Pulse

by Edna Buchanan

  The suspects were slumped in the backseats of separate police units.

  “You stay put,” DeVito said. “We’ll have somebody take them out of the cage cars so you can eyeball ‘em.”

  “Don’t you have to have a lineup? Doesn’t the law say—”

  “You been watching too much television,” DeVito muttered. “The law says we can ask a citizen to take a look at possible offenders standing on the street immediately after a crime. It’s a different story the next day, or even a coupla hours later.”

  “Then,” Jarrett said, “we use a photo lineup.”

  “Yeah,” his partner added. “I can’t remember the last time we had a live lineup. Too cumbersome, too expensive, too time-consuming. Ya hafta find everybody, lawyers, the prosecutor, a stenographer. The pain and torture, the worst part, is going over to the county lockup, trying to entice prisoners into helping us out. We need five to stand with one. Used to bribe ‘em with a carton of cigarettes. Now they got the no-smoking policy at the jail. Last time we went in there looking for inmates to participate, they were spitting at us. Remember that, Murray?”

  Jarrett nodded sorrowfully. “We don’t even have a lineup room anymore.”

  “Now, Frank,” DeVito said, “do us one favor? Just for the purposes of this investigation, let’s forget this, uh … prowler. Let’s try keeping him out of it. No point in mixin’ apples with oranges here. We don’t wanna hand some defense lawyer a red herring on a silver platter.”

  Frank nodded.

  “Try to focus on anything you noticed that can’t be changed, unlike clothing or hairstyle,” DeVito said.

  “It was only a glance,” Frank protested.

  Heads down, the two handcuffed men slumped sullenly against a patrol car beneath a streetlight. They looked small and slender, not at all threatening.

  Frank leaned forward and wondered what they were thinking. The one with the plaited hair was obviously the passenger. The other muttered something under his breath, then grinned.

  “That’s it, see it?” The glint of a gold-capped tooth. “He was the driver. That’s them,” he said.

  “Do me a favor,” Frank said later. “If they talk to you, will you ask them if they saw anybody else, and let me know?”

  “Sure,” DeVito said. “We’ll do that.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Frank arrived home at nearly midnight, stunned at how an evening of simple pleasures had ended in death delivered by shadowy figures to the familiar surroundings of Margery Howe’s own driveway.

  It could have been him. Why had he been warned? No robbers or prowlers lurking in his driveway now, only a strange, apparently unoccupied car parked on the swale. Frank unlocked the glove box for easy access to the gun and flashed on his brights. Two heads popped up. Even in the glare of the high beams he instantly recognized his oldest daughter’s heartbreakingly perfect profile.

  He stepped from the Mercedes and strode up to the driver’s side. The occupants were hastily adjusting their clothes.

  “You must be one sick son of a bitch,” he told Jay Bow-den, his voice oddly calm, “hitting on teenagers at your age. I don’t want to see you here again.”

  He leaned down, making eye contact with his daughter. “You,” he said, “inside. Now.”

  “You’ve got the wrong idea, Frank,” Bowden said.

  “Don’t want to hear it.”

  Bowden cleared his throat and tried again. “Shandi is an exceptionally mature young woman. She …”

  Too weary and preoccupied to be furious, Frank walked away from Bowden’s inane remarks, rounded the car and wrenched open Shandi’s door. He thought he smelled the sweet pungent scent of marijuana.

  “Daddy …” she protested, stepping out.

  He pointed silently to the house, slammed the car door and stalked after her.

  “Look who I found,” he told Kathleen, who was waiting. The eyes of mother and daughter connected. Kathleen, he realized, knew all along where Shandi had been.

  “Not only is your behavior disgraceful, it’s dangerous,” he told Shandi, who headed for the stairs. “One of our neighbors was murdered in her driveway tonight.”

  “Murdered?” Shandi turned on the bottom step and blinked. She wore a very short skirt and no stockings. “Who?”

  “Margery Howe.”

  “The singer? Mom.” She turned to her mother. “Is that true?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” Kathleen said.

