Valley of Lights (13 page)

TWENTY-ONE

I was up at dawn the next morning. I didn't dare dress, or go in the shower, or do anything that would prevent me from getting to the phone within the first couple of rings. I walked around in a bathrobe and couldn't even sit for more than a couple of minutes at a time. Today I was on Second Watch, which meant a mid-afternoon start, so I could stick around for as long as I needed to. Somehow it never occurred to me that he wouldn't call.

He did, on the dot of eleven.

All that tension, and now I hesitated before I picked it up. But then I snatched the receiver from the cradle and said, 'Yes?'

'Hello, Alex.'

It was a voice that I'd heard once before, on the line at the motel up in red rock country when I'd been told that I wasn't so hard to find. I said, 'Is that you, Winter?'

'Damned if I can remember,' the voice said pleasantly. 'Is Winter the college kid?'

'Yes.'

'Then that's who I am today. His eyes aren't so good, but he's fitter than most. I've used some real wrecks to get by, in my time.'

'You said I could speak to Georgie.'

He made a sound of disappointment, of disapproval, but I could tell that he was playing with me. 'Little hasty today, aren't we, Alex?' he said.

'Are you going to put her on, or not?'

'She's right here. Remember, Alex, one question and nothing more.'

I could hear fumbling around at the other end of the line, and some whispering. I couldn't make out what was being said, but I thought that I heard my own name in there somewhere. After what seemed like forever, I heard her voice.

'Hello?' she said.

I wasn't going to allow myself to get carried away. Not yet. I said, 'It's me, Georgie. I can't talk for long, but I'm going to ask you something and it's important. It may not seem so but believe me, it is.'

'Okay.'

'You remember your history book from school? No, don't answer that, just think about it. Somebody wrote his name on your history book and you tried to rub it off, but it wouldn't come. If you turn it to the light, you can still read it. Whose name is that, Georgie?'

'On my history book?' She was taking the question seriously, at least, and not messing around and making perplexed noises like an adult might.

'On the back,' I said.

'That was David Haber. He's awful, and he won't leave me alone.'

I sat down heavily, because relief had made my legs go shaky. She was safe, she was whole. There was no way that Winter could have known the answer — I hadn't even known about the book myself, until I'd seen it last night — and so I knew now that he wasn't speaking through her to fool me.

I said, 'That's fine. I can't talk any more right now, Georgie. Put your friend back on, will you?'

'Okay,' she said, and then there was more fumbling around. She'd sounded fine; a little on-guard and apprehensive, perhaps, but not as if she was being kept in fear. I wished that I could see what was happening there at the other end of the line, get some idea of exactly how and where she was being held.

When Winter came hack on, he said in a voice of exasperation, 'Jesus, Alex!'

I said, 'What's the matter?'

'I give you one simple question to ask and you have to make a whole production out of it. Are you satisfied now?'

'Depends what you call satisfied.'

'Oh, don't play games. Do you believe she was speaking for herself?'

'Yes,' I said.

'Good. Now leave me alone, and that's how she stays. She's safe, she's being looked after, she's got everything she needs.'

'And how long are we supposed to he able to go on like this?'

'For however long I say we do,' he shot back, and I could hear the iron of arrogance lying just underneath his words. 'You're not in control here, Alex, I am. Be by that phone every day at this time. I may call, I may not, but when I do, you'd better be there. Anytime you're not, that finishes it.'

'What if there's trouble with the phone?'

'Then it's bad luck for both of you. The child's here with me, so I don't think you'll want me to say what happens then. But you get the picture, don't you, Alex?'

'I get the picture,' I said, and he hung up on me.

I'd dented his good mood, and I wished I hadn't. I didn't want to score points off him, because he could too easily take it out on Georgie. But at least I now knew that she was all right, and I'd spoken to her; she'd sounded calm, too calm if anything. If I'd worried before about her being thrust too fast into a premature kind of adulthood, I had more to be troubled about now. I didn't know what she'd been seeing or what she may have learned, but I knew that it wouldn't be the kind of knowledge that you'd get from
Sesame Street
.

I sat there by the phone a while longer, looking at my empty hands. What was I going to do?

I was going to do exactly what I'd been told.

When I went out a couple of hours later, I had my spare uniform on a hanger for wearing and the other one in a plastic sack for the laundry. As I was putting them both into the back of my car, Heilbron was getting something out of his. He squinted at me, a non desert-dweller unused to the sunlight, and said, 'Hello again, Alex. The phone didn't ring while I was out, did it?'

'I don't believe so.'

