SUSPENSE THRILLERS-A Boxed Set (62 page)

Well, fuck. Maybe everyone had a burden. Shadow did. He did. Everyone had someone who weighed him down and anchored him to Earth so he couldn't fly, he couldn't breathe, he couldn't live.

He parked and sat looking across the street at the neon sign of the Blue Boa. He had to go in easy and check for the cop first. He prayed he wasn't there. He really wanted to see the woman who might be the city's next big serial murderer. There was something special about her, he knew that, felt some kinship with whatever it was that was special, but he couldn't put a name to it. Except that they both carried someone else on their backs, he didn't know what the connection was.

Unless it was murder. He hoped it was murder. He couldn't wait to try his hand at poison. Stan said the victims had Warfarin in their stomachs. Luckily Son had a box of it at home for the disposal of rats.

How convenient.

~*~

Shadow discovered Charlene after frantically searching the house, calling for her. It was early morning and she was tired, and at first she thought Charlene had wandered from the house, or she had been abducted or something. But then she found the cat dead on the dresser, and she knew her friend had freaked.

Shadow opened the closet door and there Charlene sat, eyes wide, staring. “C'mon, come out of there, Charlene. Let me help you.” She reached down and took the other woman's hand to lift her from the floor. She pulled and Charlene came to her feet.

“I couldn't find my cat,” Charlene said in a small voice.

“I'm sorry about the cat. I should have closed the door to my room when I left.”

She guided Charlene down the hall to her bedroom and had her sit on the bed. She went to her knees and removed her friend's cotton slippers. “Aren't you hot in that sweater? Let me take it off you.” She removed the garment and dropped it on the floor. Charlene smelled of fear-sweat. How long had she been hiding in the closet? “No need to get into a gown tonight. Just lie back on the bed, get under the sheet.”

“Voices,” Charlene said. “Repeating stuff in my head.” She touched her forehead and closed her eyes.

Shadow looked down at her, sad, tired, worried that things were getting worse and there was nothing she could do about it. “Try to rest,” she said.

“I can't. The voices won't let me.”

Shadow sighed. She sat on the bed and took Charlene's hand. “Look, I'll get another kitten. It's going to be all right.”

Charlene's eyes opened and her gaze fastened on Shadow. “I don't want another kitty,” she said. “They die. They just die.”

“Why don't I call the hospital tomorrow and see if the doctor will prescribe something for you?”

Charlene turned her head aside on the pillow. She stared at the wall. “I don't care.”

“You're alone too much. Maybe I'll stop working so many nights. We don't need the money. I'll stay with you more, would you like that?”

“I don't care.”

“Oh, Charlene. Please try to fight off these spells. Please? I'm doing my best to take care of us. I don't know what else to do to help you.”

“I used to hear everyone's story,” Charlene said, veering into the landscape inside her mind. “I used to remember everything so if a woman had shock treatment, I could tell her about her life. Now I can't remember things. I can't remember things.”

“Did you take those Valium I got for you from work?”

Charlene nodded. “I can't remember.”

Did she or didn't she, Shadow wondered. “If you'd take those, they'd help you.”

“Those men . . .”

Shadow waited, holding her breath. She didn't really want to talk about the men. She didn't know how to stop her friend from thinking about them. As for herself, all thoughts of them left when they slipped beneath the bay water.

“. . . they talk to me . . .”

Shadow shut her eyes now. She heard that click-click-click of the bicycle chain slipping, slipping gears, slipping her away.

“. . . they are very angry with you . . .”

There was a time when I was happy.

“. . . they talk all the time and say how wrong it is they had to die . . .”

There was a time when my children were babies. Snuggly, warm, held close to my chest while I rocked them. There were times . . .

“. . . I wish they hadn't died too. If they were alive. . .”

. . . when life was sane and real and average. When I shopped at the supermarket for the week's groceries, when I sat on the floor and read from books to the boys . . .

“. . . I wouldn't hear them in my head now . . .”

. . . and their laughter, when I bathed them, the two of them splashing the bath water above their heads, holding a washcloth in little hands, wetting it and then slapping it on their hair, pretending to wash . . .

