“Hey!”
Startled, Lyssy opened his eyes—a grotesque-looking creature with matted hair and beard, a flattened nose, and wide-set, off-kilter eyes was tapping on the car window. “Oh—hi.”
The hairy stranger opened the driver’s door and climbed in. “They said for you to go on up—I’ll take care of the vee-hicle.”
“Up there?” Lyssy pointed toward the pink house on the hillside.
“Good guess, Einstein.” It was the only building within sight.
Openness, the astonishing absence of walls, the unsettling weight of the borderless sky—Lyssy’s shoulders were hunched as he started up the asphalt mountain, as though he were expecting a giant roc to swoop down on him from that enormous, unprecedented firmament.
The climb, he estimated, was the equivalent of mounting the Japanese footbridge in the arboretum around twenty times. He was limping badly by the time he reached the front doorstep; several seconds went by before he realized the door was not going to slide open automatically. “Raised in captivity, released into the wild,” he intoned, in the voice of a Discovery Channel announcer. “Can this magnificent creature adapt? Will he survive?”
It was Lily who answered the door, once he’d solved the dilemma of the doorbell. She led him back to the kitchen and introduced him to Mama Rose, the big redhead at the stove, who told him her casa was his casa, complimented Lily on having plucked a ripe one from the cutie-pie tree, then asked Lyssy if he was hungry.
“Starving,” he said, taking a seat at the beat-up, burn-scarred kitchen table.
Mama Rose slid a chipped dinner plate heaped with scrambled eggs and bacon in front of him, filled a mug with steaming coffee. “Thanks.” He lightened the coffee with half-and-half from a cow-shaped creamer and dumped in a few heaping teaspoons of sugar.
From the back of the house, they heard a toilet flushing loud enough to wake the dead. “One of these days we gotta get that fixed,” said Mama Rose apologetically.
“The prodigal daughter returns,” drawled a male voice from the doorway a few seconds later. A lanky man, handsome in a narrow-eyed Clint Eastwood sort of way, wearing flip-flops, a ratty bathrobe, and a khaki bush hat with the brim pinned up on one side, entered the kitchen, saw Lyssy for the first time, and turned back to Lilith. “Who the fuck’s that? You know better than to—”
“Hi Carson.” Lilith hurried over and threw her arms around him. He hugged her reluctantly, still glaring over her shoulder at the intruder. “That’s my friend Lyssy. We were in kind of a jam, we thought maybe we could hole up here for a couple days.”
Carson pushed Lilith away—but gently—and turned his glare from Lyssy to Mama Rose. In the way of old married couples everywhere, they exchanged a good deal of information in glance and gesture, the gist being: M.R.: Be cool for now, we’ll talk about this later. C: Goddamn right we will.
Lilith intercepted enough of the message to understand she and Lyssy were out of danger for the time being. She hurried back to Lyssy, stood behind him with her hand on his shoulder. “Lyssy, this is Carson—he and Mama Rose saved my ass up in Sturgis.”
“Pleased to meet you,” said Lyssy.
“That goddamn well better not be the last of the bacon,” was Carson’s greeting. Lyssy quickly transferred the surviving bacon strips from his plate onto a paper napkin, which he handed to Carson.
“Sir, you are a scholar and a fucking gentleman,” Carson said grandly, rolling the bacon up in the napkin, then gnawing sideways at the protruding strips as he pulled a chair out with his free hand, twirled it around, and straddled it backward, facing the table. “Any friend of Lilith’s…had better watch his ass.”
Sounded like humor; Lyssy forced a chuckle. He was more interested in why Carson had called her Lilith. It might have been a slip of the tongue, Lyssy told himself, or maybe a memory glitch—or perhaps Lilith was her real name, and Lily her add-a-Y nickname, like Wally for Walter, or Lyssy for Ulysses.
But deep down, he knew better. Because there was yet another explanation, one that accounted for all the discrepancies he’d been pretending not to notice and trying not to think about for the last twelve hours or so. Such as how the timid fawn he’d shown around the arboretum only a few days ago had been transformed into a bossy, fearless, outgoing, self-assured young woman with the vocabulary of a longshoreman.
