Alien Rites

by Lynn Hightower

  David looked at her. “How?”

  “I broke his arm. Didn’t really mean to bend it back quite that far.” She frowned. “I don’t think we have to worry about assault complaints. He was too embarrassed at being roughed up by a shrimpy female to make any complaints. And the pig business could get him in trouble.”

  “No wonder we don’t get invited to block parties.”

  “Don’t worry, David. This little guy isn’t going to be here very long. He’s going to die. So it’ll be an animal, but a dead animal.”

  “No fair, Rose. I didn’t say word one about the dog, did I? Or the cat—”

  “You brought the cat home.”

  “Not to mention the ferret, countless numbers of bunnies, the iguana, the goat, the calf—”

  “Mattie is crazy about that cow.”

  “For that matter, so am I, but—”

  She raised her chin. “You didn’t like the ostrich.”

  “Is there some law that says I have to be grateful for an ostrich on my front porch?”

  “He wasn’t on the porch, he stayed in the yard.”

  “Rose, when cute little piglets grow up they weigh over a thousand pounds, give or take an ounce. We can barely afford to keep the animals we’ve got. Are we going to send the kids to college, or feed pigs?”

  “He’s a miniature, David. Hundred pounds, tops.”

  “I feel so much better.”

  She laughed when he expected anger, and he was annoyed when he heard Mel calling from the kitchen.

  “I guess I better go to work.”

  “Yeah, David, you go on.”

  It was there, in the tone of voice. Go to work, leave all the problems behind—cranky children, sick animals. The pig squeaked as David headed out the barn door. He paused, frowning at what was left of his garden. He had planted late, then Meat, the dog, had pulled up half the tiny tender green plants. No home-grown produce this year.

  The work was calling him. He wanted to look into this business with Annie Trey, he wanted to talk to Miriam. So easy to turn his back and go—it’s what he always did.

  But the pig squeaked again, and something in that little piggy whimper stopped him cold. In his mind’s eye, he saw Kendra crying at the breakfast table, ignoring a pantry full of food she was afraid to eat; Lisa reading and tuning out the world; Mattie, a small ball of fury.

  He walked to the kitchen and called his daughters.

  They were still in T-shirts and nightgowns, but something about his tone of voice made them appear instantly. They sat at the table, looking wary.

  “We have a sick piglet in the barn,” David said.

  Mattie leaned her chin on her open palm. “Mama brought it home yesterday. Haas is still in Chicago, he can’t come look at it.”

  David ground his teeth, smiled at his daughter. Haas. Rose’s good friend and partner. “It just so happens I talked to three experts on saving animals just last night.”

  “Who?” Kendra looked skeptical. She didn’t believe him.

  “Cassidy, Valentine, and Annie.”

  “Who?”

  “No more interruptions. Kendra, warm some milk. Lisa, add sugar to the milk.”

  “How much?”

  “Sweet but not icky.”

  Kendra put a hand on her hip. “Better ask Mattie, she’s the sugar expert.”

  “Fine,” David said. “Mattie puts in the sugar. Lisa, find a cup to pour it in. Get it ready and take it to the barn. Where’s Uncle Mel?”

  “In the shower,” Lisa said.

  “Uh, did you warn him about—” A bellow of rage and pain echoed through the hallway. “You guys get the milk ready. I’ll go rescue Uncle Mel from the iguana.”

  FOURTEEN

  The children watched, quiet and big-eyed, as David curled up beside the bale and took the piglet in his lap. Rose was in the kitchen, summoned to the phone, and David breathed easier out from under her critical eyes. His daughters were still impressed enough to assume he knew what he was doing, but Rose wasn’t.

  David checked the temperature of the milk on the inside of his wrist, stroked the piglet’s rose-petal ear while he waited for the warm, sweet liquid to cool.

  Lisa tucked her book under her arm, holding her place with a finger. “We should give it a name. If it has a name, maybe it won’t die.”

  Kendra nodded, biting her lip. “Daddy should name it. He never gets to name the animals.”

