Alien Rites

by Lynn Hightower

  “Night before this Cochran kid disappeared. That was Miriam in that kid’s trunk—you caught that, did you?”

  David looked at the sidewalk. “Very possible.”

  “This Cochran disappears at same of the time isss Miriam Kellog, sleep partner of Detective Mel.”

  “‘Sleep partner,’ String? Call her my girlfriend, okay?”

  “Isss okay. This Miriam sleep … girl partner—”

  “Girlfriend.”

  “But I wish to imply the romantic.”

  “Girlfriend does imply the romantic.”

  “Then if you are the man friend of myssself and Detective David—”

  “That’s different.”

  “In some cases I understand—”

  “String, for God’s sake—”

  David held up a hand. “Miriam did the autopsy on the Trey baby, and Cochran goes missing the same night he’s supposed to meet Miriam and Annie. Miriam hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Of course it’s connected. Mel, you checked her office, and with her sister, right?”

  “Her sister won’t take my calls. And Miriam’s on leave of absence, doing research at the university, advising some of the doctoral candidates. So nobody’s keeping track of her.”

  “Except you,” David said.

  “And I can’t find her.”

  “You don’t think she’s staying away because she’s mad?”

  “She might stay away from me, but not her apartment, not her work. I want a look at that ankle bracelet that tech found.”

  “Think you’d recognize it?” David asked.

  Mel shrugged. “I got stuff in my drawers at home I don’t recognize.”

  String teetered back and forth on his bottom fringe. “Pouchling isss mine for two-day session. If wish to go here now to the place of the Miriam Kellog, must call chemaki and arrange the makings.”

  David wished he had a grouping of five adults he could call on for help with the care of his offspring. Of course, even with Elaki, the brunt of pouchling care fell on the Mother-One. Some things never changed.

  “Nah, String—David’s right, I guess. Not much we can accomplish tonight.”

  String waved a fin and headed for his van. David opened his car door, got in. He looked at Mel, who was heading for his car, hands deep in his pockets. He stepped back out on the pavement, door hanging open.

  “Detective David Silver, please close the door or the power pack—”

  “Shut up,” David said softly. “Mel?”

  Mel turned, face in the shadows.

  “Why don’t you head home with me? Rose will behave if you’re around, and you haven’t seen the kids in ages.”

  Mel rubbed the back of his neck. “Need protection from my sister, huh?”

  “Just lately she’s been a little—”

  “She find out about you and Teddy?”

  David gave him a wary look. There was no hostility in Mel’s face, just fatigue. “What about me and Teddy?”

  “Yeah, right David, whatever you say.” Mel shifted his weight. “I would like to see the kiddos.”

  Mel sent his car away. It pulled away from the curb, and he walked back quickly, settling with a sigh into the passenger’s side of David’s car. “You don’t mind driving, do you?”

  “No.” David gave him a look. “How long have you known about Teddy?”

  “David, I hate to bust your bubble, but you’d be hard put to find anybody in the department who doesn’t know.”

  David opened his window to the steamy night breeze, turning the air conditioner on low. He felt the tires snug into the grid that led out of the city to his ten-acre farm.

  “What’s the problem between you and Miriam? Other than toilet seats, I mean.”

  Mel didn’t answer. David looked sideways, saw his partner was asleep.

  TWELVE

  The bump of car tires going from grid to raw pavement brought David out of a sleepy daze. Mel did not wake up. David dreaded this part of the drive when he was tired. There was no grid on the two-lane rural road. The car could go off the pavement and into the trees in a split second of inattention. It was hard to imagine that less than thirty years ago people had always driven this way. No wonder traffic fatalities had been a major cause of death.

  He had missed his father tonight when he returned the teddy bear to little Jenny Trey. He always missed his dad when he did something nice for kids.

  That was one thing Teddy had given him—the answer to his father’s disappearance all those years ago. David always knew that his father was a good man, the kind of man who would not abandon a ten-year-old boy and a manic-depressive wife. Something had to have happened.

  And something had.

