“He
– Everybody keeps telling me he’s dead, but I know he’s not!”
Fresh tears sprung from her eyes and she lowered her face in her
hands. Angel wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,”
Rockford said, “maybe I’m just slow on the up take. Who’s telling
you your boyfriend’s dead?”
“Everybody!
His family, his team, the cops, the people on the news.
Everybody I talk to saying the same thing, like they’re all in on
it!
But I know he’s alive! I know it!”
Kolchak knew
it wasn’t his place to eavesdrop, but his glass was empty
and the only thing on TV was a miniature chuck wagon being chased by a
dog; he angled himself on the stool and listened in as Rockford tried
to sound sympathetic and skeptical concurrently.
“You have to
know this all sounds a little unlikely, don’t you?”
Valerie gulped and hitched her head as confirmation. “Now, why
don’t
you tell me something about this boyfriend and how he died.”
Angel
stepped in again, sparing his cousin, “You heard of him, Jimmy,
plays pro ball for the Rams – ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker – he was one of the-“
Kolchak
practically hopped off his stool, joining the conver sation
without invitation, “I’m sorry, excuse me, are you – are you saying
you’re Clayton ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker’s girlfriend?”
Rockford
himself seemed thrown. “Wait just a minute, the Rams halfback who
just got-?”
Kolchak
picked it up, “Who got his throat ripped out in his own apartment last
week?" |
The Halfback by Night
A Rockford/Night Stalker novelette
By Brendan Douglas Jones
The '70s could have been known as The Decade
of the Wiseass. The era of Vietnam, Nixon, and free love that wasn't so
free had helped give rise to a new kind of hero: The antihero. As The
Duke once rode the Plains in an ongoing quest for honor, Peter Fonda
and Dennis Hopper now rode their hog down America's byways in search of
kicks. The suave romanticism of Cary Grant had given way to the brash,
uncertain impulsiveness of Dustin Hoffman.
A disillusioned nation no longer quite bought
into the stalwart square-jawed two-fisted Joe Mannix, and despite the
best efforts of Mssrs. Woodward and Bernstein, the media had lost much
of its luster. Into this not-so-brave world came two men of their time:
Jim Rockford and Carl Kolchak, AKA The Night Stalker. Two middle-aged
guys who couldn't care
less, but did the right thing anyway. A coupla guys who looked Death in
the eye whenever they thought Death wasn't looking.
Where Jim couldn't seem to avoid running afoul
of mobsters, hardnose cops, and Southern California lunatics, Carl's
nose for news inevitably led him into the lair of vampires, werewolves,
zombies, and headless bikers. Both were always ready with the snappy
comeback, even if it meant a sock in the jaw or a night in the tank.
So it goes to figure our boys might have the
basis for a beautiful friendship. Thereby hangs this tale of sports and
spirits, of ex-cons and exsanguination, circa 1974.
Brendan Douglas
Jones is a self-professed "fellow of infinite jest" and a blogger
extraordinaire. Visit him at worldjonesmade.blogspot.com; write him
at yorickjones@hotmail.com
|
With its familiar click-CHUNK the answering machine picked up the
incoming call he’d chosen to ignore. After his outgoing mes sage
and accompanying beep came a voice – a very nice female voice, but
unfamiliar.
“Jim?” she cooed in such a pleasing way that he nearly rose to
take up the phone, but he waited, “Jim Rockford? This is Shelly
with the March of Dimes. As much as we appreciate your recent
donation, we’re afraid the check you sent has bounced. The next
time you’re feeling charitable may we suggest B’Nai Brith?”
CHUNK-whiirrrrrr-CHUNK.
Rockford “hmmph”ed and re-crossed his long legs, tipping his boot heels
up on the couch’s arm. He hooked his thumbs into the belt of his
slacks and made to close his eyes. The dull orange light behind
the shades along with the crying of the gulls and the gentle lapping of
waves past the walls of his trailer conspired with the prescription
Per codan to lull him into a drowse. A nap, sure, that sounded like a
fine idea. Just an hour or so. He had just begun to gently
snore when a dream-shattering pounding began at the metal-framed door
to his modest domicile.
“Rocky?” he called out groggily though his brain cleared enough to
realize this was unlikely. His dad had his own key, so who was
this?
By the time he got to the door his skull was pounding again as it had
for the past week and a half. He opened the trailer’s door with
one hand, the other pressing against the gauze patch above his left
temple. On the other side of the threshold was the unexpected and
not particularly welcome face of Angel Martin wearing the same
half-smiling, half-twitchy expression that never bode well for his
former cellmate and friend.
“Hey, Jimmy,” Angel started, trying and failing to sound casual.
“Angel.” Rockford rooted himself in the doorway in the
super stitious belief that he could ward off whatever trouble Angel was
bringing him if he simply never let him in.
“Hey, you look better, man. Less banged-up anyway.”
Rockford offered one of his wryest grins, “Glad you think so.
What besides my general wellbeing brings you out this way,
Angel?” His friend barely had a chance to open his mouth before
Rockford threw up a pausing hand, “Actually, let me just stop you
there. I’m really, genuinely not interested.”
“Oh, hey – hey now, man,” Angel protested, “I’m just, you know, I came
by to check in on you. Because we’re amigos and that’s what
amigos do. And, okay, maybe I need a favor.”
“Uh-huh,” Rockford nodded, already starting to close his door.
Angel stopped it with a hand, his voice taking on the pleading tone
that was its signature.
“Now just wait a minute, Jimmy!”
Rockford re-opened the door, just like he always did, but he knew he’d
regret it.
Angel relaxed again, loosening his shoulders and running a hand through
his bushy dark mop of hair as he explained. “No scam here, no
angle - we’re just talking a little, nothing favor. And, yes, I
know the difference. All I need is a ride.”
Rockford’s eyebrows rose skeptically. “A ride?”
“I swear. Yeah, a ride.”
“What happened to your car?”
“It kind of got repo’d. I took the bus here.”
Rockford sighed, briefly looking skyward for deliverance, “Crimminy,
Angel.”
He retreated into the trailer just long enough to scoop up his car keys
from the table, calling out as he circled back to the door, “Okay,
where am I taking you?”
Angel smiled and clapped his hands once, already backing towards
Rockford’s Trans-Am. “The airport.”
Rockford was locking the trailer behind him. “The airport?
As in LAX?”
Angel was waiting at the passenger’s side of the car, still grinning,
“Yeah, and we better hurry up. I told her we’d meet her right off
the plane.”
**
The airport bar is a wonderful and necessary thing, Carl Kolchak was
thinking. As are expense accounts. He knew that he was only
hours away from a verbal beat down from his managing editor, a
bull-necked, gap-toothed Italian gent who would be only too interested
to learn how Kolchak had stretched a one-week, one story business trip
into a two week, two story business trip replete with unplanned
expenditures. Like a payout to replace a ruined local
landmark. Or bail. Or the second scotch sitting in front of
him. No, seeing Tony Vincenzo’s face again wasn’t going to be
fun, but that was two time zones away. For the moment Kolchak was
just enjoying his drink, the TVs above the bar, and the unending flow
of living, breathing, chatting people coming and going to, he hoped,
happier destinations than his.
The news was on, each of the bar’s three TVs tuned to a differ ent
network, but no one, Kolchak included, seemed to mind the overlapping
chatter. He was simply taking it all in, idly finding places for
his eyes to rest and snatches of conversation to dip into – this was
less his seasoned reporter’s instincts and more basic, voyeur istic
human nature. He watched from across the room as the long-faced
blonde with the sensible shoes firmly told her bald companion (Platonic
friend? Boss?) to cut it out with the hands. For the last
time, no! He spent a few seconds studying the sad-looking
old Japanese business traveler who sat at the end of the bar nursing a
flat Coca-Cola, a tiny figure who seemed composed entirely of a baggy
three-piece suit and huge glasses. He eavesdropped on the swarthy
little guy and his tall, broad-shouldered pal who had stopped just
inside of the bar’s entrance way as they bickered mildly.
Whatever, Angel, you know where to find me. Kolchak immediately
assumed that “Angel” was the short guy’s name and not some term of
endearment, but then mentally checked himself: one never knew and this
was 1974 after all.
It wasn’t until one of the newscasts, the ABC affiliate, began its
sports coverage that the bartender switched the other two TVs to the
same channel and turned up the volume. Sports in general and
foot ball in particular had never been one of Kolchak’s interests but
he was still curious enough about this particular story to divert his
full atten tion that way.
The mustached sportscaster had deftly modulated his delivery between
the extremes of enthusiasm needed for the day’s scores and the
respectful gravity appropriate for this piece, “And even though the
season is months away, football has been at the forefront of many L.A.
sports fans’ minds in the wake of the horrific cult-related mass murder
of former UCLA star halfback and Ram’s rookie ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker and
four members of the ‘Godzilla Gang’ defensive squad last Thursday
night. We spoke briefly with Rams head coach Chuck Knox at last
night’s team-only memorial service for the slain players and found him
promising the team’s best season yet.”
The screen switched to a video of the coach, in suit and tie, outside
of a local church. “Well, you know, we owe it to the guys, to
their memory, to push on and take it all the way.” He went on,
talking about “the hearts of champions”, etc., but his words were
obscured by a voice at Kolchak’s right.
“Have they given the score of the Dodgers game yet?”
“Hm?” Kolchak turned to see “Angel’s” friend, the taller of their Mutt
and Jeff duo. From this angle, Kolchak couldn’t help but notice
the square bandage taped to the guy’s temple overlapping a small
section of his hair that had been shaved away. “Oh, uh,
yeah. They beat the Astros one to zip.”
“Not exactly a rout,” Kolchak’s next stool neighbor drawled, then
hailed the bartender, “Could I get a Budweiser?”
Kolchak’s eyebrows lifted and he tilted his open hand, “A win’s a win,
right?”
The dark-haired stranger with the head wound and open-collared shirt
conceded with a nod as he collected his tall, frosted beer glass, “So
it’s been said.”
They drank in a moment’s silence broken by Kolchak’s nod to airport
etiquette.
“Where are you headed?”
His new acquaintance wiped at the beer foam on his upper lip, shaking
his head in the process. “Nowhere. My friend’s here to pick
up his cousin and I’m just the chauffeur.”
“Make sure he tips you,” Kolchak dryly delivered which made the other
guy snort.
“Yeah, knowing the friend I’d say that’s less than likely.”
Kolchak debated broaching the next topic for a decent handful of
seconds before giving in to temptation. He pointed his glass at
the stranger’s bandage. “That looks like an interesting
tale. Do you mind if I ask…?”
The stranger lifted a hand to the gauze as if he’d forgotten it was
there. “Oh, that. A love tap from a live round.
Occupational hazard.”
He didn’t even realize he’d done it but Kolchak had now rotated his
stool so he was now directly facing his neighbor. “Are you a
police officer?”
The guy slightly gagged on the sip of beer he was taking. “Uh,
no. No, can’t say as I have that distinction. I’m more your
run of the mill snoop on retainer.”
“A P.I., huh?” Kolchak grinned, “Nice to meet someone even less
respected and beloved than those in my own humble profession.”
“And what might that be?”
“Carl Kolchak, esteemed and ink-stained member of the noble Fourth
Estate at your service.”
The stranger sitting beside Kolchak smirked, “Wait a minute. Are
you saying reporters rank higher in the public estimation than somebody
in my line of work? I’d say that’s six of one, half-dozen the
other, my friend.” He held out a big, tanned hand, “Jim Rockford.”
Kolchak shook Rockford’s hand, “Nice to meet you, Jim.”
**
A few minutes of small talk later, Angel returned with a young woman in
tow. Early 20s, probably, and very pretty. She, like Angel,
was dark-haired and vaguely ethnic looking. She also seemed
noticeably preoccupied and looked like she had just had a good cry in
the bathroom. Angel introduced her as Valerie, his cousin from
Brooklyn. Rockford made the token introduction of Kolchak, whose
name made no impression on Angel but did cause Valerie to perk up
slightly.