  Mattie sat beside him, put her thumb in her mouth. She had not sucked her thumb since kindergarten, David thought. What did he expect, with Rose throwing dishes at him every time he walked in the front door? Not one of the kids had ever commented. They just sucked their thumbs, decided not to eat, escaped into books.

  Kendra sighed. “Earth to Daddy, we need a name. Don’t let the milk get cold. I don’t want to have to go back in and heat it up again.”

  David dipped a finger in the cup and held a drop of milk to the pig’s snout.

  No response. He put more milk on his finger, and coated the thin, pale pink lips. The pig opened its eyes. A small tongue flicked toward his finger, taking one drop of sweet warm milk. The pig licked its lips, looked up at David.

  “Hey, little guy. That taste good?”

  “He’s eating it!” Mattie whispered.

  David fed the pig, drop after drop. The pig sat up suddenly, snuffled, teetered toward the bowl on weak, chubby legs, then collapsed face-down in the hay, squeaking.

  “Easy little guy.” David put the bowl under the pig’s chin, and the pig stuck its snout in the bowl and lapped.

  “He’s getting it on his head,” Lisa said.

  Mattie reached out and touched the pig’s ear. “What’s his name, Daddy?”

  “Pid.”

  “Pid? Like Mattie’s security blanket?”

  Mattie’s eyes went soft, and she put a hand on the pig’s head. “Pid the pig.”

  The piglet finished the milk and moved on to the bowl of fruit and chow.

  “You got miniature dinosaurs out here too, or is it safe to come in?”

  David looked up. Waved a hand at Mel. “You put disinfectant on that scratch?”

  “You bet I did. Listen, David, I hate to interrupt this episode of Animal Farm, but we got to go to work.”

  David looked at Kendra. “You kids go in and get dressed. I want you to feed this pig every couple of hours. Milk, like this; then we’ll give him more chow tonight. Pid, say hello to your Uncle Mel.”

  Mel shoved the cat sideways, and sat on the bale of hay. “Pid the pig? And listen, I’m not playing uncle to that pig, so forget it.”

  “How do you play uncle to a pig?” David said. Pid nosed his arm, and settled back in his lap.

  “Like that, I think. You coming or what?”

  David frowned, wondering if they should go into the office or straight to Miriam’s. “You talk to Miriam’s sister yet?”

  “Just called her. She says she hasn’t heard from Miriam, but she isn’t worried.”

  “She friendly?” David asked.

  “Cordial, I guess.”

  David shrugged. “You know sisters. If one robs a bank, the other hides the loot and gives an alibi. So if you make one of them mad, the other’s going to hit you. Did she seem cold?”

  “Not so much cold as weird. But you know, we got history there, so it’s hard to figure.”

  David stroked the pig’s back, running a fingertip along the leather harness embedded in the hide. “What did you and Miriam really fight about?”

  Mel opened his arms. “I told you last night, toilet seats.”

  “You haven’t spoken for two weeks, her sister’s acting weird, and she doesn’t return your calls. Sounds like more than toilet seats to me.”

  Mel rolled his eyes. “All I did was ask her not to slam the lid, and she freaked. Started crying; I mean it was silly.”

  “You say that?”

  “What?”

  “That it was silly.”

  “Hell, no. I look
stupid?”

  “Maybe it was something else. You been getting along lately? She been acting upset?”

  Mel bent down, gave the pig a pat. “See, I have a philosophy about women, and up to now, it was working pretty good.”

  “Up till now?”

  “Last few weeks Miriam’s been really weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “It’s hard to put my finger on. Say, like we go out to eat and she says she’s got to have Chinese, she’s craving eggrolls, right? We get there, sit down after a forty-minute wait, then she’s like, can’t stand the smell, doesn’t want Chinese, wants to leave and go for Italian. I figure she’s trying to pick a fight. And I’m no doormat, but, I don’t know. I don’t get mad. She looks tired these days, gets upset over little things. I been trying to go easy, but I got to tell you, I have to watch every word comes out of my mouth.”

  “She working long hours?”

