Molly stood at the counter, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Bert and Les squinted into a catalog set on a rotating stand while concentrating on sucking in their guts. Frank manned the register and pretended he was doing something complex on the keyboard, when, in fact, he was just making it beep.
Molly cleared her throat.
Frank looked up as if he’d just noticed she was there. “Find everything you need?”
“I think so,” Molly said, taking both hands to lift the heavy can of tar onto the counter.
“You need some resin for that fiberglass fabric?” Les said.
“And some hardener?” Bert said. Frank snickered.
“Some what?” Molly said.
“You can’t patch a trailer roof with that stuff, miss. You live down at the Fly Rod, don’t you?” They all knew who she was and where she lived. She was often the subject of hardware store gossip and speculation, even though she’d never set foot in there before today.
“I’m not going to patch a roof.”
“Well, you can’t use that on a driveway. You need asphalt sealer, and it should be applied with a brush, not a squeegee.”
“How much do I owe you?” Molly said.
“You should wear a respirator when you work with fiberglass. You have one at home, right?” Bert asked.
“Yeah, right next to the elves and the gnomes,” Les said.
Molly didn’t flinch.
“He’s right,” Frank said. “Those fibers get down in your lungs and they could do you a world of harm, especially with those lungs.”
The clerks all laughed at the joke.
“I’ve got a respirator out in the truck,” Les said. “I could come by after work and give you a hand with your little project.”
“That would be great,” Molly said. “What time?”
Les balked. “Well, I, um…”
“I’ll pick up some beer.” Molly smiled. “You guys should come along too. I could really use the help.”
“Oh, I think Les can handle it, can’t you, Les?” Frank said as he hit the total key. “That comes to thirty-seven sixty-five with tax.”
Molly counted her money out on the counter. “So I’ll see you tonight?”
Les swallowed hard and forced a smile. “You bet,” he said.
“Thanks then,” Molly said brightly. Then she picked up her supplies and headed for the door.
As she broke the doorbell beam, Frank whispered “Crazy slut” under his breath.
Molly stopped, turned slowly, and winked.
Once she was outside, the clerks made miserable old white guy attempts at trading high-fives while patting Les on the back. It was a hardware store fantasy fulfilled—much better than just humiliating a woman, Les would get to humiliate her and get her naked as well. For some reason they’d all been feeling a little randy lately, thinking about sex almost as often as power tools.
“My wife is going to kill me,” Les said.
“What she don’t know won’t hurt her,” the other two said in unison.
Theo
Theo actually felt his stomach lurch when he went into his victory garden and clipped a handful of sticky buds from his pot plants. They weren’t for himself this time, but the reminder of how much this little patch of plants ruled his life made him ill. And how was it that he hadn’t felt the need to fire up his Sneaky Pete for three days? A twenty-year drug habit suddenly ends? No withdrawal, no side effects, no cravings? The freedom was almost nauseating. It was as if the Weirdness Fairy had landed in his life with a thump, popped him on the head with a rubber chicken, bit him on the shin, then went off to inflict herself on the rest of Pine Cove.
He stuffed the marijuana into a plastic bag, tucked it into his jacket pocket, and climbed into the Volvo for the forty-mile drive to San Junipero. He was going to have to enter the bowels of the county justice building and face the Spider to find out what he wanted to know. The pot was grease for the Spider. He would stop by a convenience store on the way down and pick up a bag full of snacks to augment the bribe. The Spider was difficult, arrogant, and downright creepy, but he was a cheap date.
Through the safety-glass window, Theo could see the Spider sitting in the middle of his web: five computer screens with data scrolling across them illuminated the Spider with an ominous blue glow. The only other light in the room came from tiny red and green power indicator lights that shone through the darkness like crippled stars. Without looking away from his screens, the Spider buzzed Theo in.
“Crowe,” the Spider said, not looking up.
“Lieutenant,” Theo said.
“Call me Nailgun,” the Spider said.
