Alien Heat

by Lynn Hightower

  “She started sleeping alone. Sometimes at night, I’d hear her call out. I knew better then, than to go to her. She became obsessed with the idea that Martin was somewhere, and that she had to find him.”

  Mel was quiet, finally, listening. David leaned close to Jenks.

  “Was she still seeing this psychic?”

  Jenks nodded. “He was feeding her, I know it. It’s an organization called the Mind Institute—ridiculous! They gave her reading material, all kinds of outrageous theories and crap.”

  David thought of the book with the zigzag of lightning across the cover. “What did they get from her?”

  Jenks shook his head.

  “Sir?”

  “I said I do not know. My wife is … was a very wealthy woman. I think she gave them money. She was giving it to someone. Large sums, out of her personal account.”

  “Any chance she was being blackmailed?” David asked.

  “Theresa? Not a chance.”

  “This woman. Teddy Blake.”

  Jenks smiled fondly. “Oh yes, Ted. Arthur is very attached to her.”

  “Is she connected to the Institute?”

  “No, of course not.”

  David smiled sadly. “Of course not? Why so?”

  “As far as I know, she isn’t. Teddy Blake is a straightforward woman. Bruer in Chicago recommended her.”

  David heard a noise, looked over his shoulder.

  Arthur stood in the bedroom doorway, blinking. He wore a sweatshirt, a pair of red cotton pyjamas that were too small, and one gym sock on his left foot. His right foot was bare.

  String swooped sideways. “The pouchling awakes. Popsicle, pouchling?”

  “No, thank you, I’m not hungry. Careful, Mr. String, you’re dripping.”

  Jenks gave the boy a firm look. “Arthur, I don’t believe you’re properly dressed.”

  The boy looked at the floor. “Teddy said I could call her, is that okay?”

  Jenks pulled his bottom lip, glancing hard at David. “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  Arthur’s chest heaved. He was breathing hard. “She said she didn’t mind.”

  “No, Arthur.”

  The boy looked away from Jenks, turned, and went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind him with a careful click. David found the polite control disturbing.

  “For his own good,” Jenks muttered. “You find any connection between Ms. Blake and the Mind Institute, I’d like to know right away. I’m obligated to protect the child. He is Theresa’s boy.”

  Mel looked at him kindly. “And your own little spermatozoan.”

  FIFTEEN

  David was watching Della when the phone rang, watching her scroll through a computer file while a moist chocolate chip cookie sat on the next desk by a can of Coke. Cold beads of condensation bubbled the sides of the can.

  He was tempted. A man. Della, a female, had not given it a second look, even though it was chocolate. Her computer beeped at her, but she continued scrolling, shoulders slumped, chin to chest. He wasn’t sure what she was supposed to be doing. He hoped it wasn’t important.

  Mel leaned across David’s desk and picked up the phone. “What?”

  David reached for the cookie.

  “Yo, David. It’s Dawn Weiler. You consorting with the Feds?”

  David picked up the phone. “Always. Dawn, how’ve you been?”

  “Hi, David. I’ve been working long hours and eating like a pig at my desk. I bet I’ve gained five pounds in the last three days.”

  More like five ounces, David thought. Dawn had always been able to eat anything and stay slender. Much to Della’s disgust.

  “What is it with women and their weight?” David glanced warily at Della. She paid him no attention. Her computer beeped again, but she kept on scrolling.

  “How’s Rose and the kids?” Dawn asked.

  “Kids are great.”

  “And Rose?”

  She was pushing. David wondered if the word was out.

  “Rose is fine.”

  “Good. Listen, David, you up to your ears in the supper club fire? Anything else going on?”

  David frowned. “What’s up here?”

  “Just something funny.”

  “Wait for it,” David muttered, under his breath. “Should we meet for lunch maybe?”

  “No, I don’t have time.”

  “Spit it already.”

  “You sound like Mel.”

  “Sticks and stones.”

