CHIMERAS (Track Presius) (29 page)

“You’ll have it by tomorrow.”

“Will you testify it in court, Mr. White?” Satish asked.

Jerry White jotted down the last name, put away the pen, and pushed the notepad towards me. “It won’t bring my Gaya back. And it will never do justice to her, to the other kids, or the woman you mentioned who lost her life. And yet it’s still better than rotting in jail and watching the bastards get away with everything.”

*  *  *

I drew the curtains and closed the door. I sat on the floor, my back against the wall, and an empty bottle of Corona next to me. And I stared. A penknife, an empty shell, a leather wallet, a house key. Carmelo’s silver case. And now a watch. Fake leather and plastic—a cheapie. And it wasn’t even
my
trophy—a bullet to the head killed the piece of scum, not the round I’d blasted into his shoulder.

Will finished his dinner and came rasping at the door.

I rolled the watch in my hands and ignored him.

Gomez had called me minutes after I’d gotten home. The SID field unit canvassing the arroyo behind Diane’s property had found a slug—a rimless .40 Smith and Wesson. If the M.E. fished a 10mm caliber bullet out of the ex-con’s skull tomorrow I was out of the woods: I had .357 Mags in my revolver and my Glock hadn’t fired a single round last night. Of course, Gomez didn’t put it so nicely.

Somebody wanted Diane dead. They paid an ex-con and when the ex-con failed they drilled a bullet in his skull to make sure he kept quiet. A 10mm caliber
, I thought.
Same as the bullet drilled into Tarantino’s head
.

I picked myself up, put everything back in the tin, and the tin underneath a wood plank in the closet. Not the watch, though. The watch I brought to the garage, smashed it with a hammer, and tossed the pieces in the garbage.

I went to the fridge and grabbed another Corona. The evening breeze made the blinds in the living room flutter. It carried a new spice in the air.

The King hopped down his windowsill and fled through the pet door.

Get the door
…

I didn’t.

The doorbell rang. I didn’t move. And then I did.

“You haven’t talked to me all day,” Diane’s opening line. Flustered, tired, and heavenly smelling.

I stood at the door and winced. “What do you call what we did at the meeting?”

“Work.” She glared, my words stinging. “Aren’t you going to let me in?”

Her scent was pungent and enticing, sweet and spicy like an Indian
chai
tea, the sweetness drawing me in, and the spicy burning my tongue.

Watch it, Ulysses
, said a voice in my head.

Will shoved himself between Diane’s legs and licked her all over.

“Aw, isn’t he a sweetie?” Diane cooed. “
Unlike
his human,” she added, sending me a sideways glare.

“Don’t blame him. He’s tried very hard to train me. Beer?” I offered, lacking anything better to say. She shook her head and paced inside, her eyes darting around my place, my one-man refuge, my cave. I should’ve worried about the molehills of crumbs scattered on the rug, or the coffee table ringed by espresso cups like a puddle under the rain. Details I never cared about jumped at me: empty beer bottles lined on the floor by the recliner, a gun holster carelessly left on the mantel, old stains on the couch cushions, a black sock dangling off a bookshelf from the last time I’d been desperate for a bookmark. CDs sprawled next to an old player, a few issues of Game & Fish piled on top of it. Did my armpits smell, did my feet stink, did my breath—Diane turned abruptly, her face blank, unimpressed. Without praise or blame.

I handed her the Corona she’d refused. “Here, it’ll make you feel better.” She took it, her eyes clinging on me like cobwebs. She walked to the couch, dropped on it, and brushed her hand along the spot where Will had slouched a minute earlier. Her fingers raked a clump of tawny colored hair. “You have a cat? I love cats.”

I sat on the recliner. “No, uh—It’s more of a cousin.”

Diane frowned. “A cousin with fur?”

I tittered and for a moment she joined in. Not for long, though. “Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of humor.” She wiped the smile off her face.

It wasn’t a joke
.

She took a swig of Corona, my eyes drawn by the smooth line of her neck. She lowered the bottle and swallowed slowly, her thumb drawing circles along the wet glass. “So. Troy didn’t lie to us. They weren’t experimenting with human embryos.”

