Low Red Moon (40 page)

“You said she
thinks
she’s a werewolf. You didn’t say—”

“I ain’t said jack shit, because there isn’t any point.”

“They have a profile, from one of their people at Quantico.”

“And it’s totally worthless,” Deacon says, reaching for a paper towel from the dispenser on the wall. “They’re probably looking for a man, white, let’s say someone between twenty-five and thirty-five, average appearance, below-average IQ—”

“But you’ve already told them the killer’s a woman. You’ve given them her name.”

“And how do you think that stacks up against their computers and some BSU think-tank nerd with a PhD? Do you know how rare female serial killers are?”

“I have an idea,” Downs says. “But there are precedents. I think they’re starting to believe they’re looking for a woman, or at least a cross-dresser.”

“Oh Jesus,” Deacon laughs and wipes his face with the paper towel, then balls it up, tosses it at a toilet bowl and misses. “So they’re after a transvestite with a pit bull?”

“Deacon, what if you’re
wrong?
What if Chance isn’t dead?”

“I’ve heard enough of this for one day, okay?”

“We have APBs out based on your description of this woman. You said she had yellow eyes. Now, how many people you think have yellow eyes? Sooner or later, someone’s going to spot her.”

“What I see isn’t always true,” Deacon groans and rubs at the back of his neck, the sore tendons there, only wanting the detective to shut up and let him go back to the motel. “How many times do I have to say that? Maybe she only wants to have yellow eyes. Maybe it’s part of some fantasy. Maybe she wears yellow contact lenses whenever she kills people. Maybe she’s a hepatitis carrier—”

“Or maybe she has yellow eyes,” Downs says, and Deacon shakes his head and looks at the floor, the white ceramic tile with flecks of gold.

“Yeah, and maybe she’s a fucking werewolf,” Deacon mumbles.

“Look, man, I don’t care if I gotta go lookin’ for the pope in a goddamn pink bunny suit, as long as we find her and get your wife back in one piece.”

“So what exactly do you want me to say, Downs? You wanted me to touch the wall, so I touched the fucking wall. You wanted me to answer a few questions, so I answered your questions. Now what the hell do you want?”

“The same thing those two assholes from the FBI want. I want you to stop lying and tell me the truth.”

“You’re assuming I know the truth.”

“I’m assuming you know a lot more than you’re telling anyone. For starters, who’s the girl in the hospital?”

“Sadie Jasper?” Deacon asks and kicks at a loose, cracked tile. “Well, her mother calls her Sarah.”

“No, dickhead, the girl named Jane. The one Narcissa Snow attacked out behind your apartment not two hours after you were seen with her at that bar.”

“Oh,” Deacon says. He kicks the tile again and half of it pops out of place and goes sliding across the floor. The empty space it leaves is the color of ripe avocado skin. “
That
girl. Did you try asking her?”

“Yeah. And she’s even less talkative than you.”

“She’s just someone that tried to help,” Deacon says.

“Well, let me tell you something else about her. When she wouldn’t give us a name and we couldn’t find any sort of ID on her, we ran her fingerprints. And we got a match, for a baby girl named Eliza Helen Morrow who was abducted from her home in Connecticut back in 1986. Kinda weird, huh?”

Deacon doesn’t answer, keeps his eyes on the hole left by the missing tile, remembering her thumbs pressed against his open eyes. Remembering the secret, unthinkable things she showed him.

“Turns out, there’s a whole slew of unsolved infant abductions from Connecticut for that year and the next. And a few from Rhode Island and Massachusetts, to boot. So, tell me something, Deacon. When do the coincidences stop being just coincidences?”

“That’s something I’ve been asking myself my whole life,” Deacon says and looks back up at the detective.

“I know it seems like it’s easier to go ahead and give up now than hope she’s still alive somewhere. I
know
that, Deacon.”

The restroom door opens, and a very short man with a toupee and a yellow tie stands staring at them for a moment.

“Am I interrupting something?” he asks.

