A Cold Day in Hell

by Stella Cameron

  Aaron could see only Chuzah’s eyes, the darkness—the distance—a pulling force.

  But the force promised strength, not peril.

  Chuzah put the bag on the palm of his hand and brought it closer to Aaron, who took it. Held it tightly in a closed fist.

  “Good.” Chuzah nodded. “Keep it with you at all times. Be careful you are not parted from it, Aaron. Will you promise me this?”

  For moments Aaron hesitated, looking at his own hand, then he nodded. “Yes.” He slid the bag into a pocket in his jeans. “What is it? What’s it for?”

  “Don’t concern yourself with it,” Chuzah told him. “Consider it a remembrance from a friend. When you touch it, think of strength and safety.”

  Chuzah frowned. He rubbed first one elbow, then the other, and when he saw how Aaron watched him he said, “I have exercised too hard. I am stiff. Sit. We’ll have something to drink.”

  When the man walked, the faint jingling sounded from his ankles and the heavy belt of bones slung loosely at his waist.

  “I want to ask some questions,” Aaron said. If he waited any longer, he would completely lose his nerve. “About the dog. About Locum.”

  Standing beside a cabinet, pouring orange fluid from a flask into two glasses, Chuzah paused and faced Aaron. He raised his eyebrows. “What about him? He is looking after Sonny now.”

  “Yes,” Aaron said. “But does he always stay here, or wherever you tell him to be?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Aaron considered how to talk about his experience on that early morning outside his house. “I think I saw him three days ago—early in the morning. He looked at me. He wasn’t close, but I could see he was bigger, like he had made himself much bigger. But I knew his eyes.”

  “You,” Chuzah said, pointing at Aaron, “are too imaginative. But you have experienced more than you should have at your age. That is the reason.”

  And that, Aaron thought, was not an answer. “The dog was large. Like a large wolf. It ran fast without moving.” He paused, watching for signs that Chuzah was laughing at him. He saw none. “And when the shot came, the wolf-dog howled.”

  Slowly, Chuzah approached. He gave one glass to Aaron and drank from his own. “Orange juice,” he said. “For energy. You’re sure you heard a shot?”

  “I think so.” He was sure now even if he hadn’t been at the time. “First crashing sounds, then the shot. The dog howled and there was crashing again. As if someone was running away. Just like…like the sounds in the swamp.” He touched his brow and felt sweat running freely.

  “And you think what you saw was Locum? He was there to help you?”

  “Yes. To protect me.”

  “Drink your juice. If you saw the dog, then the dog was there and he frightened the enemy away. That was good. But now it’s over.”

  “He did look more like a wolf, except for his eyes.”

  “Then perhaps he chose to look like a wolf to be more fearsome,” Chuzah said. “And perhaps you were dreaming.” He nodded and smiled, like a parent over the bed of a child waking up from a nightmare.

  He could have dreamed it. Chuzah’s answers remained non-answers. He was, Aaron decided, supposed to make his own interpretations of what he had seen…if he had seen anything.

  The scratch of claws climbed the outside stairs, and footsteps followed. After a knock on the door, Sonny put his head inside. “I’ve got to tell you something. You’ll know it soon enough anyway.”

  Chuzah poured another glass of juice and gave it to Sonny. He didn’t press him.

  “The police are at Angel’s house now,” Sonny said. “He called to tell me. I had to tell him where we are and all he said was for us to stay here if we’re okay.”

  “You are okay,” Chuzah said. “You shall both eat until you’re told to go back.”

  “Three nights ago, late in the evening, someone shot out a skylight in Angel’s bathroom,” Sonny said to Aaron. “It happened when I was at your house. It must have been while Angel was showing Eileen the renovations.”

  Aaron swallowed. His throat dried and he drank the sweet juice. “How could it have been that night? They didn’t say anything when they came back.”

  “Sometimes people try to protect others,” Chuzah said. “This happened late, three nights ago?”

  “Yes,” Sonny said. “Angel just said so.”

  Aaron looked from Chuzah to Sonny. “Why did the police take so long to investigate?”

