The Burning, page 17
"What's his name?"
"I don't know, but it should be easy to find out."
Her cell phone rang, and Angela took it out of her purse, surprised. She peered at the small screen, but the number was blocked so she couldn't see who it was. She pressed the button to answer. "Hello?"
It was Edna Wong.
She wanted to talk.
* * *
They met in a little downtown health food restaurant called Mountain Oasis. There was no privacy, but these were the off-hours and the only other patron was a gray-bearded Karl Marx look-alike who was eating soup while he read an impressively thick book through depressingly thick eyeglasses.
Angela and Derek were already in the neighborhood and arrived ten minutes before Edna, who had to fight the traffic from NAU. The old woman walked through the doorway just as their decaf iced teas were being refilled, and Angela waved her over. She and Derek had been sitting at the table in virtual silence, trying to decompress, to absorb what had happened, unable to talk yet about what they'd seen.
They were seated opposite each other, and Edna took a chair from an adjoining table and sat down facing both of them. "You want to know about the tunnel," she said without preamble.
"Yes," Angela told her. Derek nodded.
"Okay, then." The housing administrator took a deep breath. "I only know rumors. Maybe they're true, maybe not. Maybe they're just stories. But I'll tell you what I heard.
"When I was a little girl, Flagstaff was an almost completely white city. Oh, you'd see Indians in town from time to time, but it wasn't like today. The state's Hispanic population all seemed to live down by Tucson and never ventured above Phoenix, and I'd never even seen anyone who was African-American. As far as I knew, there were only three Asian families in town, including mine.
"The thing was, it had not always been this way. At one time, in the early 1900s, after the railroad came in, after they'd built the station, there were quite a few Chinese families living here, doing the work no one else wanted to do." She smiled ruefully. "Coolie labor. But there was as much anti-immigrant sentiment then as there is today, more probably, and a lot of locals were resentful, claiming that the Chinese were taking jobs away from white Arizonans."
The waitress stopped by, pad in hand, and Edna smiled at her. "Just water, please."
"Sure thing," the girl said cheerfully.
"I'll leave a big tip," Edna promised.
The waitress laughed. "Don't worry about it."
"Anyway," Edna continued, "there were some beatings and a few scattered attacks. Tarring and feathering. An attempted lynching. Flagstaff was still considered the wild frontier back then, and lawlessness and vigilantism were not unknown in these parts. Some people could see the writing on the wall, and a few of the local businesses who relied heavily on cheap Chinese labor created 'safe rooms' just in case." She paused. "And tunnels."
"Is that-?" Angela began.
Edna nodded. "Yes. At least, that's what I was told. Eventually, there were riots, anti-Chinese riots. Stores and businesses that hired Chinese workers were looted; rooming houses and shacks where they boarded were burned. There was thousands of dollars' worth of damage, dozens of injuries, and several people died. None of them were Chinese, though. This part's documented. You can look it up in newspaper articles from that time in the university library. I have."
The waitress brought her water, and Edna thanked the girl, taking a long sip. "The Chinese workers and their families all seemed to have disappeared. No one knew what had happened to them. Eventually, after things had calmed down, a few were found working at the hotel or at the mill. Supposedly they'd hidden in the secret rooms and the tunnels while all the chaos was going on above. But many of the families never returned, and the story passed down to me was that
later, maybe at night when it was safe, they'd left the city. The rumor was that they'd ridden the rails east."
Angela suddenly understood. "But they didn't leave," she said, stunned. "They never left the tunnel. They died in there. That's what we saw."
Edna nodded soberly. "But there were tunnels" she said. "Plural. At least that's what I heard. So ..." She trailed off.
"So there could be more," Derek said.
"Yes."
He looked down at the floor. "There could be bodies under us right now."
"They were supposed to be somewhere in this downtown district," Edna agreed.
Angela suddenly felt a lot less secure. With all of the gangs and violence and big-city problems of Los Angeles, she thought she'd be living a peaceful bucolic little life here in northern Arizona. She never could have imagined something like this. "But-" Her voice came out thin and cracked, and she cleared her throat. "But they were moving," she said. "At least some of them were. That one hand grabbed me. And what's that black mold? We tried to have it tested, but it doesn't even show up. It's not there. So it has to be some kind of magic or something. Is there some sort of curse on those tunnels and the people who died there? Or is it ...? I don't know. What is it?"
"That I can't tell you," Edna said. "All I know is that the tunnels were supposed to be part of an underground railroad for Chinese immigrants to protect them from vigilante mobs. Beyond that, I'm as much in the dark as you. But I thought knowing about the history might help you somehow or at least give you a place to start."
"Thank you," Angela said. But she wasn't sure it did help.
