Spooker

by Dean Ing

  It was a good thing old Walt Hildreth had developed a decent relationship with Fresno's county and city cops, thought Jessup. When Eckert phoned in the APB on Soriano, naturally all the law-enforcement groups got it. But locals often seethed at high-handedness by the FBI; sometimes with good reason, sometimes not.

  This time, it wasn't long before Fresno's Finest shot back a rocket of their own. Young Mr. Soriano had been a busy boy, and a very bad one at that, said the police. And it looked like just the kind of job for their good friends at the FBI because the word was that Soriano's apartment was untenanted, but his fridge was of considerable interest. And Soriano had hinted about a second hideout somewhere on the nearby reservation, which was tailor-made for a Fed follow-up. The CHP was on alert, and copies of Soriano's state lab photo were in the hands of agents dispersing to air, rail, and bus terminals. The fugitive was considered armed and maniacally dangerous.

  From what Jessup gathered by car phone, Soriano had stolen a tan Ford Taurus station wagon after attacking a Fresno woman in her home. She'd thrown down on him with an equalizer. Unfortunately, he saw her trying to cram its magazine in. Fortunately, there was already one round in the pipe. Unfortunately, she missed him with it, so close to his face the muzzle flash had sent him spinning, perhaps with flash burns.

  And while the woman was fumbling the damned magazine into the butt of her pistol, Mr. Soriano was grabbing his skirt and purse. The game had then been called on account of mutual avoidance, but the tan Taurus was missing.

  His skirt? His purse? Uh-huh. Newt Jessup nodded to himself, guessing how the little fucker had gotten past them at the lab. Newt would never look at women quite the same way again.

  Wade Eckert came hurrying out of the little building and flung himself inside the Chevy. "Straight up that surfaced road," he said, pointing. "Left when you're past the cut, but take it easy and stop after that - it's a dead end. We've gotta wait for Reid and LaRusso anyhow, and the perp can't get back past us." Ordinarily, the term would have been "suspect." In their own minds, Jessup and Eckert were far beyond mere suspicion of a perpetrator.

  "On foot he could," Jessup said as he drove, studying the hillside with its cover of sparse trees and high grass. "Or a boat. Fuckin' lake is right over those hills somewhere. Is the lake on the reservation, too?"

  "By God, I think a synapse just fired in you," Eckert said suddenly, grabbing the dedicated-frequency car phone. Jessup eased up on the pedal to hear. Eckert got patched into the Fresno County Sheriffs quickly enough, suggesting they bring some heavily armed gents in small boats to lurk near the lakeshore bordering the Yomo reservation. Anybody who tried to launch from that shore might be of interest. He might also be packing artillery - a knife, at the very least.

  Newt turned left past the hill, then pulled over to the verge. Two or three hundred yards away, the surfaced road simply stopped facing Millerton Lake, a few hundred feet downslope. "Well, well, look who's here,"

  Newt said softly.

  Wade Eckert nodded, already giving exact directions to Tom LaRusso, who was still a few miles from the reservation in another Chevy sedan. Newt was pointing toward two ordinary ranch-style houses - 3 BR

  1-1/2 B types with big garages - and to the tan Ford Taurus station wagon parked in the driveway of one of them.

  "Can't make the plates from this distance and angle," Newt complained. "Could be a wild coincidence."

  "Yeah, or it could be that wild hair up your ass," Eckert muttered as he put down the phone. "Let's assume that's our boy in there, and try, for once, to keep procedure. Now here's the word on the place ahead, according to the chief back there. One house was never finished. The other's been leased by a woman, one Romana Dravo, and her boy for over ten years. Chief thinks the son's name is - would you believe - Andrew. He's grown and gone now."

  "Shit he is," Jessup said. "He's in drag and crying to mama, right over there in front of us."

  "Cool your jizm, Newt. We don't even know if mama's home. LaRusso and Reid are five minutes from here and we don't wanta color outside any of the lines from here on out. You realize, if we take this guy right, Walt Hildreth will forget every effing thing that went wrong today."

  Newt: "Maybe there is something to live for. Man, I hope you're right."

