He knew that someday his reason would leave him and he had hoped it wouldn't get someone killed. He always knew it was going to feel bad. He had imagined looking foolish and old and useless and spent in front of his partner and himself. But he would manage this because it would mean one part of his life was over and he could feel good about that. It would just mean he was too old, was all. He had imagined that this would be the day he'd turn in his badge and gun, head out to the acreage in Idaho or Oregon with his wife, start fishing, let the grandkids visit and stay as long as they wanted. Yes, he had told himself, he was going to feel okay about it all when he finally slowed down.
But that moment was here right now, and what he felt was shame. He was thankful for the darkness that hid his face from her.
"Okay, blow up the pictures, Tim. But wait on the interrogation. That's a half-day setup and a half day of bracing him and I don't want to spend that kind of time right now. I got the art people to meet with Kamala Petersen today so they could colorize the sketch. Let's hope it came out well. We'll hit the county with it tomorrow, plaster it everywhere there's a space, shove it into every face at every mall he's struck and every one he hasn't. We'll say our prayers tonight that Bart.
Young's list will hit a match for us. Or the tire-kickers find a mismatched set of tires on a silver panel van and don't lose another kid's life."
"Okay. Solid."
She set a hand on his shoulder. "Help me find him, Hess. I need you to help me find him."
"I'm doing everything I can."
"I know you are."
Colesceau came to his porch. Hess watched him, bathed in the yellow bug light to his right, looking passively out at the crowd of six. He was wearing a green robe and a pair of white socks, and he held a tray of steaming mugs in front of him.
The protesters got to their feet and the signs came up. The CNB shooter moved in.
"We ought to pop him just for being such a dweeb," said Merci. "What's he got, hot chocolate?"
Hess watched as Colesceau walked toward his tormentors, set the tray down before them, then straightened and looked at them. He looked over their heads toward Merci's car but Hess saw no recognition in the dark. The cameraman stayed low and tight for a good shot of his subject. '
Colesceau spoke with his neighbors but Hess couldn't hear a word of it. Then the small dark-haired man gave the crowd a little bow and walked slowly back into his apartment.
A while later the downstairs lights went off and an upstairs light went on. Hess could see through the half-drawn curtain upstairs the faintest of figures, the shadow of a shadow, moving on the ceiling. For a brief second someone looked out.
Then the upstairs window darkened and the living room blinds were illuminated again by the blue light of a TV screen.
"He watches TV all the goddamn time," said Merci. "What a life. Hess, don't do what I think you're going to do."
But he pushed out the door and plodded across the street to the living room window. The evening had cooled and there was a faint smell of citrus and smog in the air. His legs felt wrong. For Jerry Kirby, he thought.
He looked through a crack in the blinds and saw what Rick Hjorth's camera had seen the night before. Colesceau was slumped down in the couch, his back to Hess, just his head visible, tuned into CNB's "Rape Watch: Irvine," which showed a live shot of the front of Colesceau's apartment, a real-time clock running in the lower right corner and Hess at the window.
He watched Colesceau turn just a little and look over his shoulder, then again to the TV. On his way back Hess waved to the camera then stopped at the little crowd and asked them what Colesceau had said to them.
"He said, tell Tim and Merci they can have some hot cider, too. There it is, if that's who you are."
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Eight minutes later Big Bill Wayne backed the silver van out of the garage and accelerated crisply down the street. He was breathing fast and perspiring heavily. This was a record time for getting out. What a help, to watch the cops come and go at Colesceau's, live on TV!
He drove steadily and within the speed limit. He hit the serene darkness of the Ortega and followed the moonlit highway through the hills. He thought of his favorite poem. The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moorland the highwayman came riding, riding, riding/The highwayman came riding/Up to the old inn door.
