by SM Reine
I cleared my throat and pretended it was the peanut butter. “So, do you have a picture of him?”
“I wondered when you would ask.”
Tabby brightened and plunged her hand into her purse. Instead of coming up with a .38, this time she pulled out a cracked leather wallet that had seen better days. She deftly flipped through it, as she had no doubt done thousands of times before. She could probably have worked her way through that wallet blindfolded.
She extracted two wallet-sized pictures from within its depths and handed them to me. I glanced sideways long enough to orient my swaying hand to meet her swaying hand and pluck the picture from her fingers. I did my best not to smear my oily prints on them, but it was really a challenge holding two pictures with one hand and driving with the other.
The first picture showed a chubby infant with pitch-black eyes, precociously cuddling a teddy bear that wore a Los Angeles Angels baseball cap. A saggy-looking cloth baseball was clutched in his other hand. The little guy had my eyes, but the rest of his face was Amanda’s, angelic and rounded.
My boy....
A dozen emotions struggled for dominance—pride and fear were slugging it out at the top of the list.
The second picture showed Amanda and Tabitha both planting raspberries on either side of his chubby cheeks. He seemed to be laughing hard enough to pee, completely helpless against the two women determined to smother him with wet kisses.
Amanda looked so happy. That’s how I remembered her. Always smiling, laughing endlessly, never a harsh word. We had been beautiful together. Perhaps we had been too perfect. Maybe we had been too polite. Maybe a few cross words were necessary to maintain some balance in a relationship.
Or maybe just one of the two not being a cheating, lying scumbag.
“You’re crying,” Tabby said.
I handed the pictures back. “Must be my allergies.”
Tabby snorted and snatched the pictures from my fingertips. “It’s okay to cry. You loved her, and this is the first time you’ve seen your boy. Did you see his chubby cheeks?”
“Yeah.”
“I love those cheeks, godammit. That’s my guy.”
We were now heading up the mountain route that would eventually lead us into Crestline. The traffic had thinned a little and the Jag had room to flex its muscles. “How much farther?” I asked.
“Ten miles or so.”
“Ten minutes, then,” I said, punching the accelerator.
“Make it seven or I shoot you.” She held open her purse so that I could see the black handle of the pistol. She wasn’t smiling.
“Check your watch,” I said, and proceeded to drive even more recklessly, whipping dangerously around cars and sharp mountainous turns. The tires squealed like cheerleaders on a roller coaster. I left behind a wake of flashing headlights and middle fingers and a cacophony of honking horns.
We got there in eight minutes.
Tabby didn’t look pleased, but she let me live. For the moment.
+ + +
We parked down the street from Bluejay Way, a crumbling, narrow road that matched the address Tabby had received from the deeds office. I eased the Jag into the scrub vegetation, taking a little satisfaction as branches scraped the paint job on the fenders.
A little payback, Dada. File a claim on THAT, you old bastard.
We squeezed out of the car and headed up the road, staying in the underbrush as best we could. Appropriately enough, a colorful blue jay swept low over the street and pecked at a lurking tomcat. The bird then elevated rapidly into the upper branches of the surrounding pines.
Startled shitless, the orange tom flipped backwards, landing on all four paws. A ten-point-oh, in my book. A second blue jay appeared, but the cat saw this one coming. Wanting to keep its eyeballs, the cat darted away into some low scrub. The blue jay squawked triumphantly, or perhaps in frustration.
Bluejay Way. Like it was their way and nobody else’s. I couldn’t help but wonder if Gerda had put some sort of hex on the birds and if they were about to become my new greatest fear.
There were perhaps half a dozen homes on Bluejay Way. Some were far back from the road, and some were right on top of it. Others were almost completely hidden behind the forest of pines. The San Bernardino Mountains were home to some of Southern California’s few mountain communities, location of the biggest fire in United States history. Gerda must have bought one of the cabins that had survived.
