Nowhere Land: A Stephan Raszer Investigation by A.W. Hill Read Free Book Online Page A

said. “Not that.”
         Raszer
gave his daughter a sidelong glance. “Not what, muffin?” He knew what she’d
meant, because he knew that she’d known what he meant, and that was the
way they had communicated almost from her infancy. He wanted to hear her say it
anyway. It was important, he thought, not to use telepathy as a substitute for
expression.
         “Not
that he was sick and all,” she replied. “It was more like he was a ghost. Like
he actually died a long time ago.”
         “I think
his people would have mentioned that detail when I called them at the Kingdom
Hall in Azusa.”
         “Maybe,”
she said. “Or maybe they’re just used to it.”
         “You
mean, like ‘Old Silas is up to his tricks again, haunting the streets of
Hollywood . . . searching for his lost Katy’?”
         “Something
like that, yeah.”
         She
wasn’t yet on the plane, and Raszer already missed her. He had to swallow hard.
He hated returning Brigit to his ex-wife, hated the sheltered life she was
going back to, hated the ache she left behind. Raszer’s daughter was also his
best friend.
         “Well,”
he said, exiting at Sepulveda for the airport, “it’s an intriguing idea. And I
don’t dismiss the notion that a man’s passion can outlive his body. But we did
see the paramedics carry him out, didn’t we?”
         “Yeah, I
guess we did,” she said, squinting in imitation of her father. “But still—”
         “I know.
That’s what I was trying to say before. Death doesn’t make sense. The thing
that makes us alive can’t just all of a sudden go away, can it?”
         “Do you
think Mr. Endicott was a good man, Daddy?”
         Raszer
sighed unconsciously. He was turning onto the Departures ramp. “I think . . .
he was as good a man as someone who’s been in a box all his life can be. Maybe
didn’t quite see the whole picture. ‘A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of
little minds.’”
         “Who
said that?” she asked.
         “Emerson,
I think.”
         She
repeated the sentence soundlessly, then announced, “I don’t ever want a
hobgoblin in my mind, Daddy.”
         Raszer
laughed and reached over to yank her hair as they entered the parking
structure. “I don’t think you need to worry about that, honey. Anyhow, I do
believe that Mr. Endicott loved his daughter, and that’s good enough for me.”
         “Are you
going to find her, Daddy?”
         “Well,
I’m going to see about that this afternoon. I’m going to speak with the other
men at his church, and see what they want me to do.”
         “I hope
you do, Daddy.”
         Before
they left the car, Brigit opened his glove compartment and fished around until
she found his Swiss Army knife, the one with the corkscrew and the awl and the
scissors, and then she snipped off half an inch of hair and gave it to him. It
was some-thing she did each time she left, and each time, he put it into his
wallet.
         “Daddy?”
         “Uh-huh?”
         “If
you’d died when I was little, or if I had . . . would we still be having these
talks?”
         “I know
we would, baby,” he said. “You’re my cosmic muffin.”
    Raszer was due at the Kingdom Hall in Azusa at one
o’clock, but before that, he had an appointment in Hollywood with one of the
women who, along with Monica and a few others located in various parts of the
world, formed his psychic shield. His work required such a profound and
potentially risky displacement of personality that he felt secure only by
letting each of them know where he might be headed—only when they laid their
hands on him in affirmation of his true name. Technically, Hildegarde Schoeppe
was his shrink, but she was more than that, and he was anxious to get her read
on his present state of readiness to take on an assignment. He’d not been
feeling especially fit lately.
         The
drive from LAX