Cage of Night (5 page)

CHAPTER EIGHT

The doctor said, "This won't hurt much."

But he lied. It hurt a lot.

Or, correction, they hurt a lot: nine stitches on the side of my head.

I sat in a small white room that smelled of medicine and pain. A nurse stayed with me for a while and then there was a knock on the door and Garrett stood in the doorway.

He just looked at me and shook his head. He waited for the nurse to leave and then he came in and closed the door and said, "You look like shit." He was very aware of his uniform as he moved. He hadn't gotten used to the power it gave him yet. He was still at the self-conscious stage.

"Thank you."

"Your car looks like shit, too."

"It looked like shit, anyway."

"We're charging him with assault and battery."

"The way I feel, you should charge him with murder."

"You're not dead."

"The way I feel, I am."

He got a close glimpse of my face and skull. "He sure worked you over."

"He sure did."

"He won't talk to us. His old man's got a lawyer at the jail."

I happened to be staring right at his face when he said it. "It was about the girl, wasn't it? Cindy Brasher."

His whole face changed and something happened to his voice, too. It got a half octave higher, like a kid's.

He'd met Cindy and been properly smitten.

"You talk to her?" I said.

"Yeah. For about half an hour."

"She tell you what happened?"

"Not exactly."

"She was running from him."

"Oh?"

He seemed surprised. I wondered why Cindy hadn't told him.

"She just said you took her for a ride and he got mad and followed you."

I decided not to tell him anything more than Cindy had. "Yeah, that was pretty much what happened."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing else. Why?"

"I don't know. I just got the feeling she wasn't telling me everything. I had a lot of questions I wanted to ask her."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Mostly about Myles."

"He in some kind of trouble?"

"Could be."

I laughed, but when I did the stitches pulled and shot pain arcing across the top of my skull.

"You've had a big night," I said.

"Yeah. My first."

"Busting a football hero."

"Lot of people're going to be pissed about that. They play their last game tomorrow."

It wasn't a good idea to bust their star the night before the game.

"I guess he should've thought of that," I said.

He smiled. "You should've seen him when he recognized me. I used to sweep out the mall at night, remember? He used to hang around the sports shop out there when he was a freshman. He always looked at me like I was something he scraped off his shoes. I remember one night he grabbed a paperback from my back pocket and started tossin' it back and forth like a football with this other jock. I got so mad I grabbed him by his shirt and accidentally tore it. He really beat the crap out of me. Not like you, I mean not any stitches or anything, but he really nailed me. When he was being booked tonight, he finally figured out who I was. This little computer nerd he used to push around out at the mall. He couldn't believe it."

I touched my aching head. "Maybe it was worth it."

"Maybe what was worth it?"

"Getting the crap kicked out of me."

"Yeah?"

"She wants to start going out with me."

He was stunned. No doubt about it. "The girl?"

"Right. Cindy."

"Go out with you?"

I was grinning. "Can you believe it? But that's what she said."

"God."

I wasn't sure what I was seeing or hearing at first, but then I realized he was jealous. He really had been smitten. Apparently he had his dreams of taking her out himself. She had just turned eighteen, and was perfectly legal even if she did have a semester to go before graduating high school.

"That's great," he said, hut obviously didn't mean it.

I was still curious about something he'd said earlier. "So what kind of other trouble is Myles in?"

"I really can't talk about it. Just an idea of my own I've had. Haven't even told the Chief about it."

I felt sorry for him, then.

He was all puffed up in his uniform tonight, and he'd met the kind of girl dweebs like us always dreamed about and tried so uselessly to possess, and then I went and spoiled it for him.

"I rented the second Conan movie the other night," I said. "I think I like it better than the first one. You know, where Arnold gets drunk and loses the girl he's supposed to be guarding. It's really funny."

"Yeah," he said. But he wasn't listening. I had the sense he was thinking about Cindy.

A knock.

He went to the door and opened it. I couldn't see who was there but I saw his whole body tense and then he said, "Come in."

She'd changed into a white sweater and a blue jacket styled like a Navy pea jacket. Her hair was combed straight back, almost like a mane, and the deep red natural color of her lips made me want to kiss her.

She came right over to me and picked up my hand and gave it a squeeze and then leaned in and carefully gave me a kiss on the cheek.

"You're going to be fine," she said.

"That's what I hear."

"He's such an asshole. Pardon my French."

"I guess I couldn't disagree with you there."

"It's all my fault."

"Don't be ridiculous."

"It really is, and you know it."

"God, Cindy, he just needed to explode and he picked whoever was around. It's his fault, not anybody else's."

