The Angel Maker - 2 (23 page)

it had been several days since Boldt had played, and he took to it hungrily, tuning all else out. His pager-switched off-his holstered weapon, his shield and his wallet all occupied a leathery heap by the glass of milk that Bear occasionally refreshed on his way back from the bar.

The investigation would occasionally surface, like a prairie dog lifting its head from its lair, but Boldt would send it into retreat with the stomp of a foot or the stabbing of a dissonant note.

Bear disappeared sometime during the marathon. Boldt didn't look to see what time it was. He heard the phone ring several times, glad it wasn't his. A while later, needing the bathroom and unable to use the club's because of the dark, he found his way upstairs. Bear was asleep in front of the television. With that much pot in him he wouldn't be worth trying to awaken and put to bed, so Boldt left him.

He was back at the piano and into one of his better renditions of "All The Things You Are" when he detected movement out of the corner of his eye.

He turned to see Liz standing in the darkness. Like him, she had entered through the back door. Arms crossed, she observed him solemnly, in quiet contemplation. No telling how long she might have been there: Liz was not one to interrupt his playing. "Bad day," he offered. "They happen," she reminded.

A wind moved through the room carrying the scent of her with it.

Perhaps this was what had stopped him in the first place. She smelled gorgeous. She explained, "We need you, Miles and I. We need you even when you feel like this-especially when you feel like this. I worried. I was picturing a hotel room. Something like that."

"Not likely."

"But possible. Anything is possible. Have I let you down? Have you let me down? Can I blame it on your work? Can I blame it on you? I want to. I try to./I "I miss the music, that's all. I miss you more, you and Einstein. Where is he?"

"Emma is pulling emergency duty." Their neighbor. She pinch-hit when they needed her. "You don't get it, do you?" she asked.

"Maybe not."

"I love you." When he failed to reply she added, "I want to be your piano. I want to be the one you turn to when you feel like this. I want to be the one to help."

"You do.

It's not you, it's me," he said. "It's both of us. It always is."

"I screwed up a surveillance this afternoon."

"Do you see what this stuff does to you?"

"Please."

"But do you? He's killing you, too. He is! And me and Miles.

What about your son? I hate this. It's as if we never worked any of this out. But we did, once."

"I love this work. I live to stop guys like this."

"But when you don't? Look at you."

He glanced at the piano. "This is the other me."

"No, Lou: This is the same you. I won't give you permission to love your work more than your family." "Who said anything about that?" ,,I did.,, "I'm talking about me."

"You never talk about you.

That's one of our problems."

"One of our problems?"

"Things are far from perfect," she advised him.

There was a spider in one of the spotlights, searching its web for food, seemingly supported by nothing. Boldt felt like that at times: alone, hanging by a thread, caught at the focal point of all that heat. "People die. You see enough of it, it makes you think. "Shit happens," she said. She was angry. "Do you wish I hadn't signed back up?"

"I wish you were happy. You're not. Not with me. Not with yourself. I want to understand that. I want to help."

"Do you want me to quit?"

"Do you?"

"I will."

"You need an excuse? I'll give you one if you want."

Sometimes she knew him better than he knew himself. Boldt shifted on the bench. "Maybe there's a way to balance the two."

"Which two?" Was she asking about Daphne? Was she haunted by that? "Music and work. Friends and family. Work and family."

She forced a smile. "Honesty is a good place to start. "I love you," he said. "I need some evidence, Sergeant."

He stood, crossed the room, and offered his arms. She folded into him naturally and wrapped around him like a vine. "More evidence," she said, and he hugged her tighter. He slipped his hand inside her skirt and cupped a buttock. She purred. Her hair caught in his unshaved face. it tickled. "I'll try to be there for you."

"Me too."

"It's hard," she said. "That's because it hasn't felt you this close in a while." That made her laugh, which was good. "We need more laughter."

"We need a lot of things," she said softly into his shoulder, and giggled self-consciously.

It felt fresh, wonderfully fresh, as if he had never touched her before. Each movement of hers, each probe, carried a tingling electricity. She pulled out his shirttail; her hands felt hot on his skin. She was fully off the floor, hanging off him. Her lips smeared him with lipstick, her smell invaded him.

