Low Red Moon (22 page)

“Why do you keep calling me that?” she asks, more blood spilling from her lips, and Sadie realizes that she’s bitten her tongue, so maybe that’s where the blood on the floor came from. The woman’s mouth is pressed close to her face now, her hot breath like steam off summer roadkill, and her teeth nip playfully at the rim of Sadie’s left ear.

“Come on, Sadie. Don’t spoil the moment. You know exactly how this story goes, don’t you? You know
all
the stories.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“At last I find you, you old sinner,” the woman says. “I’ve been looking for such a
very
long time.”

“You’re fucking crazy,” Sadie says, spits out a mouthful of blood, and the woman smacks her head against the floor again.

“
No,”
she growls. “It’s not half that simple, Little Red Cap. It isn’t that simple at all.”

The ballooning pain in Sadie’s head and the sweet rot clinging to the mad woman’s breath, the one as unreal as the other, and now even the fairies have deserted her, and there’s no light left in the world but a few reluctant shafts filtered through the apartment windows.

“The police are coming,” Sadie says again, but her voice sounds weak, slurred, very far away, and she doesn’t even convince herself.

“Then we’ll have to hurry, won’t we,” the woman replies, and she drags Sadie across the kitchen floor, drags her all the way to the little radiator beneath the windowsill. Sadie lies still at her feet, listening for sirens that aren’t coming, staring up at the tall blonde woman. Her eyes flash gold and scarlet, wild animal eyes, but Sadie knows that isn’t real, either. The woman reaches into her leather blazer and takes out a shiny pair of handcuffs.

“Do you think Deacon will ever appreciate what you did?” she asks. “Do you think he’ll even understand? Perhaps I’ll tell him for you, before I cut his throat.”

“Deacon,” Sadie whispers, her tongue too sore now to talk any louder. “He saw you in his dreams. He saw you—”

“He saw what I let him see. That’s all, Little Red Cap.”

“He saw
you,
bitch,” and then the woman snaps one of the cuffs shut around Sadie’s left wrist, the other around the radiator pipe. The steel cuff isn’t cold, and such a small surprise brings Sadie back to herself a little. She blinks, and now the woman is holding a long, sharp knife, stiletto glint, and Sadie wonders where the hell that came from.

“Magic,” she mumbles, and the woman kneels beside her.

“Maybe,” she says. “My father was a cheap magician, but
his
father, his father was a wizard. Isn’t that what you’ve been looking for all along, just a shred of magic in the world?”

“Hey!” a man shouts from the other room, from the apartment door. “What the hell’s going on in there! I want you to know I already called the goddamned police!”

“A friend of yours? You know who that is, Little Red Cap?” the woman asks. Sadie shakes her head no, but it’s old Mr. Farris from down the hall, Mr. Farris who yells at her in the hallway about her stereo and the sound of her typewriter in the middle of the night.

“Well, you stay put, child. I’ll be right back, I promise,” and the woman stands up. “Just a minute, please,” she shouts back at Mr. Farris and leaves Sadie alone in the kitchen. A few seconds later, and the old man starts yelling about the police again.

Sadie gets to her knees, dizzy and sick to her stomach, but she braces herself against the counter; she can just reach the stove, and she twists the control knobs for the four burners and the big one for the oven. Immediately, there’s the hiss of escaping gas, the smell that’s always reminded her of boiling turnip greens, and Sadie opens the silverware drawer and pulls out a handful of forks and spoons.

“I ain’t afraid to use this,” Mr. Farris says, and she figures he means the duct-taped aluminum baseball bat he takes with him on his afternoon walks, but it could be a gun for all she knows. Sadie has a feeling it could be a fucking howitzer and it still wouldn’t make any difference to the blonde woman.

“I fought in Korea, and I ain’t afraid to use this.”

“Thank you,” Sadie whispers to whoever or whatever might be listening and opens the cabinet door beside the stove. There’s an aerosol can of Lysol disinfectant and she takes it out, so dizzy she has to stop and lean against the counter, wasting precious seconds, until the kitchen decides to quit spinning. The room on a carnival Tilt-A-Whirl, her skull trying to spin the other way round, and “I mean it, lady!” Mr. Farris shouts.