“Lilith,” he echoed, from around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. “Lilith, Lilith, Lilith.”
“That’s my name,” she said, glaring daggers at him across the table. “Don’t fucking wear it out.”
3
On Thursday morning, Irene Cogan awoke disoriented, in a strange room. She heard snoring, looked over and saw, huddled under the covers of the queen-size bed next to hers, a mound that from the size and sound of it could only have been Pender—or possibly a hibernating bear. But this morning, unlike yesterday, everything came flooding back to her, from the hours under the spotlight at TPP Productions, to the slashed corpses in the living room, to the heartening discovery of the uninjured Corder girl, and the shock of finding the female psych tech’s body draped over the rim of the bathtub.
She and Pender had missed their flight, of course. Naturally the police wanted to debrief them, and poor Alison had begged them to stay with her until her aunt and uncle arrived—they may have been strangers to her but they were all she had. The newly orphaned girl had clung especially close to Pender, who gentled her like a horse whisperer, encouraging her to talk when she wanted to and sob when she needed to. It was Pender who’d first learned that the girl believed Lily had saved her life, spiriting her upstairs when Lyssy (as Alison still thought of him) went berserk with his knife.
But there were so many questions still unanswered. Lily or Lilith? Accomplice or victim? If she was Maxwell’s knowing accomplice, why had she bothered to save the girl from him? If not, why had she left Alison tied up on the floor of her closet instead of simply freeing her? And had she left voluntarily with Maxwell, or had he taken her captive? For Irene Cogan, who knew far too well what it meant to be abducted by Ulysses Maxwell, that was the most important question of all.
Rather than wait with Alison in the middle of a crime scene—a wet crime scene, in the cop lexicon—Irene and Pender had accompanied her to police headquarters. It had been close to midnight by the time her aunt and uncle arrived to pick her up; the girl hugged Pender good-bye so tightly he had to peel her off him like a limpet.
After dining, if such a grand word applies to a meal at an all-night Burger King, Pender and Irene had shared a room in the Holiday Inn Express near the airport. No thought of hanky-panky, of course—Irene was still half in shock from the horrors she’d witnessed, and worried to distraction about Lily—but even having to listen to Pender snoring all night seemed preferable to spending the night alone knowing Maxwell was at large again.
The snoring broke off with a choked snort. Pender took off his sleep mask and popped out his earplugs, then sat up, naked to the waist, his barrel-like chest surprisingly firm, his belly slopping over the covers like a slag heap that had reached the angle of repose. His torso was white as paper, but both arms were tan from the biceps down—a golfer’s tan.
When he saw Irene looking over at him, he sang out a few bars of “Good Morning Starshine” in his surprisingly sweet tenor voice, then segued into “A Day in the Life” as he padded into the bathroom wearing only his pajama bottoms. As one of his old friends used to say of the man who was rumored to know the lyrics of every pop song recorded between 1955 and 1980: “Pender doesn’t just live his life, he also provides the sound track.”
In the first half-decade of the new century, motel chains were still vying to see which could provide the biggest complimentary continental breakfast spread. Irene had coffee and orange juice and nibbled at a bagel with cream cheese, while Pender, humming “Food, Glorious Food,” all but decimated the buffet.
And when his belly could hold no more, he filled the capacious side pockets of his madras sport co
at with miniature muffins and pastries for himself and Irene—the rest of the passengers on the Southwest Airlines flight from Portland to San Jose would have to make do with salted peanuts and stale pretzels.
“A little pocket lint never killed anybody,” Pender assured Irene as they joined the line shuffling sullenly toward the airport security checkpoint.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Never mind—nothing important.” He transferred his carry-on to his other hand, slipped his arm around her, gave her shoulder a squeeze. “How’re you holding up there, scout?”
She looked up at him, her eyes bloodshot from worry and lack of sleep, her complexion drained of color save for a tubercular spot of red high on either cheek. “Do you think Lily killed that woman in the bathtub?” Alison hadn’t been sure one way or the other—while continuing to insist that the girl had saved her life, she had admitted reluctantly to a vague recollection of Lily saying she had to visit the john, and of her mother giving her and her escort directions to the guest bathroom upstairs.
