Waiting (24 page)

Authors: Frank M. Robinson

BOOK: Waiting

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He must have been afraid of this strange animal and the curious things it did, more afraid than he was of the big cats or the protowolves that hunted in packs. The new creature was more dangerous than all of them.

Artie smiled at the old chimp staring back at him. He was probably very much like that patriarch of long ago. Now he was too old and too slow to fight for mates and most likely considered himself fortunate to be in a zoo where old age might be a problem but not survival itself, and where the zoo veterinarian gave him odd-tasting stuff to ward off the chills he occasionally felt and where the keepers might save a particularly juicy piece of meat for him that was easy to eat because he had long since lost most of his teeth.

he might trade it all for a real forest, monkey … .

Artie suddenly felt sweaty and frightened. He glanced quickly around. There was nobody there, at least nobody he could see. He was alone in the middle of an almost deserted zoo and suddenly imagined all the cage doors swinging open to leave the animals free to roam the walks and buildings. What better place to be hunted than in a zoo?

take another look … .

Artie turned back to the island and caught his breath. The old chimp had disappeared and in its place was a naked man sitting on his haunches at the moat’s edge, his eyes dull and only casually curious. It took a moment before Artie realized he was looking at himself.

your future home, monkey
…

Artie waited, but there was nothing more in his mind than the sound of raucous laughter. It faded and he was looking at the elderly chimp again, slowly scratching itself and turning away from the fence to amble back to the center of the island. The middle-aged woman—probably a schoolteacher—and the teenager were now at the far side of the enclosure, staring at the little group on the rocks.

It was almost dusk now and all he wanted was to get the hell out of there. He’d sent the cameraman over to the Primate Center to get some close-ups of some of the monkeys on Jerry’s list of endangered species, but it was time to go; he didn’t dare stay longer. Connie would want to know just what they had shot, but he’d draw up a list for her back at the office. At least she’d be pleased with the tiger.

Besides, he had more important things to think about than a television series. He’d try Susan’s phone number once again, hoping against hope that the disconnect message had been a mistake. She might even have called him; she’d have to sooner or later. And maybe Mark had checked in.

Wishful thinking, but that was all that was left to him.

He was suffering from terminal frustration, Artie thought. He was in the middle of a conspiracy that nobody but him and Mitch even realized existed, and if he tried to tell somebody, they’d think he was nuts. He had to try to stay alive and find his family—and work on the series as if nothing was happening around him.

He glanced at his watch. He’d check again with the police, then he’d call Mitch and they’d pay Charlie Allen a visit. Charlie knew everything about everybody.

Maybe he even knew where Cathy Shea was hiding.

“Anything I can get
you guys? More coffee, soda, some cake? Franny made a chocolate one for the kids—it was Nathan’s birthday today and chocolate’s his favorite.”

Artie settled back on the living room sofa and shot a glance at Mitch in the big easy chair, concentrating on his coffee and trying to ignore Charlie Allen overdoing his role as host.

“We were thinking about Larry and Cathy,” Artie said. “You were closer to Larry than we were. We wondered if there was anything you remembered about him that might be relevant.”

Charlie looked confused. “Relevant to what? His murder? I told Schuler everything I knew. It wasn’t much—no more than you guys know.” He cut into his slice of cake. “Somebody cut him down in the city and I’ve no idea why. He was a sweetheart; he didn’t have any enemies.”

“What about Cathy?” Mitch asked.

“What about her?” Charlie washed down a bite of cake with a sip of coffee and leaned back in the chair by his desk, the inner man temporarily satisfied. “Cathy was a goddamned saint, if you ask me. Took care of Larry and the kids like nobody else, believe me.”

Franny was almost a shadow in the room, filling their coffee cups and murmuring offers of more cake, then sitting on the edge of the chair by the doorway, ready to fly into the kitchen at the slightest indication of hunger or thirst.

“Cathy have relatives here in town? Anyplace where she might have gone with the kids?” Mitch was doing his best to cut to the chase.

Charlie shook his head. “Nobody in the Bay Area, not that I know of. A cousin in San Luis Obispo, another in Seattle. Think she was an only kid—both parents died in a car accident about ten years ago.”