“You got a relative works for the NYPD?” she asked in the thick patois
of her homeland, “Bald guy? Detective, I think.”
Kolchak replied in the negative while Angel joined in worriedly, “Hey,
kiddo? Why do you know anything about New York cops?”
“It’s not what you think, Ev. This guy, he was just on the news –
some big bust.”
This rang a bell for Kolchak. “Oh, yeah, I do know who you’re
talking about. He’s kind of a celeb cop in the Big Apple - pops
up on the AP wires from time to time. But his name is ‘Kojak’
which is Greek, I believe, whereas we ‘Kolchak’s hail from the wilds of
Romania - by way of County Cork, that is.” He lifted his tacky
straw porkpie hat to display his tousled, flyaway brown hair, “Besides,
as you can clearly see, full as the day of my humble birth.”
She smiled for a second, but it was a fleeting thing. Both the
P.I. and the reporter, seasoned in their relative disciplines, couldn’t
help but notice the anxious expression returning to Valerie’s
features. Rockford was the only one who felt compelled to address
the issue while, for his part, Kolchak respectfully returned to
glancing at the TV and listening to the departure reminders being
broadcast over the airport PA.
Rockford leaned in towards the girl and asked in a concerned but
discreet tone, “Are you okay, honey?”
Angel and his cousin shared a look and he quickly stepped in, still
twitchy and still wheedling, but in a far more sympathetic
manner. “Yeah, Jimmy, listen, that’s – that’s kinda part two of
the favor.”
Rockford gritted his teeth and ducked his head, “Angel, I swear…”
“No, no listen, see, this is right up your alley and the kid, she’s got
nobody else to turn to.”
There was a slight hiss of air from Rockford’s tightened lips as he
slapped a hand to the back of his neck. He softened and locked
onto Valerie’s wet eyes, “Okay, understand I’m not promising any thing
but why don’t you give me an idea what Angel is about to talk me into
doing for you?”
“It - It’s my boyfriend.”
Rockford’s shoulders ever so imperceptibly drooped. Valerie kept
going.
“He – Everybody keeps telling me he’s dead, but I know he’s not!”
Fresh tears sprung from her eyes and she lowered her face in her
hands. Angel wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” Rockford said, “maybe I’m just slow on the up take.
Who’s telling you your boyfriend’s dead?”
“Everybody! His family, his team, the cops, the people on the
news. Everybody I talk to saying the same thing, like they’re all
in on it! But I know he’s alive! I know it!”
Kolchak knew it wasn’t his place to eavesdrop, but his glass was empty
and the only thing on TV was a miniature chuck wagon being chased by a
dog; he angled himself on the stool and listened in as Rockford tried
to sound sympathetic and skeptical concurrently.
“You have to know this all sounds a little unlikely, don’t you?”
Valerie gulped and hitched her head as confirmation. “Now, why
don’t you tell me something about this boyfriend and how he died.”
Angel stepped in again, sparing his cousin, “You heard of him, Jimmy,
plays pro ball for the Rams – ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker – he was one of the-“
Kolchak practically hopped off his stool, joining the conver sation
without invitation, “I’m sorry, excuse me, are you – are you saying
you’re Clayton ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker’s girlfriend?”
Rockford himself seemed thrown. “Wait just a minute, the Rams
halfback who just got-?”
Kolchak picked it up, “Who got his throat ripped out in his own
apartment last week?”
Angel looked green while Valerie turned hurt, red eyes Kolchak’s way,
“That’s what they keep saying! But they’re wrong!”
“For your sake I wish that were true,” Kolchak replied, his voice
taking on the smooth, faux-sympathetic tone that he’d used with
hundreds of victims and witnesses in his day, “but I’m afraid it’s not.”
“How do you know?” asked Angel and Valerie simulta neously.
“I … have it on good authority,” Kolchak dodged.
Valerie’s voice raised, a new wave of hysteria threatening, “Then how
do you explain the call?”
Kolchak was innocently nonplused, “I don’t-“
Angel nudged Valerie and indicated Rockford, “Go ahead, Val, tell him.”
Valerie squared her shoulders and fought to keep her voice steady, “How
do you explain, if he’s been dead a week, the long-distance phone call
I got from Clay just two days ago?”
**
The quartet made the baggage check before it occurred to Rockford to
inquire after Kolchak’s travel plans, “Carl, didn’t you say you were
waiting on a plane to Chicago?”
“Uh, yes – yes, I was,” Kolchak responded, “They, however, didn’t wait
for me.” Smiling sheepishly, “Final boarding call was about seven
minutes ago.”
“What?”
Kolchak leveled with the tall P.I., “If it’s all the same to you and
Ms. …?”
“Me?” Valerie picked up. “Martin. Valerie Martin.”
“If it’s alright with Ms. Martin here, I thought I might stay in town a
little longer. A good story is the best medicine for a terminally
bellicose managing editor.”
Valerie only too readily came back. “Whatever. I don’t
care. I just want this whole thing laid to rest.”
For his part, Rockford took a moment longer, eyeing Kolchak like he was
a sink full of filthy dishes and wondering if it was worth the
effort. “Okay by me,” he finally said, handing Valerie’s bags off
to Angel, “but everybody chips in for gas.”
**
Between LAX’s parking lot and the motel off the PCH that Kolchak
said would suit him and his limited funds just fine, both Rockford and
his new acquaintance in the seersucker suit plied Angel’s cousin for
more information and background. Her story, coming out
tear-clotted and pained, was that of a typical college romance that had
entered a long-distance limbo as neither party had quite the resolution
or the desire to finally sever ties permanently. Valerie had met
Clay the previous fall at the start of their fourth year at UCLA.
They had dated exclusively through her final thesis on “The Metric
System in Secondary Education” and through his star senior season with
the Bruins and subsequent drafting into the NFL. As Valerie told
it, the pair had been deeply in love and had talked of marrying later
in the year, after the season had ended. But Valerie had to
return to Brooklyn before graduation to look after an ailing aunt and
Clay had to stay behind to start working with the Rams and that, sadly,
was where things stood. There had been a few letters and phone
calls, but they were always short and Clay was always running off
somewhere. Until Saturday when Valerie came back to her apartment
from a week’s jaunt to the Catskills with her aunt to find a stack of
newspapers and a tape full of calls on her answering machine saying the
same terrible thing over and over again: that “Stacker” Shoemaker was
slain in his own apartment along with four of his teammates by members
of some Satanic cult called the “Dark Star Coven.” Valerie had
fainted in the middle of her dining room amidst the linoleum tile and a
scattering of mail.
“When I came to,” Valerie continued, her voice getting scratchy and
raw, “I immediately grabbed up the phone and started calling whoever I
could. Friends of ours from school, the guys on his team. I
just wanted to know more but they were no help. I called the
police but unless you’re a family member they won’t tell you
any thing! His family…” She stopped, forcing down a big
swallow and composing herself. “That’s the worst part of
all. When I finally got numbers for the Shoemakers and I called
and said, ‘This is Valerie Martin – Clay’s girlfriend’, they said,
‘Who? We never heard him talk about a Valerie.’”
There was a sympathetic, awkward pause cut short by Angel, “You know,
kid, they probably just forgot and – and they were grieving-”
This didn’t seem to placate Valerie, who continued, “Even worse, they
had had the funeral that very day. Nobody invited me – the love
of my life gets planted in the ground and nobody knows to find me or
have me there. It took a couple of days but I scrounged some
money together – got a loan from Angel-” At this, Rockford shot a
skeptical look at his friend in the back seat. “-and I booked my flight
– this was the earliest I could get here.”
“What about the call?” Rockford interjected, “You mentioned that you
heard from Clay two days ago?”
“Yeah, while I was packing. I was already a wreck and then the
phone rang.”
Kolchak asked, “You know what time this was?”
“It was late Monday night – probably around 12:30.”
Kolchak nodded, “So 9:30 California time.”
Rockford wondered for a moment what conclusion it was that Kolchak had
just drawn for himself before getting Valerie back on track, “What did
he say, Valerie?”
“He was kind of freaked out, said he couldn’t talk long. He said
he knew what I must be hearing but he wanted me to know that he was
okay. He said he hadn’t felt so good in his whole life, in fact,
and that all he wished is that I could be with him-” Tears
streamed down her face anew but this time they ran silently, Valerie’s
voice remaining a numb monotone, “He said, ‘I love you, Val baby, and I
can’t wait to show you how much’. And that was it. I
couldn’t breathe for the longest time.”
“Are you sure it was really him?” asked Rockford.
Valerie found his eyes in the rearview mirror to gravely make her
point, “He sounded kind of … odd, but it was definitely him.”
“I’m only saying there are some freaks out there,” Rockford continued,
“might think it’s a kick to impersonate a dead man and torture his
loved ones.”
“A sick joke, right?” Valerie said, “That’s exactly
what the Shoemakers accused me of when I called to tell them that Clay
was still alive.”
**
The following day started off cool and grayish yellow as the thick
layer of smog held out against the Pacific breezes for the first
several hours of the morning. It was going to be a hot one,
typical weather for L.A. in the middle of May. At their
pre-appointed time, Rockford rapped at Kolchak’s room door and was
answered promptly by the reporter in the same clothes from the day
before, daubing at his still-wet face with a motel towel.
“Hey, Jim, gimme a minute, would ya?”
“Sure,” Rockford replied, entering the room while Kolchak finished his
ablutions with a toss of the towel to the edge of the room’s tiny
sink. “Couldn’t help but notice that you’re in yesterday’s duds.”
Kolchak frowned as he grabbed for his coat, “Ah, yeah. The cost
of making last minute changes to one’s itinerary. My luggage made
the long journey home without me. But not to worry, the stuff
that’s washable got washed last night in the motel Laundromat. I
will do my best not to offend.”
“That’s okay,” Rockford responded, “I was in jail for a stretch, it’d
take a lot more than ripe socks to offend me.”
“Yeah? Prison, huh?” the reporter’s curiosity, as reflexive a
response as a knee-jerk under a doctor’s mallet.
Rockford couldn’t help but smile at Kolchak’s expression, “Wrongfully
accused. Long story there and one that doesn’t help Valerie
Martin’s case in the slightest.”
Kolchak, never one for dropping a subject of any stripe, none theless
ceded the topic by grabbing his hat and the two carry-on items that
stayed behind, his camera and his box-like Sony “cassette corder” which
he slung over his shoulder, “Understood. Shall we?”
**
Rockford’s bronze Trans-Am carried them east on the 405, away from the
blue-green ocean, heading ever further into the sprawl of Los Angeles.
“I’ve got a line on the police reports of the murders and the autopsies
of all the victims but it may be tomorrow before I get a hold of them.”
“That’s fine,” Kolchak said through a yawn he’d attempted to stifle.
With a brief sidelong glance at his new partner, Rockford commented,
“Too early for you, Carl?”
“Hm?”, Kolchak returned, “Oh – no. I just … don’t sleep well of
late.”
“Insomnia?”
“Fear of the dark,” Kolchak said, his delivery suggesting a joke but
his eyes as serious as the grave.
Kolchak turned his head back to his window to watch the boggling and
unrelenting traffic and, though unsure of their desti nation,
appreciated Rockford’s deft navigation nonetheless.
In answer to Kolchak’s unspoken question, Rockford announced, “Assuming
for the moment that Valerie might have been mixed up about that call
she says she got, I figured we’d start by checking in with the folks
who got the last best look at ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker.”
“The morgue?” Kolchak chimed in.
“Bingo,” replied Rockford as he steered the car towards the Westwood
exit.
