Alien Rites (6 page)

“Tell us about the phone call,” Mel said.

David figured that no one who didn't know Mel very well would pick up that tremor in his voice.

Annie closed her eyes. “Luke was in his room when I called. I told him Jen was sick, and he … he asked about if it was serious. I said no, just a cold, but that she had just got to sleep, and could maybe they come here? And he said maybe we should do it some other night. But I said no, we had to hurry things up, or they might take Jenny from me. So then I ask him something, but he doesn't seem like he's listening. And suddenly he yells. He says, like, ‘Hey, what are they'—” She looked at String, turned red. “‘Them
folks
doing with my car?' Then he goes, ‘Hang on, be right back.' And that was it.”

David cocked his head. “Folks? He didn't really say ‘folks,' did he?”

Annie shifted sideways in her chair, avoided looking at String. “He said ‘frigging bellybrains,' but I didn't want to say that in front of him.”

“The offensive will not take further,” String said.

“So it was Elaki down there, messing with the car.” Mel scratched his chin. “That it? He say anything else?”

“That was his last words to me.”

Mel leaned forward. “And Miriam hasn't been in touch?”

Annie glanced down at the floor. “No, sir.”

“You don't think it's odd, her not calling?” Mel asked. “I mean, with you worried about your babies and all?”

“I figure she's been taking care of things. And, if you got to know, I been kind of afraid to stir things up.”

TEN

There was another welcoming committee, party of one, waiting on the landing as they came out of Annie Trey's apartment. The little girl tapped a small bare foot. She did not look happy.

Mel looked down at her and waved. She scowled. She wore a thin cotton nightgown that hung just below her knees, stark white against smooth, baby-fine black skin. Her hair was long and thick, her eyes brown, the whites so white they were almost blue. She clutched a black kitten in one arm. The kitten was a long-hair, with round blue eyes and one white paw.

Mel grinned at her snub. “Why the frownie face, kiddo?”

“My name is'n kiddo, is Cassidy.”

“Your mama know you're out here?”

“My Mama is Valentine. She midwifes babies wif her own two hands. That means helping them come out of their mama. And she sings Italian in the Dixie-Saigon Club. She sings church music too, but that's just on Sunday. When I grow up, I'm going to sing. Mama says I have a pretty voice, if I could learn to carry a tune.”

“But does she know you're out here?”

“She's tired and dead asleep, 'cause my mama works hard, so I stood up on a chair and undid the locks.” She squinched her eyes. “You-all are the mens come to take Jenny away from Annie. I'm not going to let you.” The girl stood stiff-legged and afraid, and David had never felt so much the villain. “Annie is a good mama and nice to me, and when I get bigger I'm going to be Jen's babysitter.”

“We're not here to take Jenny,” David said.

“That's what they all say.”

David looked at Mel and hid a smile. An old line, but the world-weary delivery was priceless.

“What's your kitty's name?” David asked.

“Baby Blue. He's two months old. He almost died.”

Mel raised an eyebrow. “That so?”

“I found him in the road. He was so little, he could fit right in my mama's hand.”

David glanced at Cassidy's own hand, the tiny fingers buried in the cat's fur.

“He was sick and wouldn't eat. So Annie mix some milk and sugar and dipped her finger on it and he lick it off. And then he felt better after a while and drank it all up. So you got to be nice to Annie. Mama said you wouldn't leave that door open and you were probably up to no good like most mens she know.”

“The door was closed because we're police officers and we had private business.”

String surged forward. “Time for pouchling to go back inside, to be sleeping times.”

The cat hissed, fur going thick, and String backed away. Cats and Elaki never mixed.

David jerked a thumb toward the door to Valentine's apartment. “I'm going to wait out here till you're inside, and I hear you lock the door.”

“Will Annie be okay?” The little girl gave David a look that would melt sterner stuff than he was made of.

“Annie will be okay.”

The kitten was squirming. David opened the door to Valentine's apartment—simple door, simple lock, no voice-activated alarms or recognition systems for the people who needed them most.