I shrugged. “They experimented with humans, though.”

She bobbed her head, gravely. “Then the humans had children, and the children paid the price for their parents’ vanity.”

“Udall is working on the search warrants for Chromo’s labs. Once we get a hold of all the embryos, do you think you can prove the gene therapy caused the leukemia mutations in the children’s DNA?”

Diane stroked the beer bottle with her thumb. “Yes, if we can show the therapy messed up the germline cells. If the embryos have the same mutations Huxley found, we can confirm her findings.”

Diane took another swig then set the bottle on the coffee table. “Did you hear about the slug?”

I nodded, she swallowed. “I can’t believe it. There must’ve been two of them, and one… kill
ed the other.”

“Can you blame him?”

Hurt stung her eyes. “It’s not funny, Track!” She ran a hand through her hair and shook her head. “I’m—I’m so stressed out. I still can’t figure out how he got into my apartment. And why—what did he want from me? Rape me? Kill me?”

“Both.”

Diane scowled. “What?”

“I said both.”

“God, Track, that really, really helps.” She clonked the beer bottle on the coffee table, got to her feet and walked away.

Should I stop her? Or should I let her go
?

I darted behind her. “I meant—”

She never got to the door. She spun on her feet and glared. “Do you at least wonder why I wanted to talk to you today or do you not give a shit?”

Funny how Gomez had yelled to my face the exact same way that morning and yet I had unflinchingly held back his gaze and pretended his breath smelled like rose petals.

Diane’s flushed skin was ambrosial, and the more upset she got, the spicier her scent became. I would’ve stopped breathing if I could. But I couldn’t. It was everywhere: on her skin, on her clothes, in her hair. The ancestral call of pheromones reeling me in, like the Sirens calling out to the sailors who dared cross their sea… I stepped back.
Last night I would’ve taken her with my eyes closed. Last night I hadn’t killed an unarmed man for no other reason than revenge
…

“I wanted to thank you,” she whispered. Softly, suddenly drained of all animosity. “For last night, Track, for risking your life for me. You kept avoiding me instead. Why? Do I disgust you?”

“No.” I swallowed. “Definitely not.”

She came closer and this time I didn’t move. All the
what-if
castles I kept building in my head eroded away, and all there was left to stare at and take in was
her
. Diane. The beast in me purred in contentment. Tamed.

“Do I scare you?”

“Scare me? No. I’m scared of me, Diane. Of what I might do to you.”

Was she intrigued when she tilted her head, stepped so close I felt the warmth of her breath on my mouth, and asked, “What
might
you do to me?”

My hands sought her, found fabric instead. I knew
exactly
what I’d do to her. “I might peel these clothes off you,” I whispered.
Make my skin touch yours. I’d want to inhale you, let our scents mingle, let myself be part of you
—

“Like this?” Her fingers snapped the top button of her shirt and my hand followed, tracing her skin as she went along freeing it. The sight of her cleavage made blood pulse in my head. I slid my hands
down her shoulders, kissed her neck and then her lips. They were good lips to kiss—soft and embracing. Searching. Her shirt fell to the floor. I picked her up, brought her to my bed, licked the base of her throat and continued my way down. And then I froze. It was right there, on her bra.
The
smell, the bloody assassin’s scent. On her bra, damn it, of all places.

“What?”

I read desire in her eyes. The spicy zest of her skin, the pheromones, calling me in.

It’s not. Can’t be. Not the same person. The DNA didn’t match.

You’re wrong about the scent, Track. Wrong
.

I unfastened her bra, tossed it away, and removed it from my thoughts. After that I drowned in her scent, sweet and sticky like honey.

“You feel good, Track,” she whispered in my ear. “You feel good.”

I couldn’t find the words to tell her how good
she
felt. I just purred. I rocked her and purred.

CHAPTER 34

____________

Friday, October 24

Diane was sleeping. I couldn’t. I had to check the bra again. And when I did, the surge of loath I felt scared me. I could kill because of that. I had already.

At three a.m. I banged on Hortensia’s door. “What happened?” She showed up in a white T-shirt and nothing else, neither over nor under. I stepped inside and slouched on her couch, even though she hadn’t invited me in.

