A Passing Curse (2011) (36 page)

The sheets were stiff-white and freshly washed, luminescent in the sunlight. At his chest and hips, two heavy canvas straps held him to the bed. He was known to wander, a sojourner. The light shining through the windows made the speckled-brown linoleum look slippery. A four-foot length of vinyl tubing looped from an empty 500cc unit of blood hanging from a heavy stainless steel stand to the back of the man’s hand where the catheter was held fast by a large strip of white tape smudged by fingerprints. His hands were large and heavy, in stark contrast to the fragile arms. They held his last grasp on life.

The blood bag had collapsed on itself holding a thin film of blood in the vacuum. Sunshine through the bag sprayed an oval of crimson across the man’s chest.

Two nurses tended the old man. One was blunt and middle-aged. The other was young and pretty. She moved quickly and energetically. Unlike the older nurse, she actually cared about the patients, their feelings, a trait the older nurse despised. Patients were units. Decreased cycle time between units equaled increased productivity.

The older nurse, Becky, noting that the blood bag was empty, reached up and closed the drip regulator. The patient, a Mr. Tom Edwards, had been losing blood, a lot of blood, through his bowel movements. A colonoscopy had been scheduled, and the older nurse wondered why the doctors even bothered. She reached under the covers, pulled the diapers open at the waist, and sniffed the air. “He’s clean, for now.”

The younger nurse, Esmeralda, smoothed the covers that Becky had ruffled and smiled. “I talked to his wife, yesterday. They’ve been married fifty years. Imagine. He has seven great-grandchildren.”

“He has Alzheimer’s. He didn’t know his wife’s name. He doesn’t know what ‘wife’ means.”

“He knew her,” Esmeralda said. “He knew her face. He smiled when she walked in.”

Becky snorted, held the catheter in place with a heavy forefinger, and ripped off the tape, taking with it a good amount of hair from Tom Edwards’ hand. The old man woke up, said, “Goddamnit,” and fiercely rose against the straps. Esmeralda grabbed his arm and stroked his shoulder to soothe him. She patted his head and spoke softly. The old man exhaled loudly and settled back into the bed. He closed his eyes to shut them out.

“I always shave the skin before I use the tape,” Esmeralda said. Becky pulled out the catheter. The old man groaned. She had no time for such niceties. She had work to do.

“You woke him,” Esmeralda said.

“He doesn’t know whether he’s awake or not,” Becky said. “Check his temperature and pulse, log it, and let’s get moving.”

“He knows,” Esmeralda said and noticed that one of the straps was frayed and almost broken. Everything in the nursing home was falling apart, she thought.

24

Reese sipped a St. Pauli Girl as he drove the Mustang around looking for her gray truck. After watching the Chief wring his hands over the death of one of his boys but in an automatic way, because he really didn’t give a shit; and after he’d discovered that even though Thomkins had fired off a full seven shot clip but only four bullets were found and telling the Chief to check all the hospitals because Thomkins’ killer was either dead or dying, after all that and the crime scene man pulling out the liver thermometer, and Thomkins being zipped into the vinyl bag, after all of it, the shit of it, the thought of her laying beside him afterward, both of them, her softly green eyes half open, a thought he’d been carrying, that thought was gone.

She’d not been at the Sheraton when he’d returned and had left no message. He silently cursed himself for not having a cell phone. Which, now that he thought about it, hardly mattered, since she didn’t have one either.

He drove the foggy streets looking for her. He was on the second beer when he thought about leaving town. He imagined himself in Washington state, near the Canadian border. Good trees and maybe some fishing and plenty of light.

The light in Santa Marina was dim. In addition to being killed in the same room, the only other thing that linked Ramon and Thomkins, that he knew of, was that both deaths resembled a morality play gone haywire. Ramon, a whip-crazy masochist, was hung by his own whip and sliced with a sickle. Thomkins, after a cockfight, was made up to look like a rooster and sliced to death with gaffs. Cheevy could also be included: a vampire freak drained of blood. Had Ajax been trying to teach them all a lesson?

Ajax Rasmussen, the gray eminence, the player who seemed to be everywhere but nowhere, connected but unconnected, was surely the catalyst for everything that had happened. Too bad he couldn’t prove it. And what about finding all those clippings of himself in Ajax’s desk, as if Ajax had already researched him before he even showed up. Had Ajax known he was coming. Better yet, Was Ajax leading him by the nose? He guessed that Ajax knew someone would come, someone would follow Homer, and Ajax had tagged him the minute he appeared. Then a few dollars to a news clipping agency or maybe a private investigator. When you tallied the synthetic curare, the surgical steel claw, all the mumbo jumbo about Ajax’s age, nothing in this case added up.

