Alien Eyes

by Lynn Hightower

  Walker pushed past him to stare at Stephen Arnold. “Game over, dude.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  They found the missing pie in Arnold’s office. David stood on the thick beige carpet, looking at the bloodstain on the front desk drawer. The desk chair had been turned sideways. Books had been torn off the bookshelves, the desk lamp knocked over.

  He had fought them, likely been pinned down near the window, considering the amount of blood smeared on the floor and the wall, then he’d broken free to go for the phone on the desk.

  The computer screen, still lit, glowed white and grey.

  IRRECOVERABLE MEDIA FAILURE SYSTEM HAS STOPPED

  Arnold’s storage crystal had cracked. Or he had split it himself.

  The killers had tacked a note on the door. FAMILY EMERGENCY. CLASSES CANCELED. Then they’d locked up.

  No one had gone inside. No one had noticed the dried brown stains—not big, any of them—that spotted the hall floor, the staircase, and the walls outside. Arnold’s prints were everywhere, and easy to pick up. God knows he’d been perspiring. They’d found them on the blood-smeared stair rail, along baseboards where he’d fallen and flattened his hands full on the wall. And there was a lamppost in the parking lot, among the prime spots reserved for full professors, that had a nearly complete set. So they even knew where he’d been parked.

  And no one had seen a thing.

  All the calling cards of a cho killing. Bold. Killers striking not in a dark alley in a bad section of town, but in the midst of safety—your bedroom, your home, your Elaki meditation grounds.

  Nobody ever saw anything.

  Whoever they were, they did their research. They’d gotten on and off campus, no witnesses, streetlights and appliances jammed. Just like the pros who’d snatched Dahmi.

  David left the office to the nano technician. He met Mel on the staircase.

  “Where’s String?”

  “He’s got a picture of those bloodstains we found on the trunk lid of Arnold’s car. He’s trying to run that down. And the Elaki-Three, there, are looking for witnesses, like everybody else.” Mel pointed to a student who sat, dazed and tearful, in a swivel chair. “Norman Blackmun. He may be the last one to have seen Arnold alive. Says Arnold was working late.”

  “What was Blackmun doing?”

  “Computer jock.”

  “When was this?”

  “Wednesday night.”

  “Wednesday?” David frowned. The night of Angel’s lecture. The night they’d had dinner at the Café Pierre. Was Arnold killed while they were eating?

  “Arnold’s storage crystal split,” David said. “We may be able to get something from that. Time maybe.”

  Mel nodded. “Let’s see what this Blackmun knows.”

  David shook his head. “I’m going to talk to Angel. See if she’s heard the news. Find out where Weid hangs out, see if she saw him Wednesday after dinner.”

  “You arresting him?”

  David bit his lip. Arresting Elaki meant a snarl of paperwork and trouble, none of which had been done yet. “I’ll try to get him to come in on his own.”

  Mel scratched his chin. “Don’t bring him in till I catch up with you.”

  “You and a couple of uniforms. Let’s just hope he hasn’t gotten another dog.”

  “Think you can sweet-talk this Angel, huh?”

  David shrugged.

  “More like she’ll be sweet-talking you. Make sure you wait for me before you go after that Weid.”

  “Don’t think he’ll come along peacefully?”

  “Yeah, him and the tooth fairy.”

  David headed down the stairs, skirting bloodstains.

  “David?” Mel peered over the stair rail. “You want to talk to her yourself, make up your own mind, okay. But watch yourself, partner. She knows.”

  David kept going, dodging a technician and walking past a knot of students and teachers who watched him curiously from behind crime scene tapes.

  In his mind, he pictured Arnold leaving fingerprints to mark his trail, leaving a bloody clue in the lid of the trunk. Arnold knew he was dead and he left them a trail.

  Hell of a guy, David thought.

  FORTY-SIX

  David stopped to get his bearings, thinking that people who gave directions to places they were overly familiar with were the worst for leaving out chunks of pertinent information. Edmund University was big, old, and, like most conglomerations added onto in fits and starts, very confusing.

