Alien Heat

by Lynn Hightower

  “Cradle to birth, you said?” David asked.

  “Yeah, because of the teeth. She’s had good dental care from day one. I see your point. The best money is she’s wealthy, or her parents were in protected professions. You know, a cop like you guys, or maybe a teacher.”

  Mel scratched his chin. “Except lookit where she was found. What’s she doing in a housing project downtown? The supper club, okay, plenty of rich people go slumming. But why the house?”

  The air-conditioning cranked up, sending a rumble through the duct work. A waft of cool air ruffled the dry strands of hair left on the woman’s blistered scalp. David thought of Arthur Jenks, clutching his mother’s favorite old sweater when he thought no one was looking.

  He had an impulse, and checked his watch. Late, but why not? He would call Rose and tell her to bring the kids in, and they would have a family night at the little carnival down the street. They hadn’t had a family night in ages. He thought of his girls, hair streaming in the wind. He thought with sudden hunger of caramel apples, and how happy his daughters would be with a swirl of pink and blue cotton candy on a plastic cone.

  “David? You still with us here?”

  David looked at Mel, stuck his hands in his pockets. “Miriam, do me a favor. Run a DNA match on a missing person, file origin Chicago PD.”

  “Who?” she asked.

  “Theresa Jenks.”

  NINE

  They were gone—the flashing lights, Animal-shaped controls, leering pirates. Unadorned by the holograms, the Crazy Eight Wheel was a twisted utilitarian mass of metal, worn padded seats, questionable restraints. The fair had shut down for the night.

  David looked at his watch, thinking that it was late anyway, that the girls were long tucked into bed. He took a deep breath, promised himself that there would be other times.

  The fairground smelled just like he remembered, the sour greasy sweet smell that used to fill his stomach with butterflies of anticipation. The metal skeletons of the silent rides had an unmasked look. David jammed his hands in his pockets, thinking of the seats full of people who saw and savored what was not there. He thought of the Crazy Eight Wheel running without holograms, metal rising against the night sky, joints groaning. In his mind’s eye, the people rode silently, faces tense.

  He heard footsteps. Mel waved a hand; String followed. The Elaki had a plastic roller clotted with dried cotton candy snarled in his bottom fringe.

  Mel shook his head. “Well, partner, who would have ever known it?”

  “Theresa Jenks?” David said.

  “One and the same. Some copper’s hunch, David.” Mel glanced at String, then looked back again. “Behold, the Elaki equivalent of toilet paper stuck to the shoe.”

  David tried not to smile.

  “Shoe is human fringe cover? I see no toilet paper streams, Detective Mel.”

  Mel grinned at David, but the smile faded. “Tough on the kid. You want we should tell them, or put it off on Chicago? ’Cause I vote Chicago.”

  David frowned. “It’s too wrapped up in our fire. We’ll tell them.”

  “Want to see Jenks’s face?” Mel asked.

  David nodded.

  String moved sideways. “What will the face tell you that the mouth will not?”

  “Sometimes the mouth lies,” David said.

  “And the face does not?”

  Mel waved a hand. “Naw, I know plenty of faces that would lie to you, lots of ’em female.”

  “Then why would this be the—”

  “String, come on, it’s a human thing.”

  “Humans have many things, Detective Mel. I wish to learn.”

  “Okay, lookit, let’s make this as simple as we can. It’s like your magic tricks. You got to coordinate.”

  “Is hard for the human to coordinate face and mouth lies together?”

  “Depending on the human, yeah, pretty much. I know it seems complicated.”

  “No. It is straight, this, I can see it.” String balanced on the edge of his fringe. “Humans capable of much in the strangenesses. It brings to my mind something that happened with pouch-sib who would be called the eccentric, even for—”

  Mel yawned. “Can we go? Wait, ho, David. Look at your shirt, will you? You don’t look clean enough to be calling on bereaved families.”

  “That’s not where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “The psychic.”

  “Her? How come?”

