A Shroud for Aquarius (15 page)

I clutched Jill’s arm and whispered: “Somebody could be in the house.”

She breathed my name back, some fear in it; I didn’t blame her.

“Just sit tight.” I whispered in her ear; hardly a sweet nothing. “Don’t make a sound.”

I slipped out of bed, my right toes touching my jockey shorts on the floor where I’d discarded them in a considerably more carefree moment. I bent down, found them with my hand, climbed into them, bumping against the chest of drawers as I did. The sound of it was like bumping unwittingly into the car behind you as you parked, but louder. The silence that followed was louder still.

I felt better with my shorts on—I didn’t particularly relish being naked while confronting a midnight intruder—but not that much better. The burglar alarm system I’d inherited covered most of the doors and many of the windows in the house, so I had no real sense of where this possible intruder might have entered. There had been a rash of house break-ins this summer; kids with no jobs looking for loose change and/or kicks. That’s probably all this was.

But at the very least a door or a window had been breached. The alarm system had, as I’d told Jill earlier, been disconnected
as far as alerting the local cops was concerned and I rarely, almost never, switched the key in the control panel to turn on the loud, neighborhood-rousing alarm that went with the system; that left only the various tiny glowing green lights on walls about the house to provide a constant source of security, telling me my doors and windows were secure.

Or not.

I was in the little connecting nook between my bedroom, study, bathroom, and dining room, the carpet beneath my bare feet helping keep my footsteps down to a minimal squeak. I paused, listening.

I heard nothing.

I edged carefully toward the open door to my study. Listened. Heard nothing. Just my heart pounding.

I moved into the dining room; there was a little light coming from the dining room windows and filtering through sheer curtains: street light, moonlight, not much, enough to help me and my memory maneuver around chairs, tables and such.

Soon I was in my small kitchen, a little hallway with appliances, the linoleum cold on my soles. Cold on my soul, too. The lingering smell of that Italian sauce I was so proud of now made my stomach turn; why nausea accompanied fear was a puzzle to me—I’d noticed it first in Vietnam, but had never got used to it.

I took tentative steps, because walking made more noise in here; no getting around it. I’d pause between steps, listening, stepping sideways, my back to the stove and dishwasher, brushing their cold metal, so that should anyone enter via the door at either side of the small kitchen, I’d not provide that someone with my back. Also, that allowed me to face the doorway to the basement (here in the kitchen), several windows of which were among those wired to the alarm system, meaning an
intruder could be coming up via the basement steps. I crossed to the basement door as silently as I could, shut it as silently as I could, bolted it as silently as I could, which in the latter case meant making the following noise: THUK!, which seemed to echo through the house.

I moved back against the appliances, trembling, waiting, listening.

Nothing.

I began wondering if the alarm system had shut down for some maintenance reason; but every little green light in the system—there were half a dozen of them—couldn’t burn out simultaneously. If such were the case, I’d be sure to call Ripley tomorrow. Still, there could be some other bug in the system. Could any intruder be this quiet?

That was when I heard the noise out in the entryway area, a bumping. Unless I missed my guess, someone had just bumped into my pinball machine. Thank you, Bally.

I moved to the kitchen drawers directly across from me, slid one open—it creaked, but just barely—and my hand fell on the tray of silverware within. My hand found the knives alongside the tray—not table-setting knives, not even steak knives, but the carving set a relative had sent last Christmas, a gift I’d never used. I felt for the thickest wooden handle among them, knowing it held the longest, widest blade in the set, and withdrew it, clutching it in my hand like Jim Bowie sitting in his little room at the Alamo, waiting for the Mexican Army to rush in.

There was the faintest squeak of footsteps in the entryway beyond the kitchen—how could anyone learn to walk so quietly? Then a frightening thought came to me: if it was your
job
to walk quietly, you would
learn
how.

This was not some kid, some vandal; this was not just another house break-in. This was, instinct told me, something else. Someone professional. A cop, maybe? If I was lucky, a cop.

Behind me, on the stove, was a light switch; just a small light, a light by the built-in clock on the stove, not enough to illuminate the room, but enough to throw some light on the subject should I feel the need. With my free hand, the one not clutching my carving-set Bowie, I reached for the little switch, rested my fingers on it, and waited.

If he was moving through the house, he would either cut through the bathroom, which with its doors at either end would lead him directly to the bedroom, where Jill waited; or he would come through this kitchen, with the same destination in mind. What little light was filtering in from outside couldn’t reach the longer-than-it-was-wide cubbyhole of the kitchen, so I was protected in the darkness. I held my breath. Stood there in my jockey shorts like a side of beef preparing to butcher itself. The knife in my hand, held out to my side, blade up and pointing out slightly, quivering. What a man.

The curtains out in the entryway were open; plenty of light from the street was coming in there—moonlight, too. I could see my neighbor’s little bungalow across the street from me with frightening clarity. Then a shape blocked it out.

He was big, rather wide, and had something in his hand.

Something that seemed to be a gun.

Just a silhouette, just a shape, but a shape to be reckoned with. I had to pee. Thank you, God.

He moved toward the kitchen.

He filled the doorway.

Could he see me? The kitchen was pitch black, what light there was was to his back, I was plastered up against the appliances, but
could he see me
?

No.

He moved right by me; must’ve stood six-three. He smelled like English Leather. With luck, I smelled like nothing at all. He was approaching the doorway, about to move into the dining room, about three steps away from me, when I hit the little light.

He whirled, a big man in black in a ski mask—hardly the time of year for the latter—and eyes glowed at me, those of a beast caught in headlights on the highway, and the gun in his hand, an automatic with a silencer, just like in the movies, was pointing right at me, and I hurled the knife and it sunk into his shoulder above the arm with the gun in hand and he howled, more like a man than a beast, and the gun pointed down and went
snick,
and chips of linoleum went flying.