  She laughed, and David smiled, picturing her in her office. Her hair would be flipped neatly under, white lace collar buttoned up to the top of her neck, pleated skirt swinging neatly over pale trim knees.

  Teddy Blake was tan. Long-legged in cutoff shorts. David put her out of his mind.

  “David, your name has come up in an investigation that has no connection to the fire.”

  “Dawn, are you on your office phone?”

  “No, pay phone, and I don’t have long.”

  David rubbed his finger on a coffee ring. “If it’s not the fire, then what investigation is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Who’s sniffing around?”

  “Can’t say.”

  “Won’t say, you mean.”

  “Right, David, that’s what I mean.”

  “So why are you calling?”

  “Because when our paths cross the paths of local cops, local cops get screwed. And I like you, David, I like you a lot.”

  Something there he hadn’t heard before. There were advantages, sort of, to marriage rumors.

  “Tell me what the investigation’s about. Just a hint, Dawn.”

  “No can do. Honest, I don’t know. Just a blip I ran across trawling through the system. And somebody stopped by the office, oh so casually, wanting to know what kind of cop you were. Routine hacker or bulldog.”

  “What’d you tell them?”

  “I told them you were in a class by yourself. Tenacious, perceptive, relentless, broad-shouldered, brown-eyed, and obsessive.”

  “Spare my blushes.”

  “Take me to lunch one of these days.”

  “Is that all you’re going to tell me?”

  “That’s all.”

  She hung up. David looked at the phone, wondering why all the magazines said women put personal relationships before everything else, including work. Evidently the women he knew didn’t read these articles.

  He wondered why the FBI was interested in him. Something to do with Theresa Jenks?

  The phone rang again. He picked it up. It would be Dawn, with more information. The articles were right.

  “I knew you couldn’t resist me,” David said.

  “Baby, you been too much in the sun?”

  David felt his face get red. “Detective Clements?”

  “Um-hmm. Look, you got kids, don’t you, Silver? Six or seven or more? Wife always bringing them home?”

  “I have three daughters. It’s animals my wife brings home.”

  “Animals, yeah, that was it. She run a pet store?”

  “Animal rights activist. Militant.”

  “Good for her. Anyway, you know kids, right, you got three. So leave your Elaki and your Neanderthal at the office and meet me down by the supper club. Got somebody I want you to meet.”

  “Is she cute?”

  “You married, Silver, or what?”

  Or what, he thought. “Married,” he said.

  “Shame on you.”

  SIXTEEN

  The neighborhood was deserted in the heat of high noon. A man in oversized shoes and a long black coat mumbled to himself and crossed the street, rather than walk in front of the burned-out supper club.

  David thought of the people and Elaki who had perished there in hot narrow rooms. He did not blame the man for crossing over.

  He looked around, wondering if Clements was going to be late. The sun was hot, the oil stains on the paved street dark and tarry. Good iguana weather, David thought, wonde
ring if Elliot was still alive. Likely, he was sunning happily somewhere, belly fat, complacent to have escaped the attentions of the girls. He was not an affectionate lizard.

  Water dripped from a compressor, and David heard the whine of a ball bearing that would soon go. These were old units, in need of replacing.

  The crime rate had dropped dramatically thirty years ago when the Federal government passed a law requiring all housing projects to be air-conditioned. Now they were all going bad, and there was no money for replacement.

  A car horn honked; David heard an engine running rough. A battered Subaru pulled up next to the curb in front of the supper club—the curb that had been crushed to jagged chunks by emergency vehicles, angry residents, fire fighters in a hurry.

  The Subaru showed traces of two very bad paint jobs—one dull brown, the other tasteless orange. The windows were rolled down. Inside, the beige upholstery was torn in places, showing dull gold padding and a layer of the kind of grime generated by long careless use and children.

  Detective Yolanda Free Clements lifted a hand and grinned for one second, then stopped the car and opened the door, bending over the backseat for a canvas briefcase and a bright red plastic bag with a JEEPERS SNEAKERS logo.

