No Immunity (16 page)

She stopped beside the alley, checked around her, but in the dark she couldn’t tell if a car had parked there recently, only that the brush had not been smoothed by regular parking.

No light illumined the wood-paneled double door, but she could make out the sign next to it: Constant Mortuary. It was a door she was
not
going through. Slowly she walked along the track back toward the hotel, looking for nooks between storefronts, sheriff’s deputies huddled in them. In this little valley between hillside and buildings the wind was weaker, but the cold from the ground held her feet and calves like icy metal clamps. After fifty yards she turned and started back, this time eyeing the roofline. There had to be a window well midway to the street.

Was she walking wide-eyed into a trap? The don’t-try-this-at-home-kids of investigators’ training? “Couldn’t resist, could you?” Tchernak would be saying. “Just couldn’t wait and see.”

For once the man would be right. Fox had made his reputation by letting a suspect assume he was free. If she walked—or morgue-broke—into a trap she’d not only be in jail, she’d be a fool. But if she did the prudent thing, the woman’s body would disappear into the bureaucracy or the crematorium, and Fox’s statement about her would become accepted fact. There would be no proof Fox was lying. She would never know if this was the index case of an epidemic barely dodged. And the dead woman would be a faceless, nameless addendum to a blip in history, hidden forever.

Besides, she could move fast. She took the stairs to a porch, two units down from the mortuary, swung herself up over the porch, and stepped onto the tar-paper roof. In the starless dark the wind snapped her pant legs. Scraping noises came from behind her. She jerked around. Roof rats, she told herself. Frightened little creatures running away. But suddenly her running shoes felt paper thin.

The window well was close to the back alley, an octagonal hole three feet across, a one-story-high air vent. It was hardly large enough to funnel in sunlight at noon, but for her purposes the narrow space was ideal. She ran a foot along the edge of the roof, knocking pebbles and other detritus into the well. She froze, alert for reactions to the telltale noise. Whisperings, feet moving closer. All she could make out was the wind playing with an edge of tar paper.

Kneeling, she stuck her head over the edge and peered down into utter black. The smell of rot was nauseating. Creatures had died down there for a hundred years.

She tested the gutter, swung herself over, and walked her feet down the wall till she could feel the top of the window. The air was so thick with dust, rodent hairs, and decayed organic matter, she felt like she was inhaling mulch. With sudden foreboding she slid her feet along the top of the window frame. She had been assuming the mortician opened this window, this lone source of natural light, but now, as she tried to shift the window down with her feet, she realized the truth. This window never was opened.

Her arms were tiring. She didn’t have time to ponder. Kicking in the glass would be so simple. And so stupid.

She swung her feet to the far wall and, splayed out flat, she inched her way down toward the window. Her shoulders burned, her hamstrings cramped, and she had to jam her legs to keep from dropping face first into the pit. The stink of decay filled her nose, and she had to breathe through her clenched teeth. She felt the top of the window, grasped it so hard her fingers throbbed, and swung her feet down to the window ledge.

The putty on the top window crumbled at her touch. The pane moved. She wedged her fingers around it, gripping the glass between fingers and palm, vibrating the pane till it came loose.

Her arm was shaking. She couldn’t feel her feet. Gripping the glass harder, she lowered it as far as she could and dropped it into the carpet of decay at the well bottom. She slid through the window and into the mortuary, and stood, ignoring her screaming wrists and ankles, listening for the sheriff’s voice, for doors opening softly, for muffled footsteps. But the only sound was her own constricted breathing.

The reek of formaldehyde confirmed that it was the embalming room she was in. Even in the dark she could make out the table on which the dead woman had lain hours earlier. It was empty now. The woman’s body would be stored in the fridge at the far end of the room.

She scanned the countertops, but of course there was nothing like a flashlight. She stood still once more, holding her breath. No telltale breathing or hiss of official whispers outside. That was as good a sign as she was likely to get, and it meant nothing. She switched on the ceiling light and waited.

The switch was red. Her hands, she saw, were covered in blood and soot. Her scraped palms stung. Oh, God, an open wound. She grabbed the antiseptic she’d used earlier and poured it on her hands straight. Her skin was still burning as she yanked open a drawer and pulled on latex gloves.

