“This was all that same night,” Charis said. “Muriel gone, Ungaro gone, Hesketh gone ... whatever we mean by ‘Hesketh.’ I’m not liking this. Come on, Bernal. Do you have any idea of where Muriel is?”
“No. She’s sent me a couple of messages, the way she always has, but . ..”
“We have to find her,” Charis said. “There’s no excuse for this kind of game playing.”
“She might be in trouble,” Bernal said. “That might be the only way she can get a message out.”
“All the more reason to find her.”
“The guy with the Mercedes,” Bernal said. “The one who hit me.”
“Clocked you with the canine?”
“Please, Charis. I know you’re rough and tough, but it really isn’t funny.”
“You’re right, of course. Sorry. You think you can find the Connoisseur?”
“Who?”
“Oh, you’re not familiar with the Connecticut Valley’s own cat burglar? I don’t know who called him the Connoisseur first, but that’s the name everyone uses. He does something like one or two break-ins a month, ranging from roughly Williamstown in the west to Pepperell in the east. And up into southern Vermont and New Hampshire. A lot of different jurisdictions, and his rate is low, so he doesn’t come up big on any one chief’s radar screen. He likes older houses. He might just like them, or they might tend to have loose windows and rotted sills.
“He likes American work, mostly early stuff. Not European so much, though he does sometimes take off with some Central European Art Nouveau or Biedermeier. Once he found a whole Art Nouveau collection, some guy in Templeton. He left a Horta sideboard in a carport, all he ended up taking was a couple of Hungarian pieces, Zsolnay. And, no, I don’t know this stuff. I just look it up.
“He takes good care of his stuff. Sometimes he finds out that a piece is too big and heavy to be handled safely by one guy. So he leaves it. Sometimes there’s padding still attached when someone finds it. A few times there have been packing peanuts, but what can anyone tell from packing peanuts?
“What’s more of interest to you is that he always steals cars to use. Never uses one more than once. And often returns them where he got them. Sometimes the car owner doesn’t even know. Once someone got back from vacation and found a single silver button under the backseat. Turned out to come from a haul of Revolutionary-era stuff, up in Portsmouth. Once someone found a scrape on their door that hadn’t been there before they left on vacation. The paint matched that found on a chunk of granite near a farmhouse in South Hadley where an eighteenth-century vanity had vanished. The driveway had a tricky dogleg. Our Connoisseur might have good taste, but he’s not so hot on the driving.
“A few people have seen him. They didn’t know who he was at the time. They only realized later, when they found something missing. Young-looking guy, though probably older than he looks. Slender, kind of formal-seeming. Caucasian. Probably sandy hair. Sometimes a beard, sometimes not, could be a fake.”
“That’s him.”
“And you want to find him. Well, Bernal, your police work has been pretty good so far. Let’s see what you can do with a random assortment of Mercedes. Hell, maybe you can help Cheriton PD make the collar. I’ve heard that the Connoisseur has been seen in the Walnut Street hood a couple of times. Maybe what he learned that night is keeping him around. That’s not like him.”
21
By his third Mercedes, Bernal was already running into trouble.
“The bastard,” the woman, Serena, said. “Can you believe that bastard?”
“No,” Bernal said. “I can’t.”
“I mean, after all those years ... I supported him. Through truck-driver school, through computer-repair school, through art school . .
“Art school?”
Serena was a thin woman with tight jeans, cowboy boots, and fluffed blond hair, and looked like a young woman dressed like an older woman trying to look young. Yolanda could have taught her a few things, Bernal thought.
“Petey could always draw Binky,” she said. “From the matchbook cover. Pretty good. I got that fawn head somewhere. He drew it on the back of a miniature golf scorecard with that little pencil they give you. He cheated: kicked his ball through that windmill. But the fawn looks real nice. That was for my birthday, the second one we had together.”
“Is the car in the garage?”
