Satan’s Lambs (3 page)

“I'll say one thing for you, you do got a problem.”

Eloise leaned back against the stove and folded her arms.

Lena chewed her bottom lip. “I suppose the cops are out of the question?”

“Won't they be mad about me hiding that money? It's one of the big three, remember?”

“You might cut a deal. Possible jail term for accessory.”

“That's no good.” She scratched the tops of her legs, her nails making scritching noises on the polyester. “I better tell you the even worse news. What I make from the cakes just barely keeps us. I do my best in June on the weddings, and I got more orders this year than I know what to do with. Could you wait till then for your money?”

“We'll work something out.”

Lena frowned. If Eloise Valetta had taken the robbery money, she wouldn't still be here, worrying about Archie. Unless she'd spent it all?

Eloise was chewing her lip. “I was thinking one way we could do it. Like with Janette Swan. You helped her out, so she makes you chili every week. And you helped that guy's daughter, you know, the one that delivers Coke. And I bet you always have plenty of Coke. I was thinking that—you know I make these cakes? I could make you one once a week. They're good, people come down from Louisville to get them. And they have good bakeries there.”

“Do me a favor and
don't
bake me a cake every week.”

“You don't like cake? I bet you're allergic to eggs or something.”

“No, I love cake. That's the problem. Look, when I need a favor you can help me with, I'll call you.”

“Got to be something.” Eloise scratched the back of her neck, “Your oven self-cleaning?”

“No. It's an old one.”

“You're not one of those odd women likes to do housework? You hate to clean your oven, don't you?”

“Usually I don't bother.”

“Goodness, you shouldn't let it go, you'll get mice up under the burners. How about I clean your oven every six months? You help me get out of this trouble, and I'll do it two times a year for the rest of your life.”

“That's a long time to be grateful. How about just for the next two years?”

“Three years.”

“You haven't seen my oven.”

“Three years.” Eloise shook her head. “Lord only knows how you make ends meet. And that's just in return for waiting till June when I'll pay you cash money. No, now look. I'm going to need your full attention here. Archie is pretty darn scary, and I got a baby to protect.”

Lena smiled at Charlie and thought, just for a moment, of her nephew. “
We
got a baby to protect.”

Eloise put a hand on Charlie's shoulder, and nodded.

3

That night Lena had the dream again.

It started with her parking the Cutlass by the curb out front. It was Friday and Rick was out of town. She and Whitney were going to eat chocolate cheesecake and talk.

The front of the house was dark, except for the glow of a nightlight in Kevin's window. Whitney had said she'd be out on the swing, so come around to the back.

It was full dark. A lightning bug glowed, then faded. A grasshopper leapt from a forsythia bush and landed on Lena's shoulder. She brushed it off and went to the back of the house. Warm wind rippled the blades of grass, and made the wind chimes sing.

“It's me, Whitney.”

The chains on the porch swing creaked. Lena wondered why the back porch light wasn't on—there was only a sliver of moon. She went up the porch steps slowly, feet thumping the wooden slats.

“Whitney?”

The swing creaked again; the wind had moved it. Whitney wasn't out on the deck.

The sliding screen door stood open. A black moth flew in the house. Lena went to close the door, then stopped.

A line of thick black dots had soaked into the boards of the porch. Lena followed the drips to the swing—the top slat was stained and splintered. Lena put her finger out, then jerked it back, feeling the silky stickiness of a spider web across her wrist.

She stuck her head in the doorway and flicked on the porch light. The drops of blood led down the porch stairs to the yard, but she didn't follow them. The back door was standing open. Little Kevin was inside.

A low-watt bulb burned over the sink in the kitchen. The counters were clear; the dishwasher hummed. The room was hot and smelled like baked potatos. A bottle of Flintstones Chewable Vitamins sat on the counter next to a child's yellow plastic mug.

Lena ran her tongue across her bottom lip. Her mouth was dry.

The hallway was dark, except for the faint glow of the night-light. Lena paused in the doorway of Kevin's bedroom, listening for his childish exhalation of breath.

