He glanced at his watch, said “Shit!” and half ran toward the main display rooms, taking a hard right around a display case holding a saber-toothed cat and almost running into a teenager with his face pressed against the glass.
Artie started to follow him, then hesitated at the first cubicle. He slid into the chair and put on the helmet and gloves, then flicked the switch. There was no warm-up period; he was suddenly sitting in the middle of what looked like a computer game. Better than Sega, better than Sony, and it was a
great
pterodactyl, but it had none of the sense of reality of the hour he’d spent trudging along a riverbank with the Tribe. What he’d seen that first time was beyond the capabilities of any computer he could think of. There had been the feel of wind, there had been smells, there had been … blood.
The images suddenly flooded back, and once again he was on his belly in the dirt with the cutter pressed against his neck, watching a two-year-old boy being held over the river while his .throat was cut.
Artie tore off the helmet.
He was definitely going to be, sick.
Artie managed to make it to the washroom before losing his breakfast, then soaked some paper towels in cold water and washed his face. It was midmorning; Connie would probably still be on assignment. He wasn’t ready to go back to the station yet, in any event. He went out to the parking lot and sat in his car, the radio tuned to the twenty-four-hour news station, a white-noise background for his own thinking. The Tribe was at the far edge of his memory now, and Mark was much more center stage. Maybe he should have called in sick, stayed home with Mark. But what the hell—he’d told Mark not to go out after returning from school. He’d be okay.
“ …
Castro Valley. The doctor and his family …
”
Artie had a sudden premonition and turned up the volume.
“ …
apparently were murdered before the house was set on fire. The suspects is in custody at the scene. The Paschelke family was well respected in the community
…”
Connie’s breaker, had to be. It was the middle of the day and traffic was light; he could be there in maybe half an hour. Artie fumbled his cellular phone out of the glove compartment. He’d call the station and then phone Mitch, have him meet him there as soon as possible. Find out what had happened. This time they had the maniac who’d done it, though he definitely wouldn’t be your ordinary murderer.
The drizzle had stopped
, leaving little droplets of water glistening on the needles of the pine trees. It was chilly but the sun was out, and Artie guessed it would be warm by midafternoon. The town itself was idyllic, the kind you found on picture-postcard racks in drugstores. Not the proper setting for a brutal murder.
He could smell wet ashes two blocks away, then spotted the reeking heap of blackened timbers just beyond the line of trees that bordered the street. The ambulances had left but the fire trucks were still there, and several police cars. Mitch was watching Connie interview a fire captain.
“You’re fast,” Artie said. “I just called—”
“I had the radio on between patients and heard the first news flash an hour ago. Thought you might show up.”
Artie showed his press pass to a curious cop, and he and Mitch walked over to the ruins. The cameraman was taping Connie’s interview, the charred remains of the house in the background.
The house had been set back into a hill, so the rec room had actually been on the first floor. Artie could make out the few sofa spring-coils that marked where the couch had been and the half-melted bulk of the small refrigerator. A singed page from one of Paschelke’s medical journals fluttered past and Artie grabbed it. Atenolol for arrythmias, “King of the Beta-Blockers.”
He inspected the ruins a moment longer, then drifted over with Mitch to hear Connie’s interview.
“ … the intruder apparently broke a window at the back—”
The fire captain was a big man with a mustache flecked with gray and rivulets of dirty sweat that had dried on his cheeks and neck. He was soot-smudged and tired, barely managing to tolerate Connie.
“We found Mrs. Paschelke in the bedroom. Dr. Paschelke and his two daughters were sitting on the couch in the rec room. Apparently they had fallen asleep watching TV.”
“They had been”—Connie paused, professionally aware of the audience that would be watching the six-o’ clock news—“murdered before the fire started?”
The fire captain nodded, knowing what she wanted. “Their throats were cut. Apparently the killer caught Mrs. Paschelke first, then the doctor and the little girls. All of them were probably asleep when he entered—no signs of any struggle.”
“Robbery the motive?”
“Hard to tell. I don’t think the police found anything on the guy they picked up. A neighbor phoned in the fire at the first sight of the flames.” He sounded puzzled. “I don’t know why the suspect hung around; he should have been long gone.”
“Dumb,” Mitch murmured to Artie. “Too dumb.”