“My place is taken.” I scanned with no interest the clutter of paint jars, brushes and canvases populating her studio.

“By whom?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll just lounge on your couch for the time being. Will be gone by morning, promise.” Or so I hoped.

She shrugged and turned the bolt. “Whatever. You smell different, though.” She shuffled back to her bedroom and slammed the door closed.

Smells
, I thought.
What the hell does
she
know about smells
?

*  *  *

The first thing I inhaled when I woke up was turpentine and oil paints. The sun had just risen. It poked through the slats of the blinds and blinked in my eyes. I was cranky and exhausted.

“Gary was a doll yesterday,” Hortensia chirped half an hour later as I dragged myself into her kitchen.

“Hmm.”

She gaped at me. “What the hell happened to you?”

I must’ve looked pretty bad for her to notice. “Diane Kyle showed up.”

Hortensia clonked the coffee grinder on the counter. “Oh. Who?”

I retrieved two mugs from the cupboard, sat at the kitchen island, and waved a hand. “She’s…” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “We’re investigating this case together.”

“Ooh.” She clicked her tongue. “No wonder you smelled different. How closely have you two been investigating?”

I glared but said nothing. Hortensia went back on the attack. “Did you kiss her?”

“Worse. I slept with her.”

This time she pulled her lips together and sucked in air. “Oh my!” And then she laughed and nudged me on the shoulder. “Are you going to make me jealous, my Ulysses lost at sea?”

I
was
lost at sea. Ulysses—Homer’s one—had tied himself to the mast of his boat not to fall prey to the Sirens’ chants. What was I to tie myself to?

Hortensia’s laughter faded pretty quickly. She filled the coffee filter and asked, “So, what are you doing here?”

I stared at her hair. It draped her shoulders in a fan of red and golden threads, wavering back and forth as if they possessed a mind of their own. As if each sway were a chorus of— “You’re disappointing, Track.”

Hortensia’s question fell unanswered. “Gee, Track. I didn’t know you were so typical.”

I clutched one of the mugs and squeezed it. “Typical?”

“She came to your house?”

I squeezed harder and nodded.

“And she made a move on you?”

Damn it, I wasn’t going to share that much. “Hort—”

She left the coffee maker and leaned across the kitchen island. “You’re such a typical representative of your gender, Mr. Presius. A lady comes onto you and you feel your masculinity suddenly threatened because she made the move instead of you. So, what do you do? You leave. Congratulations, Track. Turns out, you’re just like everybody else.”

“That’s not why I left.”

She turned the coffee maker on and opened the fridge. “Why’d you leave, then?”

I twirled the coffee mug.

“Track?”

“Hell, Hort. Her bra smelled like the killer I’m after, okay? Do you wanna know what size it was, now?”

The half a gallon of milk in her right hand froze in mid-air. “Are you serious?”

I nodded. From the bottom of the mug, a distorted reflection of my right eye looked back at me and scowled. Hortensia propped the milk carton in front of me. “How did this happen, Track? How did you let her fool you like this?”

I bristled. “So now I’m a fool. A
typical
fool, right, Hort?” I slammed the mug on the countertop so hard the handle came off.

Hortensia was relentless. “Well, yeah! She came to your house and seduced you.”

“It’s not her!” I shouted. “It’s her damn boyfriend!” Hortensia gave me one of her looks. I hunched over the kitchen island and squeezed my temples between the heels of my hands. “Or a sibling of her boyfriend’s, or some other fucking bastard who needs to rot in jail,” I growled.

Kowalski has no siblings, Ulysses. You’ve looked into it
.

“Whose smell was on the woman you slept with?”

And who ran the DNA analyses
.

What was I supposed to say? It didn’t make any sense, and yet there was no way I could stay away from the woman. In fact, I was already regretting leaving her in the middle of the night. I wanted to run back to her.
Maybe she hasn’t awakened yet, maybe it’s not too late
…

“A man tried to kill her two nights ago,” I blurted out in the mist of my denial.

