Pariah

by Thomas Zigal

  They performed her exotic rituals the way he remembered them, as if the ceremonial oils and incantations were preparation for some sacrificial act. But as their lovemaking slowly unfurled, he couldn’t rid his mind of the letters and their crude suggestions. He felt trapped in someone else’s fantasies, his rhythms ruled by a force larger than his own will. Nicole whispered encouragement, goaded him on, a hoarse sigh in his ear. This was how she liked it, she said, and they writhed on her scented sheets with a frightening abandon. Deep in the throes of their passion, at the moment she rubbed his finger against her wetness and moaned, he had an eerie feeling they were being watched.

  Afterward they lay entwined like broken branches, her hand resting warmly on his belly. The room was overheated from the fire and he could smell their sweat mixed with an aroma of jasmine and piñon. As her nails raked sleepily through the wet hair below his navel, he could feel the cool gold band she had shown him earlier. Take the ring back you unfaithful bitch, one of the letters had said. My finger has rotted and it wont fit me now. Wear it to your own grave.

  “The ring,” he said, his lungs laboring in the heavy air. “It can’t be the same one.”

  She raised her fingers to look at it. Her hand glowed like a pink shell, backlit by the fire. “It’s the same one,” she said in a quiet voice, studying the yin-yang symbols.

  “Did you actually see it on his finger? After—you know—after the undertaker had prepared him for the casket?”

  She shook her head back and forth across the pillow. “They stole his body right out of the funeral home. I didn’t have a chance to see him at all.”

  Members of the band. Roadies, groupies, hangers-on. Legend had it that they’d cremated his body in Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. No one was ever prosecuted for the ghoulish crime.

  “There’s your answer,” Kurt said. “Somebody pocketed the ring as a souvenir before they…” He hesitated, struggling to express himself tactfully.

  “Before they set his body on fire out in the fucking desert,” she said, slipping off the ring to examine it closely. “I have no idea why I’ve been wearing the goddamned thing.”

  She hurled the ring at the fireplace. There was a thump against the hearth screen. “Hold me, Kurt,” she said, burying her face in his neck. “I’m having trouble keeping myself together. Those letters have got me spooked.”

  He held her close, listening to the hiss of the fire. In their long, exhausted silence he could feel the tension leaving her body as she slowly settled into sleep. “Whatever happened to her?” he asked, giving Nicole a slight squeeze.

  She seemed startled by the sound of his voice. Her eyes struggled to open. “Who?” she groaned, lifting her chin from his shoulder.

  “Pariah,” he said. “Where is she now?”

  Nicole inhaled, the air whistling in her nostrils. “God knows,” she said. “OD’d or found Jesus, like all the rest of them.”

  “You haven’t heard from her in all these years?”

  She closed her eyes and burrowed into him, her face pressed against his jugular. “No, darling, I haven’t,” she mumbled. “Not a single Christmas card. Now can we please go to sleep?”

  He lay still for a long time, her body curled against him, warm and smooth and smelling like a rare flower. As the firelight faded and the air grew cooler, the room seemed to contract around them, shrinking the distance between shadows. He thought he could hear someone speaking softly in another part of the house and wondered if the bedroom door was locked. He wanted that pistol in the drawer to be closer at hand.

  He had no idea how long he’d been asleep when the wind woke him, a fierce howl high in the rafters. The glass doors had swung open and an icy gale was sweeping the room, billowing the overhead canopy like a sail. Snow swirled around them, rocking the bed as if it were a small bark in a winter squall. Kurt sat up quickly. The terrace doors were banging like loose storm shutters. There was a human silhouette on the deck, long tendrils of hair whirling in the wind. Rocky, he said, is it you? The figure watched them silently, ominously, his robe rippling in the frozen moonlight. Or was it a woman standing out there? Come in, Kurt said, leaning over the sleeping Nicole for the Beretta in the drawer. Let’s finish this once and for all.

  “Kurt,” she said. “Wake up, darling.” She was shaking him, drawing his head to her bosom. “You’re having a nightmare.”

