A Kiss Before the Apocalypse

Chapter three

The drive to Salem from Boston was relatively easy.

Except for the usual traffic jam in the Ted Williams Tunnel, the ride through Revere and Lynn was free of congestion. It was 9:26 on Wednesday morning, and the entire trip had taken Remy a little more than an hour.

His appointment with Janice Mountgomery was for 9:30, and he pulled into the driveway of the home on Prescott Street right on time. This was the part of his job that he found most difficult — the final meeting with the client, where suspicions were either confirmed or denied. He reached for the manila envelope on the seat beside him and got out of the car. Dressed in black jeans, a white shirt, and wool sports coat, the private investigator climbed four orange brick steps to the front door, rang the bell, and waited.

He found himself listening to the noise of the suburbs. The sounds were different here than in the city; calmer, slower, less frantic. The angel opened his senses and heard light snoring, morning television, and young children at play. A dog angrily barked at a bothersome cat trespassing in his territory, and a trapped housefly buzzed in frustration as it bounced its tiny body against an unremitting pane of glass. Then Janice Mountgom-ery opened the door, and Remy tuned it all out.

The woman looked tired, even more so than the last time he had seen her. It was obvious she hadn't been sleeping. Her eyes were red, the skin beneath them puffy and dark. She looked as though she would collapse at any moment.

"Mrs. Mountgomery, if this is a bad time I could come back tomorrow — " Remy began.

"No. It's fine. Come in." The woman pushed the screen door open and motioned for him to enter. "I don't think there's ever a good time for something like this. Do you?"

She didn't seem to expect a response, and Remy offered none as he stepped inside his client's home.

The house reeked of cleanliness, the scents of several different cleaning products making his sensitive nose tingle. He followed her down a short hallway, past a den, and into a dining room. An oblong table made of dark cherrywood occupied the center of the room. Six chairs surrounded it. Framed family pictures hung on the walls, with watercolors of spring on Beacon Hill and the gold-domed state house as seen through Boston Common.

Janice stood beside a chair where she had obviously been working; stacks of envelopes, a calculator, and a ledger were neatly laid out. "I was doing the bills," she explained. "Have to have all my ducks in a row now that things are the way they are." She kept her eyes downcast as she spoke. "We've got a good health plan, thank God. Who knows how long he'll be in the hospital before he can come home."

She looked at Remy then, her red, watery eyes locking on to his for the first time. "If he comes home."

Remy held out the manila envelope to her.

"I know this is difficult. I'll try to be quick."

Janice took the envelope tentatively, as if expecting it to be searing hot in her grasp. She held it for a moment, feeling the contents through the paper, and then set it down in the center of the table. She looked back to Remy, eyes swimming with sadness.

"Would you like a cup of coffee, Mr. Chandler? I've just brewed a fresh pot, and I really shouldn't drink the whole thing by myself."

Remy nodded and smiled.

"That would be nice. Thank you."

They sat across from one another at the dining room table, a plate of cookies that neither had touched between them. Janice blew on her coffee but didn't drink, and looked at Remy over the drifting steam.

"It doesn't surprise me at all, really." She laughed nervously, setting her mug down on a white paper napkin. "He was never really the same after the operation."

Remy sipped at his own coffee, his sixth that morning.

"Your husband mentioned something about surgery, and dreams he was having as a result. What was wrong with him, Mrs. Mountgomery?"

She picked up her mug again, holding it in both hands as if to warm them. "He had a brain tumor. They didn't think he would survive the procedure." She finally drank, quiet for a moment. "We even said our good-byes. Believe me when I tell you, there was a lot of praying in this house the morning he went in."

Remy wondered offhandedly whether any of his kind had been listening to the prayers of the Mount-gomerys that day.

Janice continued. "They tell me he actually died on the table, but they managed to revive him." She drank some more, her eyes suddenly focusing on the thick envelope still lying in the center of the table. "Lately I've been wondering if it would have been better if they had let him die."

She dragged her eyes from the envelope.

