate. English for students who don’t see anything wrong in saying “this pizza’s good – but this pizza’s a whole lot gooder – and this pizza’s gooderer than any other p
izza I ever ate.”’

  Simon Silence gave Jim the faintest of smiles. ‘What I actually wanted to ask you is whether you ever give your class any spiritual guidance.’

  ‘Spiritual guidance? What kind of spiritual guidance? You mean religion? I don’t do religion, Simon. Sometimes we talk about life and death, but only so far as they’re part of a poem, or an essay, or a story we happen to be studying. “Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.” Discuss.’

  ‘I didn’t really mean that kind of spiritual guidance. I meant, do you ever give your class the benefit of your . . .’ He paused, his right hand circling around and around, as if he couldn’t quite find the word for it.

  Jim waited patiently, but eventually he said, ‘Yes? The benefit of my what?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I should be going, shouldn’t I?’

  ‘No, come on, Simon. The benefit of my what?’

  Simon Silence looked at him. The last of the smog was clearing away and the sun suddenly shone on him through the faculty room window. It lit up his face so brightly that he appeared to have hardly any features at all. His eyes were very pale blue and his eyebrows were blond. He could have been a watercolor painting that somebody had tipped their paint water over, so that all the colors had washed away.

  ‘My father says that we all have a gift, sir, every one of us. It is how we use our gifts that makes all the difference. I know you have a gift, Mr Rook. You have a rare and wonderful gift. That is why my father sent me here. I was simply asking how freely you share it with your students.’

  Detective Brennan laid his hand on Simon Silence’s shoulder. ‘Come on, kid. That’s enough. Vamos. Come back tomorrow.’

  Simon Silence stayed in the doorway for a while, still staring at Jim with those pale blue eyes, as if he were prepared to wait for an answer for as long as it took. The smog momentarily drifted across the sun again, and as the room darkened his features became more definite. At the same time they appeared subtly to alter, so that instead of looking innocent he appeared strangely knowing.

  ‘There’s just one more thing,’ he said, lifting the white canvas sack off his shoulder, loosening its drawstring, and starting to rummage around in it.

  ‘You really should go home, Simon,’ Jim told him. ‘Whatever it is, it can wait till tomorrow.’

  Detective Brennan began to close the door. But before he could do so, Simon Silence took his hand out of his sack and held out a shiny pink-and-green apple.

  ‘This is for you, sir,’ he said. ‘We have an orchard near Bakersfield, and we grow our own.’

  ‘An apple for the teacher?’ said Jim. ‘This isn’t grade school, you know.’

  ‘My father says that if somebody gives you a gift, you should always give them something in return. This is my gift, as a thank you for your gift.’

  Jim took the apple and sniffed it. It smelled very sweet and aromatic, but it had a sourness to it, too – almost like a tamarind, more than an apple.

  ‘It is a variety called Paradise,’ said Simon Silence. ‘We are the only orchard in the region to grow it. We bus down-and-outs and homeless people up to our orchard to pick them, and we allow them to eat as many as they like. Then we distribute them free to anybody who comes to our church to pray.’

  ‘OK, then thanks,’ Jim told him. ‘Maybe I’ll see you in the morning.’

  Simon Silence gave Jim another faint smile, and then he turned around and walked away, his sandals slapping on the floor.

  ‘Don’t envy you, teaching that fruitcake,’ said Detective Brennan, closing the door.

  Jim said nothing, repeatedly tossing up the apple that Simon Silence had given him, and catching it again. For several reasons, the boy had unsettled him. He was completely unlike most of the students that he had to teach in Special Class Two. He had seemed shrewd, and self-confident, and although he had a strong Southern accent he had spoken grammatically and without any slang whatsoever.

  What had disturbed Jim was the way that he had wanted to talk about his gift. If he hadn’t mentioned ‘spiritual guidance’, Jim might have thought that he was referring to nothing more than his talent for teaching semi-literate slackers to compose a sentence that almost made some kind of sense. But it was obvious that Simon Silence was already too fluent to need much guidance in the art of expressing himself.

  When he was seven years old Jim had almost died from pneumonia. After he had recovered he had gradually come to realize that his close encounter with the other side had given him the ability to see spirits, and ghosts, and every other kind of supernatural presence, from poltergeists to demons. He saw them, and he could speak to them, too, when they appeared.

  He was sure that this was the gift that Simon Silence had been talking about. But how did he know about it? Jim had learned to live with it, and sometimes to use it to help people who were plagued by vengeful or angry spirits, but he couldn’t understand how the son of a preacher could have come to hear about it, and why he should be showing so much interest in it.