The fridge door was heavy; she braced her feet and pulled.

The gurney was empty. The body was gone. The freezer air wafted out and wrapped the icy smell of death around her.

A door creaked. She eased the freezer shut and stood still, listening. Above were noises she hadn’t heard before—crunching, swishing. Feet? Or was it just the wind? She couldn’t tell over the drumming of her heart.

She gave her head another sharp shake. She couldn’t come up empty here; she had to have some proof of the woman she saw, the carefully groomed woman. She pulled open drawers, eyed boxes of insurance forms, boxes of pens.

The creaking of boards stopped her. It was coming from the back of the building. She stiffened. Wind? More like feet, cold feet on the back porch. Waiting for the go-ahead to charge inside.

She yanked open cabinets and saw brown bottles, white bottles, clear and opaque bottles, syringes. Nothing unexpected.

The back porch creaked. No gust of wind would do that. If there was a sheriff at the back, there’d be a deputy at the front. She emptied the wastebasket onto the counter. Nothing there but slightly stained cotton swabs and a bottle of nail polish remover. The bottle was almost full. The stains were the same unusual color of pale peach as the dead woman had been wearing. That didn’t prove anything, never would. But it made her wonder why someone had gone to the trouble of removing nail polish from a dead woman’s toes.

A loud snap came from the back of the building.

She eyed the window. Too late.

T
HE WEASEL PRESSED HIMSELF
into the wall. He could stand a long time without moving. He watched the gold Jeep charge down the street and the doc’s BMW take off after him. He hadn’t figured the doc for being in this deep. But her he could deal with later. He moved out of the shadows and strode around to the door and gave it three hard bangs. “Housing Authority! Open up!”

Feet scuffled inside.

“Lady, I’m already working on my own time. It doesn’t put me in a good mood. Don’t make me madder than I am already. Open the door!”

He heard the chain rattle before the door eased open an inch, then he pushed hard and was inside. The woman looked like a rag. But not bleached out. No. Hot, feverish, blotchy red. Hair stringy, damp, clumped to her head. Eyes wild. Touch her on the arm and he could push her over. Her nightgown hung half open down her breasts. Good pair of mangoes. Odd, a woman like this not covering herself. Oh, shit, how sick was she? Did she have the same thing as the boys? “Some kind of foreign virus,” as Adcock put it. Was this stuff one of those flus that knocks you out for weeks? He shoulda made Adcock cough up the facts on this plague business. Not that he was likely to
make
a guy like Adcock do anything.

Ignoring the woman’s cries of “I pay rent, I pay already,” he pushed past her into the bedroom looking for the girl. “Where is she, your daughter?”

“Señor?”

He heard the girl before he saw her, squeezed between the dresser and the door. Her face was blotched red; the kid was shaking.

“What’d you tell the big guy?”

“I don’t know.”

He had to strain to hear her.

“You talked to him five minutes ago. You know. Tell me and I’m gone, understand?”

“I don’t know.”

He started to reach for her, caught himself, and let his hand threaten her. The mother’d be a problem if he touched the kid. He didn’t have time for that. Turning to her, he said, “You tell her not to talk to strange men?”

“
Si.
Yes.”

He turned back to the shaking child. “This is what happens when you talk to strange men. You can make it okay by telling me what you said.” He shot another look at the mother.

“Tell him, Sarita.”

“He just wanted to know about the boys and the blond lady who took them, and the man and the nice lady they went with one day and came back.”

The blond lady, the doc. The man’d be Grady. “The nice lady, what did he call her?”

“Irene.”

A siren ripped the air, so close he could barely hear her. “Last name, did he say her last name?” He was moving toward the door.

Sarita shook her head.

“Come on, think!” The siren shrieked and cut off. The cops were here. The Weasel slid out the door and ran.

“Y
OU READY?”
A
WHISPER
. It came from the back. How many deputies did the sheriff have here?

