Alien Nation #1 - The Day of Descent

by Judith Reeves-Stevens

  Sikes’s lack of a response was answer enough for Angie. “Jesus, Sikes. You do anything about it?”

  “No!” Sikes said, far too emphatically, he realized.

  “But you want to, don’t you?” Angie shifted in her seat as if she were suddenly uncomfortable. “What got into you, Sherlock? I thought you were a straight shooter. Got that photo of your wife in your locker. A kid, even.”

  That was too much. Sikes swerved the car into the right lane and took the first turn off Sunset, ignoring the blaring horns behind him. The Mustang squealed to a stop on a residential street in Bel-Air. He yanked on the emergency brake, switched off the ignition, then twisted in his seat to face his partner. Only then did he realize that he had nothing to say.

  “Yesss?” Angie asked. “You think I’m digging around too much in your personal life?”

  “Yeah,” Sikes said as he realized she was right. “That’s it.”

  “You think what goes on between you and your wife is off-limits? You think I have no right to concern myself with your romantic and/or hormonal interests? That I should just mind my own you-know-what business?”

  Sikes felt some of the indignation ease out of him like a slow leak in a tire. Angie was as good as Theo. She knew what he was going to say even before he knew it himself. Was he really that transparent?

  “You got anything to add, or you want me to keep this going for the both of us?” Angie asked.

  Sikes summed it up. “What goes on in my personal life has nothing at all to do with how I do my job.”

  Angie took off her sunglasses and stared at Sikes as if she were about to book him for murder one. “You get this straight, rook. You’re not a shoe salesman. You’re not a car mechanic. You’re a cop. And everything you do in your personal life has to do with how you do your job. You get too happy, too depressed, too horny even, and you start getting distracted—and that makes you ripe for making a mistake. Shoe salesmen can make mistakes. They just go back and get the right size and color. But when a cop makes a mistake, somebody can get hurt or killed. And that could be a citizen on the street. Or that could be your partner. Am I making myself clear?”

  Sikes looked up at the thick mass of leaves rustling in the tree he had parked beneath. “I’ve got my life,” he said, “and I’ve got my job. And—”

  “And if you try to tell me that they’re two different things, you’ll be working forensic accounting with that sphincter Grazer so fast you’ll think it’s yesterday.”

  Sikes knew if he tried to say anything more he’d be yelling. So he kept his mouth closed. He didn’t have to take this crap. He could always ask for a transfer.

  “C’mon, Sikes. Don’t be looking at me like you’re already writing up your transfer request.”

  Sikes gave up. He punched the steering wheel. Was every detective on the force some kind of mutant mind reader?

  “Think of old man Petty,” Angie said unexpectedly. “He was murdered, Sikes, and we still don’t know who did it. How do you feel about that?”

  Sikes scowled. “It sucks.”

  “Damn right it sucks. But this is your baby. You’re doing the digging. You still want to make the case, don’t you?”

  “Damn right.”

  “You try to stop thinking about it, but you can’t, can you? You drive home, and you see Petty in his car. You try to sleep at night, you see Petty’s house, you go over those letters you got from the computer. That’s not a job, Sikes. That’s a calling. That’s your goddamned life. And if you’re trying to tell me you think it’s anything else, you’re not being honest with me, or yourself, or anyone else in your sorry little circle of friends.”

  The only sound on the street was the distant rush of traffic behind them on Sunset and the wind through the leaves overhead. Sikes kept his hands on the steering wheel, squeezing and relaxing his grip, squeezing and relaxing.

  “You know I’m right, don’t you?”

  Sikes had had enough. He shook his head and slumped in his seat. “How do you know?” he asked. “It’s like everyone else but me can read my mind or something.”

  “Look at me, Sikes.”

  Reluctantly Sikes turned to his partner.

  “It’s called being a detective. You understand that? It’s called being honest with yourself, being in touch with yourself”—she touched her fist to her chest—“listening to what your gut tells you as much as what your eyes see and your ears hear. Because when you do that, when you listen to what’s inside, you’re going to find out that everyone’s the same. Everyone. We all have the same needs and the exact same motives. The only thing that makes us different is what triggers us to act on those needs.

