Game Of Cages (2010) (22 page)

"Maybe," I said. "Except that the Breakleys were only discovered because we burned down their barn. Maybe it's holed up somewhere, feeding and biding its time."

"I don't know about that," she said. "The cage was surrounded by lights, remember? What if it only wanted a ride because it needed to avoid daylight? What if it set out cross-country once night fell?"

"Fuck." That hadn't occurred to me. The predator hadn't walked like a creature that could cover a lot of ground, but I wouldn't have guessed it could move through walls, either.

"Driving around is a waste of time," I said.

"I agree completely." Catherine did a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed back toward the shopping center on Littlemont.

The Grable was sealed off with more yellow caution tape. The arch was blackened on one side, and the building was a shell. I didn't like looking at it.

Catherine parked in front of the bar. "I'm going to socialize," she said. "You're designated driver, so you can have Pepsi. After I get inside, count to five hundred and come in. This works better if people think I'm alone."

She went inside. I sat and counted slowly. There was a Fleetwood parked a couple of dozen yards away. It took a moment for me to remember where I'd seen it before. I got out of the Neon.

I approached from an angle that would keep me out of the side and rearview mirrors, but I didn't need to bother. The driver was alone and asleep. It was Regina Wilbur.

She was wrapped in an expensive cashmere coat, and she'd managed to clean herself up. Her hair had been washed, at least. She had a duck hunter's shotgun in her lap.

The button for the door lock was up, so I yanked the door open and snatched the shotgun away from her as quickly as I could. She woke instantly. If I'd been any slower, I'd have been staring down the barrel. I was glad I hadn't underestimated her.

"Hello, Regina," I said. "It's kind of a chilly night to be sleeping in your car, isn't it?"

"Oh," she said. "It's you." If she had bothered to remember my name, she wasn't going to say it. "I know why you're in Washaway. If I get my hands on that shotgun again, I'll use it to part your miserable skull."

"You don't know as much about me as you think," I said.

That got a rise out of her, as I'd hoped it would. "That little German bastard told me everything I need to know. He says you want to kill Armand."

"And you believed him? You can't trust that guy. He murdered a member of your own staff in cold blood."

"Pfah!" She waved a liver-spotted hand at me. "Why should he lie to me? I'm just a helpless old woman!"

I almost laughed in her face. But that "little German bastard" wouldn't have been fooled by her any more than I was. "And I'll bet he offered to capture Armand for you."

"Not just for me," she said, sounding as if I'd insulted her intelligence. "He wants to bring in a team to study Armand, and he thinks the home I built for him would be the best place to do it."

"So he wants to share the sapphire dog with you? Like the poetry professor?"

"Yes!" she drew out the hiss at the end of that word with malicious joy. "He and I will share the same way I shared with the poetry professor, as soon as he catches Armand in one of those big, black Yukons of his."

I couldn't resist correcting her. "The Yukons with the red-and-white cards on the dash? Those aren't his. That's a different bidder entirely."

She smiled like a snake, and I realized I'd made a mistake. She started the engine and backed out of her parking slot. I had to jump out of the way of the open door. She gave me one last sneer before she pulled out, leaving me holding her shotgun.

Damn. I had underestimated her after all, but what should I do about it? I could have tried to call the new emergency chief of police, if I had his number, which I didn't. And if I followed her, I would be separating from Catherine again.

That hadn't worked well the last time, and I wasn't going to do it again. I tossed Regina's shotgun onto the roof of the teriyaki place. Maybe she had another gun, but I think she would have tried to shoot me if she had. And while she could certainly afford a new one, she'd have to wait until the stores opened. I had time. I hoped.

I decided that I'd waited at least a five-hundred count and went inside.

Catherine was sitting at the bar, chatting amiably with the bartender. She had a glass of white wine in front of her. Her body language was different from what I'd seen before--yet another personality. I wonder how she chose them, or if she went by instinct. I took note of where the bathroom was and picked a spot where I'd have to walk by her to get to it.

