Alien Blues (10 page)

He should never have taken her back to the house.

“You had something you wanted to tell me?”

“I saw him. That monster.”

David sat forward. “You saw him?”

“Yeah. I was scared to tell you. I was afraid he'd come and get me. Asked my grandson what to do. He said the guy might come back.”

“I wish you had asked me. I'd have protected you.”

“It's bothered me, not telling you. But I was so scared, you see. I know what he done to them other people. I didn't want to get … cut up. And every time I thought to call you, I'd start thinking about him doing what he done on that bed, and doing it
after
he know'd I got away. He's got to figure I'm calling the cops. So, I say, this fella's got no sense. He's crazy. Them crazies are not to be fooled with.”

“I understand. When did you see him?”

“'Member I told you I heard him in the hall when I was in the living room?”

“Ah. Yes.”

“I said I was too scared to turn and look, remember? Well, I was scared. But I still looked.”

David folded his arms. “Tell me.”

Millicent Darnell leaned back on her pillow and closed her eyes. “He was kind of plump. Brownish hair. Dirty-looking. He had a mustache, and red eyes.”

“Red eyes?”

“More around the eyes. The skin under.”

“Anything else?”

“He smelled bad. Like he was sweating. An animal smell.” Millicent Darnell winced and groaned. She looked very pale.

“Are you all right?” David asked. “Can I get you something?”

She shook her head.

“You said it was dark. How did you get such a clear look?”

Her eyes stayed closed but she smiled. “I told Dennis you were tricky.” Her smile faded. “The porch light was on. That's how I saw him. I wish I hadn't. Can't seem to get his face out of my head.”

“Can I get a graphics unit in here? Make a sketch?”

Millicent Darnell opened her eyes. “You got all you're going to get. I'll be dead soon. Right now I'm working on forgetting that fella. I don't want to die with him in my mind.”

The man in the next cubicle cried out and heaved loudly. The sour smell of vomit rose in the air. David remembered Mrs. Darnell crying softly when the paramedics took her away.

“You don't want to stay here,” David said. “Can I take you home?”

Mrs. Darnell smiled wanly. “My grandson's coming for me. Going to take me home—his home. I'm going to lay down in his den and look out his window, and if I'm lucky his big, fat torn cat will sit in my lap and keep me company. And I'm going to help myself to a big bowl of ice cream, too. If I know that cat, he'll lick the bowl.”

“What's your favorite ice cream?”

She grinned. “Chocolate chocolate chip.” Her hands clutched another fistful of sheet. “Here's what you
can
do for me. Talking about you-know-who makes me nervous. I feel safe with you. My grandson won't be here for a while. Sit with me while I fall asleep.”

He scooted his chair closer and held her hand.

She was asleep, snoring lightly, in minutes. David patted her hand and tucked it under the sheet.

FOURTEEN

David wasn't sleepy. He propped up on his elbow and watched Rose. She lay on her side, the cotton blanket pulled up under her chin. The top sheet was pale blue, and the hem was unraveling. The loose end fluttered with Rose's silent exhalations.

“Rose, I think Dyer's dead.”

Rose's face stayed relaxed, sweet with the concentration of sleep.

“He was a good guy—good cop. I wish you'd seen him with the girls.”

David closed his eyes, wondering if his words would lodge themselves in Rose's subconscious. They never had before, in any of the midnight talk sessions.

Confiding in Rose while she slept had begun accidentally. The girls had been babies—Mattie had yet to be born—and Rose was living in the fog of exhaustion inhabited by mothers of small children. For a long while it seemed that every time he cuddled close to her for a talk, or anything else, she fell instantly asleep. In fact, whenever she stopped moving, she fell instantly asleep.

At first he felt betrayed, even lonely. He missed the attention, the eye contact, the friendship of their conversations. Rose was bright, if opinionated, and he liked to bring things under the light of her intelligence. But after a while he began to appreciate the advantages of one-sided conversation. He could curl close to her warm soft back, trace the nape of her neck, and talk without interruption. There was none of the irritation that festered when she gave advice he didn't care to take—no quicksilver change of the subject when her grasshopper mind darted elsewhere, no losing his train of thought, and no tense stiffening of Rose's shoulders when his worries became her own.