  There was another knock at the door and this time it was a woman CSI, in a noisy white Tyvek suit, her cheeks still flushed from wearing her protective helmet.

  ‘That’s it, Detective. We’re done here. We should have some preliminary reports for you by the end of the week. But at this stage I seriously don’t think they’re going to tell you a whole lot.’

  ‘Any indications yet as to how it was done?’

  The CSI shook her frizzy blonde curls. ‘Not a clue, so far. No fingerprints, no shoe impressions, nothing. We have the nails, of course, and we’ll be trying to trace where they came from, and we’ll also be taking samples of the white paint that the vic was covered in. Animal Care and Control will be checking on the cats. They all look like pedigrees, so it’s pretty certain they’ll have microchips.’

  ‘Well, that should help us,’ said Detective Brennan. ‘It can’t be every day that somebody goes to a cat breeder and buys eight white Persians. Or steals them.’

  ‘We still have no idea how the girl and the cats were physically nailed to the ceiling,’ the CSI told him. ‘If the perps used a scaffold, or stepladders, they would have had to make some kind of impression on the floor tiles. But there’s zilch. No dents at all.’

  Jim said, ‘Did you ever see anything like this before? I don’t necessarily mean on the ceiling. But a similar sort of pattern . . . a woman with her arms and legs spread out, and all the cats around her? Or anything even remotely like it?’

  The CSI shook her head again. ‘Never. And, believe me, I’ve seen some pretty far-out arranging, when it comes to bodies. A woman’s head that was sewn on to a man’s body, and the other way about. A guy who was stuffed into a racehorse, with his head sticking out from under its tail. We never found out who did it but I think we can guess what point he was making.’

  Detective Brennan said, ‘Thanks, Moira. I’ll wait to hear from you. Mr Rook, you can go off home if you like. You gave me your cell number, didn’t you? I might have to call you if anything new comes up.’

  ‘Fine,’ said Jim. He picked up his briefcase with the broken handle, dropped the apple into it, and left the building. Outside, it was warm now, and clear. Usually, if he was given an unexpected day off, he would head for 26 Beach Restaurant in Venice and order himself a beer and a prosciutto burger and exchange some banter with his favorite waitress, Imelda.

  But today he was not in the mood for anything except going back home and trying to make sense of what had happened. He still couldn’t quite believe that what he had witnessed was real.

  He climbed into his car and backed out of the parking lot with a squeal of tires. He drove back down the driveway, still thinking about the girl and the cats on the ceiling; and about the dark figure he had nearly run over in this morning’s smog. He had told Detective Brennan about him (or her, or it, or whatever the figure might have been) but Detective Brennan hadn’t shown too much interest.
r />   ‘Like you said yourself, Mr Rook, no single person could have done this unaided.’

  As he drove out between the brown brick pillars that marked the college grounds, his eye was caught by a white flicker among the trees, off to his left. He slowed down, and then he stopped, frowning, and backed his car up twenty or thirty yards and let down his window, so that he could see the white shape more clearly.

  There was a small grove of shady oaks beside the road, just where it curved down from North Saltair Avenue toward Sunset. Standing under these oaks with his arms spread wide was Simon Silence, in his flappy white shirt and his flappy white pants. He had his back to Jim, so that it was difficult for Jim to tell exactly what he was doing. But what puzzled Jim most of all was that seven or eight young people were sitting around him in a semicircle, cross-legged, looking up at him with rapt expressions on their faces as if they were spellbound by something that he was saying.

  From the way they were dressed, and the sports bags lying on the ground beside them, Jim could see that they were students. He backed up a little more and it was then that he recognized the lanky African-American student he had seen earlier this morning, under the cypress tree; and also the pretty blonde girl with the pink T-shirt and the scraggly hair.

  Jim stayed where he was for a while, wondering if ought to go over and ask them what they were doing. He was well aware that what they got up to outside of college was none of his business. They could be jumping around stark naked or smoking crack, or both, and there was nothing he could do about it, except call the police. Besides that, he didn’t even know their names yet, or how many of them were going to be joining Special Class Two. The last thing he wanted to do was to appear stuffy and censorious, even before he found out who they were. He wouldn’t be able to teach them unless he earned their trust.

  All the same, Simon Silence had set off his psychic sensitivity, like a burglar alarm ringing unanswered in a distant warehouse. Something wrong here, although he couldn’t begin to guess what it was. Something very wrong here.

  He was still sitting there when there was a deafening two-tone blast on a horn. He looked into his rear-view mirror and saw that a huge black Dodge Ram was close up behind him, impatiently waiting for him to get out of the middle of the road.