Pender shrugged. “Let’s wait for the forensics.”
Something in the way he said it, perhaps the impersonality, set off a spark in Irene. “Well I don’t care,” she whispered fiercely. The line had started moving forward again, but Irene stayed rooted in place, her fists clenched at her sides. “I don’t care what she’s done or how involved she was, I won’t let them put her in prison, Pen. I won’t let them put her away again if I have to…I don’t know, if I have to sneak her out of the country myself.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Pender—but he knew that if it did, he’d have himself one hell of a conflict of interest.
4
Lilith followed Lyssy, spotting him for safety as he stumped unevenly up the swing-down ladder and through the trapdoor into the attic dormer, a low-budget add-on consisting of one long, low-ceilinged room built of cheapjack pine and press-on veneer siding, running almost the length of the roof. Two dormer windows faced front, each housing a bulky air conditioner, only one of which still functioned.
The cracked and faded Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle–themed linoleum, along with the twin beds, the twin child-size dressers, and a spray-painted baby-blue bookcase, suggested even to Lyssy’s inexperienced eyes that the room had once housed children. He asked Lilith if Carson and Mama Rose had had any kids; she told him no, that they’d bought the place furnished.
“They seemed like nice folks,” said Lyssy, sitting on the bed nearest the trapdoor.
“Actually, they’re stone killers, both of them. And Mama Rose already sold me out once—don’t think she won’t try it again, first chance she gets.”
“Then why did you bring us here?”
She sat down next to him, put her hand on his flesh-and-blood knee, and lowered her voice to a whisper. “For the same reason people rob banks—because that’s where the money is.”
Lyssy’s eyes widened, the gold flecks dancing in the dim morning light. “We’re gonna rob them?”
“We’re gonna need lots and lots of cash to live on the lam. You got a better idea?”
“No, but—”
“I didn’t think so,” she said wearily. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up to her. She closed her eyes and felt the room swaying; when she opened them again Lyssy was staring at her in alarm.
“Are you okay?” he asked her.
“Fine—I’m fine,” she mumbled, swinging her legs up onto the bed. “Just need…couple hours…good as new.”
She was asleep atop the covers by the time her head hit the pillow. Lyssy took off her sneakers for her, then limped over to the other bed, stripped off the blanket, covered her with it, and sat down again on the edge of the bed to watch over her while she slept.
5
Mama Rose barely made it to the stove in time to save the bacon from burning. “Sweet Jesus forbid you should get up from the fucking table,” she muttered to Carson as she set the plate down in front of him.
“One of these days, woman…. “He made a fist, brandished it threateningly.
“You and what army?” she replied, sliding into the chair across from him. Both threat and response were pro forma—he’d only struck her in anger one time, when they were newlyweds. She’d bided her time, then whacked him across the back of the head with a shovel. Concussion, no fracture. Lesson taken.
“That gimp Lyssy, he look familiar to you?” she asked Carson.
“Kinda.”
“I could swear I’ve seen him before someplace.”
“I know what you mean. You get his last name?—we could Google him.”
“He wasn’t very talkative.”
“And she didn’t tell you who or what they were on the lam from?”
“Whoever owned that Rover, I’m guessing.” Mama Rose pushed herself back from the table. “Listen babe, I’m beat, I’m gonna turn in. Just leave the dishes in the sink, I’ll take care of ’em later.”
A cavernous yawn from Carson, a phony-looking, ham-actor stretch. “I think maybe I’ll join you—I’m getting too old for these fucking all-nighters.”
In addition to running the chop shop to which the Rover had been removed, the Redding Menace were mid-level players in the new triangle trade—drugs, firearms, and cash. All night long, on any given evening, dealers and couriers came and went, arriving with large quantities of one of the aforementioned substances, and departing with (ideally) smaller quantities of another.
It was often a complicated dance: player A might have to be hooked up with players B and C, while B had to be kept apart from C, with D waiting in the wings, and so on; meanwhile all the players had to be entertained, plied with weed or coke or brandy, topped up with coffee.