  “I am not a lunatic,” he said. “In fact, I am considered a credible witness. Therefore, it is not necessary to confirm everything I say with your mother.”

  Shandi ran up the stairs.

  “Here’s your dinner.” He handed Kathleen the long-forgotten brown shopping bag from Joe’s.

  “You hungry?” she murmured, taking it to the kitchen.

  “No.”

  “Neither am I.”

  He called after her. “Where’s Casey?”

  “A sleep-over with her friend on Island Road.”

  “Looked like Shandi planned to sleep-over in Bowden’s car out front,” he said sarcastically.

  She did not respond, so, exhausted, he went to bed.

  Restless, he kept waking, expecting the dawn, then finding it was only twenty or thirty minutes later than when he had last checked the digital clock on his nightstand. Plaintive wails woke him at three a.m., a cat, pitiful and locked out. He lay there listening, wondering why Daisy, who usually slept in Casey’s room, did not bark. The sounds stopped until he dozed. The cries woke him once more, then stopped again, as he realized that the wails sounded human.

  He padded downstairs, alone in the dark, at 4:45 a.m., made a pot of coffee, then sat in the kitchen savoring the aroma and listening to the final hour of an all-night radio talk show. Lonely voices reaching out to other sleepless strangers in the dark. Frank had never felt lonely, even after his father’s death. He had been too busy. His mother, hollow-eyed and too thin, had stopped cooking, stopped cleaning, and begun slurring her words, so he had carried on. It was he, at age eleven, who had scrawled a shopping list and pulled a squeaky-wheeled wire cart to the grocery. He who took buses to pay the electric bill so their power would not be turned off. He cooked and even picked wildflowers, pink and white periwinkles, to decorate the Jell-O and instant-cake-mix desserts he fixed for his mother, hoping to see her eat, hoping in some small way to make up for all she had lost. Hopingshe would smile again. It was he who stayed awake when she was out all night, terrified that something evil had overtaken her too.

  Despite the hour and his isolation, Frank did not identify with the solitary predawn callers. He had never been less alone. He felt an uneasy presence he had never been aware of before. He wondered if traces of his donor’s personality and energy had been transplanted into his body along with another man’s cells, heart muscle and genes. The idea seemed less ludicrous in this setting, sitting alone in the dark. But he had always loved logic, it had never let him down in the past.

  At five-thirty a.m. Frank stepped out to see if the morning paper had arrived. It was not yet dawn and as he stood in the darkened driveway looking for it, a car pulled up to the gate. The two detectives.

  They followed him into the kitchen.

  “Quite a view ya got here.” DeVito peered out at the city skyline across the bay. He looked rumpled, his eyes bloodshot. He’d lost his tie somewhere during the night. “We were passing through the ‘hood here on the way back to the station.”

  “You mean you fellows haven’t been to bed yet?”

  “We been busy, talking to Willingham and Jackson, the cowboys from last night’s little escapade. Didn’t plan to bother you if there was no lights. Almost didn’t see you prowling around your driveway in the dark.” He cut his eyes at his partner.

  “I was looking for the morning paper.”

  Jarrett looked interested. “Should be some kinda story. A reporter caught up with us late last night.”

  “Pushy broad,” DeVito said, blowi
ng his nose.

  Frank poured them coffee. “So you talked to the killers.”

  “Yeah,” DeVito said. “The passenger copped first, blamesthe driver. Then the driver hears his partner is spilling, so he opens up. Now they can’t blame each other fast enough.

  “Said they were following you.” He stirred sugar into his coffee. “Picked you up at Joe’s. They were ready to rock and roll when you made the turn into your driveway. They pulled up real close when they spotted the gate, didn’t wanna risk you getting inside and shutting ‘em out. But then you floor it and take off instead. They figure you made ‘em and think twice about the whole thing.”

  He raised his eyes from his coffee mug. “They didn’t back off for no other reason. They never saw anybody else.” He sipped his coffee noisily, then sniffed.

  “Just thought you’d like to know.”

  Frank nodded and looked away.

  “So just then,” DeVito concluded, “what comes by but an older couple in a big Town Car, they hit the jackpot and your neighbor goes to glory.”

