Red House Blues (16 page)

The ugly old house did sort of fascinate
her. As if it were a person, an intelligence, as if the house were
consciously holding captive within its walls the secrets she had
come to unravel. As if it were intentionally withholding them from
her.

Her imagination was clearly careening out of
control. On the face of it, the house had become a kind of focal
point for her frustration and anger. She would have to be careful
of that. It wasn’t healthy. That was the way people went crazy.

Next morning, she deliberately walked to
work up Fir Street past the house. Bathed in clean morning light it
looked sleepy and smaller than it had the previous night. It was
primarily red, something that had been impossible to see under the
yellow illumination of the streetlight. On one side someone had
started to paint it grayish blue but had quit half way up one wall,
so that the blue reached from shaggy bushes at the foundation to
the second floor windows, no further. Maybe they couldn’t locate an
extension ladder. Maybe it was that simple. The blue reminded Suzan
of mildew. The house was obviously old by Northwest standards.
Mid-Victorian, in not the best of taste, built by someone with
little understanding of style.

One length of gutter hung by a nail at a
crazy angle. The front door’s oval window was cracked down the
center and patched with duct tape. A thick pad of green moss furred
the roof. This was a sad, injured house caught in the downward
spiral of a stagnating neighborhood economy. It was shabby but not
particularly malevolent or intimidating. It squatted on its scrap
of land like a hundred other old houses in the vicinity, just a
beat-up building sheltering the usual assortment of impoverished
students and out-of-work artists. No reason at all not to walk
right up and knock. What’s the worst that could happen?

Figuring she would e-mail a few views of the
house to Claire that night, she retrieved the camera from her bag
and took a couple of shots of the front of the house, of the red
and blue siding, and the sagging front porch.

The color was peculiar. It wasn’t barn red,
more a mix of brown brick and redwood. Dried blood. The words
sprung to mind, and though they were accurate the thought unnerved
her. It was a revolting color, leprous with peeling patches. No
wonder someone had decided to paint it blue. Too bad they hadn’t
finished the job.

There was no time just then to drop in on
the occupants. Suzan didn’t want to be late for work. Tia was bound
to think she had been mugged. Her camera stashed once more, she
trudged toward Twenty-third, promising herself she would stop by
after work and this time introduce herself. Introduce herself as
Ann Sullivan, that is, a student doing a paper on the Central
District’s historic houses.

Chapter 14

He set his dripping coffee mug in the dish
drainer next to the chipped porcelain sink and glanced out the
window at the gathering clouds. Not raining yet but it won’t be
long, he thought. Movement from the sidewalk caught his eye. A
blond chick in a green jacket looking up toward the house.

She’s out there again, like she was last
night. A cop? She looks too young to be a cop, but who knows what
kind of losers they hire these days?

Pigs sniffing nonstop since that punk kid
snuffed it - won’t find out who did it hassling his housemates but
pigs are useless. Not as if we knew the kid that well - just one
more punk renting a bed. Even less.

But here was some woman taking an interest.
Ferlin had enough experience with the system to be sure that if she
were law he’d know right off. Could she be private? That was a
possibility. But if so, she was not particularly good at it,
standing out there in plain sight pointing a camera at the
house.

Or she could be a reporter. Plenty of those
fuckers making assholes of themselves chasing ghosts, especially
after Kiki. And when they found the guy they said did her. Media
cockroaches. And that dude writing a biography on that Black kid
who used to hang around. As if he would talk to anybody about that.
As if he knew anything. Maybe this chick’s just some fan.

Should probably tell Alexis. She didn’t like
people snooping around where they didn’t belong. Sent that writer
off empty, telling the dude I was just a crazy old fart who
couldn’t remember anything about those times - telling him I’m
senile from too many bad acid trips in the Sixties. Suits me.
Wouldn’t have told him anything anyway. Especially what he wanted
to know. Best to let the dead stay dead. Makes no difference when
you’re dead. And they’ll all be dead. Or the next best thing.

