Splicer (16 page)

Grieves had changed. What Rusty saw wasn't so much the result of a metamorphosis but rather a
replacement
; a
possession
. The change was so unkind to Grieves that Rusty didn't recognize his haunted face at first. He did sense something familiar - h
is intelligence,
he thought later.
His own innate awareness betrayed him.

Grieves’ hair was long and tangled and it had taken on a new color, a darker, baneful shade of brown. He had grown a scraggly beard where bits of food still clung. He wore a long slate-colored overcoat that was spotted with grease marks and dirt. He was moving across the rail yard, stepping gingerly over several ribbons of abandoned steel track, when Rusty called to him.

"Hey! Malcolm! This the new look?"

Grieves rolled his eyes and looked back sleepily, a wave of irritation radiating out from him along with the smell of sourness, garbage and body odor. Rusty, having just caught up to him, couldn't help but wrinkle his nose. When Grieves recognized him, his eyes grew wide. Wordlessly, he sprang across the next track bed and broke into a run. Rusty, surprised by Grieves’ quickness, stumbled over a rusty piece of track, regained his balance, and then picked up his speed.

They covered the rest of the narrow train yard and crossed a dusty patch of grass that opened onto an asphalted parking lot. Several yards later Rusty came close enough, reached out and caught a handful of Malcolm's overcoat. Malcolm twisted, slipped onto his knees and then turned to knock his attackers hand away.

"I've been looking for you!" Rusty yelled, this time with a keener edge to his voice. "We've got to talk." Standing over the kneeling form of his former partner, he twisted the overcoat between the fingers of his right hand and shook it hard.

Grieves pulled again on his coat, tried to wiggle away.

Grieves looked haunted and pitiful. Rusty's anger faded fast. "Are you alright, Malcolm?"

Grieves stood, then swung drunkenly at Redfield, catching him on the side of his head with a beefy right arm. The move surprised Rusty who stepped back to avoid another blow. Grieves turned sideways as if to leave then kicked hard in Rusty's direction.
A day for surprises
thought Rusty as he hit the pavement awkwardly and landed on his back. Grieves raced across the parking lot, a yellow shopping bag under his arm, something he had been holding under his coat.

Rusty was dazed but he could feel an anger growing again; a heat rising out of weeks of frustration and the impulse to grind the shorter man’s face into the dirt, energized him. He pulled himself up and charged.

Grieves was just reaching the edge of the asphalt, which turned evenly to concrete at the traffic apron. He had climbed onto the top of the guardrail, was balancing their shakily, when Rusty reached his side. He grabbed the greasy overcoat and pulled hard. It tore up the back seam without resistance, leaving Rusty with a handful of dirty cloth. The motion pulled Grieves back on to the blacktop where he landed heavily on his knees. Again to Rusty's surprise, Grieves attacked instead of defending himself. He swung upward, hitting Rusty hard across the chin. A shot of pain flashed in his head; pain again that threatened to catapult Rusty from sympathy into blind anger. He grabbed Grieves' lapels with both hands, lifted him up bodily and pushed him back, forcing him down and across the blade of the guardrail. He bunched his fists under Grieves' chin and held him hard against the sheet metal, pressing down. The smell that came up from Grieves' open jacket was nauseating. He turned his head sharply, took a deep breath and then turned back to the struggling derelict.

"You smell like shit, Grieves," rasped Rusty, pressing down harder. Malcolm's eyes were all whites now, his face pulled back into the folds of his coat. "And right now I'd get a big charge out of slicing you in two." Grieves stopped pushing back against Rusty's bunched fists. He let out a shuddering sigh. "What's the matter with you? Did you think I would just let you walk away?" Rusty yelled, shaking him like a child. He squeezed Grieves' neck even harder feeling the rubbery hardness of his collarbone against his fist.

"Just leave me alone," Grieves muttered, no sign of fear in his voice.

"You hit me, you freak!" Rusty kicked once at Grieves' leg, but missed. He tried again clumsily.

Grieves' eyes grew dark and narrowed.