  “Because she predicted this.”

  “I didn’t hear her. String, you hear her?”

  “No, I do not recall this.”

  “I did,” David said.

  Mel scratched the left side of his rib cage. “I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff anymore.”

  David gave him a hard look. “I don’t.”

  “So then—”

  “So then I’m wondering how it is she knew what she knew.”

  String rolled back and forth on the oil-stained pavement while they stood in the garage waiting for David’s car. David gave the Elaki a second look. Yellow-brown popcorn kernels clotted the fringe around the dried cone of cotton candy.

  “Mel, get that stuff off him, will you?”

  “Tone down that parent instinct, David, this is a grown Elaki here.”

  String rolled into earshot. “It will be okay?”

  “What will be okay, Gumby?”

  “The van, Detective Mel. The dents to be sure. They will have the van in the possession for some of the days is the word to be. It will heal?”

  “For God’s sake, we’re talking fender bender here.”

  “This Warden is not the good driving force.”

  Mel grimaced. “Neither of you are. Shouldn’t give licenses to Elaki, you ask me.”

  David heard the crackle of tires on concrete, saw his car rounding the corner.

  “The van is what I wish for,” String said.

  Mel opened the back door of the car. “The van is out of commission. In you go, Gumby.”

  “I do not like seat of the back, is most uncomfortable.”

  “Get in, will you?”

  David gave the Elaki a kind look. “They’ll fix the dent, String. Wash it and clean it up, recoat the nicks and stuff. It’s going to look great.”

  String leaned sideways, scooting into the backseat on his side. Mel tucked his fringe in after him, then got in front.

  “I am most uncomfortable and do not wish to be the conversationalist.”

  “Break my heart,” Mel muttered.

  “Find out where she is,” David said.

  “Where who is? Miriam?”

  “The psychic, Mel. I can’t program the navigator if I don’t know where I’m headed, right?”

  “David Silver, please enter location code.”

  “What’s the command for drive aimlessly?”

  “Meander drive,” String said.

  Mel glanced into the backseat. “I thought you weren’t talking.”

  David raced the engine, steered the car out of the garage and onto the congested streets. He wished people would go home at night, go to bed and quit clogging the road.

  The car took a curve, veering sharply. String made a soft hissy noise.

  “The Jenkses are in a suite at the Rialto,” Mel said.

  David nodded. He couldn’t afford a drink in the lobby. He thought about Teddy Blake. “Nice work if you can get it.”

  “Not her,” Mel said. “Blake’s at the Continental.”

  David looked at Mel, who shrugged and smiled with one side of his mouth. “The Continental? You sure?”

  “Yeah, I double-checked.”

  David glanced in the rearview mirror. There was a smudge of soot on his left temple. “Okay, Mel. I’m not dressed for the Rialto anyway. Drop me off at the Continental, and you and String do the bereavement thing, then come and pick me up.”

  “That’s smooth, David. And if you’re going to the Continental, wear your gun outside your shi
rt. That way you’ll blend in.”

  A weary voice drifted up from the backseat. “Greet the officers from vice for me, Detective David.”

  Mel grinned. “The Elaki makes a joke.”

  TEN

  The district attorney had once told David that half the crimes he prosecuted originated at the Continental Inn. Where were you staying, sir? The Continental Inn. Ma’am, can you tell me where the meeting took place? The Continental Inn. Where did you first hear of the incident? The Continental Inn.

  Interesting place for Teddy Blake.

  Sweat had dried, salty on his back, and David felt grimy.

  The sensor that should have registered his presence was out of commission. If this place burned, they’d never get an accurate body count.

  The lobby had a musty, sour smell and a thin, blue-patterned carpet that looked like a fine layer of sponge on the floor. In the corner, a fig tree dropped a spray of waxy green leaves in a last-ditch bid for attention.

  David felt a thrum of vibration under his armpit and touched his gun, stroking the alarm chip. The hotel had a field going. Weapons would not work here.