  “Trust me, Sikes. If we find the guy who nailed Petty, when you talk to him and get him to tell you why he did it, you’re going to understand it. You’re going to listen to him, and you’re going to look inside yourself, and you’re going to know why it is we humans do the god-awful things we do. And if you really understand it, the only thing you can do is try to stop it.

  “That’s in you, Sikes. I saw it in the parking lot behind Mann’s the first time I met you. Something in your past—whatever that was, whenever it happened—it made you a cop. You can’t be anything else but a cop. So the only choice you have is to walk away from what you’re supposed to be and live your life like you’re half asleep and never going to wake up, like most of the other people who stumble through life, or to accept the inevitable and bear down and become the best cop you can be.”

  Angie held her sunglasses in one hand and wiped at the bridge of her nose with the other. “Christ, I should be able to give out course credits for a speech like that.”

  They sat in silence.

  “So we going to be okay, Sikes?”

  Sikes glanced at her, studied her eyes. He asked himself what he would be thinking now. He surprised himself by knowing the answer. “You wouldn’t be wasting all this effort on me if you didn’t think I was worth it, would you?”

  Angie smiled beatifically. “You read my mind, Sikes.” She put her sunglasses back on and leaned her head back against the headrest.

  Sikes restarted the engine.

  “Of course, you still screwed up the Stewart interrogation,” Angie added.

  “Thanks. I already figured that one out for myself,” Sikes said as he made a U-turn and headed back onto Sunset.

  “But not to worry,” Angie said. “We’ll take it from the top, and this time you let me do all the talking. Maybe I’ll even give you an extension on your deadline.”

  “Whatever you say, Professor.”

  But when they arrived at the Royce Physics Building Angie didn’t have much talking to do. Amy Stewart was gone.

  The Astronomy Department had one overworked office assistant on the third floor who was attempting to keep up with the normal flow of work as he answered Detective Perez’s questions while also trying to entice a shorthaired kitten with tightly curled orange and cream fur back into the cardboard box that sat open on the floor beside the counter. The label on the box announced: I’M GOING HOME. Beneath it, the name SAMPSON had been handwritten.

  The nameplate on the assistant’s desk read: JOHN K. OHLIN. He looked young enough to be a student, though the cut of his dark blond hair and fashionably draped jeans seemed well beyond the student budgets that Sikes remembered. He also was acting as if he would rather be anywhere else than behind the desk in Royce Hall.

  From behind the mounds of files on his desk, John put another phone call on hold and hung up the handset. “I can’t give out her home address. The university has a strict policy about that.” John bent down to push Sampson away from his leg and toward the box. The kitten’s response was to purr madly and leap up the assistant’s leg. He made it all the way up to John’s shoulder. John sighed in defeat and turned back to Angie.

  “You just told me that Amy Stewart missed two tutorials this morning,” Angie said patiently. “You told me that she’s never missed a tutorial before.” Sikes
stayed in the background to let her work. Besides, he was more of a dog man himself.

  “Not without phoning in to cancel them,” John said, checking the record book.

  “Doesn’t that worry you?” Angie asked.

  John shrugged. Sampson swayed but held on. “Yeah, but she’s an astronomer. They all keep these weird hours. Up all night and that sort of thing.” The phone rang and he answered, taking a message for an absent professor.

  “Did Randolph Petty have an office here?” Angie asked when John had hung up again.

  “Yeah, he shared it with three other part-timers.”

  “You know Dr. Petty was murdered, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, that was terrible. Never know, do you?” John looked at the flashing lights on his multiline phone. He lifted the receiver and went to press down a button.

  But Angie leaned forward and rested her knuckles on the only two clear spots on the desk. Sampson regarded her with interest, as if measuring the distance to another empty back. “So where were you on the night Dr, Petty was killed?”

  John screwed up his face at Angie’s persistence, but Sikes could see that Angie had finally gotten John’s attention. “Why would you want to know?” the assistant asked. He placed a restraining hand on the kitten.