“Any close friends?” Mitch asked.

“Aside from everybody associated with the Club? Hell, I don’t know. Probably the parents of some of her kids’ school friends—I think she was active in the PTA.”

“Any lovers?” Mitch asked it as if it were the most natural question in the world.

Charlie looked from one to the other, frowning. “Something going on that I don’t know about? Why do you want to know stuff like that?”

He was irritated more by the idea that he might have been left out of the loop than by anything else. Mitch tried to soothe him.

“We’re just trying to figure out where she might have gone. She’s the only one who might have some information that could lead to Larry’s killer.”

Charlie concentrated on his cake. “That was one happy marriage, Mitch. She idolized Larry.”

It was Artie who caught Franny’s expression, the slightly sour look of disapproval that fled across her face to disappear into the rolls of happy fat that framed it.

“What do you think, Franny?”

She looked surprised and faintly annoyed at being caught out. “Oh, I agree with Charlie. Completely. She was very committed to her family. But …” She let it dangle out there, a worm on a conversational hook.

Mitch leaned forward in his chair, looking at her over the top of his glasses, clinically curious. “But what, Franny?”

A wave of the hand. “Nothing, really.”

She wanted it teased out of her, Artie thought. She wanted to be encouraged to damn with faint praise and vomit twenty years of resentment all over the living room floor. Franny had been a member of the Club when it started, then had married Charlie early on and vanished into her family. She would still show up at occasional parties, though never at meetings. She hadn’t cared for the other women in the Club and never bothered to hide her opinion that they were all a bunch of elitists.

Charlie stared at her in surprised silence and Mitch, and Artie let the silence grow. Franny turned to her husband.

“Come on, Charlie. You remember how Cathy used to flirt with every man who came to our parties? She toned it down after she got married, but she still did it.”

The jealousy flickered in her eyes like flames while she glanced from one to another searching for encouragement that wasn’t there. She shrugged and began to backpedal. “It really wasn’t anything serious. I suspect most of you weren’t aware of it at all. But the other women were.”

He
had
been aware of it, Artie thought, though he never would have called it flirting. Cathy was the type of woman whom men found easy to talk to, even to confide in. She didn’t represent a threat to any happy marriage, but if you were in an unhappy one, you would have been drawn to her. Not that anything would have happened. Cathy drank too much at parties and she liked to kiss all the men good night and sometimes, the kisses were really sloppy, depending on how much she’d had to drink. If you couldn’t avoid it, you made a joke of it. Larry never noticed, or he’d spent so many years deliberately not noticing that he’d become genuinely oblivious to it.

The typical suburban housewife’s night out: You knew instinctively when to avoid her at the door and nobody held it against her afterward. It rated the same as Charlie’s occasional belch at the dinner table.

Franny was up and busy with the coffeepot to cover her own embarrassment. “I’m sure she never meant anything by it.”

“No, I’m sure she didn’t,” Mitch murmured. Charlie looked slightly put out and Artie made a big thing about changing his mind over the cake. Give Franny a chance to excel at the things she was good at, rather than regretting that she hadn’t been the belle of the ball like Cathy.

But still, there was something there.

When Franny had left the room on a mercy errand to get more cake, Artie said tactfully; “Anything you can remember about the early years with Cathy …” If there was anything to be found, it would be early on. There wouldn’t be many surprises in the later years.

Charlie waved at the shelf of notebooks about the Club. “Hell, it’s all in there. You’re free to look through them.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin.

“I’ll flip through the early ones and pick out those that include anything about her. I don’t remember much, but there may be something. Tell you what—I’ll put those copies aside and take them down to the library. You can pick them up there.”

If Charlie pulled more than a dozen, it would take longer than one night to go through them, Artie thought. But any information on Cathy’s background might be useful.

He forced himself to eat another slice of cake and sit through half an hour more of start-and-stop conversation with an unhappy Franny sitting silent and sullen in the corner. Then Mitch yawned and Artie muttered something about early-morning work on the series.

Outside, on the porch, Charlie closed the door firmly behind him, looked faintly uneasy, and coughed. Mitch tried to anticipate him.