He groped for the door, stumbling with her along as baggage.

She unfastened his belt-how he wasn't sure-and went for the button to his pants. He kicked out the door's stopper. She threw the bolt, as if they had practiced this.

She refused to be let down, clinging to him like Miles.

Giggling playfully. His pants fell down around his knees and he staggered. "No," she protested, as he tried to lower her onto a bar stool. "No," again when he aimed for a table. As he limped around waiting for approval, she lifted her skirt into a ruffle and tugged on her underwear, but with her legs clasped around him in a straddle, they weren't going anywhere. "Damn," she gasped urgently, charging him with excitement. The room was dark and strangely hot. He felt like a klutz, scanning the room for somewhere to satisfy her. She felt anxious, alive, nervous, hungry.

She hung off him, head lowered back, her lacy chest exposed from an unbuttoned blouse. She pointed like a lookout on the bow. He leaned his head down, took her bra in his teeth and tugged until he freed her breast which he sought with his lips.

He found her, and she gasped as much from surprise as pleasure.

He felt her heat pressed against him, and it drove him to an impatient frenzy. He was about to drop her, she was so far cantilevered off him. Her legs gripped him like a vise. He found the other breast and went after it with his tongue. She cried out. Her legs gripped even tighter and she worked herself against him in an unmistakable motion. "Oh, God!" she said in a way that called for him. "Down," she commanded.

He lowered her onto the piano bench, her head dangling off the far end, her skirt gathered at her waist. He jumped-fell--out of his khakis. She struggled free of her last barrier with an ambitious bend of the knee. Her scent overwhelmed him, and he lost any sense of their surroundings. It was just them. joined.

Athletic and driven toward fulfillment. Wild. She coached with sharp cries of approval and overactive hips. An elbow smacked the keys and sounded a dissonant chord.

Red light from an EXIT sign. Her hair stretched like spilled water toward the floor. He could see darkness down her throat as she laughed a pleasure ridden, gutteral laugh. He had been a long time waiting to hear that laugh again.

He warned her, and she liked that. "Wait ... wait ... " she pleaded. "I can't," he cautioned. What started as another of those laughs gave way to him and ended with the sharp sounding of satisfaction, loud and honest. Honest as anything she ever said to him. Honest in a way he lived to- hear.

For a long time her head hung limp, her chest rose and fell toward recovery. With some effort she managed to look up, holding onto him so he wouldn't move. Wouldn't leave her. Her face was a glorious red, her eyes filled with wonder, hope and promise.

She took him by the hair and pulled him to her. She whispered in a husky voice, "We've gotta get a piano."

A homicide. Boldt had been to too many to count, but each was different, each sickened his stomach. It was something you never got used to, and if you did, then it was time to change departments. A human life. So precious when you saw it taken away. So ugly a sight, a murdered human; so different from a mere dead body. The first dead body he had ever seen had been his grandfather's. He wasn't supposed to see it. He had been told not to go upstairs, but he had sneaked up while his father poured his mother a drink from his grandfather's bar. Dead on the bathroom floor his pajamas down around his knees. Eyes open and squinting. Little Lou Boldt had dared to touch him, and when he did, the man's entire body jumped as if he were hooked up to electricity. Boldt had run from that room blindly, screaming, "He's alive! He's alive!" Dead bodies still terrified him.

He had to park out on the asphalt. They had taped off the sandy road hoping the Professor's boys might lift some tire or shoe impressions. But with this rain, it was unlikely. Things washed away pretty quickly. Boldt crossed a spongy fairway. A weird place for a homicide, a golf course. The guys hadn't touched the body. They were still doing photographs when Boldt reached them. The back of the station wagon was open. Connie Chi was wearing relatively new shoes by the look of the soles. Her underwear had snagged on the right shoe. Both ankles were tied to opposite ends of an umbrella, spreading her legs.

Sadness washed through him, replaced a few seconds later by an intense and unforgiving anger. "Sexual assault for sure," the Professor's sidekick told him-Boldt had forgotten the man's name, "though Dixie will have to confirm it."

"Where is Dixie?" Boldt asked. "On his way. Be here any minute."