Charlene was asleep. Her hand limp, fingers splayed, in Shadow's hand. The moonlight snaked a path across the foot of her bed, to lie across bare feet. A water pipe gurgled somewhere in the house, in the walls.

Shadow slipped back and found herself still sitting on Charlene's bed in the dark of the night. She stood, feeling disoriented, and left the room. She needed to sleep. She needed to forget about Charlene's troubles and forget about . . . about . . . everything. It would all look brighter in the morning. It always did.

Twenty-Seven

Samson worked the streets after the sun set. He showed around the photos of the victims, but no one remembered seeing them. Or if they did, they wouldn't say.

Samson knew there had to be a connection between the killings and the Montrose area. He found Big Mac in McDonald's and sat in the booth opposite her. He ordered a large coffee, wishing there was some whiskey in it.

“I'm hitting dead ends,” he said.

“New case?” She bit into a Big Mac, squirting the special sauce all over her hands.

“Yeah, what might be some serial killings.”

“Down here?” She spoke around a mouthful of hamburger.

“They didn't happen down here, at least we don't think so. The bodies were dumped in Galveston Bay and they keep coming in around Seabrook and Kemah. The channel down there, or shrimpers, hauls them in.”

“But you're looking here, in Montrose, for something?”

“The victims, all men, were known to habituate this part of town. Some of them liked the club scene.”

“Habituate? Is that Harvard talk for ‘hung around?’”

Samson grinned. “Yeah. They hung around down here. But no one remembers seeing them.”

“Show me the pictures.” She took the last bite of the hamburger and fastidiously wiped the fingers of both hands on a napkin.

Samson pulled the photos from inside his sports-jacket pocket. He tossed them on the table. They spread out across the varnished wood. Mac pulled them with a forefinger one at a time toward her, checking the faces. “I don't remember them either. You sure they hung out here?”

“Relatives and acquaintances said they were last heard of when they headed this way.”

“That don't mean they hung out. Means they visited, maybe just that one time. Sounds funny, though.”

Samson thought it over. “You may be right. Maybe they didn't make a big habit of coming to the clubs. Maybe each one of them happened to come here the night they died. That would explain why the street doesn't remember them.”

“Now this one . . .” Mac stabbed her finger at one of the pictures. She had casually perused all the photos and then drew one off by itself.

“Yeah?” Samson leaned over the table to see which victim she meant. It was the first poison victim. “You saw him?”

“Can't be sure. This guy's fat? Hefty, big in the shoulders?”

“Yeah, he was.”

“Was. Right. Food for worms now. Anyway, I'm not real sure, but something about how big he is, I remember. It's been a while.”

“Think, Mac. Where were you when you think you might have seen him?”

“Hell, it was during the time I was coming down hard with that pneumonia. I was feverish. But still . . .” She studied the picture. “He sure looks familiar. I might've just seen him walking along the sidewalk . . .”

“Where, Mac? Near what club?”

Mac grabbed her drink and sucked on the straw. Samson didn't want to push her, the memory might retreat. He waited, sipping his coffee.

A gay couple took a table next to them. They held hands across the table and stared dreamily into one another's eyes. Samson thought one of them was downright pretty—thick black lashes, dark eyes, smooth jaw. The thought didn't disturb him. Some men's attractiveness crossed gender and could be appealing to male and female alike, not that he ever talked about things like that to the guys at the station. He brought his attention back to Mac, who slurped the drink down to the ice.

“Chez Tigress?” she said.

“You're not sure.”

“I can't be sure. It was a while ago, I told you, and I was sick.”

Samson noted the victim's name and the club name next to it on his notepad. “What about now, how are you feeling? Looks like your appetite is back.”

She smiled a little, showing a missing incisor. “I took all my medicine. I feel like a hundred bucks.”

Samson smiled. “I'm glad to hear that. Think anymore about my offer?”

“What, move in with you? I'm old enough to be your mother. Our sex life would be dull donkey droppings.”

Now he laughed and the gay couple looked over. “The offer was for housing, not a love affair, Mac.”

She methodically picked up all the litter from the table and arranged it on the tray. “I'm okay,” she said. “I'm fine now.”

“But this heat . . .”

