* * * *
“Good timing,” Ian drawled as he and Simon surfaced in the sub and saw that the city was in the process of hooking up what was left of the platform to tug it away.
“It isn’t gone yet,” Simon said grimly, throwing his safety harness off and heading for the tube. “I think we can safely assume the PD has released the crime scene.”
“True. That being the case you still think it’s a good idea to go in in uniform?”
Simon paused at the door and glanced at him. “We can’t be strolling around Water City without wearing something. The uniforms may attract as much attention as the robes, but at least they’ll know we’re watchmen. I don’t think they’re as likely to fuck with us.”
They began to hear murmured comments from the crowd of gawkers about mutants as soon as they surfaced. Several people gasped when they shot out of the water and landed on the edge of the platform, but apparently Simon’s assumption was correct.
The entire crowd fell silent and seemed to take two steps back when they saw the uniforms they were wearing.
Ignoring them and the workers scowling at them for interrupting their work, Simon and Ian slowly walked the platform, scanning what little debris remained from the explosion. They’d combed the perimeter and began working their way in when Simon kicked aside a segment of wallboard and noticed a surprising regular crack beneath the flooring. Crouching, he pushed the rubble aside and studied the square.
Ian glanced around until he found a piece of wood that looked thin enough to wedge it into the crack. When it broke, Simon surged to his feet and approached the salvagers. “Any of you have a pry bar?”
After staring at him in antagonistic silence for several moments, one of the men reluctantly stepped forward. “I’ve got one. What do you need?”
Simon led him to the panel and pointed it out. Dropping to his knees, the man worked the pry bar in and worked it around until he finally managed to lift the panel. All three of them stared down into the dark hole beneath it.
“You ever seen a hatch like this in a house platform?” Simon asked the worker.
“Not like this,” the man said. “There’s usually a crawl space for getting to the pipes and duct work, but it ain’t usually more’n two to three feet.”
“I’ll check it out,” Ian volunteered.
Moving to the metal rungs set into one side of the tunnel, he tested the first few, discovered they were unstable and made his way down the hole carefully. He was back ten minutes later. “It goes all the way out the bottom.”
“So it’s access to the house—or was. I’m not sure what the point was,” Simon said slowly. “They could’ve planted the electronic surveillance before Anna moved in.”
Ian shrugged. “Cavendish had an escape tunnel in the fortress. Maybe he just likes to make sure there’s a backdoor nobody knows about?”
“Maybe.”
They closed it again, finished their survey and moved from the platform to the sidewalk of the house adjacent, watching the salvagers finish up and tug the platform away.
“You young fellas friends of Dr. Blake’s?”
Simon glanced down at the owner of the creaky voice and saw an elderly woman.
It flickered through his mind that he’d seen her when they arrived, standing among the other gawkers. “We are.”
“She ok?”
Some of the tension eased from him. “She’s in protective custody.”
The woman sniffed a little contemptuously. “In jail, you mean?”
Annoyance flickered through Simon. “No. I mean we have her in a safe house where we can be sure she won’t be kidnapped again.”
The old woman looked him up and down suspiciously. He more than half expected a snide comment about them being mutants. She surprised him. “I guess I may as well give you fellas her stuff, then. You can take it to her?”
Simon exchanged a look with Ian. “We can.”
She turned and hobbled away and he saw she was heading toward the house that had been directly behind Anna’s. Exchanging a curious look with Ian, they followed her.
“Wipe your feet before you come in.”
Amusement flickered through Simon. “Yes, ma’am. We’re still a little damp.”
“Well, don’t be sittin’ on my furniture then! You may as well come on back here. This stuff’s too heavy for me to be pickin’ up anyway.”
Shrugging, intrigued despite themselves, they followed her all the way through the house and out onto a screened in porch. The odor of burned materials wafted to them as soon as they stepped out.
“Don’t know if any of it’s any good. Couldn’t get the smell of smoke out of it, but I figured she’d want to look at it herself.”
