* * *
No one took notice of Mr. Maguire’s rented car that night. Next morning Mr. Rachman told the chambermaid he wasn’t feeling well and would spend the day in bed, so she needn’t make it up. But he let her clean the bathroom as she hadn’t been able to do the day before. He lay with his arm over his eyes. “I hope you feel better,” said the chambermaid. “Do you have any aspirin?”
“I’ve already taken some,” said Mr. Rachman, “but thank you. I think I’ll just try to sleep.”
That night, Mr. Rachman got up and watched the rented car. It had two parking tickets on the windshield. At 11:30 p.m. he went downstairs, got into the car, and drove around three blocks slowly, just in case he was being followed. He was not, so far as he could tell. He opened his map of Mobile, and picked the house he’d marked that was nearest a crease. It was 117 Shadyglade Lane in a suburb called Spring Hill. Mr. Rachman drove on, to the nearest of the other places he’d marked. He stopped in front of a house on Live Oak Street, about a mile away. No lights burned. He turned into the driveway and waited for fifteen minutes. He saw no movement in the house. He got out of his car, closing the door loudly, and walked around to the back door, not making any effort to be quiet.
There was no door bell so he pulled open the screen door and knocked loudly. He stood back and looked up at the back of the house. No lights came on that he could see. He knocked more loudly, then without waiting for a response he kicked at the base of the door, splintering it in its frame. He went into the kitchen, but did not turn on the light.
“Anybody home?” Mr. Rachman called out as he went from the kitchen into the dining room. He picked up a round glass bowl from the sideboard and hurled it at a picture. The bowl shattered noisily. No one came. Mr. Rachman looked in the other two rooms on the ground floor, then went upstairs, calling again, “It’s Mr. Rachman!”
He went into the first bedroom, and saw that it belonged to a teenaged boy. He closed the door. He went into another bedroom and saw that it belonged to the parents of the teenaged boy. He went through the bureau drawers, but found no cash. The father’s shirts, however, were in Mr. Rachman size—16½ × 33—and he took two that still bore the paper bands from the laundry. Mr. Rachman checked the other rooms of the second floor just in case, but the house was empty. Mr. Rachman went out the back door again, crossed the backyard of the house, and pressed through the dense ligustrum thicket there. He found himself in the backyard of a ranch house with a patio and a brick barbeque. Mr. Rachman walked to the patio and picked up a pot of geraniums and hurled it through the sliding glass doors of the den. Then he walked quickly inside the house, searching for a light switch. A man in pajamas suddenly lurched through a doorway, and he too was reaching for the light switch. Mr. Rachman put one hand on the man’s shoulder, and with his other he grabbed the man’s wrist. Then Mr. Rachman gave a twist, and smashed the back of the man’s elbow against the edge of a television set with such force that all the bones there shattered at once. Mr. Rachman then took the man by the waist, lifted him up and carried him over to the broken glass door. He turned him sideways and then pushed him against the long line of broken glass, only making sure that the shattered glass was embedded deep into his face and neck. When Mr. Rachman let the man go, he remained standing, so deep had the edge of broken door penetrated his head and chest. Just in case, Mr. Rachman pressed harder. Blood poured out over Mr. Rachman’s hands. With a nod of satisfaction, Mr. Rachman released the man in pajamas and walked quickly back across the patio and disappeared into the shrubbery again. On the other side, he looked back, and could see the lights going on in the house. He heard a woman scream. He took out a handkerchief to cover his bloody hands and picked up the shirts which he’d left on the back porch of the first house. Then he got into his car and drove around till he came to a shopping mall. He parked near half a dozen other cars—probably belonging to night watchmen—and took off his blood-stained jacket. He tossed it out the window. He took off his shirt, and wiped off the blood that covered his hands. He threw that out of the window, too. He put on a fresh shirt and drove back to the Oasis Hotel. He parked the car around the block, threw the keys into an alleyway, and went back up to his room. In his black loose-leaf notebook he wrote, under 110285:
1205/unk./mc 35/Spring
Hill (Mobile) Alabama/
$0/Broken glass
Mr. Rachman spent the rest of the night simply reading through his black loose-leaf notebook, not trying to remember what he could not easily bring to mind, but merely playing the part of the tireless investigator trying to discern a pattern. Mr. Rachman did not think he was fooling himself when he decided that he could not.