  Angel was not in her office. David had gotten directions and information from a graduate assistant who had worked through the night in a badly lit, cramped cubicle. David checked his watch. Just after eight, and Angel’s first class wasn’t until ten.

  He followed the brick wall until it ran out. The ground was still moist from yesterday’s rain, and it was humid out. He kept going until he found the hedge he’d been told to look for—thick green leaves on tough gnarly vines, covering a rusting chain-link fence. The hedge was too high for David to see over, though an Elaki might get a look if it stretched.

  The gate dragged when David tugged it open, scarring the grass.

  As a visiting professor of rank and celebrity status, Angel Eyes had been housed in the small but historical residence of Annabelle Tilford, the university’s first president. The house was nearly two hundred years old, red brick with black trim, interesting and ugly.

  The landscaping was mature and lush. Huge old tulip trees had shed their pink and lavender flowers, and soft, fragrant petals were thick on the lawn. The sidewalk was dark grey and pebbled, and the generous network of trees and shrubs had brass plaques giving their names, genus, and botanical history.

  David could not help comparing the opulent lushness to the tangle of brush, scrub, and overgrown meadow grass that populated his own seven acres.

  The windows at the back of the house were tightly shuttered. Utility poles, useless now, bordered the property line. Something small and brown moved in the grass. David frowned. Lawn animal? It ran up a tree and David smiled faintly. Squirrel. A real one.

  The house had a door on the side, and concrete stairs with an ugly black railing. A paved drive circled from front to back. Another flight of stairs led down a well in the ground—probably to a basement.

  David’s heels were noisy on the driveway. A rolled-up newspaper lay on the front porch, next to a ramp that had been newly built over the top of the stairs. The ramp was too narrow for wheelchairs. David picked up the morning edition of the Saigo City Times and waited for the door sensor to ask his business.

  Nothing happened.

  He pushed an old-fashioned brass doorbell, charmed to hear the metallic chime through the solid wood door. He rang the bell again.

  There was noise and movement behind lace-curtained glass panes that framed the front door.

  “David?” Angel focused on the rolled-up newspaper. “You come to deliver this paper?”

  David smiled, then wondered if Elaki understood smiles.

  “Must come in.” Angel did not lean forward, as he would have had to. Her fin stretched and folded, and she pushed the door wide.

  David caught the warm, sweet smell of Elaki coffee.

  “You have the coffee obsession?”

  “Well put,” David said. “And yes, I do.”

  “You take the cream.”

  “Please.” She remembered, he thought.

  The house felt good. The living room had impressively high ceilings, three windows, and a tall fireplace. The walls were newly painted, beige, with white molding and trim. The floor was polished wood, and the oriental rug was threadbare, intensely valuable, and had likely been there from Annabelle Tidford’s time.

  The only furniture was a small Victorian love seat and a marble-topped mahogany side table. Overfurnished for an Elaki. Oddly furnished for an Elaki.

  His mother would have loved this room, David thought. He had the feeling she would get along well with Elaki, had she lived long enough.

&n
bsp; “Come along in,” Angel said. “The kitchen makes good hearth room.”

  The kitchen cabinets were painted bright yellow, and there was a red braided rug, oval-shaped, in the center of the floor. A table was jammed against the wall, the chairs stacked on top.

  “Please,” Angel said. “Take down chairs and will sit.”

  She was moving stiffly, David noticed. Slower than usual, her back almost rigid. Was this the Elaki version of early morning sleepiness? David yawned.

  Angel handed him a slender white mug. She’d put the cream in herself. David took a small sip of coffee and burned his tongue. He set the newspaper down on the table.

  “How long have you known Weid?” he asked softly.

  Angel backed up to the counter, and her left eye prong twitched. “So long I cannot count it. Why the question?”

  David sipped coffee, wondering if Elaki, like people, could not bear silence.

