Voodoo Moon

by Ed Gorman

  I stood up. "I'd better go see about setting up an appointment with Dr. Williams."

  "You're not scared?"

  "Of what?"

  "Of just confronting him, I guess."

  "No. Not really. I'm more curious than anything. I want to find out if Paul Renard is alive."

  "God, if he is," she said, "this is going to be some show."

  I tried hard not to notice that she hadn't mentioned Laura as yet today. Maybe she was temporarily cried out. We all get that way around death. But she had changed. Subtly, true. But unmistakably.

  She was going away. And I guess I understood it, how the celebrity had hooked her and all, but I felt lonely nonetheless. I missed the troubled but relatively simple young woman she'd once been. Maybe I wanted her to remain part child so I could remain part child, too, the oddly protective but youthful part of me—the silly part—she'd always brought out in me in our first affair. Maybe she was growing up and I resented it.

  She stopped talking abruptly, putting her hands to her face and then shaking her head as if something had just shocked her. "My God, will you listen to me? My sister's dead and all I can do is blather on about myself." She looked at me and said, "I loved her."

  "I know you did."

  "Oh, God, Robert, look what I've become."

  "People don't always go into hysterics when somebody dies. Maybe you're just in denial."

  "You'd think I could at least mention her fucking name once in a while."

  "You're doing fine."

  She was pacing in little circles. Frantic. Crazed. So many thoughts and feelings bombarding her. "Don't you think I should at least cry?"

  "You'll cry later. There's no timetable."

  "Or scream? Or throw things?"

  "Maybe a drink would be better."

  "And you know the worst thing?"

  "What?"

  "I keep worrying about the show. Here my sister's dead—my sister who raised me—and I'm worrying about the show. Isn't that incredible? I can't fucking believe myself sometimes."

  F. Scott Fitzgerald said that when he went to visit his father for the last time, he was deeply moved by the man's suffering—and yet a part of Fitzgerald's brain, he later admitted in his notebooks, was wondering how he was going to write this scene in a novel.

  I suppose we're all capable of being distracted that way. Maybe it's just another form of denial. One more wall to put up against the terrible truth.

  She said, "I'm such a cold-hearted bitch, Robert. I really am."

  My role here was to agree with her. Being a gallant kind of guy, I said, "No, you're not. You're a warm, loving woman and you know it."

  "Oh, God," she said, and now the tears came full and hard as she flung herself rather dramatically into my arms, "Oh, God, I hope you're right, Robert!"

  But I had to wonder who the tears were for—her sister or herself and the realization that she really had lost something valuable in her rush to become a star.

  I sat in the car reading the note Emily Cunningham had affixed to my windshield.

  You need to talk to Claire in the attic. Ask her to get you the baby picture. She'll know what you mean. Sandy told me about this.

  There was no signature.

  And just how was I supposed to get to Claire-in-the-attic? It was unlikely her parents would let me go upstairs and visit their daughter.

  I took out my cell phone and called the number on the card Iris Rutledge gave me earlier. Iris answered the phone herself.

  "I got a strange note from Sandy's friend Emily Cunningham."

  "I'm happy for you, Mr. Payne."

  "You talk to her?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "I don't suppose you'd tell me what you talked about?"

  "I certainly wouldn't."

  "She tell you about the baby picture?"

  Pause. "What do you make of it?"

  "I don't know."

  "Neither do I, actually." Pause. "She said that Sandy used to watch Claire when her parents would drive over to Cedar Rapids for the day. She said Sandy told her she'd seen something very weird one day."

  "The baby picture?"

  "Right."

  "What was so weird about it?"

  "All Sandy said was, 'I've seen that before.'"

  "That same picture?"

  "I guess so. Emily wasn't sure. She said she was over at Sandy's and her dad came along to pick her up and take her home. She said Sandy never talked to her about it again."

  "'The same baby picture.' I don't understand."

  "That's all Emily knows, Mr. Payne."

  "But she did say that Claire would understand?"

  "Yes."

  "So Claire does speak sometimes?"

  "That's my understanding."

  "I got the impression that she never speaks."

  "Her parents are strange people. Especially her stepfather. And those snakes of his. I hate snakes."

  "Me, too."

  "I've got to get ready for a client, Mr. Payne. Good luck to you."

  I got in my car and drove out to Claire's house.