  Teddy was a psychic, working with the Saigo City Police on a missing person case. David, who loathed psychics, had loved and hated her from the very first day. The hate had gone away. He wished the love would.

  Teddy had found his father for him—dead all these years, decomposing behind the wheel of his car, hidden beneath the muddy brown waters of the Talmidge River.

  The car had seen it all, reporting in after they’d pulled it rusty and dripping from the water. A stupid killing in the parking lot of a doughnut shop. His father had interfered, earning a bullet, a quick death, and a hidden grave in dark, muddy water.

  An old, old crime, messy and violent and pointless, happening fast, as they usually did, causing pain that lasted a lifetime.

  David wondered how many times he had driven that Talmidge River Bridge while his father floated in the swift dark waters, eyes blank and unseeing till they were eaten by the fish.

  Bad thoughts. Let them go.

  For the first time in a long time, the farm looked good to him when he pulled in the drive. He turned off the car engine, waited for the headlights to dim.

  He had an unexpected moment of happiness. Yes, the house needed to be painted, and he did not have the time to do it, or the money to pay someone else. And the leaves of yet another baby dogwood tree were crispy and brown—he could not make them grow. No doubt they resented neglect.

  The porch swing still hung crooked in spite of his best efforts. The wind made it move, and he listened for the familiar creak of rusty chain. The sky had lightened, easing the weight of a bad night. It seemed like the nights were always bad. Now was the best time, the time when the darkness breathed easier, the world fresh and unsullied by the day ahead. David stood in the driveway beside the car, feeling the breeze against his hot skin.

  And just like that, the happiness slipped away. He heard a car engine on the road behind him, and saw that it was running without lights, which could mean trouble, or nothing more than someone who had circumvented the safety controls of a bossy automobile. People hated to be told what to do.

  The dark shape disappeared, engine noises fading. David looked at Mel, saw he was awake and watchful. He wondered if it was the noise that had awakened him, or the silence.

  “What’s up?” Mel said, voice sleep-shadowed and dull.

  “We’re home.”

  The dog barked as they came up the stairs.

  “Duck,” David said, and opened the door.

  Mel went first into the living room, and bent down to rub the dog’s head. A wineglass arced from the hallway, whizzed across the room, and smashed into the doorjamb where his head had been.

  The dog barked and whined and peed on the floor. Mel looked at the shards of broken glass and the dark oval of liquid on the carpet.

  “Nothing like hanging out with the married folk, to make a guy appreciate living alone.”

  The dog groaned and whimpered and rubbed against David’s shins in an intense, doggie ecstasy that made David wonder if he oughtn’t get home more often.

  Rose had found the dog in a laboratory cage marked DEAD MEAT, and when she was through trashing the lab, she had taken pity on him and brought him home. She was a freelance animal rights activist—the militant variety. David called the dog Meat, which annoyed the childr
en, who kept trying to call her Hildie.

  “Rose throw something at you every time you come home?” Mel asked.

  David nodded.

  “You tried to talk?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Hell, sooner or later, she’s got to run out of dishes.” He raised his voice. “Hello, Rose!”

  “Mel?” Rose came from the hallway into the living room. As usual, she had left the lamp on low. Lately, David had been wondering why she always left the light—Habit? Welcome? Help with her aim?

  Her hair was full and messy, thick dark hair, with a loose natural wave. There were circles of fatigue under her eyes, a swelling bruise on her cheekbone, a scrape on her chin. She wore a loose black T-shirt that came to her thighs, and thick white cotton socks.

  New socks, David noticed, with a stab of something that sort of felt like affection, and sort of felt like pain. Rose would put on a new pair of socks every day, if they could afford it. He pictured himself bringing her boxes of brand new socks.

  David, he thought, you romantic devil.

  Rose gave Mel a hug. “’Bout time you got out here to see me. You guys hungry?”

  “What happened to your face?” Mel asked.

  Rose touched the bruise. “Nothing.”

  “Yeah, well, it could be an improvement.”

