Poltergeist

CHAPTER 11

Columbia Center is the tallest building in Seattle. It rears up from Fifth Avenue like three obsidian tors melded into one jutting prominence by some weird volcanic fit. In defiance of the prevailing winds, curved surfaces face Puget Sound like black sails. It is the bastion of billion-dollar corporations and millionaire executives. Someone called it the most obscene erection of ego on the Pacific Coast and I don't think he was too far wrong. Occupying the top two floors is the most expensive businessman's club in the city—the Columbia Tower Club—out-Babbitting even the venerable Washington Athletic Club. Dale Stahlqvist came down to the soaring red stone lobby to meet me.

Stahlqvist was one of those tall, pale blond men Hollywood likes to cast as Nazi Übermenschen or Viking raiders. In spite of my natural height plus the heels on my dress boots, he was still taller than me and he was inclined to look down his narrow beak as he assayed me.

"Well," he rumbled as he stopped in front of me and shook my hand, "we should go upstairs. A little more privacy in the CTC." "All right," I agreed, and I hoped he was paying. "So," he said as we rode up in the elevator, "you're what, another of Tuckman's graduate students?”

"No, Mr. Stahlqvist. I'm a private investigator.”

"Really? I didn't think they actually existed. How interesting. You're not what comes to mind when I think of private eyes.”

"Yeah, I'm taller than Bogie.”

He laughed. "And much prettier.”

While I suppose I am prettier than Humphrey Bogart, I'm no standout beauty and I know when I'm being buttered up, if not why. I imagined that Stahlqvist would have continued trying to turn my head a while longer if we hadn't arrived at the seventy-fourth floor just as he opened his mouth.

"Oh. We're here. Please," he added, gesturing me ahead, into the hushed modern opulence of the Columbia Tower Club's lobby. Stahlqvist paused at the big mahogany reception desk to sign in and asked me to do the same; then he whisked me into the lounge, but not before I noticed the small sign thanking guests for adhering to the dress code and eschewing denim. It appeared that my lack of laundry time had brought me more than a dry-cleaning bill.

All right, so the view was breathtaking—even with the drizzle. The lounge faced Puget Sound through the only flat wall in the building. The dark glass stretched uninterrupted across the whole width and height of the wall and around the exterior corner until necessity required a less transparent segment for the service area. Cold water, painted pink and orange with sunset, spread at the foot of Seattle's hills and, to the west, the sudden, white-peaked serration of the Olympic Mountains cut into the clouds above the peninsula. In spite of the tinted glass, it seemed as if I were a mere step from floating out over the view, weightless and free. This was not a room for those who suffer vertigo.

Since it was four o'clock, the lounge was a little crowded and I was relieved there were no free stools at the bar, facing that distracting panorama. We were forced to take a table, though both seats still commanded the view with the merest turn of the head. I chose the seat with the poorer aspect and Stahlqvist, acting the gentleman, couldn't argue with me when the declining sun was in his face instead of mine. Though I can see a great deal that Stahlqvist couldn't in any light, I still like the old-fashioned advantages, too.

He tried to order me an impressive drink, but I insisted on soda water with lime. "I'm working. I shouldn't drink.”

"Oh, yes. But I am not, so I'll have the Balvenie Fifteen on the rocks, thanks.”

The waiter nodded, smiled, and left us. Stahlqvist turned his attention back to me. "So. What can I do for you, Harper?”

"I'm doing some additional checking on Dr. Tuckman's project and I wanted to ask you a few question about it.”

"On whose behalf are you asking?”

I smiled, even though he couldn't see it. "I'm not able to tell you that. Will that be a problem?”

"No. I can't see that it would. I have nothing to hide.”

"You'll pardon me for saying, but this project doesn't seem like your sort of thing at all, Dale.”

The waiter returned with our drinks as a frown flickered across Stahlqvist's face—he didn't like my using his first name. He sipped his scotch before answering. "It's not, really. My wife's thing—friend of Tuck's from the university days." And Stahlqvist didn't approve of that friendship. He rambled on for a while about his college days and his climb to economic power in the local community, dropping names and numbers. His only interest was money. It was obvious he didn't have any background that would enable him to fake any phenomena, nor would he care to.

I nodded for a while, then nudged him back on track. "You've been with the project since the beginning, so what's your general impression of the progress? And how do you feel about Tuckman's premise—that the human mind is the force at work?" I asked.

"I was skeptical at first, I admit it—I don't have any patience for mystical crap. Tuckman's completely right—this magic mumbo jumbo is just that. It's people who make the world what it is. It's people who really have the power to move—well, to move mountains! It's quite satisfying.”

I'd just bet it was. Peeking at him through the Grey, I could see that Stahlqvist glowed with excitement. He loved justifying his power and position. As he blithered on about what he felt they could do, I noticed that he had a thin yellow thread of energy encircling his head. It trailed away to the north, dimming in the sunlight and distance until I couldn't see it without taking a big step into the Grey—which I wasn't going to do then and there. There was something familiar about the thread. . As I tried to bring it to mind, I lost track of his words. Until he put his hand on my knee and bent a suggestive look at me.

