The Blue Hour (52 page)

Then Merci felt herself
being picked up from behind, felt her body lifting. Higher. Higher again.
Higher still. Her stomach dropped. The world withdrew. She looked down at the
terrible trough of blackness and she held Tim tight and surrendered.

She closed her eyes in the
fall but she held her son tight. That much she could do, and she could do it
well and she would do it forever. She apologized for letting him die like this,
her fault entirely, stupid and cowardly and self-obsessed. But she did not let
go. Nothing was strong enough, not even this wave and this ocean, to make her
let go of him now.

When she hit the bottom
the wave crushed them down and pounded them forward. Over once. Over twice.
Direction gone now, ears roaring, a scream of red inside her eyeballs.

Then she was sliding on
her back up the slick wet beach and her eyes were burning and Tim was tight in
her arms screaming with his fists still locked on her coat.

She looked up at the
stars. She heard the rush of water receding around her, sliding back down the
beach to join the sea.

THE END

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to thank Robert Boettger, director of the Cypress College
Mortuary Department, and Franklin Barr of Pacific View Memorial Park for their
insights into the art of undertaking, sometimes known among its practitioners
as the dismal trade. Thanks also to therapist Betsy Squires for her insights
on the subject of chemical castration of sex offenders, and to Sherry Merryman
for her helpful research into contemporary car theft and theft deterrents.
Special thanks to Pam Berkson, R.N., of the UC Irvine Medical Center, for her
help with chemotherapy. Finally, thanks to Larry Ragle, retired head of the
Orange County crime lab, for his patient answers to my questions.

—TJP

Find Out More About Merci Rayborn in T. Jefferson
Parker's Next Bestseller,

Red
Light

T. JEFFERSON PARKER

It's two years after the
death of Tim Hess, her partner and the father of her child, and Merci is
working hard to do her job, take care of her son, and hold it all together. In
this suspenseful, emotionally charged sequel to
The Blue Hour,
Merci
faces a challenge that makes her question everything she has taken for granted.

You might not have liked
Aubrey Whittaker. She acted superior. She walked as if she were the most
beautiful woman on Earth, which she wasn't. She didn't say very much. She was
tall but wore heels anyway, and if she finally did say something, you felt
like a driver getting a ticket. Her eyes were blue and infinitely disappointed
in you. She was nineteen.

She let him come to her
place again that night, something that had only happened once before. Strictly
against policy. But he was different than the rest, different in ways that
mattered. In her life she had learned to read men, who were as easy to
understand as street signs: Caution, Yield, Stop. But did you ever really know
one?

Aubrey had chosen a small
black dress, hose with a seam up the back, heels with ankle straps and a string
of pearls. No wig, just her regular hair, which was blond and cut short,
sticking up like a boy's. The lipstick was apple red.

She made him dinner. She
could only cook one thing well, so she cooked it. And a salad, rolls from the
bakery, a pot of the good French roast coffee he liked, a dessert. Flowers in a
squat round crystal vase that had cost a lot of money. They sat across from
each other at the small table.

Aubrey gave D.C. the seat with the view of the
Pacific. "D.C." was the abbreviation for Dark Cloud, the nickname
she'd invented to capture his pessimism about human nature. It was an ironic
nickname, too, because D.C. wasn't dark to look at, but light, with a broad,
tanned face, a neat mustache, sharp eyes and a chunk of heavy blond hair that
fell over his forehead like a schoolboy's. He was quick to smile, although it
was usually a nervous smile. He was taller than her by a good three inches and
strong as a horse, she could tell. He told stupid jokes.

She told him he could hang
his gun on the chair, but he left it holstered tight against his left side,
farther around his back than in the movies, the handle pointing out. Whatever,
she thought. The idea of safety pleased her, made her feel compliant in a
genuine way. Aubrey Whittaker rarely allowed herself a genuine feeling,
couldn't always tell them from the ones she portrayed.

They talked. His eyes
rarely strayed from her face, and they were always eager to get back. Hungry
eyes. When dinner was over he sat there a moment, wiping the silverware with
his napkin. He was fastidious. Then he left, at exactly the time he'd told her
he'd leave. Off to see a man about a dog, he said. Another little joke of
theirs.

At the door she put her
arms around him and hugged him lightly, setting her chin against the top of his
shoulder, leaning her head against his ear for just a moment. She could feel
the tension coming off him like heat off a highway. She thought the kind of guy
she wanted would be a lot like D.C. Then she straightened and smiled and shut
the door behind him. It was only ten minutes after ten.

She flipped on the
kitchen TV to an evangelist, put the dishes in the sink and ran water over
them. She watched a car roll out of the parking area below, brake lights at the
speed bump. It might have been D.C.'s big, serious four-door or it might not
have been.

Aubrey felt warm inside,
like all her blood had heated up a couple of degrees, like she was just out of
a hot bath or had just drank a big glass of red wine. She shook her head and
smile lines appeared at the edges of her apple-red lips. It's just
unbelievable, girl, she thought, what you've done with your life. Nineteen going
on a hundred. You finally find a guy you can halfway stand, he trembles when
you touch him through his clothes and you let him drive away.

Oh that you would kiss me,
with the kisses of your mouth!

Song in the Bible.

I sucked you off in a
theater.

Song on the radio.

Has everything
changed, or nothing?

She rinsed the dishes,
dried her hands and worked in some lotion. The fragrance was of lavender.
Through the window she saw the black ocean and the pale sand and the white rush
where the water broadened onto the beach then receded.

In the middle of the
living room Aubrey stood and looked out at the water and the night. Thinking of
the different shades of black, she pried off her high heels, then got down on
all fours. Balance. She could smell the lavender. From there she was eye level
to the arm of the black leather sofa.