Artie spotted a figure huddled in the backseat of one of the police cars. “Let’s ask him.”
They walked over and peered in the closed windows, then a policeman came over to shoo them away. Artie flashed his press card again, but the cop ignored it. “Sorry, fellas, we’ve got to book him first. He’ll be arraigned this afternoon or tomorrow morning. We’ll have a statement then.”
Artie had gotten a good look. A bewildered, skinny little man bundled up in dirty pants and a scarf and a worn overcoat two sizes too large. Salvation Army issue—the uniform you wore when you slept in hallways and pushed around a grocery cart with everything you owned in it.
“Some poor homeless bastard who hung around the town,” the cop offered. “A few of the neighbors recognized him—he usually got to the recycle boxes an hour before the scavenger guys showed up, grabbed all the bundled newspapers and the bottles worth a refund. Probably how he lived.”
“How’d he start the fire?”
“Would you believe it? Booze. The firemen said they could smell it, even over the stink of the ashes. Christ knows
he
smelled of it when we picked him up.”
Artie glanced over again at the figure in the backseat of the patrol car. The man was pounding on the closed windows and shouting at them, a frantic look in his eyes. Artie couldn’t make out the words.
Mitch said, “He’s saying that he knew the two little girls, that he wouldn’t have hurt them.”
“You read lips?”
Mitch nodded and Artie walked away, embarrassed by the little man’s pleading. At his car, Mitch asked, “Did he look like he was drunk to you?”
“Not really—but he’s had time to sober up. Think he did it?”
“Do you?”
“Of course not—the devil made him do it.” Artie caught Mitch’s frown as he slipped into the driver’s seat.
“I’m not being funny, Mitch. I’m serious.”
Connie would get back
to the office before he did, but she’d be tied up most of the afternoon editing the story. Artie figured he had plenty of time to do what Hall had suggested: if seeing was believing, then he ought to see just what William Talbot had looked like. He was no expert but he might be able to glean something.
East Bay Medical Center was only a mile or so from Dr. Paschelke’s home and, like the doctor’s house, was nestled in among the redwoods. The nurses at the front desk were friendly; the doctor he was eventually referred to was less so.
An elderly Dr. Frank Lassiter, thin and dignified and smelling very faintly of aftershave and strong disinfectant, obviously resented anybody from the media. Artie guessed that sometime in the past he’d paid a heavy price for being misquoted.
Lassiter thumbed Artie’s press pass, studied it, then dropped it on his desk and leaned back in his chair, his hands behind his head. “So how can I help you, Mr. Banks?”
“The front desk said you were a colleague of Dr. Paschelke’s.”
“I’m a senior partner in his medical group.” Only the tiniest flicker told Artie that Lassiter had suddenly become more guarded than before. “The police have already been here. I couldn’t tell them much of anything except how sorry I was. Apparently the world’s going to hell in a Safeway grocery cart.” He was cool, distant, and Artie couldn’t tell whether he was genuinely sorry or not. He was the opposite of Paschelke; there wasn’t much chance the two had gotten along. Paschelke had been a beer and barbecue man: Lassiter would prefer poached salmon and a German white.
“You worked with Dr. Paschelke in the ER?”
Lassiter nodded. “I’ve worked in the ER from time to time.” Then, abruptly, he added, “Why the hell are you here, Banks? My time is valuable; I imagine yours is as well.”
“I was a friend of Larry Shea’s; he used to work with Dr. Paschelke too.”
Lassiter relented. “Affable man. Two of a kind, I’d say.”
Which meant that Lassiter had nothing bad to say about them but nothing good, either.
“They worked together on an accident victim,” Artie said slowly, watching for any sudden change of expression. “The victim was a man in his sixties named Talbot.”
Lassiter studied his fingernails.
“I remember the man. Drs. Shea and Paschelke performed an autopsy on him. I didn’t approve.” He looked up. “I thought it was unnecessary. They should have waited a few more days, see if any relatives showed up. There was the danger of litigation if they had disapproved. In short, I thought they were a little too eager.”
“Did you inspect the body yourself?”
Lassiter shrugged. “Shea wanted to point some things out to me one day. I was busy; I had other matters to attend to. I wasn’t particularly interested.” He made a show of glancing at his watch.
“What sort of things?” Artie asked.
Lassiter was running out of.patience.