The chick was walking away up Fir toward
Twenty-third. Maybe she wouldn’t be back and he wouldn’t have to
tell Alexis after all. But he would keep his eyes open for her just
in case. If she comes back Alexis will deal with it as she always
deals. Nobody gets past Alexis.

He heard a toilet flush upstairs. The house
will be waking up now. All but the drummer, who had a gig last
night and probably wouldn’t surface before noon.

Ferlin decided to throw some bacon on to
fry. He wasn’t into that vegetarian shit Alexis was always going on
about. Funny how she freaks at the idea of killing things to eat
them. Life feeds on life, thought Ferlin. Nobody eats rocks. Legs
or leaves, it’s all the same thing. Just as alive. And just as dead
when you put it in your mouth and chew.

He went to the fridge and took out the
package of maple-smoked bacon. At least Alexis doesn’t throw it out
as soon as I buy it. Just hides it in the back where she doesn’t
have to see it.

God, I ache this morning. Getting too old.
Every goddamn joint screaming it’s going to rain. Rain or no rain I
gotta get my sorry ass down to the shop and get Jacob’s Chevy back
on the road. He should have junked that piece of shit years
ago.

Could be I should have been junked years ago
too. Some mornings I don’t know why I’m still in this house, doing
the same crap I’ve always done. ‘Cept everybody has to be someplace
and this is as good as any.

He lined the bacon strips out in the bottom
of the frying pan and turned the burner to medium. Maybe it was
finally time he moved on. Maybe ask Alexis if she wants to buy the
house. He’d cut her a good deal.

* * *

Tony felt like a dog reading Claire’s saved
e-mail. He shouldn’t be doing it. Sure, it didn’t have quite the
sense of violating somebody’s privacy as opening a physical
envelope and reading the folded sheets of a letter. Still ...
Claire would think he was out of line, even if it was his computer
she used. She wasn’t exactly coming forward with any information
lately - sleeping at Suzan’s and just dropping by their house for a
change of clothes and to check her e-mail. Not that he didn’t know
he deserved the deep freeze.

As he suspected most of the entries were
from Suzan. She updated Claire on where she was staying and her job
at the supermarket. Then a name practically leapt off the paper at
him. Kiki Zell. He remembered that name. Not too long ago he’d seen
her murder profiled on cable. Was it “Cold Case Files”? Since
Sean’s death he’d found himself drawn to programs recounting cold
cases solved, as if to reassure himself that it could happen -
someday they’d reopen the case and find the pond scum that ran Sean
down. It’s not over. It will never be over.

And see, they found the guy who killed Zell.
Ten years after her murder they locate a fisherman in Alaska who
just happened to be in Seattle the week Zell was killed. They found
DNA. It was comforting to see the guy in cuffs doing the perp-walk
on the network news. Tony imagined how he’d feel watching Sean’s
killer surrounded by cops and media.

But Sean hadn’t been a rock star. He had
wanted to be, but he hadn’t made it. He hadn’t had the chance.
Anything he had wanted to do with his life was a moot point now.
Only a hand-full of people even cared that he was killed - his
family and a few friends.

Gradually the shock and pain would fade. If
they broke Sean’s case after ten years like they did in Zell’s how
would Tony himself feel by then? Would it be a triumph? Would he
finally feel some sense of relief? Or would he, after a decade,
just think, hey I once knew that guy?

Kiki Zell - something was nagging at him -
something someone said on the program that he just couldn’t quite
remember. What had it been? He closed e-mail, opened Google and
typed in “Kiki Zell”.

It wasn’t going to be as easy as that. There
were seemingly endless entries, mostly dealing with the initial
crime reports, and write-ups on actions her friends and fans took
to keep her murder before the public. Fund raisers. A flurry of
pages detailing the arrest and trial of her “alleged attacker”. It
promised to be a daunting task plowing through so much data, a
virtual needle in an internet haystack. Tony narrowed the search to
locational references in the material.

And there it was. Just one mention in a
Seattle alternative newspaper.

“Zell was last seen alive after midnight on
May first when friends say she left the Comet Tavern on East Pike
Street. At 3:20 a.m. her body was found in the 100 block of 24th
Avenue South, not far from a Fir Street house where a friend lived.
Police say Ms Zell was found lying in the middle of the street with
arms outstretched and ankles crossed.”