Kiernan pulled her latex gloves off, tossed them in front of the freezer door, and hit the light switch. The room turned black as she slipped out into the hall. Hand to the wall, she hurried forward, past other doors to other rooms. There was no time to check them out. She couldn’t chance a dead end. She had to go with the one place she knew, the viewing parlor in front.

A key scraped in the back-door lock. The lock that Jeff Tremaine said kept no one out.

The viewing-parlor door swung easily, silently, and the room let in a dim glow from the street-side windows.

Metal jangled outside on the sidewalk. Keys. Fox’s men would be coming in both doors.

Desperately she looked around the room, squinting to pull the dark forms into recognizable shapes. Dais, podium, rolling wooden platform ready to hold a coffin, twin bookcases that reached nearly to the ceiling, twin cabinets in the back. The cabinets she crossed off immediately—too obvious. Under the dais? Dicey.

Metal scraped metal as keys moved into locks.

The bookcases. In California they would be bolted to the wall. Here? She had to hope. The shelves were too small to hold an adult; that’s what Fox would assume. No adult would think to climb on top, he’d think. If she got out of this, she’d never again complain about petite-sized pants being too long. She grabbed a high shelf and climbed. The few books shimmied. A stack fell on its side.

Across the room the dead bolt gave.

The bookcase shimmied but held. Silently she swung herself onto the top, knelt, and scrunched over chin on knees. The dust flew up her nose. She rammed her hand over her mouth, pinched her nose. The fallen books, could she reach them, right them? Her nose tickled: It took all her concentration not to sneeze.

The door opened, banging back into the bookcase. The light came on. Sheriff Fox stood in the doorway, a thick angry figure turned black by the backlighting.

If he spotted the fallen books; if he questioned them at all, he need only look twelve inches up. She was in clear sight. She swallowed hard against the tickling dust. She could hear the back door banging open, feet clopping in.

Fox took a step into the room. He looked left and right. “Come on out. We know you’re in here!” He strode across the room, yanked open the cabinet doors. “Shit!” He peered under the dais.

Deliberately Kiernan didn’t hold her breath. She breathed through her mouth, so softly air barely moved.

Pushing his meaty body up, he stalked to the hallway door and wedged it open. “We’ve got both doors covered. There’s no way out. Make it easy on yourself. Step out, hands up.” He waited. “Jeez,” he muttered, and started forward.

She didn’t move.

He turned, surveyed the viewing room, eyeing the open cabinets, the dais, the windows, the bookcase. His gaze stopped—

Forget those fallen books
, every cell of her body screamed.

His gaze moved to the door, on around. With a satisfied shrug he headed down the hall, flinging open doors, dismissing the rooms behind them. Outside the embalming-room door, he stopped. “We know you’re in there. Open the door.”

The viewing room was clear. She counted to five before Fox said, “Okay,” and pushed open the door.

Light flooded the hall. The deputies followed him in. “Hey, look at this! Gloves! She must be in the freezer!”

“Maybe we should let her sweat it out, huh, Sheriff?” a deputy cackled.

Kiernan resisted the urge to leap to the floor and race outside. There were at least two deputies in here with the sheriff. That had to be the whole force. There couldn’t be anyone else watching the front.

“Go ahead, Potter, open ’er up.”

She lowered a foot to a shelf, swung herself around, and stepped quietly to the floor. Moving as silently as she could, she crossed the room and let herself out the door into the street.

“N
OW THEY’RE TELLING DAD
he needs chemo. Yeah, I know. Government sets off a bomb, sprays radiation all the hell over the grasses, the streams, the cattle, so the lads downwind get cancer from drinking the milk, ferhevvinsake, and now fifty-some years later they’re still saying it’s not their fault when Dad come up with cancer. Life east of the proving ground, eh?”

Tchernak sighed as he leaned against the wall between the Gents and the Ladies and eyed the guy jabbering away on the phone—the only phone in this greasy spoon where conversation was the tastiest thing you could buy. He could understand why there was no phone book here, what with the pages and pages of escort services, with their full-page colored pictures of ladies you wouldn’t escort home to Mom. Probably fourteen-year-old boys ripped them off as fast as Nevada Bell sent them out. When he finished this case his first project would be to get himself a cell phone.