Alien Heat

by Lynn Hightower

  He waited. The door opened.

  Jenks wore a shabby plaid bathrobe that was likely older than Arthur. His feet were bare, toenails thick and yellowish, in need of a trim. He looked gaunt, and David wondered if he had been eating.

  “Detective Silver?” Jenks was hesitating. “I’m sorry—”

  “We need to talk,” David said.

  Jenks stepped away from the door.

  Arthur was dressed, freshly showered, hair wet but neatly combed. He seemed different, more confident.

  David winked. “You think you could go downstairs for a while and get some breakfast?”

  Arthur nodded. “Sure.”

  Jenks rocked forward on the balls of his feet. “I’ve already ordered room service, Arthur.”

  “I’m eating downstairs.”

  The door shut softly. Well-trained, David thought. He’d have expected a slam.

  “I’m not happy about Arthur’s little adventure last night,” Jenks said.

  “That’s not what I came to discuss. Sit down, Dr. Jenks.”

  Jenks hesitated, did not seem to know what to do with his face or hands. He settled on the edge of the small yellow love seat and his robe split open, revealing blue silk boxer shorts. David looked away, considered telling Jenks to take a moment to get dressed, then decided he wanted the man vulnerable.

  David sat in a gold brocade armchair—a grandmother chair, his daughters would call it.

  “You and your wife were having serious difficulties when she left.” David looked Jenks in the eye, stayed quiet.

  Jenks sounded almost bored. “I know it’s normal to suspect the husband when a woman is murdered, but I didn’t kill my wife.”

  David said nothing.

  Jenks crossed his legs. “Call Bruer in Chicago. He knows how concerned I was when Theresa disappeared. I loved Theresa. I did, you know.”

  David nodded.

  “Just what is it you want, Detective?”

  “You admit you were having problems. I need to know how much of it was between the two of you, and how much of it was … other things. I need to understand why she left, and never so much as called. If she loved Arthur as much as you say, it’s hard to understand. I need to know what was going on in her mind, in her life, those last weeks before she disappeared.”

  Jenks slid forward on the couch. “Did you quiz Arthur on this last night?”

  “Dr. Jenks.” Something in David’s tone made him sit straighter. “I’ve seen your little room, off the master bedroom. I’ve seen the couch you’ve been sleeping on and the easy chair where you sit up at night and read. The two of you were sleeping apart; your wife was having nightmares. I’ve seen her books on reincarnation. I know she withdrew large sums of money from her personal bank account.

  “You implied, when we talked before, that the problems started up after she went to the Mind Institute, after she had a reading. I’m trying to understand how that one experience could be the catalyst for so much … harm.”

  Jenks shook his head back and forth. “You don’t understand, Detective.”

  “Then explain it to me, Dr. Jenks.”

  Jenks looked at David, then studied the backs of his hands. “When Martin drowned, he was four years old, and the brightest, sunniest child. We were so very devastated. Guilt-ridden. There is no comfort in this world, when you’ve lost a child.” Jenks’s voice went gravelly. “You have children?”

  “Three.”

  Jenks nodded. “We did not handle it well. We never talked about it all that much. It’s only dawned on me in the last year or two, how really strange that is. Theresa was raised in the South, and when unpleasant things came up, she didn’t deal with them. And really, I was no better. We both fell apart. I finally got to the point where all I wanted was to return to some kind of normal life. I put together a routine, and I followed that routine to the letter every day. It saved me. I didn’t have to think, you see.

  “Theresa wasn’t like that. She was intelligent, impulsive. Passionate.” He raised a heavy eyebrow. “Our relationship was the classic case of opposites attracting. And my wife was a very controlling person, Detective Silver, as am I. So much of what went on between us, even the way we dealt with our grief, was a matter of one of us struggling to control the other. No matter what we thought we were fighting about, it all boiled down to control.”

  David thought of Rose, so very strong-willed; himself, a perfectionist. He was getting a glimmer of this marriage, between Bernard and Theresa Jenks.