Two stools over from me was a guy of about twenty-five. He was slumped over a beer, reading the label as if it might make him happy.

In the corner was an older couple sipping from tall drinks with a careful, trembling elegance. They both looked shriveled and wasted on the top half of their bodies and thick with flab on the bottom half. They seemed like people who had once had much better uses for their time but would have been offended at the label "barfly."

A pair of young guys shot pool in the corner. They didn't talk, but I couldn't tell if that was because they didn't like each other or they were just intent on their game.

The last person in the bar was Pratt. There was an empty bowl and crumpled napkin in front of him--he'd come here for his dinner. I wondered if, like us, he was here to find information or if he was slacking off from his job. Which wasn't fair, but to hell with him. I didn't like him.

The bartender tore himself away from Catherine long enough to take my order. He was a middle-aged guy with a slouching belly and no ring on his left hand. His face had started to go pouchy, but his hair was thick and combed straight back as though he was proud of it. I asked for a root beer and a menu. He dropped them off and wandered back to Catherine.

I could overhear a little of their conversation: she was complimenting the town in ways that prompted the bartender to brag a little. He described the Christmas festival that would happen tomorrow, explained the history of it, and flirted with her shamelessly. She didn't encourage him, but she didn't back away, either.

Depressed Guy tapped his empty bottle on the bar and the bartender brought him a new one. He took my order, too. I went for the grilled cheese, figuring it was cheap and too easy for him to screw up.

Catherine went back to doing her thing. I couldn't hear everything she was saying, but it sounded like small talk. Whatever information she was getting was coming at a leisurely pace, and she didn't seem interested in speeding up the process. My grilled cheese arrived; I'd never had a better sandwich in my life.

Depressed Guy muttered something to himself. I glanced over at him. He said: "Ever love someone or something so much you can't live without them?"

I remembered the way the sapphire dog had made me feel. Depressed Guy suddenly had my full attention. "Yeah, man. I think I have."

Encouraged, he turned toward me. His eyes looked a little bleary and he had trouble focusing, but he could talk without slurring. "It hits so hard at first. It's like ... all the love in your life is ripped away from you all of a sudden. All you have left is this, like, little tattered shred of something in your hand, because you tried to hold on too tight. Ya know whutamean? You think I tried to hold on too tight?"

Catherine did this for a living, I thought. She drew people out, listened to their stories, and found the information she needed. Not me. Everything I'd ever learned about investigations had come from being on the other side. I couldn't play this game her way; I had to do it mine.

"I don't know, man. Who did you lose?"

"My wife." I immediately lost interest. Still, he kept talking. I glanced away and saw that one of the pool players had joined Catherine's conversation. Whatever they were talking about, she seemed interested. Was she a good actress, or did she enjoy this? "She dumped me over the phone. Can you believe that? After ten and a half months of marriage."

I glanced around the room. Pratt was looking straight at me. I looked back, and he didn't look away. In some places, that would have been an invitation to brawl, but I haven't had much luck with bar fights.

Depressed Guy wasn't finished. "Almost eleven months! I thought we were in love."

"That's rough," I said.

He went back to his beer. "I'm keeping the damn fish tank, you can believe that."

I imagined a tank full of dead fish, and it suddenly occurred to me that Pratt might have completed his job already. Maybe this was his victory meal, as pathetic as that sounded.

I slid off my stool and crossed to his booth. He was dipping his spoon into a bowl of grayish chowder when I sat across from him. Before he could tell me to get lost, I said, "Well?"

"Well, what?"

I met his stare. Apparently, he wanted me to talk out loud in front of all these people. "Well, have you taken care of that dog?"

"I don't report to you." Which was true, but he struck me as the boasting type, so I figured the job wasn't done.

"Fair enough. How about another supplemental report?"

"You don't file reports," he said. "I get those from the smoke."

For a moment I thought he was talking about smoke signals, or visions in magic smoke or something. Then I realized--duh--he meant Catherine. "You're a real charmer."

He stirred his soup. "Get out of here," he said without looking at me, "before I break both of your legs."