  Frank was serving bacon and eggs to the detectives, who were watching the Today Show, when Kathleen appeared in the doorway, clutching her bathrobe around her.

  “I thought I heard voices.” She sounded sleepy.

  “Breakfast?” Frank used a spatula to slide more eggs onto DeVito’s plate.

  “Just coffee.” Taking the cup with her, she disappeared back upstairs.

  He joined her after the detectives left.

  Kathleen sat at the foot of their bed, watching him dress after his shower. “There’s a recipient support group meeting this afternoon. I think we should go.”

  He frowned as he fastened his watch. “What time is it?”

  “Two o’clock.”

  He shook his head. “I doubt I’ll be back by then, I’m running late now. And you know I’m not into those things.”

  “You’re going to see that woman again today, aren’t you?”

  He turned to face her, his expression startled. “Yes. It’s important to square her situation away as quickly as possible. She may face severe tax problems.”

  “But after last night … ?”

  “What does last night have to do with it?”

  “It’s all part of …” She sighed. “I’ve been uneasy about this from the start. You know that. I’m worried, Frank. Your relationship with the man’s widow is unhealthy.” Her pleading eyes misted. “It’s just that all of these things are happening to us so fast. I don’t know how to handle them.” She removed a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “I was able to cope when you were sick and facing surgery. But now I’m not sure where you’re coming from anymore. It’s as though you’re not the same person. You look wonderful, you seem healthy, yet … We went through hell to be here for you, and now you go off on your own without telling us where you’re going …”

  “I’ll finish it up soon, I promise.”

  She was using her handkerchief to scrub off her lipstick, then hugged him around the waist. He was in a hurry. “This situation is strictly temporary, you know that,” he said kindly, then caught his breath.

  She was unzipping his trousers, fumbling almost eagerly, releasing his penis. Cradling it in both hands, she ran her tongue around the tip, probing, burrowing it along the slit at the head.

  His knees felt weak. Kathleen had never really liked oral sex. He couldn’t remember the last time she had initiated it.

  She loosened his belt, slipped his trousers and shortsdown below his knees and they swiftly changed places. He sat on the bed and she dropped to her knees on the thick carpet in front of him. It excited him to see his neat, immaculate wife in her impeccably crisp expensive designer blouse, shining hair pulled back so tightly that it looked taut at the scalp, like this, wild and wanton, emitting loud sucking noises and moaning under her breath. She gently massaged him, nibbling at the scar where they opened his groin to insert the catheter for his heart biopsies. Her lip always returning, taking him deeper and deeper. His hands were on her shoulders, the base of her neck, the back of her head. He closed his eyes and sighed aloud.

  She knew him so well, whenever he came close, she slowed and teased and released him, licking and stroking and gently blowing, until he wanted to force himself back inside her mouth. When he finally released and fell back on the bed, she remained curled up between his feet on the thick carpet. His shorts and trousers were around one ankle.

  He sat up slowly as she wiped her mouth with the handkerchief. “Hey,” he said softly, and reached down to touch her crotch. “I want to kiss that little boy in the boat. Bring him up here.”

  She smiled, straightening her clothes. “No, I’m fine,” she said. “I don’t want to have to change again. No time.” She consulted her watch. “I have to go drag Shandi out of bed or she’ll miss class.”

  “That’s not fair.” He kissed her throat and reached under her skirt as she sat on the bed next to him.

  “Sweetheart”—she caught his hand—“it’s time to focus on your own life. Our lives.”

  He still wanted to pleasure her.

  “In the family counseling sessions,” she went on, “theytold us what to expect after your surgery. They said there might be personality changes, due to the medications …”

  His afterglow was fading fast. “But, honey, that’s just in the beginning before they take you off the high doses of steroids. My dosage now is a tiny fraction of that. My personality hasn’t changed, Kath. I’m not beating my chest, bellowing Tarzan yells, or ripping down goalposts.”

  “Well, what about these … these hallucinations? Seeing people who aren’t there?” Her tone was that of someone correcting an errant child.

