Alien Eyes

by Lynn Hightower

  Angel was crying. Like a woman, like a child, like a human. She arched over the jerking body of Weid, whispering something that David could not catch.

  She had used a bread knife, blade serrated up the side. Weid had been hacked and nearly sawed in half, in the midsection that housed the brain.

  His eye prongs were knowing, he was still alive and aware. One of the prongs had twisted in the fight. His fins jerked, and his bottom fringe quivered and jumped, and yellow fluid flowed thick on the floor.

  “He’s not dead,” David said. His voice sounded odd.

  “But soon,” Angel said softly.

  David moved slowly, feet sliding. He touched her gently. She cringed, then twisted backward, leaning into him, and he pulled her up off the floor.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  One of the meds dropped his end of the stretcher, maneuvering Weid’s body down the back stairs. Angel hissed.

  “Come out of the kitchen.” David took her fin. “Come in here.”

  Her movements were slow and jerky. She would not look at him.

  “There will be jail term,” she said. “For killing him?”

  “No. He would have killed me.” David rubbed a thick swelling on the back of his head. “You saved me.”

  “He would kill you, yes,” Angel said. “But this other. Of the Izicho. It makes no sense to me, unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  “It is the old fears.” Angel focused on David’s face. “That must explain. He reacts because of what has gone before.”

  “I don’t think so,” David said.

  Angel slid across the floor until they were close enough to touch. “He is close to me. He is good, in his way. But in his life, the struggles. It makes for the reaction.”

  “It makes for a killer. He killed those Izicho.”

  “No.”

  “I have witnesses, Angel.”

  Angel stilled. “So. So, in truth, this is the fact.”

  “Yes.”

  “That would clear certain matters.”

  “Such as?”

  “He not be around when I think him to. You understand the cho killing has the Guardians to be most … most feared of becoming victim. And Weid, he say I am to be the logical target. But we argue. My thought is I am too much target. You understand? Too much backlash, too much publicity—I feel I am safe.”

  David nodded.

  “Weid not agree. And when he is to be here, watches me most careful. But there are times when he do not watch, he do not come, I not know why. Or where he be. And if I ask, he say things that ring the funny bells. And are other things I notice. Is hard explain.”

  David’s head hurt and he wanted to sit down. He moved to the stiff Victorian couch. It was like sitting on a rock.

  “What about the gun?” David asked.

  “I do not understand this question you ask of a gun.” Angel settled close beside him. “I do not have gun. I do not see Weid with gun. What is the significance? Are these Izicho killed by guns?”

  “Did Weid have a dog?”

  “A dog? No dog.”

  The front door opened suddenly, and David winced and put a hand to the back of his neck. Mel walked into the living room, frowning. He looked at David and Angel, together on the couch.

  “Professor.” He nodded politely at Angel before he turned to David. “Didn’t I tell you to wait?”

  David leaned up against a column of the front porch and closed his eyes. Mel folded his arms.

  “Get your bell rung a little?”

  David shrugged. “No concussion. Just a lump from where I hit the floor. Or the table, or something.”

  “You have more accidents than your kids. Which is saying something.” Mel scratched his left armpit. “So, you believe her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “In itself an amazing feat of ignorance.” Mel looked over David’s shoulder while he said it.

  “She’s had a hell of a time,” David said. He thought of Angel’s pouchlings. He thought of Dahmi. “She’s been through a lot.”

  “Yeah. Which gives her a motive.”

  “She killed him. She killed Weid to save my life.”

  “It’s a point.” Mel leaned up against a support post. “Whyn’t you go home and get a shower, David. Couple hours sleep. Let me and Gumby give her a talk.”

  David frowned.

  “You ain’t deserting her. You’re doing your job.”

  “Can you talk to her here?”

  “Long as the captain don’t mind,” Mel said. “You go on home. And shave. I’m sending everybody home tonight. Time we all got some sleep.”

  David stepped off the porch.