His name was Irving Nailsworth and his official position in the San Junipero Sheriff’s Department was chief technical officer. He was five-foot-five inches tall, weighed three hundred and thirty pounds, and had taken to wearing a black beret when he perched in his web. Early on, Nailsworth had seen that nerds would rule the world, and he had staked out his own little information fiefdom in the basement of the county jail. Nothing happened without the Spider knowing about it. He monitored and controlled all the information that moved about the county, and before anyone recognized what sort of power that afforded, he had made himself indispensable to the system. He had never arrested a suspect, touched a firearm, or set foot in a patrol car, yet he was the third-highest-ranking officer on the force.
Besides a taste for raw data, the Spider had weaknesses for junk food, Internet porn, and high-quality marijuana. The latter was Theo’s key to the Spider’s lair. He put the plastic Baggie on the keyboard in front of Nailsworth. Still without looking at Theo, the Spider opened the bag and sniffed, pinched a bud between his fingers, then folded the bag up and stuffed it into his shirt pocket.
“Nice,” he said. “What do you need?” He peeled the marshmallow cap off a Hostess Sno Ball, shoved it into his mouth, then threw the cake into a wastebasket at his feet.
Theo set the bag of snacks down next to the wastebasket. “I need the autopsy report on Bess Leander.”
The Nailgun nodded, no easy task for a man with no discernible neck. “And?”
Theo wasn’t sure what questions to ask. Nailsworth seldom volunteered information, you had to ask the right question. It was like talking to a rotund Sphinx. “I was wondering if you could come up with something that might help me find Mikey Plotznik.” Theo knew he didn’t have to explain. The Spider would know all about the missing kid.
The Spider reached into the bag at his feet and pulled out a Twinkie. “Let me pull up the autopsy.” His fat fingers flew over the keyboard. “You need a printout?”
“That would be nice.”
“It doesn’t show you as the investigating officer.”
“That’s why I came to you. The M.E.‘s office wouldn’t let me see the report.”
“Says here cause of death was cardiac arrest due to asphyxiation. Suicide.”
“Yes, she hung herself.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I saw the body.”
“I know. Hanging in the dining room.”
“So what do you mean, you don’t think so?
“The ligature marks on her neck were postmortem, according to this. Neck wasn’t broken, so she didn’t drop suddenly.”
Theo squinted at the screen, trying to make sense of the data. “There were heel marks on the wall. She had to have hung herself. She was depressed, taking Zoloft for it.”
“Not according to the toxicology.”
“What?”
“They ran the toxicology for antidepressants because you put it on the report, but there was nothing.”
“It says suicide right there.”
“Yes, it does, but the date doesn’t corroborate the timing. Looks like she had a heart attack. Then she hung herself afterward.”
“So she was murdered?”
“You wanted to see the report. It says cardiac arrest. But ultimately, cardiac arrest is what kills everyone. Catch a bulle
t in the head, get hit by a car, eat some poison. The heart tends to stop.”
“Eat some poison?”
“Just an example, Crowe. It’s not my field. If I were you, I’d check and see if she had a history of heart problems.”
“You said it wasn’t your field.”
“It’s not.” The Spider hit a key and a laser printer whirred in the darkness somewhere.
“I don’t have much on the kid. I could give you the subscription list for his paper route.”
Theo realized that he had gotten all he was going to get on Bess Leander. “I have that. How about giving me any known baby-rapers in the area?”
“That’s easy.” The Spider’s fingers danced over the keyboard. “You think the kid was snatched?”
“I don’t know shit,” Theo said.
The Spider said, “No known pedophiles in Pine Cove. You want the whole county?”
“Why not?”
The laser printer whirred and the Spider pointed through the dark at the noise. “Everything you want is back there. That’s all I can do for you.”
“Thanks, Nailgun, I appreciate it.” Theo felt a chronic case of the creeps going up his spine. He took a step into the dark and found the papers sitting in the tray of the laser printer. Then he stepped to the door. “You wanna buzz me out?”
The Spider swiveled in his chair and looked at Theo for the first time. Theo could see his piggy eyes shining out of deep craters.