**
The second the ink had dried on his first check as an L.A. Ram, Clayton
Shoemaker bought – not rented, but bought – a penthouse apartment in
the Fairchild building, one of the most exclusive resi dential
buildings in the upscale mini-city of Westwood. To the press,
he’d said he just wanted to be close to the UCLA campus where it had
all begun but to his friends he’d admitted it was all about the ready
supply of “hot young bods.”
And when Clayton Shoemaker died, his mortal remains were brought to the
UCLA Medical Center which had also seen its share of hot young bods.
Kolchak liked this observation and mentally filed it away as material
for the story he would write later. Though he also decided he
might have to edit out the adjective “hot”; if there was one thing
these gray and green halls of the Medical Center’s morgue suggested, it
certainly wasn’t warmth of any kind.
At the end of the corridor were the small desk and the small attendant
that the helpful nurse upstairs had told them they would find.
The second the tiny fellow with the inordinately large white man’s afro
looked up from his monotonous and blank-eyed working over of his hairdo
with a black plastic pick topped by a clenched fist, Rockford kicked
into gear.
“Wally, right? Nurse Reynolds upstairs said you were the man to
see,” his smile was friendly and as genuine as a best buddy’s, “I’m
Pete Thompson with the FBPR.” And like a birthday party
magi cian, Rockford snapped forth a business card between the index and
middle fingers of his right hand. Kolchak fought back a smirk at
this as he’d witnessed Rockford set and print that card with the
miniature press in his car’s trunk just ten minutes earlier. It
was a nice gimmick if the ink didn’t smudge.
Wally read the card aloud, “’Federal Bureau of Pathology Review’?
I haven’t heard of you guys.”
“Not surprising,” Rockford smoothly rolled on, “seeing as how your
board of directors has blocked our attempts to do a proper review of
this facility since ’68.”
“What are you reviewing?” Wally asked, still hedging a mild suspicion.
“Just the morgue itself, an overview of your equipment and practices.”
Kolchak took the ball, “Sanitary conditions, sterile instruments,
proper, uh, refrigeration. Quality control.”
“Exactly right,” Rockford never missed a beat, “My associate Dave here
and I just take a look around, ask a couple of questions, and we’re out
of your, eh, hair.”
Rockford’s involuntary comment escaped Wally’s notice as the orderly
kept right on raking his afro, finally rising from his chair and
indicating they follow him through the morgue’s doors.
“Whatever,” he said flatly, “You’re not gonna find anything out of
whack in there.”
“That’s what we like to hear,” Kolchak assured as he and Rockford
entered the library-like quiet of the huge room of fluores cent light
and shiny stainless steel.
Wally had propped himself against the wall, arms crossed, “Well, let me
put it this way, we don’t get a lot of complaints.”
Rockford grinned; it was a better opening than any he could’ve asked
for. He turned to Wally and confronted him with the photo of
Clayton Shoemaker Valerie had given him. “That’s not exactly
true, Wally. Recognize him?”
“Him? Yeah,” Wally answered, looking unsure again, “That’s
Stacker. He came through here last week.”
“Were you here when they brought him in?” Kolchak asked.
“Not right then, no, but my shift started while they were still doing
the autopsy.”
“And it was him exactly?” Rockford pressed. “This exact person in the
photo here? No doubt in your mind?”
Wally was growing more confused and uneasy, “Yeah, man, yeah.
Clay Shoemaker of the Rams. I had a poli-sci class with him two
years ago.”
Rockford’s eyes squinted slightly as he came in closer to the orderly,
“Look, I’m gonna be perfectly honest with you, Wally. The Bureau
got called in to investigate this specific case. Seems the family
of the deceased was less than pleased with the handling of his body.”
Kolchak aided in the unnerving of their previously apathetic host by
quickly snapping a shot of Wally as his mouth opened word lessly for a
second, “I – ‘Handling?’ Nobody was handling his- I mean,
they had him on the table, but-!”
“Right, right, about that,” Kolchak said, “would you say it was a
typical autopsy?”
“What?” said Wally, hopelessly lost and outnumbered by this
point. Rockford himself wasn’t exactly sure where Kolchak was
headed but he appreciated the reporter’s enthusiastic involvement in
the “interrogation.”
“The autopsy on Clayton Shoemaker, would you say it was a textbook,
seen-one-seen ’em-all, no surprises procedure?”
Wally shot a quick glance towards the hospital phone affixed to the
wall just a few feet away, unfortunately on the other side of the
inspector calling himself “Pete Thompson” who might as well have been
Mt. Everest to the 5’2” (with fro) morgue attendant. “I don’t
know, sure. It’s not like I was in the room. I heard some
stuff later-”
“Stuff?” asked a puzzled Rockford.
Kolchak pounced, “Elaborate please on said ‘stuff?’”
There was no use, Wally’s shoulders dropped and he finally gave in to
the two-pronged inquisition. He sighed.
“Supposedly the wounds didn’t match up with the story the cops were
selling. Stacker’s throat wasn’t slashed, it was more like …
chewed on, or something.”
Rockford’s eyebrows shot up and his head ducked back in an expression
of sheer blindsided surprise. He was equally caught off-guard by
the lack of a similar response in his partner; Kolchak, he noticed,
only nodded intently.
“And the blood - ” Wally continued.
Rockford snapped out of it, redirecting his attention to the orderly,
“Uh. What about the blood?”
“There wasn’t any.”
**
In the interest of pure thoroughness, Rockford and Kolchak paid a visit
to the Crisman Funeral Home where they established that the body
received from UCLA Medical Center and which subse quently made its way
into a powder blue, stainless-steel EternaSlumber casket was, in fact,
an exact match of the beefy blonde football hero smiling thickly out of
Valerie Martin’s photo. Afterwards they mutually decided that
lunch was next on the agenda. As they drove, Rockford’s mind was
elsewhere. He had been quietly sorting through the facts and
impressions he’d been collecting over the last day and there was
something about his new partner that wasn’t sitting level.
Kolchak was by all means an amiable and quick-witted guy, but Rockford
had a pretty good nose for hidden agendas. He would keep his
suspicions to himself for now, if only for Valerie’s sake.
**
The place was a diner on La Cienega called
Norm’s. They made their way to a booth against a window, rays of
brilliant yellow afternoon sunlight slanting through it from
outside. Telling Kolchak to order a meatloaf sandwich and Coke
for him, Rockford excused himself while he made for the payphone.
He put in a quick call to Angel, inviting him and Valerie (if they
could find a ride) to join them for a status report. Next was a
call to the secretary of Mr. Warren Jameson, the very wealthy
entrepreneur who’d recently hired him to dig into the background of his
prospective son-in-law. He didn’t have any news for him yet, but
Rockford knew it was smart to keep his paying clients in the loop no
matter how much progress had been made. And lastly he rang up his
buddy in the LAPD, Sgt. Dennis Becker, in order to ask a favor.
This didn’t come as a surprise for Becker since, other than the
occasional fishing trip invite, Jim’s calls were always about a
favor. He was a little taken aback when Rockford requested a
phone log of all calls placed to a Brooklyn phone number for the day
and night of May 13th.
“What?” Becker replied, “That’s a pretty tall order, Jim.
Especially with no whys or wherefores. You may not have noticed,
but Brooklyn is just slightly outside my jurisdiction.”
“This ties into the Shoemaker case.”
“What case, Jim? Five pro ballplayers got killed by some
tripped-out, hippy Satanists – we got signed confessions and two of the
nut jobs in lockup - end of story. Shoemaker’s case is closed.”
This was a familiar dance and Rockford knew Becker would fold.
“Those are my specialty, Dennis, says so right in my ad.”
It took another couple of minutes of back and forth before Becker, with
a heavy, put-upon sigh said he’d do what he could.
When he returned to their booth Rockford found Kolchak sipping at a cup
of black coffee and poring over that day’s Los Angeles Times.
Rockford noted that he was specifically combing through the local crime
section.
“Keeping up with your distinguished competition, Carl?”
Kolchak looked up and smirked, “Uh, in a way. But I’m mainly
interested to see if Stacker Shoemaker’s murder is an isolated
occurrence or if there might have been any similar deaths under
circum stances just as mysterious.”
Rockford took his seat and lifted his Coke, “Let’s hope not. I
can’t afford to take on anymore pro bono work.”
Kolchak perked up at this, “You know, I’ve always wondered about your
profession. On the face of it, it’s pretty similar to what I
do. A lot of legwork, developing contacts, picking up the little
clues that get dropped intentionally or not. I hope you don’t
mind my asking, but what kind of a living do you make?”
Rockford smirked, “Thinking of trading sideways, Carl?”
“Curiosity, that’s all,” Kolchak replied.
“Well, curiosity helps. Up to a point. And no, I don’t mind
you asking,” Rockford said, distracted momentarily by the arrival of
their lunches. His meatloaf sandwich plate being slid in front of
him by a sour-faced waitress. He resumed, “I don’t happen to have
my W2 on me right now, but I do alright. My rate is 200 a day
plus ex penses.”
“Say, that sounds pretty good,” Kolchak responded through a mouthful of
the BLT he’d ordered.
“Yeah, it does,” Rockford agreed. “But keep in mind I’m not the only
P.I. in town. There are some very dry spells. This,
however, is not one of them.”
Kolchak tipped his coffee cup as a salute, “Well here’s to that.
May Man’s inexhaustible passion for larceny, duplicity, infidelity and
barbarism keep our coffers full from here to the clarion call of
Judgment Day.”
Rockford didn’t return the salute. “You really that cynical,
Carl?”
“You got me, Jim,” Kolchak said with a smirk, spreading his hands in a
surrender gesture, “I’m giving Man too much credit.”
“How so?”
“Well, I’ve seen a lot of evidence to suggest that when it comes to the
doing of evil, Man has some outside help.”
Rockford opened his mouth to reply, but thought better of it and stuck
a cottage fry in it instead.
By the time they’d finished off lunch and were debating chasing it with
a piece of pie, Angel and Valerie had arrived and joined them in the
booth. They shuffled seats, Kolchak joining Rockford on one side
of the booth so both could face Valerie who seemed little better than
the day before. Rockford noticed that the cuticles of all ten of
her fingers were scabbed and raw from nervous chewing.
“Jimmy, Mr. Kolchak,” Angel started, “what have you got for us?”
Rockford began by addressing Angel, but quickly moved his gaze to
Valerie – she was the one who needed to hear this. “Now, keep in
mind this was just a day’s worth of digging but the news – well, the
news is gonna be hard to hear.”
Valerie inhaled sharply but didn’t interject or look away.
“We’ve been to the morgue and the funeral home, we’ve got police
reports on the way, and the all facts line up: Clay Shoemaker is
dead. I’m sorry, honey.”
“But I got- He called me Monday night,” Valerie insisted.
“It’s like I said before,” Rockford proceeded gently, “that
could’ve been anybody who knew you two had been together, some sicko
with a warped sense of humor. But I’m looking into that
too. It’s a slim chance, but if we can nail somebody for making
that call, maybe then you can accept that Clay’s really gone.”
Kolchak simply watched on in mute appreciation of Rockford’s tactful
and forthright manner in dealing with this bereaved, grasping young
woman.
Angel had an arm draped around Valerie’s shoulders as she again
burst into tears, covering her pretty face with her hands.
“Maybe-” he started, ignoring Rockford’s warning glance, “Maybe he’s
being held by that Coven. Y’know, like what happened with that
Hearst girl. Like he’s brainwashed or something.”
Rockford’s voice dropped to an unfriendly level, “Angel, I just got
through saying that Shoemaker’s been in the ground since Sunday.
Maybe you didn’t hear me.”
“He could’ve been switched, man” Angel continued and now Valerie was
raising her head to listen, “Yeah, it could’ve been a double – or – or
– maybe they only made it look like he was dead so they could come back
for him later and, like, zombify him.”