  “And when your head clears up,” Mel said, “I want you to think about something. Like don’t it tie up just a little too neat for her? Weid did it. Weid’s guilty. Weid’s dead. Funny thing about dead people. They always taking the blame.”

  “Prove it.”

  Mel rubbed his eyebrow. “Yeah. That’s a problem.”

  “The DA has yet to bring an Elaki down in a human courtroom. We’ve never done better than those back-room deportation deals. We go to court, we got to be more than solid.”

  “It’s still way too sweet, David. She’s got to be dirty. She and her sweetheart bodyguard have been offing these Izicho. You know it. I know it. You just better get used to it.”

  “If she is guilty,” David said. “Can you blame her?”

  FORTY-NINE

  David could not remember noticing when the leaves began to turn. The air was cooling, the sky overcast—that dreary fall grey he hated. He thought of hot cider and bright kitchens, and steered the car onto the gravel drive. The farm looked good.

  He put the car in the barn—for once he was staying. The barn, dark and cool, smelled like old hay. Motes of dust filtered through the dull bars of light that came in through the cracks in the weathered wood-plank walls. David slammed the car door.

  Mel was right. Weid’s death tied everything up very neatly.

  The back door was open to the breeze, the windows wide, curtains billowing. David opened the screen door.

  The breakfast dishes had been cleared and the dishwasher was running. David smelled coffee and the leftover tang of bacon. Alex meowed at him and rubbed against him, leaving a coat of grey and white cat hair at the bottom of his trouser leg. David squatted and ran a hand up and down the cat’s back. Alex rippled, then flopped to his side, purring loudly. The house was quiet.

  David checked every room—girls’ bedroom, so cluttered with toys and discarded clothing he had trouble shutting the door. His bedroom. He stopped to make up the bed, tucking the sheets and blankets so tightly under the mattress that he knew Rose would complain. His mind flooded with ways he and Rose could loosen things back up.

  David heard a shriek, and looked out the bedroom window. Rose, coming across the field, grass grown past her knees, waist high on Kendra and Lisa. He scanned the field, looking for Mattie. The calf, brown and amazingly puppylike, loped toward the house, Mattie running behind. The grass came to her chest, so that she had to tear her way through. Hilde barked and circled them, keeping the calf on the run.

  “Wait!” Mattie yelled. “Wait, cow baby!”

  The cow scurried ahead, past Kendra and Lisa. Mattie stopped and folded her arms. David recognized that stubborn stance.

  Rose turned and opened her arms and Mattie ran to her. Rose lifted her in the air and settled her on one hip, never breaking stride.

  “Hey!” David yelled and waved. “Hey!”

  Rose spotted him first. “David!” He was glad to hear the pleasure in her voice. “See girls. There’s Daddy.”

  Daddy was a novelty.

  Mattie scrambled out of Rose’s arms and ran to the house behind her sisters. “Wait! Wait for me.”

  Kendra stopped and took her hand.

  David had the urge for fall pleasures. Fire in the fireplace, house locked up tight, bedtime stories—then the girls in bed, and long quiet
evenings with Rose. In his fantasy the phone didn’t ring, Mattie didn’t wake up at awkward moments with nightmares, and Lisa didn’t start in with a cough that wouldn’t quiet.

  David met them at the kitchen door. “You shouldn’t go off and leave the house open like this.”

  Rose smiled lazily. “You’re off duty, cop. You’re in my precinct now.” She stood on her tiptoes and kissed him. “It’s still daylight, or didn’t you know. What you doing home?”

  “Having a very late night.” The girls were chattering and hugging his legs. It was hard to make out the zigzag of their conversation.

  “You haven’t had any sleep? I figured you’d curled up at the office or stayed in at Mel’s.”

  “I wish.”

  She frowned, but it was a sympathy frown. He knew it would be.

  “Did you?” Kendra was pulling on his jacket.

  He peeled a grasshopper off her shoulder, flicking it into the grass.

  “Aw, Daddy,” Mattie said. “Shouldn’t let him go. Alex eats them.”

