Authors: T. Jefferson Parker
He snapped on a pair of
latex gloves and toured the place: meaningless inventions, organized tools,
posters of girls. Beautiful women, made in America. Before him was a shoebox of
identical metal rings, ten of them, maybe, big enough to fit around the wrist
of a small woman. From each ring protruded a thin arm. Each arm widened into a
flat, thin, shiny leaf of metal about the size of a quarter. They looked to
Bill like they could be used for scooping something out of something else.
"What are these T
Bill demanded, slapping the back of the box with his hand.
"Flashlight
Friends."
"For what?"
"You put the ring
around the end of your flashlight and adjust the deflector end into the beam.
It sends some of the light to your feet. That's if you're aiming the light
straight ahead, I mean. So you can see where you're walking but see what you're
looking at, too."
"Shoots the light to
your feet while you walk in the dark?"
"Uh-huh."
"Do they
work?"
"Not really. I don't
think you can divide light that way. Or not enough of it, maybe. The second
beam's too weak. But, you know, three bucks is all I wanted."
Bill liked the idea. Some
of the things he'd seen at LaLonde's table at the Lake Elsinore Marina swap
meet had been better, though. And, of course, the electronic alarm override
he'd commissioned was the best thing he could imagine, short of a device you
could turn on a person to make them just do whatever you said from then out.
Like a gun, but unthreatening and legal. Something small and secret, they
couldn't even see. Maybe someday.
But on to more practical
matters, Bill wondered if LaLonde could devise some kind of display stand for
his driver's license collection. Something to show them off. Something
expandable.
"What's
this?"
It was two pieces of
plastic about the size of counter tiles, connected at right angles. One side
was backed by a large suction cup. From the bottom extended a three-foot tube
that ended in some kind of coupling, from the other a short nozzle of some
kind.
"It didn't work,
either."
"I asked what it
is, partner."
"The Shower Power
Coffee Caddie. It's a coffee warmer for the shower. You know, for those cold mornings
when you want to take a shower but you want your coffee, too? The suction
holds it to the shower wall. Put your cup on the plate. That hose takes water
from the hot water pipe and circulates it through coils. The cooler water comes
out the nozzle to make more room for more hot."
Bill set the Coffee
Caddie back on the bench.
"What's the
problem with that device of mine?"
"I'm looking,
I'm looking."
Bill could hear LaLonde tinkering at the bench. He
viewed the tools and projects on the other benches, glanced at the
kitchenette/sitting area, looked into the bathroom. There was a Formica table
near the refrigerator. On it were cardboard salt and pepper shakers, some
magazines about inventing and a letter holder made of wire that displayed the
envelopes upright and in fanned layers, like the tail of a peacock. The tail
pivoted on its base. Bill spun it once, then again. No squeak. The little
bastard did good work when he wanted to. A tan-colored business card with black
writing and a gold badge toppled out when he spun the holder again.
Orange County
Sheriff-Coroner Department
Sergeant Merci Rayborn
Homicide Detail
Bill turned over the card
and smiled to himself: her home phone, written in a woman's slanting print. He
slid it into the pocket of his duster. When, he wondered. When had they been
here, and how did they know?
"What's the
problem?" he asked.
"It's just the fuse.
I'm putting in a new one and it should work."
Bill wondered where the
old one had fallen out. The device had quit working after Janet, and LaLonde's
prints might be on the fuse. If it had fallen out near her car...
"There,"
said LaLonde.
Bill looked over at him:
dumb smile, hair all funny from being asleep, his jeans falling off his slender
hips and bunching up over his boots.
"Yeah, see, the
circuit's fixed now and the charge is running. I'll put in a couple of new
nine volts to top it off."
So merry, thought Bill.
Guilty. Watch his face now. "When did you talk to Sergeant Rayborn?"
"Who's
that?"
"The dark-haired
police gal who was here, partner."
A heavy burned smell
wafted through the shop.
"Oh,
her.
Couple of weeks back—they were
asking questions about this guy in the slam with me. They think he's heisting
again, thought 1 might know about him. I don't. Wouldn't tell those pigs
anything if I did."
"Of course. And
the older man, Hess? Was he here, too?"
"Old fart? Yeah. Hey,
this thing's working now. Looking good, Bill."
"Demonstrate."
"Well, I can't,
unless your car has an electronic alarm."
"No alarm."
"Mine neither, piece
of junk. This is fixed. It was just the fuse. It must have fallen out somehow.
I soldered a piece of wire to hold it in."
LaLonde held out the
little box. Bill walked over and took it, examining the new fuse and the
soldered restraint. The solder gun lay on the bench with its tip over a tin
ashtray, smoke wobbling upward toward the light.
Bill picked it up. "Smells like burning
bones." "I wouldn't know about that, Bill." "I burned a
woman once, but she was already dead." "Jesus. I've wanted to a few
times. You know, get real mad at one or something."
"I'll need two extra fuses."
LaLonde nodded and picked
out a plastic box from the bench top. He rummaged through its compartments,
chose a tin of fuses and offered it.
"Thank you. Here is payment for what you've done." Bill felt
in his pocket. "You really don't—"
Bill pulled out the
derringer and blasted the inventor in the forehead with it. LaLonde hit the
floor like someone had yanked it from under him. He was jerking and the blood
pouring out of his head was deep red on the concrete. Bill shot him in the
nose.
Bill mused on how some
people would worry about doing something like this, whether it was right or
wrong.
Then the traitor went stiff, the orgasm of his life, thought
Bill.
He got $32 out of LaLonde's wallet, then threw the worn-out canvas thing
on the floor.