When the chambermaid came the next day, Mr. Rachman sat on a chair with the telephone cradled between his ear and his shoulder, now and then saying, “Yes” or “No, not at all” or “Once more and let me check those numbers”, as he made notations on a pad of paper headed up with a silhouette cartouche of palm trees.
Mr. Rachman checked out of the Oasis Hotel a few minutes after sundown, and smiled a polite smile when the young woman on the desk apologized for having to charge him for an extra day. The bill came to $131.70 and Mr. Rachman paid in cash. As he watched the young woman on the desk tear up the credit card receipt, he remarked, “I don’t like to get near my limit,” and the young woman on the desk replied, “I won’t even apply for one.”
“But they sometimes come in handy, Marsha,” said Mr. Rachman, employing her name aloud as a reminder to note it later in his diary. Nametags were a great help to Mr. Rachman in his travels, and he had been pleased to watch the rapid spread of their use. Before 1960 or thereabouts, hardly anyone had worn a nametag.
Mr. Rachman drove around downtown Mobile for an hour or so, just in case something turned up. Once, driving slowly down an alleyway that was scarcely wider than his car, a prostitute on yellow heels lurched at him out of a recessed doorway, plunging a painted hand through his rolled-down window. Mr. Rachman said, “Wrong sex,” and drove on.
“Faggot!” the prostitute called after him.
Mr. Rachman didn’t employ prostitutes except in emergencies, that is to say, when it was nearly dawn and he had not managed to make anyone’s acquaintance for the night. Then he resorted to prostitutes, but not otherwise. Too easy to make that sort of thing a habit.
And habits were what Mr. Rachman had to avoid.
He drove to the airport, and took a ticket from a mechanized gate. He drove slowly around the parking lot, which was out of doors, and to one side of the airport buildings. He might have taken any of several spaces near the terminal, but Mr. Rachman drove slowly about the farther lanes. He could not drive very long, for fear of drawing the attention of a guard.
A blue Buick Skylark pulled into a space directly beneath a burning sodium lamp. Mr. Rachman made a sudden decision. He parked his car six vehicles down, and quickly climbed out with his blue Samsonite suitcase. He strode towards the terminal with purpose, coming abreast of the blue Buick Skylark. A woman, about thirty-five years old, was pulling a dark leather bag out of the backseat of the car. Mr. Rachman stopped suddenly, put down his case and patted the pockets of his trousers in alarm.
“My keys…” he said aloud.
Then he checked the pockets of his suit jacket. He often used the forgotten keys ploy. It didn’t really constitute a habit, for it was an action that would never appear later as evidence.
The woman with the suitcase came between her car and the recreational vehicle that was parked next to it. She had a handbag over her shoulder. Mr. Rachman suddenly wanted very badly to make this one work for him. For one thing, this was a woman, and he hadn’t made the acquaintance of a female since he’d been in Mobile. That would disrupt the pattern a bit. She had a purse, which might contain money. He liked the shape and size of her luggage, too.
“Excuse me,” she said politely, trying to squeeze by him. “I think I locked my keys in my car,” said Mr. Rachman, moving aside for her.
&
nbsp; She smiled a smile which suggested that she was sorry but that there was nothing she could do about it.
