A Passing Curse (2011)

by C R Trolson

  He needed light. He reached one hand in his pocket and felt the horns of Cheevy’s devil lighter. He pulled out the lighter and rolled the wheel. The valve was set high. Four inches of flame shot out. Then one crazy eye coming very fast.

  Rawlings hit him low, knocking him over. A short train in the night and gone. He was on his back, his front slippery with blood, his hand burning from the lighter still shooting flame, his other hand on the pistol, aiming at the stars.

  He threw the flaming lighter. He rolled to his knees, gun out. Searching.

  Nothing. The clearing brightened. He shook his leg, knocking off shreds of burning paper. Flames in the dry underbrush shot a yard high. Newspapers curled and turned black. He swatted his leg. The fire spread to the wall of brush around him. He jumped when the lighter exploded.

  Rawlings came at him limping, holding a tire rim. He swung it against a protruding branch, snapping it cleanly.

  He emptied the revolver point blank. Rawlings sank to his knees. Burning powder lit Rawlings’ shirt on fire. The rising flames highlighted the missing jaw, the feral eyes. Blood dropping from Rawlings’ jaw sizzled on the burning shirt. He kicked Rawlings in the chest, knocking him over, and quickly reloaded.

  “You trying to set the town on fire?” the Chief asked ten minutes later. The fire, which had roared thirty feet high, was now out. Water arced over them from two fire trucks, the air energized with the crystalline spray. Smoking trees hissed as the water hit.

  “Lucky there wasn’t any wind, the whole town might have gone,” the Chief said and tapped him on the shoulder. “What’s that you picked up? What was it? Speed? What was he cranked up on? Meth? Acid? Hand it over.”

  “I thought you searched him? You found the gaff didn’t you? Or maybe you planted it?” Reese slapped the Chief’s arm away. “Ask Ajax what I found.”

  The Chief backed off, stared at him, a hint of a grin, but said nothing. Was the Chief telling him that he was right, but there was little he could do about it?

  With hooks and ropes, two firemen pulled the smoking hulk of Lung Butter Bill onto the sidewalk. Another threw an aluminum fire blanket over the body to shut off the air. The shrinking tendons drew the corpse into the fetal position, tenting the blanket. Smoke escaped from the blanket’s edge, along with the smell of burnt ham.

  “I heard gunshots,” the Chief said.

  “He came at me.”

  The Chief snapped his fingers and held out his hand. “Gimme your sidearm until I can straighten this out. You don’t need a weapon anyway since you’ve killed our main suspect.”

  “You shot him first.”

  “But I didn’t kill him.”

  “You should have,” Reese said. “A twelve gauge to the head would kill anyone normal.” Of course, the Chief hadn’t been using silver buckshot.

  A fireman touched the Chief’s arm and pointed. “Look at that.”

  They turned. A fireman jerked the blanket loose with the flourish of a magician. A puff of smoke and a pile of ash were all that remained of Lung Butter Bill. The Chief walked over, waving his arms, yelling, “What’s the matter with you guys? We needed that body for evidence!”

  The fireman shook out the blanket as if for his next trick he would make Lung Butter Bill reappear whole again and said, “Never seen anything like it.”

  He was a block away, walking fast, before realizing that he hadn’t given his gun to the Chief. Of course, the Chief hadn’t pushed too hard, probably wanting him to kill Ajax with it.

  He walked into a Handi-Mart, bought a beer. Outside he saw a payphone, opened the surprisingly unused phonebook, and looked through the white pages. He spilled beer on the yellow pages, wiped it away, found the number, and called a cab.

  The cab driver raised his eyebrows but said nothing about the torn clothes, the singed hair, the bottle of beer. When they were going, he polished off the beer and threw out the empty bottle. It broke on the sidewalk. The driver kept one eye on him, one on the road.

  The driver dropped him at the curb. Halloran’s expensive house stood a hundred feet back from the street. Dark trees shrouded the large one-story home. Halloran answered the door, a look of mild surprise. He was dressed in a smoking jacket. A woman’s voice from inside queried, “Who is it, dear?”

  “It’s business,” Halloran said over his shoulder. “A policeman.”