  Jenks clasped his large hands and let them hang between his legs.

  “Theresa became unbelievably, painfully depressed. Then she got restless. Anxious. It’s hard to explain. Three years after Martin died—” Jenks’s voice broke. After all these years, he could not say the child’s name casually. “Theresa decided she wanted to have another child, she had to have one. I could not bear the thought, the worry—my God, I would never sleep another night. The thing is, Detective, you go through life, and against all evidence to the contrary, you never really believe that bad things can happen to you. You go on every day feeling immune, for no logical reason. And then your son drowns, just by accident, and your innocence goes, you’re marked now. You don’t believe bad things won’t happen. I knew if I had another child, I would be afraid for the rest of my life.”

  David looked at Jenks and began to understand. “So you didn’t. And she did.”

  Jenks nodded. “I don’t begin to care or understand why other people make these arrangements. I suppose for the woman it means never fighting for child custody. And for the man, it’s complete freedom from child support.”

  David knew of other reasons. Darker reasons. Child molesters who grew their own victims, but did not want to risk the new death penalty for incest.

  “At the time, I thought we both won. She got her child, and I was able to keep my distance. Arthur was hers, legally. I donated the sperm, but Theresa was artificially inseminated. Legally, it’s not required to do it that way, but she insisted, and I wanted the same. It was not our baby, it was hers.

  “Theresa and Arthur started having problems when Arthur turned twelve. She wanted me to intervene, to be a father, and I wouldn’t do it. There you have the source of trouble, Detective. Just that simple.”

  And that complicated, David thought. “So what happened?”

  There was a knock at the door, and the sensor said room service.

  “Come in,” Jenks said.

  The locks unbolted. David tensed. Jenks was far too careless. Sensors could be tripped up, even in expensive hotels—especially in expensive hotels.

  The door opened wide and a cart rolled in. “Please enjoy the breakfast you ordered, Mr. Jenks of Room 3017. If you require anything further, please dial extension twenty-three on your telephone, and we will be pleased to serve you.”

  “Join me, Detective?” Jenks dragged the cart closer, setting the voice chip off again.

  “Please enjoy the breakfast you ordered, Mr.—”

  “Damn it,” Jenks said. “Coffee, sir?”

  “Please.”

  Jenks’s hands were shaking. David took the pot and poured. Jenks took his small china cup and sat back on the couch. David poured himself a cup, added cream. He took the cover off the food.

  Hash browns, a basket of croissants, bacon, and a saucer of caramel candy. David shook his head. Elaki were very partial to caramels. They probably came with every meal.

  He looked at Jenks. “You should eat.”

  “I order meals three times a day, then I can’t eat them. Arthur eats for both of us. I think he’s grown four inches since we got here.”

  David took the basket of croissants to the table near the couch, helped himself, and sat down. Jenks took a pastry and set it on his knee. The croissants were small and shedding flakes like Elaki lost scales. They tasted of buttered dough and cinnamon. Not surprising; Elaki liked cinnamon in everything.

  “Taste like cinnamon?” Jenks snapped.

&nbs
p; David nodded.

  “I hate this hotel. No cinnamon in the coffee, you will notice. I raised holy hell the first morning they brought that Elaki pap for my breakfast. They’re going to run real people off, if they’re not careful.”

  David kept quiet, thinking that Elaki coffee was superior to the typical brew, and that if Jenks didn’t realize that running humans off was the business of this hotel, he was a fool.

  “Arthur is a good boy,” David said.

  Jenks set his coffee cup down. “I told her—Theresa, I mean—I told her that when she started this business up about Martin.”

  David nodded patiently.

  “You know, even though it was a lark, just a chance thing with a friend … the reason she went to the psychic was to ask about me. Would I become a father to Arthur?”

  This pleased the man’s vanity, David thought. He took another croissant. “And?”

  “The psychic was an Elaki. It read scales, Detective, what a load of crap.”

  “You hired Teddy Blake.”