“Oh, the damn car. So, here I am, supporting him, and what does he do? Goes down to Foxwoods, bets it all on 18 black, which is my birthday, November 18th, and wins fifty thousand dollars. My birthday. And never lets me know.”
She viciously punched the keypad and the garage door opened. A black Mercedes stood there, crammed in among gardening tools, old tires, and neat bundles of newspapers. Getting it in and out without knocking anything over would have taken some skill.
The taillight was fine. This wasn’t the car Muriel had escaped in.
“So he buys this thing and brings it home, like it’s nothing, like he picked it up along with a bottle of Colt down at the packie. I ask him where he got it, and he’s like, ‘what?’ And I’m, ‘where’d you get the money for the car, didn’t you borrow money against the truck?’ And he’s like, ‘you can get a deal on these things if you know where to look.’ Bastard never used a coupon in his life, even when he could get two-for-one on the Quilted Northern, he used TP like a girl, like a troop of Girl Scouts, we were always out, and he’s talking deals.”
“But you think he’s been here, driving this car?” For a new vehicle, it was fairly dinged up, as if someone had been using it in speed trials on gravel roads.
“Look, I can tell when he’s been in here. He moves stuff around. Can’t help himself. Always done it. You’d think he’d sneak in, steal money out of my bedside table, beer from the fridge, whatever, and get the hell out, but he has to sort my magazines, or pull dead leaves from the dieffenbachia.”
The doors weren’t locked. Bernal examined the interior. Where the radio and CD player should have been there was nothing but a hole with wires sticking out. And someone had even pried the steering wheel open and , taken off with the airbag.
“How long ago did he leave?” Bernal asked.
“He didn’t leave. I kicked his ass out.”
“Good for you. When was that?”
“Two months, eight days ago. On the anniversary of our second date. The first one he’d come on gangbusters, taken me to some Italian place with white tablecloths. They had great tiramisu, let me tell you that. Second date he took me to Bernard’s. You know Bernard’s?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“Some guy threw up on my shoes. Buddy of his, in fact. Nice ones, Ferragamos, I got them at DSW marked down, a steal. Never wore them again, that alligator hide really holds the smell. I love a ‘No Gang Emblems’ sign, don’t you? It’s the mark of a real class place.”
Feeling uncomfortable with her confession, and looking for something to do, Bernal popped the hood. For a moment he thought it was just the shadows from the overhead light, but then there was no doubt: most of the pieces were missing. Alternator, starter motor—the fuel injectors had been yanked out. All that was left was the engine block and the heavier mechanical parts. It didn’t look like this car had gone anywhere recently.
Serena took a glanqe, wailed, and collapsed on a bag of Scotts Turf Builder. “Oh my God! Is there anything left?”
The front right wheel, invisible unless you clambered over the gigantic rider mower and peered over, was gone too, the car propped up on a jack. Mercedes wheels fetched a nice price. The guy had eaten the thing away from the inside, and Serena had never realized. It was only the shell that was left. The shell, three wheels, and the leather seats. He had no doubt that those were going next.
“How the hell did he get in here?”
“Doesn’t he know the combination?”
“I changed it!”
“To 1118?”
Serena looked flabbergasted. “How did you know?�
�
“Just a lucky guess.”
She grabbed Bernal’s arm, sharp nails digging in. “Help me with this, will you please? What am I supposed to do now? I have a dealer coming over to look at the car in a couple of days. The thing is worth—”
“All you’ll get from a dealer is some more room in your garage.” Bernal felt tired. The cars he’d looked at so far had shown him absolutely nothing, while this one had showed him entirely too much. “If you’re lucky, he’ll tow it for free. I’m sorry.”
He glanced back as he got into his car. Serena was still sitting on the fertilizer, staring at the shell of the Mercedes. All Bernal could do for her was hope that there were no particularly valuable plumbing fixtures or structural members in her house.
22
“Should I be worried?” The guy named Alistair scratched his thinning hair. “I mean, I drove the thing home. Anthrax? Explosives?”
“Nah, nothing like that,” Bernal said. They trudged up the long driveway. “How long were you gone?”
