THE BLUE HOUR

by T. Jefferson Parker

  "That does feel good," he said.

  So she ran her hands through again while she wondered what to do and the forest of hair thinned and clung statically to her fingers and began to sprinkle down on Hess's ears and shirt front and shoulders and bunch up on the backs of her hands like the little nests that ended up on her smock at her hairdresser's.

  No, she thought. If I summon my will the hair will not fall out. And Merci summoned her will, all the deep power of it, all the blinding light of it and she closed her eyes and focused its beam directly at Hess's head.

  "Ummm."

  And she pressed her nails in a little deeper, applied a little more strength. Went a little faster, because she knew when she opened her eyes the hair would not be falling out. But it was. And Hess, eyes still closed, was groaning like a dog. Merci looked at him and smiled, as if her smile might mitigate his disappointment when he realized what was happening. She rose up and leaned into him a little more because Hess in his relaxation had melted back into the sofa. She rested lightly against him, feeling the great weight of failure in her heart beating against the particular hardness of Lieutenant Timothy Hess. She was too surprised to move away. She didn't. And a moment later, when her surprise was gone, she didn't want to.

  This, she understood, was something that her will could not fail. She could take him, all of him, all his years and his exhaustion and his disease, all his desire and his dreams, and she could accommodate them. She could absorb and absolve. She could take in and transform. She could will the death right out, and the life right into him.

  Power.

  "Merci."

  "Keep your eyes closed."

  "It's falling out, isn't it?"

  "Yeah."

  She reached over and turned off the lamp.

  "Come on," she said. "Follow me."

  • • •

  At four in the morning Hess awoke to the sound of cats screeching somewhere out in the grove. Merci breathed deeply and didn't move.

  He lay still and remembered: fishing with his uncles, his dad making pancakes on Sunday mornings, the creases on the back of his mother's blouse as she walked, Barbara's expression as she came down the aisle in the church where they were married, his first dog, what the world looked like from the tail gunner's position of a B-29 thirty thousand feet above Korea. He had no idea why he thought of these particular things. It felt like they were lining themselves up for his inspection. This is what we were.

  Eight more years, he thought. Seventy'five years.

  He set a hand on Merci's back. He thought of standing in front of her bathroom mirror a few hours ago, looking at his new head. He remembered her hands kneading his scalp and the hair falling lightly onto his face, and later, the shower they took together when she shampooed it away by the handful.

  It was a strange moment as he stood there, naked and still wet, newly bald and thoroughly exhausted, with Merci naked herself under a towel, this large and quite lovely woman who had just made love to him, dark moles on creamy skin, the strands of black wet hair on her shoulders, crowded right up close in the steamy little bathroom to look in the mirror with him. She had actually smiled. He had felt the heat of her on his skin, through the towel. They had shaved off the remnants. Eyebrows gone, too. He looked like a giant baby.

  Hair or not, it seemed too good a thing for him to be here now, still alive in the world, still touching and touched by it all. And he was thankful for it in a way he could not express.

  He got up and walked through the warm old house, looking through the windows to the dark groves and the moonless sky littered with stars. The floorboards creaked under his feet and a clock ticked echoes across the living room at him.

  He sat for a while and wondered how he could use the rest of his life in the best way possible. He had no specific ideas, but the general concept of using his years to live well was a good place to start. It was certainly a new concept, that much was for certain. Use the years to live well.

  He made coffee and took a cup back to the bedroom. He stood beside the bed and looked down at Merci Rayborn as she slept. Her hair was tangled with shadows and her face was pale as cream against the darkness. He saw the rise of her hip under the sheet, the way her fists came together at her chin. He wondered what might have happened if he could have met her forty years ago.

  In the kitchen he turned on the light over the stove, got out his blue notepad and pen and wrote Merci a letter about what he was feeling at four-thirty in the morning in her house in the orange grove. Hess considered himself a clear but dull writer, and as he composed the letter to her he read it quietly to himself. It was clear and dull. That was okay, he thought: the purpose wasn't to entertain or divert. The purpose was just to tell her how much she meant to him and how she had inspired him enough to write her about it. It came off sounding like a thank-you card, but he was thankful. So what?