Now, the fires were just a distant memory. A breeze awakened the branches overhead. The cat was gone, and so were the birds. The street was quiet and peaceful. It was hard to believe that a crazy killer was hiding out up there. Even harder to believe I was about to meet my son for the first time, and that a woman I had once loved might be cooking up a pot of boiling water to play “Hansel and Gretel” with him.
“What do you think?” I said.
“It’s number 105. That’ll make it the fifth house down.”
“Yes.”
“Looks empty,” she said.
As much as I dreaded the confrontation, I knew this was our best chance to save Petey. If Gerda was already on the run, the chances of Petey getting out of it without a hostage situation or a shoot-out were slim.
I looked at Tabby. She was straining her neck forward, searching through the rows of pine trunks. “Are we going to break in?”
“Of course. But we should do a full reconnaissance mission first.”
“Guess we don’t have to do this by the book, huh?”
She pulled her cannon from her purse. “Nobody’s ever written a book for this.”
31
We crossed through a soft matting of pine needles. From the angle of our approach, we could see only the closed garage door and a bedroom window. The blinds were shut at the bedroom window. The cabin looked much like many of the other homes in the area: a lot of rough, dark wood paneling. The house was built on a slope, with two stories.
I doubted very much that we were being watched. It was a good angle to sneak up on the house, although I had never dreamed that I would be sneaking up on my wife to peek in the windows. And if I had, it would have been because I suspected her of cheating, not that she might be conjuring up demons and curses while playing “This little piggie” with my baby.
Still, there was no sign that Gerda was here and I was beginning to think we were wasting our time, that she was already on the run under another false identity.
“Do you hear that?” Tabby asked in a dry whisper. We were still hunched behind the bole of a thick pine.
I heard the beating of my own heart in my ears, and my stomach gurgled from the peanut oil, but I doubted that’s what she was referring to. I strained past my bodily noises and thought I could hear something.
“Sounds like scraping,” Tabby said.
I heard it then. Snick, snick, snick. A faint, rhythmic scratching from somewhere.
“Or digging,” I suggested, remembering the hours Gerda and I had spent landscaping our house back in happier days.
She nodded. “But I can’t tell where it’s coming from.”
Acoustics here were thrown off. Bluejay Way was actually a fairly steep street, with many of the homes below us, and the hills and trees alternately muffled and amplified sound. Sometimes I could hear laughter and loud music coming from somewhere below, but I couldn’t tell if they were a backyard away or across the valley.
I noticed Tabby was carrying her gun loosely in her palm. Her entire hand surrounded the gun, perhaps in an attempt to conceal it if from anyone watching from surrounding homes. Then again, I would suspect that the sight of us crouching in front of the cabin, looking as suspicious as hell, would have already alerted nosy neighbors. Luckily, many of the cabins in these mountains were vacation homes, abandoned for much of the year.
“Okay. Let’s take a look,” she said. “Follow me, and keep quiet.”
I grabbed her shoulder as she started moving, halting her. “Are you sure it’s a good idea that I fo
llow you? I mean, this is police work. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
“Don’t be such a pussy, Albert. She’s your wife. If she’s in there and she’s doing something stupid, perhaps you can talk some sense into her.”
“Uh, she killed my lover and stole my baby. Do you think she has any rationality at all when it comes to me?”
“I can see where you could have that affect on women.”
Ah, she likes me. Except the part where she hates me.
She must have seen my slight grin because she wrinkled her nose a little as if she’d stepped in a dead skunk. “Sarcasm, Shipway. Besides, this isn’t police work, remember? I’m off the clock.”
“Well, I didn’t take ‘Action Hero 101’ in college like you did.”
“Stick around. I might need you for bait.”
“Wonderful.”
“Try making a sacrifice for once,” she said, moving ahead.
“And I’m not a pussy,” I said after her. “Just cautious.”
“Keep telling yourself that. C’mon.”