"You probably think I'm awful. The bitter, spurned wife," she said with a nervous laugh. "But it's not like that at all. After the surgery he just wasn't the man I married anymore. It was like the operation made him into somebody else, like the tumor was really Peter and once that was taken away, he left too. I know it sounds crazy, but that's how it was."

Remy set his mug down on his own napkin and watched as Janice pulled a tissue from her pocket. Her eyes had begun to tear.

"I'm sorry, it's just been so much for me to handle."

The woman dabbed at her eyes and wiped her running nose.

"How was he different?" Remy asked.

Janice sat stiffly for a moment, thinking, remembering. "He became very distant, distracted. And there were nightmares. Every night, he'd wake up screaming, carrying on about the end of the world."

Remy leaned forward. "Tell me more about the nightmares."

Janice wiped the table in front of her with the side of her hand, sweeping away imaginary crumbs. "Something about seals being broken and horsemen coming. It was all quite disturbing."

Another intrusive chill ran down the length of the angel's spine. It was starting to become commonplace, and he didn't care for it in the least. Waxen seals being broken on scrolls in the possession of the Angel of Death would, in fact, stir the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and bring about the world's end, but any fanatic, or editor at a religious publishing house, would be aware of that.

Janice Mountgomery laughed bitterly and stood up from her chair, empty coffee mug in hand. "Of course, he was completely out of his mind at that point," the woman said. "The kids and I begged him to get help. But he just became more and more withdrawn. We hardly spoke anymore, and then he began sleeping in the guestroom. Said it was so his nightmares wouldn't wake me, but I knew otherwise."

She made her way into the kitchen with her mug, taking Remy's as she passed. He got up and followed her, standing quietly in the doorway as the bereaved woman placed the dirty mugs in the sink and ran water into each.

"He did go back to work, although I don't know how he managed it. That's where he got involved with that woman, his secretary, Carol something or other — Weir? Carol Weir, isn't it?"

She turned off the water and wiped her hands on a red-and-white checked dishtowel, which hung beneath the sink. "I guess she was a bit of a religious nut, at least that's what people tell me. She believed his stories about the end being near. Probably needed help as much as he did."

There was a simmering rage in her voice now, as she leaned against the sink, arms tightly folded across her chest. "It's funny. I knew it was going to be her. When I suspected that he was fooling around, I knew it was with his secretary. I met her once at an office function, a while ago, before Peter got sick. She gave me this look, and I knew she was going to be trouble."

Janice smiled sadly and glanced at Remy, still in the doorway. "Wives can sense these things." She chuckled nervously. "Listen to me — now I sound like Peter." Then her eyes began to fill and she quickly changed the subject.

"Are you married, Mr. Chandler?"

Remy nodded, though he was usually careful not to reveal too much of his personal life to his clients. Yet this woman was hurting so much that he allowed himself to share a little. "Yes. Yes, I am."

That was all he gave her, but it seemed to satisfy.

"You seem like a very nice man, Mr. Chandler. Your wife is a very lucky woman."

"Thank you, Mrs. Mountgomery." Remy turned and began to move through the dining room toward the hall. "If you don't have any more questions, I really should be on my way."

The woman came quickly toward him, an air of desperation about her.

"Should I pay you the remainder of your fee now, or will you bill me?"

"I'll bill you. That way you'll have a receipt for your records." Remy started down the hallway. "Thank you again for the coffee." He grabbed the front doorknob, pulling it open as he turned back toward her. "Please, don't hesitate to call me if there's anything else I can do for you."

Janice reached around him to help with the door. "I was pretty much set to leave him, before all this, before I called you. I… Ijust wanted to be sure I was doing the right thing. All that talk about angels and devils around every corner, it was enough to make me nuts."

Remy nodded, then turned back toward the screen door, recalling the expression of disbelief, then unbridled joy that spread across Peter Mountgomery's face before he'd shot himself. Had the man just been crazy, experiencing delusions as a result of some defect of the brain? The question gnawed at him. Remy couldn't be sure.

He pushed open the storm door and stepped outside. He could feel the woman's eyes on him as he walked toward his car. He half expected her to call out to him, to ask him questions that would keep him there longer, but then he heard the front door close. He focused again on the sounds of the suburbs around him: morning talk shows on television, the rasping snore of a restless sleeper, and a new sound — the pitiful sobs of a woman, more alone at that moment than she had ever been in her life.