“I’m a doctor. I deal with the living, not the dead. I’m experienced in autopsies and postmortems, but I’ll be the first to admit there are others more knowledgeable in the field than I. And more interested.”
“But you did take a look,” Artie persisted.
For the second time there was a small flash of expression.
“I thought they were wasting their time on an unethical procedure. They really should have talked to an anthropologist, not a fellow doctor. I told them that.”
It was going to be a contest between him and Lassiter over how little the doctor would tell him.
“Why an anthropologist, Doctor? What was it you saw that made you recommend one?”
“I thought they were letting their fantasies run away with them. A good anthropologist would have brought them down to earth.” Lassiter stood up. “Look, Mr. Banks, this conversation could go on forever and I’m a busy man—”
“I’d like to see the body.”
Lassiter looked startled. “You’re not a relative—it’s against regulations. Even if it weren’t, it’s not possible.”
Artie misread him. “Perhaps another doctor who has more time?”
“The family claimed the body this morning,” Lassiter said, now bored with the whole conversation. “And that is all I know. I never saw them, I never signed the release papers. The nursing supervisor took care of all of that.”
Artie stared at him. What family? Aside from the name, there had been no ID for Talbot, no family to notify.
The supervisor wasn’t very helpful at all.
“We got a call that the mortuary had come to pick up the body. I countersigned the receipt and filed it and arranged for the showing of the body to the family. A younger brother and a woman, maybe a little older. A cousin, I believe she said. From Mr. Talbot’s hometown in Illinois.” The nurse smiled slightly. “A suburb of Chicago, Evanston. I had an old boyfriend who came from there.”
“You didn’t check them out?” Artie asked.
Like Lassiter, she was suddenly less friendly.
“They arrived right behind the mortuary van and had already made arrangements with an airline for shipping the body out. I didn’t see any reason to hold them up.” She read Artie’s dissatisfaction in his face. “I’m not a policeman, Mr. Banks,” she said stiffly. “They had ID; everything seemed to be in order.”
And the medical center didn’t have to foot the bill of a cheap cremation. Artie flipped open his wallet to his press card. “Do you have a phone or an address for them?”
She pursed her mouth, hesitated, then opened a file on her desk and scribbled some information on a piece of paper and slid it across the counter.
“That’s their address. We definitely don’t give out phone numbers and I probably shouldn’t give you that.”
Artie stopped at a public phone in the lobby and got the number from Information, then dropped in enough change to connect him to Evanston. The voice at the other end of the line was suspicious and curt and, surprisingly, without an Illinois twang. There was little that the voice would say about the late William Talbot except that they planned to cremate him tomorrow and scatter his ashes over Lake Michigan.
When he hung up, Artie’s hand was shaking. Case closed, he thought.
Larry was dead and Talbot’s body would be returned to the Mother of Waters.
The only people left who were suspicious of anything at all were he and Mitch.
It was the middle
of the afternoon by the time Artie got back to the city. There was no sense in going to the office; Connie would be in the editing room getting the Castro Valley tape ready for the six-o’clock news. If he needed to grab a few hours for Christmas shopping, now was the time. He wanted to be home when Mark got there.
It was chilly for a San Francisco afternoon, cloudy and overcast, the temperature probably in the high thirties—damned cold for the Bay Area. The TV weathermen would call it unseasonal and blame it on the jet stream dropping down from Alaska. At least it wasn’t the pineapple express, which picked up moisture in the mid-Pacific and dropped it by the bucketful along the coast and on the Sierras.
Macy’s was jammed with shoppers, but he managed to get a ski sweater for Mark and a silver serving tray for Susan. Expensive, but a nice piece of work. He spent ten minutes admiring the displays in store windows, then walked back to Union Square and the underground garage. There was an ice-skating rink at one end of the square and Artie pushed through the crowd of spectators to catch a glimpse of the skaters.
“They’ve only had this for a couple of years—a few more and it’ll be tradition.”
The husky, pleasant voice belonged to a man about his own size and age, though Artie wasn’t sure, what with his collar turned up and a woolen navy watch cap pulled down over his ears.
“Just like Rockefeller Center in New York,” Artie said. “We’ve got a Christmas tree, too, maybe even bigger.” San Francisco, the only city in the world with Christmas tree envy.