Simon and Ian approached the pile and stared down at it. He didn’t recognize any of it as Anna’s, but it had clearly been taken from the fire. “You collected this from Anna’s place?” he asked dubiously, struggling with the fact that the old woman had removed it from a crime scene.
“Some of it. The damned cops was haulin’ everything off as fast as they could and I figured there weren’t no tellin’ if she’d ever get any of it back or not. So I waited until they wasn’t lookin’ and picked up what I seen that looked like it might still be good.
Most of it landed in my yard, though, when the house blew up, some of it on my roof or the roofs of some of the other houses. I paid a boy that does some work for me from time to time to get the stuff off my roof and he brought me a few things he found.”
Simon couldn’t decide if he was more horrified that the old woman had removed things from the crime scene or more amused—or excited. “The cops didn’t check out your roof for debris?”
“Well, I’d done got it all before they thought about it. They was too busy trolling up and down the water lookin’ for stuff to think about the roofs till the next day.”
“Ma’am,” Ian said hesitantly. “You know this is part of an ongoing investigation, don’t you?”
She looked at him indignantly. “It’s hers. Poor thing didn’t hardly have nothin’
left!”
Simon chewed his lower lip. “Do you have anything we could put it in to take it with us?”
“I’ll see what I can find.”
Simon and Ian crouched down and picked through the pile while they were waiting. Simon was of the opinion that it should all go in the trash by the time they’d looked it over, but, as the woman had said, it was Anna’s. She at least deserved the chance to look at it and decide for herself.
“You might as well take these, too,” the old woman informed them when she came out again, carrying several bags that looked like the sort for disposing of garbage and a bowl of some sort of fruits or vegetables that he didn’t recognize.
“What is it?” he asked curiously.
“Damned if I know, but I figured she grew it. She spent all her time in that greenhouse of hers. Nastiest tastin’ shit I ever tried. I cooked a couple, but they was so salty it turned my stomach.”
Neither the smell nor the appearance was really appetizing either, Simon thought wryly, wondering if they were over ripe and rotting. Most of them were pretty banged up. “I guess they rained down in your yard,” he said with a trace of amusement.
“Mine and everybody else’s! Took me the best part of two hours to gather them up. The most food I’ve seen in one place in a while outside a grocer’s. Most of it was squished, though, or burned. I just saved the best lookin’ ones.”
“I’m sure Anna will appreciate it,” Simon said a little doubtfully. “We’ll take these to her, too.”
“I guess you may as well take the seed, too. I’ll get it from my greenhouse.”
“There’s seed?”
“Of course! I told you I collected these all over the place. I didn’t see no sense in throwing the seed away just because the vegetables wasn’t no good to eat. I figured I might grow some myself, but I didn’t have no luck. Couldn’t get it to grow for nothin’. I ‘spect they ain’t no good, but I don’t throw nothin’ away when I ain’t sure, if you know what I mean!”
He was beginning to. He studied her speculatively when she returned with the seed. “I don’t suppose you saw anything … strange the night of the explosion?”
“Course I did! I told the cops, too, but they didn’t never come back. They told me they was goin’ to, but I knew they wasn’t. Kept lookin’ at each other while I was tellin’ them—like I didn’t know they was suggestin’ I was just a crazy old bat!
Ignored me when I tried to call and report it before it happened!”
“Would you mind telling us?”
She shrugged. “No, but we’re gonna have to go inside so I can sit down. My joints hurt if I stand up too long. When I sit down too long, too,” she muttered. “It’s hell gettin’ old.”
“You think she knows anything?” Ian asked doubtfully when she’d left.
Simon had been staring at the house absently. At that, he glanced at Ian. “She ran circles around the Water City PD and she can barely hobble,” he said dryly. “There’s at least two pieces of the device used to blow up Anna’s house in this pile. If we can match it to what we discovered at Cavendish’s island, we have a tie-in between the two cases. Let’s go find out what other little treasures Anna’s nosey neighbor has for us, shall we?”
