Dust to Dust Read Online Free PDF Page A

had a girl…she was screaming…I tried…”
    She actually shook him to get him to focus, then felt guilty. He’d been one of the good ones. A decent human being. He’d tried to help.
    â€œListen to me. I need to find that guy before he hurts that girl. Are you all right now? Can you stand?”
    â€œYeah, yeah, I’m fine. Lady, don’t you go getting involved. You’ll get yourself killed. Get a cop. Tell him that bastard kept going down Santa Monica. Like toward the cemetery.”
    â€œThanks.”
    â€œDon’t you go after him. He’s an animal!” the man called as she ran in the direction of the cemetery.
    â€œThanks! Take care of yourself!” she yelled back and kept running.
    Near the cemetery, the world seemed far more quiet. There weren’t any restaurants and bars near the entrance,only a lot of manufacturing. The cemetery itself was gorgeous and a huge tourist attraction by day. People loved celebrities, dead or alive. Sometimes, at night, they showed old movies on the outside walls of the mausoleum. The living picnicked on an expanse of grass where no interments had yet taken place. It sounded bizarre, but Melanie thought that if she’d been a star and interred in the mausoleum, it would be kind of cool to know that her living celluloid self might still be enjoyed right outside. The owner believed in the living recognizing the dead, but also finding life and peace among them; the Mexican Day of the Dead was celebrated there in a big way.
    Because of its distance from the heart of the tourist area, there had been fewer cars in the area, and apparently no collisions. The pavement was ripped and buckled, but there was only one car parked, and no one near it. All the businesses were closed.
    Residents, if there were any, remained inside.
    The street lamps were all tilted at odd angles, and none of them were lit.
    The world was very dark.
    She kept running, listening as she did so, heading toward the entrance to the cemetery. Then she paused, standing still in the darkness.
    The noise—the sirens, the car horns, the screams and shouts of the people caught in the congested tourist areas—seemed to fade. She wasn’t sure where her quarry had gone.
    Viv, scream, make a noise, she thought, then listened hard.
    Then she thanked God for the darkness and all but flattened herself against a wall as two of the sweat-shirted thugs raced by her, so close that she could have reached out and touched them.
    They were headed not for the main gate of the cemetery, she realized, but for a street nearby.
    She rushed after them and was in time to see them scaling the wall outside a business attached to the cemetery whose sign boasted Mortuary Monuments. Beneath, in smaller letters, it advertised Residents’ Discounts!
    Melanie looked at the wall.
    She hadn’t dressed for climbing.
    Oh, well.
    Despite her silk halter top, linen pants and low-heeled sandals, she jumped, then dug for finger-and toeholds, and crawled over.
    The darkness on the other side was almost total.
    In the shadows, it appeared as if she had entered a bizarre realm of the dead. Everything the place offered was displayed in the large, walled-in yard.
    And this being L.A., where the dead were often far more famous than the living, the wares tended toward the elaborate.
    Marble angels with folded wings greeted her in their forlorn wait to stand guard over the dead.
    The monuments, most of them lying askew in the aftermath of the quake, were arranged along a series of winding paths. There were huge marble sarcophagi, along with angels, cherubs, saints and crosses, along with simpler headstones and plaques. Melanie wascertain none of them were cheap, but for those in the agony of loss, eager to honor those loved ones who had gone before them, price was undoubtedly no object.
    She shivered suddenly, as she felt an odd chill in the air. For a moment, she thought she was in the realm of the