  “At this time of night?” the woman answered, slightly miffed. A door slammed somewhere deep inside the house. Reese stepped into the foyer and said, “Unicorn Medical.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tell me about Unicorn.”

  Halloran cleared his throat, motioned for Reese to follow, and walked into the den - paneled walnut and green carpet - a desk the size of a small house. There was a half-filled tumbler of whiskey on a leather blotter. Papers strewn on the desk. Halloran pointed to a collection of bottles on a side-table, a crystal bucket half filled with ice. “Drink?” he said with little hope in his voice.

  Reese filled a tumbler with ice and topped it with Wild Turkey.

  Halloran said, “You want something on those cuts?”

  “I didn’t come here for that,” he said, nearly adding he’d no sooner ask a medical examiner for treatment than he would a dog doctor.

  “I am a doctor,” Halloran reminded him.

  He looked at Halloran. He’d hurt his feelings. “Unicorn Medical. What is it?”

  Halloran took a drink. “It’s a front, a holding company owned indirectly by an insurance company. They have a warehouse in Torrance that disperses whole blood and plasma to area hospitals. As a matter of fact, they’re one of the largest blood suppliers in the area.” Halloran took another sip and looked at him. “What happened to you?”

  “Did Cirrus Industries come up?”

  “Sure. They supply Unicorn with blood, along with a half a dozen other companies. They are the largest distributor of blood in the world. Why?”

  “Ajax Rasmussen is CEO of Cirrus.”

  “Yes?”

  “The vial came from Ajax.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “That was the easy part.”

  “Took it?”

  “Stole it.”

  Halloran shifted lightly, finished his drink, patted down his hair. He clinked the ice cubes. Looked in the glass as if to expect more whiskey to appear. “You know what happens to evidence stolen by a police officer?”

  “I’m not a police officer.”

  “Anyone. Stolen evidence is - ”

  “ - no good.” He sat in the chair. “I took the vial from a box containing a few hundred vials. This box was in Rasmussen’s office and addressed to Unicorn Medical, which you say is a blood distribution company. You understand? Ajax wants to put it, whatever it is, in the blood supply. I need a warrant to search his house. I need to get those vials and put Ajax away.”

  “A few hundred vials? You only took one?” Halloran now seemed disappointed he hadn’t stolen the whole box. Halloran moved to the liquor bottles. He filled his glass with Dewar’s. He didn’t bother with ice. His hand was shaking. “Why would Ajax Rasmussen want to contaminate the blood supply? He’d be cutting his own throat, so to speak.”

  “I don’t know,” Reese said. “He ruins the blood supply, the price of blood skyrockets. Who knows? I don’t care. Why did he inject Cheevy with curare and Xanax? Why did he drain Cheevy’s blood? Why did he kill Father Ramon? Why did he hog-tie Thomkins in the same room. You tell me.”

  “I never said he injected Cheevy with anything. Or that he had anything to do with the Father’s death.” Halloran drank down half his glass.

  “If it isn’t Ajax?”

  “Who else could it be? Is that what you’re asking? That’s not proof. That’s not reasonable evidence. What if you didn’t kill the real Anaheim Vampire, Reese? Maybe he followed you up here, or you followed him.”

  “I killed him,” Reese said. “Homer Wermels. He lived here and worked for Ajax. I’ve got fingerprints that ma
tch the Anaheim Vampire’s inside Homer’s apartment. As for description, outward appearance they could have been twins.”

  “A serial killer worked for Ajax Rasmussen? So what? Thousands work for him. Tens of thousands. Your fingerprint evidence won’t stand up in court. There was no chain of evidence or witnesses. You don’t have a state license to take fingerprints. It’s nothing.”

  Reese decided not to argue with him. Halloran was right. But he wasn’t worried about making a court case. “Have you looked at Thomkins yet?” He remembered Thomkins attending Ramon’s autopsy. His weak stomach and now himself down there, opened, closed, and slipped into one of the lockers. “Well?”

  “He bled out.”

  Reese finally said, “I’ve been wondering. Why check Cheevy for curare? You suspected Ajax all along, Didn’t you? Did Ajax pay you off. Did he get to you?”