God, what are the chances of a homicidal
maniac from Alaska wandering by looking for a victim just as a
young punk rock singer goes for a stroll in the small hours of the
morning? The odds must be astronomically against. And yet the poor
kid came up craps. The exception that proves the rule that Little
Red Riding Hood should stay out of the deep dark forest at one
a.m.

Who doesn’t know that these days, he
thought. Of course we’re talking about ten years ago. No telling
what the circumstances were that night. Maybe she was a little
drunk and wasn’t thinking clearly. Tony knew - or at least hoped -
that if Claire were in a similar situation she’d have better sense
than to walk out alone in an inner-city neighborhood at night.
Equality be damned, stupid is stupid. Anyone with a firing brain
cell calls a cab even if she’s only going six blocks.

Fir Street. So that’s the neighborhood Suzan
Pike is hanging around these days. Wonder if she knows Fir Street
was connected to the Zell murder?

Should he mention it to Claire? No, no way
to do that without letting on he’d been reading her e-mail. And
anyway, did he really want to warn Suzan? And warn her about what?
This is nothing but the illusion of coincidence. Nobody twisted her
arm into going down there. Claire couldn’t talk her out of it so if
Suzan gets in over her head, he thought, it’s her own damn fault.
Tony logged out and went to the kitchen for a beer.

Chapter 15

Suzan woke thinking winter had double backed
or that she had slept through summer and fall. A steel drizzle
pelted the window of her pink room at Linda’s, watery light seeping
through its thin panes like a false promise. Would spring ever make
an appearance? Her hand was aching again where the knife went in.
She wondered if it would continue to bother her in damp weather for
the rest of her life. The knife had missed tendons, thank heavens.
Small favors. There would be an impressive scar.

Where were the warm breezes and blowing
blossoms? It was as if she had dropped into a deep hole in the
center of an ice cave. If she couldn’t shake the mood this promised
to be a long, miserable day.

The only up side to the morning was knowing
it was payday - which of itself presented a new set of
complications. Suzan needed someplace to cash the check. Perhaps
she could convince Linda to cash it for her, eliminating
embarrassing questions about identity and bank accounts. It
wouldn’t be all that much anyway. If she wouldn’t go for letting
her sign it over to her for rent she would have to suck it up and
sign half of it away at the local Speedy-Money outlet.

More than a week in Seattle
had slipped away with very little to show for it. Suzan still
hadn’t summoned the courage to approach the house closer than the
sidewalk. Something has to happen today, she thought, while padding
down to the bathroom for a shower.
You’re
not on vacation, Suzan. You can’t go home empty.
After work, knock on the door before it becomes
such a road block you can’t get up the first step, before you build
it up in your mind to the extent you’re paralyzed. Hold that
thought.

It was one of those iconic Seattle days when
the sun hadn’t a chance. Apple Market customers, what there were of
them, all wore the same drowned dog scowl as they straggled in from
the sodden parking lot. They came in for toilet paper, cigarettes,
milk – all the things that wouldn’t wait for the storm to pass. By
two p.m. Suzan was already counting the minutes to the end of her
shift. She longed to be anywhere but standing at that register -
almost anywhere. It would have been so easy, given the weather, to
put off her visit to Fir Street, just go back to Linda’s and open a
can of chowder.

At the thought of canned soup, her hand
throbbed - a reminder of the boning knife that had so effortlessly
sliced through her palm only a few weeks before. The wound was
healed but the pain was as relentless as an impacted molar.

At long last Suzan punched out, collected
her paycheck, her purse, coat and umbrella, took a deep breath and
plunged into the deluge. By the time she reached the intersection
of Twenty-third and Fir, water was sluicing off her hair into her
eyes. Her underwear felt more like a swimsuit at the end of thirty
laps. Surely this wasn’t the time, place, or weather to meet new
people. Nonetheless she splooshed west down Fir, head tucked so
tightly inside the umbrella she nearly walked smack into a light
standard on the corner by the park.