“I don’t like you very much,” I said.
She turned and looked me in the eye, and her pretty face finally cracked into a wry smile. “Yes, you do,” she said. “More than you should.”
She moved quickly and confidently out from behind the tree trunk and strode across the dirt driveway, toward the garage door. I hustled next to her, trying to keep up. The woman had unhumanly long strides. Hell, she loped across the packed dirt like a jungle panther, and I was shocked to see I was watching her rear end as well.
Good to know I had my priorities straight in these critical times.
Still, I was having a hard time believing Gerda was even here, that Gerda had slaughtered Amanda and kidnapped little Petey. Until I saw it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it. Despite all that serial-killer genetic code sewn into her spine.
Whew. Just think. She would have been the mother of my own little budding psycho if not for a little twist of infertile fate.
At the garage door, Tabby asked for a boost. I gave her one, careful not to smell her body or rub her butt against my face, and she peered through the smoky glass window of the pull-up door.
“Your wife drive a Chevy Suburban?” she said.
My heart skittered like a mouse in a maze. “Yes.”
“She have any other car?”
“Not that I know.”
“There’s a red BMW, too.”
I still didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
32
I followed Tabby around the corner of the garage and along a red brick footpath, past a fat ceramic toad with a mouth open wide enough to hide a milk bottle. Tabby moved cautiously and slowly, hunched over. I decided to mimic the cop as best as I could—and ran square into her back when she stopped suddenly.
She oofed and stumbled, reached back, and caught hold of my T-shirt. She regained her balance and glanced back with a look reserved only for those destined for the lowest levels of hell. Like maybe Max Richter, assuming he wasn’t waiting in the kitchen, rummaging through the silverware drawer for a decent blade.
I’m sorry, I mouthed.
Shaking her head, she turned back and faced the house. There was a peephole in the heavy oak door, but other than that, there were no other windows in it. For all we knew, Gerda could be watching us now, having a good laugh at our impression of the Keystone Kops.
Then again, Gerda never laughed much.
Tabby cautiously stepped up onto the front porch. The redwood planking creaked once. Still, the sound seemed to ring out like a shriek of a banshee. My heart leapt up into my throat, rubbing against the peanut butter still coating it.
But I had to remind myself that Gerda could be on the lam, and had parked her SUV here and caught a taxi cab to the airport. It was certainly possible. On nights when we had both been drinking, she would often force us to take a cab home together, and then retrieve our vehicle the next day. Back in the days before I only drank alone.
So, to put it another way, Gerda was taxi savvy. And for all I knew, she’d mastered the art of broomstick riding somewhere along the way. But where had the BMW come from?
Tabby reached for the doorknob—
The ground suddenly wavered and dropped about a foot. I reached out and steadied myself on the rough wood paneling, driving a few splinters deeply into my fingers.
Breathe, Albert. Breathe. Don’t scream in pain. Pain good. Pain friend.
This wasn’t my bag. I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t Jack Bauer and Dirty Harry and Lara Croft all rolled into one. I was an insurance claims negotiator, for God sakes. And if Gerda was in there, she was out of her fucking gourd, probably heavily armed, cooking up arcane herbs, and maybe dancing naked around a bound-and-gagged Petey.
And what about this golem thing? I mean, I had seen the damn thing with my own eyes. It was alive and well, made entirely of clay, and looking exactly like the thing Gerda feared most: her psychotic serial-killing father. And wasn’t a golem easier to handle than a ghost? At least there would be something to punch or shoot or roll out into nice little ceramic bowls that made great Christmas gifts.
Breathe, Albert. Breathe. You withstood the mice, you can withstand this. Tabby’s going to need your help. Little Petey’s going to need your help.
No time to be Albert the Pussy. No time to drive back down the hill and pick up a pint. Nothing left but to do it.
The doorknob jiggled quietly in Tabby’s hand. She turned, completely unaware of the drama behind her, reached up on her tippy-toes, and whispered into my ear: “Think we should try the back?”