He drove by the mission again. She wasn’t there.

He stopped at the station. The Chief was gone. No one had seen Rusty. The cops had adorned their badges with a single piece of black tape. Smith handed him a bundle of files bound with shipping string and sadly said, “They were on Thomkins’ desk. They had this note saying they were for you.” He looked at the files remembering the old saying that you weren’t really dead until they cleaned out your desk. Smith added, “Missing persons going back two years.”

His landlord, Rupert Amos, spoke in a voice that was low and broken. Reese guessed the depression in his throat, like a thumb pressed in dough, was from an operation or an accident.

“There was this city boy that inherited a farm outside of Atlanta from his granddaddy,” Rupert said. “So he shows up with a mind to be a pig farmer, because he’d heard how much money they made and how the hogs multiplied like chickens. So he buys a sow pig thinking she’ll soon have a lot of little pigs, but she never did. She just ate and ate and the city boy kept looking for piglets and scratching his head until the neighbor finally tells him to bring his sow over so his boar pig can have a go at her. So, the city boy puts the sow pig in his wheelbarrow and wheels it over to his neighbor’s.”

He’d come upstairs twenty minutes earlier to ask Rupert Amos what he knew about Ajax. He figured that his landlord might have seen Ajax visiting Homer Wermels. But Rupert had been drinking, half-drunk really, and had ignored the question and invited him in for a drink.

They now sat on a green cloth couch, Rupert dressed in bib-overalls with no shirt, a fugitive from Hee-Haw. A bottle of whiskey and two glasses were on the low table in front of them.

“Now this city boy didn’t understand that piglets take time to come on, so every morning he wheels his sow pig over to the neighbor’s. One morning he sleeps in and that afternoon, when he goes to check on his sow pig, she’s waiting in the wheelbarrow for him.” Rupert cackled and slapped the table. He drank straight from the bottle, half of it missing his mouth and running down his glistening gray-haired chest, wetting the overalls.

Reese laughed. What else could he do?

“Here’s how I used to tell it,” Rupert said. With his big freckled hands he opened a wooden box next to the bottle of Johnny Walker Red. From the box, lined with red felt, he took out a piece of sandstone the size of a large peach pit.

“Listen now.” He hit the rock a few times on the table, to get his tone Reese guessed, and began to tap. He tapped faster, the sound blending except for the short pauses between letters, Reese guessed. Probably Morse code.

“Dash dit dash, dit dit, dit dash dit dit, dit dash dit dit.” Rupert was sweating now, his white hair plastered to his forehead. His face tight, focused. He had not shaved, but smelled of stale shaving cream. “Dit dash, dit dash dash dash, dit dash, dash dit dit dash.”

Reese listened to the crazy beat. He poured himself another whiskey. Rupert kept pounding out the code, sweating, his mouth a grim line.

In each corner of the room stood mahogany figurines, Bali dancers, three feet high with hands above their heads, fingertips joined, wood-smooth bellies and brown-shining legs. Along one wall of the kitchen hung pictures of jet fighters. Above the couch was a picture of Amos as an Air Force Colonel. Silver wings shined above six rows of decorations. This Rupert Amos was recruiting poster stuff: strong jaw, clean-cut hair, razor-sharp mustache, light blue scary eyes. Now just the eyes remained.

Rupert kept rapping the table, eyes closed, head shaking loosely in rhythm. “Dit, dit, dit, dash, dash, dash, dit, dit, dit.” Rupert was sweating good now. “Dit dash, dit dash dash dash, dit dash, dash dit dit dash.”

Reese poured another drink. The tapping got louder. Unconsciously, he tapped the table in rhythm with Rupert for a few seconds before stopping himself. The sandstone was stained from Rupert’s sweating fingers.

Rupert Amos suddenly stopped tapping and looked around like he wasn’t sure where he was, like he’d just woken up. He put the rock back in its box and poured himself a drink. He wiped a dusting of sandstone off the table and said, almost apologetically, “You probably don’t know Morse code. It’s not Morse, exactly, altered a bit, something we invented.”

“Never learned it,” Reese said calmly. The best recourse when dealing with the mentally impaired was to speak softly. Whispers do not intrude on delusions.