“A week. Eight days, actually, Monday to Tuesday the next week. San Francisco, Tucson, and, God help me, Omaha. I left the car at the Enfield station, took the train to North Station, then the T to Logan. I like taking the train. I don’t have to fight the traffic. It’s really pretty easy.”
It sounded like he was trying make sure Bernal didn’t think he was lame for taking public transportation.
“Anything different about the car when you got back?”
“No! I mean, I didn’t notice anything.” Alistair sounded genuinely panicked. “But. . . okay, I don’t know if this is a clue or anything, but...”
“Yes?”
“I’d been expecting to pay sixteen bucks for the time I was parked. They charged me only two. . . .”
“You thought it was just good luck?”
“I get reimbursed . . . what the hell? What’s up with my car?”
“Don’t worry. We just know a guy who take joy rides in nice cars that are left somewhere for an extended period. We’re trying to build a case. That’s all.”
“Sure.” The garage door hummed up. “Um, car’s unlocked.”
Bernal stopped. “What the hell is that smell?”
“Ah? Oh, my wife . . . Rue makes calamari when I’m on the road. I don’t like it. She doesn’t eat the tentacles, though. I don’t know why that’s her sticking point, but it is. So—jeez, it does stink. Trash pickup is tomorrow.”
“How does she cook it?” Bernal said.
“The calamari? I hate the stuff. I don’t know.”
“She home?”
“No. No, she’s not home. She’s ... well, to tell the truth, we’ve been having a bit of trouble lately. Communications ... issues. Nothing we can’t handle. We’ve gone through worse things before.”
Hence the week-old squid in the trash, Bernal thought. Poor Alistair.
“Go ahead, take a look. There it is.”
“I see it.” And it was the right one, this time. He could see the strip of tape across the taillight. Until this moment, he’d been fearing he imagined it and would be searching for the rest of his life for something that wasn’t there.
“What happened to the taillight?” he said.
Alistair looked at it. “Rue backed into our mailbox. Just before I left. Now that I’m home, I can get it fixed.”
“That’s a good idea.”
Bernal tried to figure out the course of events. Only one really made sense right now. Alistair drove his Mercedes to Enfield and parked it in the lot, then took the train into Boston. The Connoisseur boosted it from the lot. Then Muriel stole the car from the Connoisseur and . . . drove it back to the Enfield lot? That seemed to explain the ticket issue. Pretty smooth, actually. Maybe she hopped the train into Boston, just as Alistair had. If Bernal hadn’t come along looking, no one would even have noticed that the car had ever been missing.
Muriel was much more evaporative than he had given her credit for. Now she was sending him messages from wherever she was, guiding him without really being clear.
Alistair stopped outside. The guy wasn’t going to go into his own garage. That was fine with Bernal.
Not that there was anything for him to worry about. It was a nice car. Leather upholstery, walnut burl trim, individually heated seats ... and it was as clean and neat as if it had just been driven off the showroom floor. There were a hell of a lot of stickers on the windshield. Alistair and his wife had joined a lot of local organizations, looked like: Historical Society, Arboretum, Nature Conservancy. . . . Alistair was as fastidious as the Connoisseur. Every crime left a trace, but somehow it would have been easier if a loose piece of birds-eye maple veneer had peeled off a dresser.
Bernal went around to the back and opened the trunk.
For an instant he thought that he’d found some inadequate lubrication. But that creak was Alistair groaning. Then he was throwing up into the bushes by the side of the garage.
It was a decent-sized trunk. The corpse, a woman, dressed in black microfiber, was curled up on its side with plenty of room to spare.
Of course, it wasn’t quite the challenge it could have been, since the body had no head.
23
Morning light seeped in through the high windows. Bernal could feel the pad hard under his sleeping bag. He could hear his own breath whistling through his nose. He could move his eyes and examine the struts and hanging lights high above.
What he couldn’t do was move anything else.