  “I know him from beginning, when I am the young political. He is some older. Dedicated and had the experience. And taught me much. He is something of the strongman. He teach us to fight and protect—there was much need for that, in the bad old days. After a time he became my own protector. He is as a shadow to me, a part to me. He and myself the last of my own chemaki. You know of chemaki?”

  “I know.” Mel was right, then. If Weid was involved, how could it be that Angel would not know?

  He was married to Rose. There were times he didn’t think he knew anything about her.

  “I guess the Izicho harass you, even now,” David said gently.

  “I am to be retired. Those days be gone for me.”

  “But the other night,” David said. “At the restaurant. You said you were afraid.”

  She moved to one side. “It is a stir of the old fears. The cho killings. I do not want the oppression to be starting up.”

  “What do you think should be done?”

  The Elaki raised and lowered a fin. “These questions seem odd to me, David. Your own law does not tolerate the killing. Were there not years when the human societies put such criminals to the punishment death?”

  “Yes,” David said.

  “And do not some wish to go back to those penalties?”

  My wife, for example. “Yes.”

  “What about you, David Silver? Do you think such a thing is justified?”

  “Honestly?”

  “What other?”

  “Some days, yes. Some days, no.” He was lying. He wanted to tell her what he really thought. “I think the killing has to stop somewhere. Somebody has to finally say enough.”

  “Ah,” said Angel.

  “What about you? What do you think? Should the cho killers be put to death?”

  She slid across the floor to the table. “More of the coffee?”

  “No.”

  She went back to stand before the counter. “Yes, David, I think the cho killers should find death. But only by the law authorized and administered. I have seen these things get bad. Out of the whack? The authorized is the only way it can work. And even that will be abused in best systems.”

  “Systems are frustrating when you know someone is guilty. Aren’t they, Angel?”

  “These questions have a personal feel, David. Meanings behind meanings. I feel I know you enough to ask what is behind this. To ask what it is that you really wish to know.”

  David chewed his lip. “I need to talk to Weid. And to you. It might be better to do it down at the precinct.”

  Angel Eyes went rigid beneath her scales. “Are you arresting me, David? What this be about?”

  “It’s about Elaki Izicho who come through the Elaki Documentation Center and wind up dead in Little Saigo.”

  “Izicho? They are murdered, then? You think they are murdered by me?”

  “I think you can help us in our investigation.”

  “To be how? You think I have done these things, do you not? Hurt these Izicho.” She stayed very still, with none of the sideways skittering he saw in other Elaki. Her voice dropped, subdued. “If it would help you, my David, I will come to the headquarters. But I have the teaching today. Could it wait or … could we not talk here and now?”

  She didn’t know about Arnold, David thought.

  “You heard from Stephen Arnold lately?”

  “No,” Angel said. “I am hearing Stephen has left without notice, some family thing.”

  “Is that usual? To leave and not arrange for someone to take over?”

  “Most professor do cancel. But Arnold, no, he disapproves. Before when he go away quick, he make arrangements. This time he does not. But he is having the trouble time.”

  “You took his classes before, didn’t you? For the conference, when his daughter was killed?”

  “Yes. So sad.”

  “So you were one of the only people who knew he’d be gone.”

  “Yes? I am best qualified. He most careful of the students and—”

  The sound of tires on pavement was loud, followed by the groan of brakes, the grind of a van door sliding open. Angel moved across the kitchen to look out the window of the side door.

  “Weid has come,” she said. “How odd, this.”

  Angel unlocked the door. David set his coffee cup down too hard, and it wobbled sideways and fell. Coffee pooled onto the table.

  “Sorry,” David said. “Is there a towel—”

  Angel moved across the kitchen and opened a drawer. The back door opened, blocking David’s view.

  “They have find him.” An Elaki voice.

  Angel turned swiftly and raised a fin. “Find who?”

  The kitchen became very quiet. There were none of the appliance noises David was used to.

  “Come in, Weid,” Angel said. “Detective Silver to meet.”