“You still live in that cabin by the Beer Bar Ranch?”
“Yep,” Theo said. “Eight years now.”
“Never been on the ranch, though, have you?”
“No.” Theo cringed. Could the Spider know about Sheriff Burton’s hold over him?
“Good,” the Spider said. “Stay out of there. And Theo?”
“Yeah?”
“Sheriff Burton has been checking with me on everything that comes out of Pine Cove. After the Leander death and the truck blowing up, he got very jumpy. If you decide to pursue the Leander thing, stay low-key.”
Theo was amazed. The Spider had actually volunteered information. “Why?” was all he could say.
“I like the herb you bring me.” The Spider patted his shirt pocket.
Theo smiled. “You won’t tell Burton you gave me the autopsy report?”
“Why would I?” said the Spider.
“Take care,” Theo said. The Spider turned back to his screens and buzzed the door.
Molly
Molly wasn’t so sure that life as Pine Cove’s Crazy Lady wasn’t harder than being a Warrior Babe of the Outland. Things were pretty clear for a Warrior Babe: you ran around half-naked looking for food and fuel and occasionally kicked the snot out of some mutants. There was no subterfuge or rumor. You didn’t have to guess whether or not the Sand Pirates approved of your behavior. If they approved, they staked you out and tortured you. If they didn’t they called you a bitch, then they staked you out and tortured you. They might release starving radioactive cockroaches on you or burn you with hot pokers, they might even gang-rape you (in foreign-release directors’cuts only), but you always knew where you stood with Sand Pirates. And they never tittered. Molly had had all the tittering she could handle for the day. At the pharmacy, they had tittered.
Four elderly women worked the counter at Pine Cove Drug and Gift, while above them, behind his glass window, Winston Krauss, the dolphin-molesting pharmacist, lorded over them like a rooster over a barnyard full of hens. It didn’t seem to matter to Winston that his four hens couldn’t make change or answer the simplest question, nor that they would retreat to the back room when anyone younger than thirty entered the pharmacy, lest they have to sell something embarrassing like condoms. What mattered to Winston was that his hens worked for minimum wage and treated him like a god. He was behind glass; tittering didn’t bother him.
The hens started tittering when Molly hit the door and broke titter only when she came to the counter with an entire case of economy-sized Neosporin ointment.
“Are you sure, dear?” they kept asking, refusing to take Molly’s money. “Perhaps we should ask Winston. This seems like an awful lot.”
Winston had disappeared among the shelves of faux-antidepressants when Molly entered the store. He wondered if he should have ordered some faux-antipsychotics as well. Val Riordan hadn’t said.
“Look,” Molly finally said, “I’m nuts. You know it, I know it, Winston knows it. But in America it is your right to be nuts. I get a check from the state every month because I’m nuts. The state gives me money so I can buy whatever I need to continue being nuts, and right now I need this case of ointment. So ring it up so I can go be nuts somewhere else. Okay?”
The hens huddled and tittered.
“Or do I need to buy a case of those huge fluorescent orange prelubricated condoms with the deely-bobbers on the tip and blow them up in your card section.” You never have to get this tough with Sand Pirates, Molly thought.
The hens broke their huddle and looked up in terror.
“I hear they’re like thousands of tiny fingers, urging you to let go,” Molly added.
Between the four of them it only took ten minutes more to ring up Molly’s order and figure her change within the nearest dollar.
As Molly was leaving, she turned and said, “In the Outland, you would have all been made into jerky a long time ago.”
Fifteen
Steve
Getting blown up had put the Sea Beast in a deep blue funk. Sometimes when he felt this way, he would swim to the edge of a coral reef and lie there in the sand while neon cleaner fish nipped at the parasites and algae on his scales. His flanks flashed a truce of color to let the little fish know that they were safe as they darted in and out of his mouth, grabbing bits of food and grunge like tiny dental hygienists. In turn, they emanated an electromagnetic message that translated roughly to: “I won’t be a minute, sorry to bother you, please don’t eat me.”