  He was lying beside her in a pool of sweat. There was no gun in his hand. The terrace doors were shut tightly, the room untouched by the storm outside.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, kissing his forehead. “You were talking in your sleep.”

  He pulled away from her and got out of bed and walked naked to the glass doors. The carpet was dry under his footsteps. When he tested the door handles, they were locked securely. He peered out onto the dark deck at an unblemished layer of snow. There were no tracks of any kind.

  “What’s the matter, Kurt?”

  “I thought I saw someone out there.”

  She propped herself on an elbow. “Come back to bed,” she said. “You were dreaming.”

  He returned to the chair where he’d discarded his tuxedo and found his watch. It was two A.M. “I’m sorry, Nickie,” he said, “I’ve got to go. My ex is bringing Lennon back home early in the morning.”

  It was a lie, but not the first one he’d ever told her. His son wasn’t coming home until Sunday morning.

  “Convenient,” she said tersely. Kurt had never stayed with her until daylight. He wondered if any man had.

  “I’ll call you around lunchtime and we can talk more about the letters,” he said, slipping on his trousers. “Let me see what I can dig up.”

  He needed to puzzle this thing out. It wasn’t going to be an easy investigation. He suspected that eventually he would have to turn everything over to the FBI.

  Nicole rose and found her robe. She helped him button the studs on his starched shirt. “I suppose there’s no point in trying to entice you to stay a little longer,” she said, kissing him gently on the chin.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “Call me before two o’clock,” she said. “I have a meeting with my brothers. The boring quarterly family foundation meeting.”

  He was surprised that she was involved in such matters. At one time her family had disowned her.

  “Decisions, decisions,” she said, reading the bewilderment in his face. “Father made it so my vote counts, too. They can’t piss away all the money unless I let them.”

  She held the tuxedo jacket while he settled his arms into the sleeves. “The Menendez brothers,” he said, glancing at her hall door. “Are they live-in help?”

  She nodded. “I’ll wake Kyle. He’ll take you home.”

  “Do they have security experience? I can assign one of my deputies to watch your house.”

  “The boys take good care of me. They’re better than they look.”

  In their final embrace he felt the soft contours of her breasts and thought he must be insane to walk out on this woman and into the cold night.

  “You said his name in your sleep,” she whispered close to his ear.

  “Who?”

  “You know who,” she said in a cautious voice, as if someone might be listening. “You were shouting his name.”

  “It was just a bad dream,” he said. “Rocky is dead, Nicole. He didn’t write those letters.”

  She kissed him one last time. “I’ll be waiting for your call,” she said.

  Chapter four

  When Kurt trod down the steps to the parking circle he found Kyle slouched against the limousine in a half-conscious state of sleep deprivation. The young driver had traded his uniform for a quilted down parka and battered hiking boots, and he’d tucked his long blond hair into a fleece ski cap. Kurt’s appearance seemed to startle him awake. With a grudging sense of duty he opened the back door for his passenger, but Kurt walked on past him and opened the front door for himself. “Why don’t we get acquainted,” he suggested
.

  “This time of night I’m all out of party chat,” Kyle grumbled.

  On the dark mountain road curving down from Starwood to McLain Flats, the limo crept along at twenty-five miles an hour, its high beams like searchlights sweeping the snowy night. Either Kyle was a very cautious driver or he was seriously stoned.

  “You gonna drive like this all the way to Aspen?”

  “We’re in their world now,” Kyle said, breaking his sullen silence.

  “We’re intruders here. This is their hour.”

  Kurt looked out the tinted side glass. “Don’t tell me you’re expecting a UFO,” he said.

  “The animals, man. God’s creatures. This is when they cross the road and we slaughter them. The highways are a bloody holocaust.”

  Where had Nicole found this young loon?

  “How long have you been working for Miz Bauer?” Kurt asked, lowering his voice to what he hoped was a sedative level.

  “Since the spring,” Kyle said, his eyes swollen from sleep.

  “What did you do before this? Besides sawing down fences to free the elk.”

  Kyle glanced sidelong at him, then back to the road. “Mostly carpenter work and some gardening,” he said.