She had refreshments waiting for them when they reached her living room.
Simon and Ian both looked at the little sandwiches uncomfortably.
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much effort,” Simon said.
She waved it away. “In my day, we always offered guests refreshment, even if there wasn’t hardly nothin’ in the house. I’m too old to change now.”
Shrugging, they settled on the couch across from her, studying the sandwiches and the brown beverage she’d served with it a little uneasily. “That’s iced tea,” she informed them. “Don’t guess you have that down under.”
“No, ma’am,” Ian responded, but took a sip. “It’s good, though.”
“What’s this on the bread?” Simon asked curiously.
“Pimentos and cheese. I grow the peppers myself.”
“You said you’d tried to call in a report before the house blew up?”
“Yeah, well. I knew they wouldn’t listen to me. They never do.”
Ian and Simon exchanged a look.
“Don’t you two go actin’ like I’m off my rocker! I ain’t got nothin’ much to do, you know. Ain’t able to do what I want to, so I watch other people. Nosey. Never thought I’d turn into a nosey old neighbor, but I get bored. Got me a spot out near the viaduct where I can see the houses all the way around my place. I don’t sleep too good, so I go out there sometimes at night where it’s cool and quiet.
“Anyway, I was out there that night. Saw that fella come skulkin’ up the waterway and tie up behind Dr. Blake’s place. He didn’t make no move to get out, so I just sat real still and watched him, tryin’ to figure out what he was up to.”
“Did you recognize him?”
“Not right off. He was dressed all in black, like somebody that didn’t want to be seen. My eyes ain’t too good anymore, but after he got out and started across her lawn, I recognized him. It was the fella that had been posin’ as her assistant.”
Simon frowned. “Explain that.”
“Which part?”
“You said he was posing as her assistant? How do you know that?”
“Don’t, but he didn’t look like no scientist type to me. Some people’s got brains, some got beauty, but there ain’t too many got both. He was a good lookin’ fella. Besides that, he didn’t look all paunchy or soft and white like somebody that spends all their time with their nose in a book or lookin’ through microscopes. He just looked too fit, if you know what I mean—fine figure of a man.”
“So how did you recognize him if it was too dark to see that well?”
“Like I told the cops. I been watchin’ him go back and forth for weeks. You watch somebody a while, you get to know the way they move. I could see he was about the right height and build. When he took off across her yard, I knew it was him.”
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Simon suggested grimly. “Do you mind if I record your statement?”
“Naw. I ramble, though.”
“That’s fine … so you were sitting outside when you saw him arrive?”
“I said he slunk up. I didn’t hear no motor. He just sort of glided in there and tied up.”
“There isn’t an ordinance against motor boats in the crossings?”
She made a rude noise. “There’s ordinances against everything. Stupid bastards don’t seem to have nuthin’ useful to do. Most people’s too lazy to pay that any attention, though. They get ‘em a trollin’ motor and putt to their docks. He wasn’t usin’ a motor. I would’ve heard it. That means he cut it off so he could coast in an’ that means he didn’t want no attention. Anyway, he wasn’t comin’ to see me and nobody that ain’t up to somethin’ creeps up to somebody’s backdoor in the middle of the night.
“Then, he just sits there for the longest kind of time, studyin’ somethin’ he’s holdin’. I couldn’t tell what it was, but it was about this big.” She made the form in the air with her hands.
“About the size of a reader, maybe?”
“Didn’t look like one. Weren’t no radio, neither. The only music I heard was comin’ from Dr. Blake’s. Whatever it was, was real interestin’ because he studied it the whole time, didn’t even look at her house—didn’t notice me when I got up and went in to call the cops. When I got back out, he was still sittin’ there. Then, all of a sudden, he drops the thing and bounds out of the boat. Took off toward her house. Then he stopped at the back corner, like he’s waitin’ for somethin’.