'Only, I had a brainwave. Picked up this.' He brought it over to show me; it turned out to be a telephone answering machine in a box. 'Eighty-five dollars but the man said it works like new. Now if somebody calls and I have to be out, I won't have to worry about whether I missed it.'

'Good idea,' I said.

'I don't suppose you know anything about fixing them up?'

'Not a thing.'

'Well,' he said, turning the box over and looking all around it as if for clues, 'I ought to be able to manage. There's supposed to be a booklet somewhere in here.' And then he turned kind of sheepish and serious. 'Listen, Alex...'

'What?'

'I'm sorry if I rambled last night. I'll bet you thought I was never going to shut up.'

'Didn't even cross my mind,' I said.

'Well... thanks for coming around, anyway. It did me good.'

And me as well, I supposed. I said, 'Any time. Except now. Now I have to work.'

He didn't take offence, as I'd known that he wouldn't. He said, 'Listen, if you should hear anything at all...'

'I'll find you,' I promised.

He walked to the park's entranceway and waved me off down the road. It was years since anybody had done anything remotely like that for me. But then I suppose that I'd lost a father, and he'd lost a son... we were like pieces from two different puzzles, we may not have matched but we more or less fit. I liked him, he was all right.

But now it was hack to business.

Michaels, I learned at the station, had called in sick. This was to everybody's relief and to nobody's surprise except mine; I couldn't understand why he'd bothered to keep up the deception. Within ten minutes of being on the road almost the entire Watch was involved in a major scramble when we had a call from somewhere on North 40th Street for a domestic quarrel with shots heard; the address turned out to be somewhere in a labyrinthine estate whose roads followed no comprehensible system and which had no less than ten units screeching around and almost shunting one another as they crossed at the intersections. The cause of the panic proved in the end to be an over-loud TV set. After that there was a kind of lull in the action, and I took advantage of the quiet period to slip out of the area and drive out toward the quiet street where Michaels had lived.

I'd been there once before, but that had been before his wife had taken a college place somewhere back east to begin belated work on her Master's degree. I didn't know what kind of arrangement they had now. The place seemed dead and silent as I walked up the short path to the door, anyway; I rang the bell, but nobody came.

It was a one-story house, no more than three or four years old, with close neighbors but a well-screened boundary of masonry walls and bushes between each property. It wasn't bad, not bad at all. I knew that Michaels topped up his salary with all kinds of business interests; in fact he'd once told me that he looked upon policework more as a recreation and a labor of love than as a career, to the extent that he'd declined to take the captains' exam because he didn't want to be taken off the streets.

Well, he was off them now.

I went around to the back, through a gate which should have been bolted, but which wasn't, into a yard where a stepped redwood deck overlooked a small swimming pool. There were leaves on the surface of the pool, and the patio door beyond stood open a couple of feet.

I unclipped my holster. Just in case.

The whole house had been pretty thoroughly turned-over. Drawers had been turned out and dumped, clothes pulled out of the closets and strewn, pictures clawed down from the walls in the search for a concealed safe. He'd uncovered one in the study, an iron safe with a combination lock, and although it was scratched and chipped he hadn't been able to get it open. Michaels' certificates of business practice still hung on the wall to either side. The desk beneath had been plundered and things like files and deeds and ranch prospectuses had been thrown around in the hunt for cash and petty valuables to pawn. It was low, it was petty, it made me sick. To be able to live forever, and to choose to live like this.

I noticed one other thing before I left, and that was a letter lying on the mat behind the door. It had yesterday's postmark, and must have been delivered this morning. I didn't have to open it to know what was inside, because I recognised the stationery of Doctor Elaine Mulholland. Poor old Doc, sitting there in an empty office and none of her patients putting in an appearance. I hoped it wouldn't give her a complex, or anything.

Five minutes later I was back in my own area and responding to a call. No-one had even noticed that I'd been gone.

TWENTY-TWO

It was two whole days before he called me again, days that seemed to drag on forever. The city was quiet, although the fear was still everywhere; the sale in guard dogs was so heavy that animals were having to be trucked in from out of state, and gun shops couldn't keep up with the demand. One of the local radio stations took to playing
Psycho Killer
by Talking Heads until their board of management told them to stop, after which phone-in requests for the track increased tenfold. I read in the
Phoenix Gazette
that a small-time movie producer had taken a suite in the Hyatt and announced that he was going to step in and bid for the killer's story, as soon as he was caught. According to the paper his last movie had been
Revenge of the Zombies
and I sat there in the coffee shop, giggling and snorting helplessly and thinking Christ, if only he knew. Out on the streets, we had to cope with local vigilante groups who organised their own patrols and generally got in the way. We even had to break up a fight between two of them.

I was expecting him to hit again, and he probably knew it and was drawing me out as far as he could; but at least that way, nobody was dying.