“I think he's dead, but I keep hoping he's not.” David scratched his stomach. “I wish I knew why the Elaki are so interested in Machete Man. And why Dyer was interested. There some kind of Dyer/Elaki connection? Or a vice/Elaki connection?” David rolled over on his back. “What was Dyer doing at that Elaki restaurant? He's going to stick out like crazy, place like the Ambassador, but the whole staff swears they didn't see him.”

Rose sighed in her sleep.

“I know,” David said. “I don't believe it either.”

FIFTEEN

There was a fair turnout at Millicent Darnell's funeral. David and Mel stood a short distance from the graveside, watchful, but not intrusive.

David checked his watch. Ten-fifteen and already hot. A breeze would have been nice, something to stir the thick humid air. The minister's voice droned like the buzz of an insect, and David wished he could swat it away.

The presence of his mother's grave less than a hundred yards away was a pressure against his back. Sweat rolled off his forehead, trailed down his cheeks, and was sucked up by the stiff white collar of his shirt. He badly wanted to loosen his tie.

He bent close to Mel. “Be right back.”

Mel nodded, his eyes on the mourners.

The cemetery was lavishly landscaped. The grass was lush and green, though there had been almost no rain in the last few weeks. David spotted the grey heads of sprinklers, hidden in the grass. He stepped over a border of heavy pink begonias and saw apples on a row of crab apple trees.

A huge bouquet of white carnations marked an old, but tended grave. The flowers were limp under the muggy blanket of air, a brown discoloration edging the blossoms. David inhaled the strong, sweet fragrance and thought of rotting fruit and women who wore too much makeup. A swarm of gnats attacked his nose and eyes, and he shooed them away, mopping his face with a handkerchief.

He stopped at the edge of a man-made pond. The cement on the sides had cracked; the water was dark green and scummy. Insects dived at the surface. Fat black and orange koi opened their mouths wide, looking up with avid stupidity. He moved away.

The hump of his mother's grave had settled a little. The tombstone, newly in place, was stark, simple, affordable. Exactly what she would have wanted. There were no flowers. He had come the day after the funeral to clear away the incredible clutter of wreaths and arrangements sent by friends, coworkers, his father's relatives.

Even Rose might not understand his compulsion to rid the grave of clutter. She would not see it for the courtesy it was.

Rose had never met the mother of his childhood, had never seen her explode in sudden rage when the disorder of their rooms began to press her. Newspapers on the floor made her sputter. She was infuriated by the magnificent fortresses he built—entire cities of boxes, blocks, army men, and toilet paper rolls. During calm, easy moments, she praised his ability to make do with materials at hand, calling it genius. But during the eruptions of anger, she would sweep his beloved cities to the floor, scream at him to throw them away, and retire to her bed, crying.

Once she had told him that she fantasized about living on the ceiling, where there was no furniture, no mess—just wide-open space. He learned to hang up his clothes, not leave them on the floor; make up his bed before answering the first call of nature; be unsentimental and throw things away.

But still the furies broke and his mother rampaged for reasons he could not fathom. What caused the rages? The depressions? Sometimes she yelled, sometimes she threw things. He would search her contorted, tear-streaked face, looking for the woman who could cook lasagna you would die for, who knew the answers to impossible math problems, who treated you like a prince when you were sick, who fended off teachers who didn't like little Jewish boys.

He had been afraid when they lived in Little Saigo—families were prey in Little Saigo. Lavinia had “wired” an alarm around their room, so the bad ones couldn't get in without an alert sounding in the police station. How often he had pictured the police cars, sirens blaring, coming to rescue them. He did not know that police cars rarely came to Little Saigo, and that protection came from payment to the tunnel rats, or allegiance to Maid Marion. And it was years later, when the tunnels were a bad, dark memory, that he realized that the “wired” alarm was a fake his mother devised to keep his sleep easy and his heart calm.