  Kendra was still yanking his jacket. He remembered the sticky yellow blood, dried now, and he reached down and peeled her hand away.

  “What, sweet?”

  “My note. Did you get it?”

  “Note?” David had a flash of memory—standing on the edge of the hill overlooking Stephen Arnold’s car, the smell of death, finding the note from Kendra in his pocket. “Yes, sweetheart, I got it. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “See, I even kept it.” He dipped his hand in his pocket.

  Kendra smiled hugely, tossing her head.

  “Earrings?” David said. “You get your ears pierced?”

  “Ages ago, Daddy. What is that? Did you draw on it?”

  Hilde was snuffling his knee and jumping. David patted the dog’s head and pushed her nose away.

  “Draw on it?” David turned the note over, focusing on the sketch he’d made of Stephen Arnold’s death message.

  “What is it?” Lisa asked.

  David hesitated, then held it up. He caught Rose’s eye. “What does it look like to you?”

  Rose cocked her head sideways and frowned.

  “It looks like a lollipop with a halo,” Kendra said. She opened the screen door and ran outside, followed by Lisa, Mattie, and the dog. The calf kept his distance and bawled.

  Mattie pressed her face into the screen. “He wants to come in. He likes it in the house. He wants candy.”

  “Cows don’t eat candy,” Lisa said.

  “He wants candy.”

  Rose glanced over her shoulder at the calf. “Sometimes I think Mattie hears animal minds. David?”

  David glanced down at his wife. His head was hurting again, pounding.

  “With a halo,” he said softly.

  “Sit down,” Rose said. She nudged him, pushing him onto a chair at the table. “Kids, out.”

  David stared at the sketch.

  “David, you don’t look too good.”

  He turned the picture one way, then another. And then he had it. Stephen Arnold had been bleeding, passing out, dying. He hadn’t finished. This was not some esoteric alphabet, some complicated clue. He’d been hurting and afraid, mind working simple and direct. David pictured him crammed into the hot, dark trunk, reaching up with fingers wet with his own blood, enduring the bumps of the car as it latched on to the road grid taking him God knew where.

  It was a simple drawing that he hadn’t been able to finish. A stick figure with a halo, a rough sort of saint. Or an angel.

  FIFTY

  David sat in the kitchen while his daughters ate hot dogs. They laughed and giggled and spilled food, happy to ignore him, but comforted by his presence.

  “Aren’t you hungry, Daddy?” Lisa was coughing too much and there were circles under her eyes.

  David was suddenly worried. He wanted to ask how things were going at school, but she seemed happy and he didn’t want to upset her.

  “Yeah, Daddy, have a hot dog. Want a bite of mine?”

  He was tempted to make up a story about having had a large breakfast, but it went against the grain.

  “My job is worrying me,” he told them. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Don’t worry, Daddy.” Kendra patted his arm. “You’ll catch those killers.”

  “You’re the best on the force,” Lisa said.

  Mattie nodded, and catsup slid from her hot dog bun to her lap.

  He smiled at them, and fixed them ice cream cones to eat in the backyard.

  A hot shower and a few aspirin dimmed the headache. David put on a pair of faded jeans with a hole in the back pocket, the waistband of the jeans loose and comfortable. He slipped on a clean white T-shirt and went barefoot into the mud room where he had his office.

  “Code Shalom,” he said to the computer.

  “Good afternoon, David.”

  “Bring up the Arnold file. Stephen Arnold.”

  “No such file.”

  David chewed his lip, wondering what the hell they’d named this one. “Do a search. New file starting yesterday, and scan for the name Stephen Arnold. But don’t bring the McCallum file.”

  “Scanning. Arnold, Stephen, found in file name Trunk Skunk.”

  David sighed. “Scan for estimated time of death.”

  “Scanning … time of death, estimated between ten P.M. and two A.M.”

  David scratched his cheek. He hadn’t shaved and the growth of beard was heavy and dark.

