The Fever Kill

by Tom Piccirilli

He thought, Okay, that was easy.

  Chapter Ten

  He was in a downtown bar parking lot, at a payphone trying to call Joan, when he heard them walk up around him. They coughed and kinda muttered, sniffing loudly, scuffling their feet. A sure sign of hesitation.

  Crease sighed and put the phone back in its cradle and turned to meet them.

  There was Jimmy Devlin and three other guys who might as well have been Jimmy. All of them cut from the same colorless cloth, ex-jocks who'd gone to flab but still had a lot of brawn. Mooks who'd discovered too late that running touchdowns might get them laid by a cheerleader but it wasn't going to get them anywhere far in the world.

  The disappointment scrawled in their faces was offset by a perpetual confusion, like they still didn't understand where their lives had taken the left turn. Forty years down the line, they'd still be wearing that expression in their coffins.

  These guys, Crease imagined them taking out their old trophies, hissing hot breath against them, and wiping them down with a greater gentleness than they'd ever shown their wives or kids. He had nothing but disdain for these kinds of mooks because in an adjacent universe he was one of them.

  He still had Jimmy's knife sheathed on his belt. He drew it and held it out to him, handle-first. "Hey, you want this back? It's okay, I've got another one now."

  Jimmy—all four Jimmys—stared at Crease like they didn't know what to make of him. They had no idea how dangerous this was yet, how fast things could go nuclear. Funny how many guys walk around looking mean, flexing what muscle they have left, doing their best to appear brutal, but then act all baffled when somebody takes them seriously.

  He saw the bulge of a .32 under one of their jackets. It wasn't in a holster, just stuck in the guy's tight inside pocket like it wasn't any big deal. If he had to draw it in a hurry, he'd be dead before he got his hand on it.

  The others weren't carrying. They had no leader. Each one of them was waiting for the other to make the first move.

  Jimmy Devlin didn't move to take his knife, so Crease put it back on his belt. He thought about playing around with the butterfly blade for a minute, see what kind of impression it made on these idiots, the speed he could work it, but he didn't want to go to the trouble. It would be easier and more practical to nip this as quick as possible.

  Jimmy Devlin's nose was taped up, but Crease knew he hadn't broken it. Jimmy actually took a step backward, trying to center himself, one fist covering his solar plexus to ward off another punch there.

  The other Jimmys, now a step out in front, didn't know which way to move, forward or back. They shuffled around some more.

  Maybe Crease hadn't come back to town because of his father. Maybe the girl's murder didn't mean as much to him as it should have. Maybe it was just for this kind of scene right here that he'd bolted north. Because no matter how old you got, how much you saw or did, how many children you had or medals you stowed, the adolescent pain clung to your back like a clawed animal.

  Jimmy pointed a finger at Crease and said, "You! You screwing my girl?"

  "You want me to?" Crease asked.

  "No! What kind of sick question is that?"

  Sometimes they were too dumb to even toy with. "You boys sure you want to do this?"

  "Do what?" one of the others said, and he cracked his knuckles. The rest chuckled and bared their teeth in befuddled, bitter smiles, trying to ramp themselves up.

  The taped nose caused Jimmy Devlin's voice to go high and nasal. He sounded like his testicles hadn't descended yet. "Where'd you come from, huh? Why are you here? I want to know why you're here."

  "I wish I could answer that, I really do," Crease told him. "But the truth is, I'm not certain myself. Let's just say I needed to see Hangtree again. And there's some stuff about my old man. And kidnappers. And a serious drug dealer and a bent sheriff. And a dead six-year-old girl. And money."

  "What money?" one of the other Jimmys asked, his eyes wide.

  The setting sun dropped heavily from the sky, the silhouettes of distant stands of pine and maple raised against its face. Night swarmed in around them, the stars appearing in great moving washes like a black ocean stirring as a storm approached. Wind swept across the street and blew bronze leaves with slashes of fiery ember along the walks. Inside the bar things were starting to crank, the dull thrum of music and belligerent laughter rising and falling in swells. Front porch wind chimes tinkled and tolled up and down the roads, all across the neighborhood. He didn't hear any children laughing. He seemed to want to hear children laughing. He was getting maudlin again.