  “I don’t think they knew about it until today,” Sonny said.

  “And you didn’t, either?” Aaron said.

  Sonny shook his head. “Nothing. Remember how your mom sent me home? She was mad and she sent me home.”

  “She was upset,” Chuzah said.

  A skylight shot out. And only hours later, there had been the sound of another shot—in his own backyard. Aaron let a breath out slowly. He smiled and felt lighter. “A hoax,” he said. “This is all a silly joke.”

  Sonny sat down suddenly and drank his juice in earnest.

  “It’s good to hear you so confident,” Chuzah said. “Will you share your thoughts?”

  Aaron leaned against the cushions in his chair. “Someone is shooting, just to shoot. Three times, they’ve done it. No one could miss three times if they really wanted to hit someone.”

  19

  Angel let the door swing shut behind him and stood at Eileen’s shoulder. The police station lobby was empty—almost. A gray tabby cat overflowed the seat of a metal folding chair, one of a row of similar chairs. A green eye gave them the once-over and closed again.

  “Where is everyone?” Eileen whispered. “Shouldn’t it be busy?”

  “We’re not in church,” Angel whispered back, and bought himself a narrow stare. “I hear voices in Matt’s office. He is one angry man these days.”

  Eileen didn’t comment, but she nodded and leaned her elbows on the reception desk.

  “I always expect to see Carley out here, but I guess she has other things she does,” Angel said. “She’s probably gone home.” The female officer seemed like the glue that held the place together.

  Since Eileen remained silent, he did what he had always been able to do, he put his body in neutral, relaxed, and breathed deeply even while he was aware of the physical power coiled inside himself.

  He listened to Matt’s voice until it became a drone and melded with the overhead fan.

  A cool current wove across Angel’s skin. He felt still, inside and out. His mind, quiet, calm, drew away and he recalled, faintly, other times when this separation of his mind and body had imposed itself.

  He focused on Eileen’s back, the way she crossed one foot over the other, how her ankles were narrow beneath cropped, yellow linen pants. She felt a long way from him but he could reach her the instant he had to.

  Her hair rippled, lifted a little as if a breeze passed.

  There was no breeze.

  She was in danger. A fleeting image of dark eyes came and went and he felt as if he’d been winded. Whose eyes were they? How were they connected to Eileen being in danger?

  I have seen those eyes.

  Startled by his thoughts he said, “Stop,” almost under his breath, and he physically shook himself, stretched his fingers. The coldness remained, but he was completely present to himself again.

  This, these manifestations, had left him when he turned his back on the work he’d once done for the CIA in South America. He’d come away from it all and gone into ATF because he didn’t want to see what others couldn’t anymore. The best interrogator in the service. That’s what they had called him because he had taken men who had endured everything but death and not talked, yet when Angel DeAngelo finished with them, they had revealed every secret and would have told him more had there been more to tell.

  Angel breathed again, deliberately, and went to stand beside Eileen. He put an arm around her shoulders.

  Matt stalked into the hallway. He gave them a two-fingered, thum
b-cocked, point. “I’ll get to you shortly,” he said, then walked deeper into the building and out of sight.

  “Did you hear that?” Eileen said. “Give a man a little bit of power and he goes mad.”

  Angel decided to let the comment pass.

  The front door opened again and a guy with more gray hair on his face and exposed chest than he had on his head walked in. He went directly to a coffee urn on a card table in one corner, helped himself to a paper cup and filled it to the brim. It stopped. Bending over, flapping the wet fingers of his free hand, he slurped from the rim of the cup until the coffee just about stopped running down the side.

  “Good coffee?” Eileen said, surprising Angel.

  The man gave her a dark-toothed leer. “Gotta come in this place for my coffee after the bank closes and they finish serving at the shelter. I’d rather be over there at the bank. They got better chairs.” He sat down.

  Eileen turned to Angel. “So why did we have to come over here right away?” she said quietly. “You can see how much of a hurry Matt’s in. I’d have told him to hold his horses.”