  “That’s insane. Ajax? Listen to yourself. An extremely successful businessman, with family ties to the community dating back over a hundred years, suddenly turns into a serial killer?”

  “Why check for curare?” Reese asked. Halloran sat down and adjusted a picture on his desk. The wife had a big blonde face. But the face had been worked. She’d tried to lose about ten years.

  “Because I got a tip. From a woman. On my answering machine.” Halloran closed his eyes, took another drink. He stared at Reese. “I don’t know who it was.”

  “What are you hiding?”

  Halloran looked up, shook his head, a bitter smile. “You come to town. The big homicide detective. The big city boy. Telling everyone how to do their job.”

  “Get me a search warrant,” he said, knowing he’d never get one. But, at least, you couldn’t say he hadn’t tried to do things legally.

  Halloran shook his head. Looked at the ceiling. Stalling. Let out a breath. “Not based on stolen evidence. You keep forgetting who Ajax is. You’ll need more than stolen evidence. You’ll need more than the fact that Cirrus Industries makes succhynolcholide to get him for Cheevy’s murder. Every emergency room in the country has enough to drop an elephant.”

  “You’re telling me that a lunatic with a lot of poison and the means to distribute the poison can’t be stopped? He’ll turn LA into a jungle.”

  “Los Angeles is a jungle,” Halloran said as if telling Reese something he didn’t know. “Anyway, whatever was in the vial becomes inert after twelve hours. After the initial reaction, which would kill most people, the agent stabilizes and becomes untraceable.” There was a long silence. “Can you get me another vial?”

  “Steal another vial?”

  Halloran seemed to perk up. His second wind. “I’ve used what you gave me. I need more to study. Learn how it works. If I find out how it works, its substructure…”

  “It turns people into maniacs.”

  “What do you think methamphetamine and heroin does? Alcohol? Listen to me,” Halloran urged. “Ajax isn’t trying to poison the blood supply. Not through his own distributor. It would be insane, too easy to trace back to him.”

  “Assuming Ajax is sane.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The protocols put in place after the AIDS and hepatitis scares were put there by Ajax. He led the fight in keeping the nation’s blood supply safe, uncontaminated. He pushed pasteurizing and antibody tests. You have the wrong man. You must have misread the package or Ajax was storing the vials in an old box.”

  “I know what I saw,” Reese said. “If Ajax wrote the protocols, he can by-pass the protocols.”

  “You’re wrong. The protocols are ironclad. Besides, most people receiving massive blood transfusions are either hemophiliacs, accident victims, people getting heart surgery, the elderly. Not exactly the type to be out creating mayhem.”

  Reese said, “I don’t care if it’s a grandmother with a broken leg, Ajax’s drug will have her coming at you like a locomotive. I just watched a trash-can wino run a mile with a head wound that would have dropped a bull after three steps.” He gave him a brief rundown of Rawlings’ wild escape and subsequent combustion. He did not tell Halloran that even though Rawlings’ had survived a shotgun blast to the jaw, he had not survived six silver bullets to the chest.

  “Can you prove he drank LX?”

  He wondered why Halloran was being so defensive. And, suddenly, a thought hit him. “You tested it on people? Haven’t you? You’ve done more than add the sample to blood or a petri dish. You’ve - ”

  “That’s crazy. I’d never test that on people. It would be illegal and unsafe.” Reese stared at him. Reese now knew he had given LX to someone. Halloran kept looking around the room nervously, finally he made up his mind. “Who told you?” Halloran took another drink.

  “Let me hear your version.”

  Halloran let out a short sigh. “First of all, it wasn’t me. Let’s get that straight. I had nothing to do with it. One of the technicians, against my orders, injected a test rabbit with LX. Used the last of it.” Halloran nervously drained the glass and set it down. “Against my orders,” he said. “Against my orders.”

  “And?”

  “The rabbit was fine, for about twelve hours, then it attacked a technician. The other techs had to pull it off his neck. It wasn’t a serious wound, didn’t break the skin. They killed the rabbit with a fire extinguisher. Smashed it flat. It kept coming after them. It kept moving.”

  “And then it burned up,” Reese said as if recalling an often told tale. “Just like Rawlings burned up.”

  “You still don’t understand, do you?” Halloran said. “Rawlings would not die. The rabbit would not die. LX could lead to major breakthroughs.”