  Rose yawned. “Come on in the kitchen; the girls and I had hamburger on a roll tonight, and we’ve got leftovers.”

  David trailed behind them, wondering if there would be anything else to eat. He had never understood their passion for hamburger on a roll.

  “You want to warm it?” Rose asked.

  Mel shook his head. “No way. We eat it cold.”

  David sat down at the small kitchen table. Rose rustled a package wrapped in butcher cling, put food on one of their few remaining plates, and set it in front of him. Then she and Mel stood side by side in front of the sink, munching happily, repeating some familiar ritual from their childhood. David wondered if Rose and the kids had happy rituals from which he was excluded. Rose took a single beer out of the refrigerator, opened the top and took a drink, then passed it among the three of them. David was grateful to be included. He preferred individual beers, and Rose liked to share—another point of contention among many.

  He looked down at his plate. The white-bread hoagie was grey at the bottom, soaked with grease from the meat, which was ground chuck mixed with onion, catsup, and Worcestershire sauce. The hoagie had little brown sesame seeds. David took one bite. He did not like sesame seeds. They seemed pointless and he wasn’t quite sure where they came from. What was a sesame?

  Rose gave him what could have passed for a smile. Then the familiar shadow crossed her face; the smile faded.

  “I didn’t know you were working today,” David said. Which she would either take as a polite nothing, or an accusation that she never told him what was going on. The usual marital mine field.

  She shrugged. “Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.”

  She was; he knew it, and she knew he did. She was wearing that old black T-shirt and sporting a bruise, so she’d been working somewhere—raiding a lab, freeing gorillas, saving horses, going wherever the animal rights organizations needed heavy artillery. She met an amazing number of very nasty people, many of them dangerous, and seemed quite satisfied to beat the crap out of anybody who had the bad sense to get in her way. David looked at her, wondering, as he often did, how such a petite, fine-boned woman could be so deadly. He’d seen her kill a man once—a man who had broken into the house and threatened the children. He still remembered what the man’s neck bone sounded like when it snapped.

  “Where’s the poor, orphaned animal?” David asked.

  “There isn’t always an animal, David.”

  Mel swallowed a mouthful of roll. “This from the woman who brought home an ostrich.”

  “I really would like to know what happened to that bird.”

  David and Mel carefully avoided looking at each other. David flicked a finger at the bruise on her cheek.

  “You should put ice on that.”

  Mel went to the refrigerator door, demanded ice from the side pocket.

  “Don’t want it,” Rose said, chewing hard.

  David looked at her, thinking that the chewing must hurt. “Don’t pass on the ice just because it was my idea.”

  Rose frowned at him. Open warfare was a new level, but he wanted new tactics. He was weary of the undertow.

  Rose put her hamburger down and went out the back, screen door slamming behind her. A moth scuttled into the kitchen, drawn by the light.

  “I get dibs on the couch,” Mel said. “Or is that where you’re going to sleep?”

  THIRTEEN

  David woke with the sun in his eyes, and the scream of a furious little girl in his ears. Rose’s side of the bed had not been slept in. He closed his eyes again, thinking there was something to be said for a bed all to yourself.

  He looked at his watch. Seven-thirty. Not much sleep, but it was time to be up and moving. He pulled on his jeans and wandered into the hallway. Mel stood at the edge of the kitchen, hair sticking up, eyes red-rimmed but wide open. Mattie’s voice was shrill.

  “She ate all the Elaki Marshmallow Pops, and yesterday she took the last micro strudel. What am I s’pose to eat?”

  Mel scratched his head. “How about I scramble up some eggs?”

  David heard a feminine medley of Ooooos, which told him that all his daughters were up.

  “Coffee, Mel?”

  “Thank God you’re up. Where do they get the energy to fight this early in the morning?”

  Rose wasn’t in the kitchen supervising, obviously. Mattie, Lisa, and Kendra looked sleepy-eyed and grumpy. Lisa sat with a book propped by her cereal bowl, oblivious to Mattie’s upset over Elaki Pops. Kendra nibbled at a rice cake, watching weight that did not need to be watched. She curled her lip.