It took him longer to get back into Boston. Remy sat in the late-morning traffic, listening to news radio and slowly making his way across the Lenny Zakim bridge. Something bothered him. No matter how hard he tried to shake it off, it wouldn't let go. The Mountgomery case was, for all intents and purposes, closed, done. But something would not allow him to think of it that way. The more he poked at the strange animal that was this case, the more it twitched to be noticed.

Remy decided to stop at the hospital, to see Peter Mountgomery for himself, hoping to still some of these strange feelings of unease.

Finding a space on Cambridge Street, he locked up his car, fed the meter a few quarters, and walked the short distance to Massachusetts General Hospital. He entered the main lobby through the revolving doors and willed himself invisible — another angelic trait he allowed himself to indulge in every so often. In his line of work, the talent frequently proved invaluable. Only the very young and the very old had the ability to glimpse the angel when he was in this state. He imagined it had something to do with being closer to the divine at those particular stages in the human life span.

Remy moved through the lobby and down the crowded corridor, following the signs for the Bigelow Building elevators. No one so much as looked in his direction. The center elevator chimed happily as its doors opened, and he joined a small crowd headed up.

While everyone else watched the numbers over the doors climb, Remy and a baby boy stared at each other. The child began to laugh, pumping his chubby arms crazily as drool trailed from his toothless mouth. Gently, the angel brushed the child's head with the side of his finger and mouthed the word hello. The boy laughed even harder, squealed loudly, and tossed his melon-shaped head back, flailing his arms. The mother glanced around nervously, looking for what had excited her baby so, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. She smiled and kissed the child, calling him her silly monkey, as they exited the elevator on the floor before Remy's.

He had little problem finding Mountgomery's room. Still unseen, he approached a tired-looking nurse who was doing paperwork at the nurses' station. He moved up silently behind him and whispered into his ear. The exhausted young man put down his pen suddenly, as though he had just thought of something he didn't dare forget again, and wheeled his chair over to a computer terminal. He began to type on the keyboard, and Remy watched as Peter Mountgomery's medical records appeared. He was in room 615. The nurse checked some information, nodded to himself in satisfaction, and went back to his paperwork. Silently, Remy Chandler thanked him and headed down the hall.

The angel heard it even before he'd reached the room he sought, the doleful, ethereal cries of a soul in distress wafting down the corridor. Remy entered room 615 and approached Mountgomery's bed, wincing as the man's life force screamed to be freed from its prison of flesh.

What is keeping you here? he wondered, staring down at the man, desperate for answers. Why hasn't your soul been taken? The man lay in the hospital bed, his head and neck swathed in bandages stained with blood and a yellowish discharge. He was hooked to a number of machines that monitored his condition and provided life support. Tubes of various sizes carried fluids to and from his body.

Remy took Peter's hand in his and gently squeezed. "Why are you still here?" he whispered, speaking directly to the spirit trapped within the broken body.

The imprisoned soul moaned all the louder, sensing the presence of a being who might free it from its confines. The anguished cries tore at the essence of Remy's true self.

"I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do," he told it. "It's… it'snot my job."

The soul continued to cry out, and the angel's thoughts turned to the one whose purpose it was to an- swer these plaintive cries. Remy let go of Mountgom-ery's hand, stepping back from the bed, watching the man's chest rise and fall with every breath — with life. Something was wrong.

Horribly, horribly wrong.

And then Remy heard the others.

The pleading wails of Mountgomery's soul rose in intensity, joining with other tortured cries from the intensive care unit, and it was almost more than the detective could stand. The accumulated misery was deafening, and he quickly left the room, making his way back to the elevators. He had to get away.

Tormented souls beckoned to him as he passed other rooms, begging for his divine attention, and he apologized to them all, sorry that there was nothing he could do to help them.

It isn't my job.

At the elevator he wondered, Where is Israfil? The question replayed itself over and over again as he practically threw himself into the elevator to escape the mournful pleas.

Where is the Angel of Death?