“Why are you asking me?” I whispered in return. She made that “I’m going to punch you” face but I raised my hand in reflection. “Wait!” I almost snapped my fingers.
Tabby shushed me.
I moved back down the red brick path and stuck my hand inside the fat toad. There, among rolly-pollies and a full-grown black widow spider that had probably just eaten hubby, was a spare key. I grabbed it triumphantly, brushing away the cobwebs, and handed it to Tabby.
“How did you know?” she asked.
“That’s where Gerda would hide a key if she lived here. That’s just how she thinks.”
“Like, here’s a hole, better stick something in it? That sounds like something she learned from you, Al.”
“There’s no pleasing you.”
“Oh, I can be pleased. Just not easily, and probably not by you.” She looked like she wanted to twist my nose hard. But then she turned and slowly inserted the key. She tripped the tumblers and turned the knob.
We were in.
33
The door pushed open with a wheeze of hinges. A cool breeze met us instantly, which suggested to me that a back entrance was open.
There was something else in the air as well. Something metallic. Coppery, perhaps. Or maybe like fresh lizard skins tacked to a wall.
Tabby stepped into the house, her gun before her, held with both hands like they teach fake cops on TV. Her arms were taut and her steps were agonizingly slow, although her head pivoted rapidly, taking in the entire scene. There wasn’t much to see. The door opened into the front living room. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, and no lights were on.
I gasped when I saw the bright gleam of eyeballs, and I grabbed Tabby’s shoulder and blinked. Then the shadows resolved and I realized that it was only an elk’s head, hanging on the wall above the sofa. Could have been worse. Gerda might have taken up the family practice, or else Max himself might have been rounding up some fresh trophies.
The elk was staring at me from the darkness, following me with its glass eyes. Tabby trained her gun at it briefly, perhaps surprised to see a head leering at her from the shadows, or maybe just warming up for the big show. She grunted quietly and pulled the gun down.
We stepped deeper into the cabin. The breeze was steady, but it couldn’t erase the rusty-nail smell.
The living room was small an
d looked out toward the front yard. To the right of the living room was an opening that led upstairs. We stepped through the foyer and Tabitha immediately swung her arms around the corner, should there be anyone waiting for us.
There wasn’t, although her sudden movement almost caused me to lose my pee.
Around the corner was a small hallway that led to a kitchen. The kitchen itself appeared to have been little used, without so much as a salt shaker on the counter.
The iron smell was stronger. Now I could almost taste it on the breeze. Sharp, acrid, pungent.
Tabby paused, raising her hand up to make sure I paused as well. I didn’t bump into her this time.
The scritching sound of digging was louder, seemed to be coming up through the house and carried on the wind. The wind was busy today.
Tabby turned back and looked at me, and it was a look that I will never forget. Her face was slightly green, eyes filled with something close to horror and panic as if expecting the worst for Petey, but through it all, her jaw was set in grim determination.
Wait here, she mouthed.
I opened my mouth.
Head shake. Firm gesture with her hand. The same hand holding the gun. I waited where I was at the head of the hallway.
She eased forward. She held the gun once again with both hands before her. The barrel was tilted slightly down. She acted like she knew what she was doing.
Me, I didn’t know what I was doing. I looked around for something to grab, a convenient baseball bat, fireplace poker, or maybe a Medieval mace hanging on the wall as a misfit decoration. I even considered the elk, with those gnarly, yellowed horns. I waited uneasily in the hallway. I glanced back over my shoulder once, to make sure the bedroom door had remained closed. The elk seemed to glare with evil intent.
Look. I didn’t kill you, and I didn’t eat you, and I most definitely didn’t stuff you. Just give me a break already.
Yeah, but you’re alive, and that’s reason enough to hate you, its eyes seemed to respond.
Oh God, I think I’m going crazy.