"Well, I called your parents and apologized, anyway. Your dad said he'd come down and get you, but I said I'd give you a ride home."

I felt that old flattery again.

Girl like Cindy Brasher offering to give me a ride home. And in front of a witness.

I knew it probably made Garrett jealous and angry to hear all this but I didn't care. In a mean way, in fact, I probably enjoyed it a little bit. His uniform had made him a big man. Cindy Brasher's interest in me was making me a big man, too. That's the thing I figured out about love a long time ago. It's not how your lover feels about you that matters—it's how your lover makes you feel about yourself that counts.

"Sorry to spoil your fun, Miss Brasher," Garrett said, "but I'm afraid he'll have to ride home with me."

"With you?" she said, sounding genuinely disappointed.

"Afraid so."

"But why?"

"I've still got some questions to ask him. About what happened tonight, I mean."

I saw what he was doing. The pettiness of it was so pathetic it was almost laughable. Revenge of the Conan Readers.

She looked angry.

I took her hand. "I'll call you tomorrow," I said. She continued to glare at Garrett. "No, you won't," she said. "I'll call you. As soon as I get up."

She gave me another cautious kiss on the cheek, scowled again at Garrett, and left.

The squad car smelled of puke and disinfectant and cold, cold night. Cops hauled a lot of drunks.

After he pulled out of the hospital parking lot, Garrett said, "You going to press charges?"

"Sure. Why wouldn't I?"

'"For the good of the cause' as the Mayor put it to me.

"You're shitting me. The Mayor doesn't want me to press charges?"

"That's the idea he gave me."

"Well, fuck him."

He looked over at me solemnly. "What if I told you that I was going to nail him on a couple of charges a lot worse than assault and battery?"

"A lot worse?"

"Uh-huh."

"Man, you just started working tonight. How could you have anything on him?"

"Yeah, but I've been following some things very closely. That's one thing they taught us at the Academy. To watch things that don't seem to be related."

"Like what?"

He didn't say anything for a time. Just drove. His uniform gave him the right to be mysterious.

The mercury vapor lights made the glowing snow purple. No other cars were on the street. The town looked doomed.

"You been following the robberies?"

"What robberies?" I said.

"Eight convenience stores in little towns all within fifteen miles east and west of here."

"Guess not." Of course not. Why would I follow anything like that?

The radio squawked. He picked it up and checked in and then ten-foured.

He looked over at me and grinned. "I do that shit pretty good, don't I?"

"Yeah, Conan couldn't have done it any better."

He laughed. "That'd make a great movie. You know, fish-out-of-water. Conan gets transported forward in time and is a cop."

It really was a pretty funny idea.

Then, "Three weeks ago, in one of the robberies, two store clerks got murdered."

"That's right. I forgot about that." Then, realizing his implication, I said, "God, you think Myles had something to do with that?"

"Maybe. But if you tell anybody, I'll deny I said it."

"Why would he rob convenience stores? His old man's rich and he's a football hero."

"Have some fun, maybe. Who knows?"

"Anyway, how could you tie him to it?"

"Hamstring."

"Huh?"

He shook his head. "Maybe I'll explain someday."

He pulled up in front of my house. All the lights were on. Mom and Dad and Josh would be waiting up. Nervously.

Just as I was getting out of the car, I said, "You could've let her drive me home."

"I know. But I figure the less time she spends with you, the better my chances are."

At least he was finally being honest about it.

"Man, who would've thought that two comic book nerds like us would be going after the same beautiful girl?"

I suppose I felt sorry for him again. At the moment I felt that Cindy was completely mine. I could afford to joke with him.

"Too bad she doesn't have a twin," he said, and then put the car into gear.

"Yeah," I said, "too bad."

And then I closed the door.

And then he was gone.

Richard Mitchell, KNAX-TV:

"Another problem they had with the last execution here at the prison was that one member of the execution team snuck in a tiny camera to the death chamber and secretly snapped pictures of the prisoner while he was dying. He then sold the photos to one of the tabloid TV shows for a lot of money. So tonight, before the execution team enters the chamber, every member is going to be searched. The warden doesn't want a repeat of last time."

Tape 21-D, August 14. Interview between Attorney Risa Wiggins and her client in the Clark County Jail.

A: The alien was controlling your mind?

C: Absolutely.

A: Tell me about the headaches again.

C: You mean the ones I got right before it would take control of me again?

A: Yes.

C: Well, I'd see it for what it was. I'd have these blinding pains in my head and then I'd see the alien, what it really looked like, I mean. It was horrifying.