  David heard the metallic murmur of the car.

  “In addition to the oil pan, the engine block continues to accumulate rust, and the leak makes it illegal to allow the cooling system—”

  “Just fuck off, baby.” Clements put a hand to the small of her back and winced. “Cut off my air-conditioning on a day like this? Don’t be expecting no oil change any time soon, and you can forget the paint job.”

  “Yolanda Clements, there is no choice but to obey the law concerning leaks in the—”

  Clements slammed the car door.

  “You didn’t lock it,” David said.

  “Never do. Keep hoping somebody will take it. Almost happened once, but the damn car talked ’em out of it.”

  “Might try leaving it here later tonight.”

  She grinned at him, and he was relieved that her bad humor was only for the car. She glanced at a huge watch with a wide, white leather band. David could see the time over her shoulder. 12:46.

  “You by yourself?” she asked.

  “Just like you said. What’s up?”

  She slung the briefcase over one shoulder and headed down the street. “Follow me.”

  “Where’s your Elaki?” David asked.

  “Left him back at the office, studying a chi-square analysis of investors in this property.” She jerked her head toward the supper club. “Expecting it’s changed hands several times the last few years, but evidently it hasn’t. We’re looking at mortgages and all, see if some familiar names come up in the list of investors.”

  “Got any?”

  “Don’t know. My guess is they will. Most of these arson fires are about money, though this one may prove to be the exception.”

  She stopped walking, leaned against a brick house, checked her watch again.

  “I wouldn’t lean against that brick there,” David said.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Side walls in an alley make good bathrooms.”

  She jerked upright. “Oh.”

  More suburban than she admitted, David decided. If she’d grown up like he had, she wouldn’t need to be told.

  “Anyway,” she said. “I didn’t think it was fair to bring my Elaki when I asked you not to bring yours. And they’d just fight over that van String drives. You ask me, it wasn’t even dented. Good Lord save me from obsessive Elaki.”

  David frowned. “String is very proud of the van. And Detective Warden did dent it.”

  “I checked, Silver, I didn’t see any damage.”

  “I checked too.”

  She looked up at him. “At the rate you and I are getting along, we might as well have that Neanderthal here, plus both the Elaki.”

  “I assume by Neanderthal you mean your buddy, Cobb? The one who scratches?”

  “No, I mean your buddy, Burnett, the one who calls me Yo. And he scratches too. His crotch.”

  “He was making a point, Clements.”

  “That’s an excuse?”

  A silvery tingle of music was palpable in the thick humid air. A pink Sno-Cone jeep crept down the grids.

  “Saved by the bell,” Clements said. “Look, we’re hot and crabby. Let me buy you a Sno-Cone, and let’s start over.”

  She waved a hand. The jeep veered right, just as a stream of children emerged from the side window of a tan brick two-story. The tires made screeching noises and the jeep stopped, rear end jumping the grid.

  The side door opened and an Elaki flowed out.

  David looked from the Sno-Cone vendor to Clements. “An Elaki?”

  “That’s right. I warn you, the root beer’s not worth getting.”

  The Elaki held a fin high and swayed sideways, reminding David of a trained dolphin in a water show. His scales were small and close together, no bald patches. He was firm, almost rigid, and his eye stalks were small and close to his head. The happy-face pattern of breathing slits on his belly was elongated, gaping open in the heat.

  “Good of the day, sirs, ma’ams.”

  The voice was high-pitched, but male. David had the feeling the Elaki was very young. He wore a white cotton vest stained with pink and purple juice.

  Clements looked over her shoulder. “Now where’d she get off to?”

  “Who?” David asked.

  “My informant. There she is.” Clements raised her voice. “Get on over here, girl, tell me what flavor you want.”

