Alien Crimes

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  “And,” she said, “even if they had decayed because of some strange environmental reason particular to this basement, they wouldn’t smell after a hundred years.”

  That guarded expression had returned to his face. Only his eyes moved now.

  “Maybe it’s something small,” he said. “A mouse, someone’s lost cat.”

  She shook her head. “Smell’s too strong, and over the entire building. If it were something small, the smell would have faded back when you broke open that wall.”

  “Not when it was dug up?” he asked, seeming surprised.

  “No,” she said. “Is that when you first smelled it?”

  “That’s when they called me.”

  They, meaning his crew. She frowned at him, wondering if he was going to blame them.

  But for what? A smell?

  She’d have to find the source before she made assumptions.

  And that, she knew, was going to be hard.

  THEN

  A hand touched her shoulder. A human hand, warm and gentle. Another shivery ripple ran through her. She still had a shoulder; she hadn’t gotten rid of that either. How silly she must look, plastered against the brick wall like a half-formed younglin.

  Screams still echoed. The shouts had died down, although sometimes they rose up altogether, like a group excited about something.

  “You’re one of them, aren’t you?”

  Male voice, human, just as gentle as the hand. She couldn’t stop shivering.

  “I won’t hurt you.”

  She resisted the urge to rotate an eye upward, so that she could see more than the boot.

  “But you better come with me before they find you.”

  That did startle her. Her eye moved before she could stop it. It formed above her shoulder. He jumped back slightly when her eye appeared, but his hand never left her skin, even though it was finally turning tannish-red like the brick.

  She’d seen him before. Daddy had laughed with him in the good days. He had slicked-back hair and a narrow face and kind eyes.

  He crouched beside her, and looked right at her eye, like it didn’t bother him, even though she knew it did. He wouldn’t’ve jumped like that if it didn’t.

  “Please,” he said, “come with me. I don’t know when they’re coming back. And someone might see us. Please.”

  She had to form a mouth. Her nose remained, tucked against her stomach from when she’d formed a ball, but her mouth had disappeared when she had tried to take on the appearance of the wooden sidewalk.

  It took all her strength to make the mouth come out near the eye, and from the look of disgust that passed over his face, she still didn’t look right. Her hair was on the other side of her body, and her eye was just above her shoulder. The mouth had probably come out on what would have been her back if she put herself together right.

  Right being human.

  That’s what Momma said.

  Momma.

  “Please,” he said again, and this time, she heard panic in his voice.

  “Stuck,” she said.

  “Oh, Christ.” He looked up and down the street, then at the buildings across from it.

  He seemed younger than she remembered, or maybe she was as bad at telling human ages as Momma was.

  “How do we get you unstuck?” he asked.

  She didn’t know. She’d never been like this, not this scared, not all by herself.

  She tried to shrug and felt her other shoulder form into the wood. A splinter dug into her skin, and her entire body turned red with pain.

  “What a mess,” he said, and she didn’t know if he meant her or what was going on or how scared they both seemed to be.

  She willed herself to let go, but she was attached to the brick, and she’d lost control of half her body functions. Daddy said fear would do that.

  Whatever happens, baby, he’d say, you have to trust us. You have to believe we’ll get together again. Let that be your strength, so that you never, ever succumb to fear.

  But he’d been gone for a long time now. And Momma hadn’t come back for her, even though people were screaming.

  The man tried to pry a flat corner of her skin from the edge of the brick. She could feel the tug, saw his face scrunch up in disgust when he got to the sticky underneath part.

  “How’d you get there?” he asked.

  “Squinched,” she said.

  “Squinched.” He didn’t understand. And she spoke his language, she knew she did. She formed the right mouth, she’d been using the words for a long time now, and she knew how they felt inside her brain and out.

  “Can you show me?” he asked. “Can you squinch onto my arm?”

  She wasn’t supposed to squinch to a human. Momma was strict about that. Like there was something bad about it, something awful would happen.

  But something awful was happening now.

  The screams ...

  “No,” she said, even though that had to be a lie. Momma and Daddy wouldn’t forbid something if she couldn’t’ve done it in the first place.

  “God,” he said, then looked down the street where the screams had come from. Where the shouts had grown more and more angry every time they rose up.

  Right now, it was quiet, and she hated that more.

  She hated it all.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  He stood up, letting go of her shoulder. The warm vanished, and the fear rose even worse. Her other shoulder disappeared, and she felt the spikes, threatening to appear.

  She had to close both eyes and will the spikes away.

  When she opened the eyes, he was gone.

  She moved the eyes all over her skin, looking for him, and she didn’t see him at all.

  The street was still empty, and too quiet.

  Then, faraway, someone laughed. A mean, nasty, brittle laugh.

  She folded her ears inside her skin, and willed herself flat, hoping, this time, that it would work.

  NOW

  Becca climbed the stairs, clinging to the handrail, the rust flaking against her palms. She had to call for help. At most, she needed a coroner, and probably a few officers just to search for the source of that smell.