  "Mark my words, fair-haired boys. OF Walt will hug us so close under his arm we'll be snorting his Brut for a week."

  Then, because Newt had let the window down and the breeze was right, they heard it: a long, faint howling cry, a demon's wail that sent gooseflesh up Newt's arms to his hairline. It did not sound quite like anything human, yet it could hardly be anything else. As the agents stared at each other, a different cry erupted from the near distance. It lasted several seconds and could have been from a different throat, even a different species; a low-pitched scream of unearthly rage, or perhaps of terror and pain, neither identifiably male nor female. Later, neither of the agents was able to characterize it more closely; but, Eckert was to say, you don't expect anybody who's made that sound to ever make a sound again.

  The Chevy's engine roared to life. "Awright, goddammit, that's more than probable cause," Newt Jessup snarled and started the Chevy rolling.

  Wade Eckert's larynx bobbed twice as he held onto the armrest. "You know what you're doing?"

  "Not exactly, but I know I'm not waiting to hear anything like that again," Newt Jessup called over the engine's thump as he hurled the Chevy forward.

  "Man, I'm with you," Eckert breathed, dry-washing his face with his hands. The search-and-seizure regs let you go in with unequivocal signs of violence. They didn't have to specifically mention the shrieks of the damned. Eckert had no time to raise LaRusso in the few hundred yards of Newt's rush.

  Jessup went over the curb and stopped crosswise behind the Taurus, giving it no way to back up and banging his door against its bumper as he exited the Chevy. He had never had a situation quite like this in his career, and knew somehow that he must rely on old training, without giving himself time to think it over and maybe let discretion mature into plain chickenshit. He took his old Smith Model Ten in hand as he set sail for the back door. "Take the front," he called to Eckert who was a few paces behind. That, too, was procedure.

  The front-door locks - Romana's work - stopped Eckert cold and stopped his shoulder, too. The back door was already ajar and Newt went through it fast, announcing himself, squatting and popping up once he was inside, stepping over wires and blasting caps strewn on the floor, so pumped that fear seemed as irrelevant as bikini briefs on a fat man. Newt could hear Eckert bashing himself silly against the front door and announced himself again, listening for other noises in between the body slams of Eckert, scoping out the living room, releasing three locks on its door and Eckert nearly shot him then but calmed down a little and they went from room to room, taking more time than Newt liked, finding a dresser drawer full of men's clothing dumped onto the floor of one bedroom and another room fitted out like a wealthy hobbyist's workshop, stumbling over plastic buckets full of goop in the hall that filled the house with an odor like kerosene; and Eckert pointed out that a muzzle flash might ignite the whole place, which dampened their enthusiasm a bit, but it didn't slow Newt down much until they heard some kind of distant thumping, and that was when Newt Jessup's free hand went up for silence.

  It sounded like a lawn mower, faint but distinct. Then like two lawn mowers, or gasoline-driven generators. They might have been automatic systems somewhere behind the house. Eckert pointed toward a door from the kitchen and opened it for Newt, who went ducking through into a big shelf-lined garage, and what he saw lying in front of a panel van made them forget that distant thrum for the moment, and while Eckert lost his lunch in a corner Newt tried to determine whether it was their perp, part of him anyway, opened like something that should hang in a meat locker, but whatever had done this work had done it only too well and incredibly fast. The jeans and shirt were unisex, slashed and soaked with gore; the shoes were loafers. The victim was roughl
y the size and build of Soriano. There was no sign of a bra, but Newt had seen men with bigger tits.

  Newt Jessup had once watched a pro dress out a three-point buck in under a minute, leaving the hide on, the head attached. But he had hung the deer up first. This butchery had been done faster, with great economy of motion. The head was missing.

  Newt looked around him, searching for the head, gooseflesh marching in columns up his spine. It did not seem possible that this ghastly business had been done in the thirty seconds before he entered the house, but a new possibility made his arms shake. What had begun as he drove toward the house might have continued more quietly in that garage as he went from room to room only a few yards away. If that was the case, they weren't dealing with anything that should be treated like a human being. Newt saw no need to step into the great crimson pool on the cement to establish vital signs.

