Alien Rites (5 page)

David looked into his eyes and saw a child.

He wore cheap blue workpants, heavy brown work shoes, a short-sleeved mustard-yellow shirt that made David wonder who dressed him every morning. But he was smiling in that open, friendly way David associated with the mentally handicapped, and he laughed when he caught sight of String.

“See that, Val? That's an Elaki, isn't he?”

“Yeah, Eddie, that's an Elaki.” A woman stood at the top of the stairs beside a very old man—making a committee of three. She did not look friendly. The old man looked worried. Somewhere behind them, behind closed doors, a child sobbed, weary and choked.

“Who might you be?” the woman said, in a low, steady voice that caught David's attention.

“Who's asking,” Mel said. He wiped sweat from the back of his neck.

The woman tilted her head sideways and considered him. She had beautiful skin, David thought, blue-black and glowing with sweat in the impossible heat of the building. She was barefooted, wearing a white cotton dress that was shaped by the curve of her small breasts, narrow hips, and the sweet, gentle swell of her belly. Her hair was up off her neck, casually pinned up in the way some women have of twisting their hair this way and that to get it out of their way, achieving a casual sexiness in seconds that other women cannot achieve in hours of primping. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black, her face somehow missing pretty but achieving handsome.

It was a serious face, and she wasn't smiling. She was looking at Mel with her long neck arched. “
I'm
asking. And I know who
I
am. Who I am is not the issue. I'm wanting to know who you are, and you got one minute to tell me before I call the police.”

“They'll come, too.” This from the old man, a brittle ancient whose tone of voice was querulous and unconvincing. “I have friends on the force, and a nephew in the IRS.”

David looked at the old man, knowing there would be no friends on the force, no nephew in the IRS.

“We
are
the police,” Mel said.

David offered his ID.

It took the sass out of them, if not the wariness. David did not know whether to laugh or cry, watching them deflate, exchange looks, regroup.

Still the enemy, he thought, just a different flavor.

“We don't know nuthin about nuthin.” Eddie's wide smile belied the challenge of his words. The old man patted him on the shoulder with a hand that trembled.

“I'm Detective David Silver,” David said. None of them had given his ID a second glance. They were the kind of people who knew cops when they saw them. “And you are?”

“I'm Mr. Dandy.” If the old man had a first name, he didn't admit to it.

His striped shirt was spotless, but worn thin with frayed cuffs, and buttoned tightly at the wrist and the long, thin neck. He wore a blue-and-white tie, cuffed khaki pants that hung loose on a frame nearly skeletal, and brown leather suspenders that David guessed he wore every day of his life. His ears stuck out. His hair was short on the sides, thick at top, white and healthy and parted on one side. He was bony and tall, all joints and long, thin fingers.

“I'm Eddie Eyebrows,” the man on the steps said. He offered David a hand, grinned at the Elaki, waved.

David liked the way he said ‘eyebrows,' as if it was the name he'd been born with. He had pulled the sting out of what was likely a constant taunt by taking ownership.

“Valentine,” the woman said.

“Just Valentine?” David asked.

“All
you
need to know. You here for Annie?”

David did not like the feeling he got here. He did not want to play the heavy with these people.

“We're just here to ask her some questions.” Why, he asked himself, did he feel the need to earn this woman's approval?

Valentine folded her arms. “This time of night? When she's got a sick baby on her hands?”

David held up the teddy. “I've got the bear.”

Eddie leaped up and clapped his hands. “He's got it, Val; it's the bear, Jenny's bear!”

The transformation was instantaneous and beautiful, smiles all around.

“My hero,” Mel muttered.

Mr. Dandy held out a hand. “Right this way, good sir. I know one little girlie who's going to be glad to see you.”

Valentine folded her arms, nodded at David. “Just be sure you leave that door open when you have your little talk.”

Mel waved a hand. “Yeah, Your Highness, whatever. Bring on the bear, will you, David, and let's get on with this.”