  Jimmy Devlin said, "You aren't from here, are you?"

  "I could read you the license plate of your orange '84 Camaro, if you want. But you probably don't remember it, do you, Jimmy?"

  "Christ, you do know me."

  "I know you."

  "I want your name. Tell me your name."

  "No," Crease said.

  There was always a problem with talking too much, even if you only did it to squeeze a little entertainment out of the situation for yourself. You got to chattering and pretty soon the others started believing you weren't going to do anything more. You were all talk. It gave them time to quell their nerves and pump themselves up again. Crease knew he should shut up, but he couldn't help himself. Talking to Jimmy was scratching a few places deep inside him that he hadn't fully realized he still had.

  He could see these four on the streets of New York, swaggering downtown in the East Village. Looking for a place to get a brew and the first spot they hit is a gay bar. They walk in and see two guys holding hands and suddenly they need to start bashing in order to prove to each other they didn't want to take bubble baths together. They'd get half an insult out before they got their asses kicked.

  Crease sighed again.

  Another Jimmy said, "Answer the man. The man wants an answer. You should give him one. You're being rude."

  "What's that?"

  "You're being very disagreeable!"

  It got Crease grinning. He thought, That's the worst the guy can say? That I'm disagreeable?

  Another Jimmy said, "Yeah, who do you think you are? You coming around here causing all kinds of trouble. Irritating our friend. Screwing around with his girl. Asking sick questions. We don't like people who ask sick questions around here."

  Jimmy with the .32 said, "Don't make us do something we don't want to do."

  "Like what?" Crease asked.

  "Like what we don't want to do."

  "Yeah, but what is it you don't you want to do?"

  "We don't want to do something you might make us do!"

  "What am I making you do?"

  "Just get in your car and get out of here. Or else you might make us—"

  Taking a step forward and getting back in line with the others Jimmy Devlin said, "Just stay away from Rebecca. She's my girl."

  "You sure about that?"

  "You don't know her, you don't know who you're dealing with. You got no idea what she's all about." He let out that laugh again, the one from the old days. "You should've listened to me when I was talking to you the other night. She'll spit you out. I love her. You can't handle her."

  Crease heard that laugh and everything that went along with it, the sound of the Camaro's engine kicking into fourth gear. The tires squealing down Main Street, the smash of the beer bottle. His old man saying, "Take cover."

  The four Jimmys moved up another step, the two on the ends easing out in a wide spread, cutting off any exit. All of them dropping their shoulders, shifting their weight. They were on the front line. Coach had them by the birdcage. They probably saw bleachers around them all the time, girls waving in the stands. Talent scouts taking notes.

  They were stupid and they would be easy, but the chances were high that at least one of them would get hurt badly. Or somebody would get a lucky punch in. Crease couldn't afford to be off his game when it came to the final drop with Tucco. He didn't need any more trouble right now. Not when the real
thing would be coming along soon enough.

  Crease said to Jimmy Devlin, "Let me get this straight, okay?"

  "Okay," Jimmy Devlin said, being very agreeable.

  "You gave Reb four hundred bucks for bills, then two weeks later she tells you that you stink, sends you to the shower, steals two bottles of Jack and a hundred and eighty bucks out of your wallet." Crease had a good memory too. It threw guys off, hearing their own stories word for word coming back at them. "Then she lures you to the diner fifteen miles out of town, steals the plastic jug at the gas station, makes you an accomplice after the fact, then tries to ride off with a trucker. You slap her around some and she runs inside, meets me, has me work you over even while she's telling you to work me over. All this, and she's still your girl, you want her back. You love her. That right?"

  The other three Jimmys looked at the fourth, waiting to hear his answer. Nobody could put the pressure on you like your best friends. Especially when they thought you were losing your manhood to a chick who treated you like trash.