I glanced at his hand, then back into his face. "I doubt your wife would approve of that offer.”

"Cara's her own woman. I'm my own man.”

My bullshit meter pegged to the redline. Even in the Grey he had a smarmy shiftiness to him that only reinforced that feeling. I let my inner bitch chill the stare I locked onto his. "My leg doesn't belong to either of you.”

Stahlqvist looked surprised and pulled his hand back, making the movement into a glance at his Rolex. "It is getting a bit late. What else did you need to know?”

I asked him for his impressions of the other participants and watched his aura flicker and shift colors as he replied, flushing through oranges and reds and into sickly green spikes. He said they were all great friends, though it was obvious he disdained them. He was jealous of Celia's fondness for Ken—the artist—and of the older military man's ability to assume control of the group. Dale Stahlqvist felt he merited more consideration from both ghosts and humans—including his wife. Something between them caused Stahlqvist distress, but he slapped a lid on it.

The only time I was sure he was telling the truth as he saw it was when I asked him if anyone was faking the phenomena.

He shook his head, laughing. "Not possible. Tuckman's made sure of that. What we get is real." He'd convinced himself, in spite of his own disbelief in "murabo jumbo." Tuckman seemed to be right on track there.

I stood up and offered Stahlqvist my hand. "Well, that's all I needed to know. Thank you. I appreciate your time. May I call you if I have any additional questions?" I noticed that the little yellow thread hadn't wavered once and I was still wondering what it was.

He stood up, too. "Certainly, Harper. It was a pleasure to meet you." He shook my hand, leaving an odd cold spot on my palm, and watched me go.

I exited onto Fifth Avenue in the long, dark shadow of the black tower behind me as the streetlights came on. The road ahead was choked with cars trying to turn left onto 1–5 southbound. I was glad to be on foot. I turned and started up Fifth toward Westlake Mall, thinking about that thin yellow thread that looked so much like the strands of energy I'd seen wadded into a ball under the séance table.

The Pager Cart had gone out of business. I scouted around and found a kiosk selling mobile phone service, but not pagers. After two other stops, I emerged from a shop in the lower level of the Pacific Place Mall with a cell phone I'd been assured could accept my pages and receive forwarded calls from my office number, too. I was a little nonplussed about the two-year contract I'd had to accept to get the plastic marvel of miniaturization and modern convenience, but I'd been impressed by the fact that it got a signal at all two floors below street level.

I poked the phone, amazed to see that it was already working. I realized that the sun was well down now, so I tried calling Cameron. He sounded anxious when he heard it was me.

"So?" he asked.

"Your dead guy is just a dead guy. Nothing to see.”

"Good. Great. Thank you, Harper. I owe you.”

"Yeah. OK. But I'd like not to do that ever again.”

"Never on my account.”

I hoped not on anyone's account. I finished up my business with Cameron and made another call. It was two a.m. in London, but I was expected.

Will sounded tired when he answered.

"Hi, Will," I started.

"Hi, Harper. You sound far away. Usually, you sound close enough to touch. And I miss touching you.”

A mild flush heated my face. "I'm on a cell phone—that's why I sound odd. In the basement at Pacific Place. If I move I'll lose you.”

"Oh." His pause stretched as he shifted conversational gears and we talked about nothing much for a few minutes. Then he said, "Now I'm lying in bed, thinking I need to get up in four hours. . ”

"I shouldn't have called.”

"You always call on Fridays.”

"Maybe I shouldn't. Maybe—”

"Maybe you shouldn't call from the mall.”

"What?”

"I just mean we can't have much of a conversation when you're in a public place with bad reception. There are things I want to say to you that I can't say in those conditions. I want…”

"What?”

I imagined him shaking his head, some stray light from the street glinting off his pale hair in the early-morning gloom. "Never mind. Good night, Harper.”

My own good-bye was made to a dead phone. I felt tired, frustrated, and sad. I wandered into the bookstore in the opposite corner, hoping to raise my mood. My feet hurt and I hadn't eaten all day, so I bought food and collapsed into a corner of the bookstore's cafe with a Michael Connelly novel.

One of the most pleasant aspects of that bookstore to me was its location so deep in the earth of the Denny Regrade that no ghost stalked there. Pacific Place lay at the southern edge of what was once Denny Hill until R. H. Thomson got his hydraulic mining equipment turned on the offending bluff. He'd watered it down to size to make the north end of downtown hospitable to the wide, gently sloping avenues he preferred over the vertical insanity that defined the original shape of the city. The current street level at the corner of Pine and Seventh lay more than a hundred feet below the hill that once towered over it, and the basement bookstore snuggled down into the glacial silt that lay undisturbed until the foundations of the current building were laid in 1998. I reveled in the paranormal quiet with Harry Bosch and a cup of soup until I had the energy to head home.

Chaos and I sorted laundry that had developed the sudden urge to levitate and move around the room, which amused the ferret, but just turned my dissatisfaction into irritation. I yelled at the moving clothes and swore at my purse, which spilled its contents all over the kitchen floor, sending coins and small objects everywhere, to the ferret's delight. I fell into bed late and in a mood so bad I had disjointed, angry dreams, and woke up swaddled as tight as a medieval baby.