The Blue Hour (39 page)

Hess said nothing.

Then the CNB anchor said
they'd be back in just a moment, with traffic, weather and the breaking story
of a murder in nearby Lake Elsinore.

"Maybe the Purse
Snatcher killed LaLonde because his device broke down," said Hess.

It surprised her, that
Hess would make a jump like that, so quick, no reason at all for it.

Then Merci realized that
if by some stretch of the imagination the Purse Snatcher
had
killed LaLonde, it well might have
happened while they were sitting there outside Colesceau's apartment an hour
or so ago. Or maybe just after they'd left. Either way, CNB had Colesceau, on
video,
at home,
not in Lake
Elsinore.

Maybe Hess would believe
his own eyes, since he wouldn't believe her.

And then it came. Just
like Hess had willed it to. Just like he'd seen the picture before it got to
the screen.

She sat there with a buzz
of excitement running along with the Scotch as the CNB anchor reported the
murder of "amateur inventor and convicted car thief' Lee LaLonde in his
Lake Elsinore workshop. He was apparently killed by an unidentified intruder
"earlier tonight." Riverside Sheriffs said robbery was apparently the
motive.

Merci looked at the video
footage of the shop, its door open and crime scene tape flapping, the deputies
trying to do their jobs.

Hess was already on the
phone. He left a message and her number, clicked off and put the handset on the
arm of the couch beside him. Then he pulled the small notepad from his pocket,
flipped through and wrote something.

The phone rang less than a
minute later and Hess, to her irritation, answered it. He listened for a
moment, asked what time, listened again. He thanked someone and clicked off
without saying good-bye.

"Nine,
nine-thirty. Some other tenants saw the door halfway up, then the body. Gunshot
to the head. They're saying botched robbery."

"Well, it wasn't
our man Colesceau."

"No, it
wasn't."

He looked at her and she
could see the exhaustion and indecision in his eyes. He sat forward with
effort, then stood. "We might be able to help, out there."

"Riverside
Sheriffs don't need us tonight, Hess."

"I know. But we
could
just..."

"Yeah, I know,
too."

She put her hand on his chest, lightly, and eased him
back down to the couch. He didn't resist, which she found sad and exciting.

• •

They ate in near silence
in front of the TV. Merci flipped to a sitcom rerun, one of those that bred so
many future stars. Fun to see them with long hair. Hess didn't seem to be
looking at it, but he didn't look at her, either. Most of the time he seemed to
be staring out the dark open windows of the house. He kept his sport coat on,
even though the night was warm.

She wondered if old people
took tragedy harder—things like Ronnie Stevens or Jerry Kirby, things like being
wrong about the suspect in an investigation. She continued to will Jerry Kirby
out of her mind. And she willed Hess to feel better. She wondered if he was
just sickened by what had gone down and had run out of things to say.

• • •

After dinner they walked
the orange grove around the house. It was Merci's idea to lift Hess's spirits.
She got fresh drinks and a couple of big flashlights they didn't really need in
the moonlight. She wanted Hess to smell an orange grove from the inside. And
she wanted him to see something.

Now she stood astride
a soft chocolate furrow and heard herself telling Hess to take a deep breath, a
deeeep
breath and see if he could feel
the oranges going inside him.

"No, not exactly."

"Try again."

And he did, taking a
long deep breath that made her wonder how much of his lung was gone—had he said
half or two-thirds?—then she banished
that
thought from her mind too because it didn't fit what she was
trying to accomplish with regard to smells, oranges, being inside of things and
improving the spirits of Hess.

"They'll take up root inside
you," she said.

"I used to
imagine that about ocean water. If it made you part ocean inside. Because sweat
is salty."

"That's exactly
what I wanted you to realize." It really was exciting to educate an older
person, if only a little..

"Mission accomplished, then."

They came to one side
of the grove, where it ended at a culvert. Merci could see the outline of the
irrigation gate against the weeds. Past the culvert was a flood control channel
lined with concrete. Overhead the moon was smudged by clouds. And just beyond
the channel rose the tan stucco townhomes of some recent development, their
backsides tall and flat and almost windowless. They reminded her of stuck-up
people at a party, huddled together, looking away. When she came out of the
trees the buildings always surprised her, how tall they were and unexpected,
even when you knew they were coming.

"It's like they
can't look at the grove behind them," Merci said. "Because they're
too good."

"The developers?"

"No, the
buildings. Hardly any windows, like they don't want to see. But that would go
for developers, too, right? Not wanting to look behind, like at history and
stuff."

"Why look backward, when you're
driving to the bank?"

"All's they do is pack in more
people."

"I never had
much problem with that. People need places to live. I think if people don't
like it they should just leave."

"Why not
preserve some things? I never thought of that until I moved in here. And I only
moved here because Dad knows the owner and the rent's cheap. But some stuff,
you just ought to save. Hess, check
this."

She led the way down
the side of the culvert, shining her flashlight back every few steps to make
sure he didn't stumble. Then she cut diagonally across the grove, aiming toward
the back of her house. The ice in her Scotch glass clinked and she heard Hess's
clink behind her and she drank more. Her ears felt warm but her lips tingled
and there was a cool patch on her forehead.

"Okay back there?"

"Just plodding along."

Approaching the last
three rows Merci could see the back end of her house, the driveway that curved
all the way around it, the ring of porch light active with cats, and the
rat-happy garage dark against the trees.