She had taken a single step towards the terminal when Mr. Rachman lifted his right leg and took a long stride forward. He caught the sole of his shoe against her right calf, and pushed her down to the pavement. The woman crashed to her knees on the pavement with such force that the bones of her knees shattered. She started to fall forward, but Mr. Rachman spryly caught one arm around her waist and placed his other hand on the back of her head. In his clutching fingers, he could feel the scream building in her mouth. He swiftly turned her head and smashed her face into the high-beam headlight of the blue Buick Skylark. He jerked her head out again, and even before the broken glass had spilled down the front of her suit jacket, Mr. Rachman plunged her head into the low-beam headlight. He jerked her head out, and awkwardly straddling her body, he pushed her between her Buick and the next car in the lane, a silver VW GTI. He pushed her head hard down against the pavement four times, though he was sure she was dead already. He let go her head, and peered at his fingers in the light of the sodium lamp. He smelled the splotches of blood on his third finger and his palm and his thumb. He tasted the blood, and then wiped it off on the back of the woman’s bare leg. Another car turned down the lane, and Mr. Rachman threw himself onto the pavement, reaching for the woman’s suitcase before the automobile lights played over it. He pulled it into the darkness between the cars. The automobile drove past. Mr. Rachman pulled the woman’s handbag off her shoulder, and then rolled her beneath her car. Fishing inside the purse for her car keys, he opened the driver’s door and unlocked the back door. He climbed into the car and pulled in her bag with him. He emptied its contents onto the floor, then crawled across the back seat and opened the opposite door. He retrieved his blue Samsonite suitcase from beneath the recreational vehicle where he’d kicked it as he struck up his acquaintance with the woman. The occupants of the car that had passed a few moments before walked in front of the Buick. Mr. Rachman ducked behind the back seat for a moment till he could no longer hear the voices—a man and a woman. He opened his Samsonite case and repacked all his belongings into the woman’s black leather case. He reached into the woman’s bag and pulled out her wallet. He took her Alabama driver’s license and a Carte Blanche credit card that read A. B. Frost rather than Aileen Frost. He put the ticket in his pocket. Mr. Rachman was mostly indifferent to the matter of fingerprints, but he had a superstition against carbon paper of any sort.
Mr. Rachman surreptitiously checked the terminal display and found that a plane was leaving for Birmingham, Alabama, in twenty minutes. It would probably begin to board in five minutes. Mr. Rachman rushed to the Delta ticket counter, and said breathlessly, “Am I too late to get on the plane to Birmingham? I haven’t bought my ticket yet.”
Mark, the airline employee said, “You’re in plenty of time—the plane’s been delayed.”
This was not pleasant news. Mr. Rachman was anxious to leave Mobile. Aileen Frost was hidden beneath her car, it was true, and might not be found for a day or so—but there was always a chance that someone would find her quickly. Mr. Rachman didn’t want to be around for any part of the investigation. Also, he couldn’t now say, “Well, I think I’ll go to Atlanta instead.” That would draw dangerous attention to himself. Perhaps he should just return to Mr. Maguire’s car and drive away. The evening was still early. He could find a house in the country, make the acquaintance of anyone who lived there, sit out quietly the daylight hours, and leave early the following evening.
“How long a delay?” Mr. Rachman asked Mark.
“Fifteen minutes,” said Mark pleasantly, already making out the ticket. “What name?”
Not Frost, of course. And Rachman was already several days old.
“Como,” he said, not knowing why.
“Perry?” asked Mark with a laugh.
“Peter,” said Mr. Como.
Mr. Como sighed. He was already half enamoured of his alternative plan. But he couldn’t leave now. Mark might remember a man who had rushed in, then rushed out again because he couldn’t brook a fifteen-minute delay. The ticket from Mobile to Birmingham was $89, five dollars more than Mr. Como had predicted in his mind. Putting his ticket into the inside pocket of his jacket that did not contain Aileen Frost’s ticket to Wilmington, Mr. Como went into the men’s room and locked himself into a stall. Under the noise of the flushing toilet, he quickly tore up Aileen Frost’s ticket, and stuffed the fragments into his jacket pocket. When he left the stall he washed his hands at the sink until the only other man in the rest room left. Then he wrapped the fragments in a paper towel and stuffed that deep into the waste paper basket. Aileen Frost’s license and credit card he slipped into a knitting bag of a woman waiting for a plane to Houston.