  The back door closed.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  The noise of the deadbolt driving home broke the silence.

  Weid, at last.

  He was different. There was a tension about him. He had none of the aura of repressed formality David had become used to. His stillness reminded David of Angel—no nerve-wracking skittering from side to side.

  David wondered if Mel would be coming along soon. They hadn’t exactly arranged to meet.

  “Weid some coffee?” Angel moved against the counter.

  Weid moved toward the coffeepot and helped himself. His movements were confident, measured. He was thickly built for an Elaki, covered by raw patches. Like Angel, his midsection was scarred, the old wounds branching like shattered glass to his upper torso.

  “You know the Detective Silver?”

  Weid sipped coffee, then turned to David. Still silent. Measuring.

  “Detective Silver is of the concern. There be Izicho who disappear after come through EDC.” Angel turned sideways between them. “They seem to be murdered. Bodies found … I am sorry, David, but where?”

  “Little Saigo,” David said.

  “Little Saigo,” Angel parroted.

  Weid’s hostility was palpable. He turned to Angel, fluid, graceful. “I come to say to you that the Stephen Arnold be dead.”

  “Stephen?” Angel scooted backward, then raised up on her bottom fringe. “David, you did not know this?”

  “He know,” Weid said. “Arnold killed cho killing.”

  “Still another?” Angel said, sweeping toward David. “And you come to me for questions of Izicho?”

  David stood up and edged toward the back door. “Let’s go.”

  “Is this an arrest?” Weid asked.

  “No.” David unbolted the lock. “But it could be. If that’s what it takes.”

  “We will come, of course.”

  “No,” Weid said.

  “Weid, is not like bad old days.” Angel turned to David. “We be safe with you?”

  Neither of them was afraid. David wasn’t sure how he knew, but he knew.

  “I have nothing to say to hot dog police.”

  “No?” David said. “The hot dog police have ques
tions for you.” He cocked his head sideways. “Tell me, Weid. Have you ever owned, or had in your possession, a Glock six semiautomatic pistol?”

  David was not expecting the attack. The Elaki ran straight at him, hitting hard, smashing him into the door.

  David tried to remember everything he knew about fighting Elaki, but it was like trying to wrestle an octopus. The Elaki’s fins extruded into ridges like long, steely-strong fingers, latching on to David’s temples, neck, the soft center of his throat. David fell, raking his back on the doorknob before he hit the floor.

  The pressure on his throat increased and David’s vision blurred. He grabbed handfuls of velvety Elaki fin, scales coming loose in his fingers. The pressure eased, but there were lights in his eyes. He couldn’t breathe.

  David brought his knees up and smashed them into the Elaki’s midsection. Weid sagged, and David rolled sideways. He reached under his jacket, wrapping his fingers on the butt of the gun. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Angel leaning sideways, heard her talking urgently to Weid. He couldn’t understand what she said, but she sounded frantic, angry.

  David pulled himself up, palms flat on the kitchen table, then turned, gun ready, to face Weid.

  Weid was not there.

  David felt the smack against his back, but could not react before the Elaki wrapped itself around him and squeezed. David’s fingers slid off the gun and it clattered on the floor.

  His vision blacked and his knees buckled. He heard a drawer open and close, heard Angel calling to him, then to Weid. He opened his eyes, saw sunlight on her scales, beautiful, reflective, but no, his eyes were closed and he still saw the glint of light. Then he was falling sideways, against the counter, sliding to the floor.

  He could breathe. He coughed, hurting his chest, his ribs. There was weight on his back, pinning him down. Something wet trickled onto his neck and pooled at the collar of his shirt. David put a hand to the back of his neck, then brought his fingers around.

  He was expecting blood, bright red blood, but his hand was coated with runny yellow egg-yolk stickiness. Elaki blood. David squirmed sideways, and the weight eased.

  Someone was crying. David wiped his hand on the side of his jacket, then rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist. His vision blurred, then focused, and he grabbed the edge of the counter and pulled himself to his feet.