He concentrated on the skaters in the center of the rink. There were little kids pushing tentatively along on their blades and taking an occasional pratfall, and a covey of teenagers flashing around the edges of the enclosure showing off for the crowd and each other, trying figure eights and an occasional leap, usually badly. A solitary old man glided sedately through the swirl of other skaters around him.
Not a bad time of year, Artie thought. Skaters, fresh air, the municipal Christmas tree—if he didn’t watch out, the spirit of the season would get to him yet. All he really needed was for Susan to be home. And for Larry to be at the other end of the phone line.
“The afternoons are sponsored,” Watch Cap said. “This time, it’s the AIDS Foundation. Poor bastards, something like seventeen thousand dead in the city and thousands more to go.”
Artie knew the stats by heart; he’d lost enough friends to the disease. But right then he didn’t want to think about it and spoil a pleasant afternoon.
Watch Cap wasn’t about to take silence for an answer. “Not like Ebola, though. Now there’s a disease for you—no cure and it’s wiping out half of Africa. Or take Rift Valley TB—”
“I’ve lost friends,” Artie interrupted. “I don’t want to talk about diseases with strangers.”
“Pardon me for living, fella.” There was no anger in the voice, just a mild amusement, which annoyed Artie even more. His black mood returned in a flash and he swore quietly to himself. He started to edge away, trying to protect his packages from the crowd around him. He didn’t have to fucking listen to this.
Watch Cap suddenly grabbed his arm.
“Catch the old man—can you believe that?”
Artie automatically turned back to the ice. It took a few seconds to spot the figure in the middle of the rink. He was doing jumps and turns with a grace Artie hadn’t seen outside of competition or TV specials. Some visiting professional, probably. Then the skater flashed by fairly close to him.
He was better than good, Artie thought, astonished. At seventy, the old man was miraculous. Artie watched him intently, the crowd laughing and applauding every time he leaped into the air. A triple axel, and then another … The applause and the laughter died and the crowd was suddenly silent. What the old man was doing was impossible.
Not more than a dozen feet away, the skater folded his arms close to his chest and spun on his skates. He slowed, threw out his arms, and stopped, staring straight at Artie. The expression on his face was one of confusion and terror. A moment later, he slumped to the ice.
Heart attack, Artie thought. Had to be. No man his age could have done what he’d done without his muscles and joints freezing up, without his heart giving out.
Artie felt the cold sweats start then. It couldn’t have been a senior citizen’s idea to try to imitate Brian Boitano or Scott Hamilton. And it probably hadn’t been a homeless man’s idea to slit the throats of the Paschelke family and then burn down their house. And he doubted that it was the original intent of a roving pack of runaway dogs in the Tenderloin to tear the throat out of Larry Shea.
Nor had it been his idea the night before to play at being a seagull and soar over the city from the railing of a porch three stories above Noe Street.
He shivered. Last night
something
had put him on as easily as putting on its socks. He had thought what it had wanted him to think, had done what it had wanted him to do. So had the terror-stricken old man on the ice, so had the homeless arsonist, so had the dogs in the Tenderloin.
Larry Shea had been killed by a pack of dogs, Paschelke and his family had been murdered by a homeless drunk, the old man out for a lark on the skating rink had probably died of a heart attack, and if Mark hadn’t stopped me, Artie thought, I would have been a suicide.
All of them had been murder by proxy.
Or would have been if he’d launched himself off the back porch. And the only connection was Larry Shea’s research. Except that the old man didn’t fit.
But, of course, he did. The murderer had been showing off. For his benefit.
Artie suddenly turned around. Watch Cap, the man whose face he’d never really seen, whose voice he hadn’t recognized at the time but that now seemed oddly familiar, a voice he’d heard someplace before—was gone.
It was six o’clock
when Artie got home, and Mark wasn’t back from school yet. He started to fix supper, then gave up and called up the House of Chen for takeout. Chinese from the House of Chen was second only to a Haystack pizza on Mark’s scorecard of Good Things to Eat.
Artie made himself a cup of coffee and tried to remember Shea’s notes—he’d have the Grub make another copy for him in the morning. But he knew Larry had been convinced he had autopsied a descendant of a … caveman. Artie half smiled. He preferred Hall’s term. One of the Old People. It sounded a little more mysterious but also more acceptable. And Hall hadn’t believed it in any event.