If Angels Fall

FORTY-FOUR

The Ayatollah Komeini glowered at Reed.

EYE OF THE HURRICANE. AMERICANS HELD HOSTAGE AT THEU.S. EMBASSY IN TEHRAN. EL SAVADOR TEETERING, MOUNT ST. HELENS SPEWING ASH ANDROCK. SOVIET INTERVENTION IN AFGHANISTAN. All there in black-and-white,bleeding on the front page.

1980.

All there except for Keller’s tragedy. Wrong page?Reed checked the skyline. Wrong date. He hit the advance button on the Minoltaand whisked through time along a microfilm torrent of photographs, headlines,and advertisements. The take-up reel buzzed. It was late.

He stayed at the paper after reading the old Starclip on Edward Keller’s boating tragedy. Alone in the news library searchingthe past. Reels of microfilm newspapers and opened news indices were piled nextto him, signposts to Keller’s case. The Star’s clippings were a start.He was also going through the Chronicle and the Examiner fortheir takes, looking for something extra, any vital piece of information thatwould…what? Connect Keller to the kidnappings?

He had a beard and looked like the guy in the fuzzyhome video footage. And there was something strange about Keller, somethingthat just didn’t sit right.

Be careful, Reed. This ain’t no movie. Hunches aremean, wild horses. You rode one last year and ended up with your ass gettingstomped. The memory of Wallace’s widow slapping his face still stung. Wallace’slittle girl clinging to her father’s leg hours before his put his mouth arounda double-barreled 12-gauge.

“Leave my daddy alone!”

You’d better be damned careful. The reel clicked andstopped. This is it. BILL RODGERS WINS THE BOSTON MARATHON. MOUNT ST. HELENSERUPTS. Photos of an anguished President Carter and the wreckage of U.S.Helicopters in the desert where eight Americans died in the failed rescue ofthe hostages. And Keller’s story. A small item, inconspicuous. Below the fold:

BUILDER’S 3 CHILDREN LOST IN FARALLONS TRAGEDY

Three children are missing and feared dead after afamily sight-seeing excursion ended in tragedy yesterday near the FarallonIslands.

Nine-year-old Pierce Keller, his sister, Alisha, 6,and their brother, Joshua, 3, are presumed drowned after the small boatchartered from Half Moon Bay by their father, Edward Keller of San Francisco,capsized in a storm southeast of the islands.

“The search for the children will continue throughthe night and tomorrow,” a U.S. Coast Guard official said. The chances offinding them alive were “remote,” he said.

“The weather was severe and none of the childrenhad life jackets. We found the father on a buoy, suffering from extremeexhaustion and hypothermia.”

Keller is recovering in San Francisco GeneralHospital. He is the owner of Resurrection Building Inc., one of northernCalifornia’s largest contracting firms, specializing in the construction ofchurches. An official with the company was too distraught to comment whenreached by the Chronicle.

No other details were available.

Resurrection Building? Churches? Keller builtchurches?

Interesting. Explained his religious ranting. Reedpunched the photocopy button. As the Minolta hummed, he searched the SanFrancisco phone book and the current state directory of companies for a listingfor Resurrection Building. Nothing. He searched the phone book and citydirectory for Edward Keller’s listing. Nothing.

He pulled the story from the copy tray and read itagain. Then he snapped through his notes from his interview with Keller.

“I know that soon I will be with my children again.That I will deliver them from purgatory. God in His infinite mercy has revealedthis to me. Every day I give him thanks and praise Him. And every day I wagewar against doubt in preparation for my blessed reunion.”

Reed went over the passages several times.

He removed his glasses, chewing thoughtfully on oneearpiece.

“I will be with my children again.”

He sifted through his papers for Molly’s article onthe FBI’s psychological profile of Danny Becker’s kidnapper. The quotes leapedfrom the page: “-traumatized by cataclysmic event involving children-lives infantasy world stimulated by alcohol, drugs or religious delusions…” Religiousdelusions.

And there was another key about the suspect, the FBIhad told Molly. Reed scanned her story. Here it was. Yes. They always followedthe news coverage of their cases to learn what police knew and to enjoyfeelings of invincibility, superiority.

Keller told Reed that he had read his stories aboutDanny Becker and Tanita Marie Donner.

Reed rubbed his tired, burning eyes.

“You know you are crazy to be here at this hour,Reed.” Molly Wilson’s bracelets chimed as she breezed over to him, brandishinga first-edition copy of that day’s Star.

“Let me see that.” Reed took the paper, still wrm andmoist from the Metroliner presses.

“You should be in a bar, Reed. We own the front page.”

The double-deck forty-point headline screamed:

SERIAL CHILD-KILLER STEALS SECOND CHILD

“I didn’t believe the night desk when they said youwere working in here. What the hell are you up to at this hour?”

Wilson bent over behind Reed, her hair playing againsthis shoulder. He caught a trace of her Obsession.

“Let’s go have a beer. Photo guys are saving a tableat Lou’s.”

“I’ll pass.”