NINE

All of David's children had loved a special cuddly when they were toddlers—Kendra's had been a stuffed snake, Lisa had a Winnie the Pooh, and Mattie had only recently given up custody of a blanket named Pid. Trying to get one of them to sleep without their special toy was always a crisis—the kind of crisis Annie Trey was having with Jenny.

Her apartment was known as a junior—two rooms, L-shaped, with a tiny kitchen attached to a living room, and a closet-sized bedroom off one side. She did not have very many things; a battered rocker with an old green cushion, a cubed plastic love seat—dirt-cheap even brand new. A wire lamp. Large-screen TV tacked to one wall.

Everything that she had evidently wanted in the way of furniture was painted on the walls. Mel turned a circle, studying. He pointed a finger at Annie Trey.

“You the artist?”

She jiggled the baby. Looked at Mel a long moment, then shrugged. “Yeah.”

Her taste ran to the simple—chunky lines of Scandinavian furniture, blond wood, boxy silhouettes. There was a couch on one side, with end tables. The other side showed shelves that held a complicated sound system, a computer, stacks of laser discs. Another wall showed an entertainment center and a grandfather clock.

Annie Trey paced the room, bouncing Jenny up and down in her arms. “
Hush
, honey.” The baby clutched the teddy bear and burrowed her head in Annie's shoulder, sobbing as if her heart would break. Annie looked at David, but didn't really see him. She ran a hand through her hair. “I'm sorry, we'll just have to talk while she cries, 'less you want to wait on this. I thought the bear would turn the trick.”

String looked at David. “She is the artist of the stairs.”

He nodded. It was the outside wall that drew him.

She had painted a large bay window, where the architect had committed the sin of not having one. Curtains billowed, framing a view of a river, tug boat moving in the ripples. David walked across the room, drawn by the glint of sunlight on water. It was good. Very good. Almost, he had been fooled.

A hole had been punched through the yellow plasticine beneath the window—all the way through the mortar to the outside. It was a small opening, no more than three inches across and two inches high. A small piece of white lace was tacked across the top—the closest Annie Trey came to a real window.

David felt tired. It was the little things people did that sometimes broke his heart.

“Maybe we should come back at a better time,” Mel said.

String slid sideways toward the baby. “But what of the pouchling? We cannot just leave to the tears.” He moved back and forth on his bottom fringe. “Is this pouchling in need of nourishment?”

Annie patted the baby's back. “I tried to give her a bottle just a minute ago, and she throw'd it acrost the room. Come on, sweetie, come on, baby. Hush now. Got Fuzzy Bear, see?”

Jenny closed her eyes and the sobs stopped. She hiccupped, then made a little snore. David and Mel took a deep breath.

Annie held a finger to her lips and headed for the bedroom. The baby woke up coughing before she made it across the room.

Mel looked at David. “Let's go and leave this woman in peace.”

String waved a fin. “There is not the peace here, Detective Mel.”

“Yeah, but—”

Annie Trey had tears in her eyes. “Please, Jenny. Hush, baby.”

David wondered how she'd made it with two. One of them died, he reminded himself.

He held out his arms. “You mind?”

She handed him the baby but hovered close, waiting to snatch her back. “She's a good baby, she's just feeling real bad.”

“She had cough medicine in a while?” David asked.

Annie nodded. “Don't get another dose for at least two hours.”

David settled into the rocking chair. Jenny twisted sideways, whimpered. He tucked Fuzzy Bear into the crook of his arm and the little girl laid her head wearily on the bear's tummy. David took the thin cotton blanket tangled in the chubby little legs and put it on top of the child's head, covering both temples.

“You forget which end is up?” Mel said.

David began to rock gently. Jenny watched him, heavy-eyed and cautious. He smiled at her, rocking. The child snuggled deeper into his arms. The coughing stopped. The baby's eyes closed. She hiccupped twice, and was asleep.

“Experienced father,” Mel said.

Annie gave David a wary half smile.

“Isss the magic touch,” from String.

David shrugged. It was a trick he had learned from his father, a trick that always worked with his girls when they were coughing and could not sleep. He stood up and headed for the bedroom. The room was tiny and held a white crib, a wicker changing table, and an empty bassinet.