She came out of the
grove and started across the overgrown back lawn. The toes of her tennis shoes
got damp. Hess had fallen back a few steps so she waited for him to catch up.
When he did she heard the sharpness of his breathing and wondered if the chemo
and radiation were getting it all. She banished that thought from her mind
immediately. She rebanished Jerry Kirby from her mind, too. She felt strong
again, in control. Probably the Scotch, she thought. So she turned and shined
the flashlight at Hess's chin—not quite into his eyes—laughed, and turned it
off.

"Funny," he
said.

"Had
to."

"What's the big
attraction?"

"Over
here."

Behind the garage was a
bare quarter acre of land that Merci had decided was once a vegetable garden.
She had made the discovery digging there, trying to save money when the septic
tank needed pumping. She was actually trying to sweat out a ferocious anger at
Mike McNally and his diabolical little son for letting themselves in, eating
her food, leaving the dishes unrinsed and letting the bloodhounds shit tremendously
upon the lawn. For about the hundredth time.

She thought the digging
might help. According to the owner's drawing the tank lay about twenty yards
south of the garage. The drawing was off by ten feet at least because she never
did find the tank, or even a leach line. But the soil was soft and her anger
diminished as her blisters grew. And she found what she found, proving to Merci
that a will to locate the known could result in discovering the unknown. Her
mother would call it serendipity, but she also called a vase a
vauuz
.

She shined her light down through the
dead tumbleweeds, saw the plywood. She'd secured the plywood with scrap cinder
block, and tied the tumbleweeds to the wood with dental floss. The last thing
she wanted was neighbor
hood kids or dogs
into her discovery, or some eggheads from the university.

Hess was standing beside
her now. She could hear the short precision of his breathing. He looked
slightly forlorn as he stood there in his sport coat with his general's haircut
and stared down into the beam of his flashlight. But there was a good shine to
his eyes when he looked at her.

"Nice
tumbleweeds," he said.

"Check it
out."

She set down her glass and
flashlight and carried off the cinder blocks with both hands. The edges were
sharp and dug into her fingers. She got under the plywood and slid it away. She
pulled out the wadded newspapers.

Then she stood and
aimed her light in.

"Meet Francisco.
He's real."

He looked the same as last
time, she thought, which was probably the same as he'd looked for about four
centuries. The rusted, upswept horn of his conquistador helmet protruded out from
the recessed skull like the prow of a ship. The bones were brown and, to Merci,
disturbingly small. The skull still had some skin attached, which was black and
thin as paper. The beauty of him was the way his old brown bones were still
encased in the armor—the helmet and chest plate and belt buckle. He seemed to
her a tiny man caught in the hard, oversized diapers of history. His sword
with its deeply eroded blade lay to his side. It was the only part of him or
his gear that didn't seem small. In fact, it was gigantic compared to the
frail, chest-crossed hands that had once wielded it.

"Is he cool or
what?"

Hess was leaning forward
at the waist, looking in, the light held out in front of him.

"I think he could
have been some kind of law enforcement, but they took his harquebus because it
was valuable."

"No badge."

"Maybe it rusted away." "Hmmm."

"But he was probably
just a soldier. Either way, four hundred years ago he came about halfway
around the world and died right here in my backyard."

She looked down at the
small brown bones and pitted armature, feeling what she always felt when she
looked at Francisco: that he was here on a mission far more perilous and
important than any she would undertake, that there were many more important
moments per year back then than there were now, that people had more courage.
And they didn't live very long, either.

Hess continued to stare
in. "He looks awful. . . alone down there."

"Not so alone,
since I found him."

"Well, whatever,
Merci. He looks damned alone to me. Have you told anyone?"

"Who?
Who
are you going to trust with him? A
scientist would take him. The health department would take him. A relative
would probably say leave him right where he is, but where's a relative?"

Hess had brought his hand
to his face but was still looking down, thinking.

"I like everything about him,"
said Merci. "Look at that helmet. And his hands, the way they fold over
his ribs. And look at the way those ribs connect up around the back. I never
knew the rib cage was so graceful. Plus,
his
teeth? Look how big and sharp they are, like he was used to eating wild
animals."

"Out here he
probably did."

"And check the belt
buckle. I mean, that must have been one big belt he wore. I wish he had some
boots on, but I'll bet you he died with new ones and they took those along with
the gun."

"You've given
this some thought."

Merci didn't answer for a
long time. She just looked down at Francisco and tried to let her mind retreat
through the centuries. The things about him that really bugged her were height
and weight, what color his hair and eyes had been, if he'd had a beard or
not—the kind of stuff you'd need for a solid suspect description. Sometimes she
wished she could think different than a cop, just once in a while.

"You find a conquistador
in your backyard and you'd think about him, too."

Back inside she turned on the TV and went to make new
drinks. Standing against the yellow tile of the kitchen counter Merci got hit
hard again by Jerry Kirby. Then the word six. She couldn't stop the thoughts.
Her pants were in the hamper in the bedroom, drenched in his blood. She could
smell it and feel it warm on her forearms. She tried to think of something
humorous or diverting but all she could think was if you're so goddamned
powerful why couldn't you make him live? The kitchen clock said midnight and
she felt worse. She snuck a gulp of the Scotch and forced it down. Bad stuff—it
made your feelings big and blurry, with ledges in them you didn't see. Easy to
fall off one.