He found LaLonde's place. It was what you'd expect for an ex-con inventor with no job—a commercial space, rented cheap. Someone began raising the door after three knocks. Up it went, like it was letting him into a castle. Except the door was blue steel and Lee LaLonde was no nobleman. Bill stood there in his black suit and western tie and his golden hair, with Pandora's Box in his shopping bag, sniffing the inside of LaLonde's cave for danger or opportunity.
"Hi, Bill," said Lee LaLonde.
"Fix this, partner."
The toothy young man nodded and smiled. Bill could tell he'd been asleep. So he swept in without an invitation, turned on his boot heels and stared at LaLonde.
"It failed. I figured you'd know why."
"Okay, sure. Wanna beer or something?"
"Nope. I'm in a hurry."
"Not a problem. I'll check it out."
Bill gave the kid the bag and watched him go to one of his workbenches. LaLonde pulled the string and an overhead fluorescent light flickered on.
"You can sit down if you want. I wondered if I'd see you again. How's it hanging?"
"How's what hanging?"
Bill didn't like the furtive look that LaLonde gave him, or the seemingly genial talk. He didn't feel like sitting on LaLonde's couch.
He snapped on a pair of latex gloves and toured the place: meaningless inventions, organized tools, posters of girls. Beautiful women, made in America. Before him was a shoebox of identical metal rings, ten of them, maybe, big enough to fit around the wrist of a small woman. From each ring protruded a thin arm. Each arm widened into a flat, thin, shiny leaf of metal about the size of a quarter. They looked to Bill like they could be used for scooping something out of something else.
"What are these T Bill demanded, slapping the back of the box with his hand.
"Flashlight Friends."
"For what?"
"You put the ring around the end of your flashlight and adjust the deflector end into the beam. It sends some of the light to your feet. That's if you're aiming the light straight ahead, I mean. So you can see where you're walking but see what you're looking at, too."
"Shoots the light to your feet while you walk in the dark?"
"Uh-huh."
"Do they work?"
"Not really. I don't think you can divide light that way. Or not enough of it, maybe. The second beam's too weak. But, you know, three bucks is all I wanted."
Bill liked the idea. Some of the things he'd seen at LaLonde's table at the Lake Elsinore Marina swap meet had been better, though. And, of course, the electronic alarm override he'd commissioned was the best thing he could imagine, short of a device you could turn on a person to make them just do whatever you said from then out. Like a gun, but unthreatening and legal. Something small and secret, they couldn't even see. Maybe someday.
But on to more practical matters, Bill wondered if LaLonde could devise some kind of display stand for his driver's license collection. Something to show them off. Something expandable.
"What's this?"
It was two pieces of plastic about the size of counter tiles, connected at right angles. One side was backed by a large suction cup. From the bottom extended a three-foot tube that ended in some kind of coupling, from the other a short nozzle of some kind.
"It didn't work, either."
"I asked what it is, partner."
"The Shower Power Coffee Caddie. It's a coffee warmer for the shower. You know, for those cold mornings when you want to take a shower but you want your coffee, too? The suction holds it to the shower wall. Put your cup on the plate. That hose takes water from the hot water pipe and circulates it
through coils. The cooler water comes out the nozzle to make more room for more hot."
Bill set the Coffee Caddie back on the bench.
"What's the problem with that device of mine?"
"I'm looking, I'm looking."
Bill could hear LaLonde tinkering at the bench. He viewed the tools and projects on the other benches, glanced at the kitchenette/sitting area, looked into the bathroom. There was a Formica table near the refrigerator. On it were cardboard salt and pepper shakers, some magazines about inventing and a letter holder made of wire that displayed the envelopes upright and in fanned layers, like the tail of a peacock. The tail pivoted on its base. Bill spun it once, then again. No squeak. The little bastard did good work when he wanted to. A tan-colored business card with black writing and a gold badge toppled out when he spun the holder again.
Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Department
Sergeant Merci Rayborn
Homicide Detail
Bill turned over the card and smiled to himself: her home phone, written in a woman's slanting print. He slid it into the pocket of his duster. When, he wondered. When had they been here, and how did they know?