  And what if the slasher was still there, hidden among the shadows of that cavernous garage, silently waiting? The garage door hadn't been opened, and there was no other door Newt could see but the one they had entered. Newt Jessup studied the nearest shelves closely before sidling up near them, then squatted to peer beneath the big panel van. "Find the light switch, Wade," he said.

  Eckert apologized, coughing, and tripped a toggle near the door. The place flooded with light.

  The two men began moving slowly along the shelves, standing well back, ready to fire at the first sign that somebody or something - anything at all - might be moving among all that stuff. Newt pointed to a bloody partial footprint on the floor beneath one big set of shelves. Then it was Eckert who snapped his fingers for silence. Somewhere in the distance, a mechanical scraping had begun, something homely and familiar as a garbage disposal, or -

  "Garage-door opener," Newt said, not bothering to look because he knew it wasn't the door of this garage, bounding back to the kitchen and then to the outside door. Wade Eckert had said the second house was unfinished, but what better place to stash some kind of hot wheels. With LaRusso and Reid still en route, they could all wind up looking like the "duhh" factor was kicking the bejeezus out of them all when some CHP throttle jockey made the collar.

  And because there was no breeze, it did not matter which direction an aircraft used to take off. By the time Newt burst outside he saw, passing behind his car, a slab-winged craft all in charcoal gray with a short pod of fuselage, not much to shoot at, one engine pointing upward as if broken though its prop was a blur.

  The big garage behind it had all the appurtenances of an aircraft hangar, with gallon-sized containers lined across the floor. Two of the containers rolled lazily down the driveway slope, one trailing what looked like cooked oatmeal.

  The aircraft was gaining speed like a rocket, so Newt stopped and took an approved two-handed aim, knowing small airplanes didn't get off the ground without considerable roll, aiming at the front of the canopy for Kentucky windage. Just as he squeezed off, so did the little plane, which left the ground as if jerked aloft by wires, climbing without much tilt at all. Newt sent five more rounds after the first one. Wade Eckert was firing too, now, and Newt reloaded in record time, faster than he'd ever managed on the firing range.

  As the plane banked overhead, a dark, boxy Chevy sedan smoked its wheels around the corner, LaRusso and Reid braking to a stop in time to lend credence to the idea that either a homicidal maniac or his mother had just fled from a garage in a fucking airplane, taking off within fifty yards, while two FBI agents emptied their service revolvers at it.

  Newt stowed his Smith and looked toward Eckert, who still had glop on his chin. "You think we got it?"

  he asked.

  "If by 'it' you mean Walt Hildreth's warm embrace; no, I don't think we got it," Eckert said glumly.

  Newt: "Now I've gotta find a head."

  Eckert: "Me, too. I've got nicotine stains in my shorts."

  Newt: "No, Wade, a real head. We don't know yet if that was a man or a woman in there."

  Eckert sighed. "I hate it when you're right."

  "I wish I was following that thing," Newt said, nodding aloft.

  Eckert began to reload his piece. "Why? Where d'you think it's going?"

  "Far from Fresno - that'd be good enough for me." "Oh." Eckert sighing, and stowing his piece, "I don't think either of us has to worry about that. Did I ever mention Point Barrow?"

  37

  JUNE 1994

  It was half-past eight before Gary nosed the Camaro toward Route 65. He told himself repeatedly that his anxiety was nothing more than a reaction to Linda Tate's little conversational grenade. When he had called Jan from the Tate house, she had felt well enough to answer and, now that she knew when to expect him, she had sounded almost chipper. On the outskirts of Porterville he checked his fuel gauge and cursed the thirstiness of that engine just ahead of his feet. Like all pilots, he had a horror of an empty tank.

  Paying for his fuel, he asked for the nearest phone and was directed inside the station where he used his calling card. Okay, maybe he wasn't paranoid enough to alarm Jan over nothing. Swede was another matter.

  The old man's answering machine growled, "I'm feeding the attack dogs and cleaning my Uzi. Leave a message of any length - or not." Swede owned neither dogs nor burp guns but, with a welcome like that, he wasn't as likely to be burgled while off drowning worms.

