Spiral (34 page)

A surge near my left elbow kept me from replying, even if I’d wanted to.

Helides said, ”Well, as I began to feel even better and more confident, I took to ‘acting out.’ At first, as a celebration of feeling human and only”—a sweep of his hand around the clearing—”out here, in the hammock, where I knew no one could possibly see me.”

”At first.”

A rueful smile. ”Exactly. There were days when, despite feeling better, I had no desire to visit this place. The weather, sometimes a particularly fierce hatch of mosquitoes. On those occasions, and when no one else was in the house, I would slip into the control room and simply deactivate one of the security cameras. Can you guess which one?”

I thought about it. ”The pool, because it gave you the largest working area to act out’ in.”

”Bravo, John. In fact, to extend the metaphor a bit, it was the largest and most desirable theater in the house, so long as no security guard could monitor it.”

”How did you get into the control room, though?”

”My father had a key. He sleeps from time to time. Not so difficult really to slip it off his ring and have a copy made.”

”I still don’t see why you had to kill Veronica.”

The hollowed features changed. ”During one of my sessions in the pool area, she had Cassandra drop her off at the front of my father’s house. For some reason, Very decided to stroll around to the rear of the house.”

”I thought you always called her ‘Veronica’?”

”Only for you, John. To bond us, once I noticed you used her full name. Out of your respect for the dead, I assume, no matter how badly misplaced.”

”And you didn’t hear her coming?”

”Not through the glass wall, and since Cassandra, of course, lived in the house, there was no telephone call from the gate guard. Which wouldn’t have mattered, generally, since my father’s new wife is not the quietest of people, and I therefore always heard her coming in time.”

”So, Veronica saw you through the glass wall...”

”And sensed immediately that she had an advantage over me.”

”One that she—” I clamped down again, this time feeling the sap eating into my neck below the hairline.

David Helides beamed a beatific smile at me.

I said, ”One that she... cashed in.”

”Blackmail. For a supposed ‘child’ of thirteen, Very already exhibited a remarkable appreciation of how leverage on another person could improve her own position.”

”But how did the knowledge that you were recovering give her leverage over you?”

The disappointed-teacher look again. ”She threatened to tell my father, John.”

”That you were better?”

”That I was faking still being ill. I told her it was only a recent phenomenon—I said ‘thing’ at the time, of course. However sly Very might have been, she was ignorant as pig dung. But the little bitch knew how to play the card I’d so unwisely dealt her, and so she bluffed going to my father and... exposing me.”

”Bluffed.”

”To gain what she wanted.” A grotesque caricature now of pelvic thrusting. ”In a word, sex.”

”With you.”

”Me?” Helides seemed shocked. ”I was Very’s blood uncle, John.”

”And that stopped her?”

”It stopped me, at least until it helped cover up my crime. But even then, the experience wasn’t terribly pleasant, because I waited until she was... ‘in extremis,’ shall we say? And there were smells—” Helides shuddered delicately. ”No, in any case, Very was more interested in the love that dare not speak its name.”

I thought about what Cassandra Helides had told me about the incident in her car. ”Veronica wanted a female partner.”

”And an experienced one. On top of which—no pun intended—she expected me to find such a slut for her in exchange for not blowing the proverbial whistle on me with my father. Which expectation presented quite a problem for a man who hadn’t been out and about much.”

A drop of fire crawled down my spine, but I thought I saw Helides’s solution. ”Sundy Moran.”

”Oh, excellent, John. I’d met Sundy at one of those bars, and her name rang a bell, a conversation I’d overheard between two of my brother’s band members at my father’s house. A conversation about one of their deceased druggie cohorts fathering himself a child with that odd name. I thought it might add some spice, Sundy being completely unaware of my familial connection to Spiral, of course.”

”And so you started dating Moran.”

”Dating her? Not at all. I said before that sex was not as available in these plague-ridden times, unless, of course, one is willing to have
‘a
relationship’ with the woman involved, which in my position would have been awkward at best.”

”Or unless you were willing to pay for it.”

”My, John, we are on the same wavelength, aren’t we?”

”I hope not.”

Helides seemed not to notice my jibe. Or care about it. ”The ‘allowance’ from my father was sufficient to cover biweekly visits—including the cheap motels Sundy would rent for a couple of hours—so I’d become rather a regular client of hers. Enough so that she explained to me—complained to me, really—about her boyfriend Ford and her ‘momma Donna,’ and how Sundy thought they might be ‘doing it to each other’ and how disgusting that would—”

”So you took a thirteen-year-old girl to see a prostitute.”

”The girl took herself. My only function was the arranging and the transporting. I didn’t even have to pay, since Sundy was curious enough to service Very on the cuff, so to speak.”

I thought it through. ”But those visits weren’t enough, were they?”

”No.” Another change in the hollowed features. ”No, Very wanted other ‘trips,’ as she called them, a term no doubt cadged from one of the drugged-out band members. So, she found where her dear demented dad kept his cocaine.”

”And snorted some.”

”Yes. Obnoxious as Very was ‘straight’—no pun intended again—she was exponentially the bitch once under the influence. The first occasion she used cocaine, with Sundy, Very let slip about her becoming a rock star soon, and that she’d take Sundy with her on the road. Fortunately, I was in the room with them, and realized the bitch hadn’t just compromised my anonymity but could just as easily blurt out my secret to her grandfather.”

”So you staged Veronica’s ‘performance’”—a searing sensation over my kidney—”for her grandfather at the party.”

A shake of the head. ”I’m afraid you’re wrong there, John. I of course intended to kill Very then, given all the masking reasons you’ve already recounted. But her decision to snort up was one she made herself. Probably wanted to show the old man what his money was buying in more ways than one.”

”And her running from that room gave you the perfect opportunity.”