"What's the problem?" he asked.
"It's just the fuse. I'm putting in a new one and it should work."
Bill wondered where the old one had fallen out. The device had quit working after Janet, and LaLonde's prints might be on the fuse. If it had fallen out near her car...
"There," said LaLonde.
Bill looked over at him: dumb smile, hair all funny from being asleep, his jeans falling off his slender hips and bunching up over his boots.
"Yeah, see, the circuit's fixed now and the charge is running. I'll put in a couple of new nine volts to top it off."
So merry, thought Bill. Guilty. Watch his face now. "When did you talk to Sergeant Rayborn?"
"Who's that?"
"The dark-haired police gal who was here, partner."
A heavy burned smell wafted through the shop.
"Oh, her. Couple of weeks back—they were asking questions about this guy in the slam with me. They think he's heisting again, thought 1 might know about him. I don't. Wouldn't tell those pigs anything if I did."
"Of course. And the older man, Hess? Was he here, too?"
"Old fart? Yeah. Hey, this thing's working now. Looking good, Bill."
"Demonstrate."
"Well, I can't, unless your car has an electronic alarm."
"No alarm."
"Mine neither, piece of junk. This is fixed. It was just the fuse. It must have fallen out somehow. I soldered a piece of wire to hold it in."
LaLonde held out the little box. Bill walked over and took it, examining the new fuse and the soldered restraint. The solder gun lay on the bench with its tip over a tin ashtray, smoke wobbling upward toward the light.
Bill picked it up. "Smells like burning bones." "I wouldn't know about that, Bill." "I burned a woman once, but she was already dead." "Jesus. I've wanted to a few times. You know, get real mad at one or something."
"I'll need two extra fuses."
LaLonde nodded and picked out a plastic box from the bench top. He rummaged through its compartments, chose a tin of fuses and offered it.
"Thank you. Here is payment for what you've done." Bill felt in his pocket. "You really don't—"
Bill pulled out the derringer and blasted the inventor in the forehead with it. LaLonde hit the floor like someone had yanked it from under him. He was jerking and the blood pouring out of his head was deep red on the concrete. Bill shot him in the nose.
Bill mused on how some people would worry about doing something like this, whether it was right or wrong.
Then the traitor went stiff, the orgasm of his life, thought
Bill.
He got $32 out of LaLonde's wallet, then threw the worn-out canvas thing on the floor.
• • •
Fifty-five minutes later Colesceau came downstairs in the blue TV darkness to watch some more CNB.
The station was running old news of the day because it wasn't prosperous enough to program fresh news all the time. Hence "Rape Watch: Irvine" and Colesceau's continuing torment at the hands of the video shooters and Lauren Diamond.
He went to the door and opened it. There they were, the after-ten crowd: two couples sitting on lawn chairs in a semicircle feeing his front door. They were playing cards. One couple was dressed for tennis. The guy had a towel around his neck. The hot cider looked untouched. The video shooter heaved himself out of the CNB van and came his way with the camera down, not shooting, and a cigarette in his mouth. Colesceau had overheard his name, Mark, and rather liked his sloppy look and sleeplessness.
"Well, Mark, our law enforcement people didn't want the cider."
"Guess not," said Mark, fiddling with his microphone. "They left about half hour ago."
"Hmmm."
He padded across the porch and lawn in his robe and white socks, bent over and collected his tray.
The protesters stared at him, cards still in their hands. Tennis man stood up.
"Don't you ever go to sleep, shitface?"
"I'm about to."
"You can dream about all the old persons you molested."
"I raped them, actually. And I've never dreamed of them, not once."
"You're disgusting," said Miss Tennis.
"You ever give me half a chance," said Tennis Man, "I'll beat the living shit out of you."
"I know you would. Give my regards, please, to the reasonable and decent Trudy Powers."
"She thinks you're a bag of shit."