  Dear Merci,

  I wish we'd have met when we were both young. But you weren't born then and I would probably have been too witless to do you right anyway. I feel happy now and blessed by the years, by circumstance and by you.

  Sincerely, TrnH.

  He left it on the kitchen table with one of the snapshots Hjorth had taken of them together, to use up his roll of film. The picture caught Hess attentive and Merci scowling at the camera. A few minutes later he was dressed and looking down at her again. Her face was lost in hair and pillow and she was snoring lightly, the sheet halfway down her back.

  He locked the door on his way out and walked across the driveway toward his car. Cats scattered in fractional starlight. Sunrise was still an hour away and Hess wondered why it always seemed darkest just before dawn.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Colesceau parked outside the old Santa Ana Courthouse. You could park two hours for free, and he liked the imposing old building with its heavy stone architecture because it reminded him of torture and executions. It was early Wednesday afternoon and the smoggy heat hung over the county like the mist along the Olt. Thick enough to hide your thoughts in, Colesceau thought, but not quite thick enough to hide your body.

  Too bad about that, he thought, seeing them from a block away. They were gathered outside the entrance to the Parole Board building with their cameras and cables and lights and vans. The pushy, preening reporters. The shooters. The techs. The Grant Majors of the universe. And more folkish demonstrators with their signs and placards and candles. Lots of them. Some of them were from his neighborhood, some were new converts. He looked for Trudy Powers but couldn't find her.

  You can't even serve out your sentence without a TV show about it, he thought. America really is crazy.

  He sidled down a busy side street and found a pay phone behind the old courthouse, called the Sheriffs and asked for Merci Rayborn. She answered. He used his American accent to introduce himself as John Marshall over at Federal Airborne in Santa Ana with a package for her they couldn't deliver. Similar to the accent he gave to the Bianchi promotions fellow, but a bit of a Texas twang to it.

  "Parcel got damp back east, address smudged up in transit," he explained. "Your phone numbers were still on the sticker."

  "Who the hell's it from?"

  "Let's see here... Bianchi International in—"

  "—What's your number there?"

  He heard the rudeness in her voice, the reflexive caution, the automatic defense.

  He sighed and read her the number off the phone. "You're going to need the parcel number."

  He gave it to her and she hung up. Thirty seconds later she called.

  "Federal Airborne, Marshall."

  "Merci Rayborn again."

  "What do you want us to do with this—"

  She interrupted and gave him her home address, hung

  up.

  Colesceau smiled, slid the pen back into his pocket, firmed his clip-on necktie around his neck and tried to put some resolve into his step. In the glass of a building front he saw himself: dark Kmart slacks, short-sleeve white shir
t, plump and unremarkable body. He looked hunched and harried. He carried a brown paper grocery bag in his right hand and a vinyl briefcase in his left. The bag had gifts for Holtz and Carla Fontana, and the briefcase just a few pencils and paper clips. He brought it because it made him feel as if he had something meaningful in reserve.

  They spotted him crossing the street and they bristled with readiness. He was barely onto the sidewalk when they were upon him, the reporters with their mikes brandished and their questions popping, the shooters gunning him in silence, the protesters yapping at him like toy breed dogs you could impale beautifully on a hat pin.

  He stopped and looked at them and tried to compose himself.

  How does it feel to be taking your last injection?

  "I am pleased. It is an unhappy experience."

  How long until the effects of this last injection wear off!

  "I'm told it will be months. It will take my body many months to recover its former health." And when it does, he thought, I'd like to pay a call to every last one of you...

  Where are you going to live next?

  "Somewhere I can be forgotten."

  Will you date women?

  "I have no desire for the company of human beings."

  What about employment—what kind of work will you be looking for?

  "I would be good as a lighthouse watchman, but there aren't any lighthouses left."

  What will you do when your sexual desire returns? Will you turn violent toward older women again?