“Good night, little pouchling,” String said.

“Good night, sir.”

The door closed softly. Mel and String headed down the stairs, while David stayed and listened for the lock.

ELEVEN

The cars had balked at meeting them in cracker Village, some regulation or another, so they'd congregated outside of Stella's Deli on Marsh and Third. The deli was closed, the street dark, car headlights reflecting in the safety glass of the storefront, arcing across brick walls.

David leaned against the car door, arms folded. “It's late, Mel, and you look like hell.”

“Don't be sweet-talking me, David.”

String made a moaning sound as he slithered from the back seat of the car onto the pavement.

David shrugged. “Look, if you want to go to Miriam's tonight, we'll go right now. It's just we're both tired and—”

“You're afraid we'll, like, miss a clue?”

“Might be better to go tomorrow, after we've had some sleep.”

String was upright again, making a whistling noise through the oxygen slits on his belly. The slits formed a perpetual happy face on his tender, inner pink hide.

“Isss most stupid, this lack of the van.”

Mel looked at him. “Yeah, but String, we'd like to get there in one piece, and with you driving, that's not guaranteed.”

“For this I have the cricked fringe-scale?”

“How long since you talked to her?” David asked.

“Night before this Cochran kid disappeared. That was Miriam in that kid's trunk—you caught that, did you?”

David looked at the sidewalk. “Very possible.”

“This Cochran disappears at same of the time isss Miriam Kellog, sleep partner of Detective Mel.”

“‘Sleep partner,' String? Call her my girlfriend, okay?”

“Isss okay. This Miriam sleep … girl partner—”

“Girl
friend.
”

“But I wish to imply the romantic.”

“Girlfriend does imply the romantic.”

“Then if you are the man friend of myssself and Detective David—”

“That's different.”

“In some cases I understand—”

“
String
, for God's sake—”

David held up a hand. “Miriam did the autopsy on the Trey baby, and Cochran goes missing the same night he's supposed to meet Miriam and Annie. Miriam hasn't been seen or heard from since. Of course it's connected. Mel, you checked her office, and with her sister, right?”

“Her sister won't take my calls. And Miriam's on leave of absence, doing research at the university, advising some of the doctoral candidates. So nobody's keeping track of her.”

“Except you,” David said.

“And I can't find her.”

“You don't think she's staying away because she's mad?”

“She might stay away from me, but not her apartment, not her work. I want a look at that ankle bracelet that tech found.”

“Think you'd recognize it?” David asked.

Mel shrugged. “I got stuff in my drawers at home I don't recognize.”

String teetered back and forth on his bottom fringe. “Pouchling isss mine for two-day session. If wish to go here now to the place of the Miriam Kellog, must call chemaki and arrange the makings.”

David wished he had a grouping of five adults he could call on for help with the care of
his
offspring. Of course, even with Elaki, the brunt of pouchling care fell on the Mother-One. Some things never changed.

“Nah, String—David's right, I guess. Not much we can accomplish tonight.”

String waved a fin and headed for his van. David opened his car door, got in. He looked at Mel, who was heading for his car, hands deep in his pockets. He stepped back out on the pavement, door hanging open.

“Detective David Silver, please close the door or the power pack—”

“Shut up,” David said softly. “Mel?”

Mel turned, face in the shadows.

“Why don't you head home with me? Rose will behave if you're around, and you haven't seen the kids in ages.”

Mel rubbed the back of his neck. “Need protection from my sister, huh?”

“Just lately she's been a little—”

“She find out about you and Teddy?”

David gave him a wary look. There was no hostility in Mel's face, just fatigue. “What about me and Teddy?”

“Yeah, right David, whatever you say.” Mel shifted his weight. “I would like to see the kiddos.”

Mel sent his car away. It pulled away from the curb, and he walked back quickly, settling with a sigh into the passenger's side of David's car. “You don't mind driving, do you?”

