The Stupidest Angel (10 page)

This wasn't his first Nativity mission. No, in fact, he had been given the assignment of the very first Nativity mission, and due to having stopped on the way to play some pinochle, he'd shown up ten years late, announcing to the prepubescent Son himself that he "would find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger." Embarrassing? Well, yes. And now, some two thousand years later, he was on another Nativity mission, and he was sure now that he'd found the child, that this one was going to go much more smoothly (for one thing, there were no shepherds to frighten—he'd felt bad about that back then). No, come Christmas Eve the mission would be accomplished, he'd grab a plate of ribs and head back to heaven lickety-split.

But first he needed to find the site for the miracle.

There were two sheriff's cruisers and an ambulance outside the Barker house when Theo arrived.

"Crowe, where the hell have you been?" the sheriff's deputy was yelling before Theo was even out of the Volvo. The deputy was the second-shift commander; Joe Metz was his name. He had a linebacker frame that he augmented with weight lifting and marathon beer drinking. Theo had encountered him a dozen times in as many years. Their relationship had gone from a mild disregard to an open disrespect—which was pretty much Theo's relationship with everyone in the San Junipero County Sheriff's Department.

"I saw the suspect and made pursuit. I lost him in the woods about a mile east of here." Theo decided he wasn't going to mention what he'd actually seen. His credibility was thin enough with the sheriff's department.

"Why didn't you call it in? We should have units all over the area."

"I did. You do."

"I didn't hear the call go in."

"I called it in on my cell. My radio's broken."

"Why don't I know about it?"

Theo raised his eyebrows as if to say,
Perhaps because you're a big no-necked dumb-ass.
At least that's what he hoped the gesture said.

Metz looked at the radio on his belt, then turned to disguise his action as he turned a switch. Immediately the voice of the dispatcher came on, calling out for the shift commander. Metz keyed the mike clipped to the epaulet of his uniform shirt and identified himself.

Theo stood by, trying not to smile as the dispatcher reported the entire situation again. Theo wasn't worried about the two units that were headed to the woods up by the chapel. He was sure they weren't going to find anyone. Whoever the guy in black was, he had a way of disappearing, and Theo didn't even want to think of the means by which he did it. Theo had gone back to the chapel, where he'd caught a glimpse of the blond man moving through the woods before he was gone again. Theo had called home to make sure that Molly was okay. She was.

"Can I talk to the kid?" Theo asked.

"When the EMTs are done looking at him," Metz said. "The mother's on the way. She was out to dinner with the boyfriend in San Junipero. Kid seems okay, just real shaken up, some bruises on his arms where the suspect picked him up, but no other injuries I could see. Kid couldn't say what the guy wanted. There's no property missing."

"You get a description?"

"The kid keeps giving us names of characters from video games for comparison. What do we know from 'Mung-fu, the Vanquished'? You get a good look at him?"

"Yeah," Theo said, forcing a lump out of his throat, "I'd say Mung-fu is pretty accurate."

"Don't fuck with me, Crowe."

"Caucasian, long blond hair, blue eyes, clean-shaven, six foot two, one-eighty, wearing a black duster that goes to the ground. I didn't see his shoes. Dispatch has it all." Theo kept thinking of the deep gouges in the blond guy's cheeks. He had started to think of him as the "ghost-bot." Video games—right.

Metz nodded. "Dispatch says he's on foot. How'd you lose him?"

"The woods are thick up there."

Metz was looking at Theo's belt. "Where's your weapon, Crowe?"

"I left it in the car. Didn't want to scare the kid."

Without a word, Metz stepped over to Theo's Volvo and opened the passenger-side door. "Where?"

"Pardon?"

"Where in your
unlocked
car is your weapon?"

Theo felt the last of his energy flow out of him. He just wasn't good at confrontation. "It's at my house."

Metz smiled now like the bartender had just announced pitchers all around, on the house. "You know, you might be the perfect guy to go after this suspect, Theo."

Theo hated it when the sheriffs called him by his first name. "Why's that, Joseph?"

"The kid said he thought the guy might be retarded."

"I don't get it," Theo said, trying not to grin.

Metz walked away shaking his head. He climbed into his cruiser, then as he was backing past Theo, the passenger window whirred down. "Write up a report, Crowe. And we need to get a description of this guy to the local schools."

"It's Christmas break."

"Dammit, Crowe, they'll be going back to school sometime, won't they?"

"So you don't think your guys will catch him, then?"

Without another word Metz whirred up the window and whipped the cruiser out of the driveway as if he'd just received an urgent call.

Theo smiled as he walked up to the house. Despite the excitement and terror and outright weirdness of evening, he suddenly felt good. Molly was safe, the kid was safe, the Christmas tree was up at the chapel, and there was just no rush that compared to safely and successfully fucking with a pompous cop. He paused on the top step and considered for a moment that perhaps, after fifteen years in law enforcement himself, he really should have matured past that particular pleasure.