  Nicole’s armed chauffeur-bodyguard was apparently a converted yard boy. If she feared for her safety, why hadn’t she hired professional security? They were easy enough to find. Every wannabe vip in Aspen employed a knuckle-dragger with a neck full of steroids to trail him around the slopes.

  “So why the hardware under your jacket?” Kurt asked. He wondered if the live-in help knew about the letters.

  “When that wigged-out chick with the knife broke into the place, it freaked her.” He studied Kurt’s reflection in the windshield. “It’s a sick world out here. She likes extra protection. You ought to know.”

  An uneasy silence lingered between them for the next two miles of darkness. They passed the lurking shadow of Red Butte and turned off Cemetery Lane, coasting like a long soundless cutter toward the bridge over Castle Creek. The snow clouds had drifted southward and silver threads of moonlight glimmered through the rushing water.

  “What about Lyle?” Kurt said after the long interval. “What’s he do besides answer the door and hang up coats?”

  Kyle slowed the limousine for the dramatic curve onto Main Street, Aspen. “He’s handy with a wok,” he said, offering Kurt a nasty little smile. “Maybe you ought to ask him. He’s been at her service longer than I have.”

  Kurt wondered if either young man was capable of sending those letters to Nicole. They had access to her private domain; they may have even shared her bed. That would certainly explain the intimate sexual descriptions. But why would an overpaid, underqualified employee do something to jeopardize such a posh gig? Anger, jealousy, revenge? Blackmail? Or maybe one of them got his rocks off on the dirty talk. Kurt intended to run a background check on Kyle and Lyle as soon as he could sit down at a department computer.

  “Looks like you got something cooking tonight, Sheriff,” Kyle said.

  Kurt turned to the driver and dropped his voice even deeper, saying, “Listen, Kyle,” prepared to threaten him physically if he mentioned to a living soul what time he’d left Nicole’s bedroom. Then he saw the police lights swirling in the dark street ahead and realized that the young man had meant something else.

  “It’s that sushi bar,” Kyle said. “Might have yourself a grease fire.”

  A flashing Aspen police cruiser was parked in front of the establishment, an old Main Street home remodeled into an upscale restaurant with Japanese decor and tatami seating. Kyle pulled the limousine over to the curb as a Pitkin County Sheriff’s unit sped past. The vehicle skidded to a halt behind the police cruiser, and two of Kurt’s deputies, Muffin Brown and Joey Florio, leaped out with weapons drawn and raced toward the bright entrance. Kurt could see two municipal cops squatting behind a snow-laced hedge that ran the length of the original front porch.

  The burglar alarm was ringing. Someone had broken in.

  “I’m getting out,” Kurt said, opening the limo door to the frigid night air. He stepped onto the frozen pavement and then ducked his head back inside. “Kyle, I’m sure Miz Bauer has given you strict instructions about her privacy,” he said.

  There it was again, that nasty little smile. “I know the rules, Sheriff,” the driver said. “Tonight never happened.”

  Kurt straightened his shoulders and stared at him. The young man had delivered that line before. Other nights, other limo rides in the snow.

  “We’ll talk again,” Kurt said.

  “It could get to be a habit,” Kyle said with a mock salute. “Adios, chief.”

  Kurt waited for the limousine to edge off into the darkness, then hurried across the street to the Pitco unit. He used his master key on the trunk, where a spare twelve-gauge shotgun was latched into a safety holder. Pumping a shell into the chamber, he jogged toward the restaurant with his head low. Deputy Florio and an Aspen cop had forced open the front door and three officers were inside now, but there were no shouts or audible voices, only the alarm ringing above the eerie silence.

  “Kurt, is that you?”

  Muffin Brown crouched by the door with her Glock raised, a sheriff’s department cap tucked tightly over her brow. She watched him lumber up the steps and slide to his knees next to the long picture window.

  “Hey, must’ve been a bitchin’ party,” she said sarcastically.

  He looked down at his clothes. The striped tuxedo pants were visible below his herringbone overcoat. The rented patent leather shoes gleamed under the restaurant burglar lights.