Sadie opens the microwave oven and dumps all the silverware and the can of Lysol inside, shuts the door and presses the button marked
QUICK ON
. The green LED display sets itself to
0
and she pauses, looks from the window to the kitchen doorway, and
Maybe if I scream,
she thinks.
Maybe he does have a gun, and if I scream now—

But then a shocked and gurgling sound like someone strangling, and so she knows that the blonde woman has used her knife, has cut the old man’s throat. “I’m sorry, Mr. Farris,” she whispers and presses
9
on the microwave’s touch pad. The oven hums and whirs suddenly to life, and Sadie pulls herself to the window, up over the radiator and onto the narrow sill. Already sparks are flying about inside the microwave, and she doesn’t stop to think about how far it is down to the ground, or her wrist snapped and torn by her own weight and the steel cuff. No more time left for thought, not if she wants to live, and Sadie Jasper has never known how badly she wants to live until this moment.

And then the blonde woman is back, standing there in the doorway, sniffing the poisonous air like a dog, revelation bright in her furious golden eyes, and Sadie tumbles backwards out the window as the kitchen is swallowed in a blinding cascade of roiling blue flame.

S
unday, 9:30
A.M
., and Chance is sitting alone at the little table in the nursery, sipping Red Zinger tea from a cracked coffee cup that she keeps meaning to throw out. But it was her grandfather’s, his plain white cup with the glaze worn away to rough ceramic at the handle and most of the way around the rim, and so it always winds up back in the cabinet. Too little of him left, now that the house is gone, and Chance sets the cup down on a saucer and listens to the rainy sounds of Deacon taking a shower. Most of Saturday morning spent working on the nursery, Chance watching more than actually doing anything, watching while Deacon finished with the wallpaper border she’d ordered from a catalog—a dinosaur alphabet, crude stone letters and cute cartoon dinosaurs.
A
for
Ankylosaurus, B
for
Brontosaurus,
and he called her a geek when she complained that the proper name for
Brontosaurus
was
Apatosaurus
and everyone ought to know that by now.

Pretending their world was safe and sane and normal, and then the phone rang and his hands were full, so she went to the bedroom and answered it. The girl named Sadie, one of his old drinking buddies,
Hello, can I please talk to Deacon,
and Chance almost hung up on her. As though pretending were enough to keep the bad things at bay, when she’s always known better.

“I asked her to do me a favor, that’s all,” Deacon said when they were finished talking. “I’ll be back in half an hour.” He wiped his hands on his jeans and reached for his jacket hanging on the bedpost.

“What if I said no?” Chance asked, and he shook his head and looked at the floor.

“I’d have to go anyway.”

“This is about the guy at the door, isn’t it? The shit with the cops?”

“Thirty minutes, I swear,” he said, and Chance didn’t say anything else, but she sat on the bed watching the alarm clock on the dresser until he came back. Forty-five minutes later, not thirty, but she couldn’t see any point in complaining about the difference. He apologized, not for being late, but for going, for Sadie’s call, for everything, and went back to the nursery to finish the border.

C
is for
Coelophysis
.

Chance sips her hot crimson tea and stares through the wooden bars of the cradle, her eyes tracing the soft ridges and valleys in a white flannel blanket. In the bathroom, Deacon turns off the water, and she can hear his heavy, wet footsteps on the tile floor. The brief hiss of his spray-on deodorant, and then the sound of a door opening, and Chance turns to see him standing naked in the hallway, still rubbing at his hair with a towel. Wisps of steam rise from his lean shoulders, his body still so skinny that she can count the ribs, skinny but hard, strong despite the abuse it’s endured over the years.

“You’re dripping all over the floor,” she says.

“Did you call Alice?”

“No, I didn’t,” she replies. “Now wipe that up. I’ll slip and break my neck.”

“Are you
going
to call her? I have to leave soon.”

“I called Dr. Capuzzo’s office and rescheduled for tomorrow.”

Deacon stops drying his hair and stands there dripping and frowning at her.

“Why the hell’d you do that?”

“Because,” she says, “I’m going with you today.”