“No.” David gave him a look. “How long have you known about Teddy?”

“David, I hate to bust your bubble, but you'd be hard put to find anybody in the department who doesn't know.”

David opened his window to the steamy night breeze, turning the air conditioner on low. He felt the tires snug into the grid that led out of the city to his ten-acre farm.

“What's the problem between you and Miriam? Other than toilet seats, I mean.”

Mel didn't answer. David looked sideways, saw his partner was asleep.

TWELVE

The bump of car tires going from grid to raw pavement brought David out of a sleepy daze. Mel did not wake up. David dreaded this part of the drive when he was tired. There was no grid on the two-lane rural road. The car could go off the pavement and into the trees in a split second of inattention. It was hard to imagine that less than thirty years ago people had always driven this way. No wonder traffic fatalities had been a major cause of death.

He had missed his father tonight when he returned the teddy bear to little Jenny Trey. He always missed his dad when he did something nice for kids.

That was one thing Teddy had given him—the answer to his father's disappearance all those years ago. David always knew that his father was a good man, the kind of man who would not abandon a ten-year-old boy and a manic-depressive wife. Something had to have happened.

And something had.

Teddy was a psychic, working with the Saigo City Police on a missing person case. David, who loathed psychics, had loved and hated her from the very first day. The hate had gone away. He wished the love would.

Teddy had found his father for him—dead all these years, decomposing behind the wheel of his car, hidden beneath the muddy brown waters of the Talmidge River.

The car had seen it all, reporting in after they'd pulled it rusty and dripping from the water. A stupid killing in the parking lot of a doughnut shop. His father had interfered, earning a bullet, a quick death, and a hidden grave in dark, muddy water.

An old, old crime, messy and violent and pointless, happening fast, as they usually did, causing pain that lasted a lifetime.

David wondered how many times he had driven that Talmidge River Bridge while his father floated in the swift dark waters, eyes blank and unseeing till they were eaten by the fish.

Bad thoughts.
Let them go
.

For the first time in a long time, the farm looked good to him when he pulled in the drive. He turned off the car engine, waited for the headlights to dim.

He had an unexpected moment of happiness. Yes, the house needed to be painted, and he did not have the time to do it, or the money to pay someone else. And the leaves of yet another baby dogwood tree were crispy and brown—he could not make them grow. No doubt they resented neglect.

The porch swing still hung crooked in spite of his best efforts. The wind made it move, and he listened for the familiar creak of rusty chain. The sky had lightened, easing the weight of a bad night. It seemed like the nights were always bad. Now was the best time, the time when the darkness breathed easier, the world fresh and unsullied by the day ahead. David stood in the driveway beside the car, feeling the breeze against his hot skin.

And just like that, the happiness slipped away. He heard a car engine on the road behind him, and saw that it was running without lights, which could mean trouble, or nothing more than someone who had circumvented the safety controls of a bossy automobile. People hated to be told what to do.

The dark shape disappeared, engine noises fading. David looked at Mel, saw he was awake and watchful. He wondered if it was the noise that had awakened him, or the silence.

“What's up?” Mel said, voice sleep-shadowed and dull.

“We're home.”

The dog barked as they came up the stairs.

“Duck,” David said, and opened the door.

Mel went first into the living room, and bent down to rub the dog's head. A wineglass arced from the hallway, whizzed across the room, and smashed into the doorjamb where his head had been.

The dog barked and whined and peed on the floor. Mel looked at the shards of broken glass and the dark oval of liquid on the carpet.

“Nothing like hanging out with the married folk, to make a guy appreciate living alone.”

The dog groaned and whimpered and rubbed against David's shins in an intense, doggie ecstasy that made David wonder if he oughtn't get home more often.

Rose had found the dog in a laboratory cage marked
DEAD MEAT
, and when she was through trashing the lab, she had taken pity on him and brought him home. She was a freelance animal rights activist—the militant variety. David called the dog Meat, which annoyed the children, who kept trying to call her Hildie.