  Once more Angel didn’t choose to respond. He and Eileen had still been walking near the Oakdale Mansion Center when Matt’s call came in. The light had been fading, but they had so much to say.

  “I still can’t believe you told Aaron and Sonny to stay at that madman’s place in the swamp,” Eileen said. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. They’ve been there for hours. He could be a pedophile.”

  “Who you callin’ a peedophile, lady?”

  Angel swung around. The coffee-drinker, little finger sticking out from his cup in a queenly parody, glared at him. “We aren’t talking to you,” Angel said.

  “I don’t want to be here,” Eileen muttered.

  “Who does?” He needed to put her mind at rest about the boys. “Chuzah’s okay. I know we don’t have to worry about the boys being with him.” The one thing he couldn’t tell her was that his instincts about people had saved lives, had saved his life.

  She turned a little pink and shook back the long black hair that made his fingers want to play. “Maybe Chuzah is okay, but he’s not suitable.”

  “Gimme a break,” Angel said. He did love looking at her. She’d looked particularly good in his bathtub—before that fool arrived on the roof. “They were going to stay and have something to eat there and then leave. They could be on their way home by now.”

  Eileen looked at the ceiling. “What were they going to eat? Bone soup?”

  He laughed and she took a deep enough breath to turn him hard. She had beautiful breasts.

  And he should be concentrating, something he usually found easy.

  She touched his arm, which didn’t help him stay focused. “Just ignore me,” she said. “I don’t know why I can’t keep it together. Every little thing sets me off. I embarrass me.”

  A current, hard and fast, brought back the sensation that there was something he already knew. He’d forgotten something. But he’d seen what he needed to know. For a second, a stick figure jerked before his face—like the ones he’d finally left behind in South America. It shook him so badly he gasped. A stick figure wearing a dress. Then a raised hand fell and the figure disappeared.

  Please, God, not this again.

  “You okay, Angel?” Eileen asked.

  Very quickly, he kissed her earlobe.

  “Christian,” she hissed, but she was smiling. The smile straightened out. “Do you have any sort of feeling that something’s about to happen? I don’t mean something big. Just anything.”

  He raised his chin and looked down at her. “Lack of evidence is a big problem. How do you make progress with a case when there’s no evidence other than a couple of mangled bullets, a casing but no weapon?”

  Eileen wiggled her nose. “We’ve got to be grateful those things didn’t have to be dug out of our bodies. Our dead bodies.”

  “Nice,” Angel said. “Now, there’s a thought. Maybe Matt’s going to tell us they’ve already got a make on the ammo.” And that was wishful thinking. Finding a match that quickly would be a miracle.

  “So for that Matt called us in here as if the place was on fire?”

  Angel frowned at her. “I’m getting a nasty idea. He could ask what I carry. He could ask if you’ve got a weapon and what it is. What d’you bet he starts asking questions about what I carry and if you carry? He’s shouting and glaring around the place because he’s out of ideas. Hell, he didn’t have any in the first place. Maybe he’s going to suggest we’ve been doing our own shooting.”

  “He wouldn’t do that. That’s insane.”

  Angel inclined his head to look at her. “What is sane about any of this?”

  Matt appeared in the hallway again, then came all the way out to reception. “Hi, Joseph,” he yelled to the coffee-drinking visitor.

  Joseph said, “Eh?” so loudly the cat jumped off its chair.

  “He’s deaf,” Matt said. “We used to try kicking him out till we figured he couldn’t hear what we were saying.” He flicked up one corner of his mouth.

  Deaf? Angel smiled at Eileen with his eyes. And he caught a knowing smirk from Joseph, who cupped a hand around one ear.

  “Let’s go,” Matt said and they followed him back to his dismal office with his battered metal desk and the faded carpet where he rested his feet when he sat there. As they entered, he said, “How many bullets does it take to kill someone? That’s what I think my guest is here to ask.”

  “Not exactly,” Chuzah said.

  Angel stared. If he’d been asked who was least likely to be here, now or at all, Chuzah wouldn’t even have been on the list of possibilities.