He rubs his rough, unshaven cheeks and sighs, stoops to wipe up the water.

“Honey, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. A police station isn’t exactly the ideal place for pregnant women.”

Chance takes another drink of her tea and shrugs. “Be that as it may, I’m still going with you. And we’re not going to have an argument about it.”

Deacon sits down, the wet towel draped across one knee, his bare ass on the varnished wood, and he’s looking back at her with that familiar, weary expression that she knows means he isn’t up to whatever it would take to make her change her mind.

“This is stupid,” he says. “You know that, right?”

“I want to know what’s happening. I
need
to know what’s happening.”

“I already told you—”

“
No,
Deke,” she says, truly sorry that she sounds angry, but not sorry enough that she doesn’t finish what she’s started. “You’ve only told me what you thought I’d believe, or what you thought wouldn’t piss me off. You haven’t told me what you think is
really
going on.”

“That’s because I don’t know what’s really going on.”

“But you know a lot more than you’re telling me.”

“Yeah,” Deacon says, “I do,” and then he rubs his cheeks again. “Shit, I forgot to shave.”

“I wasn’t brought up to believe in ESP. Hell, sometimes it seems like I wasn’t even raised to believe in card tricks.”

Deacon raises an eyebrow and coughs out the stale crust of a laugh. “Or God. Or the Easter Bunny. Or Santa Claus—”

“I did too believe in Santa Claus,” Chance says indignantly. “I believed in him until I was six.”

“No shit? Man, I bet that was a weed up Joe’s ass.”

Chance doesn’t reply, because this isn’t going to degenerate into a fight about her grandparents, that old bone already chewed down to the marrow ages and ages ago. She goes to take another sip of her Red Zinger, but the cup is empty, just a stain and a few bits of tea leaves stranded at the sticky bottom.

“I’m scared, Deacon,” she says, finally. “I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life.”

“And now you’re starting to think that not knowing is worse than knowing, even if you don’t believe?”

“Something like that,” she says and dabs at the tea leaves with an index finger.

“But it doesn’t always work that way, Chance. You need to understand that. Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.”

“No, I absolutely can’t accept that. I can believe in a whole hell full of ghosts and goblins,
or
a heaven full of angels, before I can believe I’m better off being ignorant about
anything.
”

Deacon gets up off the floor, the wet towel slung around his neck, and he glances towards the bedroom door.

“I don’t suppose I have to tell you about trying to put genies back into bottles, do I?” he asks, and she shakes her head.

“That’s why you went to see this Sadie girl, isn’t it? Because you can’t talk to me, but she’ll always listen, no matter how crazy it sounds.”

“She took me to see a ghost once,” Deacon says. “Something like that sort of breaks the ice about shit like this.”

“I have to know,” she tells him, and Deacon silently stares at her a moment, the indecision plain to see in his green eyes, and a small voice somewhere inside Chance insisting that maybe she doesn’t want to know these secrets, after all, doesn’t want Deacon to start telling her all the things he’s told Sadie Jasper and the police, the things the man named Scarborough Pentecost has told him. But the fresh memories of blood that wasn’t there as a counterpoint, blood dripping from her forehead into a rest-stop sink, the blood from the fiberglass maw of the
Megalopseudosuchus,
and she thinks nothing can ever be as terrible as the fear that she’s losing her mind.

“Well, hang on a second,” Deacon says and disappears into the bedroom. She can hear him rummaging about in the closet, and when he returns, he’s wearing a pair of blue-and-green plaid boxer shorts and carrying a manila envelope. “I have to get dressed. If you’re serious, look at what’s in here, and then we’ll talk on the way to the station. But, Chance, if you’re
not
serious, I can get through this mess without dragging you any deeper into it. And when it’s over, we can go right back to the way things were before.”

“No, we can’t,” she says, turning the envelope over in her hands. There’s a coffee stain on one side. “Something’s changed, Deacon, something
inside
me has changed, and I don’t think it’s ever going to be the same again. Are you going to shave?”

“I don’t think it matters.”

“No, I don’t guess it does.”