  But she felt guilty about calling. Chase used to talk about restoring the End of the World when she’d met him. He had brought her out here on their first date, even though she’d told him that she had explored the property repeatedly when she was a child.

  Maybe they’d be able to keep this out of the paper, particularly if it turned out to be a graveyard or a dumping ground. But even that probably wouldn’t happen.

  The newspapers seemed to love this kind of story.

  If she reported this, she would condemn Chase’s project to a kind of limbo. With so much capital invested, he probably couldn’t afford to wait until the legal issues were solved.

  She almost turned around to ask him how much time he could give them, but then she’d be compromising the investigation. For all she knew, there was a recently killed human beneath that dirt, and someone (Chase?) was using the old bones to hide it.

  Then she shook her head. Not Chase. He was manipulative and difficult, moody and untrustworthy, but he wasn’t—nor had he ever been—violent.

  She sighed and continued up the stairs. Much as she wanted to help him, she couldn’t. She had an obligation to the entire community.

  She had an obligation to herself.

  The wind hit her the moment she stepped outside. Bits of sand stung her skin, sticking to the sweat. Even with the sun, it now felt cooler out here because of that wind.

  The construction workers watched her. She didn’t know most of them; the town had grown too big for her to know everyone by sight like she had when she was a child. Many of these workers were Hispanic, some of them probably illegal.

  Hispanics expected her to check their papers. She was supposed to do that, too, although she never did. She didn’t object to people who worked hard and tried to improve their lives.

  W
ith one hand, she tipped her hard hat back and nodded toward the workers. Then she opened the squad’s driver’s door, and winced at the heat that poured out at her. She leaned inside, unwilling to go into that heat voluntarily, and grabbed the radio’s handset.

  She paused before turning it on, knowing that even that momentary hesitation was a victory for Chase.

  Then she clicked the handset and asked the dispatch to send Jillian Mills.

  Jillian Mills was the head coroner for Hope and the surrounding counties. She actually worked the job full-time, but her assistants were dentists and veterinarians, and one retired doctor.

  “You want the crime scene unit?” the dispatch asked. It was standard procedure for a crime scene unit to come with the coroner.

  “Not yet,” Becca said. “I’m not sure what exactly we have here, except that it’s dead.”

  Which was technically true, if she ignored all the crushed and broken bones.

  “Tell her to hurry,” Becca added. “It’s hot as hell out here and there’s a construction crew waiting.”

  That usually worked to get any city official moving. Lately, the “foreigners” had taken to suing the city if their emergency or official personnel delayed moneymaking operations, even for a day.

  Chase would never do that—he knew that getting along with the city helped his permits go through and his iffy projects get approved—but Becca still used the excuse.

  She didn’t want to be here any longer than she had to be.

  She stood, lifted her hard hat, and wiped the sweat off her forehead. Then she closed the door and leaned on it for a moment.

  The End of the World.

  She wondered if Chase had ever thought that the name might have been prophetic.

  THEN

  She had shut down her ears, and didn’t know he had come back until the sidewalk shook. She opened her eyes. He stood above her holding a long wooden box. His mouth was moving, but he kept looking down the street. A single bead of sweat ran down one side of his face.

  She unfolded her ears and said, “What?”

  “This can hide you,” he said, setting the box on the sidewalk. He glanced at her, then looked away. “Think maybe you can squinch into it?”

  He set the box in front of her. It did cover her strangeness from anyone who didn’t look too hard.

  Her shivering stopped.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Well,” he said, wiping at that drop of sweat, “the sooner you squinch, the better chance I have of getting you out of here.”

  That brought a shiver. She looked at the box, saw it had some dirt inside. He had taken it from some kind of storage.

  If she just thought about the box—not the screaming (which seemed to be gone. How come it was gone?)—not the way Momma’s hand had slipped through hers, not the fall against the sidewalk, not the bruises that still radiated through her skin, maybe then she could squinch to it.

  She’d have to stare at it like a younglin, think only of the box, only of the box and becoming part of it...

  A long, drawn-out scream sent ripples through her.

  “Jesus,” the man said and closed his eyes.

  She squinched. She had to. The scream made her move. She squinched to the edge of the box, then cowered against the back, just a blob, as small as she could make herself.

  “Mister?” she said and heard the terror in her voice. She wasn’t sure why she was trusting him, but she didn’t have a lot of choice.

  That scream sounded like Momma.

  He looked down, and his shoulders slumped.

  “Thank God,” he said, and picked up the box.

  He tucked it under his arm like it weighed nothing, and hurried back through the door.

  NOW

  Jillian drove the white coroner’s van. Becca’s breath caught as she scanned the windshield, looking for an assistant.

  There was none. Either none was available, or dispatch conveyed the message about the stalled work crew.

  Either way, Becca was grateful.

  She finished the last of her water and tossed the bottle in a nearby recycling can. She had waited up here, unwilling to go back inside without Jillian.

  Or maybe she had just been unwilling to talk to Chase again.

  He had come out of the basement after about ten minutes. He saw her near the squad, shook his head slightly, and sat against one of the cats, his face half-hidden by shade.