  “What’s the situation?” he asked.

  “Broken window in the rear. The surveillance cameras picked up movement in the kitchen area.”

  “Still in there after all this noise?”

  “Only one way to find out,” she said.

  Knees bent, scuttling like a crab in sand, she led the way into the dim interior. He followed her past the hostess station and through a dining room where straw mats were spread around floor-level tables. Kurt had only been here on one occasion, a birthday party last year with friends.

  Muffin signaled him to halt, and they crawled behind a liquor bar while she spoke quietly into her walkie-talkie. “Joey, come in. Where are you, man?”

  The radio squawked. “Kitchen doors,” the voice responded. “Sounds like he’s tearing up the place.”

  Kurt could hear Muffin’s shallow breathing. “Some asshole on angel dust,” she said to him.

  They moved swiftly through the darkness until they spotted flashlight beams crisscrossing in the rear of the building. The three officers were stationed near a pair of swinging doors that led into the kitchen.

  “Police! ” shouted a burly redheaded cop Kurt recognized as Mike Marley from the Aspen force. “We know you’re in there! Give it up and come on out where we can see you!”

  There was a commotion of crashing pots and pans. Marley stood up and flattened his wide back against the wall next to the swinging doors, gripping his .38 with both hands. “Cover me,” he said to the others. “I’ll kick the door.”

  “Hold on, Mike!” Kurt said, slipping to the other side of the doors with the shotgun braced across his chest. He had caught a whiff of something and it wasn’t raw fish. At least not in any palatable form.

  “Recognize that lovely smell?” He turned to Muffin, who was down on one knee fifteen feet away with her Glock 9 aimed at the doors.

  She sniffed the air, considered, and sniffed again, like a connoisseur with a wine cork. “Eww, god, yes,” she said.

  Kurt laughed. He knew that smell too.

  Inside the kitchen something heavy and metallic banged to the floor. They could hear a liquid leaking like a slow dribbling faucet. Kurt slowly nudged open the door with his knee and peeped in. Thirty feet away, under pale burglar lighting, the black bear raised its head from an overturned bucket of slop and stared back at him. It had made a mess of everyt
hing in view.

  “Pretty good-sized female,” he said. “Two-fifty, two-eighty.”

  Muffin slipped up behind him and peered around his shoulder. “Holy bear scat,” she said. “It’s eating all the sushi.”

  “Maybe we ought to put a couple of rounds in her before she totals the place,” Marley said, scratching his huge, moon-shaped face.

  “Relax, Mike,” Kurt said. “We’ll take care of it from here.”

  Technically this restaurant resided in the municipal jurisdiction, but Kurt knew that Marley and his partner, city cops, had no experience with bears. For the past two years there had been a rash of black bear sightings in the Aspen area and Kurt’s department had assisted the Colorado Department of Wildlife rangers on several occasions. This was the first bear to break into an Aspen restaurant. The lure of raw fish must have been overwhelming.

  “Joey, who’s on duty in the squad room?” he asked the deputy hiding behind a service cart. All he could see of the man’s face were his bushy black eyebrows below the bill of his cap.

  “Linda Ríos,” Joey called out.

  “Radio her and tell her to bring the Cap-Chur rifle. Pronto.”

  The bear had entered the kitchen through a window above a large industrial sink. Glass shards and fragments of wood frame were scattered over the aluminum sideboard and the tile floor. A shelf of cooking pots had been pulled over and a tray cart lay upended near the Hobart dishwasher.

  “A sushi-eating bear,” Marley said, shaking his head. “Wonder if it drives a Volvo?”

  Everyone had bunched together at the swinging doors, trying to see the bear without venturing inside the kitchen. She ignored them and shoved her nose deeper into the slop bucket.

  “Muffin,” Kurt said to the young deputy stepping on his toes. “Get on the horn to Rick Keating and tell him to bring a cage.”

  Keating was a tall, lanky, agreeable dow ranger who lived in Woody Creek, five miles north of Aspen. It was nearly three A.M., but he could always be counted on to show up within half an hour of a bear call, day or night.