He was getting a similar message from the warmblood that was ministering to his burns, and he flashed the truce of color along his sides to confirm that he understood. He couldn’t pick up the intentions of all warmbloods, but this one was wired differently. He could sense that she meant him no harm and was even going to bring him food. He understood that when she made the “Steve” sound, she was talking to him.
“Steve,” Molly said, “stop making those colors. Do you want the neighbors to see? It’s broad daylight.”
She was on a stepladder with a paintbrush. To the casual observer, she was painting her neighbor’s trailer. In fact, she was applying great gobs of Neosporin ointment to the Sea Beast’s back. “You’ll heal faster with this stuff on you, and it doesn’t sting.”
After she had covered the charred parts of the trailer with ointment, she draped fiberglass fabric on as bandages and began ladling roof-patching tar over the fabric. Several of her neighbors looked out their windows, dismissed her actions as more eccentricities of a crazy woman, then went back to their afternoon game shows.
Molly was spreading the roofing tar over the fiberglass bandages with a squeegee when she heard a vehicle pull up in front of her trailer. Les, the hardware guy, got out of the truck, adjusted his suspenders, and headed toward her, looking a little nervous, but resolved. A light dew of sweat shone on his bald head, despite the autumn chill in the air.
“Little lady, what are you doing? I thought you were going to wait for me to help you.”
Molly came down from her ladder and stood with the squeegee at port arms while it dripped black goo. “I wanted to get going on this before dark. Thanks for coming.” She smiled sweetly—a leftover movie star smile.
Les escaped the smile to hardware land. “I can’t even tell what you’re trying to do here, but whatever it is, it looks like you mucked it up pretty bad already.”
“No, come here and look at this.”
Les moved cautiously to Molly’s side and looked up at the trailer. “What the hell is this thing made of anywa
y? Up close it looks like plastic or something.”
“Maybe you should look at it from the inside,” Molly said. “The damage is more obvious in there.”
The hardware clerk leered. Molly felt him trying to stare through her sweatshirt. “Well, if that’s what you think. Let’s go inside and have a look.” He started toward the door of the trailer.
Molly grabbed his shoulder. “Wait a second. Where are the keys to your truck?”
“I leave ‘em in it. Why? This town is safe.”
“No reason, just wondering.” Molly dazzled him with another smile. “Why don’t you go on in? I’ll be in as soon as I get some of this tar off of my hands.”
“Sure thing, missy,” Les said. He toddled toward the front door like a man badly in need of a rest room.
Molly backed away toward Les’s truck. When the hardware clerk laid a hand on the door handle, Molly called, “Steve! Lunch!”
“My name isn’t Steve,” Les said.
“No,” Molly said, “you’re the other one.”
“Les, you mean?”
“No, lunch.” Molly gave him one last smile.
Steve recognized the sound of his name and felt the thought around the word “lunch”
Les felt something wet wrap around his legs and opened his mouth to scream just as the tip of the serpent’s tongue wrapped his face, cutting off his air. The last thing he saw was the bare breasts of the fallen scream queen, Molly Michon, as she lifted her sweatshirt to give him a farewell flash before he was slurped into the waiting maw of the Sea Beast.
Molly heard the bones crunch and cringed. Boy, sometimes it just pays to be a nutcase, she thought. That sort of thing might bother a sane person.
One of the windows in the front of the dragon trailer closed slowly and opened, a function of the Sea Beast pushing his meal down his throat, but Molly took it for a wink.
Estelle
Dr. Val’s office had always represented a little island of sanity to Estelle, a sophisticated status quo, always clean, calm, orderly, and well appointed. Like many artists, Estelle lived in an atmosphere of chaotic funk, taken by observers to be artistic charm, but in fact no more than a civilized way of dealing with the relative poverty and uncertainly of cannibalizing one’s imagination for money. If you had to spill your guts to someone, it was nice to do it in a place that wasn’t spattered with paint and covered with canvases that beckoned to be finished. Dr. Val’s office was an escape, a pause, a comfort. But not today.
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove pc-2 Page 12