  “She’s different. Bruer recommended Teddy, and I think you’re wrong about her. I can’t get her to take any money, other than expenses. But this guy Theresa went to, he was manipulative. He had her do all kinds of strange things. Meditate three times a day, keep her own personal scale with her at all times. It was ridiculous.”

  David thought of Candy Andy, his own set of odd instructions, how often he had gone along.

  “Before she left, she was really going off the deep end. Nightmares, like I told you. Talked about reincarnation till I thought I would wring her neck.” Jenks looked up sharply. “I didn’t mean that, you know.”

  David gave Jenks a reassuring smile.

  “Then she stopped talking about it. To me. But I saw her books, and I knew she was still seeing the psychic. She seemed to have some sort of epiphany, she came to a decision. At first I thought, thank God, she is over this. Then I realized she had just gone underground. I caught her in Arthur’s room when he was at school. She had his Eight Ball—you’ve seen those things the kids have, like a black bowling ball? Ask it a question and the answer comes up?”

  David nodded. He’d had one himself, when he was growing up. How many times had he asked it if his father would come home?

  YES … NO … IT SEEMS SO … ASK AGAIN LATER … ANSWER HAZY AT THIS TIME

  Jenks grimaced. “Those things, they’re just kid toys. They’re a joke. And there she was, with this Eight Ball in her hands, tears running down her cheeks. It was important to her. It mattered.”

  “Then what?”

  “It shook me. I started watching her. And I realized how completely she had shut me out of her life.”

  “Did you argue?”

  “I wish we had, but we couldn’t even do that. She was polite, she just slid away. I let it go awhile, but she even shut Arthur out. Her own son, she had no right to do that. Someone had to focus on the boy, and he was hers after all.”

  “Did you tell her that?”

  “Hell, yes, till I was blue in the goddamn face. And you know what she said?”

  David waited.

  “Said he wasn’t mine, by legal contract, and I could mind my own business.”

  Jenks picked up his coffee cup, then set it down. David saw that he had shredded the croissant into a pile of brown flakes.

  “Then what?” David said.

  “Then she disappeared.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  David slouched next to the pay phone in the lobby of his precinct and dialed Teddy’s number. He decided not to think about why he didn’t go up to his office and call from his desk. He let the phone ring, wondering if she was in the shower, counted three more rings. He hung up, disappointed, but relieved. The camera disc recorded his presence, and he ducked into the stairwell.

  There were three messages in his reader. Two from Detective Warden, one from Clements. Mel was sitting on the edge of Della’s desk, being ignored.

  “Hey, David, you had breakfast yet?”

  “Twice.”

  “Once with your mistress, and once with your wife?”

  “Talked to Jenks this morning, Mel. No surprise, but he and his wife were having Serious Marital Strain.”

  “Business as usual,” Mel said.

  String rolled in, carrying a white bag that reeked of cinnamon, garlic, and chili powder. The bag said HOMEBOYS on the side.

  “Good of the morning, I have brought breakfast.”

  Mel shook his head. “You have brought tacos. How many times I got to tell you that ain’t breakfast?”

  “Goes in one hearing orifice and proceeds out the other. This is the proper expression?” String opened the bag. “Who will care for the taco?”

  “They got cinnamon in them?” Mel asked.

  “All are Elaki-style.”

  “Give it here. Take mine, Della. You like stolen food better anyways.”

  David shifted his weight. The Tylenol was wearing off and his back ached. “Della, did you do that background for me on the Mind Institute? There hasn’t been anything in my reader.”

  Della’s voice went low and apologetic. “I got it started, Silver, just haven’t quite finished it up. System’s slow.”

  Mel gave David a knowing look.

  Della pushed her chair back from her desk. “Look, I’m serious here. I know my work’s not up to par, okay? But this wasn’t me. I got most of the stuff together, including a client listing, did some cross-referencing, and somehow in the middle of all this I lost data. Haven’t been able to retrieve it.”

  String took a bite of taco, tearing the shell loose and showering filling on the desk. David fished a napkin out of the bag and slid it across the table.