Edna thought for a moment, then sighed. "Well, maybe there is something else. I don't know. But I'll tell you anyway." She took another long sip of water. "When I was a little girl, my uncle came to visit us from Missouri. He was very tall for someone who was Chinese, very charismatic. He had some kind of glamorous job, although I don't remember what it was* Anyway, he stayed for about a week and it was wonderful. But one day, my parents were out somewhere and my uncle asked me to show him where my grandfather was buried. It wasn't in a real cemetery, since Chinese weren't allowed to be buried with Caucasian^ at that time. It was a makeshift cemetery out on the north end of town that was shared with other outcasts^ Indians had their own burial grounds, but the rest of us, the other minority groups-and there were only a handful of families all total-made do with this little plot in the forest, a little clearing of unowned land. My uncle bought a chicken first and put it in this black bag. I thought that was very odd. I kept asking him what he was going to do with it. I was fascinated| really. But he wouldn't say. Then when I showed him my grandfather's grave, he knelt down before it and started doing some kind of ... ritual is the only word to describe it. He started whispering some sort of chant-I knew some of the words but not all of them-then he took out the chicken and slit its throat! He let the blood drip on the grave, then put his fingers in it. He wrote some Chinese characters on the gravestone-I couldn't read yet, so I don't know what he wrote-then he put some blood on his forehead! stood up and bowed. Two words I remember he did say were 'bo sau.' Revenge. He gave me a lecture and told me my mother and father should be doing this, loo. We all should. But I got scared and started crying, and then he picked me up and then we left.
"When I told my mother about it, I remember she seemed scared. I think she even shivered, although that may just be my memory. But what she said was, He's trying to raise the dead.' That was enough to scare me, and it's all we ever said about it. My uncle left the next day, and I never knew if that was why, if my parents kicked him out or he stormed off, but he never came back to visit.
"I know my parents were never involved in any such thing, and I've never heard of anything else like it since. But my uncle said all good Chinese should perform that ritual, and I've thought about that over the years, wondered if there were others. Now I'm wondering if it's not connected to those bodies in the tunnel."
They were silent, no one sure of what to say after that. Angela's head was spinning.
"More iced tea?" the waitress asked cheerily, stopping by.
They acquiesced, fooled around for a few moments putting sugar in their glasses, squeezing lemon, stirring. Edna sipped her water.
Trying to raise the dead
It had to be related.
Derek began updating Edna on the most recent events, including their aborted sojourn into Babbitt House, and the old woman, shocked and frightened, said they had to call the police. And tell the county health authorities. "This could be the beginning of an epidemic," she said.
Neither of them had thought of it that way, and they both realized Edna was right.
"You don't know anything about this mold or fungus or whatever it is, do you?" Angela asked.
Edna shook her head. "I'm sorry, no. I've told you everything I know that could possibly help. This I never heard of."
Angela thought about the riots. Mob violend spread through crowds much like a disease or viru infecting ordinarily rational people. Maybe this blad mold had been around back then, too. Maybe it had sparked the anti-Chinese sentiment that had led to these horrible consequences. Maybe Flagstaff had been built on ground saturated with this toxic spore, and unearthing the tunnel had once again released it into the general population.
She agreed with Edna that the authorities needed to be notified, but she had no confidence that the people sent out to investigate wouldn't be affected, too. She glanced suspiciously over at Derek. Had he been contaminated? He hadn't actually touched the mold And he looked okay. But ...
Perhaps the best thing to do would be to cut her losses and speed back to California as quickly as Greyhound bus could carry her.
A cell tone rang out at the table, and all of them checked their phones. It was Edna's, and she looke down at the text message. "I have to go," she said. "Problems at the office. As always." She smile kindly, touching Angela's arm. "I'm so sorry, dear. This just hasn't been your semester, has it?"
Angela smiled back. "That's the understatement of the year."
The housing administrator took out two dolla from her purse and placed the bills under the shaker. "If you need me, you know where to find me.
"Thank you," Angela said.
"Thanks," Derek echoed.
Edna hurried off, and the two of them looked at each other. "What now?" Derek asked. "Police station?"
Angela quickly finished the last of her iced tea. "Yeah," she said. "Let's go."
Nineteen
Washington, D.C.
Greg Rossiter stared glumly out the window of his office at the cubicles of junior FBI agents, all of whom wanted his job.
His old office had had a window that looked outside. At the city. At the sky.
He pulled the shades, hiding the outer office from view. Ever since The X-Files had gone off the air, his stock had gone down in the bureau. Sad but true. No matter that he had successfully investigated over fifty cases in the last five years and had worked on two high-profile incidents featuring objective, verifiable supernatural phenomena-the presence of that fucking TV show had granted him more legitimacy than any closed case could. Now he was on the outs, considered passe, a relic from another era.
Just like Fox Mulder had been.
Goddamn, he hated that program.
Rossiter paced restlessly around the room before returning to his desk. Everything was focused on counterterrorism these days. That, too, had knocked his career off track. Not that he didn't understand, but, shit, there were other domestic threats as well, other crimes, other dangers that deserved the bureau's full attention.
Like vampires.
It was strange how dispassionate he was about the paranormal phenomena he had encountered. Uncovering the existence of these monsters hadn't turned him into a paranoid Chicken Little but had left him surprisingly unaffected. His job was still just a job to him, not a crusade, not a lifestyle, and instead of spending every waking moment worried about the infiltration of the supernatural, he was more concerned with how such things affected his career trajectory. He wasn't sure if that was good or bad.