“I don’t blame Franny, I can see—”

Charlie said, “It’s not about Franny. She’s a little on the jealous side, always has been. I take it as a compliment. It’s about Nathan.”

Nathan was the eight-year-old boy, Artie remembered. Quiet kid, a little on the chubby side, like his father.

Mitch was all professional calm. “Something wrong, Charlie?”

Allen took a breath. “He’s been playing with matches.”

“Normal enough, nothing serious. Just talk to him—”

“I have. Three times now. We had to call the fire department the last time. He started a fire in the basement—two of them, actually: a pile of rags soaked in kerosene beneath the bottom of the stairs, another by the water heater and the gas line. The firemen said they were very … workmanlike.”

“You sure it was Nathan?”

Charlie was looking progressively more unhappy. “We caught him a couple of times before, in the kitchen and in his own room. Little fires, easy to put out. But the firemen said we found these just in time.”

Artie could feel the hair stir on the nape of his neck. Nathan hadn’t thought of it all by himself. He’d had help. If the house had gone up and Charlie and the family with it, somehow Nathan would have survived and confessed and once again it would have been murder by proxy.

But why Charlie? He didn’t know a damned thing.

Mitch clapped Charlie on the back and said briskly, “Call me at the office tomorrow—we’ll make an appointment for the boy.”

The consummate professional, Artie thought with a trace of irritation. Levin was friend and clinician, but seldom both at the same time.

CHAPTER 18

They spent that night
at the Ritz-Carlton on Stockton and Artie dimly remembered taking an est seminar in the building. What had it looked like back then? He couldn’t remember and there was little about the building now to remind him; the renovation had been very thorough.

“A little rich for my blood, Mitch.”

Mitch loosened his tie and dropped his coat on a chair.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. We’re getting it for half—the manager’s a former patient of mine.”

Artie ran his fingers over the pillow; both beds had already been turned down.

“You’re ethically challenged, Mitch, but I accept.”

“I said ‘former,’ Artie. I try to discourage it, but sometimes you end up sounding like you’re being unfriendly. If I were still counseling him, I would have rejected it automatically.” He pulled the curtains; there wasn’t much of a view: Chinatown and the towers of the business district. “If we’re going to have to hide out, might as well do it in style. He recommended room service, by the way—offered to put it on his tab.”

The alarm bells started ringing in Artie’s head. “How well do you know him?”

“Well enough not to worry.”

Would Mitch trust his friend with his life? Artie wondered. But that was a little like asking how far he and Connie would trust Hirschfield. The station manager seemed reliable, but that’s where the crunch came. You really couldn’t be sure of anybody. Mitch ought to know that. It wasn’t a case of better-the-people-you-knew-than-the-people-you-didn’t-know. It didn’t matter if you knew them or not; the only thing safe to assume was that you didn’t know them. Not really.

“What did you think of Franny?”

Mitch was leafing through the room-service menu and didn’t bother looking up.

“Aside from the fact that she’s a bitch? I felt sorry for her—she’s been holding it in all these years and tonight was the first chance she had to vent. She’s not going to be a happy woman to live with for the next few days. Charlie didn’t give her any support at all.”

“Maybe he made it with Cathy Deutsch, too.” It was still hard for him to connect the sexy Cathy Deutsch of his youth with suburban housewife Cathy. Shea, Larry’s widow and mother of two young boys. Artie yawned and stretched out on his bed, flicking on the TV with the remote but keeping the sound low. “What about Nathan?”

“He was set up. I’ll get the kid alone and ask him why he did it and I’ll be lucky if he even knows what I’m talking about.”

“And the two times before last?”

“Normal playing around. Ordinarily he’d forget all about it. Our Hound picked it up from the kid’s mind and saw a way he could use it.”

Artie was halfway through a baked potato with the works and a small filet when he remembered the question that had worried him at Charlie Allen’s house.

“Why would Charlie be in danger? He never saw Larry’s research.”

Mitch wiped his mouth and took a sip of chardonnay. “Think, Artie: Why did we go to see Charlie in the first place?”