  Angie looked over her shoulder at Sikes. “What about you? You thinking what I’m thinking?”

  Sikes had no idea what Angie was thinking, but he wasn’t about to interfere in whatever it was that she had planned. “Absolutely,” he said.

  Angie stood away from the desk. “Okay, John, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with us.”

  “What?”

  “You figure it out. Dr. Petty gets killed, and you won’t tell us if you have an alibi. Now Amy Stewart’s missing, and you’re not helping us track her down. It looks awfully suspicious to me.” She held her hand out like a surgeon waiting for a scalpel. “Sikes? Cuffs, please.”

  Sikes automatically fumbled under his sports jacket for the cuffs on his belt. He couldn’t be certain, but it looked as if Angie were risking a harassment charge. There was no way that the assistant could be considered a suspect just for following university policy. Besides, any judge would issue a warrant over the phone to obtain Stewart’s address from university records. Then Sikes saw the look in Angie’s eyes as he slapped the cuffs into her waiting hand. He knew what procedure was, and Angie knew, but the important point was that John didn’t.

  Angie rattled the cuffs. “You carrying anything besides the cat I should know about before I search you?”

  “Are you serious?” John still held onto Sampson and the phone receiver as he stared at the two detectives.

  Angie began walking around John’s desk. “There’s a murderer loose. It doesn’t get much more serious than that.”

  John looked at the dangling cuffs as if he were about to be hypnotized by them. He hung up the receiver swiftly, swung a protesting Sampson down into the cardboard box, and latched the lid shut. He straightened up. “Uh, what if I give you her address? Confidentially.” A warning yowl rose out of the box.

  “I’d consider that a sign of cooperation.”

  “I’m only subbing this week for a friend,” John said as he flipped hastily through his Rolodex. He pulled Amy Stewart’s card off the metal rings and handed it to Angie. The cardboard box at his feet began rocking back and forth.

  Angie read it. “Did you try calling her at this number?”

  John nodded, putting out his foot to keep the cardboard box from tipping over. “I just got her machine.” A small orange-and-cream-striped paw punched a hole in the side of the box.

  Angie copied the information from the card into her notebook. She handed it back to John. “Looks like you could use a set of cuffs yourself,” she said with a nod at the box. “Stewart lives out in Santa Monica,” Angie said to Sikes. “You ready to roll?”

  “Let’s check out her office first.”

  Angie frowned. “For anything in particular?”

  Sikes shrugged. “First time I was in it I don’t think I was looking at it the way I should have been.”

  “Fair enough,” Angie said. She thanked the assistant for his help, then let Sikes lead the way down the hall to Amy Stewart’s office. Behind them the assistant sighed with audible relief to no longer be the focus of Angie’s attention. Sikes knew how he felt.

  Amy Stewart’s office appeared to be unchanged from Sikes’s first visit. The clutter was about the same. All the pictures were still on the wall. And the computer was still on the tiny desk, though its screen was completely blank, without even the image of a watch face slowly moving across it.

  “Anything missing?” Angie asked as she stood in the doorway and looked around. Sikes could tell she was already seeing the small room in more detail than he had the first time he had looked. “As if anyone could tell in this mess.”

  “Nothing obvious is gone. But then that’s what I thought at Petty’s house until I tried to look at the computer.”

  Angie walked over to the desk, studied the computer’s keyboard, then pressed a single key on it. The computer chimed, and in a few moments the screen began to glow.

  “You know about computers?” Sikes asked as he joined her at the computer screen.

  “They’re the future, rook. But don’t tell that nut Grazer that I said so.”

  They watched the screen. Nothing came up on it. “This is just what happened at Petty’s,” Sikes said. “It wouldn’t do anything because the hard disk had been erased.” He began to search the desk’s single row of drawers.

  Angie knew what he was looking for. “Any disks?”

  Sikes rummaged through the bottom drawer. “Nothing. Let’s check the shelves.”