  The tiny little girl who trudged toward them had her thumb in her mouth. She wore cheap plastic sandals and yellow shorts. Her T-shirt said LAFARGE AND GROAT and showed a fat cat and a dachshund—spin-offs from the old Ren and Stimpy cartoons.

  The little girl popped the thumb out of her mouth. “Booberry.” Her voice was tiny, but shrill. It carried.

  “You mean blueberry?”

  The Elaki waved a fin. “No, iss booberry. The flavor that comes in the cartoon.”

  “Oh,” Clements said.

  “Oh,” David said. They exchanged looks.

  The Elaki pushed a button on an oven-shaped lump of brown metal. “One booberry. And ma’ams and sirs?”

  “Got grape?” David asked.

  “Got grape, yessss. And the ma’ams?”

  “Oranges Jubilee.”

  The Elaki set a dial and pushed a button. “Wait for this beeping, like machine of answering phones. Can pay while the wait goes away.”

  Clements looked at David. “He’s a sociology scholar, on some kind of funded project.”

  The Elaki slid close. “Joint questions for the sirs and ma’ams. Thissss is to be in the confidence of. No names will be taken. For the anonymousness.”

  David braced for something personal.

  “Please to tell. Any swimming fanatics in family history? Much swimming in early years?”

  “That’s two questions,” Clements said. “You’re overcharging.”

  “Swimming?” David echoed.

  “There are three Sno-Cones, ma’ams, it is not to be overcharging.” He cocked an eye prong at David. “Do not be of the embarrassed, sirs. Is anonymous this. Please to tell, much swimming?”

  David leaned close to the Elaki and lowered his voice. “We swam almost three times a week, during the summers. Sometimes for hours at a time.”

  The scales on the Elaki’s midsection quivered. “Fringe wetting or submerged?”

  “Submerged. All afternoon. Just came up for air.”

  Clements put a hand over her mouth. “I had no idea, Silver.”

  “Keep it to yourself,” he said.

  “And ma’ams? The swimming?”

  “Certainly not. What kind of girl do you think I am?”

  “Not even—”

  “Hush that talk or I’ll smack your fin. And no pestering the kid, her cone’s on me.”

  The mach
ine beeped. The Elaki opened the hinged door and handed out Sno-Cones cupped in thin, edible rice paper. He twitched an eye prong at David, giving him a second look.

  Clements bent down and handed a red and blue Sno-Cone to the little girl in yellow shorts. Her hair was a nimbus of tight brown curls. She held the Sno-Cone in both hands, took a test lick, then munched ice sprinkles off the top at a rate that made David’s teeth ache just to watch.

  “Am I getting old,” he said, “or are the informants getting younger?”

  SEVENTEEN

  The little girl grudgingly admitted her name was Penny, though she preferred to be called LaFarge after the cartoon cat on her shirt. David, familiar with the cat’s habits of personal hygiene from his own daughters’ gleeful recitations, was quietly appalled.

  Clements sat beside Penny, both of them swinging their legs. Clements wore cutoff army fatigues, a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a dark, conservative tie. Penny took a slurp of juice from the side of her Sno-Cone and peered at Clements over the mound of pink and blue ice.

  “Most of the polices I know dress nice.”

  “I ain’t most polices,” Clements said.

  The little girl pointed at David. Pink juice stained the pale white skin of her chin and reddened her lips. “He dress nice, like my daddy.”

  “Do I remind you of your daddy?” David asked conversationally.

  The little girl stopped mid-lick. “No.”

  Clements laughed quietly, under her breath. She rustled the red plastic bag and took out a small pink pair of chippers.

  Penny’s eyes got big and she leaned close to David. “Those the shoes that talk.”

  “What do they say? Tie me? Wash your feet?”

  Penny giggled, dribbling pink juice down her shirt. “They tell stories.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “Spaceships. Little pigs with cones on their heads. Parrots run away to the Big Apple.”

  David smiled. The parrot story was one of Mattie’s favorites. “You know where the Big Apple is, Penny?”