  Crease lit a cigarette and leaned back against the phone, letting their eyes do all the work for him.

  Jimmy Devlin said, "This isn't about her right now, it's about you jumping me the other night. Doctor's bill was eighty bucks and he couldn't do anything for me but tape my face up. I'm pissing blood from those cheap shots you gave me."

  Enough of the tension had dispersed from the situation. Crease walked up close. The Jimmys had a tough time holding their ground. They didn't move their feet but they reared their chins back. Jimmy with the .32 stuck his chest out, like the pistol would protect him somehow even in his pocket.

  Crease said, "She's not worth the aggravation. You're a bigger man than that, Jimmy Devlin. Go on out with your boys tonight and they'll help you hook up with a real woman, one who won't treat you as poorly as Reb has. You deserve much better. Give your heart away more carefully, to someone who will value it."

  He'd been forced to say much more important things with a straight face before, but it had never been quite so tough. He stuck the cigarette between his teeth and champed on it.

  Another Jimmy said, "I never liked her much, to tell the truth. She always seemed to have an agenda, that one."

  Another Jimmy said, "We're only thinking of you, man. You need somebody new. Wife material, like my Betty. She's got friends, I think we could probably fix you up with somebody nice, if you want."

  Jimmy with the .32 said, "Remember Lydia Miller? You always liked her. She's getting divorced and only has one kid. A four-year-old. They're not much trouble at that age. They usually sleep through the night."

  Jimmy Devlin said, "Lydia's getting divorced? I didn't know that."

  "I told you."

  "You never told me."

  "I told you over at Bammer's house a couple of weeks ago, but you were stewing over Reb. It happened fast, Lydia and Stan breaking up. Stan had a gambling problem, was always at the Indian Reservation."

  "I saw him there a couple times."

  "He took a second mortgage out without even telling her and eventually lost his job. Pretended to go to work every day and would go to the strip clubs for their brunch buffet."

  "I didn't know that."

  "Lydia was in the dark until one day she answers the door and it's the bank, guy serving her papers. She packed up the kid and her belongings on the spot and went home to her parents. They got a nice basement apartment."

  Another Jimmy said, "She's got to look after her kid's welfare. I bet a responsible guy would impress her—"

  The music and laughter inside throbbed out an invitation. The parking lot lights snapped on, humming and burning. Beyond, the dark sky frothed over the final rays of the sun.

  Crease finished up his cigarette, flicked the butt off into the dark, turned back to the phone and started dialing a number, thinking that the Greenwich Village boys definitely would've had a frickin' field day.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tucco's tech whiz kids weren't really in the loop so Crease figured it was safe enough to give them a whirl. The word that Crease was a cop probably hadn't filtered down yet, even though they're the ones who would've looked up his father's badge number. They had the info and didn't have the info, that's what the tech boys were so good for.

  He got a whiz kid and gave him Sarah Burke's name and all the relevant information he had on hand, which wasn't much. It didn't have to be. Within two minutes the kid spit back the name of a state-run assisted living group home where she'd been shuffled off to after banging around mental hospitals for the better part of a decade. The kid MapQuested the address and gave Crease the directions. Turned out to be just over the New Hampshire state line in a town called Langdaff.

  It would be after ten by the time he got there and he wasn't sure what the rules of the place would be. Did you have to call ahead and make an appointment? Could you walk up off the street? Did you have to be family to visit? He decided to give it a go anyway, and if need be, he'd find a cheap spot to stay overnight and try again in the morning.

  The Jimmys were still dialoguing. Crease got in the 'Stang, gassed up around the block, drove out to the interstate and headed to New Hampshire.

  The directions were perfect and went right down to the tenth of a mile when the next turn was coming up. He made it in no time, listening to an Oldies station, his mind a flat, empty lowland periodically broken by someone running by in the distance.

  The group home was a converted Victorian house that on the open market would bring in one point two, one point three mil. A sign on the front lawn said it was the Sinclair Mayridge Home for the Needful. It sounded like a methadone clinic in Harlem.

