Possession

Chapter Forty

As Cait parallel-parked on Trade Street, no more than a block away from the Palace Theatre, she frowned and leaned into the windshield. It wasn’t because she was lost this time, though. As opposed to when she’d been trying to find the hair salon a couple of nights ago, she had no confusion as to the theater’s location.

The issue was the police.

There were six or seven Caldwell Police Department vehicles parked in front of the Palace, and about half a dozen uniformed officers milling around outside the main entrance.

Getting out into the sunshine, she pulled her light coat in tighter and slung her bag over her shoulder. She had to wait for a stream of traffic to go by, but eventually there was a break in the cars and she jaywalked across.

Probably not the smartest thing to do in front of a cop convention, but it sure seemed like the unis had bigger fish to fry than her.

As she approached the knot of officers, several of them turned to her.

“Hi,” she said, blinking in the glare of their badges. “I’m here to meet a friend for lunch?”

The tallest one, an African-American guy with a voice that suggested you really did not mess with him, spoke up. “Who would that be?”

“G. B. Holde? He’s a singer—he’s here rehearsing for Rent?”

“You’re meeting him for what?”

Abruptly, they were all focused on her, measuring her, no doubt taking mental pictures and notes. “Lunch? We were going to have a sandwich together?”

“Is this a regular thing?”

“Um, no. We made the date—er, you know, the time—last night?”

“Do you know him well?”

“Why are you here? What’s happened?”

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Cait. Caitlyn Douglass?” Maybe they were violating her rights, she didn’t know. But she had nothing to hide. “Is he okay?”

“We can’t let you inside, ma’am, I’m sorry. This is a crime scene.”

Cait felt the blood leave her face. “Who died?”

“A young female.”

Which meant G.B. was okay—and yet the intel was not any kind of relief. “Oh … God.” Was it a case of Sissy all over again? Or … “I was chased in the parking lot the other night. You don’t suppose this had anything to do with—”

“When was that, ma’am?”

Even more police officers clustered around her as she told them all what had happened to her. And then an exhausted man in a loose suit came out of the theater’s glass doors.

“Detective?” someone called out. “We got a female over here.”

A man with dark hair and a way-too-early-in-the-day five o’clock shadow walked across the mosaic stretch and put his hand out. “Detective de la Cruz. How you doing?”

Shaking his hand, she instantly felt comfortable with him. “Hi.”

“You’ve got quite a crowd here.” He nodded at his colleagues. “They’re nosy—and paid to be that way. Me, too. So you mind telling me what’s going on with you?”

In quick, clear terms, she explained everything that had happened to her the other night, and as she talked, he scribbled in a little spiral notebook.

“Well, I’m sorry you were chased like that.” He put his notebook away. “Any follow-up on the perpetrator?”

“No. I haven’t called, and no one’s been in touch.”

“I’ll check back at the station and let you know one way or the other. As for your lunch, I’m sorry, but we can’t let you in. Everybody who’s working in the theater is being questioned by my team. As for this …” He took the notepad out again and flipped the cover open. “This G.B. guy? Is that the man you were going to meet?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, he’s going to be busy for a while.”

She frowned. “Detective, can you tell me anything about what’s going on?”

“I’m sorry, I can’t. But you’ll hear about it tonight on the news,” he said dryly as a van with a satellite dish on its roof pulled up across the street. “However, if you want me to get a message to G.B., I’d be happy to carry it in.”

“I just want him to know I came … and that I hope he’s okay.”

Which was stupid. Someone had died. Nothing was okay.

After she got back to her car, she started her engine and pulled out of her spot. She didn’t have any idea where she was going, although she did text G.B. at a stoplight, just in case the detective got busy or forgot.

With any luck, he would volunteer an update.

Hitting another stoplight, she made a random turn. And another. And even more, until she realized she was literally going nowhere. Pulling over, she found herself in Caldwell’s financial district, the thicket of skyscrapers blocking out the light, the pedestrians all in gray and black like shadows of real people.

She really needed to just go home, she thought—even as she put the car in park and sat back in her seat.

Man, one thing that sucked as you got older was that you had so many more associations with things. A couple of years ago, she might have gone to that theater, heard that someone she didn’t know had been killed, and probably only had a moment’s pause. Now? After Sissy Barten’s brutal murder, she was stuck in a domino effect that took her right back to that hospital, when her brother had been taken off the ventilator.

He should have been wearing a helmet. Goddamn him, he knew he wasn’t supposed to skateboard without a helmet.

But teenagers were clueless enough to believe their skulls were stronger than concrete.

That had been the transformative part for her, she realized. If he’d only been properly prepared, he would have been okay—he would have survived the impact.

That had been the basis of the fixation on order for her: the idea that if you just made sure you were always neat and prepared, you’d be safe. If you put on a helmet, you would never be injured. If you always wore your seat belt, and got regular checkups, and flossed and brushed, and never, ever took a step without first considering what kind of padding and safety equipment you needed…

She thought of Thom: If you stuck with nice guys who you weren’t really passionate about, you wouldn’t have to worry about getting your heart broken.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered to herself. That had happened anyway. And curiously … it had been okay. It was okay.

And didn’t that make her think about the differences between G.B. and Duke.

She had known that she was going to have to make a choice at some point. She had not expected to have that decision come to her here and now, as she sat in her car at the side of the road, swarms of business types walking by, taxis shooting up and down the street, distant sirens suggesting that crises were all around.

She had tried the safe option once before and the outcome had been what it was—and in fact, crash helmets only helped in certain kinds of accidents … and even neat freaks who relied on order to protect themselves got chased in garages and scared shitless.