He fell backward, pitching into the refrigerator, and I was on him, using the pain in his shoulder to wrest the gun from him. It was in my hand now, and I stood over him, shaking, grinning, saying, “Take the mask off. Christmas is over.”

It seemed witty to me at the time.

He sat there, glaring at me—quite an accomplishment, since he was doing it through the circles of the ski mask with just his heavily browed eyes, an oddly attractive shade of green, pretty jewels in ugly settings—and pulled the knife out of his shoulder.

I swallowed.

He pushed himself to his feet.

“Don’t do that!” I said. Nothing vaguely witty occurring to me.

He held the knife, blade streaked with his own blood, in his big hand, the hand of the arm ending in the good shoulder, and spoke. His voice was a raspy whisper.

“Give me my gun,” he said.

I found myself backing up. I should’ve shot him on the spot. But I’d never shot anybody in my kitchen before. And I’d never before hurled a knife at somebody and sat him down and seen him get up and take the knife out and lumber toward me, with the grace and, apparently, the pain threshold of Frankenstein’s monster.

“I’ll shoot,” I said. It sounded kind of lame, even to me.

Then he raised the knife in stabbing position and lunged at me, and I shot my refrigerator.

He was on me, a thousand pounds of him was on me, unless I’d killed the Frigidaire and it fell on me, and the gun wasn’t in my hand anymore. I had the presence of mind to grab the arm with the knife, with two hands, but the son of a bitch was strong, and then an arm looped around his neck and a hand pulled off his mask, and I got a good look at him being surprised and pissed—green eyes, broken nose, wide mouth, scarred cheekbone—as he must not have known anybody else was in the house.

He stood, tossing Jill off him like a nude little monkey, and she smacked into and rattled against the wounded refrigerator. You would’ve thought he’d have appreciated having a beautiful naked woman like Jill latch onto him, but no….

Nor did he appreciate me butting him in the nuts; he was tough, but nobody’s tough enough to withstand that, and he sat on the floor and clutched his privates, the knife clunking to the linoleum, and I did something I didn’t know I was capable
of: I looked quickly around for and picked up his automatic and smacked him with it, on the side of the head, as hard as I possibly could.

While he was still unconscious, we tied him up with clothesline, called Sheriff Brennan, and put on some clothes. I took time out to pee. Then, waiting for Brennan, I checked the guy’s pockets and found no ID. The gun was a nine millimeter Smith & Wesson; the silencer was a round tube with perforations, apparently homemade, but slickly so.

Brennan was there in five minutes, and the guy was still unconscious.

Pushing his Stetson back on his head, kneeling, Brennan touched the guy’s head; it was bloody, clotting up. The black shirt around the one shoulder was damp with blood, too.

“Hit him alongside his head a mite hard, wouldn’t you say?”

“He shot at me in my goddamn kitchen,” I said. “What do you expect me to do?”

Brennan stood, hands on hips, shrugging. “I don’t think you killed him.”

“You don’t think…” My stomach dropped. “Jesus, I didn’t mean…”

“It ain’t like TV,” he said solemnly. “Most people don’t take blows to the head lightly. I better call a ambulance.”

He did.

Jill and I stood in the living room—the big, black-clad intruder was slumped, trussed up in clothesline, on the kitchen floor, his back to the cupboards and drawers, where I’d got the butcher knife. We hugged each other, feeling like we knew each other very well now. Sharing unexpected violence in the night brings people together. The family that slays together stays together.

“Be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” Brennan said, coming back from the phone. He took the Stetson off, brushed greasy hair off his forehead. “You know that feller?”

“Sure. He lives next door. He wanted a cup of sugar, but he forgot to say please.”

Brennan laughed, but not because he thought my limp crack was anything to laugh about. “You’re a pretty tough hombre, ain’t ya, Mallory?”

“You got me into this, dammit!”

His face turned serious. I couldn’t believe he hadn’t made a connection between this and Ginnie Mullens yet.

He said, “You think this has something to do with little Ginnie dyin’?”

“For two days I’ve been asking around about her, including talking to her drug connection in Iowa City. Then suddenly Arnold Schwarzenegger in a ski mask comes calling at midnight. What do
you
think?”

Brennan thought about it. “He have any ID on him?”

“No.”

The sheriff let some air out. “He don’t look like a cat burglar at that.”

“He’s a guy with a gun with a silencer. How do you read it?”

“Like somebody took out a contract.”

“Me, too.” I glanced at Jill. She had the drawn face of a woman who hadn’t slept for days. “Forgive me for thinking like a mystery writer.”

“That’s okay,” she said. “Any time a guy in black comes in your house with a gun with a silencer, you got my permission to think like a mystery writer. By the way, does this sort of thing happen to you often?”

“First time this week,” I said. “Brennan, this guy is obviously not local.”

He nodded. “This kind of thing
can
be set up in these parts. There are bars in South End where you can set up a hit for a hundred dollars.”

“That’s a generous estimate,” I said, thinking of certain bars in that part of town. “But I don’t think this is a hundred-dollar contract.”

“Me neither,” Brennan admitted.

The wail of an ambulance interrupted us, and soon we were untying our slumbering charge and he was being loaded onto a stretcher; Brennan kept a gun on the slack figure in case he was “playin’ possum.” He sent a deputy along in the ambulance, and stayed behind with me.

We stood in front of my house. On the corner across from me, there is no house, simply a bluff, way down at the bottom of which is the Mississippi, which I can see from my place. A nearly full moon was shimmering on the river, rippling there. The winking amber lights of barges, having just come through the lock and dam, multiplied themselves in reflections on the water.