Poltergeist

EPILOGUE

No one would have been believed and judged competent to stand trial when they raved about ghosts and vampires, sex and death, and women who danced in curtains of blood and fire. During his hearing, Ian's sudden fits of screaming, swearing, and sobbing did nothing to advance a finding for sanity, even though the things he said were true. I would not have called what I had done in the dread light of the entity dancing, however.

Ian had been quiet at first, sitting still and calm beside his lawyer. His demeanor and responses had been almost childlike in simplicity and lack of focus. Then he had burst into profanity and screaming. Guards removed him from the room after the second rage of hysteria, when he had raised his hands to his face, shrieking and gouging at his own eyes. He was committed to Western State Hospital, confessing to Mark's murder over and over in gruesome detail. I knew he'd never be coming out; Carlos had deranged his mind too far for hope of recovery.

While he wasn't sane enough to stand trial after the fact, the summary hearing found Ian sane at the time of Mark's murder. Ian had been a diarist. In the office of the Wah Mee, Solis discovered a notebook in which Ian had written everything he'd thought, felt, and planned. His intended actions through Celia, coldly detailed, were perverse and violent, written in a neat draftsmanly hand, between precise margins.

My name was included in his list of those he'd meant to have Celia "remove," just below Ana's, Ken's, and Cara's. The testifying psychologist believed that Celia was Ian's own disassociated personality and that everything he attributed to Celia was something he had done—or wished to do—himself, deluded that he had some kind of magical powers. I wouldn't have argued with that concept. With his increasing skill, Ian might have been able to do what he'd written. I was glad not to have tested the hypothesis, though.

Sous was never happy with my story of being spotted by Ian and of a phone call that had brought me to the Wah Mee, but I refused to change it and there was nothing he could do. My office was six blocks from Uwajimaya and my claim to have been shopping in the neighborhood was attested by his own observers.

The Lupoldi family accepted the official finding and Amanda Leaman confirmed that it was Ian who'd argued with Mark the Monday before the murder. No mechanism for Mark's death was ever found, since no one but Ian and I accepted the notion of killer ghosts.

The lack of a weapon made the case quite unsatisfactory to Solis, but the rest of the evidence was strong enough to close the file. His colleagues consoled him that his clearance record remained unblotted by the mystery, but he turned a chilling silence on them and further discussion died.

Frankie called to tell me Gartner Tuckman hadn't dodged the grant review or the specter of having unleashed a psychopathic killer, and his credibility fell apart. He was dismissed and a fraud investigation was initiated. Terry was left scrambling to find a new thesis reviewer. I figured he'd do better without Tuck.

Frankie also informed me that Ken and Ana had both changed their address cards and were cohabiting. "I wouldn't call it an engagement," she said, "but they look like they're headed that way." I guessed family objections meant less when life seemed shorter.

Of the Stahlqvists, only the business news had word and that mostly bland. Patricia Railsback and Wayne Hopke dropped from my radar like stones in water. I tried to settle back into normal cases—or as normal as they get when some of the clients start out dead—but grasping the burning lines of energy in dismantling Celia had seared the Grey deeper into me and it was harder than ever to shake it off. Most of the time, I no longer bothered.

The knee and shoulder I'd landed on were injured worse than I'd imagined, and I replaced my morning jog with time at the gym, working them back into shape.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving, with no phone call to warn me, Will Novak came through my office doorway. Tall—almost gangly—with prematurely silver hair glinting from the hall light, he leaned on the doorpost and smiled at me, glimmering pink sparks like I'd seen around Ken and Ana.

"Hi, Harper.”

"Hi, yourself, stranger.”

"Got any plans for the national holiday?”

"Yeah.”

"Oh?”

I nodded. "I thought I'd rent a pile of DVDs and gorge on old black-and-white movies and turkey potpie. Want to join me?”

"Are you coming apart?”

"Yup. Wanna try to stick me back together?" Well, I hoped he could, but I wasn't sure we'd still get pink sparks.

He came in and kissed me and grinned and said, "Think we can find Suspicion?”

Cary Grant as a man who might be a psychopathic killer. . My stomach pitched and I felt cold. "I'd rather not," I said. "Maybe we could find something a little lighter.”

In quiet moments, guilt, anger, and regret found me and I didn't want to see a film that would remind me of Ian and of what I hadn't stopped Carlos from doing to him. Ian wouldn't kill anyone else, but he lived in endless nightmares. I didn't know that I could have changed that; I only knew that I hadn't.