A mobile had been painted on the wall over the crib. One had been started by the bassinet, then left unfinished. A new picture had been painted where the mobile left off. Smaller, darker, fresh paint.

David settled the child into the crib, keeping the blanket over her head and off her face. He tucked the bear in next to her. The picture caught his attention again, held him.

It showed a huge tree, old, decaying, flanked by smaller, younger trees, leaves turquoise under white light. An orange, red-tinged flame leapt up the center of the tree, crisping the edges of the bark, shattering the serenity of the forest.

David heard a noise, saw Annie Trey standing in the doorway, watching him. She went behind him to the crib, shifting the blanket to her own specifications—typical mother, that. She herded him out, motioning for him to reclaim the rocking chair, while she sat cross-legged on the floor.

She settled heavily, shoulders drooping. “What was it y'all wanted to know?”

David felt guilty, keeping this child-mother up. “I'd like you to tell me everything you remember about the night Luke Cochran disappeared.”

Annie Trey nodded and chewed her lip.

David watched her with pain and pleasure, thinking she reminded him of Teddy. Not in looks—Teddy was pretty and wise, her voice pitched low but full of fun. And Teddy had an aura of energy, like a puppy—you never expected her to sit still. Annie Trey was exhausted, perfectly willing to sit if she had the chance. She moved differently, slower, almost hesitantly.

David had not spoken to Teddy in months. Best not. Hearing her voice would eat up the distance he was barely managing, leaving him raw again, starting from scratch.

But they were both from the South, Teddy and Annie Trey, and there was more to their similarity than the accent. Maybe it was the air they both had of having their backs to the wall.

Mel settled back against the couch, eyes half closed. “Sure you're up for this?” he asked.

Annie nodded, chin sharp. She drew her legs up, elbows on knees.

“Go back to the night you made the call, the night Luke disappeared. Start at the beginning. What were you doing?”

“I was drinking iced tea. It was real hot, real humid. And Jenny had just started in with this cold, been up and fussy all day, wouldn't go down for her nap. I was supposed to meet Luke and that forensic lady. Ms. Miriam Kellog.”

David turned and looked at Mel, who was nodding. Miriam? Mel did not seem surprised.

“Why were you meeting Miriam?”

Annie looked at the floor. David slid forward in the rocking chair, and it tipped forward as he strained to catch Annie's soft monotone.

“She was doing a … tests, and all of that. On my baby, Hank.”

David had not heard the baby's name before. It made the child seem more real, and he thought of the empty bassinet in the nursery, by Jenny's little white crib.

Annie's chin drooped to her chest. “They still don't know what he died of.”

All of that, David thought, trying not to imagine the autopsy of an infant.

“She told me even if she couldn't find out for definite, if it was a virus or a bacteria germ, she could at least make sure people knew it wasn't me that did it. It wasn't poison, or nothing like that.” Annie looked up at David. “She was real nice to me. We talked a lot about what might have made Hank sick, and she ran them people over at the hospital pretty hard.”

String moved sideways, shedding scales. “What hospital will this be?”

Annie looked at the Elaki as if she were surprised he could talk. “University Hospital, Meridian Branch. For indigents; you know the one.”

David rubbed his thumb. “Are you saying that Miriam was going to meet Luke the night he disappeared?”

Annie nodded. “We was all supposed to meet, but the baby was sick, so I couldn't go.”

“Did Miriam go?”

She shrugged. “I left a message on her machine before I called Luke. I didn't hear from her but I figured she got it.”

“You haven't heard from Miriam since Luke disappeared?”

“No, sir, I haven't.”

David took a quick look at Mel, saw the lines of weariness and worry, the sag of his shoulders. Making the same connections, most likely. He thought about Caper's suggestion that it was a woman who had been locked in the trunk of Cochran's car. Maybe this was not Luke Cochran in the wrong place at the wrong time, snagged by Mr. Stranger Danger. Maybe this was something else. Had Cochran or Miriam been targeted? Cochran had been picked up at his dorm room, so he was the likely target. Maybe Miriam was the one in the wrong place at the wrong time.