Alien Rites

by Lynn Hightower

  She scuttled close and took his hand. Gave it a second look. “How long this scratch infected?”

  He glanced down at the swollen red streak. Tried to remember cutting it. “Last night, I guess. When we found Cochran’s car.”

  “Ah.” Her fin felt soft, like ice-cold velvet. “Nano retrievers, small invasive, no pain. Hand here.”

  He pulled away. He had the insane urge to grab his girls and run. Stupid. Whatever he was running from had caught him.

  THIRTY-ONE

  That night David dreamed of his father.

  He was walking through an airport; he had a plane to catch. It had been raining, but the sun was out and he could see through the plate-glass window that the tarmac was rain-streaked, but drying.

  He had just veered to the right when he saw his father, on the left side of the corridor, smiling quietly, waiting to be noticed.

  “Dad?”

  Someone tried to interrupt them but his father pointed a finger and they froze, silenced.

  His father looked good. Trim, rested, healthy. David put his arms around him and hugged him, then pulled back and looked into his father’s face.

  “How can you be here if you’re dead?”

  His father’s eyes were kind, he was smiling. “If you need me to be alive, David, I’m alive.”

  The phone rang, jerking David awake. The dream went like a bubble popping in his head. He reached for the receiver, aware of the sweat-drenched sheets, the oily moisture coating his skin, Rose in the bed by his side.

  She had not slept near him in months. He would ponder this miracle later.

  He took a deep breath. “Hello?”

  “Detective Silver? Detective Silver?”

  He tried to place the voice. An old man, upset, almost in tears. He thought for a confused moment of his dad.

  “Is this Detective Silver? Please answer me, please, sir.”

  “Yeah, this is Silver.” David sat up, rubbed his face. “It’s okay, I’m here. Who is this?”

  “It’s Mr. Dandy. You gave us all your number, sir. You said we could call.”

  David heard an angry scream, the wail of a terrified child. He was instantly awake.

  “What is it, Mr. Dandy? What’s going on?”

  “It’s you. You people!”

  “Please?”

  “Valentine said to call. The police are here and they broke down the door. Please, Detective, don’t let them take that child from Annie Trey.”

  “Broke down the door?” David said. Nobody went through doors anymore.

  “They used a battering ram, sir.” Dandy’s voice broke. “For God’s sake, can’t you hear these babies cry?”

  THIRTY-TWO

  David stayed on the radio all the way in, Car lights blazing through the black void of four-thirty A.M., August haze milky in the headlights.

  Della’s voice floated up from the console. “David? You there?”

  “Here.”

  “Where is ‘here’? I’m not tracking right.”

  “Just outside Watson, moving past the Ritter projects to Cracker Village.”

  “Don’t be going in there by yourself. I’m sending uniforms.”

  “The hell you are. Not in that area—uniforms will start a firefight for sure. You send an army or let me slip in by myself.”

  “David, I talked to Vice—they got nothing running right now, and they haven’t used battering rams since 1997.”

  “Maybe the one you talked to doesn’t know what’s up.”

  “And maybe you’re being set up.”

  “I heard babies crying, Della.”

  He left his car out front, wondered if it would be there when he got back. It was hot out, muggy, and he was sweating before he left the air-conditioned coolness of the car. He put a hand on his gun, let it register his prints so it would be ready to fire when he needed it.

  The outside door of the tenement hung crookedly, knocked off the hinge. The building was completely dark, no power. David’s heartbeat quickened, and he went cautiously into the cavernous entrance foyer.

  Broken glass underfoot announced his presence. He took his flashlight out, made his way upstairs.

  It was the quiet that alarmed him. No televisions, no music, no voices raised, no cries of children, cranky, tired, or afraid. It was a tense quiet, as if the residents were holding their breath. He pictured them inside their hot, dark apartments, huddled together, afraid to open their doors. It was the kind of quiet he felt around a freshly murdered corpse—the air electric with recent emotion.