The room was quiet.

She went in, squinting in the dim light. He was in his big-boy bed now—she had forgotten, expecting the crib. She could see his hair on the pillow.

She turned on the light.

There was a hole in the blanket over the small chest—a hole too big for this baby. The face was unmarked, sweet, tears still glistening in the thick black lashes. In his fist, he clutched the tail of a battered blue bunny, its whiskers dotted with blood.

There was blood on Lena's hands, so she must have touched him. Her footsteps were heavy now, slow. She turned lights on all over the house. She went to the kitchen and looked at the phone. A note was taped on the wall. Detective Mendez, it said, by a number. Lena had to dial it twice.

Mendez answered on the second ring; sane, safe, alert. Her own voice was low and sleepy, oddly slurred. She told him about the boy, the blood, the bunny. He told her what to do. She said no, and hung up the phone. She couldn't stay put until she found Whitney.

Lena went back on the porch and followed the blood trail down the steps.

The light from the kitchen and the back bedroom helped, but it was too dark to see if there was blood in the grass. Lena walked along the back of the house, then around to the side.

Whitney sprawled at the top of the driveway, her ankle touching the left front tire of her car.

The smooth sensitive flesh above the inside of her right elbow flapped open and bloody. A heavy-caliber bullet had torn her belly and killed the child within. Her left eye socket was a congealed mass of blood and tissue. The exiting bullet had ripped the back of her head in half. Blood pooled and ran under the car, soaking into the asphalt drive.

The next part, Lena knew, was the sirens. Tonight, in this dream, the phone rang instead.

Lena opened her eyes and rolled sideways, pushing hair out of her eyes and wiping sweat off her face. The phone rang again.

“Hello?”

“Caught you.” The voice was male and pleasant—no particular accent. A voice you might hear on the radio. “Lena?”

She took a breath.

“Lena?” the man said. “You know who this is?”

“What do you want, Jeff?”

“Unfinished business, my sister-by-law. Just want to let you know, I'll be around again soon, to see you.”

Lena hung the phone up gently. Her wrist grazed something cool, and there seemed to be grit on the sheet. She sat up and fumbled with the switch on the lamp. Light pooled over the top of the bed.

There was a seashell on the pillow—a yellow one, with swirls of pink, and grains of sand inside.

4

Calling Mendez went against the grain.

These days she called him when she needed cop favors—running an NCIC records check, the occasional peek at a file, a piece of backdoor information. No PI could function without access to a cop.

She liked calling him—a jab to her favorite target. Mendez never turned her down. Whitney was long buried, but between them the corpse was fresh.

This time felt different. This time was like asking for real help. The kind of help Whitney had needed, before Hayes shot her down. The kind of help a woman couldn't get.

There was a time in her life, long past now, when Mendez would have been the first and most natural step, but she was way beyond that now. Policemen, husbands, sisters—they always let you down. If Hayes wanted to start something, she would handle it.

Still, there was Eloise Valetta to think about, and Charlie. She pictured the boy, bent over the newspaper, arranging scraps of paper. He reminded her of her nephew. Both had that same air of knowing what they were about. She remembered Kevin sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of dry Cheerios, ignoring the cartoons and watching the commercials. She could see his chubby fingers lining up the Cheerios across the coffee table before he ate them one by one.

Maynard squirmed out from under the couch and sat at her feet.

“Yes?” Lena said.

The cat strolled into the kitchen and Lena followed. Maynard looked up at her, his tail high. He miaowed.

“Okay,” Lena said. “I'm doing it.”

She set a plate of food on the floor. Maynard hunkered forward and purred. Lena stroked the silky back, feeling the skin ripple under her hand.

“Did you see Hayes last night, Maynard?” She looked down at the cat. “If you see him again, you hide.”

Lena realized, when she got to the outer office, that she ought to have called and made sure Mendez was there. It was just on 8:15. He might not even be in yet.