Rockford’s eyes closed for a second as he released a small sigh, “What
do you think of Angel’s ‘zombie theory’, Carl?”
“Actually,” Kolchak replied from behind his coffee cup, “I don’t
think it works that way.” Three sets of eyes pinned him.
“From what I gather.”
“Okay, right, right, it’s just one of ‘Angel’s crazy ideas’,”
said Angel while grabbing fries off of Rockford’s plate, “But one of
these days, Jimmy, you’ll figure out I’m onto something. There’s
a lot goin’ on out there that even a sharp guy like you couldn’t guess
at.”
“Sure, Angel. And where did you park your UFO, by the way?”
Angel, chewing on his pilfered food, acknowledged the dig with a wry
smile and a nod. Kolchak was looking at Angel with an expression
that could’ve almost been appreciation before his attention shifted to
the poor girl at Angel’s side, slumped in the booth in shell-shocked
near-catatonia.
“You know,” Kolchak began gingerly, “There’s still only one way to know
for sure – for absolutely, 100-percent positive sure – that Clayton
Shoemaker is ‘neath the sod.”
Valerie and Angel looked up. Rockford asked for the check.
**
The remaining hours of the day passed uneventfully. Kolchak and
Rockford split up after lunch, with Kolchak suggesting they rendez vous
at 8:30 that night. Taking advantage of the time spent apart from
his new partner, Kolchak used the diner’s pay phone to make some
preliminary calls to the police and coroner regarding a couple of the
suspicious deaths he’d read about in the paper. In each case he
posed as an AP stringer following up on those stories – just a few more
questions, if you don’t mind, regarding the state of the bodies; what
is the current theory about the massive blood loss in the victim?
Any idea where it might’ve gone? Each flustered, “Who told you
there was massive blood loss?”, “No comment.” and sudden dial-tone told
Kolchak more than any direct answer could have. A couple of hours
later, he was met by the attractive real estate agent he’d made the
acquaintance of when he first came to L.A. Faye Kruger was a
bright, chatty redhead with pretensions of being a writer that two
weeks of being Kolchak’s girl Friday had effectively doused.
Still, she came when he called and was happy, if surprised, to see that
he hadn’t made it back to Chicago just yet. She offered to make
him dinner at her place and Kolchak smoothly pointed out that dinner
was still hours off. What could they possibly do to fill the time?
When 7:15 rolled around and Kolchak finally rose
from Faye’s bed it was too late for her promise of a home-cooked
meal. She stirred beside him and nudged at his “love handles”
with her bare foot while he pulled on a sock. “Where do you think
you’re going, lover boy?” she asked, grinning at him sexily.
“The graveyard, actually,” Kolchak returned with
what he hoped was a charming grin, “Do you think I could borrow your
car?”
**
He’d been able to stop by an In-N-Out burger stand on the way and now
food wrappers decorated the floor of Faye’s Chevette. Using a gas
station map, Kolchak found his way into the hills of Burbank and,
specifically, to the gates of Forest Lawn Cemetery, the final resting
place of many a famous name. On this Thursday night, though, it
was just a well-groomed hillside flattened into dull shades of
gray-blue by a not quite half-moon. A few hundred yards past the
gates, Kolchak came upon Rockford’s Trans-Am parked along the shoulder
and the detective himself propped against the hood with his arms folded
across his chest. He greeted Kolchak by saying, “This is just
about the most ill-advised, most likely pointless exercise I’ve been
mixed up in since – well, since the last one.”
“Right, but you’re here,” Kolchak reasoned, “so you must have some
lingering questions or doubts that only concrete proof will
settle. Right? So let’s pick our spot and get inside.”
Rockford held up a halting hand. “Just a second, Carl.
There’s a good chance our little partnership ends right here.”
Like he’d just walked into a shut door, Kolchak’s face went stiff with
surprise, “What? Is this about-? Look, they’ve got one
guard in a golf cart patrolling this place once an hour, if he hasn’t
nodded off in the guard shack by the time Johnny Carson’s finished his
monologue. We won’t get caught.”
“That’s not it,” Rockford stated and, even in the deepening dark,
Kolchak could read the seriousness in the set of his features. “I
got the police reports of the ‘Dark Star Coven Murders’ this
after noon.”
Kolchak’s eyebrows shot up and he nodded slowly. “Oh. And
you – you read them already I take it?”
“Yeah,” said Rockford. “See, I had the feeling all along that
there must’ve been more to your interest in this case than just a
high-profile murder story or some good-hearted concern for poor Valerie
Martin.”
“Now, be fair, Jim. There’s nothing saying my interest can’t be
complex and multi-layered. I happen to care greatly for how this
resolves for Ms. Martin-”
“You were there, Carl,” Rockford interjected, “at the crime
scene. Last Tuesday night five pro jocks got brutally killed in a
swanky penthouse apartment and the only living witness to the inci dent
was a third rate reporter from a Chicago news wire named Carl Kolchak.”
Kolchak reeled, “Third rate?”
“It didn’t occur to you to maybe, oh, I don’t know, share this
snippet of information with me up front?”
“Look, I don’t know what version of the facts you read in those
reports-”
“Let’s just say you don’t come off so well,” Rockford inter jected.
Kolchak was squeezing his chin as he ceded the point with a nod, “Yeah,
I imagine. Who signed off on those – Lieutenant Mateo?”
“The very same.”
“I don’t know if you’ve ever dealt with that gent-”
Rockford nodded, “Pompous little twerp with an Ivy League accent.”
Kolchak pointed a finger at Rockford, “That’s the very guy. Now
would you say – as somebody who’s had dealings with the local
constabulary – that Mateo is a stalwart public servant whose primary
allegiance is to the public good?”
“Mateo?” Rockford admitted, “Mateo’s a company man,
toes the line, does what he can to ensure he keeps his detective’s
pension.”
“Ah-ha!” Kolchak exclaimed, “So you, yourself, would
admit that Lt. Mateo might be inclined to promote and propagate
whatever theory his bosses felt the public needed to hear, even if that
theory was a pure fabrication. A bedtime story of
devil-worshippers with drug-fueled super-strength and butcher knives,
for instance.”
“The coven members copped to the murders, or don’t
you read the papers,” Rockford quipped.
“Sure, suuure,” Kolchak expounded, “and those
confessions were obtained how exactly? Maybe after a little
excessive force perhaps? Or a day or two of withdrawal symptoms
in lockup?”
“If you’re trying to imply that the LAPD may have, on occasion, leaned
on their suspects a little hard or purposely fudged a report now and
again - for whatever reason – then you’re not telling me anything I
don’t already know,” said Rockford, “But if you think I’m just gonna
throw in with a guy who’s managed to get himself un officially exiled
from three major American cities-”
“They had that in there, huh?” Kolchak said,
sounding like a bashful reprobate in the principal’s office.
“Good to know they did their research.”
Rockford just uttered an “uh-huh.” The
temperature was dropping and a night wind snaked around the hillside.
“You’ll get it, Jim, the whole story for better or
worse, I swear. But first you’ve got to believe me that this is
serious business and there are going to be more Valerie Martins out
there getting the worst news of their lives.”
“What are you getting at, Carl?” Rockford demanded,
his voice tinged with impatience; he’d never developed a taste for the
cryptic.
For Carl Kolchak, however, such was his stock and
trade. “We do this thing and then I’ll fill in every blank, you
have my word. What do you say, Jim?”
There was a moment’s pause as many, many possible
answers to that question ping-ponged through Jim Rockford’s mind, most
of them involving Kolchak taking long walks off of short piers.
Before he opened his mouth to respond, Rockford mentally calculated how
quickly he could get home if he took the 101 as opposed to the 405 as
well as trying to remember if he still had any beers in the fridge.
“I’ll get the shovels,” he finally said in the
resigned voice of the instantly regretful.
With a fair amount of dexterity for men of their
advancing years, they boosted themselves over the top of the stone wall
of the cemetery grounds, each landing with a grunt on the soft grass
awaiting on the other side. Kolchak, somehow, managed not to lose
his hat or his ever-present camera. They collected the shovels
they had chucked over in advance, took their bearings as best they
could in the darkness and then hustled off in what Rockford decided was
the direction of “Stacker” Shoemaker’s final resting place.
The verbal walkthrough he’d received over the phone
from a nice woman in the cemetery’s office had been quite good, though
finding their way through the gridiron of headstones in the pale blue
moonlight was a different matter for Rockford and associate. It
took them nearly ten minutes to wend their way to the right spot, but
soon they found themselves at a three-foot tall slab of marble that
declared under their flashlight beams:
CLAYTON “STACKER” SHOEMAKER
1951 ~ 1974
“He plays for God’s team now.”
Kolchak dryly commented on the adornment atop the
head stone – a cement football. “Nice touch.”
“Yeah,” Rockford agreed as he removed his sport coat
and began rolling up his sleeves. Kolchak followed suit and
passed Rockford one of the shovels.
Kolchak removed the first earth, finding it soft and
easily managed, no doubt due to the newness of the grave. He
stopped before going back for his second shovelful when he noticed
Rockford paused and frowning at the patch of ground under his
feet. “What is it, Jim?”
Rockford shook his head, “Nothing. I just
realized this is the second grave I’ve plundered in a month.”
Kolchak’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Only last time,” he continued, finally
digging in with one foot jamming the shovel into the ground, “I ended
up with a bullet creasing my skull.”
Kolchak, as ever, was piqued. As they
continued to dig, Rockford spun a tale of a statuesque mobster’s girl,
a faked death and a coffin full of tax-free money. The story of
the bandage gracing Rockford’s temple. When Rockford got to that
point of the story he reached up to touch the bandage but found it had
fallen off, likely due to the sweat that bathed his forehead. As
the wound was nearly completely healed, Rockford wouldn’t worry about
it. Besides, the pale pink scar made for a better illustration of
his recent mis adventures. Kolchak just shook his head; it was a
good story and, unlike so many of Kolchak’s own, one that people would
believe.
Two and a half hours later, time completely
undisturbed by any security drive-bys, Rockford’s shovel glanced off
something solid and hard. The two men, now filthy and drenched in
sweat, shared a look. They scraped the last few inches of dirt
away from the surface of the casket and carved out enough of a trench
on either side to clear the latches of the lid. Rockford pulled a
bandana from his back pocket and raised it to his nose and mouth in
anticipation and noticed, pointedly, that Kolchak made no such
preparations. Kolchak leaned forward to examine the seals on the
lid’s “top” quarter and showed Rockford by flashlight that the latches
had been snapped. When Kolchak pulled upwards on the lid section,
it came open easily and practically detached from the rest of the box,
the still shiny metal of its pins wrenched from some mysterious
force. And inside the casket was nothing but an empty bed of
shimmering white satin and air only slightly laced with the stink of
dead flesh. Rockford absorbed all this but couldn’t keep his eyes
from the underside of the casket’s lid which bore the track marks of
fingernails raked through the satin and knuckles imprinted into the
steel. But no blood. Rockford shivered lightly and told
himself it was a response to the wind chilling him through his damp
shirt. The sudden pop of a flashbulb startled him.
Kolchak was snapping pictures of the empty casket,
nodding as he did so. When he looked up to Rockford it was with a
strange, adrenaline-fueled light in his eyes, “And I’ll bet you 200
dollars a day plus expenses that if you lean on the director of this
place, he’ll admit they found much the same thing Monday night but
chose to quietly fill the grave back in.”
“Because a missing body is bad for business,”
Rockford muttered.
“Exactly,” Kolchak concurred.
Rockford’s head pounded and he leaned against the
wall of the hole, “Why Monday?”
Kolchak was placing the lid back onto the casket,
meeting Rockford’s eyes. “Because they rise after three days.”
A voice which each of the men was fairly sure
belonged to neither of them disrupted the eerie calm of their hole in
the ground, “HEY!”