  He would proceed on the premise that Arnold had been identifying his killer. Angel Eyes. He would ignore the question of why, ignore the alternate possibilities—that Arnold was warning Angel of danger, telling her good-bye, sounding the Guardian alert.

  David leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes. He had tucked Angel into the van outside the Café Pierre sometime after ten. Had that business with her back been trumped up? A way to leave suddenly, an alibi of sorts, where she could claim she’d been in too much pain to kill Arnold? The pain seemed genuine.

  David picked up the phone. He got through to Bellmini General and asked for Aslanti, medical.

  “Yes, Detective Silver. How is my patient?”

  “Biachi? Doing fine, so I hear. Rose has him stashed with Haas right now. Too noisy around here.”

  “Ah.” Her voice sounded disapproving.

  “I need to know if someone treated an Elaki professor last Wednesday night. Sometime between ten-thirty and eleven.”

  “Elaki professor? You mean the Angel?”

  “Yes.”

  “But yes, there is much talk of that. A big buzz, as you say.”

  “Who treated her?”

  “I was the duty medical, Detective.”

  “Don’t they ever let you go home?”

  “It suits me, Detective. We have not the family pressure.”

  David thought of String. No family pressure, no chemaki. He rubbed the back of his neck. He was getting as bad as Mel, projecting human urges on Elaki. Like Mattie, thinking the calf wanted candy.

  “I need you to tell me what you found when you examined her.”

  Aslanti was silent for a long moment. “I understand humans keep such information confidential. There are many privacy rules to learn. But the human habit is to use such information against patients, do I understand?”

  “Elaki don’t have privacy rules,” David said.

  “No. However—”

  “However?” He could get a court order. Quickly. But Angel would be notified, and he didn’t want her in on things just yet.

  “No rules for Elaki, true. It is not correct to ask such questions unless knowledge necessary. So the rules not necessary.”

  “I’m conducting a murder investigation,” David said. “The information is critical and timely.”

  “For Izicho.”

  David rubbed his chin. “I work with String and String is Izicho. You’ve spent enough time with him to judge his integrity.”

  Silence.

&
nbsp; “Point taken,” Aslanti said. “Let me—yes, please excuse, but desire terminal. Thank. Detective Silver?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Angel Eyes has degenerative spinal injuries—a vertebra problem where the … the normal padding has worn through, causing swelling and pain. Let me call up … yes. Most severe. Does this answer the need of knowledge?”

  “Is this a long-standing condition?”

  “Months to years, depending upon her physical activities.”

  “Was it particularly bad that Wednesday? Any reason for her to come in that night?”

  “But yes. Swelling and spasms, most severe, requiring medication and manipulation. It would have been best to administer electrical current, but she refused this treatment.”

  “Why?”

  “She did not say.”

  “Your opinion?”

  “Such treatment is a time consumption.”

  “I see.” David heard the click of a keyboard as Aslanti manipulated her terminal. Evidently the hospital computers had no better luck with Elaki voice patterns that the PD computers.

  “Is new condition, relatively,” Aslanti said, sounding preoccupied. “Earth phenomenon. Not seen at home except among badly formed Elaki. Rare that, most such aborted.”

  “An Earth phenomenon? What causes it?”

  “Unusual physical activities. For which Elaki physique unsuitable.”

  David chewed his knuckles. “Give me some examples.”

  “Say sitting.”

  “Sitting?”

  “Elaki not made to curve in such bizarre fashion. Or. Riding in car with no Elaki adaptation. Spinal is curved and bumped on bad pavement or track. Much of this will cause the injury.”

  David closed his eyes. Angel was always sitting, riding in cars, blending in with people. Angel, the good diplomat.

  “Thank you, Dr. Aslanti. You’ve been a help.”

  “Yes, have I not?”

  David hung up. He called up Arnold’s file and browsed. Mel had yet to file his report. Things were summarized in odd ways, and information that was supposed to be there wasn’t.

  David leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. His fault. This was what he’d ordered. David thought of Ogden and smiled.