  He took the stairs slowly, beam of light from his flash bobbing ahead, making him a target. He listened, thought he heard something, paused in the hallway.

  Singing. He recognized Valentine’s voice.

  She was singing hymns, slow and sweet with a throaty resonance. He cupped his palm over the light, turning his fingers a glowing orange, pointed the flash at the floor, and crept quietly down the hallway.

  They were huddled together in Valentine’s apartment—Mr. Dandy, Annie, Eddie Eyebrows, and two tiny, sleepy little girls—Jenny and Cassidy, side by side next to Valentine, curled up on the floor. The door was open, as were the windows, creating a cross ventilation that almost made the room bearable.

  Watching them from the hallway, David felt chill bumps along his arms. They’d lit a candle that gave off the faint scent of violets. They had that look about them, a sort of exhausted abandon one saw in victims of catastrophe.

  Annie was curled in almost fetal position, arm across Jenny, who had her head on Annie’s arm. Both were tucked close to Valentine, who was leaning against the back of a beige velvet couch that made you want to curl up and watch TV or read a book. Cassidy’s head was in Valentine’s lap, and Valentine stroked the child’s neck and hairline with a languid touch that David thought must feel like heaven.

  Mr. Dandy was sitting upright, sound asleep, facing the door. He held a large stick, slack in one hand. His shirt was torn, one suspender slipping. He had taken his shoes off and they sat, unlaced and worn, on either arm of the chair. Eddie Eyebrows had the couch, and lay sideways, one hand tucked under his cheek. Childish and odd-looking on a man his age, but suitable for the child inside.

  Valentine looked up and saw David, standing in the hallway, shielding the light. Her face was mysterious and beautiful in the flickering candlelight. She quit singing—something slow about Jesus and angels keeping little children safe in the night—and hummed softly.

  David had that awful after-the-fact feeling—common occurrence for a homicide cop, always called in when the worst was over.

  He shined his light toward Annie Trey’s apartment, and caught his breath.

  The door was off the hinge, on the floor in pieces. David closed his eyes, wondering if there had been a shout or a knock, any kind of warning before the door had been smashed open. One part of his mind replayed Mr. Dandy’s voice, frantic and frightened, the cries of the frightened little ones in the background. The other part wondered what they, whoever they were, had used as a battering ram.

  David walked in carefully, shining his light around the apartment, getting a sketchy but horrific illumination of the raid. The rocking chair was over on its side, old green cushion torn, hanging off the side. The plastic couch had been overturned, jammed up into the corner, one leg bent—when it was turned right side up, it would list to the left in a permanent wobble. Children’s toys were scattered, most of them broken, trampled by large careless feet.

  “They wore dark blue flak jackets, with ‘Police’ stenciled in gold on the back.”

  He hadn’t heard her behind him, and he jumped at the sound of Valentine’s voice. She leaned against the door-jamb, close enough to touch. She was smoking a cigarette, the orange glow drawing his eye. The acrid smell of the smoke filled the hallway. There were no smokers’ “friends” in the complex. She could light up without being doused by sticky grey foam, the usual lot of anyone who had the bad manners and worse sense to smoke in the moderniz
ed public areas, or multiple residentials.

  He saw her hands moving in the darkness, bringing the cigarette to her lips, taking it away.

  “Made a mess, didn’t they?”

  David flashed his light around the apartment. “Tell me what happened,” he said, and she sighed.

  THIRTY-THREE

  They sat across from each other like conspirators, cross-legged, right under the painted-on window and the small hole that went through the wall. It was hot—David had seen sweat beading on Valentine’s skin in a flash of the light, but he was shivery and cold.

  “I was just home from work. Been inside to change my dress and shoes. Cassidy was asleep at Annie’s place. I was on my way over to pick her up, when I heard a noise like a train coming through, and I heard Annie scream.” She took a breath. “You know what I thought? I thought a plane had hit the building. I came outta my place expecting everybody to be dead. And it’s funny, but the whole time it was going on, I kept thinking, oh happy girl, ’cause nobody is dead.” She laughed, low and deep in her throat. “Cassidy was crying and carrying on, and the men are yelling they heads off, and I’m almost laughing, don’t ask me why.”