Hell, for all she knew, whatever woman had been killed at the theater had had a color-coded closet, too.

There was no protection from injury, disillusionment, disappointment.

God, what a depressing thought. And yet it was liberating, too.

She knew who she wanted.

At least … she thought she did.

The knock on her window made her shout in alarm.

“Ma’am?” It was a meter maid, her voice buffered by the closed windows. “I’m going to have to ticket you if you don’t get moving.”

“Sorry,” Cait said, trying to remember where the gearshift was. “I’ll leave right now. Thanks.”

Getting back into the flow of traffic, she felt a strange dread come over her, as if her destiny was somehow threatened. But … that was just crazy.

Wasn’t it?

At the next stoplight, she dragged her bag over and searched through it … and as she found what she was looking for, she couldn’t believe she was thinking about calling that psychic, the one whose business card she’d taken from the corkboard at the theater.

Focusing on the address, she mentally mapped out a route. She’d never been to anyone like that before, and had no idea what to expect—or what she could possibly get out of it.

The only thing she was sure of was that a kind of … crossroads … seemed to have appeared before her, and she wanted some sort of confirmation that the direction she intended to go in was the correct one.

Couldn’t hurt, right.

Hitting the gas, she got lost in images of the two men, anxiety sharpening the pictures to an almost painful degree…

When Cait’s car stopped again, she was barely aware of having hit the brakes. And … wait a minute, this was not the grungier end of Trade Street. In fact, it was…

Where the hell was she?

Too much grass to be downtown.

She was about to pull a U-ey when she saw the stray dog. Small, low to the ground, and scruffy as a floor mop, it was seated on the broad stretch of lawn and staring right at her.

Cait got out. “You okay there, boy?”

Somehow she knew it was a boy. No collar, though. Poor thing.

As it lifted its forepaw, she was compelled to go around the front of her car—and that was when the place she’d arrived at came into her consciousness.

Not the psychic’s, no. Try church and steeple.

It was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the grande dame of all Christian houses of worship in Caldwell, the one with the Gothic spires, and all the saints, and the stained glass that looked like jewels.

Where Sissy Barten’s funeral was going to occur.

How had she ended up here?

She turned back to see the dog, but he was gone. “Where are you?”

Cait looked all around, pivoting in a circle—he’d disappeared, though.

Following a long moment, and for no good reason she could think of, her feet decided to take the term walkway to heart, pulling a one-after-another that brought her up to a side entrance. As she reached out to open the door, and found the heavy weight obliging, she labeled the impulse that carried her over the threshold under “preparation for Sissy’s event.”

There was no other purpose for her to come here. In fact, she hadn’t been in a church since she’d moved to Caldwell—unless she’d gone home and been dragged to services. And she certainly wasn’t Catholic, all that regal tradition antithetical to the pine-floored, white-washed, garden-flowers-on-the-altar simplicity she was used to, and had revolted against.

Inside, she had to close her eyes and take a deep breath. Oh, wow, did that smell good—incense and old wood and beeswax.

She was in a side vestibule, as it turned out, and as she walked across the polished stone floor, her footsteps echoed forward into the vast expanse of the nave. Stone block walls rose to seemingly incalculable heights, the buttresses flying like the wings of angels at every juncture, depictions of holy men and women marking the corners and the straightaways, different chapels running down the longest length from the incredible entrance to the beautiful altar.

So many pews, stretching out on both sides of the bloodred aisle—and she pictured them filled with people, grown-ups and children, grandparents and teenagers. All the stages of life—

“Hello.”

Cait nearly lost her footing on the slick marble. “Oh! I’m sorry.”

An old man dressed in a mucky green janitor suit smiled as he put his mop back in his rolling bucket. “Don’t apologize. You’re welcome here.”

“I’m not Catholic.” She winced. “I mean—”

“It doesn’t matter. Everyone’s welcome here.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, I didn’t come to worship. I don’t go to church anymore. Ah, actually, I’m … I’m bringing some paintings that Sissy Barten did? You know, for her funeral? I thought it would make sense to check out things beforehand?”

“Oh, of course.” He moved his pail out of the way. “Her family has been really involved here over the years—there’re going to be a lot of people. I think you should plan on setting it all up in the narthex. That way there’s enough space so her work can be seen well. Come this way.”

As he started to walk away from the altar, she paused and looked back at the crucified Jesus on the cross that was the focal point of the entire building.

“Are you coming?” he said gently. “Or would you like a moment here?”

“Oh, no. I’m fine.” Except she didn’t turn around. Didn’t move. “I’m not Catholic.”

“You don’t have to be.” When she still hesitated, he dropped his voice. “You know, the truth is, it’s all the same.”

“I’m sorry?”

He leaned in and put his hand on her arm—and oh, God, the moment the contact was made, she felt suffused by something she’d never come close to before … grace, she supposed her parents would have called it, that transcendental glow that supposedly came with revelation.

But he was just a janitor…

“It’s all the same. No matter the vocabulary, it’s all the same.” He patted her. “I have to head to the office for a minute. I’ll come back in a bit and show you where to go.”

“I’m okay.”

“I know you are. Sit down and soak it all in. I’ll return soon.”

Left alone, she told her feet to get moving again. Instead, she ended up doing what he said … sitting down, putting her hands in her lap, and staring up, past the pews in front of her, to the majesty and the power before her.

In the kind silence that surrounded her, Cait discovered she was really glad she’d come here. Even if she hadn’t meant to.

Who knew what the psychic would have told her. But she never did find out.

Destiny, she would discover, took care of itself.