  “Always—you know Miriam—but she don’t complain, loves the work. But now she’s falling asleep at the movies and stuff, so she’s tired or I’m boring as hell, and we know that’s not it. Plus she’s had some kind of stomach virus, can’t seem to shake it. Throws up all the time.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know. That’s not enough? I mean, all of a sudden she’s insecure. Asks me do I love her, and how much—like am I going to be any use in a crisis or something. Usually a woman talks like that, you think, oh, marriage hints. But that’s not it.”

  “You sure?”

  Mel shrugged. “I offered, and she turned me down.”

  “Sorry.”

  Mel waved a hand. “I just asked ’cause I thought it would make her happy.”

  David looked at him, wondering if he should be the one to tell his partner that Miriam was pregnant. He wondered how Mel was going to take being a dad.

  FIFTEEN

  David noted the level of dust in Miriam’s living room and realized that things were very wrong. Mel’s instincts had been right; they should have gone straight to her apartment last night. He went to the kitchen sink, dragged a finger across the stainless steel, dipped into the drain and the garbage disposal. Mel stood in the doorway, back against the doorjamb.

  “Dry?”

  David nodded. He opened the refrigerator.

  “She don’t cook,” Mel said.

  “Not much to cook with.”

  Inside were fruit juices, boxes of soda, fridge crackers.

  “The lettuce test?” Mel said.

  David nodded and opened the vegetable bin. Sure enough, a head of lettuce, going liquid in the package. Mel looked over David’s shoulder, said “shit” under his breath, and left.

  David stood up, narrowed his eyes, considered the appliances. Clocks were usually best, especially when they kept the right time. Refrigerators talked too much, and stoves tended to complain. He checked the clock on the wall against his watch—right on the mark. He checked the back for the serial number, then leaned against the counter.

  “Police authorization code B7428 addressing appliance Miriam number 8X2BY. Please report last observed activity.”

  A crackle of static, then the voice of the clock, female, tired, irritable. David wondered who had modeled the voice, and why she had been in such a bad mood.

  “Subject owner Miriam Kellog last seen in kitchen, nine-oh-seven P.M., dipping a chocolate bar into a jar of crunchy peanut butter and drinking box of Orchard peach juice.”

  David grimaced. Pregnant all right. “Date last seen?”

  The voice hesitated.

  David could close his eyes and imagine a sigh. “You have something else you need to do? Some place to go?”

  The clock whirred. “Do not understand the relevance of the question.”

  He knew better; sarcasm blew the discs on these things. “When was it that you saw Miriam eating the chocolate and peanut butter?”

  The clock answered and David checked the date on his watch. Miriam had last been seen by the clock the night Luke Cochran disappeared.

  He opened cabinets, browsing. The pantry was obviously stocked by a single person who ate out a lot—olive oil, Thai seasonings, but no common, everyday food packages for the microwave. No boxes of milk, no cereal, but yes on a bottle of champagne.

  He opened the jar of peanut butter, almost dropped it when the microchip in the lid activated.

  “Sixteen grams of fat for two tablespoons, one hundred and ninety calories.”

  Was it his imagination, or did the voice seem disapproving? No wonder Kendra was afraid to eat.

  There were traces of chocolate in the peanut butter. David wondered where Miriam was, and if she had access to chocolate. He tightened the lid of the peanut butter and headed into the living room.

  The room seemed bigger than it was—beige carpet, thick, new looking, a minimum of simple furniture, white verticals over a large window at the end of the room. A computer console sat on the desk, a large slab of glass supported by tubular metal legs. A smudged brown packet sat next to the laptop. David picked it up. Thick. The flap was open and David emptied the contents onto the dusty glass desktop.

  Autopsy photos, Annie Trey’s infant son. David’s stomach dropped. He shoved the photos back into the envelope, pausing over one.

  The baby lay on the stainless-steel examining table, wrapped in a white cotton blanket. The face was unmarked, eyes gummed shut. A pretty baby, with a light fuzz of blond hair.

  David put the picture away, sat down on the couch. Annie Trey was dark. He wondered if Luke Cochran had blond hair.