Mr. Como had been given a window seat near the front of the plane. The seat beside him was empty. After figuring his expenses for the day, Mr. Como wrote in his black loose-leaf notebook:
0745/Aileen Frost/fc
35/Mobile Airport Parking
Lot/$212/Car headlights
Mr. Como was angry with himself. Two airport killings within a week. That was laziness. Mr. Como had fallen into the lazy, despicable habit of working as early in the evening as possible. This, even though Mr. Como had never failed, not a single night, not even when only minutes had remained till dawn. But he tended to fret, and he didn’t rest easy till he had got the evening’s business out of the way. That was the problem of course. He had no other business. So if he worked early, he was left with a long stretch of hours till he could sleep with the dawn. If he put off till late, he only spent the long hours fretting, wondering if he’d be put to trouble. Trouble to Mr. Como meant witnesses (whose acquaintance he had to make as well), or falling back on easy marks—prostitutes, nightwatchmen, hotel workers. Or, worst of all, pursuit and flight, and then some sudden, uncomfortable place to wait out the daylight hours.
On every plane trip, Mr. Como made promises to himself: he’d use even more ingenuity, he’d rely on his expertise and work at late hours as well as early hours, he’d try to develop other interests. Yet he was at the extremity of his ingenuity, late hours fretted him beyond any pleasure he took in making a new acquaintance, and he had long since lost his interest in any pleasure but that moment he saw the blood of each night’s new friend. And even that was only a febrile memory of what had once been a hot true necessity of desire.
Before the plane landed, Mr. Como invariably decided that he did too much thinking. For, finally, instinct had never failed him, though everything else—Mr. Como, the world Mr. Como inhabited, and Mr. Como’s tastes—everything else changed.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the captain’s voice, “we have a special treat for you tonight. If you’ll look out the left side of the plane, and up—towards the Pleiades—you’ll see Halley’s Comet. You’ll see it better from up here than from down below. And I’d advise you to look now, because it won’t be back in our lifetimes.”
Mr. Como looked out of the window. Most of the other passengers didn’t know which stars were the Pleiades, but Mr. Como did. Halley’s Comet was a small blur to the right of the small constellation. Mr. Como gladly gave his seat to a young couple who wanted to see the comet. Mr. Como remembered the 1910 visitation quite clearly, and that time the comet had been spectacular. He’d been living in Canada, he thought, somewhere near Halifax. It was high in the sky then, brighter than Venus, with a real tail, and no one had to point it out to you. He tried to remember the time before—1834, he determined with a calculation of his fingernail on the glossy cover of the Delta In-Flight Magazine. But 1834 was beyond his power of recollection. The Comet was surely even brighter then, but where had he been at that time? Before airports, and hotels, and credit cards, and the convenience of nametags. He’d lived in one place then for long periods of time, and hadn’t even kept proper records. There’d been a lust then, too, for the blood, and every night he’d done more than merely plac
e an incrimsoned finger to his lips.
But everything had changed, evolved slowly and immeasurably, and he was not what once he’d been. Mr. Como knew he’d change again. The brightness of comets deteriorated with every pass. Perhaps on its next journey around the sun, Mr. Como wouldn’t be able to see it at all.
ORSON SCOTT CARD
America
Orson Scott Card began publishing in 1977, and by 1978 had won the John W. Campbell Award as best new writer of the year. His short fiction has appeared in Omni, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and elsewhere. His novels include Hot Sleep, A Planet Called Treason, Songmaster, and Hart’s Hope. In 1986 his novel Ender’s Game won both the Hugo and the Nebula Award; his novel Speaker for the Dead won both awards in 1987. His most recent novels are Wyrms and Seventh Son. Upcoming are two more novels in the “Seventh Son” series, Red Prophet and Prentice Alvin, from Tor, and two collections Cardography, from Hypatia Press, and Tales from the Mormon Sea, from Phantasia Press. Card’s story “Hatrack River” a recent World Fantasy Award Winner, was in our Fourth Annual Collection; his story “The Fringe” was in our Third Annual Collection. Card lives in Greensboro, North Carolina, with his family.
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