“I wander ‘round the Kroger's when I get too hot. They got the best air conditioning in town. And they also got cheese and cracker samples sometimes. Great snacks for a light lunch.” She stood with the tray. Samson pocketed the photographs and stood with her, coffee in hand.

“If you change your mind . . .”

“I know how to reach you, yeah, I know. Now get outta my way, I'm a busy woman.” She shouldered past him, dumped the tray, and put the empty in a stack. He followed her out the door and onto the street. The heat, even at night, was oppressive. It enclosed the body like a sheet directly from the clothes dryer. Mac went around back of the restaurant, heading for the dumpster where she had left the shopping cart.

Samson strolled down the sidewalk to the Chez Tigress. He had to show the photos around some more. Then later he might catch Shadow at the Blue Boa. If he didn't stop thinking about her, he'd never get this case on its feet. She dominated his thoughts too much. Or else he was too goddamn horny. Or both.

Probably both.

~*~

Son befriended the bum at the same time Samson and Mac shared a table at McDonald's no more than five blocks away.

“What's your angle, mister?” the bum wanted to know. Son had offered to give him a bottle of wine he had stashed in his car.

“Since when would you want to be suspicious of free booze? I just thought since you answered some of the research questions for my book, I'd repay you. It's good wine. Not that cheap shit you've been drinking.” Actually, it really wasn't bad wine. He had found some strong red wine from the California vineyards, took it home from the liquor store, carefully removed the cork, and added enough rat poison to gag a maggot. It meant he had had to pour some of the good wine out down the kitchen drain, but it was all for a good cause.

He had been nervous, though, at home with Mother, trying to add poison to the wine. He kept thinking she had made her way from the bedroom to the kitchen and might be watching him. He couldn't stop looking over his shoulder to catch her there, spying. When he was busy being a copycat, paranoia was his best friend.

“I guess I'll take it then,” the bum said from the side of his mouth. “I ain't too good to turn down a free drink.”

Son thought the man must have had a stroke recently. Or some kind of nerve damage to the left side of his face. When he talked, the words formed with half his lips in motion, half his facial muscles. He was ready for the undertaker, no one would miss him.

He wore a set of mismatched pants and jacket, a shirt with holes in it, and his shoes had seen much better days. Son found him in an alley, sitting on a blue upturned milk-carton crate. Drinking. Swaying. Ripe for the picking.

“I'll go get it,” Son said. “Don't go anywhere.”

“Where'd I wanna go, the Ritz Carlton?”

Son found his car and drove it to the alley. He doused the lights as soon as he saw the bum on the crate. He exited the car with the bottle of wine, holding it by the neck aloft and before him, a gift for a friend.

“See you been sipping on this one,” the bum said, holding the bottle up to measure its content level. “You ain't got no disease, do ya?”

“What do you care?” As soon as he'd said it, Son wished he hadn't. His disgust had gotten the better of him. He wanted this repellent human piece of garbage dead. He wanted him to hurry and drink the wine so he could watch how he died.

“Hey, I'm human, ain't I? I got worries too. There's all kinda shit people got today. I don't wanna catch none of it.”

“No, I don't have a disease. I didn't drink from the bottle anyway. I poured out a half glass at home, that's all. Of course, if you don't want it . . .” He moved to take the bottle back.

The bum jerked the bottle near his chest. “I want it, I just don't wanna drink no slobber in my wine, that's all. Why doncha sit down? You make me nervous standing over me like that.”

Son relaxed. He looked around, found a cardboard box that was empty and clean, flattened it, and sat next to the man. With his knees up in front of him, he didn't know what to do with his hands. He wrapped his arms around his knees, hugging them. In his eyes anticipation danced like fairy elves on Hallow's Eve. This was going to be interesting. They shouldn't be interrupted. The alley was dark, unlit by streetlights, unappetizing for anyone but the bum. Moonlight hit one side of the alleyway, the side they sat on. Democratic, it lay a strip of silver over wall and garbage cans alike. In the moonlight Son could see pretty well, now his vision had adjusted.

“You want the first slug?”

Son looked at the poisoned wine and shook his head. “It's yours. I don't even drink much.”