  “Of what nature be the data?”

  Della shrugged. “Names. Mainly people that were on the list the first time through, and now they aren’t. And I can’t figure out where I dropped the entries. I transferred everything to a shell document, and put it through a keystroke program, but it’s a simple routine and—”

  “Wait a minute,” David said. “You’re saying you have names that were in the data bank, and now they’re not?”

  Della nodded.

  Mel scooped up meat that had spilled from String’s taco. “But what’s the significance? Who are the people on the list?”

  “Clients of that Mind Institute,” Della said.

  “How many names are missing?”

  Della slapped the desktop. “How am I going to know what’s missing if it’s not there?”

  Silence settled, broken only by the crunch as String ate another taco.

  “I do have two of the missing names. Shut up, Mel, let me finish. It’s only because I ran a test subset. That’s how I knew data was gone in the first place.”

  David frowned. “Della, you think there’s any chance anybody got into your drive crystal?”

  “No, Silver, I was right there the whole time, working late. I ran the subset, got a call from the central operator. Said they were running a data compile, and the system would be down. I got up, took a break, came back.”

  “So if somebody messed with it—”

  “They’d have to get to the actual data file, Silver. Who’s going to do that? The Feds?”

  “Give the girl a taco.”

  String fished in the bag.

  “It’s an expression, String, okay? He’s kidding.” Della chewed a thumbnail. “You don’t really—”

  David held up a finger. “Here’s the funny thing. Captain Halliday told me that if I wanted to back off on this Jenks murder, work just the supper club—”

  “Nah, come on, she’s a rich bitch, that don’t sound right.” Mel cocked his head sideways. “And even if they did tell you that, it’s bureaucratic bullshit. Management isn’t smart enough to actually hatch a plot, they’re just blowing in the wind.”

  “Please, most distressing mental image.”

  “Sorry, Gumby. What else makes you say Feds, David?”

  “Dawn Weiler
called me, said my name came up over there. Why would that be?”

  “Senior detective on this supper club fire.”

  “What’s got the FBI interested?”

  “If it’s a hate crime, David, it’s up their alley. Especially since this business agent, real estate broker … what’s his name?”

  “Tatewood.”

  “You said he’d been getting letters from that group. SCAE. And you know those supper clubs always catch the hate groups, right? Mixing Elaki and people?”

  Della dropped the taco she had picked up.

  “I don’t know, Mel. Clements is pretty sure these fires were set by the owners.”

  “Two in the same month?” Mel said.

  “Ah, it will be the feline faker.”

  Della looked at String. “The what?”

  “Feline faker. It brings to my mind an incident of happening when I was but young in law enforcement.”

  Mel put his feet on the table and closed his eyes. “Excuse me for interrupting another ever fascinating story, but are you trying to say copycat, String?”

  “Yes, that is it.”

  Mel looked at David. “For the life of me, I can’t figure how Theresa Jenks fits into any of this.”

  “Wrong place at the wrong time?” Della said.

  David shook his head. “Not if she’s murdered. We have the same incendiary devices used in the house and the supper club. Making sure it burned and burned good.”

  “Same somebody that killed Jenks did the fires,” Mel said.

  String chewed taco shell. “Is most surprise the dog does not protect.”

  Mel scratched his left armpit. “Much as I hate to admit it, he’s got a point. You get anywhere on finding Bowser’s remains?”

  “The Bowser cannot be finded in the morgue.”

  “Should be in evidence,” Mel said.

  “But yes, Detective Mel, and much is the altercation, which does not change the one true way.”

  “The one true way?” David asked.

  “That this animal of remains has been tossed for the cookies.”

  Della frowned. “Thrown up?”

  “Thrown away, I bet.” Mel put his feet back on the floor. “That’s what you mean, ain’t it, Gumby?”

  String twitched an eye stalk. “Have speaked with a one who believes Bowser remains given the heave-ho at site of origin. The fire. So this will be perhaps found in the Euclid dump?”