The door opened, and his assistant poked her head into the room. "Sir?"
He looked up, scowling. "What is it?"
"The director wants to see you."
The director? Rossiter stood, straightened his tie, made sure his shirt was tucked in properly. "Where? In his office?"
"Yes. Now."
A lot of agents, he knew, would be quaking in their boots at the very thought of such a summons, but he thrived on opportunities like these, knew how to work them to his advantage. They were openings, not challenges, and if he played his cards right, he could use this brief meeting to jump-start his stalled career.
But what did the director want to see him about? That was the only variable here.
It didn't matter. Even a dressing-down could be spun into gold if the spinner knew what he was doing.
And he did.
Rossiter looked at his ghostly reflection in the window to check his hair, then strode purposefully out of his office, past the cubicles of the junior agents, down the outside corridor to the bank of elevators. Once inside the elevator, he stared straight ahead, a neutral expression on his face, acutely conscious of the fact that he was being observed.
He was expecting others to be present at the meeting-his immediate supervisor perhaps, other agents with whom he'd worked-but he was unprepared for the level of high-powered attendees that greeted him, and though he tried not to let it show, the sight of the White House chief of staff, the national-security adviser and the head of the Secret Service all seated in a semicircle in front of the director's desk left him feeling overwhelmed and slightly intimidated. Still, he acted as if this happened every day, as though he were used to such company, and he took the remaining empty chair and sat down quietly, waiting to be told why he was here.
"Agent Rossiter," the director said curtly. "There's been an incident in Manhattan, and as you're reported to have some experience with unusual or ostensibly unexplainable occurrences, I've decided to bring you in on the case."
"Thank you, sir."
"Put simply, Grant's Tomb has been defiled. We've blocked off Riverside Drive to keep the public away, and the area around the building itself has been cordoned off. Bomb scare's the cover story. As you doubtlessly know, the sepulchre is guarded at all times, as well as being monitored by our best surveillance equipment, so theoretically such a thing should not be able to occur. In fact, we have no idea how it did occur, and this colossal security failure is what we've been discussing for the past forty-five minutes." He glanced disapprovingly around the room, and Rossiter was amused to note that the other men looked chastened. "To state the facts, President Grant's body has been removed from its final resting place and ... butchered. The desecration was conducted with such ferocity that it would be easy to conclude that it was perpetrated by a wild animal, although obviously it would require a human to disinter the corpse. The purposeful dismantling of the body, however, and the distribution of the parts, imply that the entire operation was human in origin. In addition, the tomb's walls have been defaced with childish drawings.
"His wife's corpse remains untouched."
There was silence in the room. Rossiter was not sure what to say. "Are there photos yet?" he asked.
"Yes. And streaming video that you can access, as well as a written report by the answering officer."
"I'll need to see the site for myself. I'll need to talk to on-duty personnel. I'll get over there right away and-"
"After." The director cleared his throat, looked around the room. "The president wants to see you first."
The president!
The situation was progressing from good to great.
Still, Rossiter was cautious. "May I ask what this is concerning?"
The chief of staff frowned at him. "At this point, everything is on a need-to-know basis. All you need to know right now is that you are to report immediately to the president in the company of Director Horn."
"Yes, sir," Rossiter answered.
The director frowned again, although whether it was at the chief of staff or himself Rossiter could not say. The director handed Rossiter a manila file folder, emphasizing that despite the high profile and public visibility of the crime scene, he was to do his utmost to ensure that word of what had occurred did not leak out to the press. "The last thing we need is publicity. Particularly right now."
That seemed to be a cue for the others to stand and take their leave. None of the men offered so much as a good-bye. They simply filed out of the room. The director stood up, pressing an intercom button on his desk. "Have a car ready," he ordered. Rossiter couldn't hear the response-he was not sure the director had even waited for one. He knew only that Horn was striding purposefully toward a nearly hidden side door in the office, making a single brusque motion indicating that Rossiter was to accompany him.
They took a private elevator to the first floor, where they got into a black town car with darkened windows. The director remained silent on the short trip through the D.C. streets, and Rossiter followed his example. There were questions he wanted to ask: Did the bureau believe that the tomb desecration had a supernatural cause? Was that why he had been called in? Were any connections suspected between this and the disinterring of Civil War dead at Arlington? But he sensed that this was a time to remain quiet, and he did.
The car passed through the White House gate and rolled smoothly by the guard shack without stopping. The residence, he noticed through the smoked glass, was partially hidden behind scaffolding and a gigantic billowing sheet of bright red tarp.
"Christo's new project?" he joked.
The quip was met with flat silence.
"They're making a few cosmetic repairs to the building. Touch-ups." They were the first words the director had spoken since leaving his office.
Rossiter said nothing, kept his eyes open and his mouth shut. He'd been in D.C. now for well over a dozen years, through three administrations, and he had never seen anything like this. He had no idea what sort of lunatic impulse had made him joke about the appearance of the White House; he'd merely been fishing for information about this obviously extraordinary sight, and he'd stupidly thought a stab at camaraderie would yield results. He should have known better.
