Part 9 (1/2)

”Well, it was probably just the stocking he wore.” She squirmed in her chair like a schoolgirl who's forgotten a crucial answer on a test.

”Your impressions could be valuable,” I said. ”No one will make fun of you.”

”Thanks.” She gave me a weak smile. ”But you know, it never looked like he had features, facial features, I mean. His head seemed to be this smooth-” She gestured with her hands, a motion that defined a cylinder. ”This smooth, well, thing under all the cloth.”

”A mask, maybe?” I said.

”Or some sort of helmet.” She looked away, then shuddered. ”It made a very unpleasant impression.”

Ari leaned forward and asked, ”Did you know about the heroin traffic?”

”I did not!” Her nostrils flared, and her blue eyes opened wide. ”I never would have stayed if I'd known that awful man was selling drugs.”

”Which awful man?” Ari said.

”Well, both of them, really, Doyle and Johnson, but-” She paused again, and her hands began to shake even though she'd twined them together. ”You're the officer who killed one of them, aren't you?”

”I'm afraid so,” Ari said. ”In the line of duty and all that.”

”You deserve a medal,” Mr. L put in. ”In my opinion, anyway.”

Mrs. LaRosa's facade cracked. Tears ran down her cheeks, tears gray with eyeliner that plowed little furrows into her foundation. LaRosa leaned over, put his hands on her shoulders, and rubbed them while he murmured a helpless ”there, there, I'm sorry” over and over.

”I'm not upset over Johnson.” Mrs. LaRosa choked out the words. ”I keep thinking of Elaine, dying like that, and she loved him so much, Doyle, I mean, she really did, and he killed her.”

She turned half away, then reached inside her s.h.i.+rt to pull a tissue out of her bra with delicate fingers. I waited until she'd gotten herself back under control.

”If there's anything else you can remember about Belial,” I said, ”when you're feeling less stressed, please call Lieutenant Sanchez. He'll see that I get the message.”

”I'll do that, yes.” Mrs. L forced out a smile. ”I do want to know the truth about this. I feel so foolish, now, that I trusted them.”

Agreeing with her would have been too rude, even though I wanted to. I stood up, and Ari followed. ”We'll leave you alone now,” I said. ”Thank you for the information. And remember, if you think of anything to add, no matter how trivial it seems, please call homicide detective Sanchez down at the Police Department.”

”We will,” Mr. LaRosa said. ”You can count on that. And they can always reach us by phone, even in Provence. I'll leave the numbers before we go.”

We showed ourselves out. While we walked uphill to the spot where we'd parked, Ari stayed silent. Once we'd gotten into the car, he turned toward me.

”Do you think Belial was a human being?” he said.

”You're getting the hang of this, aren't you? At the moment, no, I don't. The question is: if not, then what?”

”I don't suppose there are actual demons involved in this case.” He paused to buckle up his seat belt. ”Um, is there such a thing? As demons, I mean.”

”Well, it depends on how you define demon. What looks like a demon to some people might be a perfectly natural being in its own world. For all we know, Chaos masters live on some other world.”

”You're having a joke on me, aren't you?”

”Unfortunately, no.”

”Father was right.” Ari rolled his eyes. ”I should have been an insurance adjuster.”

”You couldn't carry a gun everywhere if you were an insurance adjuster.”

”I'll admit it; that was one of the things that influenced my decision. But these Chaos masters. I'm a.s.suming they'll bleed if I have to shoot one.”

”As far as I know, yeah. But then, I don't know much.”

”How rea.s.suring.”

I smiled and started the car.

I've always hated the term ”Chaos masters.” It sounds like something from a golf tournament. For all we know, these ”masters” don't exist as sapient beings. We may simply be personifying little vortices or knots of energy that strive to break up stagnant situations and other overloads of Order gone wild. The energy, however, is definitely real. It can form waterspouts and whirlpools of disruption that suck in the vulnerable and force them to do things that, left to themselves, they'd never even consider.

Like jumping into the bay fully clothed.

Still, in this particular case, we faced someone, human or not, who could pull a stocking over his face and put on a ritual robe. Whether he was a master or a minion-in fact, whether he was a ”he” in any sense we'd recognize as a gender-were big questions.

We continued searching for answers that afternoon by interviewing the coven member called ”Sweetie,” or, in more ordinary terms, Caroline Burnside. She lived in the Cole Valley neighborhood on the uphill edge of the old Haight-Ashbury. As usual, parking there proved to be an aggravation and a half. Eventually, we found a spot of sorts. I could just squeeze the rental car between a monstrous black SUV and a pickup truck.

”By the way, I'll be getting the new car on Tuesday,” Ari said. ”I'm not sure if it'll be easier to handle or not.”

”Am I going to be allowed to drive it?”

”Oh, yes. I made sure to ask.”

We walked a couple of blocks to Burnside's address, a big white corner building housing a pair of flats above a laundromat. As we headed for the street door, I noticed an obvious unmarked squad car, black and bulky, parked nearby. A man in a sports jacket and open-throated white s.h.i.+rt sat behind the wheel and read a newspaper. Ari glanced his way.

”Sanchez's man, I a.s.sume,” he said.

Since Ari stood between me and the car, I could throw an un.o.btrustive Chaos ward. It bounced off the car door with no effect. ”Yeah,” I said. ”Must be.”

When we rang the doorbell, Caroline Burnside buzzed us in. A narrow flight of stairs, covered in ratty brown carpet, led up to the landing where she stood waiting. I'm not sure what I expected Sweetie to be, but it wasn't the amazon who greeted us. Dressed in a black tunic, caught with a silver concho belt at the waist over a long black skirt, she stood at least six feet tall, and was heavyset without being fat, with broad shoulders and long legs. She had a shoulderlength mop of curly blonde hair which she wore pulled back from a square, strong-jawed face. Her voice, however, was high and girlish, though I put her age at about forty.

”Hi,” she said, ”I'm Karo. That's what everyone calls me, Karo like in the syrup.”

Hence the nickname of Sweetie, I a.s.sumed. Ari and I brought out our IDs, which she inspected with some care.

”Looks like you're real cops,” she said. ”Come in.”

She ushered us into a room crammed with brightly colored stuff. It took me several minutes to sort out the sight-piles of books on the floor, knickknacks and more books on shelves and the mantel over the gas heater. Blue-andyellow paper lanterns, some with sun-and-moon faces, hung from the ceiling. Patchwork pillows lay piled on the two wicker chairs, on the floor in corners, and on the long cedar chest that sat in the big bay window, which was partly covered by green-and-purple brocade swags of curtain. Karo waved vaguely at the chairs.

”You can sit there, I guess,” she said. ”Just throw the pillows on to the floor if there's too many.”

There were, and we did. Karo pulled over a huge red-and-blue paisley floor pillow and sat on that.

”So,” she said, ”what do you want to ask me about? Bill?”