  At the beep, Gary said, "Swede, I just got a line on the guy who may have put me in that mine shaft. If I'm right, he's still serious trouble, and he knows me. He may know - well, I'll brief you later. I'm in Porterville on the way to Jan's. I don't think he knows how to get to me through her, but you never know, and I don't want to scare her or blow this out of proportion with our people in Bakersfield. So look: just to be on the safe side, if you get home before I raise Bakersfield, I'd feel better if you staked out her place.

  She doesn't have to know. See you there."

  After that, his drive through the twilight seemed to take no time at all because he was focused on his discoveries about quiet, sweet Candy Andy Soriano, whose friendship had seemed wholly coincidental until now. In fact, it had been Gary - not Andy - who made that first friendly contact.

  Yes, but why? Because Andy had access to the Thomas Concoction at the state lab. After that it had been Andy who promoted the friendship in that shy, deferential way of his. And both Linda Tate and Mongo Kirk had implied that Candy Andy was anything but sweet on the Lowery kid. Recalling Andy Soriano's ways, Gary found it hard to imagine him overpowering Lowery. Yeah, it was probably hard for Lowery to imagine it, too. With a little more imaginative paranoia, maybe Gary could avoid getting his ass pumped full of the Thomas Concoction. Again.

  But what had Linda said about Andy's mom? That he doted on her, but he still needed mothering. Then the phrase "two women" popped into Gary's mind, jolting him with the connection. The older of his attackers had been a woman, but the younger one could easily have been Andy Soriano in drag? Maybe; Andy had mentioned being part of a theatrical group.

  Christ, it was almost too pat, now that he thought about it. He'd even wondered briefly if some parent had taken Steele Lowery out. Now it seemed a lot more likely; with those two working as a team, they had nearly bagged Gary himself. And maybe a hell of a lot of other people, over the years. Yet somehow the idea of an aging woman and her son as a team of contract killers was so bizarre that Gary found himself ridiculing his own suspicion.

  Well, first thing tomorrow morning, he would sit down with Visconti and lay it all out for him: Gary's inquiries in Briant, his follow-ups at the state lab and later with the Tates, and that visit Andy Soriano had paid to the apartment. There was simply no telling what part, if any, Andy's mysterious mom had taken in all this. Maybe none.

  Or maybe she was the puppet master.

  One thing he could depend on: if he passed his suspicions on to Graham Forster, with or without Visconti's blessing, both Andy and his mom could never sneeze again without some Company spook muttering "Gesundheit" somewhere nearby.


  And if Gary were totally out of his tree in this guesswork, some part of his fiasco would work itself into his file. His best tactic would be to offer the idea as highly speculative, a tissue of circumstantial evidence that he was offering only to cover all possibilities. But without proof to the contrary, I intend to make Andy and his mom a hobby of mine, he promised himself.

  It was fully dark as Gary parked beside Jan's little Z car, emotionally warming himself in the glow from her shaded windows. He blipped a faint bleat of his horn for her and for Swede, who might be sitting somewhere nearby with his back against an apricot tree. Recalling his paranoia, he locked the Camaro, though now that he was with Jan, his worry seemed groundless.

  His knock got an immediate reaction as Jan opened the door a few inches, red-eyed, her hair in need of brushing, wearing nothing that he could see. He was already grinning up at her, taking the steps, as she blurted hoarsely, "Run, Gary - get help!"

  A hand, with a knife in it, slid into view at her throat. A soft female voice said, "And if you do, Gary, she'll die. I promise." It did not sound like anyone Gary knew. He noted that Jan's shoulder was averted and realized that her hands were probably held behind her. .

  Gary stopped with his hand on the doorknob. He had slammed against partially open doors before; they could send big men sprawling. But he'd had a weapon in hand. And nobody had been holding a knife to an innocent throat. Was Swede on stakeout? On that supposition, Gary spoke so his voice would carry. "If you hurt her, lady, you go down hard. That's my promise."

  Now the voice changed cadence, timbre, everything; and it was the voice of Andy Soriano. "Let's be honest about this: I've already hurt her. Not much, and I think she enjoyed it, paaal." The last word drawled sarcasm. "But she won't enjoy it if I - but do come in and shut the door."