  "I have not had sexual or violent thoughts for many years. I never intended violence, even as a confused young man. I will never harm another person as long as I live. This is both a fact and a promise to all of you."

  SEND the MONster BACK to the PRISon

  A1 Holtz barged outside, waving his arms and shouting as he ushered Colesceau through the throng and into the building. "Sonsofbitches have no respect at all," he said as soon as they got through the door. He clapped a heavy hand onto Colesceau's shoulders. "How you holding up?"

  "With difficulty, Al."

  "I'm so goddamned sorry it came down this way."

  "I'm sure you tried your best to avoid it."

  "Just between you and me, I wasn't the only vote."

  "I expected no mercy from the women."

  "It's old news now, Moros. But there's good news for you, too. You're ten minutes away from being a free man."

  Psychologist Carla Fontana and Sgt. Paul Arnett, a deputy from the Sheriff's SONAR program, were waiting in Holtz's little office. Carla extended her tanned and freckled arm, gave him her 200-watt smile. She smelled like skin cream. Arnett shook his hand and looked him steady in the eye.

  On the desk were a small round cake with frosting and a six-pack of root beer. Red napkins and white forks. The cake said GOOD LUCK MOROS in a script so inept Colesceau knew it could only belong to Holtz himself.

  Holtz arranged the seats, still jabbering about the media outside, then started cutting the cake with a plastic knife. Colesceau wondered for the hundredth time how the PA saw anything out of his grimy glasses, which slid down his nose as he peered at the cake. Carla poured the root beer and the sergeant sat back against one wall with his arms folded over his chest.

  Colesceau looked around the office—neat and small, that of an inconsequential bureaucrat—and was happy to think he was seeing it for the last time. It was actually kind of pleasant to sit here and realize he was finished. Except for the imminent visit from the nurse—a large flabby matron who smelled of sterile dressings and worked the needle into his vein each week with endless deliberation and satisfaction—it was exciting to him to be sitting here, being processed out of the system. He half expected an erection to begin, but none did.

  "I have gifts for you, and for you, Carla," he said. "Sergeant Arnett, I had no idea you would be attending."

  "Carry on."

  He brought out a yellow turkey egg for Holtz and a pink goose egg for Carla. The yellow egg had small checkerboard flags on toothpicks protruding from each side near the top. It wore a snug muslin vest trimmed in gold piping and festooned with gold sequins. Thus a rococo high-performance racing egg or something. He shuddered at what his mother must have been thinking when she did it. She made it for him right after he got the job at Pratt. It was astonishing in its ugliness, and Colesceau had happily chosen it for A1 Holtz. Fontana's was hung with tiny strips of dangling frill, giving it the look of a rotund, headless flapper from the '20s. Tiny silver slippers were affixed to its bottom. Pure Carla.

  He presented them one at a time. Holtz's eyes actually became misty behind his filthy glasses. Carla Fontana smiled at him with a smile so pitying and genuine that Colesceau wished he could smash her teeth out with a brick and make her swallow them.

  He shook Holtz's hand and then Carla's. Sergeant Arnett nodded to him.

  man to me, Moros. You've abided by the rules and maintained a sense of good humor and cooperation about it all. Especially this last part. Good luck. And, I arranged with Corrections to send you out of here today without that last injection. It's up to the Board physicians and they took my advice. After three years of it you don't need any more. And if you do, one more's not going to do you any good at all. So, to you, my friend. Cheers, salud and godspeed."

  He lifted his root beer cup for a toast. Colesceau raised his own and drank.

  "Drink up and have some cake," said Holtz. "When you're done we'll sign the papers and sneak you out the back."

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Tim Hess sat in the mournful hush of the detective's pen. He watched the fax machine print out Bart Young's list of embalming machine buyers in Southern California over the last two years. It was arranged by date of purchase. The addresses and phone numbers and signing purchaser were conveniently listed, too. Mostly funeral homes and, presumably, their owners or managers: Marv Locklear of Locklear Mortuary... Burton Browd of Maywood Park... Peg Chester, Orange Tree Memorial Park and Cemetery...