Boldt looked in at her. Naked from the waist down. Hands tied with plastic grocery bags, spreading her arms open like Jesus on the cross. Tied to the back seat door handles. He glanced just once at the head. A car flare was thrust deeply into her mouth, sticking out like a cigar. The phosphorous had burned a white hole through her throat. No blood at all. just an ugly two-inch hole.

The other guy said, "Doing her Groucho imitation." Trying to be funny. There was always a tendency toward humor around crime scenes.

Boldt got away from there quickly, over to the bushes in case he puked. He'd been away for two years-his stomach had forgotten about this. Fifteen years earlier he would have been embarrassed to puke; now, he wished he would, just to make himself feel better.

He wanted to think that some monster had done this to her all by himself. But the inescapable feeling was that he, too, was responsible. He and his crew had blown the surveillance. He and his crew had made their interest in Connie Chi apparent. They had marked her. "Over here," one of the Professor's boys hollered.

Boldt and some others joined him. At the end of the man's Bic pen was a spent condom and a blue wrapper. Looked pretty fresh.

One of the others said, "A place like this, the bushes are probably full of one finger gloves. You want it, Sarge?" he asked Boldt, inquiring if it should be collected and marked as evidence. "I want everything," Boldt replied in a voice that cracked. I want her back alive, he felt like saying. I want a second chance at that gas station surveillance. He could picture himself running alongside the van, his hand on the door handle-he could feel it. He could see that finger lock the door before he got it open. He could see the van pull away into traffic. "We're looking for animal hairs-white animal hairs.

Carpet fibers. Fingerprints."

"Prints are out. The vehicle is wiped clean," -one of the technicians called out.

In an authoritative voice that rang with anger Boldt ordered,

"Don't forget to check under the back seat. He may have folded the back seat down at some point. He may not have remembered to wipe it down." Had this guy thought of everything? "And get someone from Sexual Assaults down here. I want the rape angle treated just as carefully as if she had survived. This is a hell of a lot more than ..." He caught himself. The entire group of maybe ten guys, including the uniforms, were looking at him. Staring at him. Only then did he realize he was crying.

Crying buckets.

Only then did he wish he had never come back at all.

Donnie Maybeck entered the First Avenue storefront that advertised "Peep Show $1." Inside, behind a black velvet curtain, a row of well-used nickelodeons showed endless-loop adult videos. Loners, who smelled bad and couldn't keep their hands from shaking, pressed their faces to the viewing lens, squinting. Donnie thought that if someone had been running a camera in the back of his van when he had knocked those runaways or when he'd jumped Connie that he'd be a porno star by now. Donnie Does Debbie. Live Healthy: Eat A Vegetable. He could see the titles now. Worthless dirt bags, these guys. They should all be zoomed.

The one behind the counter was called Bogs. He had a tattoo of a skull on his left cheek, and he chewed gum so fast he sounded like a dog eating. Bogs knew everything and everyone. When the word had reached Donnie that Bogs wanted to buzz, Donnie had made tracks to the shop.

Donnie said, "Hey," because that was how Bogs said hello. You had to know these things.

Bogs said, "Hey," though his mouth never stopped chewing. "I hear you got a C-note for me."

"The laptop?" Donnie shouted it. He couldn't control himself.

"What the fuck do you think?" The man winked slowly at him. His right eyelid was tattooed with the word

"Fuck." When he winked his left eye, Donnie read "You." He repeated the sequence proudly fuck YOU-just in case Donnie had missed it. Donnie could see this guy doing this into a mirror, reading the words backwards, smiling, chewing his gum. Probably chewed gum in his sleep. "You got the scratch?" he asked Donnie.

Donnie dug into his pocket and withdrew Tegg's money. He hated to see it go.

Bogs said, "I ain't promising you it's yours, you know. I got no way to know if it's yours."

Donnie realized he should have split the reward into two payments. He hated it when he did stupid things like that. He said, "If it's not mine, I'm coming back for the scratch."

"A Toshiba, right?"

Donnie answered this with a nod. "Young kid, dark hair?"

Another nod. "It's yours." Bogs pocketed the money. "North side of Pine between First and Second, just up from the market.