  “Breakthroughs? What kind of a breakthrough is a homicidal rabbit that’s hard to kill? And a maniacal wino?”

  Halloran ignored him. “I’m talking immortality. Don’t you get it? An anti-aging drug. Ajax’s a chemist. World famous. You obviously found something he’s working on, a new drug, something secret, not a drug for blood. Not poison, but immortality. He’s not trying to poison the world. He’s on the edge of a major breakthrough. Can you get me another vial?”

  “Why is Ajax mailing his wonder drug to Unicorn?” Reese asked. “Does he want to test it on the population?” He hadn’t noticed it before, but Halloran was not young. His face was unlined, the skin pulled tight, but he was not young.

  “I don’t know,” Halloran said. “You could be mistaken. You probably are. The thing is, I need more LX to test. Can you get me another vial?”

  Reese shook his head. So, Halloran thought he was on the verge of discovering the fountain of youth or, at least, stealing it from Ajax. He wanted to live forever and make a lot of money while doing it. “Ask Ajax. He’s a reasonable man. You think he’s innocent. You think he’s sane. Ask him for a vial.”

  The medical examiner was thinking. The faintest smile. “Look at it this way,” he said. “We need more evidence to stop Ajax before he kills again. It’s a murder case. That’s what you said.”

  Reese didn’t bother to answer. He stood up and walked out of the house. Halloran yelled at him to come back, to be reasonable. Outside, he headed for the Sheraton. He needed time to think. Halloran didn’t want evidence for a legal case. He wanted evidence to blackmail Ajax into taking him on as a business partner.

  26

  Rusty looked through the peephole, saw the distorted, slightly-wavering image of Reese and opened the door for him. He was soot-smudged. His pants were ripped. He smelled smoky, tangy and acrid like a California wildfire.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said and made him sit on the bed. She wet a washcloth and grabbed a towel. The first wipe colored the washcloth black. He never blinked. “What happened?” There was a slight cut on his forehead. Another on his neck. His hands were nicked. Blood spackled his running shoes. She grabbed another washcloth and soaked it with hot water until it steamed. He flinched when she wiped his face. After she’d wiped off most of the dirt, new blood rose from the cuts. He guzzled a tiny bottle of JD in one gulp. “What happened?”
/>
  “Thomkins?”

  “Yes?”

  “You didn’t hear?”

  She shook her head.

  “He’s dead.”

  She felt herself slipping.

  “Sometime last night.”

  “After he left us?”

  He told her how he’d found Thomkins. The way he’d been killed. While she cleaned his cuts, he told her about Rawlings. “His jaw was gone, but he kept running. I shot him. He burned up in front of us.”

  To keep busy, she stuck strips of tissue on his cuts to stop the blood.

  “You have to leave,” he said. “I’ll drive you to Burlingame. Then I’ll come back.” He said the next part quickly. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  She was surprised he was saying that much. “You don’t know me very well.”

  “That’s exactly why I want you to leave. I want to get to know you.” Reese paused. “I don’t want you taking on Ajax by yourself. I don’t want you getting hurt.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not taking anyone on, especially not Ajax. Did Thomkins have a family?”

  “The Chief’s taking care of it.”

  “I’d like to send them something, a letter, a card, maybe flowers.” She paused, realizing how stupid she sounded, knowing she’d have to do more than send flowers. She still could not believe Thomkins was dead. She’d put it away for now. She’d use her anger later when she found the killer. “You don’t want to lose me?”

  “I’m fond of you.”

  “Fond? I must be slipping.” She wanted to tell him how she felt, but not now. “Who?” she asked, already knowing what he would say. “Who killed Thomkins?”

  “Ajax,” he said. No surprises there. He cleared his throat and told her about LX and his meeting with Halloran.

  “So, this wino that you shot, this Rawlings, was high on a drug or virus, not even the medical examiner is sure, that Ajax gave him?”

  “I don’t trust Halloran. He thinks LX is a fountain of youth. For now, Halloran is Ajax’s biggest fan. He’ll cover up for Ajax, turn a blind eye, just to get his hands on the formula.”

  “Halloran’s in on it?”