So much for warning him about Yin's ghost knife. I glanced back at Catherine. She was looking at me, and her expression was difficult to read. I stood and went to the men's room, washed my hands in the dirty sink, and walked toward my original spot. As I passed Catherine's stool, the bartender said, "Hey, man. Are you Clay Lilly?"

I stopped. "My name's Ray Lilly."

"Well, I'll be," Catherine said, her voice lilting. "I knew that was you. How is your mother?" She slid off her stool. "Excuse me, Rich," she said to the bartender.

I heard the bartender curse under his breath, but it was too late. Tonight's entertainment had walked off with another guy. I led her to the table and picked up my soda. "Did--"

She interrupted me right away. "Is your mother still working at that law firm?" We had a conversation about a woman I hadn't seen for years. While we were talking, Pratt laid a couple of bills on the table and walked out.

Eventually, I said I had my mother's phone number out in the car, and Catherine smiled as though I was learning the game. I paid for my food, and while we were waiting for the slip to sign, Depressed Guy looked blearily over at us.

Catherine couldn't resist. "How are you, honey?" Her tone was maternal.

"Alone," he said. "My wife just left me."

"I'm sorry to hear that. What happened?" If she was pretending to be interested, she was damn good at it.

"Thass the thing. I don't even know! This afternoon everything was great between us. An hour later, she called me and said that she didn't love me anymore. She said she'd found someone else. Someone with stars in his eyes."

Catherine looked at me. I looked at her. I fought down the urge to grab the guy and shake him until he told me more.

"That's terrible," Catherine said. Her voice was shaky and she'd lost her grip on the kind, maternal, cry-on-my-shoulder character she was playing. "Where did she call from?"

It was a crazy transition, but Depressed Guy was drunk enough to take it in stride. "She rides out at the stables three nights a week." He took a pull off his beer. "He's prolly a cowboy or something."

The credit card slip came. I signed it. Catherine and I walked calmly and slowly toward the door.

Once through it, we ran to the car. We had our lead.

I scanned the parking lot. Pratt was already gone, dammit. "Do you know where the stable is?" I asked.

"I know how to find it." She took out a cellphone, dialed 411, and got the address from the operator. "There's only one in the area," she said. "Shit. I wish they hadn't stolen my cell."

"What's that in your hand?"

"The bartender's. He loaned it to me, without realizing he was loaning it to me. But I can't use it to file a supplemental report. The number would turn up on his phone bill."

I was feeling keyed up. "I'm sorry," I said. "The answer we needed was sitting right next to me, and I didn't realize it."

"Don't worry about it. That's my job, not yours. Not that I found out a damn thing. All those boys wanted to talk about was the festival tomorrow. They're worried that it may be canceled after 'what happened today.' I wasn't sure how much they really knew, but they were being careful."

I wondered what the festival would be like. If we destroyed the predator tonight--and did it quickly and cleanly--the town could have Christmas in peace: no more killings, no more people going crazy, no more burning buildings. Maybe there would be something nice I could pick up for Aunt Theresa and Uncle Karl. And maybe I could find a gift for Catherine, if--

"God, I hope we can finish this tonight," she said. "I want to spend Christmas with my family. Was that man in the tan coat who I think?"

"That's Pratt. He didn't want to talk to you at all."

She seemed to understand right away. "They're like that. A lot of them. They live a couple of hundred years, and everything they knew about the world gets turned on its head. They see a black woman alone at a bar, talking to men she doesn't know, and they immediately think prostitute. They're old-fashioned, squared. Some of them even talk about the good old days before the Terror."

I didn't know what "the Terror" was, but I got the point. "Do you know anything about him?"

"One of the other investigators said Pratt likes killing people, which doesn't exactly set him apart from the crowd. He should have talked to me. Now I can't even get a new report to him." She sighed. "So, we're going to check out the stables, right?"

"Oh, yeah."

She started the car and we rode through the dark town. I wondered how late the stables would be open, and if we'd have to break in.