  David could make out the barest outline of her face in the darkness. He looked out the small hole, saw the lights of the next building. Nothing else on the block was affected. Everyone else had power.

  No accident that.

  “They were yelling and stomping around.”

  “Elaki or human?”

  “Men. Human. ’Bout six of them, big guns. Loud and scary. Told everybody to lay down on the floor. Saw me, told me the same. They stomped around like they were looking for something, but …”

  David turned away from the window. “But what?”

  He saw her shoulders move. A shrug?

  “Just got a funny feeling, like they were going through the motions. Look in one cabinet, but not the other. The closet, but not the shower stall. Didn’t rip open the mattresses, but stomped all over the toys, even though I honestly think they were trying not to.

  “Then the power shuts off. Annie’s crying. Cassidy is crying. But Jen is quiet, which is worse, the more you want to think about it.”

  David nodded.

  “And then they left.”

  David frowned. “Anything missing?”

  Valentine made a rude noise. “How we going to tell? What we got to steal? The worse problem we got when the dust settles and we’re sure the men are gone, is we can’t find Jenny’s bear.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  David went home but did not sleep. Every time he drifted off, he would wake suddenly, coated in sweat, kick off the covers, turn the air conditioning up, then wake up ten minutes later so cold his teeth chattered. Worse than the sweats and the chills was the tight panic in his chest, the breathlessness.

  And here, when he really needed the bed all to himself, and certainly had no desire for sex, Rose decided to stay with him. He knew he was impossible to sleep with, knew he was keeping her up. Twice he suggested, gently and with tact, that one of them take refuge on the couch. She’d pretended not to hear.

  Instead she brought him blankets when he was cold, ice chips when he was hot, and once a cup of tea with honey and whisky.

  He’d finally drifted off around dawn in a comfortable, peaceful sleep, waking at nine-thirty to a house that was quiet, and warming up with sunlight.

  He had not heard Rose get up with the kids, had not heard their typically noisy preparations for school. Everyone had been quiet. Everyone had been considerate. He’d had a good sleep, and had awakened almost refreshed.

  But by the time he walked into the office at eleven, the drive in had worn him down, and his heart was racing in his chest.

  He stood in the elevator, wondering if he should turn around and go home.

  With Miriam missing? No sign of Cochran? Men, disguised as police officers, battering down Annie Trey’s door?

  Yeah, right.

  David looked around the bullpen, saw String headed out the back way. “String? Where is everybody?”

  The Elaki skidded on his bottom fringe, rotated like a bird, and looked at him. “Detective David arrives, most good. Is the round-up conferencing. Follow and I will show.”

  The room was full. Walker, String, Mel, Sam Caper, the forensic mechanic named Vanessa, Della, and David. They’d had to bring in extra chairs from one of the larger conference rooms. The meeting over there was smaller, but it was about identity theft, which was highly funded at the moment. All the rage (meaning anger—an in-cop joke) with the general public, which meant that’s where the action would be for a while.

  David closed his eyes, listening for the umpteenth time to the 911 emergency call Annie Trey had made the night Cochran disappeared. Her voice sounded sluggish and soft. David knew without looking again that the stress-level readout was off the charts. She’d been having a four Valium night.

  Her voice cracked when she mentioned the three Elaki. David wondered how Thurmon had hardened his heart to her evident distress. Even with a heavy caseload, there should have been more follow-up.

  Next on the agenda were Miriam’s messages—except there weren’t any. No record of the call Annie Trey swore she’d made. David looked at Mel.

  “Somebody stopped her newspapers, Mel. Stopped her mail. Erased those messages, if there were any.”

  “There were. I left some of them.”

  String slid toward Mel. “Then who would be the stopper of the newspapers and mail?”

  “I called and tried to check on that. Come to find out she has an automatic thing. If she don’t pick up the mail and stuff for three days, they automatically stop. Why, you don’t think I followed that up? You think I’m too stupid to live or something?”