Nah.

"Did you ever shoot anybody?" asked Joshua Barker. He was sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen counter. A man in a gray uniform was fussing medical over him.

"No, I'm an EMT," said the EMT. He ripped the blood-pressure cuff off Josh's arm. "We help people, we don't shoot them."

"Did you ever put that blood-pressure thing around someone's neck and pump it till their eyes bugged out?"

The EMT looked at Theophilus Crowe, who had just entered the Barkers' kitchen. Theo frowned appropriately. Josh turned his attention to the lanky constable, noting that he had a badge clipped to his belt but no gun.

"You ever shoot anybody?"

"Sure," Theo said.

Josh was impressed. He'd seen Theo around town, and his mom always said hi to him, but he never thought he actually did anything. Not anything cool, anyway. "None of these guys ever shot anyone." Josh gestured to the two deputies and the two EMTs stationed around the small kitchen, giving them a look that said
the wussies!
with the full disdain his soft seven-year-old features could muster.

"You kill the guy?" he asked Theo.

"Yep."

Josh didn't really know where to go now. If he stopped asking questions, he knew that Theo would start asking questions, just like the sheriffs had, and he didn't want to answer any more questions. The blond man had told him not to tell anyone. The sheriff said that the blond man couldn't hurt him, but the sheriff didn't know what Josh knew.

"Your mom is on the way, Josh," Theo said. "She'll be here in a few minutes."

"I know. I talked to her."

To the EMTs and deputies, Theo said, "Guys, can I talk to Josh alone a minute?"

"We're done here," the lead medic said, leaving immediately.

Both the deputies were young and eager to be asked to do something, even if it was to leave the room. "We'll be outside writing this up," said the last one out. "Sergeant Metz told us to stay until the mother got home."

"Thanks, guys," Theo said, surprised at their congeniality. They must not have been on the department long enough to learn to look down on him for being a town constable, an archaic and redundant job, if you asked most area cops.

Once they were gone he turned to Josh. "So tell me about the man who was here."

"I told those other police."

"I know. But you need to tell me. What happened. Even the weird stuff you didn't tell them."

Josh didn't like the way Theo seemed to be ready to believe anything. He wasn't being too nice, or talking baby talk like the others.

"There wasn't any weird stuff. I told them." Josh nodded as he spoke, hoping he'd look more convincing. "None of that bad touch stuff. I know about that. None of that."

"I don't mean that kind of stuff, Josh. I mean weird stuff you didn't tell them because it's unbelievable."

Josh really didn't know what to say now. He considered crying, did a test sniffle just to see if he could get things flowing. Theo reached out and took his chin, lifted it so Josh had to look him in the eye. Why did adults do that? Now he'd ask something that would be really hard to lie about.

"What was he doing here, Josh?"

Josh shook his head, mostly to get out of Theo's grip, to get away from that adult lie-detector look. "I don't know. He just came in and grabbed me and then he left."

"Why did he leave?"

"I don't know, I don't know. I'm just a kid. Because he's crazy or something. Or maybe he's retarded. That's how he talks."

"I know," Theo said.

"You do?" He did?

Theo leaned in close. "I saw him, Josh. I talked to him. I know he wasn't like a normal guy."

Josh felt like he'd just taken his first deep breath since he left Sam's house. He didn't like keeping secrets— sneaking home and lying about it would have been enough, but witnessing the murder of Santa, and then that strange blond guy showing up. But if Theo already knew about the blond guy . . . "So, so, you saw him glow?"

"Glow? Shit!" Theo stood up and spun around as if he'd been hit in the forehead with a paintball. "He glowed, too? Shit!" The tall man was moving like a grasshopper locked in a running microwave. Not that Josh would know what that was like, because that would be a cruel thing to do and he would never do something like that, but, you know, someone told him about it once.

"So he glowed?" Theo asked, like he was trying to get this straight.

"No, I didn't mean that." Josh needed to back out of this. Theo was trippin'. He'd had enough of adults trip-pin' for one night. Soon his mom would come home to find a bunch of cops in her house and the trip to beat all trips would start. "I mean he was really mad. You know, like glowing mad."

"That's not what you meant."

"It isn't?"

"He really glowed, didn't he?"

"Well, not constantly. Like, for a little while. Then he just stared at me."

"Why did he leave, Josh?"

"He said he had what he needed now."

"What was that? What did he take?"

"I don't know." Josh was beginning to worry about the constable. He looked like he might hurl any second. "You're sure you want to go with the glowing thing, Constable Crowe? I could be wrong. I'm a kid. We make notoriously unreliable witnesses."

"Where'd you hear that?"
"CSI."

"Those guys know everything."

"They have the coolest stuff."