  Not a bad policy, for a hotel like the Continental.

  The desk clerk was short enough that the counter came up to his chest. He was bald, a faint stubble of hair intimating that he was bald by choice. He had a dimple in his chin, and his left ear had five piercing holes but no earrings.

  David showed his ID. “Teddy Blake. What room?”

  A curious stillness settled over the desk clerk, and his smile was surface tension only.

  “Three fifty-two.” He did not check the computer.

  David gave him a cop look. “Just like that? Off the top of your head?”

  The man touched the stubble on his scalp with a sudden, self-conscious motion. He put his hand back on the counter, voice soft and bland to the point of being offensive. “Three fifty-two. Sir.”

  David shrugged, bypassed the elevator for the stairs.

  It was hot in the stairwell, and David started sweating again. He heard footsteps behind him and moved to one side. A familiar-looking man in blue jeans and a polo shirt took the steps two at a time. The guy had the buffed-up physique and expensive tennis shoes that said vice cop, and he carried a grease-spotted pizza box. David sniffed. Onions and sausage.

  “String says hello,” David said softly, after the man was out of earshot.

  The hallway was dimly lit, and cooler than the stairwell, but not by much. Clean enough, David decided, if one did not mind water-spotted ceilings and a grey film of grunge in the corners. Same carpet pattern as in the lobby, this one red.

  David turned a corner, frowned, tried to understand a numbering system that stopped dead at one end, then started fresh at random in the middle. He heard the roar of a crowd and an excited male mumble—sportscaster. Someone’s television was way too loud. David looked at the number over the door. Three fifty-two.

  He ran a hand through black curly hair, thinking maybe he’d gotten it cut too short last time. He knocked hard, wondering if Teddy Blake would hear him over the ball game.

  She was psychic, she ought to know he was there.

  David waited. Heard screams from the crowd, the announcer going wild. An unladylike shout—“Go, go, go!” David knocked again.

  “I’m coming, Detective, have some patience, okay?”

  The volume muted. David heard a woman sobbing softly in the next room. He looked over his shoulder, unpleasantly reminded of the kind of motels where the department put him up when he traveled. The only hotel rooms that did not depress him were the unaffordable kind.

  The door swung open. He almost didn’t recognize her.

  Her hair was pulled loosely back, and she wore a thin tank top that was bright orange and said TENNESSEE VOLS. Her cutoff jeans were rolled to an indecent level at the tops of her thighs, making David wonder if the room air-conditioning was on the blink.

  She was tan, her arms firm and muscular; the tan was too imperfect to be chemical. David decided she had to be the only person on Earth who hadn’t had a fear of skin cancer drummed into her head since birth.

  “Come on in, if you’re coming.” She turned her back on him and dashed back into the room.

  He followed her in, closing the door softly. She was watching basketball, no surprise, on an old-fashioned television whose thin screen covered the entire side of the wall. A radio was playing—twangy music with guitars and a sax, and simple, mournful lyrics. A paperback novel was open on the bed.

  David checked the book cover. My Sweet Savage, etched in gold and pink over a bare-chested man and a bosomy woman who chastely held hands and stared into each other’s eyes.

  “Good book?” David asked. He smelled pizza.

  Teddy turned away from the television with the same look of irritation he gave his kids when they interrupted. She looked confused, followed his gaze to the book on the bed, and blushed.

  Her shoulders straightened. “What’s it to you?”

  She was direct, that much he would give her.

  “Kind of late to be dropping by, isn’t it, Detective? Back home, we call first, if we think it might be inconvenient.”

  “In the city, people always find it inconvenient for the cops to drop by. How’d you know it was me at the door?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “You said Detective.”

  “Well. I am psychic.”

  David tilted his head to one side. “The desk clerk called you.”

  She shook her head at him. “A nonbeliever.”

  The tank top was oversized, and the armholes dipped all the way to her waist. She wore a white lacy half shirt underneath. David did not think she had on a bra. Maybe the lacy thing was supposed to be instead of a bra.