  She didn’t go to talk to him and he didn’t talk to her. They both knew the futility of these kinds of arguments. Once again, she and Chase were on opposite paths, and trying to influence each other would only end in misery.

  Jillian got out of the van. Her hair was already pulled back and tucked in a net. She was small and delicate, with skin so pale that it looked almost translucent. She seemed fragile at first glance, but Becca had seen her split a corpse’s rib cage open with her bare hands.

  “What’ve we got?” Jillian asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Becca said. She grabbed the flashlight and gloves from her own kit, as well as the portable radio, and led Jillian inside.

  Chase didn’t come with them. Instead, he watched them go with the same wariness that his crew had.

  Becca was relieved. She half-hoped that Jillian hadn’t noticed him, standing in the shade.

  They were on the steps to the basement before Jillian said, “This is Chase Waterston’s project, isn’t it?”

  “Unfortunately,” Becca said.

  Jillian knew Becca’s troubles with Chase. It had been no-nonsense Jillian who had listened to Becca’s difficulties extricating herself from Chase’s world.

  I’m a cop, she used to say, it seemed, during every conversation. I shouldn’t be so easily influenced.

  We all have a hook that’ll draw us in, Jillian would respond. He knows how to find yours.

  He did, too. There should have been a full team here, along with a crime scene unit.

  Jillian probably knew it just from the smell.

  She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked around. “Where’s the body?”

  Becca had thought about how to answer that one the entire time she waited for Jillian.

  “I don’t know where the smell is coming from,” Becca said. “But it’s not our only problem.”

  Jillian glanced at her sideways. Becca sighed and led her to the hole.

  The sun had moved away from the gap in the wall, no longer sending rays filled with dust motes into the basement. But the light was still strong enough that she didn’t need a flashlight to lead Jillian to the dig itself.

  “Chase thinks this is an old cemetery,” Becca said as she approached.

  “You don’t,” Jillian said, slipping on her gloves. “So you brought me here to be the bad guy.”

  Maybe she had. Or maybe she just needed someone between her and Chase, someone sensible.

  She didn’t say anymore. Instead, she turned on the flashlight and turned it to the rib cages and skulls.

  “Mother of God,” Jillian said, touching the tiny cross she wore around her neck even though her Catholicism had lapsed decades ago. “This is going to take an entire team.”

  “I know,” Becca said softly.

  They stared for a long moment. Becca didn’t move the flashlight beam. Finally, Jillian grabbed it from her and swept the entire large hole. The light caught more bits of bone, scattered throughout the dirt.

  “How’d you even get me here?” Jillian asked. “Chase has to know this will ruin him.”

  “He does.” Becca didn’t look at Jillian.

  “So he called you.” Jillian shook her head. “Bastard.” “Jillian, it’s bad enough.”

  “It’s bad enough that he thought you’d cover for him.”

  “He didn’t ask that,” Becca said. But he had, hadn’t he? He asked that this be handled quickly and discreetly and with a minimum of fuss.

  Although he stopped arguing when she explained about the smell.

  God, she w
as still making excuses for him, and she was no longer married to him.

  “He knows I’m going to do this right.”

  “He knows,” Becca said.

  “That’ll mean the media’ll get wind.”

  “Let’s try to prevent that as long as possible.”

  “So Chase can save his ass?”

  “So that we don’t have weirdos contaminating the crime scene.”

  “You didn’t block it off. It could be contaminated now.” Becca pursed her lips. “I kept an eye on everyone.”

  “I hope so,” Jillian said. “I’m going to call for backup.”

  Becca nodded.

  Jillian didn’t move, even though she said she was going to. “You think maybe you should take yourself off this investigation?”

  Becca’d been thinking about it. “I’m the only qualified investigator we have. Everyone else has been promoted through the ranks and most haven’t even completed the crime lab courses.”

  Because they were only offered in the Willamette Valley, and that was more than two hours from here. The department couldn’t afford to lose personnel for days on end just so they could have classes in criminal justice, classes that the chief—a good ole boy who had worked his way through the ranks without a damn class, thank you—didn’t believe anyone needed, not even his detectives.

  Jillian sighed. “You’ve got a conflict.”

  “No kidding.”

  “What if Chase is behind the smell?”

  Becca almost said, He isn% but she stopped herself in time. “I’ll treat him like anyone else.”

  Even though she knew that was a lie the moment she spoke it.

  “No matter what you do, everyone’ll think you’re soft on him.”

  “Then everyone’ll be supervising me, won’t they?” Becca snapped.

  Jillian put a hand on her shoulder. “Rethink this, Becca.”

  Becca sighed. “If this starts leading to Chase, maybe I will.”

  THEN

  He didn’t take her very far. She managed to squinch part of herself to the edge of the box, away from his arm, and pop an eye forward.

  They were inside the bank. No one else was. The afternoon sun filtered through the large windows, illuminating heavy wooden desks, the wide row of grills that people got money out of or put money into, the safe just behind the far door.