  “All I know is what’s happened.” He slipped his other foot out of his pants, hoping to retain some dignity. He did not want them dragging from one ankle on his way to the bathroom to clean up.

  “Somebody, something, warned me away last night when I was about to be robbed, maybe shot.” He tried to look credible, even though he now stood before her exposed from the waist down. “Call it what you will, guardian angel, apparition or premonition. I think it has something to do with the man whose heart they gave me.”

  “You mean you think it’s him.”

  “I know how it sounds, but it would make sense, wouldn’t it? That he would want to protect me—and his own heart.”

  “Oh, Frank. You’ve never believed in ghost stories and the supernatural.” She looked stricken. “And you’re still going to see her today?”

  “I have to,” he said, as he went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the sink. She was gone when he came out. The bed had been straightened, not even a crushed spot in the spread to show they had been there. He heard her voice down the hall.

  * * *

  Rory was at work in a flower bed, a trowel in her hand, when he pulled into her driveway. She wore a scarf over her hair, green garden gloves, denim overalls and a T-shirt. “The snails got the upper hand.” She grinned ruefully, surveying the yard. “Didn’t fertilize last month like I was supposed to, the allamandas are outa control and I forgot to cut back the poinsettias so they’d be red for Christmas.” She smiled at him. “But slowly, surely, I’m gitting myself back in the groove.”

  “I see your green thumb, but what’s with the nose?” A shiny green leaf protruded from beneath the bridge of her sunglasses.

  “Oh,” she laughed. “Nose protector. Didn’t want to git the thing sunburned. Looks god-awful when it peels.”

  “And what is that?” A saucer was sunk into the ground, flush with the soil.

  “That’s for the beer.”

  “Beer?”

  “Happy hour for the snails. I’ll pour it full a beer right after dark. Snails love it, they suck it up, git tipsy and drown. Don’t like puttin’ out poison.” She brushed off her overalls. “Don’t like killing ‘em at all, but when they get the munchies they eat every leaf on the place. Me and Billy used to handpi
ck ‘em, drop ‘em in a grocery sack and relocate ‘em to an overgrown lot on the waterway a coupla blocks over. Perfect new home for ‘em, but one a the neighbors caught us in the act and raised hell. So now we just let ‘em drink themselves to death.

  “Thought you gave up on me,” she told him, as they went inside.

  Frank studied Daniel’s picture close up while she changed to go to the bank. He felt nothing, no heartfelt connection. The man in the photo seemed to be an ominous stranger.

  His thoughts that morning seemed inane in the bright light of day.

  He delayed telling Rory what he’d discovered about Alexander’s accounts until after they picked up her new checkbook and called her insurance agent to determine whether the life policy was gone as well. He listened with relief as the agent promised imminent checks to both the widow and Alexander’s business partner. The delay was not unusual, the agent explained, in the case of suicide. The company had been awaiting final reports from their own investigator, police and the medical examiner’s office. They were now complete and all was in order.

  “Rory, I’ve got some bad news,” Frank said, after the call.

  “Are you all right?” Her big eyes grew huge. “You’re not sick? Your heart … ?”

  “No, it’s you I’m worried about.” He explained in detail the closed accounts, the emptied funds, the pension cashed in prematurely.

  “This can’t be right.” She paced nervously, tossing back her hair. “There was stocks, CDs, the cash from the sale of the business, Daniel’s retirement fund.” She ticked them off, one by one on her long tapered fingers.

  Her eyes dropped to the new checkbook on the table. “Where’d that money come from?”

  “I transferred it there, from one of my accounts.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t let you do that, Frank.”

  “You can pay it back when we find the money.”

  “Okay, as soon as the insurance check comes in.”

  “There’s something else,” he said solemnly. “Because of the capital gains on the sale of the business, the stock sales, withdrawal of the pension fund, you could be facing a huge tax liability.” He leaned forward, intent, his voice earnest. “This is serious, Rory. Give me the leads and I’ll follow themoney, but I need somewhere to start. Do you have any idea what new ventures Daniel might have invested in?”