  “You shouldn’t eat that crap anyway, it’s full of sugar.”

  “Don’t say ‘crap,’” David said, rote parental involvement.

  Mattie squinched her eyes. “I can eat all the sugar I want, I don’t have a big moon face.”

  Kendra’s eyes filled instantly. “At least I’m not a beanpole brat.”

  David patted Kendra’s shoulder, careful not to mess his daughter’s hair, something he knew from sore experience would cause more havoc than the fight with her sister. “You have a very pretty face, Kendra.”

  “I do not. I’m fat. I just don’t like that brat throwing it up at me.”

  David looked at his oldest daughter, who was not fat. He was going to have to talk to Rose about this. He picked Mattie up.

  “There’s leftover hamburger on a roll. Want some of that?”

  She nodded, lower lip big.

  “Share it with your Uncle Mel. And Mattie?” He set her on the edge of the counter, lowered his voice to a whisper. “Your sister is very sensitive about her weight. I don’t want to hear you call her ‘moon face’ again.”

  “She called me beanpole brat.”

  David set his jaw. “Let me put it this way. Any time I hear you tease her about her weight, you get to scrub every toilet in the house. Argue with me, same punishment. Is that understood?”

  Her eyes widened, chin down. “Yes, sir.” Her tone of voice told him to go to hell.

  Mel opened the refrigerator. “Come on, Mattie, come and share this with me.”

  “Not hungry.” She hopped off the countertop, little feet thumping the linoleum, and headed out of the kitchen.

  “Eat it while you can,” David told Mel, and headed out the back door.

  The grass was newly trimmed, the ceramic lawn animals jumbled next to the barn. David looked at them suspiciously, and went to make sure they were turned off. They kept the grass trimmed, but he’d never trusted them.

  The barn door was open to catch the air, and light filtered in through the slats of wood on the side. David peeped through the doorway.

  Rose w
as curled up in an open stall, head resting on an old moldy hay bale. She was deeply asleep. Alex the cat was curled on top of the bale, head next to Rose’s, tail hanging down the side. A small animal was tucked next to Rose’s feet. David moved closer, wondering what she’d brought home this time.

  The piglet’s eyes were open and glazed over, rheumy with discharge. David thought it must be dead. He crouched close and put a hand on the animal’s side. It was soft, not bristly like it would be as the animal matured. Someone had put it into a teeny harness, which had worked its way into the pig’s hide as it grew bigger. The tiny heart beat slow and steady, but the piglet did not react when David stroked its side. Not good.

  A bowl of dried chow had been mixed with expensive kiwi and strawberry. David grimaced. From the looks of the bowl, the piglet had not been tempted.

  Alex greeted him with a deep-throated purr, and he scratched the cat’s head. Rose opened her eyes, sighed deeply, gave him a quick glance. She bent over the pig and rubbed its back.

  “Come on, little sweetie. Come on and eat.” She took a brown lump from the bowl, put it to the pig’s mouth.

  The piglet made a tiny squeak and blinked.

  “This is not an animal?” David said.

  “What?” Rose looked worse this morning, face swollen, bruise purplish-black and spreading.

  As he said the words, he wondered why he kept at her over this. “Last night you said you hadn’t brought an animal home from work. So I guess this isn’t an animal.”

  “Yesterday I was in Chicago checking on the security of a sea park marineland that trains dolphins with TaserPocs—illegal and thriving. There are no pigs there. I found this little guy on the way home, about thirty-five miles out Karlton Lane. He’d been staked outside in the sun all day, food bowl dirty and crusted over. See that little harness? They didn’t take it off when he outgrew it. It was made for a kitten, and now it’s grown into his hide. His owner had him out there with a ‘For Sale’ sign, but didn’t want to let me take him.”

  “Did you offer to pay?”

  Rose shrugged. “I didn’t have any money, and if I did I wouldn’t give it to a creep like that. I got him to let me take the pig for free.”