Tentatively she placed her
left hand out. Tentatively she raised her right knee and slid it forward. Then
the hard part, the transfer of weight to her other hand and the moment of peril
as the left knee came up to support her.

She wavered just a little,
but when her left leg settled beneath her she was okay and very focused because
she had to repeat the whole complex procedure again. Her doctor friend, the
shrink, had advised her to do this. She had never learned. She had walked at
eleven months.

Her doctor friend had said
that for an adult to develop fully, to form certain concepts, especially
mathematical ones, she needed to know how to crawl.

Then she heard the knock
at the door. A flash of embarrassment went through her as she realized what
she was: a six-foot woman in a short black dress crawling across her living
room through the scent of lavender.

She sprang up and
walked over. "Who's there?"

"Just me again,
Aubrey—"

It was a little hard to
hear, with all the cars roaring by on Coast Highway.

"—Your Dark
Cloud."

She flipped the outside
light switch and looked through the peephole. The bug bulb must have finally
burned out because all she saw was one corner of the apartment building across
the alley laced with Christmas lights, and the tiny headlights out on Coast
Highway, miniaturized in a fish-eye lens clouded with moisture. She hadn't
replaced that bulb in months. When she opened the door she was smiling because
she half expected his return, because she knew he was in her control now. And
because she was happy.

Then her smile died from
the inside out and she formed her last thought: Oh No.

ONE

"Out of the way,
please. Sheriff's investigator. Come on now. Out."

Merci Rayborn ducked under
the ribbon and continued down the walk. Her heart was beating fast and her
senses were jacked up high, registering all at once the cars hissing along
Coast Highway to her left, waves breaking on the other side of the building, the
citizens murmuring behind her, the moon hanging low over the eastern hills, the
smell of ocean and exhaust, the night air cool against her cheeks, the walkway
slats bending under her duty boots. She figured a place like this, oceanfront
in San Clemente, would run you two grand a month and you still got termites in
your walkway and spiderwebs high in the porch corners.

Or maybe you got
worse.

Two patrolmen were talking
to two paramedics, all four of whom nodded and stepped aside. Merci stopped
short of the entryway alcove to 23 Wave Street and looked at the door. It was
open about two inches. It was painted a flat Cape Cod gray. The red splatter a
foot above the doorknob looked wet in the overhead light, a yellow-tinted bulb
so as not to draw insects.

"Sergeant, the neighbor heard a
disturbance, suspected something was wrong. He saw the presumed blood. He
knocked, identified ourselves, no response. The door
was ajar. I proceeded inside, found the body where it is right now, notified my
partner. Together we searched the apartment for any other possible victims.
Negative. And for a perpetrator. Negative again. 1 checked for vitals, and
found the victim deceased. Then we called it in, sealed it off."

"What else did
you do insider

"Nothing. I closed
the door to the same approximate position I found it in. Not using the
knob."

"Did you touch
any of the light switches?"

"Yes. I forgot
that. Forgot to tell you that."

"This outdoor
light, was it on when you got here?"

"Bug light,
affirmative."

"Was the door
ajar when the neighbor first came down?"

"That was his
statement."

"See if he'll let us
set up shop in his place. If he says no, do it anyway."

"Yes."

"Start an Order of
Entry Log, fill it in and fasten it to this wall somehow. Nobody gets in but
the coroners and Zamorra. Nobody."

"Yes,
Sergeant."

The paramedics were
leaning against the walkway railing but stood up straight when Merci turned to
them. They were young and handsome and looked to Merci like TV actors.

"We went in, examined
her and came back out," one offered. "We didn't defib or try CPR. She
was cold, blood already draining down, extremities in early rigor. I turned on
the lights just inside the door there, then turned them off. Looks like
gunshot."

Merci looked at her
watch: 11:40, Tuesday, December 11. She gloved up, then toed open the door with
her boot.

Muted light shone
from inside. Merci saw a kitchen, a small TV screen flickering, a dining-room
table with flowers, a sliding glass door beyond the table. But what drew her
attention lay just inside the arc of the door she now held open with one elbow:
a young woman in a black dress, arms thrown casually back like someone deep in
sleep, her face peaceful and unmarked and inclined slightly toward the sliding
glass door behind her. Her chest and stomach were still wet with blood, which
looked black in the weak light. The blackness had progressed onto the pale
carpet on both sides of her.

Merci knelt down and
placed two of her right fingers on the woman's jugular vein. She believed that
she owed hope to the dead, even if the dead were beyond it.

She pulled a little
flashlight from her pocket and found the hole in the dress, below the left
breast but close to center, straight over the heart. She looked for another
but found none. The neighbor said nothing about hearing a gunshot. Merci
retraced her steps to the front door and pushed it closed with her boot. The
paramedics who looked like actors watched her, a fade-out.

She stood between the
body and the dining room. No signs of forced entry or struggle, so far. She
noted that the table had been set for two. A pair of seductive high heels stood
near the couch, facing her, like a ghost was standing in them, watching. The
apartment was still, the slider closed against the cool December night. Good
for scent. She closed her eyes. Salt air. Baked fowl. Coffee. Goddamn rubber
gloves, of course. A whiff of burned gunpowder? Leather.

Maybe a trace of perfume, or the flowers on the
table—gardenia, rose, lavender? And, of course, the obscenity of spilled
blood—intimate, meaty, shameful.

She listened to the waves.
To the traffic. To the little kitchen TV turned low: an evangelist bleating for
money. To the clunk of someone on the old walkway. To her heart, fast and heavy
in her chest. Merci felt most alive when working for the dead. She'd always
loved an underdog.