“Can I talk to her?” Deacon asks Downs. “To Jane, I mean.”

“You can try,” Downs replies.

“Without any cops around?”

Downs glances thoughtfully at the man in the toupee. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says.

“I’m not making any promises,” Deacon tells him.

“Hey guys, you know, I can go downstairs,” the man says, but looks longingly towards the stalls.

“No,” Downs says. “I think we’re finished for now. Be my guest,” and then he walks Deacon back down the hall to the elevator.

Another hospital, this one only a few city blocks south of the great gray Federal Building, over the railroad tracks and past a squalid wasteland of vacant lots and fast-food drive-thrus. Deacon stops at a package store on the way and buys two bottles of Jack Daniel’s and a fifth of scotch, three packs of cigarettes, puts it all on one of his credit cards. Enough to last a day or two, maybe even enough to beat this headache, and he drinks half of one of the bottles of Jack in the parking deck of Cooper Greene Hospital before he can find the nerve he needs to get out of Chance’s Impala and go inside. Downs promised that he wouldn’t have any trouble seeing her, but there would be a guard, because she’s being held in protective custody.

Another hospital and another elevator, and Deacon’s beginning to think he’s going to spend the rest of his life riding goddamn elevators. At least this one doesn’t buzz or ding to count off the floors, though the gears and cables creak and groan as it hauls him up. There’s an old black man in the elevator with him who smells of menthol and wintergreen; the man smiles at Deacon and keeps shifting his dentures around in his mouth.

“You here to see your wife?” the old man asks around his loose uppers.

“No sir,” Deacon says uncomfortably, watching as the round white buttons with black numerals printed on them light up, one after the next. “I’m not. I’m here to see a friend.”

“I’m here to see my wife,” the old man replies. “She’s got a bad heart. Doctors keep telling us she’s gonna die any day, but she keeps not dying. Swears she ain’t gonna die till Judgment Day.”

“Oh,” Deacon says, because he doesn’t know what else to say and doesn’t want to say anything at all.

“Yeah, she keeps on sending money to one of them TV preachers, but you ask me, I don’t think she’ll make it that long.”

Then the button with a 5 printed on it lights up and the elevator doors open.

“My floor,” Deacon says. “Hope your wife feels better soon.”

“She always does,” the old man replies. “You watch yourself, boy. You keep hitting the bottle like that, and they’ll stick you in one of these rooms, sooner or later. Mark my word.”

“I’ll do that,” Deacon says, as the silver doors shudder and then slide slowly shut again, taking the old man away. Deacon turns around and there’s a very small waiting area, just a few chairs and a table buried under old magazines, a potted plant that looks wilted even though it isn’t real, artificial rhododendron leaves covered with a thick veneer of dust. He has the room number written on the back of the matchbook from The Plaza—Room 534—and he tries not to make eye contact with anyone at the nurses’ station. There’s a plastic jack-o’-lantern, orange and black and grinning like a skull, filled with candy, sitting on the counter.

“Can I help you?” one of the nurses asks him anyway, and Deacon tells him he’s looking for Room 534. The man in mint-green scrubs consults a clipboard, then a computer monitor. “That’s our Jane Doe,” he says. “She’s not allowed visitors. Police orders.”

“I have permission,” Deacon says uncertainly, wondering if the call’s come through, if maybe Agent Gorman decided it wasn’t such a good idea. “Detective Downs was supposed to call.”

“Ah, wait a sec,” the nurse says and pulls a yellow Post-it note off the computer monitor. “Here we go. Are you Deacon Slivey?”

“Silvey,” Deacon corrects him. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Just take the hall on the left, turn at the first right, and you’ll have to check in with Officer Merrill.”

“Thanks,” Deacon says and then starts walking before the nurse decides that he’s not Deacon Slivey after all. Down the hall, and he turns at the first right, stopping outside the room with #534 on the door and a bald policeman sitting in a chair that’s much too small for him, reading a copy of
Field & Stream
.