A: You do admit that you took LSD a few times several years ago?

C: Yes.

A: Could all of this have been some kind of flashback?

C: No way, no.

CHAPTER NINE

It was sort of like being sick when you were a little kid. Everybody was extra nice to you.

I spent the next morning sitting in the living room watching
Repo Man
, one of my favorite science fiction movies, and sipping the honey-laced tea my mom made for me.

Josh came home for lunch from school, something he didn't do very often. He brought me a paperback he thought I might like. Josh didn't know anything about science fiction but he had heard the name Heinlein.
The Door Into Summer
, the book he'd bought me, just happened to be one I hadn't read in a long time. It was a great book. I hated to call anything "sweet" but that's just what the book was.

By now, the headache was pretty much gone. The stitches still hurt, and I was moving pretty slowly, but I felt much better than I had when Garrett dropped me off last night.

Dad came home for lunch, too.

He handed me an envelope. Inside was a check for twenty-five dollars.

"You don't need to do this," I said. My parents weren't exactly rich.

"I should've done a lot more when you were a little kid."

"You sure?"

"Sure I'm sure." He smiled. "Spend it on that Brasher girl."

"Thanks, Dad."

Josh spent a few minutes with me before he left.

"You're the big news at school."

"I am?" I said.

"Sure. You broke Cindy and Myles up for one thing."

"They were already breaking up."

"Yeah, but you look like a heartbreaker."

"I'm not even sure what a 'heartbreaker' is."

He grinned. "A heartbreaker is a stud."

"Yeah, that's me all right. A stud."

"And people are saying that it's also very cool that you're not pressing charges."

"I'm not?"

"Judge Sweeney will arraign him on Monday for the traffic violations, but will let him play today since you're not pressing charges. People're saying it's cool that you put the school's interest before your own. Those are the exact words our esteemed class president said to me. 'It's cool that your brother is putting the school's interest before his own.' Then he said something else but I probably better not tell you what that was."

"Now you have you tell me what it was."

He smiled. He loved baiting me. Gave him a sense of power. Picking on me that way.

"He said, 'You know, it's funny. I guess I always thought your brother was sort of a dip-shit, but I guess I was wrong about him.'"

I suppose it should have hurt my feelings but I laughed. There was an innocence about it that was funny.

"Tell him I still am a dip-shit."

"Yeah," Josh said, rallying to my defense, "but you're not as big a dip-shit as you
used
to be."

"Boy, that's comforting to know."

"Anyway, thanks for not pressing charges. We couldn't win the game if Myles didn't play."

I hadn't officially been asked to press charges anyway, but I figured I may as well play the forgiving hero. Now that I wasn't as big a dip-shit as I used to be, I had to start doing noble stuff like that.

Around one, the house settled down again, Josh and Dad back to school and work respectively, Mom off for her Friday afternoon grocery shopping.

I watched an episode of
Land of the Giants
on the Sci-Fi channel. The first act was so bad it was good, but the second act was so bad it was just plain awful. I switched over to the beginning of
High Plains Drifter
, which is just about my favorite western because of the fantasy element, and I stayed with it through the first thirty-six killings, and then I kind of dozed off, I guess. They'd given me some extra pain medication to take home last night. The stuff made me groggy.

At first, I thought the phone was part of the dream I was having. In the dream, I was getting this call I knew to be urgent but every time I reached out to pick up the receiver, the phone moved away from me, further and further away until I knew I'd never be able to reach it, even though it was like this life-and-death call.

Then I woke up and grabbed the phone in reality.

"Hello."

"You fucking go out with her, man, I'm going to fucking kill you. You fucking understand me?"

Apparently he'd been told to use "fucking" in every sentence he spoke today.

I hung up.

He called back.

"Last night was just the warm-up, asshole."

"I'm not pressing charges, jerk-off. I'm doing you a favor."

"I don't give a shit if you press charges or not. All I give a shit about is Cindy."

"That's between you two."

"I want you to leave her alone."

I was scared, then I was angry, then, and this kind of surprised me, I was a little bit sad. For Myles, I mean. He was a bully and all but he was in great pain right now—in his way, I guessed he probably did love Cindy—and he didn't know what to do with it. All he could do was get angry, but he sensed that wouldn't get Cindy back. And that just made him angrier than ever. If that makes sense.

"Maybe you could try being nice to Cindy," I said.

"Don't give me any of your faggot bullshit, Spencer."

"I'm going to hang up, Myles. And I don't want you to call me any more. All right?"

"You faggot, you see her one more time and I'll kill you. You fucking understand me?"

He was the one who hung up.