Rockford and Kolchak immediately scrambled.
“Godammit!” Rockford hissed as he used the coffin for a stepping stone
and hoisted himself out of the grave, Kolchak right behind. They
hastily grabbed for their discarded coats and ran. There was a
pair of small head lights bobbing along the hill, weaving towards their
position with the soft electric purr of a golf cart motor.
“HEY YOU! STOP!” the security guard, who was
neither as little nor old as Kolchak had promised, somewhat rotely
bellowed.
Rockford and Kolchak made their way back towards the
wall encircling the enormous cemetery, hearing from behind them as the
security guard walkie-talkied to his partner back at the guard shack
that there was a situation that required backup and the police.
Kolchak, to Rockford’s surprise, sprinted into the lead.
They had made it to the wall and were bolting over
it by the time the security guard’s cart rocked to a stop and he
rejoined the chase on foot. He was only yards away.
Rockford hoped he wasn’t armed.
A gunshot broke the night wide open just as
Rockford’s head dropped below the rim of the wall. So much for
hoping, Rockford thought.
On the other side of the wall, within feet of
Rockford’s car, the two men started to separate until Rockford grabbed
Kolchak’s arm. “Get in the car!” Rockford barked.
“What?” Kolchak panted, “But what about-?”
“STOP RIGHT THERE, YOU PRICKS!” the guard shouted
from his position – arms and head peeking above the top of the
wall. He punctuated with a gunshot that pinged off the gravel
between Rockford and Kolchak’s feet.
“Get in the car!” Kolchak suddenly parroted as he
shoved Rockford towards the Trans-Am’s driver’s side.
In the seconds it took the guard to gain his footing
on the out side of the wall, Kolchak had leapt into Rockford’s car
while the detective gunned it to life. They peeled off down the
sloping hill road bordering the cemetery, passing Faye’s abandoned
Chevette on the way. The guard fired one last shot at their
wheels but missed.
Rockford didn’t turn on his lights or slow down
until they merged onto the 101.
“Cripes!” Kolchak expelled at last, breathing deep
and shooting a look through the car’s back window, “Faye is going to be
less than pleased when the cops knock on her door tomorrow.”
Rockford still looked grim and riveted to the road
in front of him. His voice rolled with the terse drawl that
seemed most promi nent when Rockford was stressed, “You can call her
when we get back, coach her to tell the cops she broke down and thumbed
her way home. There’s nothing tying that car to us, so she’ll be
alright.”
Kolchak sat back in his seat, tilting his hat to the
top of his fore head, “Yeah – yeaaah, that’s right. Good.”
Diverting his gaze from the road long enough to pin
Kolchak in an unfriendly stare, Rockford stated edgily, “Now then, this
is where you ‘fill in the blanks’ while I try very hard not to toss you
out of here at 80 miles per hour.”
Kolchak looked offended, “Jim! I said I would
and I will!”
Rockford now squinted in concentration, “That scene
back there didn’t surprise you in the least. You knew exactly
what we would find out there from the get-go, didn’t you?”
“I had a good idea, yeah,” Kolchak admitted.
“Uh-huh. So where the hell is Clay Shoemaker?”
Kolchak looked dumbfounded, “That I don’t
know. But we need to find out, and soon.”
Rockford slid his eyes sideways, simmering, and
Kolchak picked up, “But I do know some things about our missing dead
man, facts that probably aren’t gracing the police reports you read.”
“Such as?”
“Well, for instance, Stacker wasn’t exactly the
squeaky-clean All-American football hero his press – and his girlfriend
– make him out to be. He liked women,” Kolchak stated with the
proper inflec tion, “he liked them a lot. And he knew a lot of
them.”
Rockford frowned, “I know that. I did some
asking around yesterday – his teammates, his college buddies. I’m
not surprised no one outside his inner circle ever heard of Valerie; it
seems he was stringing her along from a distance. She was a
fallback while he played the field.”
“Right, well,” Kolchak nodded, “Then maybe you also
found out that Clay occasionally liked to hire ladies for
companionship. A boy has his appetites and Stacker’s ran towards
thin girls with long dark hair.”
“I noticed that too,” Rockford said, “looking at the
yearbook pictures of girls he had been dating. They all looked
like Valerie.”
“Here’s a name you didn’t come across: Catherine
Rawlins,” Kolchak said, his voice dropping to a lower register as if he
were worried about being overheard. “Slender beauty, gorgeous
figure and straight black hair hanging down her back. She was a
high-price callgirl in Vegas before she-” he paused, rethought, “before
she came to L.A. Catherine Rawlins was Stacker Shoemaker’s last
date.”
Rockford tried to follow, “Do you mean he saw her
the night he died?”
“Yes,” said Kolchak, “and he got a lot more than he
paid for.”
Kolchak paused before taking the plunge.
“Thursday night, at approximately 10:45 PM, following a lead from
Catherine’s ‘manager’, I entered Shoemaker’s apartment – door wide open
– to find Clay dead on the floor and four men, not a one under 225
pounds, being tossed around the room by our Ms. Rawlins.”
“What?” Rockford’s expression would’ve made Kolchak
laugh on any other day. “Are you telling me-?”
“There were no black-robed cultists in sight,
Jim. Just one petite hooker with pronounced canines and what one
might assume to be the physical disadvantage of being three years
dead.”
The Firebird swerved violently for a second as
Rockford involun tarily jerked the wheel. Without further comment
or exclamation, Rockford slowed the car to a stop on the freeway’s
shoulder and hit the hazards. When he turned back to Kolchak, the
expression on his face was one of wary attention, a prompt to
con tinue. So Kolchak did.
He began by describing for Rockford a series of
slayings that occurred in Las Vegas three years before. Six women
at final count but possibly many more. Each of these murders
displaying the same M.O.: mutilation of the neck and complete blood
loss. At the time Kolchak had been just doing his job, covering
the crime beat, when he became more and more convinced that something
unbelievable was behind these deaths. He had been present for the
aftermath of a hospital blood bank robbery by a tall, dark man with
blazing eyes – a man Kolchak witnessed being shot multiple times at
point-blank range without slowing him down. The police later
identified their prime suspect as a European national named Janos
Skorzeny – a fugitive from Interpol and a man that, if his birth
records were to be believed, was performing these feats at a spry 72
years of age. Kolchak had taken it upon himself to urge the Las
Vegas sheriff’s department and city police to treat the suspect as if
he were exactly what he appeared to be. Though openly derided and
threatened by the city officials, Kolchak learned later that Las Vegas
cops had, in those last few days of the manhunt, been issued
crucifixes, holy water and stakes. In the end, it had still
fallen on Kolchak and his one good friend in the FBI, Bernie Fain, to
track Skorzeny to his dilapidated wreck of a rented home one night just
before dawn. The confron tation had been horrifying, the work to
be done gruesome, but by the time the sun had risen and the police had
arrived on the scene, Janos Skorzeny was a threat no longer. For
his efforts and heroism, Kolchak received a one-way ticket out of town
with the threat of incarceration (or worse) should he ever attempt to
return to Sin City or if he tried to spread the true story of the
events of that terrible year.
“This is all completely verifiable,” Kolchak
informed Rockford, “Police records, autopsy reports, newspaper accounts
– including a few under my own byline. You’ll find everything I
just relayed – except the most important part of the story.
You’ll never come across the slightest mention of the word ‘vampire.’”
Kolchak watched Rockford’s face, to see how the
concepts were being digested, but the detective just stared back with
one elbow propped on the steering wheel, his deadpan expression
intermittently lit by the headlights of cars roaring past.
Catherine Rawlins, Kolchak continued, had been the
one victim of Skorzeny’s that had never been found and, apparently, the
only one infected with his curse. Kolchak hadn’t known any of
this, of course, until an acquaintance had let slip about a string of
sus picious murders that had been occurring along the road from Vegas
to L.A. The possibility that these were somehow related to the
Skorzeny case is what brought Kolchak westward. Rawlins had
killed several people – men and women (including her own sister) –
before laying into Stacker Shoemaker and the Godzilla Gang. Again
Kolchak’s attempts to work with the police, to try to guide them
towards a highly improbable solution to a particularly nasty string of
homicides, ran aground of the 20th century rationalism of men like Lt.
Jack Mateo and the LAPD. And again it was Kolchak who bore the
burden of hunting and destroying a foul and terrible thing. In
doing so, he had set alight the 20 foot white cross that had stood as a
local landmark on a Burbank hillside not far from the grounds of Forest
Lawn since the 1920s – pinning Rawlins beneath its righteous light.
The cops had booked Kolchak for the murder of Catherine Rawlins until
the M.E. reported that the body of the woman identified as the victim
showed signs of advanced decomposition. In short, she had been
dead long before Kolchak had killed her.
Rockford stared on as Kolchak kept elaborating,
inwardly marveling at the spectrum of madness in the world. He’d
seen myriad shades of lunacy in his day, just as many outside the
slammer as in, and each had been crazy in his own special way.
Take this guy for instance, smarts, a way with words, good storyteller,
acerbic wit, likable and seemingly sane. And then you listen to
the fantasies he’s laying out in journalistic detail, and you look at
the utter conviction writ across his slightly comical face, and you
just have to wonder how many more certifiable nutcases walk amongst us
each and every day, going to work, heading home, tucking their kids in
at night.
“…. but of course that all depends on finding where
he’s roosting, which is where you come in,” Kolchak was wrapping up,
finding Rockford’s expression unchanged. “Jim?”
It looked like Rockford was swimming up from his own
thoughts, “Mm? Yeah? You were saying something about
Dracula?”
Kolchak nodded, smarting a bit but taking it, “Okay,
I know, I know. This is coming high and fast out of left field,
but for this to work, you’re going to have to believe me – or at least
give me the room to prove all this to you. What do you say?”
With a flick of his wrist, Rockford had turned the
engine back on. He responded sarcastically as he shifted the car
into gear and spun back into traffic, “I say it’s a little early for
Halloween, Carl.”
“Better check your calendar, friend,” Kolchak
uttered darkly, “It’s always Halloween. Trust me.”
**
Too tired and low on gas to swing towards Kolchak’s
motel, Rockford drove both of them to his trailer. The
reporter/head case could sleep on his couch. The Trans-Am rolled
onto the sandy “driveway” fronting his modest home. The sight of
his dad’s truck already parked there only indicated to Rockford that
quarters would be a little cramped that night.
They exited the car and Kolchak followed Rockford up
the steps to the trailer’s door. “Beachfront,” he said
diplomatically, “Very nice.”
“Yeah, well, location is everything,” Rockford said,
jangling his keys as he reached for the door.
The door swung open from the inside so quickly that
it caught Rockford full in the face, knocking him backward into Kolchak
and sending them both to the sand before either knew what had happened.
From their place on the ground, both Kolchak and
Rockford could make out Angel framed in the doorway, “Jimmy!
Thank God!”
Angel had hopped down to meet them as they regained
their footing. The look in his eyes was one Rockford had rarely
seen, even in one as prone to cowardice as Angel Martin – genuine
panic. “Angel? What’s going on?” he asked, noting the
appearance of his father now filling the doorway. “Rocky?”
Rockford’s dad, a thickly-built old man with a
boxer’s face, stood at the trailer’s threshold in a ratty bathrobe, his
white hair mussed from sleep. “Angel here called me for help when
he couldn’t find you, Jimmy. I drove him here to wait for you to
show.”
“It’s Val, Jimmy,” Angel said urgently, his hand
gripping Rockford’s shoulders. “She’s gone! And it’s all my
fault, man!”
“What?” Kolchak chimed in while Rockford attempted
to put the brakes on Angel’s escalating anxiety.
“Wait a minute now, just keep it together and come
inside.”
“No!” Angel insisted, “We gotta go now – this
second! It’s already been too long!”
“And go where?” Rockford asked.