“I guess you’re from the South?” Reese said. If he was patient, if he let Rupert wind down, he might get another chance to ask him about Ajax.

“No, Washington. A little east of Vancouver on the Columbia river, but I was in prison with a guy from the south, a black man.”

“Prison?”

“That’s what I said. Prison in Hanoi. I graduated from the Air Force Academy in “sixty-seven, then Thailand, F-4’s, bombing Hanoi, The Trail, back and forth. I was hit, SAM’s got my hydraulics, common story, two years in Hanoi, the Hilton, home in “73, then cashed out in “83, twenty years.”

Reese nodded toward the box. “That’s how you communicated?”

“Yeah, tap code. We couldn’t talk. The guy in the next cell was Jackson, from Jackson, Mississippi of all places, and he knew lots of stories. We did communicate some, except when we were interrogated.” Amos touched the depression in his neck.

“Sounds rough,” Reese said and felt stupid for saying it.

“Rough?” Rupert asked. His eyes glinted, remembering it. “Rough? Sure, but we were rougher on them. Yes, sir, we made it rough on the little people.” Rupert Amos curled his lips and drank half a glass of the warm whiskey. “You wanted something? I’m not that entertaining. You already paid the rent, six months, so I know you’re not up here trying to put that off.”

“I came to ask you about Ajax Rasmussen. I’m guessing you’ve crossed paths with him. I’m guessing you’ve gotten your wires crossed a time or two.”

“Who hasn’t?” Rupert said. “In this town.”

“Trouble?”

“You might say that,” Rupert laughed and took a drink. He licked his lips in reflection. “After I bought this place, I found out Ajax Rasmussen wanted the land. I’m zoned commercial and he wanted a center for blood donors. Leach blood off the winos. Anyway, he claimed I stole the land out from under him. Asked me up to his spooky castle and offers me ten thousand more than I paid and I tell him to go to hell. End of story, or so I thought.”

Rupert wiped whiskey off his lips and looked at the empty glass before refilling it. “A month later I started getting funny phone calls from lawyers, official calls, and sometimes just a creepy voice, urging me to sell. One night, I swear to god, Rasmussen floated past my window. Course, I didn’t tell anybody. ‘Crazy old bastard’s drunk,’ the cops would say.”

The cops would still say it, Reese thought, including himself. “Go on.”

“Then Rasmussen sent that hunchback monster of his with another offer, twenty thousand more this time and the poor bastard hunchback drooling on the carpet. It was weird. I told him to go to hell again. That was two years ago. Since then I’ve had windows broken, had things creeping around outside, and one night I had a hell of a fight with something and when I woke up I was alone and bleeding. Last few months it’s been quiet.”

“Did you know Homer Wermels?”

“Sure, I knew him. Simple minded, I guess, but I liked him, tried to look after him. He’d lived in town all his life. Had a good heart and then he started working for Ajax. I warned him, but he said he was just cutting weeds for Ajax and that he was a fine man and paid well. The kid never had any sense.”

“But you knew something was wrong?”

“Sure, I did. One morning I said hello to him - we talked a bit every day - and the kid started screaming, ran down the road like a wild man. When I knocked on his door that afternoon to see if he was alright, he’d already packed and left town.”

“Where do you think he went?”

“I read about the murders in LA starting about the same time Homer left and then you show up - the guy who killed Lamb - asking about Homer’s apartment. What am I supposed to think?”

“You could’ve rented the room sooner,” Reese said, wondering if a vacant apartment complex somehow was part of Rupert’s plan. If he had one.

“Maybe I was saving it for you.” Rupert Amos leveled a hard stare at him. He was not a man to lie to. “He’s not coming back, is he? Homer didn’t make it.”

Reese shook his head. “No, he didn’t make it.” He told Amos most of what he knew about the case. Amos listened indifferently. A weariness seemed to wash over him.

“The Anaheim Vampire?”

“I think so.”

Rupert hauled himself out of the couch. He took a drink, emptying his glass, and walked into the back bedroom. He left the door open. “I want to show you something.”

A steel post rose from the center of the bedroom, supporting a giant rifle, over six feet long, a scope the size of a small muffler. To the right side of the scope, a magazine coming out of the top was the size of a shoe box. The heavy barrel pointed out a sliding glass window in the general direction of the mansion, posing sedate and elegant on the distant ridge. Two large ammo boxes sat on a bench to the side of the rifle. Both boxes held at least a dozen large brass shells, the size of coke bottles.