“You’ll pass? Why? What’s so important here?”

Reed looked at Wilson. Deciding to confide in her, hegot up and shut the library door.

“This is between you and me. It doesn’t leave thisroom, Molly.”

He returned to his chair. Wilson sat on the table.

“Remember, I joked to you about this Keller guy fromthe bereavement group when you were doing up the FBI profile?”

“Yeah.”

“Before I go any further, read this.” He handed herhis notes from Keller, the old clippings from the tragedy twenty years ago, andher article on the psych profile. It took less than two minutes for her toingest everything. Next Reed handed her working prints of the police compositeand a still from the blurry home-video footage of the suspect in Golden Gate,then Henry Cain’s contact sheet of the pictures he shot of Dr. Martin’sbereavement group. Although Edward Keller didn’t want his picture taken, Caintook it. Secretly. Most photographers would have. It’s an unwritten rule in thebusiness. You never know when you’ll need a photo of a certain person. Likenow. Wilson held the contacts up to the light and squinted through a loupe atthe one-inch-square shot of Keller.

“Holy fuck, Tom. Put dark glasses on Keller and helooks just like the composite. What do you think?”

“he’s got to be a suspect. There’s got to be somethingthere.”

Wilson pulled up a chair, sat next to Reed, and beganpicking through the papers. “What do you think is going on?”

“I think he could never come to terms with the drowningof his three children. Something snapped inside and he grabbed Danny Becker andGabrielle Nunn as surrogates.”

“What about the Donner case? Where does it fit in?”

“I’m not sure. So far it’s different. I mean in thatcase a body was found. Maybe something went wrong with that one, or it’s notrelated. I don’t know anymore.”

“Look at this!” Wilson underlined the ages of Keller’schildren when they drowned, then drew a line on a blank piece of paper, writingthree-year-old Joshua Keller’s name on one side of the line. Opposite Joshua’sname she wrote, “Danny Raphael Becker, 3”. Under Joshua, she wrote, “AlishaKeller, 5”. Across the line she wrote “Gabrielle Michelle Nunn, 5”.

“Look at the old stories Tom. Gabrielle will be six bythe anniversary of the tragedy, the twenty-first.”

“That’s right.”

“Something else. These names”-Wilson circled Raphaeland Gabrielle-“these are angels’ names.”

“I thought that too. Are you sure?”

“I’m lapsed Catholic. I wrote a high school paper onangels.”

Reed studied the names, thinking.

“Angels. Maybe to him the kids are angels orsomething.”

“Maybe guardian angels?”

“Maybe. It would fit with the profile. I mean we’vegot him on the traumatic cataclysmic event with children.”

“Right, the drownings.”

“And we’ve got him on religious delusions.”

“Church building, Scripture spewing, grief-strickennut who is stealing kids with angel names who are the same age as his deadchildren.” Wilson shook her head.

“What?”

“I don’t know, Tom. It’s just so incredible.”

“Not really, Molly. Look, remember I did that featureon the woman who posed as a maternity nurse and walked out of an East Bayhospital with a newborn?”

“It was a good piece.”

“Well, the FBI’s research showed that a key motivatorfor child abductors-and it’s mostly women who do newborn hospital abductions-isthe need to replace a child. So it’s not unreal. And I’m thinking, this couldbe the same thing Keller is going through.”

“Yeah, but for twenty years, Tom? We’re making a leaphere.”

“Stranger things have happened.”

“Okay, so it fits. So why not go to the police? Whynot tell Sydowski about your theory? Let him check it out.”

Reed stared at her, saying nothing. Her suggestionmade perfect sense, but he couldn’t do it. Wilson knew.

“It’s because of what happened last time you playedyour hunch, right? You’re a little gun-shy?”

“Something like that. What if I tell Sydowski, and hegoes to Keller and it turns out he’s not the bad guy at all? Keller’s in acounseling group, the anniversary of his kids’ deaths is coming. What if thepolice spook him and he loses it or-“

Reed couldn’t finish the thought.

“You don’t want another suicide.”

Tom rubbed his face. “I may have been wrong aboutFranklin Wallace, Molly. It’s been haunting me. I just don’t know.”

“I don’t think you were wrong there. Wallace hadsomething to do with Tanita’s murder. Maybe it was a partner crime.”

“Okay, say I was right about Wallace. But I wentthrough so much shit with that. It cost me so much. I’m torn up with this.”

“But what if Keller is the one? There’s so much atstake here. The kids could be alive.”

“I know.” Exhausted, he placed his face in his hands.

Wilson bit her lip and blinked. Her bracelets tinkledas she brushed her hair aside. She tapped a finger on the table thoughtfullybefore turning to him.

“I’ll help you, Tom.”

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s only one thing you can do.”

“What?”

“Check Keller out yourself, quietly. Take a few days,dig up everything you can about him, then decide whether or not to pass it tothe police. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”

It would be risky. The paper would fire my ass if itfound out what I was doing.”

“Nobody would have to know. I’ll cover for you. I’llhelp you.”