“Detective Downs sent me,” he says, feeling like an idiot, and the cop stops reading and eyes him suspiciously.

“You don’t say?” the cop asks, closing his magazine; there’s a photograph of a wild tom turkey on the cover. “You that Deacon Slivey fellow?”

“Silvey,” Deacon says. “Deacon Silvey.”

“You got some kind of ID on you, Mr. Silvey?”

“Just my driver’s license. Will that do?”

“Not if you don’t show it to me, it won’t,” the cop says, so Deacon takes out his wallet and finds his license, hands it to the policeman who looks at it a moment and then looks at Deacon again.

“You drunk, Mr. Silvey? You smell like you’ve been drinking.”

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” the cop replies, handing back Deacon’s license. “Agent Broom said you might be, that’s all. Sorry as hell about your wife.”

“Yeah,” Deacon says, and then the cop frisks him before opening the door.

“Okay, you’re clean. You got thirty minutes with her, that’s all. I’ll be right out here if you need anything.”

“I feel safer already.”

“Hey, man, joke all you want. But that’s a spooky little lady in there. Damn good at gin, too.”

“You’ve been playing cards with her?”

The cop opens his magazine and goes back to reading. “It was her idea,” he says. “Thirty minutes, don’t forget.”

“Don’t worry,” Deacon says and goes in, shutting the door behind him, half expecting the bald cop to open it again, but he doesn’t. The girl named Jane is sitting in a wheelchair near the window, staring at him. Either she’s wearing the same raggedy clothes as the last time he saw her, or different raggedy clothes that look exactly the same as the others.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come,” she says. She’s wearing dark wraparound sunglasses, and there’s a big white bandage on her forehead. “I thought maybe they weren’t going to let you in.”

The room is a little smaller than Sadie’s and a lot dingier. There are no flowers or get-well cards, and the curtains are drawn. The little television bolted to the wall is tuned to MSNBC, but the sound’s muted and nothing comes from the anchorwoman’s lips when they move.

“You knew I was coming?” he asks her; she nods her head and rolls the wheelchair a few feet closer to him.

“I knew you’d try, sooner or later. Where else would you go?”

“I wasn’t planning on coming,” Deacon says. “I didn’t really see any point.”

“What changed your mind?”

“Maybe I haven’t changed my mind, Jane,” he answers and sits down on the bed because his head hurts too much to stand any longer. “Maybe I’m just curious. So, what’s the damage?” and he points at the bandage on her head.

“Just a mild concussion. I lost a tooth, too. Some scrapes and bruises, a few stitches. Your wife’s friend probably saved my life by opening the garage door when she did.”

“Lucky her,” Deacon says. “They told you she’s dead, right?”

“Yeah, they told me. But I saw it happen. There wasn’t anything I could do to stop it. Scarborough’s dead, too, isn’t he?”

Deacon holds an index finger to his lips and nods towards the door, towards the cop and his
Field & Stream
.

“That’s okay, Deacon. I knew he was. I felt it.”

“What about Chance? Have you felt anything about her lately?”

Jane takes off her sunglasses and squints at Deacon. “The light hurts my eyes,” she says.

“The concussion.”

“Yeah. It’ll pass. Are you asking me if Chance is dead?”

Deacon stares at her a moment, weighing the consequences of his reply, of any reply, wondering how much less pain there will be if he walks out of the hospital room right now and keeps walking. No answers, no hope, no disappointment, no distance left to fall because he’s already found the bottom.

“We shouldn’t have lied to you,” she says. “I could tell you it was all Scarborough’s idea, but there’s no reason for you to believe me, is there?”

“Lied to me? When’d you lie to me?” Deacon asks before he thinks better of it.

“Scarborough never intended to protect your wife,” she says. “I’m not sure he ever even intended to try to kill Narcissa.”

“Then what the fuck were we doing in that house?”

“You might want to lower your voice,” Jane says, barely speaking above a whisper now. “I’ve discovered that our friend in the hall has very keen ears.”