Levin was playing the role of intelligence officer talking down to a subordinate, and Artie resented it. Mitch had been a top interrogator in ’Nam, and on more than one occasion Artie had looked on with a mix of admiration and horror as Mitch worked on a prisoner. At such times he’d had to struggle to remain friends with Mitch, to remind himself that it was war and a lot of lives depended on Mitch’s skill.

“Come on, Mitch—to find out about Cathy Shea.”

“Because we think she knows something that would shed some light on Larry’s murder, right? Because she probably knew what Larry was working on, knew that he intended to publish it. Because she was the last one we personally know who saw Larry alive. She may know who our Hound is, Artie, might even have been friends with him—or her—at one time without realizing it. And Charlie Allen knows more about all of us than we do about ourselves—I’m willing to take his word on that. Poor Charlie has his memories and his diaries and could very well know too much—or know where to look for it. He probably doesn’t give a damn, but that’s beside the point.”

He couldn’t deny that Levin had a good sense of summary, Artie thought, but he resented having to play Dr. Watson to Mitch’s Holmes. He set the trays and dirty dishes out in the hallway, then double-locked the door and stripped to his shorts for bed. He channel-surfed for a few minutes, then tossed the remote over to Mitch. He started to doze, the aftermath of a good meal, and made a mental note to tell Mitch to thank his friend.

Mitch finally flicked off the tube and Artie was alone in the darkness, thinking of Mark and Susan and what they might be doing now. He was sitting on his ass waiting for Susan to call him, and that was a mistake. He should try to find out where she had gone, talk it out in person …

There was no noise at all in the room except for the murmur of the ventilation system and the muffled sounds of the city outside. With the drapes drawn, it was pitch black and Artie let his mind drift, then turned over and tugged on the blanket to cover his ear. The one mystery story that had left an indelible impression on him when he was a kid was one where the murderer killed his victims by pouring hot lead into their ears while they slept.

He’d never forgotten it.

The cold was numbing
just beyond the mouth of the cave and the small night fire that Deep Wood was tending. The spirits of the dead were twinkling in the evening sky, and as Artie watched, he saw one of them flash across the blackness and disappear just over the trees that lined the other side of the river. One of the spirits returning to the earth to be reborn as who knew what? One of the giant bears that lived deep in the forest, maybe a beaver, maybe even a wolf.

He remembered the wolves that came around and watched him from just outside the ring of firelight, their eyes gleaming in the dark. He imagined that the spirits of the dead were looking at him through the eyes of the wolves, and when he told White Beard what he thought, the chief had nodded wisely and said, of course that was so.

There was one particular wolf who came quite often to sit just beyond the firelight, a huge male with a dirty white coat and black splotches on its muzzle. It stared at him with intelligent eyes, and lately Artie had taken to throwing it small pieces of meat, which it would grab out of midair: Artie wondered how close he could get to it without it biting him. There was a dim picture in the back of his head of the wolf standing where he was in the mouth of the cave, howling whenever danger approached and being rewarded with more chunks of meat.

But that was a foolish thought. Why would any animal from the forest want to protect them? It could get all the meat it wanted on its own.

The wind had picked up strength now and was howling through the branches of the trees and making the fire spirits dance as they ate the twigs and leaves Deep Wood fed them. Deep Wood was afraid of the dark, and Artie caught images in his mind of monsters hiding in the gloom, ready to pounce on him. They were marvelously inventive monsters and Artie felt an occasional flicker of fear himself, then shrugged it off.

White Beard had said the reindeer would be passing through in two more risings of the sun and they had already picked out where they would drive them, a small cliff with a thirty-foot drop, but not so steep that members of the Tribe couldn’t scramble down the face and butcher their dead or crippled prey. There would be no problem in preserving the meat. They’d stack it outside the cave, away from the fire, and it would keep frozen until the sun lingered longer in the sky and the blue and. yellow flowers dotted the valleys again. They would, of course, have to mount guard to keep away the wolves and the big cats.

White Beard had warned that the Flat Faces might follow the reindeer and if they did, then the hunt would be very dangerous. There were enough reindeer to feed many tribes but the Flat Faces acted as if the reindeer belonged to them, though Artie couldn’t imagine the Flat Faces eating them all.