  “We’re just kicking it around, Mel. Just trying to work it out.”

  “Yeah, sorry. So where is she?”

  Della chewed a fingernail. “Hiding?”

  “Makes sense,” David said.

  Mel blew air through his teeth. “Why hasn’t she been in touch?”

  “Maybe she’s scared whoever killed Cochran would come after her. If it’s a blood sanction—”

  “They had her,” Mel said. “They had both of them. That’s the flaw in the logic, folks. The people she’d be in hiding from had her in their hands. If she was in danger from them, then what was going to happen happened. The simplest explanation is the one that’s usually right.”

  “So where is the body?” David said.

  “Side by side with Cochran in a ditch somewhere.”

  The way Mel said it was chilling.

  “Let’s show the hologram,” Vanessa said.

  Someone called “Lights out.” The smell of strong coffee made David queasy, even as he sipped it from a mug. The outside door opened, throwing a band of light across the hologram.

  Captain Halliday shut the door softly, pulled the only empty chair up close to David.

  “Any luck?” David whispered.

  Halliday shook his head. “If it was a legitimate police operation, nobody’s admitting it. I’ve had feelers out since you called in last night. Bottom line is it sounds like cops, but nobody’s owning up to it. I honestly think that if it was something under wraps, I’d have gotten a hint, maybe warned off. I think it was a scam, David, top to bottom. You say they didn’t take anything?”

  “Nothing to take,” David said. “You seen this?” He inclined his head toward the hologram.

  “No. But it’s breaking my heart, if that was Miriam in the trunk. How’s Mel holding up?”

  “Hanging by his fingernails.”

  On-screen, a dark, shadowy figure was moving through a hole in the trunk, elbows catching, just as the shadow emerged into the back seat.

  The car’s interior burst into malevolent shadows moving frantically. The action was hard to make out.

  “Any chance this Annie Trey is into some kind of drug thing?” Halliday asked.

  “Come on, Captain. If it was a dr
ug burn, they’d have killed everybody in the apartment. And Annie Trey wouldn’t be dirt poor. Della’s been over her records of purchase for the last six months. That kid is hanging on by the skin of her teeth, no question.”

  “Cochran had money?”

  “None recorded, but he had things. Expensive tennis shoes. The Visck, that car.”

  “Which—there it goes. Right over the guardrail.”

  A low-pitched moan rippled around the room, in sympathy for either the beautiful car or the occupants, David wasn’t sure which.

  Someone called up the lights.

  “No real information there,” Vanessa said. She had her hair tied back again today, and David thought of Miriam. She always wore her hair tied back.

  “Nobody was killed by the crash, you’ve established that,” Della said.

  “Point,” String said.

  David wondered if the Elaki was keeping score or using a human expression. He noticed that everyone avoided looking at Mel.

  Vanessa cleared her throat. “I do have some interesting information for you. One is, I’ve got a match on soil samples, taken off the car. We found dirt in the top of the wheel wells, and matched it to what was on the tools in the trunk. The best news is, I can tell you exactly where the soil came from.”

  Mel looked at her. “How the hell can you do that?”

  She smiled. “I’d like to say I’m brilliant, but it’s insecticides.”

  “Insecticides are banned,” Halliday said.

  “Exactly. Except in certain parks and preservation areas, and those sprayings are strictly scheduled. This area got hit no more than six weeks before the digging was done. We’ve tracked it to the old Bailey Farmstead.”

  Mel sat forward. “You’re sure, right? No doubt?”

  String rolled sideways. “But this is not the sensical. Isss long way of distance from Elaki-Town. No any nearness to the university. So what could be the draw?”

  Vanessa tugged her ponytail to one side. “What you have there is a preserved turn-of-the-century farm community, complete with farmhouses, outbuildings, crops, and orchards. Hence the insecticides. What it has to do with your players, I haven’t the slightest. But there’s no question where that soil came from.”