  Their search wasn’t helped by the chaos in the crammed bookcases, but eventually the two detectives satisfied themselves that there were no computer disks hidden among the jumbled stacks of journals and papers and books.

  Sikes began to feel a sense of frustrated panic grow in him. “Whoever killed Petty must have traced the material back to Amy,” he told Angie. “We should get a black and white over to her place right now.”

  Angie handed him her notebook. Two wide elastic bands made it open to the latest page. “You’re still jumping to a couple of sweeping conclusions, but I agree, let’s play it safe. Call it in.” Sikes pulled the desk phone out from behind two mounds of file folders and called Dispatch. When he hung up he was ready to head back to his car. Quickly. He kept picturing Amy dead in a parking lot, just like Dr. Petty. But Angie wasn’t ready to go. She stared at the framed photographs on the wall between two bookcases, just above the chair Sikes had sat in the day before.

  “This her?” she asked, pointing to a photograph of Amy standing in a group of four other people. The picture had apparently been taken on a mountaintop somewhere. Behind the group was only clear blue sky, and all four were dressed in sweaters and heavy jackets.

  Sikes took a quick look at the photograph—an 8 x 10 color print. It was the same one he had seen yesterday. They all were. “Yeah, that’s her. We should get moving.”

  “Slow it down, rook. The uniforms will get there way before we will. Have you ever seen this guy before?” She pointed to one of the figures beside Amy in the photograph.

  Sikes was almost bouncing he was in such a hurry to leave, but he took a look at the person Angie indicated. “I, uh, I don’t know,” he said. Then he looked more closely. “But . . . he does sort of look familiar.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Angie said. She lifted the photo from the wall, turned it over to see if anything had been written on the back, then looked at the picture again. “I know I’ve seen him before. What do you think? An actor or something?”

  “Yeah, sure, maybe,” Sikes said. That was one of the odd things about living in L.A.—the place was crawling with not-so-famous actors whose faces were vaguely familiar, though their names were not. Walking into a supermarket could be like walking into a high scho
ol reunion. A familiar face would suddenly jump out of the crowd, though it was impossible to say where or when it had been seen before.

  In this case the person in question was a Caucasian male, about fifty, Sikes guessed. Dark hair, dark eyebrows, clean features that even he recognized as handsome. And there was a pleasant sense of quiet and calm to him, too. Everyone else in the photo, even Amy, was smiling broadly. In contrast, the mystery man had only a slight smile but appeared to be having just a good as time as the others. Whoever they were. “So she knows a movie star,” Sikes said impatiently. “Is it important?”

  “That’s the fun about being a detective, Sikes. You never know what’s important till the fat lady’s locked up.” She put the photograph under her arm and started for the door. “We’ll stick it up at the station, maybe run it by someone at the Times.”

  “You can just take it like that?” Sikes asked.

  Angie frowned. “It’s not evidence, Sikes. It’s the picture we’ll need if we have to put out an APB. Maybe we’ll get a better one at her place, but why waste time?”

  “Right,” Sikes said. But he felt that was just what they had been doing.

  Amy Stewart didn’t have a place in Santa Monica. She had a house. Correct that, Sikes thought as he walked through the gate in the high, nondescript fence that edged the property, it’s a mansion.

  “Not bad for a student,” Angie said as she walked up the path at Sikes’s side. The house was an ultramodern assemblage of three large cubes joined in an apparently haphazard but curiously balanced pattern. The cubes were faced with strips of dark-stained wood—some sides striped diagonally, others checkerboarded. Elaborate plantings of dwarf and standard palms and monstrous bird of paradise plants erupted from the corner of each cube, as if the house were a gift freshly burst free of its multicolored wrapping.

  Sikes stared at the spiky plants enviously. He had once been part of a task force that had broken up a stolen plant ring. Ten-foot-tall plants could cost more than he made in six months. He started up the wide wooden steps that led to an inset porch where two uniformed officers waited. There was an elaborate wall sculpture to one side of the porch—various angled pieces of heat-stained metal down which several trickles of water ran, creating an almost musical rush of splashing in a tiny rectangular pool.