Angel was helplessly turning left and right,
clenching handfuls of his hair, looking for all the world like a
distraught autistic child, “I don’t know, man, I don’t know! But
we gotta find her!”
Rockford guided his friend along with a hand on his
back, making for the steps into the trailer, Kolchak following.
Looking to his dad, Rockford said calmly, “How about some coffee, pop?”
Rocky backed up to let them all enter, “Yeah, sure
thing.” After Kolchak entered and briefly introduced himself,
Rocky asked, “Where you boys been? You’re filthy!”
Sitting Angel down at the small dining table,
Rockford squeezed his eyes shut and dropped his chin, “Just make the
coffee, okay?”
While Rocky clanked and banged about the
kitchenette, Rockford and Kolchak joined Angel around the table.
“Angel,” Rockford started gently, “start from the beginning and tell us
what happened.”
Angel took a deep breath. “Valerie’s been
staying at my pad since she got here. When she’s not crying, she’s
baking stuff. She’s been baking a lot. I don’t know, maybe
it calms her down, all I know is I got muffins for days. So last
night, I mean just a few hours ago – like 10 or 10:30 – the phone
rings. When the phone rings at my place I’m usually right on it
‘cause I’ve always got … associates … looking to wheel and deal.”
For Kolchak’s benefit, Angel stressed, “All com pletely legit business,
understand.”
Kolchak nodded reassuringly but Rockford prompted,
“So you got a call - ?”
“Yeah, only I didn’t and it wasn’t for me anyway,”
Angel picked up, “Val was closer so she grabbed the phone. Once
she listened for a second she kinda gasped and went all white in the
face. Her hand started shaking. There wasn’t much of a
conversation, I heard her say, ‘yes’ a couple of times and then she
hung up but missed the rest of the phone so the handle part just fell
on the floor and started beeping. She had me freaked out so I’m
asking her, ‘What was it?’, you know? ‘Are you okay?’ And
she said, ‘That was Clay again.’ I swear, man, that’s what she
said. But she wouldn’t say anything else other than she needed to
lie down. She was still shaking. I was worried for her so I
told her to get to bed and that I would give you a call which I did but
I got your machine.”
“She never told you what he said?” Kolchak asked.
“That’s what I said, man, she was too shook up to
talk about it. So she went off to the bedroom and I sat on the
couch watching TV. I started nodding off myself ‘til midnight –
around there – when I hear this engine. A sports car with one of
those racing engines – loud – and that wakes me up along with the light
from its headlights coming through the blinds as the thing pulls up in
front. And I’m thinkin’ what’s this about? And so I get up
to peek out the window and what do I see but Valerie outside running
for the car and hopping in and driving off. She snuck out my
bedroom window, Jimmy, no note or anything.”
Rockford looked concerned, but he kept his usual
level head, “But you didn’t see her coerced or forced into the
car. She’s a girl in her 20s, she’s got college friends around
who haven’t seen her in a while, she could be at a party for all you
know. It’s only been, what, four hours or so now? I
wouldn’t call out the bloodhounds just yet.”
Angel’s eyes, his whole body language suggested
urgency, “No, but, Jimmy, it was him driving the car! It was
‘Stacker’ Shoemaker, I’m sure of it!”
The coffee was awful which made Kolchak feel like he
was back in the INS newsroom. This was oddly comforting as he sat
back and listened in to Rockford going thoroughly through the points of
Angel’s story: the make and model of the car (a silver Porsche - “one
of the new ones” as far as Angel could tell), license plate number
(“there was two 8s and an ‘X’ and a ‘B’, I think”), what direction the
car went (south), etc. The sun would be rising soon. To
Rockford this meant getting his buddy Sgt. Becker’s day off to a busy
start. But to Kolchak the coming dawn represented a reprieve,
thirteen hours or so of daylight in which to do the terrible work he
knew must be done. Either way, both men knew they wouldn’t be
getting to sleep anytime soon.
**
Around 7 AM, Rockford and Kolchak saw Angel back to
his apartment. Though Angel was adamant about sticking with them
and aiding the search for his cousin, Rockford deflected this by
rea soning that he could best serve the investigation by staying home
in case there was word from Valerie or, even better, if she just
happened to show up. Angel couldn’t argue with the logic of the
idea so he agreed. Promising to check in throughout the day,
Rockford and Kolchak took their leave.
Next, Rockford dropped Kolchak off at his motel so
the be draggled reporter could send his wearables through another spin
in the washer and dryer. Though his clothes could certainly use
the attention, this was also a valid excuse to bow out of Rockford’s
subsequent trip to Becker’s precinct house; in light of his
less-than-cordial treatment at the hands of the LAPD (interrogated,
booked for murder and finally released with the threat of instant
incarceration if he was seen in L.A. – city or county – again), Kolchak
doubted it was wise to show his face around the boys in blue.
They planned for a lunchtime rendezvous and Rockford drove away.
**
“You’re unbelievable, Jim,” Becker sighed, “No doubt
about it, a real piece of work.”
Rockford leaned back in the chair opposite Becker’s
desk and propped his boots on the edge dangerously close to the photo
of Peg, Mrs. Becker. “Sweet of you to say, Dennis.”
Becker, a squat, balding pug of a man who was
already dis playing pit-stains through his thin polyester dress shirt
at 9 in the morning, looked less than happy, swatting his friend’s feet
off the desk with a handful of reports in manila folders. “I’m
barely ten minutes in this seat – my first cup of coffee,” he held the
cup up to illustrate, “is still mostly warm – and you waltz in here
like the migraine fairy just waiting to make this day longer and harder
and more a pain in the butt than it promised to be when I went to bed
last night.”
“At least you got to sleep last night,” Rockford
replied, “Some of us aren’t that lucky.”
Becker’s eyes rolled but his fit of piquant was
done. He took a long slug of coffee, sloshed it around in his
mouth for a second before swallowing grossly. Making a show of
it, Becker then set his cup down and folded his hands, fingers
interlocked, in front of his chest. With an almost regal lift of
his eyebrows, he addressed the lanky inter loper across from him,
“Okay, Mr. Rockford, what can the Los Angeles Police Department do for
you today?”
After most of the tale had been told (Rockford
omitted the thornier details of illegal grave tampering, empty caskets
and Carl Kolchak and his Creature Feature theories), Becker said he
would start the search for a vehicle fitting the description of the one
Valerie Martin left in and could also promise a phone record of calls
placed to Angel’s number the night before. When Rockford asked if
there had been any progress in getting the list of calls to Valerie’s
Brooklyn phone from Monday night, Becker looked incredulous.
“Since yesterday? Let me see … no. I
don’t know if you non-police types understand or not, but we don’t have
some super computer where we just hit a couple of buttons and – voila –
it spits out a card with the answers punched right on it. This
takes time and manpower, Jim, so hang onto your britches. Since
your pal Angel is a local, we’ll probably have the call list in a few
hours, but the Brooklyn number and the car search – well, just don’t
hold your breath.”
Rockford understood and appreciated these truths
already but it never hurt to urge on the effort when it mattered.
As he stood to leave, Rockford offered, “You know I appreciate it,
Dennis. One thing: when you look for that car, I suggest looking
through the hot sheets first. That should cut the time down a
bit.”
Becker looked up, “A hunch?”
“Yeah.”
“You got it,” Becker said, already moving for his
phone, “Now, do you mind if I attend to some of the actual crime that’s
been patiently waiting its turn since you got here?”
Rockford just laughed as he left the office.
**
A plate of gnawed-on shrimp tails sat between them
on the rough-wooden table. Though bleary-eyed, Kolchak was
feeling good with a full stomach. They had received the royal
treatment when the owner of this small but bustling seafood shack in
Santa Monica spotted Rockford coming through the door. The
proprietor had ushered them to a table and joked around with Rockford
for a minute before rushing off to the kitchen to “whip you up a
feast.” And he had. Rockford’s only explanation of all this
was that he’d done some work for the guy once. Kolchak wondered
what that must’ve been but didn’t ask.
Rockford also had a question he’d wanted to put to
Kolchak since he’d picked him up but had likewise refrained: what’s in
the bag? Since they’d last seen each other that morning,
luggage-less Kolchak had acquired a cheap gym bag (drug store tags
still dangling from the handles) yet still carried his camera and tape
recorder slung off his shoulder. Rockford had dim speculations of
such a ridiculous and unnerving nature that he shoved them aside and
decided to pay them no attention. He glanced at his watch.
It was already 5:30 PM; the day lost to the fruitless tracking down of
Valerie Martin’s friends and acquaintances to see if they’d seen or
heard from her. When Rockford had finally come for Kolchak, he
found the reporter ready and anxious.
“Time to check in?” Kolchak asked. “Let’s pray
they’ve got some leads.”
“Amen to that,” Rockford replied, “Be right back.”
He rose and made for the bar, calling out to the
owner, “Hey, Ronnie, mind if I use the phone? It’s local.”
Ever-grateful Ronnie plunked his phone down on the
bar top. “For you, Jimmy, anything.”
Kolchak smirked. He was definitely in the
wrong line of work.
**
“Yeah, Jim, I got some new info,” Becker was saying
over the line, “but first I got a question for you.”
Rockford played along, “Okay, Dennis, sure.
What’s up?”
“Since when are you Boris Karloff all of a sudden?”
“What?”
“Oh, okay, I see how this works now,” Becker
continued, his sarcasm growing more hostile the longer he talked, “this
is where you give me some alibi for last night – this is where you tell
me it must’ve been some other bronze colored Firebird peeling out from
Forest Lawn Cemetery-”
“Now wait a minute, Dennis,” Rockford started to
protest, but Becker wasn’t finished just yet.
“You left your big Band-Aid behind!”
Rockford sighed, knowing there was nowhere to go but
straight ahead. “Okay, Dennis, yes, I was there. But this
ties in-”
“Where the hell is Stacker Shoemaker?!” Becker
bellowed.
“That’s the 64 thousand dollar question,” Rockford
admitted. “The grave was empty when we got there.”
“We? Who’ve you roped into your new criminal
career, Jim?”
“An interested party.”
“You know who’s interested, Jim? I am – very
interested! And it’s only a matter of time before Jack Mateo gets
interested, since it’s his case you’re stepping all over, and from
there it’s just a hop and a skip before the DA’s office gets interested
in a bad way!”
Rockford tried to rein his buddy in, “Dennis, if you
have the leads I asked for, that means I’m that much closer to wrapping
this whole thing up. What you should now be thinking about is the
young woman who’s possibly in danger right now from whoever’s behind
all this.”
“Who’s behind this?” Becker parroted, “That’s no
mystery, Jim, it’s those freaks from the Dark Star Coven. The two
‘warlocks’ we have in the stir are taking the credit for everything.”
“What did you find out, Dennis?”
“The Porsche – you were right on that one,
Jim. It came up on the hot sheet in connection with the Fanelli
case.”
“Who?”
“Leo Fanelli, big shot talent agent found murdered
in a Westwood restaurant parking lot two nights ago. Neck all
messed up like in those other Coven murders. His Porsche was
missing.”
“And so was his blood, right?” Rockford asked,
shooting a look over at Kolchak who sat at their table nonchalantly
loading his camera with film.
“Jim – there’s a limit to what I can tell you, you
know that.”
Rockford’s stomach was rolling, “The phone logs, did
you get any-”
Becker cut him off, “Yeah, here’s the
clincher. At 10:27 PM last night a call was put through to your
buddy Angel’s line coming from a Silver Lake phone number.
Specifically from 478 Wollam Street.”
“Hold on, Dennis,” Rockford said, pulling the small
note pad and pen from his jacket’s inside pocket, “give that to me
again?” He jotted the address down as Becker repeated it.
“Should I know the place?” Rockford asked.
“Probably not,” Becker responded, “but to your
hard-working police department that is known as the headquarters of the
Dark Star Coven.”