So the exhausted hosts had been on their way to bed when their last two visitors arrived unexpectedly. And now Carson, who hadn’t approached his wife with amorous intent for ages, wanted to make love. Mama Rose was no fool: she knew what was up, and why it was up—he’d had a letch for Lilith ever since Sturgis—but reminded herself that it didn’t matter where a man worked up his appetite, so long as he ate at home.
She grabbed a quick shower and changed into her sexiest nightgown, making only one concession to jealousy: If Carson even closed his eyes, much less called out Lilith’s name, Rose would have his nuts for earrings.
When Mama Rose emerged from the bathroom, Carson was at the computer. Like many another twenty-first-century wife, her first thought was that he was surfing for porn. Not that she minded—that appetite thing again.
“Hey babe, look at this.”
Mama Rose crossed the room, and standing behind him, resting her right breast on his left shoulder, she saw a picture of their new houseguest plastered across the front page of the cyber edition of the Oregonian. “Looks like we have a celebrity in our midst.”
She read past the headline to learn that the infamous serial killer Ulysses Maxwell had escaped from an asylum, leaving four dead bodies behind; a fellow patient, a minor, name withheld, was either a hostage or an accessory. “Got any bright ideas?”
“Fuckin’ A.” Carson leaned back in his chair, laced his hands behind his head. “Way I figure it, if there ain’t a reward for him yet, there will be; if there is, it’ll get bigger. So we find somebody we can trust, somebody with a clean record, that somebody takes Maxwell…shit, I don’t care, someplace far enough away from here, blows him away, makes up a good story for the cops, we split the reward. What do you think?”
“It might work,” said Mama Rose. “But what about the girl?”
“What do you think?” Same four words, but this time they chilled Mama Rose to the marrow.
6
No lights, mailbox stuffed, four days’ worth of rubber-banded Monterey Heralds on or around the porch steps—Pender might as well have put up a sign on his postage-stamp front lawn: Attention burglars: nobody home.
But burglaries were almost unheard of in The Last Home Town, as Pacific Grove officially styled itself�
�its other nickname was Butterfly Town, USA, for the monarchs that wintered over every year—and the annual murder rate hovered just above zero.
So Pender’s jet-black ’64 Barracuda was still in the short, weedy driveway when he hauled his bags up the mossy brick walk (he and Irene had taken the shuttle bus from San Jose to Monterey, then shared a cab from there) and his new flat-screen plasma TV was still on the wall of the front room—other than that, there wasn’t much worth stealing. (The kind of music Pender enjoyed sounded best in a car, second best on a boom box, the cheaper the better.)
Built in 1905, the cottage originally contained only three small rooms—parlor, bedroom, kitchen—lined up shotgun-style, front to back; a tiny bathroom with toilet, pedestal sink, and stall shower had been added on off the kitchen. Pender carried his luggage through the front room with its secondhand velour love seat, non-matching Naugahyde recliner, and hooked oval rug, dropped it off in the bedroom, where a queen-size bed took up most of the floor-space, grabbed a beer in the kitchen, and carried it out into the backyard.
Too small to qualify as postage stamp, Pender’s tiny yard was overhung and walled in on three sides by a gnarled and ancient fig tree, a spreading giant that also supported Pender’s only outdoor furniture, a low-slung, dispirited-looking mesh hammock. Lying in it, his big ass barely clearing the ground, Pender was still steaming about the disrespect with which the Portland police had treated him the night before. As a federal agent, he’d grown used to being regarded with suspicion or resentment by the local constabulary—but not with contempt, never with contempt.
And never mind that he and Irene had probably saved the Corder girl from death by suffocation—whatever happened to plain old professional courtesy? Even after he told the officer in charge who he was, all the supercilious sonofabitch had to say was that in that case, he should have known better than to even enter a possibly dangerous crime scene on his own, not to mention dragging a civilian through it—and are you sure you didn’t touch anything in the living room, Pops?
When She Was Bad: A Thriller Page 13