“He didn’t though, did he? I bet the idea was to ambush and kill
you
,” Hortensia replied. It was the final stab to my already wounded ego. She shook her head. “That’s what happens when you get personally involved in these things. You lose lucidity.”

I could no longer listen to her. I slammed my hand on the table, got up and left.

“I hope she won’t kill you,” she called after me. “It’s hard to say ‘I told you so’ when you’re dead.”

Could I really be such an idiot? Fall for a woman on the trail of a scent, like a bug flying right into the honey jar and drowning.
Sweet death
, I thought, Diane’s inebriating scent still clinging to my skin.
Sweet death
.

*  *  *

By the third cup I started feeling the caffeine jitter. I hated drip coffee. And I hated it even more when it came in a Styrofoam cup. It was like getting drunk with malt beer in a Chianti cellar. I crushed the cup, tossed it in the trash, then opened the blue murder book on my desk. My eyes glazed over.

Diane’s exposed throat, a pearly offering to my searching mouth. Diane’s navel, arching under my touch. The more I tried to run away from them, the more those images came back, haunting me. A movie in slow motion gradually accelerating and finally screeching to a halt. Diane, in my bed, a stroke of light from the
window brushing her hair. How long until she realizes I’m not there? Until she calls my name and she understands no answer will come? She gets out of bed, her fragrance trailing behind her. If I were still there, I’d cherish the warmth of her body on my sheets. I chose to leave, instead. How much longer until she feels betrayed? Abandoned, maybe. Or maybe just used.

Wasn’t that the plan, Ulysses? To use her to get to the killer?

Turns out, she used you, instead
.

Udall dropped by around ten. He shuffled to my desk and sat on Satish’s chair, the knot of his tie slightly skewed, and the black briefcase with the tattered corners swinging by his side. He laced his fingers across his stomach and stared at me smirking. Always smirking.

“Aren’t you going to ask me how I did yesterday, Track?”

“You always do well, Mr. Udall.”

He crossed his legs and flashed a blue sock at me. It nicely matched his tie. “Jerry White got away with one count of voluntary manslaughter—five years on paper. He’ll do one if we’re lucky.” This time the smirk seemed out of place. Picture a dolphin crying.

I gulped down the lukewarm remains of my third coffee. “Between you and me, Mr. Udall: can you blame him for what he’s done?”

“Track, I’ve been doing this for quite some years now. I’ve learned to look at the one action and put it in its context. I can’t afford likes or dislikes towards the victim. All victims have equal right to justice. And murder is always murder.”

I shook my head. “Except this particular story doesn’t have one victim only, Mr. Udall. Gaya White was a victim, too. And the other children, whose parents were fool enough to believe in eternal youth.”

Udall exhaled. “Their parents made a stupid choice. They played with their own lives. Too bad it was the kids who ended up paying the price.”

I tapped the empty cup on the table and sighed. A little Satish-like wisdom came to me. “Some people have a hard time growing
up. If you tell a five-year-old, ‘Give me your piggy bank, and I’ll give you the most gigantic lollipop on the face of the Earth,’ is he going to say no?”

“Naïveté is White’s crime, then?”

I shrugged. “Or too much faith. Some people believe in God, others believe in science.”

Udall nodded, the chain of his glasses bobbing in unison with his jowls. He slapped a hand on his knee, crouched to retrieve his briefcase, and then rose to his feet. “I’m glad you do your job and I do mine, Track.” So was I. He took a few steps and then turned around. “I almost forgot. Chromo does have more embryos. White and Kelson weren’t the only parents who opted for in vitro fertilization after the rejuvenating gene therapy. However, if you want those embryos, you better get a written consent from each one of the rightful owners.”

I raised a brow.

“The parents, Track. Or donors, or whatever you want to call them. When you go to Chromo, you must get a log with the info on what belongs to whom. You can seize the evidence, but you can’t look at the embryos’ genes without destroying them, and you can’t destroy them without the parents’ consents.”

“Every one of them? It’s crazy.”

“You know what’s crazy in this case? Think about it: who are the
real
parents?”

I watched him trot away, his briefcase swinging and his question ringing in my ears. It beat any of Satish’s best riddles.