Something pushed down on his chest. The pressure was strong but soft, like a big hand ... or something sitting on him. Something with a huge ass. He couldn’t see what it was. All he could see were the sharp details of the struts that made up his sky. He found himself tracing them out, as if there was some solution to his life in the way they distributed the weight of the roof.
Was this a heart attack? He was young, he’d never even had his cholesterol checked, and now .. . Maybe it was a stroke. The pressure grew stronger, and his panic grew with it.
“Hesketh?” He tried to say it, but nothing came out of his mouth. His breath kept going, but he couldn’t control it.
He would lie here forever, he knew, with his thoughts running around the inside of his immobile skull like crazed lab rats. And something would sit there and watch him. He sensed a presence, an observant intelligence, out there in the half-darkness of the lab. It had been there all along, it had never left, and now that he was alone in there, it had him to itself.
It could do what it wanted.
Something tapped at the door.
The pressure vanished. He tried to unzip his sleeping bag, but the zipper stuck, and he writhed on the floor, finally pulling himself out on the end. He rolled to his feet.
He took a couple of slow breaths. His heart wasn’t even beating fast. He felt fine. He felt better than fine: he felt alive.
The tap again, louder this time.
He pulled on his pants and buzzed the front door.
Charis’s huge shape filled the doorway, black against the wet morning glow. She wore something that was almost a dashiki. That was quite a claim, but she came close to carrying it off. Her dark hair had frizzed in the moist air. Strands draggled down on her shoulders, as if she had tried to get it to behave and then had given up.
She paused there.
“Come . . He cleared his throat. “Come on in.”
Without a sound, she slid to the side and vanished into the shadows of the loading dock.
What the hell?
“Charis?”
What had she seen? He turned slowly around. There was nothing in the shadows. Hesketh’s limbs hung in a still row. Tools lay on their racks.
While he waited for her to reappear, he pulled an electric shaver out of his overnight bag and ran it over his chin. Despite the fineness of his beard, it labored, reaching the end of its charge.
“What the hell was that?” Charis had made her way completely around the perimeter of Ungaro’s lab without
making a sound and now stood in the doorway to the office. “That the way you normally greet people at the door? You sounded like a hostage situation. All fake normal like.”
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to sound like that. I’ve been faking normal all my life. I thought I’d gotten pretty good at it. I had a bad dream. Sleep paralysis.”
“What the hell is that?” Charis brushed big hands over even bigger upper arms. She could have had a position as Strongest Woman in the World in some traveling show in an era before steroids changed the ideal of what a really strong person looked like. “This gal Ungaro was a neatnik, but only about stuff that touched her own body. Typical.”
“Your body normally disconnects its motor neurons during REM sleep, otherwise you’d be breaking windows and humping your pillow as you dreamed.” Bernal rubbed his chin and realized he’d missed a spot, but this time the shaver refused to even start. “Under stress, they don’t reengage when you wake up. ‘The hag,’ it’s called. The old hag. Sits on your chest. I’d never had that happen. Incredibly real.” He paused. “Did you think there was really something back there?”
“I wasn’t going to assume anything. I leave that kind of thing up to smart people who already know all the answers. Do you have any coffee around here?”
“You want me to make coffee? Is that a way of calming me down?”
“No. It’s a way of getting coffee. I love my husband, but Muneer’s coffee sucks. You’d think it would be scientific or something, and right up his alley, but he always makes it too weak. And I didn’t have time to stop at a Dunkin’ on the way over.”
Bernal had gotten used to Ungaro’s tiny cooking area. He set up her complicated camping coffee maker.
“I pulled all the strings I could, but they still wouldn’t let me see you yesterday.” Charis pulled over the desk chair and sank her weight down on it, legs splayed. “How are you?”
“Fine. You know, Charis, I thought it was Ungaro in the trunk. That Muriel had, I don’t know, hunted down and killed her. Then, I realized . . . Who killed her, Charis? Who would murder Muriel?”
Alexander Jablokov - Brain Thief Page 13