**
65. 70. 75. Kolchak watched the
needle push farther and farther to the right of the Trans-Am’s
speedometer, finally holding and bobbing just past 85. He made a
good show of listening to what Rockford was saying, but he was slightly
preoccupied with watching the cars dodging out of their way and the
angry or startled looks on the other drivers’ faces as they were
overtaken by the roaring muscle car.
“So I hope you’re okay with a slightly more mundane
– if still grim – explanation of recent events,” Rockford was saying,
as coolly as any Indy 500 champ.
“If it leads us to Valerie Martin, safe and sound,
then that’s all that matters, obviously,” Kolchak said, flinching only
slightly when Rockford performed a very illegal high-speed lane change,
narrowly avoiding the bumper of the pick-up in front of them.
“But are you saying that this cult – only two members of which have
been arrested – is behind all these similar murders – Clay Shoemaker
and the Godzilla Gang, the talent agent Fanelli, even Catherine
Rawlins’s sister and boyfriend?”
Rockford answered, “I don’t know about that; I
haven’t looked into that case at all. I’m just saying at this
point it appears likely that these cultists are on some kind of
rampage. They’re the ones who have Valerie.”
“What kind of sense does that make, though?” Kolchak
asked, still gripping the handle of his door, his knuckles bloodless,
“Why target the out-of-state girlfriend of one of their victims?
And why would a group of Satan worshippers kill a man for his snazzy
wheels?”
It was obvious that even Rockford had his doubts,
his excuse sounding half-hearted, “Well, come on, what did the Manson
Family have against the La Biancas or that Tate woman? These
freaks are playing by their own rulebook and there’s not a whole lot w-”
Rockford stomped on the brakes, verbally as well as
literally, to avoid plowing into the back of the Pinto in front of
them. “Hey!” Kolchak exclaimed, bracing for impact, while
Rockford uttered something a lot more colorful. They weren’t the
only ones coming to a sudden stop; to the right and left – four lanes
of the 110 were at a dead standstill.
“Damn it!” Rockford added, smacking the heel of his
palm against the steering wheel.
Kolchak craned his head towards the side window,
trying to peer past the cars stacked immediately before them.
“What is this? Rush hour?”
Rockford sighed, “Some maybe. But I forgot
it’s a game night.”
“A what?”
“The Dodgers are at home tonight. That’s
Dodgers Stadium right up there,” Rockford indicated the hill up ahead
on the left. “They’re playing the Braves, I think.”
Kolchak looked at the section of the stadium visible
from their position that primarily consisted of the light banks ringing
the huge circular structure. As if on cue they popped on as he
watched, the light blurring in parallel rays against the darkening
purple-blue sky.
5. 8. 0. 3. The needle weakly twitched from the
bottom of the speedometer’s horizon.
“We’ve got to hurry, Jim!”
“I’m worried too but there’s not much I can do right
now,” Rockford said, scooting up the few feet the traffic’s snail like
pace allowed. “But the good news is Becker’s already sent a
patrol car around to the place. Hopefully this will all be
wrapped up by the time we get there.”
Kolchak sank back in his seat. “Yeah …
hopefully,” he said, silently willing the sun to stick around just a
bit longer.
**
It was a tense wait as they lurched and heaved
through the traffic snarl adjacent to the ballpark. In spots here
and there they stood still long enough to watch the shadows lengthen
beneath their wheels. Once free, Rockford nearly shoved his foot
through the car’s floorboard, pushing all 8 cylinders as hard as he
could. They dipped and rose along the freeway until, not too long
after, Rockford took the Figueroa exit that was marked with a sign
indicating they were headed towards Elyria Canyon Park.
The streets they took wound downward from the
heights of Mount Washington to the pleasant community of Silver Lake
whose fine wooden town homes stacked lackadaisically amongst stretches
of honest-to-goodness Nature seemed to Kolchak more like Seattle than
the garish urban sprawl of Hollywood below. The closer they got
to the park, the more sparse the development became and once they’d
reached the end of Wollam Street there was just one house left standing
at the border of the deep green reserve beyond, a two story house no
more ominous than any others on the block. The only suggestion of
something amiss was the presence of a solitary black-and-white patrol
unit sitting in front of the house, empty.
Rockford rolled the Trans-Am to a gentle stop.
When he and Kolchak exited the car they were greeted with a quiet
evening broken only by the sound of distant dogs, muted televisions and
the squawking chatter of the police car’s radio – calls no one was
answering.
“Carl, maybe you should stay put for now,” Rockford
warned.
“Not a chance,” Kolchak replied as they made their
cautious way to the front door. “Do you carry a gun?”
Rockford frowned, “No.”
“Wouldn’t do you any good anyway,” replied Kolchak,
waving the idea away. “But do yourself a favor and take this.” He
reached into his gym bag and produced a small crucifix on a chain.
The look Rockford now shot Kolchak was all the
response necessary and Kolchak bobbed his head to say okay, I get it
and dropped the crucifix back into the bag. The detective was
inwardly referring to the checklist of pros versus cons in bringing
Kolchak along on this rescue mission in the first place and finding his
math questionable. He would now have to keep a protective eye on
the affable lunatic as well as deal with the situation - whatever
it might be – waiting for them on the other side of this door.
Rockford held a silencing finger to his lips as he
tried the front door knob of 478 Wollam. He didn’t have to do
much as the door swung lightly open at his touch. With a look to
Kolchak and a motion indicating to keep low, Rockford knelt and
carefully pushed the door open enough to allow him to creep
inside. With one last look behind him, scanning the western
horizon where the day’s sun was steadily dropping behind the ridge of
the ambitious hill called Mount Washington, Kolchak followed.
There were lights on inside the place but it was
stock still, the air not stirring even with the breeze introduced from
outside. They entered a foyer that branched into a small living
room; the walls pleasantly covered with sunny yellow and white striped
wallpaper and here or there framed posters of meadow scenes.
There were a couple of couches and standing lamps and crocheted rugs on
the hardwood floors – nothing that announced this as the inner sanctum
of black magic either investigator expected. The hallway they
inched along was lined with bookshelves where a cursory examination
re vealed the collected volumes of Aleister Crowley’s Golden Dawn
magicks side by side with I’m OK, You’re OK and Happiness is a Warm
Puppy. Ahead on the right was the empty kitchen while on the left
was the entrance to a guest room – visible on the floor spilling out
from with this room was what looked to be small shards of broken
ceramic. Rockford was first to the room and he peered around the
edge of the doorjamb. Kolchak saw the small jolt in Rockford’s
shoulders and angled himself to get his own view.
Inside the guest room was a small bed with its
mattress jarred at a strange angle on its box springs, an overturned
chest-of-drawers and the remains of a heavy vase that lay jagged and
sparkling amongst the disarray of what most have been a violent
struggle. Across the bed was a teenage boy tossed down and bent
oddly, his neck mangled and spattered with gore. Beneath him were
the legs of an older woman whose torso was bent at the waist so her
upper half wasn’t visible from where Rockford and Kolchak stood.
Her stockinged feet were shoeless. A mother and son?
Rockford didn’t know but the answer didn’t matter right now. The
sight sickened him and he’d seen plenty of terrible things in his
time. He was doubly sickened by the sudden click of Kolchak’s
camera. Rockford angrily grabbed at the reporter’s jacket lapel,
wordlessly expressing his disgust. All Kolchak could do was shrug
apologetically. Rockford shook his head and turned from the
room. If there were cops here, they must be in trouble.
Their hearts thudding in their throats, Rockford and Kolchak headed for
the stairs.
They found the third body halfway up. It was a
middle-aged man in a black turtleneck sprawled upside down across the
stairs, a gold medallion of a ram’s head dangling past his chin and
laying on the wooden stair step. Rockford and Kolchak had to
clamber over his remains to reach the second floor landing. Once
they had reached the top a gasp escaped Rockford despite himself and he
didn’t react this time to the snap of Kolchak’s shutter. Taking
in the scene before them, he could hardly fault the newsman’s zeal.
There was no master bedroom or bath; the entire
upper story had been converted into one room that looked like a cross
between a torture chamber and the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.
The walls, ceiling and floor were painted jet black, the only color in
the room coming from the blood red candles arranged in the four corners
of the room on tall ceremonial holders and from the crimson pentacle
deco rating the far wall where at some point in the past windows might
have been. There were chains and manacles bolted into the walls
about the room. There were standing cabinets filled with
implements of pain. And there was a stout oaken altar situated in
the middle of the floor as wide and long as queen size bed. The
whole scene smacked of B-movie obviousness and do-it-yourself Satanism,
so much so that it would have been laughable if not for the corpses.
They were scattered everywhere. Seven men and
two women fallen about the place in no order or arrangement, having
just been dropped where they died, and one woman atop the altar,
gagged, nude and chained by the wrists and ankles. Amongst the
dead on the floor of the room were two police officers, freshly killed
and still leaking blood from the gouges in their necks. Their
hands still loosely holding their revolvers. The air stank of
bodies just starting to decom pose and the acrid smoke of discharged
rounds. It was a horrific sight and Rockford’s mind reeled.
He immediately knelt to check on the policemen, to see if there was any
hope at all that one or both might still be clinging to life.
Kolchak was so overwhelmed that it took him another second before he
realized the “corpse” on the altar was breathing. And that it was
Valerie Martin.
Kolchak manically rushed to the enormous wooden
platform, reaching for the girl’s head, cradling it with one hand and
pulling loose the knotted cloth gag with the other. It was hard
to accept that this drawn, bony thing – her chalk-white bosom barely
lifting and falling, her neck bearing the kind of awful, bruised
puncture wounds Kolchak was all-too familiar with – was the same
vibrant if sad young woman he’d met just three days ago. Her
deep-shadowed eyes were closed, but Kolchak leaned in close to try and
rouse her, “Valerie? Valerie, can you hear me?”
Kolchak could see her eyes rolling beneath their
twitching lids. She was fighting her way back.
He brushed the long black hair from her face,
“Valerie, it’s Carl. We need you to wake up, honey.”
Across the room Rockford was examining another of
the likely dead. Actually, he had no doubt that this
broad-shouldered fellow was a goner, the smell alone suggested he’d
been deceased for much longer than the members of the Dark Star
Coven. Before he even turned the body over, he had a feeling he
knew what the blonde man’s face would look like.
“Jim!” Kolchak called, distracting Rockford from the
corpse of “Stacker” Shoemaker. “It’s Valerie! She’s alive!”
Rockford’s head shot up, his eyes lit with surprise
and grati tude for an inkling of good news in the midst of this
slaughterhouse. Kolchak and Valerie both were looking his way,
the girl’s gaze clouded over and vague. Rockford was about to say
something, was in the midst of raising himself from his kneel, when he
saw Valerie’s eyes shift from semi-consciousness to sharp focus to
stark terror in the span of two seconds. She wasn’t looking at
him, but at some point below. There was a low animal hiss from
beneath him and a super humanly powerful left arm swung into his side,
sending him flying into the heavy cabinets several yards across the
room. Rockford went down heavily and the cabinets collapsed on
top of him with house-shaking force. The detective was
unconscious, leaving Kolchak on his own to face the dark mockery of the
All-American golden boy rising to his feet and pinning him with a
malevolent stare. Shoemaker’s lips peeled back, displaying the
same perfect white smile as seen on his bubble-gum trading card with
two noticeable alterations – a pair of wicked fangs.
Kolchak found himself wishing: once, just once, I’d
like to find these guys while they’re still asleep.
Shoemaker crossed the span between them with one
cobra-fast bound but found a large metal cross before his face, being
brandished by the ludicrous looking guy in the straw hat and seersucker
suit. The undead football hero jerked backward involuntarily,
shielding his eyes and roaring.
“AAAOOOOOOWW! Jesus, man!” Shoemaker spat,
backing away from Kolchak, “What’d you have to pull that for?