  Her toenails were painted livid red. David looked away from her long slender legs, glancing at the television.

  “Who you for?”

  She glanced back at the screen. “Volunteers, of course. That’s my team.”

  “You from Tennessee?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What player you hooked into?”

  She grinned at him. “This hotel’s not what you’d call equipped, Silver. You have to watch it the old-fashioned way.”

  David glanced around the room. She was reading, watching TV, and listening to the radio, all at the same time.

  She turned the music down. Over her shoulders, a coach signaled time out.

  “Hang on,” she said.

  She opened the white pizza box on the bed, put a piece on a Styrofoam slab, then handed it to him. “Hope you like sausage.”

  She went to a tiny refrigerator that was stashed next to the dresser and a dirty coffeepot, and got out a beer. Retro Beer, the cheapest brand on the market. David hadn’t had one since he was a broke kid in Little Saigo. He wondered if it was as bad as he remembered.

  “I’m not hungry,” David said.

  “Pretend. I feel funny if I eat and you don’t, and this pizza just got delivered. Carpe diem.”

  David took a bite. The crust was crisp and chewy and the cheese was hot. There was a lot of sausage, oozing orange fat over the cheese and the onions. It tasted wonderful.

  “I didn’t think these places delivered anymore.”

  “Not in this neighborhood, that’s for sure. Friend of mine picked it up.”

  David remembered the vice cop running up the stairs. He cocked his head to one side. There seemed to be an interesting microcosm of society in this hotel, and Teddy Blake fit right in. The desk clerk warned her of cops at the door, and the guys in vice brought her pizza.

  David opened the beer, watching her eat. She was dainty about it, but fast, like she was starving.

  She caught his eye. “Excuse me. Haven’t had a bite all day.”

  “Why not?”

  “Forgot.”

  It seemed like her, forgetting to eat. She opened the pizza box and gave him another slice. Cheese threaded from the bottom of the box, then pulled away.
The beer had a bitter, watery taste, but it was cold.

  “Jenks and his boy are at the Rialto,” David said.

  “You think I don’t know?”

  “He wouldn’t put you up there? This isn’t the greatest hotel in the world, for a woman on her own. Or a man, for that matter.”

  “I do okay.”

  Not good enough for Jenks to put her up in style, David thought.

  “Jenks got me a suite there, or tried to. I just told him no. I bill for expenses, and I don’t gouge people.”

  “How much do you charge?” David said.

  “That’s kind of rude, just to ask.”

  “Maybe I want a reading.”

  “I don’t do readings. And I don’t believe in astrology, so don’t tell me your sign. I don’t read palms or tea leaves or tarot cards, and I don’t charge for what I do. Just expenses, if I go out of town or something, ’cause otherwise I couldn’t go. I’m not rich, you know.”

  David nodded. She did not look rich. But she’d have it socked away, lots of it, good as she was. This was just for show.

  She chewed a piece of crust. “Besides, I’m from a small town. Hotels like the Rialto make me uncomfortable. They don’t want people like me there.”

  Her eyes were very large and brown, and David felt an odd pang. She ate all of the crust before she took another piece of pizza. Frugal, David thought. She passed him another beer. It still tasted bad, but he wasn’t minding it.

  “Pretty bad fire you had. Sorry we intruded in the middle. I tried to get Jenks to wait a day, but he’s not the kind of man—”

  “He’s not the kind of man who waits.”

  “Nice of you to finish my sentence for me, Detective, but I can do it myself, no trouble.”

  “Tell me about yourself, Ms. Blake.”

  She rocked from side to side in her chair. “Like what?”

  “History. Born?”

  “Flatwoods, Tennessee. I know, you never heard of it.”

  “Age?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “You look twenty-two.”

  “You don’t.”

  He smiled at her. It was cute, her trying to get under his skin. He’d survived worse. “Married?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Brothers? Sisters? The seventh child of a seventh child?”