”Exactly. People had used the pool earlier, but no one was interested in going there after Very’s performance. Except for Very herself, whom I found already in her bathing suit. As soon as I entered the pool area, she began to snarl: that she was going to tell her grandfather about my faking the depression, that she thought it had been going on for years, and that I’d been threatening her if she revealed it to him. However, Very was so high on drugs, she couldn’t sense my attitude toward her—at that moment or any other—as being anything beyond the simperings of a pathetic beggar.”

”But Malinda Dujong might have.”

”Yes. Malinda, Malinda.” Helides looked toward her manchineel tree. ”I’m sorry to say I believe she suspected something about me even during the few times we were in each other’s company. She had a genuine gift, John, and I’m just extremely fortunate that she also was so empathetic as to agree to meet a woman she’d never spoken to before instead of attending my father’s party that day.”

”You had Sundy Moran as ‘Wendy’ make the call to Ms. Dujong.”

”From a pay phone, shortly before slashing her in our little trysting spot. But I have to say, the sex with Sundy just after the call was the best I’ve ever had.”

”Because you were contemplating killing her.”

”Yes. I insisted she shower and clean up when we’d finished in bed, because I wanted to take her out for a great dinner.”

”But more because you wanted to wash away any trace evidence.”

The beatific smile again. ”When Sundy came out of the bathroom, I’d already gathered up the sheets. She said, ‘Huh?’ and that’s when I took out the buck knife and started with her throat, to reduce any screaming. There’s an excellent Web-page on combat killing techniques, too, though its site address probably won’t be of much help to you anymore.”

”Quite a risk for you”—Jesus, now the sap ate at my elbow—”to carry that knife away.”

”Ah, so I was right! The police were able to match it as the one Ford Walton tried to use on you.”

”A nice way for you to tie him to both crimes.”

”Yes, John, my thought exactly. And even when I discovered after killing Sundy that Ford had an ironclad—if rather embarrassing—alibi, I thought it still might work. I even told him that I’d found the buck knife a few blocks from the hotel, where I’d seen you ‘pitch’ it after running from that hotel room.”

”And Walton bought all that?”

”Ford was not the brightest of bulbs, John, and the prospect of killing you with the same knife you’d used on Sundy was, I think, too much poetic justice for his mind to question.”

”You drive Walton away from my hotel, too?”

”Yes. It was the surest way for me to keep tabs on him for the short period between then and killing him myself. Oh”—Helides bowed, as a Japanese business representative might—”and many thanks for ‘softening him up’ for me. Even with that other Website on ‘the Knife in Combat,’ I’m not sure I could have handled an uninjured man of his background so easily, though all those years on the exercise equipment did keep my muscles toned, and these last healthy months really have strengthened them. Watch.” David Helides leaped straight and high into the air, extending arms and legs so that, combined with his head and neck, they made a five-pointed star.

When he landed, I said, ”But once you’d killed Veronica, Sundy Moran, and Ford Walton, why take Dujong?”

”Malinda?”

”Yes. She couldn’t have identified Sundy Moran’s voice from the grave, so Dujong couldn’t have tied her caller to you.”

”Ah, but Malinda had ‘counseled’ me once, a stab at her ‘spiritual advising,’ though it seems she never sent my father a bill. When he asked me about our supposed session, I said, ‘I don’t remember talking to her,’ and apparently he never pursued it with her. However, I think the reason Malinda never billed him was because she really did sense something about me, and that’s why I had Sundy draw her away from the birthday party, so Malinda couldn’t sense anything more about me there.”

I thought of Dujong’s ”crab-monster” in its cave. ”But why kill Dujong if she never attended the party?”

”Loose end.” Helides’ voice sounded so casual. ”If Malinda thought about Very’s death long and hard enough, I was afraid she might go to someone with any suspicions she had. Someone... like you.”

Dujong’s call to me on my hotel voice mail. Around a burning near my left hamstring, I said, ”So you dropped off that note about Spiral and Sundy Moran to point me back at the members of the band.”

”Precisely.”

”But then why leave that second note for me in Dujong’s trunk?”

A smile, almost sheepish. ”Hubris, John. Sheer gall. I was beginning to enjoy the game so much—a game I could never have played while depressed—that I simply didn’t want to see it end.”

”And so you took Justo, too?”

A smug smile now. ”My ultimate reasoning, John. I knew from my father that you all had served together in Vietnam. I knew also that Mr. Vega and you seemed ‘brothers’ in a way Spi and I never had. After meeting you, watching you, overhearing you in the house, I began to fear that you might be capable of figuring out what the police had not. When Ford Walton’s attempt on you went awry, I decided that a frontal attack by me might fail as well. So, I thought I’d give you a stronger motivation to fall into my trap than the disappearance of just Malinda apparently provided.”

A trap I thought I’d laid. ”Taking Justo should have been a little more trouble for you than someone Dujong’s size.”

”Mr. Vega’s training is almost as old as I am, John, and over the last thirty years, he’s not been in the situations I expect you have.” David Helides inclined his head toward the hanging vine behind him. ”Though, playing Tarzan, I was able to take even you, now, wasn’t I?”

”It still doesn’t wash, David. How do you account for all our bodies?”

”Account for them?” Helides lifted his face to the sky and laughed like a maniacal bird in the old jungle movies. His laugh spurred more of the dinosaur roaring I’d heard earlier. ”John, there has to
be
a body first, and that bellowing sound you hear comes from a nearby drainage canal— or more precisely, from its resident alligators, garbage disposals both mobile and hostile.” A more serious look. ”Though before that stage, I plan to have rather an unparalleled—and extended—period of study involving the manchineel tree, with two remaining subjects who should tell me much about its already evident properties.”

I swallowed the chuffing sound coming up my throat. ”You can’t fool the Colonel, David.”