"You're the freak, Redfield! You're the fucked up psychotic! Made a last minute deal with the cops and had them send
me
away instead of
you
. Killed Ludd in cold blood. And I used to think you were a
friend
?" Rusty was paralyzed by the anger and pain that spilled from Grieves like blood gushing from a torn artery. Yet he stood there, knees shaking, holding the sweaty form of his former friend pressed against the knife edge of the guardrail, fully prepared to listen to everything he had to say. He felt feverish.
What could he do now?

Grieves continued "Everything you touch turns to shit, Redfield. Your friends. Your wife. Your career. You gonna kill me now? Grind me into kitchen scraps? Go ahead! Go ahead!" With that, Grieves spit in Rusty's face.

All the anger was gone now out of Rusty's tensed frame, but there was a smoldering malice in his eyes that warned Grieves. He released him and wiped his face with his sleeve. Grieves raised himself slightly but seemed to have lost the will to run.

Rusty looked around the lot, saw an older man not fifty feet away, dressed like a maintenance worker, turn slowly and detour around them. His only expression, boredom. Rusty lowered his voice. "You believe what you want.  But I thought you, of all people, would be smart enough to know a frame up when you saw one."

"Don't con me, remember, I was your partner. You're goin' down! And you know it. And when they find you a nice cozy cell, say hi to the boys from me. They'll show you a good time, Rusty. A
real
good time." With that, Grieves drew back slightly, then kicked upwards, connecting with Rusty's groin. Rusty dropped back, bending over instinctively with the pain, an ache that was growing like a shock wave out from his testicles and up into the pit of his stomach. Grieves rolled backwards over the guardrail, landed on the ground, then hunched over and ran for the stream of traffic beyond the egress ramp. Rusty followed, feeling useless - bunched over and breathing hard.

:

Rusty hit the steel guardrail low, cutting his right shin deeply, and was thrown violently to the pavement by his own momentum. He looked up at Grieves who had by now put about thirty yards between them. He pulled himself up, uncoiling from the knot of sick white-hot pain that seemed to spread through his arms and legs.

Grieves dodged left, heading between the honking vehicles. Rusty heard brakes screeching and rubber on pavement. Grieves continued to scurry around the moving cars. Rusty picked himself up then raced at an angle to Grieves' retreat, hoping to cut him off. His leg throbbed with each step. Then Grieves dodged right this time and darted into an alleyway.

Rusty was barely to the edge of the traffic, which was closing in the gaps created by the departing form of Grieves, who in his torn filthy coat looked like a man escaping his own imagined demons. Rusty waded through the traffic haltingly, catching his breath. He felt sure that despite Grieves' lead, the overweight programmer would tire quickly. And the alley led in only one direction, the river. From there he could only go in one of two directions, along the bank upstream or down.

Rusty reached the mouth of the alley and looked down the dark canyon. There was no movement, no form recognizable as human. He ran carefully down the center, his feet splashing in the discolored pools, which collected where the pavement was rutted or broken. He scanned the sides of the alley, a wall of old crumbling brick, wet cardboard, drooping electrical cabling and broken crates.

Grieves had dissolved into the chaos of lumber and dust. When Rusty reached the end of the alley, he spun to the south along the cluttered riverbank and realized his error. The riverside was covered with overgrown willow and river oak, a home for street people and unclassified dumping.

Grieves could be hiding in a thousand holes, a hundred deserted car bodies. Rusty had lost him again.

She could hear the random clicking of the keyboard keys; the sound filtered through the heavy bedroom floor beams.  She didn't even have to look at the clock radio to know it was after midnight.  Pulling on her bathrobe Ivy quietly made her way down the dark hardwood stairs.  Karl Kozak, one orange-tinged hand holding a cigarette, was staring into the blue-green glow from the computer monitor.

"I didn't hear you come in,” she said quietly. Without turning away, he answered.

"Braintree called a meeting after shift close. Sorry. Didn't want to wake you."