The woman behind the front desk was pudgy in her uniform, the style unflattering to the female figure. Lena wondered how many decades it would be before women cops got their own uniform.

“Is Sergeant Mendez in?”

Lena smelled coffee, cigarette smoke, floor wax. A tired-looking woman in blue jeans was cleaning the bathroom. The door was propped open with a big metal mop bucket. Lena heard water running and smelled the acrid odor of cleaning fluid.

The woman behind the desk was eyeing Lena's earrings. Lena pushed her hair back off her shoulders. The woman chewed the eraser on the back of her pencil.

“Those what they call shoulder dusters?”

Lena fingered the left earring. “No. Shoulder dusters come all the way down to here.”

“I been thinking about getting my ears pierced. Everybody says you don't even feel it. Tell me now,
does
it hurt?”

“Bravest thing I ever did was get the second ear pierced.”

“I knew it.” The woman nodded her head and jerked a thumb over her shoulder toward the elevator. “Mendez is up there. I think I saw him come in about an hour ago.”

“Thanks.”

The elevator was slow. Lena slipped into the bullpen through a side door, avoiding the secretaries behind the fortresslike counter out front. Rows of desks were butted side by side like a schoolroom for adults. It was cold in the room and she shivered. She smelled overheated coffee.

Mendez had taken off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair. His shirt was white, cuff links gleamed at the sleeves, and his thin dark tie was neatly knotted. He was making notes on a yellow legal pad and he wrote quickly, never lifting the pen from the paper. He stopped for a minute and took a sip from a Styrofoam cup. Lena crossed the room, ignoring the stares from other cops behind other desks. Twice she nodded at familiar faces.

“Hello, Mendez.”

He looked surprised. He pulled a chair from behind an empty desk and set it beside his.

“Coffee?”

“No, I'm swimming in it.”

He raised an eyebrow but didn't comment. He sat in his chair and looked at her. His lack of polite patter used to unnerve Whitney.

Lena fished the seashell out of her shirt pocket.

“Found this on my pillow last night.”

Mendez leaned forward and took the shell. He looked it over and frowned, lips tight, then set it on the legal pad in the center of his desk.

“When do you think he got in?” Mendez sat very still in the chair. His voice was harsh.

“It wasn't there when I went to bed.” Lena frowned. “The phone rang, around three this morning. It was Jeff. After I hung up, I turned on the light and found the shell.”

Mendez picked up his pen, and put it down again.

Lena made a conscious effort not to grind her teeth. “He came in while I was asleep. Came up to my bedroom, and left that on the pillow. I never knew he was there.”

“What did he say?”

“I
told
you, I didn't know he was there.”

“On the phone.”

“Oh. Something like he'd see me soon.”

“Did he threaten you?”

Lena shrugged. “He said we had unfinished business.”

Mendez picked the seashell back up.

“Which you think is worse, Mendez? Sand and shells in the sheets, or cracker crumbs?”

“How did he get in?”

“I think he came in through the basement. There's a ground-level window there, and it was unlocked this morning when I checked it.”

“Did you lock it before you went to bed?”

“Usually I keep it locked. But I don't check it every night.”

Mendez eased back in his chair and closed his eyes.

Lena smiled. “This is the part where you pat my back and tell me he just wants to take me to the seashore.”

Mendez glared at her. Not, she decided, the best way to go about asking for favors. “I need your help.”

He nodded. “We'll tap your phone. I want a look at the window. They won't assign protection. They'll send a patrol car up and down your street now and then, but it would be best—”

“That's not the favor. You asked me before about Archie Valetta. How I knew he was due to be out of prison.”

Mendez cocked his head sideways.

“You probably already figured out that Eloise Valetta came to me for help.”

“What does she need help with?”

Lena shrugged. “It's not police business. She's got a little boy, and she's having trouble arranging tests and stuff at the free clinic. Anyway, Archie getting out of prison is one of the things that's got her worried.”

“Is Hayes bothering her?”

“Hayes? No.”