  Allen Bobb was on the list, signing for the Cypress College Department of Mortuary Science. Most of the sales were in Los Angeles County. There were nineteen in Orange, sixteen in San Diego county, fourteen each in Riverside and San Bernardino.

  Lots of dead people to take care of, thought Hess. He was hoping for a match with the registered panel van owners or the customer list from Arnie's Outdoors, one of which he flipped through with each hand as the fax rolled out its own list. His head moved back and forth as he went from one to the other.

  He could feel the draft on the back of his head whenever someone walked behind him. The air conditioner coming on was like a freezer being opened. He was curious what the back of his head looked like without hair in a way he was never curious when his head was covered by it. At home, before coming in, he'd tried on half a dozen hats. They called attention to what he was hiding, but he decided on an old felt fedora that had been his rain hat for a couple of decades. He hadn't figured on every little draft once he took it off indoors, however, or on the stares of the other deputies who worked around him. He could actually feel their eyes on his newborn skin. After an hour or two, he was getting a little irritated by them.

  ... D.C. Simmons of Simmons Family Funeral Home ... Barbara Braun at Sylvan Glen . . . William Wayne of Rose Garden Home in Lake Elsinore...

  Lake Elsinore, again, thought Hess. The Ortega. Lael Jillson and Janet Kane. Murdered LaLonde. The buyer of an electronic car alarm override, calling himself Bill. A Porti-Boy embalming machine delivered November of last year, three months before Lael Jillson, one month before the Deer Sleigh'R and rope purchased with cash at Arnie's by a man who looked like the one described by Kamala Petersen.

  But William Wayne wasn't on the other lists. And no one else on Bart Young's list was either.

  Too easy, Hess thought, though easy things broke cases all the time. In fact, a surprising number of high-profile murder investigations turned on something like this—something simple and direct. Hess thought of the dead man si
tting next to Randy Kraft in his car; the Atlanta child killer tossing a body off the bridge in view of the FBI; the bloody chainsaw returned to the rental yard by a killer whose name Hess could not at the moment remember. But that kind of good luck wasn't something you expected. And it only seemed to come late in the game, when the casualties were high, when everything else you'd tried hadn't worked.

  . . . Vance Latham at Trask Family Mortuary .. . Fran Devine for Willowbrook Memorial Park... Mark Goldberg at Woodbridge Mortuary...

  Claycamp came by to tell him they were down to twenty-two panel vans registered to Orange County males. Gilliam came by with the now moot blowups picturing Matamoros Colesceau as he watched TV, courtesy of concerned citizen Rick Hjorth. Hess looked at them anyway. They were less definite than the originals, as he knew they would be. He shook his head and slipped them into his side coat pocket. Maybe see them later, in a different light.

  Ray Dunbar, Jerry Kirby's partner, stopped to thank Hess for being there the night before, for doing what he'd done, for trying what he'd tried to do.

  Brighton came over for a casual debriefing on the Jerry Kirby aftermath. The sheriff set a hand on Hess's shoulder, thanked him, then walked away. Hess had always hated hands on his shoulders—condescension, pride of ownership, false assurance. Brighton's hand made his skin start burning again. And his heart sank a little when he finally realized that word of his new head had leaked out, and his friendly visitors were coming to see it for themselves.

  "Nice head," said Merci, passing him for the first time at work, acting her part. She had a thick stack of papers in one hand. Hess saw Phil Kemp look over at her, then away. "When did you shave it?"

  "Last night."

  He was aware of the other homicide detectives, all men, watching him.

  She appeared to study his new hairstyle for the first time. "I like it," she said with a smile. "It shows off your face."

  She had said the same thing the night before, as Hess dried himself after the shower. He couldn't remember the last time he'd taken a shower with a woman just because he wanted to be close to her some more. Or the last time he had held for a long while and really looked at his lover after they were done. It had been decades since he'd been with someone Merci's age and this made him feel as if he were somehow not himself. Like he'd gone back in time.