  Some days he hated his job.

  The quiet hum of appliances never quite at rest got to him suddenly. He headed for the bedroom.

  Mel stood beside the bed, looking through the blinds out the window. He held a piece of yellow paper in one hand. There was a stillness about him that David found disturbing.

  David looked around the room, feeling like an intruder. He’d worked with Miriam for years; she was the medical examiner of choice. He had not known, during these years, that her bed was low to the floor, king-sized, with a lacy pale blue bedspread, that a ball cap hung on the bedpost.

  He pictured her—small-boned, hair fine, long, reddish brown, always coming loose from the French braid or the ribbon that held it back. She had dark eyebrows, a face that was interesting, almost pretty. She was a good forensic technologist, intuitive, methodical, always doing that extra bit of work that separated a good human operator from the computer-generated routine. She and Mel had been circling each other for years—smart remarks, arched eyebrows, sexual innuendo. It was clear to everyone who worked with them that they should either be dating or killing each other.

  They had gone out once or twice, early on, until something happened to put an end it—what exactly, Mel never said. From the hints Miriam let drop, David gathered that Mel might have made the mistake of hitting on her sister.

  So there had been three years of sniping and open warfare before they were both between relationships and ready to try again.

  “Mel?”

  Mel looked away from the window. “None of this makes any sense.” He sounded calm enough. It would take someone who knew him well, someone like David, to catch the undercurrent burr of roughness. “There’s no mail, no newspapers. Somebody’s put all that on hold.”

  “She hasn’t been in the kitchen since Cochran disappeared.”

  Mel nodded. “I took a look at her makeup and stuff, clothes in the closet and dresser. She didn’t pack up and go anywhere. Bathroom’s a mess—makeup and stuff, pantyhose, wads of tissue, like she got ready in a hurry.”

  David pointed to the sheet of paper in Mel’s hand. “What’s that?”

  “This?”

  “Yeah.” David reached for it, and Mel hesitated, then handed it over.

  “Looks like a list of my good points. Assets and liabilities, like that.”

  David read the paper. The heading said MEL THE MAN, and everything was in Miriam’s handwriting; David
recognized the slant of her tall, spidery scribbles. One side was labeled THE GOOD and the other THE NOT SO GOOD. She had put it a lot kinder than Rose would have.

  Mel shook his head, as if he were listening to something high-pitched and uncomfortable. “David, have you ever sat down and listed a woman’s good and bad points?”

  “No, Mel.”

  “I mean, either they got tits or they don’t, hypothetically speaking. Women, jeez, they’re obsessive—how do they have time to even think up all this shit? You think maybe she just had a night where there was nothing good on cable?”

  David cleared his throat and read out loud. “‘He makes me laugh.’”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t read it.”

  “‘He has crinkles around his eyes.’” David looked up. “You know, Mel, I never noticed that, but you do.”

  “That’s like number two on the list of good things. Crinkles. I mean, you think this is in order of importance?”

  David read ahead. “Not bad, Mel. I never really thought about your butt that way.”

  “That’s good to hear.”

  “And I had no idea—”

  “All right, already. Jeez, do we have to enter this in evidence?”

  “‘Not punctual and drinks too much. Bachelor for a long time. Set in his ways.’”

  “You think I drink too much?”

  “Maybe, Mel, but your butt makes up for it.”

  “Thank you for clearing that up.”

  David looked at a notation at the bottom of the page. “You see this part she underlined?”

  “Yeah, but I got no earthly idea what she meant.”

  “‘He sees me,’” David read softly. “‘He sees me and doesn’t go away.’”

  Mel turned his back to the room, twitched a slat on the window blind. “David, tell me the truth, do you think Miriam’s dead?”

  David was reminded of Annie Trey, biting her lower lip, asking after Cochran.

  “I think the situation’s serious, Mel, and you have reason to be worried. But I’m a long way from giving this up.”

  He waited for the reaction, but Mel just turned, nodded, and gave him a wan smile. “We’ll find her.”

  David nodded.

  Mel stuck his hands in his pockets. “What do we do now?”