Uncool, man!”
“Sorry, Stacker. You oughtta know the
importance of a good defense.” Kolchak’s words were
pointedly cocky, but his face was still a wide-eyed mask of alertness
and nerves.
He noticed that the vampire was backing for the doorway and, with
capable aim, tossed a small disk of hard bread to the floor just at the
room’s threshold. Shoemaker’s foot jerked back from the host as
if it radiated the heat of the Sun. He cursed at the top of his
voice. Hitting the “record” button on the cassette corder hung
from his shoulder, Kolchak allowed himself a small grin, “Where’re you
going, hot shot? I was hoping you might answer some questions for
our readers….”
“Screw you, Poindexter!” Shoemaker retorted, aiming a finger at Kolchak
who snapped a quick picture one-handed. “You don’t get to mess
this up for me!”
“Mess what up, Clay? Death?”
“Aw, man, you don’t know,” Shoemaker said, “I thought pro football was
great, you know? The dough, the chicks. But this –
this!” He shifted his gaze to Valerie who stared back with
terrified eyes, “Look at this bod, baby, look at this face! I’m
gonna look like this forever!”
Like a magician with one more trick, Kolchak pulled his left hand from
the gym bag and aimed a 75-cent water gun at the broad handsome face
that “Stacker” Shoemaker was so proud of. He squeezed the trigger
and a stream of tap water he’d had a Hispanic sidewalk evangelist bless
earlier that afternoon hit the vampire’s face with the sound of bacon
grease on a super-heated skillet. The shriek that escaped
Shoemaker’s blistered mouth was inhuman.
Shoemaker whirled and drove his shoulder into Kolchak’s chest as
if he were a 300-pound tackle. Kolchak fell hard against the edge
of the altar upon which poor, manacled Valerie was powerless to do
anything but scream soundlessly from her wounded throat. Kolchak
blinked at the pain, trying but failing to draw breath into his lungs,
while Shoemaker strode across the floor – careful to sidestep the cross
and water gun that had fallen from Kolchak’s hands in flight.
Kolchak wheezed and attempted to get to his feet but Shoemaker was
closer, growling, frothing at the mouth like a rabid beast. The
undead athlete clutched Kolchak’s throat and leaned in.
Shoemaker’s mouth opened and Kolchak was assaulted by a gust of
coppery, fetid breath….
**
No one was more surprised that Rockford wasn’t dead than the man
himself. There were hands on his shoulders gently shaking him,
and his eyes rolled making uncertain attempts at opening. Each
time they did a gong of pain was struck in his skull and Rockford
groaned.
“Jim,” somebody was saying somewhere. “C’mon, Jim, we’ve gotta
go.”
He forced his eyes open again and caught a glimpse of two smudged
silhouettes hovering over him. People? Ghosts?
Rockford worked himself up to one elbow and stretched the muscles in
his face, trying to warm himself up to full awareness. The gong
kept striking.
“Come on, Jim,” one of the shapes was saying and Rockford saw the blur
resolve itself into more detail. He recognized the hat. “Do
you think you can stand?”
“Kolchak?” Rockford finally said and instantly regretted it, his own
voice reverberating painfully through his head. But something of
Kolchak’s urgency was seeping through the fog and Rockford held out an
arm that the reporter grabbed and hoisted his tall frame to a more
erect, if still unstable, posture.
Rockford swayed and another set of hands caught him, smaller
hands. Rockford’s head turned and his rapidly clearing vision was
able to make out the form of Valerie Martin, clothed now in some kind
of long, loose garment that he finally registered as being one of the
cult’s robes.
“Valerie?” Rockford queried, “Are you okay?”
“No,” she answered quietly.
Kolchak was trying to usher them to the door. “But we’re all
still alive and – for the moment – not incarcerated. I suggest we
try to stay that way.”
Rockford made to ask a question but he heard them too – police sirens,
still far off but echoing faintly through the quiet of the canyon.
The trio made their way for the stairs but Rockford paused, his brain
reassembling the facts and reasons behind his present location.
With too many questions and no time, Rockford looked back into the
chamber of horrors that he wished he’d never seen and found the body he
was looking for. “Stacker” Shoemaker had moved … some how.
And now he lay on his back, eyes open and dead staring at the black
ceiling, with a piece of wood (like the kind of garden stake used for
growing tomatoes) puncturing his chest.
The sight just made his head hurt worse.
“I thought they turned to dust,” Rockford muttered as they hurried down
the stairs.
“That only happens in the movies,” Kolchak said.
**
Kolchak was driving. True, Rockford knew he was in no shape to
pilot his car, but it still made him anxious. They had rolled
inconspicuously out of Wollam Street just as the first police cruisers
made their appearance. Rockford felt sorry for them, knowing they
were only sent to check up on their unresponsive fellow officers.
They had no idea what was waiting for them at the end of the quiet
street.
Rockford was in the back seat with a protective arm around Valerie’s
shoulder. If anything she looked even worse in the staccato
flashes of streetlight briefly illuminating the car. Kolchak
first asked Rockford for directions to the nearest hospital, then began
engaging Valerie in an interview about what had transpired over the
course of her abduction. Rockford was inclined to tell Kolchak to
lay off, but, as Valerie began to talk, his own curiosity kicked in and
he was soon drawing answers out of the exhausted and traumatized girl.
Last night, after she’d snuck away from her cousin’s apart ment to meet
her boyfriend, she had wanted to know where Clay was taking her.
He’d said he’d gotten a new place he couldn’t wait to show her.
She asked him why everyone was saying he was dead. And Clay had
answered, “Because I am.” She had started crying, getting
hysterical, and he’d slapped her – hard. But he had told her
everything would be fine, his voice sounding just like it used to after
they made love.
The house was full of dead people and she had started screaming and
wouldn’t stop no matter how many times he hit her. That’s when he
tied the gag over her mouth. He told her to calm down, that these
weren’t people anymore – they were food. He’d learned that from
the whore, Cathy, the one who turned him. He’d seen her a few
times and she was “a kinky chick,” she would bite and have him do the
same to her.
In the back of Rockford’s Trans-Am, Valerie flatly reported, “And then
he even apologized for seeing a hooker. He told me he only did it
‘cause she reminded him of me.”
When he’d first “woken up” and clawed his way out of the ground, he’d
been confused, scared, but, more than that, he’d been so hungry.
He’d gone home, past the police tape across his door, and that’s where
he’d called her from. But the realization soon dawned that too
many people would recognize him if he stayed there, so he left.
Restless, he’d made his first kill that night – a bald guy in a nice
suit outside of a restaurant Clay used to love. He took the man’s
car.
Clay had read the papers and watched the news and saw how a group of
devil worshippers were taking the credit for his murder as well as
others. So Clay had decided to pay “the flakes” a little visit to
see if they would like to see their handiwork up close.
“They were total phonies,” Clay had said to Valerie, “They peed
themselves when I showed up at the door.”
He’d asked Valerie if she’d missed him as much as he’d missed
her. And then he strapped her to the altar and raped her several
times. He’d bitten her and lapped at the blood flowing from her
neck. She thought he was going to kill her like he had all the
others but he kept whispering to her that he would make sure they would
be together forever.
By the end of her tale, Valerie’s voice was a dry whisper, “But he
didn’t understand – I couldn’t make him understand – I wanted him to
kill me…” Her eyes had dimmed and were now frozen, staring ahead
but focusing on nothing. She now just kept repeating softly, “Why
didn’t he kill me? Why didn’t he kill me? Why didn’t he
kill me…?”
Rockford met Kolchak’s gaze in the rear-view mirror, both men radiating
the same sympathetic regret. Rockford heard Kolchak shut off his
tape recorder.
**
The hospital Rockford had guided Kolchak to was one where the detective
had a couple of friends; good doctors who would help Jim with
confidential treatment kept off the books no matter how severe or how
suspicious. They saw to Valerie who was on the verge of shock and
in need of an immediate transfusion and they looked after Rockford’s
wounds old and new: three bruised ribs and a new concussion to go with
his still tender gunshot wound of three weeks ago. Rockford
thanked them for the diagnosis but declined their firm “suggestion” of
an overnight stay. Within the hour Rocky arrived with Angel in
tow and an edited version of the night’s events was then spun.
Rockford warned Valerie’s cousin that, once she was awake, she might go
on about “vampires” but that was just the kid napping trauma
talking. Upon securing Kolchak a ride back to his motel
from Rocky (“What am I, a taxi service?” his father had quipped),
Rockford drove himself home.
Exhausted and beaten, he slept hard, but not as soundly as he
wished. His dreams were of teeth.
**
The bartender set two beers in front of them, eyeing Rockford oddly for
the strange way he was sitting on the stool, rigidly straight and
wincing with every move.
Kolchak took a long draw from his glass knowing this would be the first
of a few. He would need plenty of lubrication to deal with his
upcoming flight and, more to the point, Anthony Vincenzo’s ire which
would be waiting for him when he disembarked at O’Hare.
Rockford was seeing Kolchak off for his 2:30 flight and they had
mutually decided to cap things off with a quick drink at the very
airport bar where they’d been introduced. The conversation on the
drive to LAX had been sparse. There were terrible, unbelievable
facts hanging in the air between them, facts that one man didn’t want
to accept and the other man bore like a ball and chain. Rockford
had reported that his friend Sgt. Becker would keep Valerie Martin’s
name out of the investigation into the Dark Star Coven massacre, which
should be easy enough as there was never an official case opened for
her disappearance. Becker also had an update that verified
Valerie’s story but left Rockford’s sergeant friend further bewildered:
the call placed to Valerie’s Brooklyn number on Monday night was from
Clay Shoemaker’s home phone, the same Westwood apartment that had been
empty since his death three days previous. As for Valerie, Angel
would look after her while she recovered in the hospital and then see
her safely home to Brooklyn where he hoped time, friends, family and
years of therapy would help to scab over wounds of this experience.
Rockford also told Kolchak to breathe easy about his own in volvement,
the Coven murder case was taken out of Lt. Mateo’s hands earlier that
morning and passed along to another LAPD homicide detective, a Lt.
Columbo.
“Is he good?” Kolchak had asked.
“Very good,” Rockford replied, “and thorough. He’ll definitely
place me at the scene, but I should be able to wriggle my way out of
any criminal charges. I was there looking into the death and
disappearance of ‘Stacker’ Shoemaker, I got there after the deeds were
done, I saw dead cops and decided not to hang around. Doesn’t
paint me in such a noble light, but it’ll still keep me out of jail.”
“I wonder how they’ll clean this one up for mass consump tion,” Kolchak
mused, but Rockford had no answer.
His beer nearly drained, Rockford rolled the glass
between his palms for a moment, distracted, searching for a way, any
way, to avoid broaching the only topic they now had in common.
“Get this,” Rockford started, squinting hard either
from his bruises or the difficulty of the subject matter, “For me, this
stuff never happened. I told Valerie she needs to follow the same
tack with this. She was in shock, she was traumatized, she has no
idea what she did or didn’t see and hear. Me, I got shot in the
head a little while ago. See, we have good excuses. Easy
outs.” He knew he shouldn’t as he still had to drive home, but
Rockford found himself ordering another beer. Kolchak waited
patiently for Rockford to receive it and take his first sip before
continuing.
“But you,” he said, pointing the beer glass at
Kolchak, “what are you going to do with all of this? Who – How
are you going to put a story on the wire saying-” He looked
around cautiously and lowered his voice, “-saying that a top draft pick
of the LA Rams ended up killing multiple people as a – you know?”
Kolchak sighed and drooped noticeably. “I
don’t. You forget that I’ve been around this particular block a
couple of times before. I’ll write the story twice; one version
for the Vincenzos and Mateos of the world, for Mr. And Mrs. John Q.
Public and their 2.5 children, and then I&