“I
will
protect you and the baby, Chance. Ain’t nothing or nobody getting close to you again, not as long as I’m alive and breathing. Maybe you do need to know what this is all about, but I need you to believe that I can take care of you.”

“I’m trying,” she says. “I promise, I am,” and opens the envelope, dumps the photographs and photocopied pages out onto the table beside her empty teacup.

“You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do,” she says, and in a moment Deacon gives up and goes back to the bedroom to finish getting dressed, and Chance picks up a black-and-white photo of a ramshackle old house in the woods somewhere. And behind her, a sudden shattering sound like breaking glass; she turns quickly, and the window looking out onto the street and the buildings along First Avenue is washed in thick streaks of blood or something that may as well be blood. She takes a deep breath and starts to call for Deacon, a witness to tell her this isn’t all in her mind, but then it’s already gone, and there’s only a nursery window again. Autumn sunshine bright through clear, clean glass, the sky wide and blue above the city, and the baby kicks so hard she gasps.

“Hush,” she says, rubbing her belly. “That really hurt.”

When Chance glances back at the window, there’s a rock dove perched on the sill, watching her with its beady, dark eyes. She watches it too, for the minute or so before it flies away, and then Chance goes back to examining the contents of the envelope.

“It’s good to meet you, Mrs. Silvey,” the detective says and reaches across the clutter on his desk to shake her hand. “But this is a surprise,” he adds. “I was under the impression Deacon would be coming down alone today,” and then Chance catches the confused, what’s-going-on-here expression on his face when he looks at Deacon.

“It’s
Dr.
Silvey,” Chance says and squeezes the detective’s hand as hard as she can.

“Right,” Detective Downs replies, smiling an uncomfortable smile to show off his wide nicotine-stained teeth. “
Dr.
Silvey, it’s nice to meet you.” She releases his hand, and he stares at it a moment, as if maybe he’s counting his fingers to make sure they’re all still there. “Too bad it’s not under more pleasant circumstances.”

The detective’s stuffy office smells like stale cigarettes and staler coffee, the walls painted the lifeless color of oatmeal, and there are too many pieces of furniture crammed into much too small a space: his desk and three chairs, a bookshelf and metal filing cabinet, a coatrack stuffed into one corner. The heat’s blowing from a small vent overhead, and Chance has already started to sweat.

“So, what are you a doctor of, Dr. Silvey?” the detective asks, and then Deacon lays a sheet of paper on the desk in front of him, the address from the manila envelope the girl gave him.

“Yeah, what’s this?”

“That’s the best I can do,” Deacon says. “You need to go to that address this afternoon. I think you’ll find something there that will help you locate the killer.”

“You
think?
Have you been holding out on us, Deacon?”

“It doesn’t always happen right away. I told you that before.”

The detective picks up the piece of paper and leans back in his chair, chews thoughtfully at his thin lower lip while he reads the address printed there aloud. He glances skeptically at Deacon.

“Is that all? An address?”

“Sometimes it’s a whole lot less,” Deacon replies.

“But you didn’t actually
see
the killer? That’s what I’m asking you, Deacon.”

“I didn’t see very much.”

“But you saw something more than this address?”

Chance shifts uncomfortably in the chair, wishing she’d used the restroom before being herded into the detective’s office, wishing someone would turn off the goddamned heat.

“Do you really believe he saw anything at all?” she asks, and the detective shrugs and rocks forward in his chair.

“There wasn’t much,” Deacon says again. “A white man in his forties. He has a tattoo on his back, a swastika.”

“You’re telling me this guy’s some sort of Nazi?”

Deacon takes a very deep breath, like a swimmer before a dive into cold, deep water. “No,” he says. “Not necessarily. The swastika goes back a lot farther than the Nazis. I don’t know what it’s supposed to mean to him. It could have another meaning.”

“Is that all?”

“He wears a Masonic ring, and I think his eyes are blue. Blue or gray.”

“And we’re gonna find him if we go to this address?” Detective Downs asks and taps the sheet of paper.

“That’s not what I said. I’m not sure what you’ll find there, but it’s something important.”

“You never answered my question, Detective,” Chance says.

“Do
you
believe he really sees anything, Dr. Silvey?”