  Crease parked at the curb and stepped up. Several people sat on the porch conversing lazily. One guy was reading a paper, two women convened in the corner crocheting and discussing what sounded like a romance novel. A teenage boy leaned against the railing where he typed on a laptop, and a teenage girl sidled at his shoulder watching him. Nobody looked particularly needful. They all looked well-rested and happy as hell.

  Crease climbed the stairs but wasn't sure what the etiquette was. If you were supposed to knock or if you just walked right in. He looked around wondering if anybody would make eye contact and give him a hint, but nobody seemed to notice him. He turned the knob and wandered inside.

  More blithe folks sat in a living room watching television, pleasantly chatting. If anybody was in charge, he couldn't tell who it might be. He lit a cigarette and two middle-aged ladies playing cards told him in unison, "No smoking here."

  He ground the butt out against his heel and said, "Sarah Burke?"

  "Upstairs. Room twelve."

  He took the stairs two at a time, feeling like a thief in the night. Strange it should be that way since nobody cared he was here. Still, he could just imagine someone leaping out of a chair and pointing at him, screaming hideously, falling into convulsions. Somebody might slip a dirty pair of panties in his pocket and send him up the river for a nickel.

  Door ten was painted yellow. Eleven was green. Twelve orange. Flowers and bunnies and other cuddly creatures had been carefully depicted on each of them. Rainbows arced across the walls of the hallway, multicolored groups of children danced harmoniously across blue globes. Crease thought he could very easily bug out in a place like this.

  Someone had snuck Jesus way up top, almost on the ceiling, smiling down upon the puppies and tulips. One of the needy could call a lawyer and start yelling about the separation of church and state, maybe walk out of this place with a laundry bag full of money.

  He knocked on the door of room twelve. No sound from inside, and he got no sense of movement. He knocked again. He imagined the woman in there staring at the door, wishing lethal thoughts through the wood, into his head. Willing murder, demanding death, spilling blood from afar.

  You could get yourself pretty jazzed in front of a closed door in a state-run facility.

  He swung it open and walked in.

 
A forty-watt bulb burned through a smoke-stained, dust-covered lampshade, giving the room a sickly yellow pallor.

  Sarah Burke was seated in a ladder-back wooden chair in the far corner, huddled inside a ratty cotton nightgown. Her slippered feet didn't quite touch the floor. It was a crazy place to be, sitting over there far away from the rest of the furniture, the windows, the closet, everything. She was drawn up into herself—her body twined against and within itself—staring out at everything else like she found it all so peculiar.

  A bony, ragged face, all you really saw were her eyes.

  He'd dealt with a lot of bad dudes in his time, but only a couple of them had ever given him the willies on sight. She did it to him. Plucked a nerve deep inside that you never wanted touched. Some people, you just looked at them and knew the seriously bad juju was at work. It was all over her.

  Her white hair stuck out in clumps and tufts. This was a witch, a queen gone bad in the deep forest who plotted your death while she fed you gingerbread cookies. Stevie's kiddie books were filled with creepy broads like this. She was so thin that he found it hard to believe her bones didn't break just carrying out the most casual acts. Just walking across the room would cause her kneecaps to burst through her skin.

  He remembered he'd thought something similar about her brother, Sam Burke. Sitting there in his living room with his anguish pulsing under his face, pulsing, like it would come crashing through his flesh at any second.

  She was needful all right. What she needed you couldn't give her. If you could give it to her then you'd be as wracked across the rocks as she was.

  Crease said, "I'd like to talk to you."

  The woman turned her lifeless eyes on him. She stared hard, harder than most people were able to do no matter the reason. You couldn't get angry enough to glower that way. You couldn't be thoughtful enough. It was something that happened when you went so deep in the well that you couldn't climb back out again.

  Yeah, the lady had taken a fall and dug in when she hit the ground. He cocked his head and studied her another minute.