• • •
Fifty-five minutes later
Colesceau came downstairs in the blue TV darkness to watch some more CNB.
The
station was running old news of the day because it wasn't prosperous enough to
program fresh news all the time. Hence "Rape Watch: Irvine" and
Colesceau's continuing torment at the hands of the video shooters and Lauren
Diamond.
He went to the door
and opened it. There they were, the after-ten crowd: two couples sitting on
lawn chairs in a semicircle feeing his front door. They were playing cards.
One couple was dressed for tennis. The guy had a towel around his neck. The
hot cider looked untouched. The video shooter heaved himself out of the CNB van
and came his way with the camera down, not shooting, and a cigarette in his
mouth. Colesceau had overheard his name, Mark, and rather liked his sloppy look
and sleeplessness.
"Well, Mark, our
law enforcement people didn't want the cider."
"Guess
not," said Mark, fiddling with his microphone. "They left about half
hour ago."
"Hmmm."
He padded across the
porch and lawn in his robe and white socks, bent over and collected his tray.
The protesters stared
at him, cards still in their hands. Tennis man stood up.
"Don't you ever go to sleep,
shitface?"
"I'm about to."
"You can dream about all the old
persons you molested."
"I raped them,
actually. And I've never dreamed of them, not once."
"You're disgusting," said Miss
Tennis.
"You ever give
me half a chance," said Tennis Man, "I'll beat the living shit out of
you."
"I know you
would. Give my regards, please, to the reasonable and decent Trudy
Powers."
"She thinks you're a bag of
shit."
Colesceau sighed. He
glanced at Mark, who was right up close by now, gunning away, then back to the
Tennis Couple.
"I have paid my
debt and I am rehabilitated. Harmless. So why are you so frightened
?"
"If it was up to me I'd just cut
them
off."
"Why?
To make earrings for your wife?"
Words of disgust, then, from all of them,
and Mark in close.
He headed back inside. On his
porch he turned, balanced the tray with one hand and waved.
Merci pulled up beside Hess's car in the medical
center parking lot. The sedan had collected dew in the cooling night and some
comet-shaped leaves from a eucalyptus. She thought, what a lousy place to have
to visit after working your ass off all day. And all night. Hess hadn't said
much since the shooting. She knew he was embarrassed for the Colesceau idea. Or
maybe just pissed off, because she wouldn't buy in. But it wasn't the smart way
to go and she knew it. She'd thought it through.
More to the point, Jerry
Kirby's death had spread through her spirits, spread through the night like an
infection. She knew it had contaminated Hess too.
"I'm only about
twenty minutes from here," she said. "Come over and eat?'
"It's almost
eleven."
"I know what
time it is."
"I'd like that,
then."
"It's in the
middle of an orange grove. Follow me."
She waited while Hess got
out and into his car. He looked uncertain opening the door, as if he didn't
know how much strength it might take and he used a little too much.
At home she opened the
windows and turned on the TV and made two Scotch and sodas. She'd bought a big
bottle of each because she'd enjoyed it that night at the beach with him. She
changed out of her bloody pants and showered. She listened to the messages—Mike
McNally, again, hoping she hadn't "busted a gut" in the gym. Then the
Bianchi rep saying they'd shipped the holster Federal Airborne, their compliments,
no obligation whatsoever, hoped she'd use it. They'd sent it to her home
because the offer was, again, only for "select law enforcement
individuals."
"Select, my
ass," she muttered. "Just send it."
Then she searched her
cupboards for something to heat up—it was either beef stew or noodles in a
Styrofoam cup so she went with the stew. There were some crackers that weren't
quite stale. She tried to arrange them artfully on a fancy serving plate but
they kept sliding down to the middle. There were always oranges, so she cut up
two fat ones. Just two gulps of that drink and it went to her head.
Hess was watching CNB
when she brought the plate in. She could smell the orange groves like they were
growing through the screens. Hess looked at her, a cat on one of his thighs and
another with its head on his lap. She shooed them away and put the plate on the
coffee table. The cat on Hess's leg was standing up but not gone, tail jumping
defiantly, so Merci held an orange hunk out and shot it in the face with the
juice. The cat fled.
"It's
okay," Hess said.
"Vermin."
"Why do you have
so many, then?'
"I like
them."
They ate some crackers and oranges. They clinked
their glasses together and drank but neither made a toast. There wasn't
anything to say if you were thinking about what happened to Jerry Kirby and
there was nothing else to think about. She could see him, youthful and dead on
the concrete. Merci called upon her inner power to banish thoughts of it from
her mind right now. And the thoughts obeyed, hovering outside her mind, though
she knew they'd have to get back in sometime.
There hadn't been many
times in her life that she had applied all of her considerable will to the task
at hand and come up empty. Jerry Kirby was one of them, and it made Merci doubt
herself, made her wonder if she wasn't as strong as she believed. She'd done
everything in her power to make him live and he had died. What was important
now was to put it out of her mind so she could come back to it fresh, maybe see
what she'd done wrong, how to do it right the next time.
So she sipped the
drink and let the alcohol lead her away.
"It's either
canned stew or Styro noodles."
"I like stew. It
reminds me of hunting trips to Idaho. Look, Colesceau again."
"The TV makes
him look bigger."
She watched him on his
ten-fifteen appearance, padding around in his socks and robe, collecting the
tray, talking to the tennis people. She took another couple of sips of her
cocktail. When Colesceau suggested his testicles might make good earrings for
Tennis Man's wife, Merci scoffed, "I'd like to see those."