Nobody that we were hearing about, anyway.

The next time he called, I had Winter's photograph — the one that I'd taken from his room — propped on the table by the phone. After making me wait for so long, at least he was punctual about the hour. I picked up the phone after two rings, and heard Winter's voice say, 'Me again.'

'Still sticking with the college boy, I see.'

'He's clean, no sign of any bad habits. But I only keep him for around the house, so don't expect to see him on the streets. I've got other faces for that.'

Winter looked back at me out of the photograph. A plain, ordinary, smiling kid. But only an instrument, now.

I said, 'How many faces do you have?'

'You really want to waste today's question on me?'

'I take it back.'

'That's better. Here's Georgina.'

He seemed to be in a playful mood today. And why not? He had everything under control, after all. I heard the phone being passed over, and Georgie came on the line and said, 'Hi, Alex.'

'Hello, Georgie,' I said. 'You know the rules we have to play by?'

'You get to ask me a question, and I have to answer it.'

Winter must have been right there with his ear up against the receiver, because without a break he cut in and said, 'Was that it? Hot very illuminating, I must say,' and put the phone down on me.

I sat there clutching the buzzing phone in disbelief, but it was already too late. I cradled it and paced the room in impotent fury, running my fingers through my hair and unable to decide what to do next.

But then the phone rang again, and I dashed over and snatched it up.

'Admit it,' Winter said happily, 'I had you worried.'

'Stop playing around,' I said. 'Put her back on.'

I could hear him laughing in the background as he handed over again. Georgie came on and said, 'He didn't mean that. He was only joking.'

'Yeah,' I said, 'he's a real comedian. Answer me this, Georgie. Are you scared?'

She thought about it for a moment. 'I was at first,' she said, 'but no so much now that he's explained some things to me. I've got my own room and a TV, and he brings me comic books and stuff. I asked for a bird in a cage, and he says he'll get me one. It's not like jail, or anything.'

'Does he lock you in?'

'Of course I lock her in,' Winter said unexpectedly, because this time the changeover at the far end had been quick and silent, 'but she understands why it has to be done. I wish I could say as much for you.'

'I got what I wanted.'

'You mean that was it? No catch-me-out question, just a welfare enquiry? Alex, does this mean you're beginning to
trust
me?'

'I'd trust Nixon before I'd trust you,' I said. 'I genuinely wanted to know.' And now that I knew, I liked the situation even less, impossible as that seemed. I didn't like the rapport that he and Georgie seemed to be building up — something entirely manufactured from his end, I didn't doubt, but Georgie couldn't see through that. I felt very much like the outsider butting in, here.

Winter said, 'Don't worry about her, Alex, she's getting everything she could possibly want. You think I don't know how to spoil a child?'

'Don't tempt me,' I said.

There was a moment's silence while I waited for his reaction, and then: 'A joke! You know, Alex, you may not believe this, but I've been getting to like you.'

'Just what I always wanted.'

'Poor, dull, unimaginative Alex. Thrust right into the middle of something that he can hardly believe, and he can't breathe a word about it to anybody because they won't believe him either. I feel for you, I really do.'

I said, 'If you like me so much, will you listen to a suggestion?'

'It costs me nothing to listen,' he said.

I wasn't looking at the photograph of Winter now, I was looking at the face that had formed in my mind; it was composite, ugly, a kind of soft clay that could boil and mutate but which retained the essence of evil in any shape that it took. Being on the phone made it easier to visualise; and visualising made it easier to say what I had to say next.

'Meet me one-to-one,' I said. 'You can be whoever you like as long as you wipe out all the reserves first. I'll meet you on equal terms and we'll see who walks away.'

He seemed amused by the proposal. 'What makes you think I'd agree to something like that?'

'Because you've already thought of it. Every time we meet up, you've got an escape hatch — which means that every time, it ends with you running away. But I'll bet you've wondered, what would happen if we both had to see it through to the finish?'

'You'd lose,' he said flatly. But was there just a small hint of uncertainty in there?

'Easy enough to say,' I persisted. 'Admit it, you're scared of me a little.'

'Scared of you? Why?'

'Because unless you've got me pinned down like you have now, you don't know where I'll be coming from next. And I think that's why you say you like me, as well, why you don't just break the chain and move on to some other town. I've put some spice into your life, and you'd forgotten what it can be like.'

I heard him sigh. 'You're an entertainment, Alex, I'll give you that,' he said. 'Listen, I'm going to do something for you. I can promise you something good this afternoon, and I'll try to make sure it's within your squad area. Watch for it, okay? This one's just for you.'

And with that friendly promise, he ended the call.