News chopper. It waited in a field behind a copse of trees, ready in case of a high-speed chase.
“Leland,” Biggs broke in, “watch for the guy getting out of the orange-red Festiva. The roadblock called in, saying he looked suspicious.”
“Right, Chief,” Leland responded.
A reddish-orange Festiva rumbled up and passed her car, its old-style door handles scrapingly close. Behind the wheel was a tall, intense figure, his eyes wide and excited, his hands tight and feverish on the wheel. He glanced at a narrow parking space hard beside the open iron gate, and his car darted into it. One front tire dipped down into the ditch, and the opposite rear wheel lifted from the rutted road. The gray cloud puffing from the exhaust pipe sputtered away. The driver’s door squealed open. A man emerged, tall and thin, his face oddly rigid and slightly jaundiced. He had watchful silver eyes. A chill went through Leland. “He’s the first one I’ve seen that looks the part.”
“Right,” said the chief. “He’s also the last one through the gate except a four-foot-two grandma at ninety-eight pounds.”
The silver-eyed man leaned forward as he climbed the sloping drive of the cemetery. He passed the gates. His jacket was the dull gray-white of the tombstones.
“Listen, Boss,” Leland said, “I know I agreed to stay in the car, but I’m not sure if it’s him, and he’s just now gone over-”
“Stay put, Leland. That better not be the sound of your car door-”
“He’s going to be here, somewhere. We all know that. I want to make sure we catch him. I want no more skulking, no more of this masquerade.”
She stood, slammed the door behind her, and reminded herself to toddle rather than stride after the white-suited man.
Ahead lay the tableaux of the closed casket, wreathed in flowers and hemmed in on all sides by black-suited mourners. Beside it, a red-jowled face appeared, marching toward her. The chief was very handsome in dress blues.
His voice came through Leland’s earpiece. “I’m going to be right next to you, then. I’m bringing one of the spotter teams forward to surround the guy and have a look at him.”
“Fine.”
Biggs moved the microphone away from his face and, with barely believable stage decorum, said, “Here, ma’am, let me help you. You should have waited for someone to take your hand.”
Leland took his arm. They topped the rise, crossed the blacktop, and stepped onto the tender grass. The morning lawn was damp with dew, which soaked chillingly into her stockings. She spoke into her headset. “I know he’s here. I can feel it. But whether that string bean is him…”
The chief looked toward the gathered group. “The string bean is heading for the foot of the grave. Let’s go up that way. Then I’ll walk you around the far side of the grave to one of the chairs set up behind the priest. I’m sure we can get someone to let you sit. Be watching for him all the time.”
“Well, duh.”
Taking tiny, patient steps, the two approached rows of seated civilians and standing officers. Leland decided to ignore the police, for the moment. They’d been thoroughly checked. Samael could be among the news cameramen. They stood with their tripods behind a black velvet cord, held up by four theater-style stanchions. Still, those cameras had been closely checked, too. Or Samael might be seated among the reporters, beside the photographers. But they, too, had endured a thorough and perhaps less-than-gentle inspection. He was here, though.
As they approached, Leland looked into each set of eyes that turned toward her – the cerulean gaze of a long-haired young boy, the brown serene witness of a black matriarch, the dull grays and blues of others. It was not color she checked – he could be wearing colored contact lenses – but soul, that predatory soul.
“It’s him, Chief,” came a whispered voice over the headphones. “This is Spotter Six. This guy’s got the exact same height, and maybe ten or fifteen pounds lighter, but he’s been on the lam. Besides, that skin can’t be real. There’s something wrong with his eyes.”
“Anybody else got an opinion?” Biggs asked.
“This is Spotter Three.” A woman’s voice. “I don’t think so. Too obvious. Everything fits, but he’s too nervous, too high-strung.”
“She’s right,” Leland agreed. “He wouldn’t be nervous. He would be in complete control.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t you be nervous with two hundred fifty packing cops around?” the chief asked. “And what if it is him? We say we missed him because his disguise wasn’t good enough and he was too nervous?”
The chief’s whisper was barely audible. They were nearing the place where the silver-eyed man stood. There was a nervous severity in the suspect, something Leland had never seen in Samael. On the other hand, by all accounts, Samael had changed. He was suicidal as well as homicidal. On the run. Perhaps without food or sleep or shelter.
“It could be him,” she murmured, “a little thinner, a little worse for wear.” They were edging around the cluster, as if the old lady wanted to get a clear view of the casket and flowers before she sat down. “If he’s mentally decayed, it could be him.”
“This is Spotter Six,” came a male voice. “He’s got my vote.”
“Mine, too – Spotter One.”
Biggs pretended to be cautioning the old crone about a depression in the ground when he said, “He’s either our man, or somebody even worse off.”
They rounded the group, and Leland noticed a glint of metal on the man’s gray-white lapel. “What is that pin he’s wearing?”
One of the supposed mourners standing near the man ducked his head, scratching the top of it. “An angel.”
A shiver went through Leland. She remembered exactly that sensation when she had met Sergeant Michaels at the Inn-Town Tap in Griffith. “It’s him,” she said. “I’m almost positive.”
“Any other suspects?” the chief asked, and there were no responses from the other groups of spotters.
“All right, then. Wait until I get the old bag here seated. Then I want Jenkins to drop him with the hypodermic, and the rest of you be ready to catch him and act like he fainted. Get him away from the crowd and out of sight before you try ripping his face off.”
Leland cringed as she passed her own casket. In a moment, it’ll all be over.
As if cued by that thought, the ornate casket began its slow, quiet descent into the grave.
“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion-” The priest spoke the psalm with the lyric, ringing voice of an oracle, reading from a fat Bible held in his left hand. “We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”
Biggs had done well to get one of Leland’s old parochial school priests to do the service. It leant authenticity. Father George, was it? Or Father Ben? They both had seemed ancient when she had been in their classes twenty years ago, and she was surprised either of them still lived. Even so, that white-haired, whiterobed old man was just as she had remembered him – with kind eyes and a perpetual, uncomfortable smile. She’d seen him in the paper recently – a photo with that smile. Probably something about his officiating at her funeral.
“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy-”
Apparently Father Whomever remembered her as a student. As she passed him, a tear crept from the corner of his eye and ran down to linger in the hollow above his cheekbone.
“Remember, O Lord, the children of Edom in the day of Jerusalem; who said Raze it, raze it, even to the foundations thereof.”