Colesceau sighed. He glanced at Mark, who was right up close by now, gunning away, then back to the Tennis Couple.
"I have paid my debt and I am rehabilitated. Harmless. So why are you so frightened?"
"If it was up to me I'd just cut them off."
"Why? To make earrings for your wife?"
Words of disgust, then, from all of them, and Mark in close.
He headed back inside. On his porch he turned, balanced the tray with one hand and waved.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Merci pulled up beside Hess's car in the medical center parking lot. The sedan had collected dew in the cooling night and some comet-shaped leaves from a eucalyptus. She thought, what a lousy place to have to visit after working your ass off all day. And all night. Hess hadn't said much since the shooting. She knew he was embarrassed for the Colesceau idea. Or maybe just pissed off, because she wouldn't buy in. But it wasn't the smart way to go and she knew it. She'd thought it through.
More to the point, Jerry Kirby's death had spread through her spirits, spread through the night like an infection. She knew it had contaminated Hess too.
"I'm only about twenty minutes from here," she said. "Come over and eat?'
"It's almost eleven."
"I know what time it is."
"I'd like that, then."
"It's in the middle of an orange grove. Follow me."
She waited while Hess got out and into his car. He looked uncertain opening the door, as if he didn't know how much strength it might take and he used a little too much.
At home she opened the windows and turned on the TV and made two Scotch and sodas. She'd bought a big bottle of each because she'd enjoyed it that night at the beach with him. She changed out of her bloody pants and showered. She listened to the messages—Mike McNally, again, hoping she hadn't "busted a gut" in the gym. Then the Bianchi rep saying they'd shipped the holster Federal Airborne, their compliments, no obligation whatsoever, hoped she'd use it. They'd sent it to her home because the offer was, again, only for "select law enforcement individuals."
"Select, my ass," she muttered. "Just send it."
Then she searched her cupboards for something to heat up—it was either beef stew or noodles in a Styrofoam cup so she went with the stew. There were some crackers that weren't quite stale. She tried to arrange them artfully on a fancy serving plate but they kept sliding down to the mi
ddle. There were always oranges, so she cut up two fat ones. Just two gulps of that drink and it went to her head.
Hess was watching CNB when she brought the plate in. She could smell the orange groves like they were growing through the screens. Hess looked at her, a cat on one of his thighs and another with its head on his lap. She shooed them away and put the plate on the coffee table. The cat on Hess's leg was standing up but not gone, tail jumping defiantly, so Merci held an orange hunk out and shot it in the face with the juice. The cat fled.
"It's okay," Hess said.
"Vermin."
"Why do you have so many, then?'
"I like them."
They ate some crackers and oranges. They clinked their glasses together and drank but neither made a toast. There wasn't anything to say if you were thinking about what happened to Jerry Kirby and there was nothing else to think about. She could see him, youthful and dead on the concrete. Merci called upon her inner power to banish thoughts of it from her mind right now. And the thoughts obeyed, hovering outside her mind, though she knew they'd have to get back in sometime.
There hadn't been many times in her life that she had applied all of her considerable will to the task at hand and come up empty. Jerry Kirby was one of them, and it made Merci doubt herself, made her wonder if she wasn't as strong as she believed. She'd done everything in her power to make him live and he had died. What was important now was to put it out of her mind so she could come back to it fresh, maybe see what she'd done wrong, how to do it right the next time.
So she sipped the drink and let the alcohol lead her away.
"It's either canned stew or Styro noodles."
"I like stew. It reminds me of hunting trips to Idaho. Look, Colesceau again."
"The TV makes him look bigger."
She watched him on his ten-fifteen appearance, padding around in his socks and robe, collecting the tray, talking to the tennis people. She took another couple of sips of her cocktail. When Colesceau suggested his testicles might make good earrings for Tennis Man's wife, Merci scoffed, "I'd like to see those."
THE BLUE HOUR Page 26