"How did it go today?" Her voice had lowered slightly, almost to a whisper. He squeezed his lips, a particle of tobacco from his home-rolled cigarette on the tip of his tongue. He shrugged. "As they say, the universe is unfolding as it should". She meant his heart. His doctor told him he needs to avoid stress. But how do you do that when you’re a Homicide detective?  He was like her father; the type who could ignore pain and discomfort and act like nothing out of the usual was happening.  Her father was a long distance truck driver who had died on a
lonely stretch of highway out on the prairies - from an appendicitis attack.  For her, a bad cold
made her feel like life wasn't worth going on with.

"Has Greg left yet?"  She moved behind him, kneaded his bony shoulder with her fingers.  He leaned back into it but refused to take his eyes off the screen. She noticed he needed a trim. Getting him to a barber was as tough as getting him to his first check-up in a decade. The one that started everything.

"I'm still fighting with Braintree over the trip."

"What are you working on?" He looked back at her sharply, surprised by her interest.

"You really want to know?" Ivy nodded, continued with her massage.

"Maybe I can help you solve this case so you'll come to bed with me," she said.

He pointed to a line of text, one of a screen full of short sentences. "These are my notes on the Ludd murder."

"I thought that was closed?"

"Not to me."

"My
Clint Eastwood
." She kissed the top of his head.

"Redfield's lawyer made a big case in court out of the air-conditioning being on in Ludd's car when we found him. That started me thinking. Imagine you drive about a dozen blocks to the President’s Club. It's a warm evening. The sun is shining so you turn on the air. Then you arrive at the parking lot. You wait. You're in the shade. You sit there for twenty minutes or so - with the air-conditioning on full-blast. When Greg and I got there it was a warm night, but I was wearing a coat and I didn't find it that uncomfortable. And to sit in the car for twenty minutes with the air on full blast with the windows rolled up?"

"The papers say he was an eccentric."             

"Don't believe everything you read in the papers. There's more. Now ... someone shows up. Rusty Redfield. And he gets in the back seat?"

"Because he wants to garret poor Ludd."

"Right. But all the doors are locked. His car had automatic door locks. I checked with a dealer. If the car is running and you put it in gear,
kachunk
. Locked."

Ivy stopped the massage and rubbed her own fingers together. She had a touch of arthritis in both. "So the murderer walks up, the doors are locked. Ludd unlocks them. But
not
for the back seat.
Not
for an ex-employee that Ludd probably doesn't trust. Right?"

"You think like me, Ivy dear. That's a scary thought."

"You rub off on a gal." She pulled up a wooden side chair and sat close on his right. The warm glow of the screen lit up her long white hair. Though almost sixty, she still had the eyes of a young girl. Eager and innocent still.

Koz flipped the page on the screen. "Now if
two people
walked up to Ludd's car that night it would have been perfectly natural to let the second one into the back seat."

Ivy turned to him.  "Ahhhh ... the mystery guest."

"That's assuming that Redfield was one of them." She looked surprised. "Don't look at me that way," he said. "I know what you're thinking."

Ivy pushed the chair back and stood, let her nightgown open for a brief second to expose one tiny breast, then pulled it back tightly around her waist. She smiled. "I'm going back to bed. Are you coming?" Kozak turned from the computer then back to her.  "I'll be up in a minute," he answered. Her smile dissolved.

"That's one of those COMPUTER minutes, right? What are they now, about an hour in human time?" At the door she stopped. "By the way, your friend Mooring did another report on the trial tonight. She definitely comes from the
Broad Stroke School of the Television News
. If you're not sure about Redfield maybe you should plant a bug in her ear." Kozak looked off across the room in thought for a moment. She wasn't sure if he was thinking about coming to bed with her or mulling over her question. "By the way," she said "What about the air?"

He answered automatically. "If you were Ludd, drove into the parking lot, stopped, and then were attacked right away - you wouldn't have time to turn down the air. That would explain the temperature in the car. But if you sat and waited for more than a few minutes, you'd shut it off.  That's what McEwan was getting to. Dimbrowsky has the timing all wrong. Whoever killed Ludd was someone who was already in the car when he arrived at the President’s Club. Sitting in the back seat. The only question is
who
?"