He shivered and wrapped his furs tighter around his chest, letting the fire keep his backside warm. The furs reminded him of what Clear Stream had gotten from one of the Flat Faces she met fishing in a small river nearby.

The Flat Face had shown some interest in a cutter she had and traded her several very thin strips of hide and a slender length of bone with a point at one end and a hole at the other. You forced the point through two furs, then pushed one of the thin strips through the hole. When you pulled on the bone the thin strip slid through both furs and you could tie them together. Clear Stream had demonstrated on the skins that Artie wore, tying together several pieces so they wouldn’t fall off his shoulders. The Flat Faces had been good for something after all.

He shifted around so he was standing in front of the fire and could feel the warmth on his face and hands. It was a cloudless night, the sun’s pale companion just a hand’s-width above the top of the trees. It was almost time to wake Tall Tree to take over guarding the cave mouth and keep Deep Wood from falling asleep despite his fearsome monsters.

But first he wanted to spend a little more time staring up into the night sky and wondering how the spirits traveled to the inky blackness overhead after their ashes had been returned to the Mother of Waters. But it must be easy for them; there were so many up there. He yawned and moved closer to the fire, shivering. The wind had shifted once again, blowing off the huge river of ice that crept through the mountains two marches away. He was puzzled why White Beard insisted the Tribe live here, when they had all heard of pleasant meadows where the sun traveled higher in the sky and stayed there longer.

It was more marches away than they could count, White Beard had said. And none of the other Tribe members seemed anxious to leave, to make a journey to places they had never seen but had only heard about and that might hold unimaginable dangers.

There was a sudden hooting in the forest across the river and Artie tensed. White Beard had warned that the Flat Faces constantly watched them, that sometimes when it was dark and they heard hooting it was actually the Flat Faces talking to one another.

But there was no more noise, only the crackling of the fire and the usual sounds of the forest. Artie turned and walked to the corner of the cave where Tall Tree was sleeping and kicked him in the rump. It took two more kicks before he was awake and stumbling toward the cave entrance.

Artie watched for a moment to make sure he didn’t go back to his furs, then crept to his side of the cave, his mind alive with the dream images from those around him. Some were fighting off bears and wolves as they slept; others, especially those of the boys, were exciting in a different way. He crawled under his own sleeping furs, stiffening for a moment when he felt somebody else there. He recognized Soft Skin by her smell and pulled her closer to him, cursing the thin strips of hide that knotted the skins around his chest and waist. But it took only seconds to slip out of them and a moment later he felt her breath upon his face. He sighed with pleasure and let his hands dance over her breasts and slide down her stomach and between her legs.

It was very good to be alive, he thought. The spirits were watching overhead, the fire was blazing at the mouth of the cave, he had a full belly, and the hunt would begin as soon as the sun awoke. Soft Skin was moving steadily beneath him now and he could feel his own excitement build.

Somewhere in the cave a baby cried and Artie could hear the shushing sound of its mother. He could feel the rough surface of the cave floor beneath the furs and smell the air thick with the odors of a hundred meals and the assorted stinks of the other members of the Tribe. Just beyond the cavern’s mouth he knew there were creatures who could tear him in two or delight in eating him while he was still alive.

But if he lived twice as many winters as White Beard had, he knew life would never be much better than it was right then.

“Let’s go, Artie.”
Somebody was shaking him by the shoulder, and it took a moment for Artie to wake up. Another visit with the Tribe, but this time no killing, no slaughter by the river’s edge. It had been much more like the dreams he used to have with Susan beside him in bed, then he realized that Soft Skin had been far too real and his shorts were sticking to him. Jesus, that hadn’t happened to him since he’d been a kid.

Susan had been gone for … how long now?

Mitch was already dressed and pacing nervously by the window.

“What’s up?”

“We’re going to have to get out of here. Right now, no time for breakfast.”

Artie sat on the edge of the bed, blinking the sleep out of his eyes and feeling sudden alarm growing inside.

“Why the hurry?”

“I checked my calls—Schuler phoned in at seven-thirty. He wants to see both of us as soon as possible.”

“They found Pace and Anya?”

Mitch shook his head. “Don’t think so. Said he’d meet us at an address in the Upper Haight.”

“You ask him what about?”