  He heard Eileen gasp and sympathized. And this was not the Chuzah they were used to: Silver-gray silk slacks, white silk shirt open at the neck, one dark, highly polished loafer resting on his opposite knee, and a nonchalant attitude worthy of any successful citizen dropping in for an afternoon call. He sat near Matt’s scarred desk and for once he wasn’t smiling.

  What the hell was this all about? “Why are you here?” Angel asked Chuzah.

  “I popped over to bring in some items I thought Matt might find interesting. He wanted you here to discuss these things. I need to get back to my pad quickly.”

  “How many bullets?” Matt repeated, and tapped Angel. “To kill someone?”

  “Depends on who’s pulling the trigger,” Angel said. He wasn’t amused that he and Eileen had been told, not asked, to appear at the police station when they were in the middle of an important discussion. Finding Chuzah, not looking at all like himself, didn’t help a thing. “I talked to Sonny and Aaron a while back. They said they were at your place,” he told the man. “Did they leave?”

  “Nope. Still here,” Chuzah said. “And they are in exceptionally good health. We decided against the bone soup in favor of fried oysters in cornmeal. When I left they were enjoying my latest shipment of Swiss chocolate. Later—with your permission, of course—I shall start teaching them mah-jongg before they go home. I’ll await your instructions on where that might be, the home they’re to go to, I mean. If there is one.”

  Eileen was too busy with one of her blushes to take umbrage at Chuzah’s cracks. “What I said about soup was just a joke,” she said, giving him a dimpled smile.

  So fast, Angel almost missed it, Eileen gave him an amazed look. “How did he know what I said about soup?” she asked Angel. “It was out there, way out there, and I whispered.”

  Chuzah lowered his eyelids a fraction. Angel didn’t miss the appreciative male inventory of a sexy woman. It pissed him off. The guy was too good-looking, even Angel could see that. “My hearing must be exceptional,” he said, turning a bone-melting smile on Eileen.

  Angel wanted to know a whole lot more about Chuzah, man of many faces.

  “So what is it we have to look at—right at this moment?” Angel asked Matt.

  “Sit down,” Matt told him. “You can have my chair, Eileen. It’s
more comfortable.”

  Eileen hesitated as if she’d refuse the offer. She nodded and walked to sit behind his desk.

  Matt slid a single piece of paper from the desk. “This is very preliminary, but they think the weapon used at Angel’s house is old. Probably an old Colt. Can either of you think of where I could find a weapon like that?”

  “Not me,” Angel said.

  “No, sir,” Chuzah said.

  Eileen shook her head. Then she said, “There must be guns like that all over.”

  “I’m finished with nice,” Matt said, and threw the paper to the desk. “Now I want you two to open up and start telling the truth—all of it.”

  Angel stopped smiling. “What does that mean?”

  “I can help with some of this,” Chuzah said. “Aaron—”

  “I want to hear it from Eileen and Angel,” Matt said. His face was tight and furious. “Finally I get called in but I’m only told part of the story. Why bother to tell me anything? What’s going on here?” He spoke directly to Angel.

  “Aaron didn’t want to tell you he was shot at in the backyard,” Chuzah said rapidly.

  “Whose yard?” Eileen and Angel asked together.

  “That would be yours, Eileen,” Chuzah said. “He was feeling a trifle unsettled and went out back to take the air. That would have been in the early hours of the morning several days ago. He heard a shot and hurried back inside. He did assume someone was firing a weapon at him.”

  “As soon as I heard about this, I sent out what personnel I have available to your place, Eileen. They did knock but you weren’t there.”

  “I work,” Eileen said.

  “You weren’t at work, either,” Matt said, his expression smooth. “I spoke with Suky-Jo, who told me she doesn’t give out personal information about you to anyone. Fortunately Frances Broussard at the salon wasn’t so difficult. She said she’d seen you go out for a walk with Angel.”

  “My friends only want to do what’s best for me,” Eileen said.

  “Your house is a crime scene,” Matt said.

  “Great,” Eileen snapped. “Angel’s house is a crime scene. And now my house is a crime scene. But there’s still no progress in the case.”