That woman was gone now. Lavinia Hicks Silver, born June second, 1986, had died by her own hand on July second, 2040.

She was not a Jew. He did not recite Kaddish for her, like he had for his father. He had been eight when his father disappeared—went out for doughnuts and never came back. Seven years later, when his father was declared legally dead, David said the Kaddish for him, every day for eleven months.

He was aware, suddenly, that Millicent Darnell's funeral was over, and people were drifting away. He turned and headed for the knot of mourners.

Mel had edged closer to the crowd.

“Which one's the grandson?” David asked. “What was his name?”

“Dennis Winston. One of those two guys over there. Blue suit or grey suit.”

The two men talked to the minister, who put his hand on the shoulder of the man in the blue suit. Blue Suit was short, his hair dark and thinning. Grey Suit said something and the minister nodded. The funeral director joined them, speaking seriously to Blue Suit.

“That's got to be him,” Mel said. “The one in blue.”

Mel headed for Blue Suit and David followed. He noticed that Grey Suit had cat hair on his pant cuffs.

“Mr. Winston?” David asked.

“Yes?”

Mel, who had started to speak, closed his mouth.

“I'm Detective Silver, Homicide Task Force. Mind giving us a minute?”

Winston looked wary.

“Yeah, sure. Excuse us, Jeff.”

Blue Suit watched them curiously.

Winston walked steadily to a large cottonwood tree, and turned his back to the trunk. He was an inch or two taller than David, his hair blond, fine, and falling into his eyes. His complexion was fair, tinged with pink at the moment. He had deep circles under his eyes, and his pants were loose and droopy under the belt. David wondered if Winston had been dieting.

“I'm sorry about your grandmother, Mr. Winston. She mentioned you several times. You were pretty close?”

“You're the detective that took her back through the house. Silver?”

David knew his face was red. “Yes.”

“You sat with her at the hospital. Thanks.”

David's heartbeat steadied. “I was glad to.”

Winston adjusted his tie. He looked exhausted.

David thought of Millicent Darnell's ravaged bedroom. CATCH YOU LATER Machete Man had written on the wall—in lipstick, this time. Usually he used blood.

Mel cocked his head sideways. “Understand you told your grandmother not to give us an ID on this killer.”

Winston backed against the tree, oblivious to the snags the bark made in his suit coat.

“I … she … was very frightened. She thought he might come back.” Winston straightened up.

“Your grandmother told me that
you
suggested he might come back,” David said. “What made you think so?”

Winston pulled a handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his forehead. “What about … what he wrote on the wall. ‘See you around.'”

“‘Catch you later,'” Mel corrected.

“You don't know what's going on with somebody like that. I know you need to catch this bastard, but my grandmother was the important thing. I want … I wanted her to be safe. I never thought … I never suspected she'd be a target.” Winston bit his lip. He wiped his face again and folded the handkerchief. He adjusted his tie.

“It's like lightning,” Mel said. “Happens. Nothing you can do about it.”

“You can stay out of the storm,” Winston said bitterly.

“When did you put the new locks on her door?”

Winston paled. “Two … three months ago. I'm not sure.” He rubbed his chin.

“A good thing you didn't get to the window,” David said.

“The lock on it was fine,” Winston said quickly. “It just squeaked. She'd been after me about it for … years, really. God, what if I had? She never would have …”

“Sure she would have,” Mel said. “Earl would have seen to it.”

Winston looked closely at Mel. “She told you that, huh? Listen, if anybody could come back and do that, it'd be my grandfather. He's buried over there.” Winston waved an arm in the direction of the grave site. “She still died though. Didn't do any good.”

“I agree with you, Mr. Winston,” David said. “Machete Man is responsible for your grandmother's death.”

“Seen it happen a hundred times,” Mel said. “Vic—people survive the attack, but the stress of it, for the older ones, can kill them.”

Winston's expression was wistful, and David quelled the urge to pat the man's shoulder. Winston was younger than he'd first thought—grief had added years.

“Look at it this way,” David said. “She won. She got away. And her death was peaceful. You took her home, didn't you?”