“Christ, Helen,” I murmured.
“It’s better than what you thought, bud,” Jake said.
He was right. But still.
We talked, the three of us, for most of the afternoon. A lot of it covered everything that had happened, from each of our perspectives and experiences, and though Detective Shea couldn’t express enough how much he wanted to slap Jake and me for getting in so deep, he proved himself to be a genuinely warm and upright guy as far as I was concerned. He assured me that Cora Parson would never live to see the outside of a prison again, and though it couldn’t undo the unholy wreckage she’d left in her wake, it was good to hear. I liked Donny Shea. Maybe that was why I felt so guilty for keeping one little bit of information from him. At least for the time being.
Jake, on the other hand — my partner in all of this, for better or worse — came along for the ride on this one. I might have expected the coordinates to some remote spot in the San Gabriel Mountains when I asked Cora Parson where Grace Baron was hidden, but to finally find her all we had to do was take a cab out to the crumbling remains of a once grand mansion.
“Joseph March’s house,” she’d said simply in the moments before I let the El Centro police in and, temporarily, experienced handcuffs for the first time in my life. “That is where you will find Grace. Where she belongs.”
The name was vaguely familiar, but a quick Internet search filled me in on the finer details. Joseph March was a minor director in the silent era whose career tanked once the Talkie came around. At the height of his success he occupied the mansion in Malibu, which had passed from owner to owner over the years, eventually left to rot by the dawn of the eighties. It was prime oceanside real estate, though, so by the mid-nineties the entire property was scooped up for a song by someone with more money than I’d ever see with plans to restore the house to its original condition. One look at the place upon our arrival was all we needed to know those plans had been greatly delayed.
“Christ, what a dump,” Jake opined.
I was inclined to agree. The place looked like a haunted house from some old B horror picture with its sagging roof and rotting eaves. The overstated columns in front were choked by creepers and the steps were falling to pieces. A swimming pool on the side facing the Pacific was filled almost to the top with dirt and tall, intersecting weeds. I figured the guy who bought the place must have had second thoughts about restoration; the house was wrecked and probably just needed to be knocked down. But not before we did what we came to do.
“I don’t know, Graham,” Jake said as the cab pulled away. “It doesn’t look exactly safe.”
“You can wait out here,” I told him. “I don’t mind.”
“Forget that,” he countered. “In for a penny, man.”
“All right.”
I climbed the ruined steps with Jake’s help, using my cane to knock aside chunks of the broken stone to keep from tripping on them. The front door, a massive hunk of oak going green from rot, wasn’t locked. I pushed it open to reveal a dark, rank foyer overgrown with vegetation. Our steps echoed loudly against the walls as we went inside. Jake kept his hand at the small of my back, like he was worried I’d fall over. It wasn’t the first time it occurred to me what a decent human being he’d turned out to be. I still thought he was annoying as all hell, but I was starting to tolerate the guy.
“Big joint,” he said, his voice bouncing all over the place like a museum. “Where to?”
I heaved a sigh and went forward, stepping lightly in spite of my limp, working to avoid the weeds and detritus covering the marble floor. There was an open doorway in front of me and a closed door to my right. I looked first through the open one, which led into a large empty room lined with what once were bookshelves, but now wouldn’t even serve as useful firewood. I looked back in time to see Jake trying the closed door. It didn’t budge, so he threw his shoulder into it and fell right through. He yelled out, startled, and I came to him as quickly as I could.
“You all right?”
“Goddamn thing,” he groused. I decided he was all right.
We were in a dark hallway that smelled like a jungle and a locker room rolled up in an old rug. I helped Jake up and we peered into the darkness together, our eyes adjusting to the light. We saw the door at the end of the hall at the same time, and neither of us said a word. We just walked side by side right up to it, and this time it opened up without a problem.
I flicked my disposable lighter to see what fresh hell we’d stumbled into. Once the flame leapt up and gave a faint glow to the metal frames of tiered seats and the small window in the center of the wall behind them, I understood everything perfectly.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh, Jesus.”
“What?”
“Where she belongs.”
“What is all this?”
“A private screening room,” I told him. “A mini movie theater. Because that’s where Grace belongs. It’s where she always belonged. On the screen.”
“So — she’s here?”
“She has to be.”
The flame burned my thumb and I released the button. We were plunged back into darkness, but I remembered seeing an old sconce on the wall of the library. I told Jake about it and he rushed to get it. When he returned, we were both relieved to find it still held some fuel and the wick actually caught. Now we had light to work by.
It didn’t take long. Together, we pulled up the moldy old carpet to reveal a floor comprised of wood slats. Like everything else in the house they were half rotted away, so Jake passed the light over the sundry gaps between the seats and the facing wall where the screen once hung until he gasped and shouted out, “Here! She’s here. Oh my God.”
I hobbled over and peered down through the broad, jagged cracks. Looking back up at me was the hollow eye socket of a human skull.
“Jesus,” Jake whispered. “All these years?”
“Most of a century,” I said. He held the light steady so I could look at her, or what was left of her. Just a gray-white skull, only bones left barely concealed in the threadbare ruins of an ancient gown.
“I’ve got my phone,” Jake said, his voice unexpectedly choked with emotion. “I’ll call Shea.”
I nodded and he left the screening room. Left me and the light and the remains of the doomed girl who should have been the most enduring name and talent of her time, but was instead forgotten, lost to history. I’d been through so much to see her sit where she belonged, among the royalty of silent cinema to whom she truly, rightfully belonged. And I knew, now that the ordeal was really done, that the job I’d come to do in the first place was finally going to be done. I was going to make damn certain Angel of the Abyss, for all its beauty and horror, was finally brought back from the grave.
On my hands and knees in the tremulous light of the sconce, I smiled down through the holes in the floor at the bones underneath, and I said, “Hello, Grace. I’m Graham Woodard. I think I’ve been looking for you for a long time.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ed Kurtz is the author of A Wind of Knives and The Forty-Two. His short fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Shotgun Honey, Beat to a Pulp, and numerous anthologies. Ed lives in Texas, where he is at work on his next project. Visit Ed Kurtz online at www.edkurtz.net.