  FOUR

  It was a two-story frame corner house with the kind of junky garage behind that seemed common in this area. Isolated from its neighbors by half a block on both sides. The garage doors hung awkwardly, seeming about ready to fall off. The backyard was littered with pop cans and beer cans and paper scraps, as well as some gray clumps that might have been boxes that had collapsed when they were left out in the rain. A defeated-looking dog dragged himself from one end of his cage to the other. He barked once but it was a pathetic performance. You could see where somebody had tried to scrape dog poop off the front sidewalk. Maybe they were going to have a party.

  The garage was empty.

  So their car was gone and I had to make a decision. Should I risk trying to get inside, upstairs to where Claire rocked back and forth and sat silhouetted in the attic window?

  The baby picture.

  Claire might be the only one who could help me with that.

  I got out of the car and started across the sidewalk. Three kids on the tricycles sat two doors down, watching me and whispering to each other. I waved to them. They didn't wave back. I didn't blame them. Earthmen should never humble themselves by waving at Martians.

  No sounds from inside as I mounted the three paint-shorn steps. I walked across the age-slanted porch and knocked on the screen door. I angled my ear to the door. No sounds from inside, either.

  The shellacked pine door behind the screen door was relatively new. As was the lock mechanism. It was a cheap one.

  "Hey," somebody said, and I spun around, scared. I'd been so involved in appraising the lock—seeing how much trouble it represented—that the voice had startled me.

  "Hey," I said back.

  The mailman was chunky and gray-sideburned and suntanned.

  His near-empty bag said he was near the end of his route.

  "Nice day," he said. "Sure hope this keeps up. Maybe we can slide by until December."

  "Wouldn't that be nice?"

  He jammed the mail into the rusted black box on the pillar connecting porch floor with porch ceiling.

  Then, "Be even nicer if the Hawks'd have a good season."

  "Sure would."

  He was suspicious of me, of course. The babble was meant to cover his suspicion.

  I said, "Doesn't look like they're home."

  "I had to drop an overnight package off here this morning. Said they were going to look at a new car this afternoon. Their other one's falling apart."

  Still looking at me. Judging me. Still very suspicious.

  I faced him and walked to the front of the porch. "Guess I'll stop back later."

  We both heard it. Claire's cry. The exotic call of a forlorn night bird.

  "Poor gal," he said. "I went to high school with her."

  "You did, huh?"

  He smiled. "Had a crush on her then—and even after she came back from nursing school. She sure was pre
tty back in those days. But of course Paul Renard took her away from me."

  "You knew Renard pretty well?"

  "Hell, no. He wouldn't spend any time with somebody like me."

  "But you knew Claire?" I wasn't sure why that was especially interesting. But it was.

  "Almost everybody knows everybody else in a town like this. And Claire was a real beauty."

  I had to finish the charade.

  I came down off the steps and walked with him to the sidewalk.

  "She went to nursing school?"

  "Yep. Worked with her mom out there. The bughouse, I mean."

  Another cry.

  He looked up at the attic window. "You'd think they'd be used to it by now."

  "Who?"

  "The people on the route. The neighbors around here."

  "Oh."

  "They say her voice still gives them shivers. All the little kids think she's a witch." He nodded to the tricycle trio down the block. "Those kids think she's a Martian."

  I laughed. "Well, they're a little more creative than other kids their age." Then, "Well, see you," I said.

  I walked back to my car and drove off.

  I parked two blocks away and came back up the alley.

  The garages in the neighborhood, like the houses, were old, sagging. The alley floor was gravel.

  A woman hanging out her wash on a clothesline waved, apparently mistaking me for somebody else. A pigtailed little girl jumping rope stopped abruptly to watch me. And a young sweet-faced collie growled proudly at me as I passed her backyard.

  When I reached the backyard of the Giles house, I moved quickly to the screened-in back porch.

  Amazingly tidy, given everything that surrounded it. Twelve packs of empty Pepsi cans stacked neatly in one corner; an old divan tucked in another; even a small, thrumming refrigerator for cold beer and pop.

  The back-door lock wasn't any more troublesome than the front-door lock would have been.

  I carry a number of Burglar's Helpers. That's what this cop I knew used to call them. Open most any kind of lock, most any-time I care to. Superman should have such power.

  I got inside. The cat stench was an acid physical presence. Two litter boxes sat next to an ancient white stove. The boxes hadn't been emptied in some time. A small cat with pinkeye looked up at me, lost and heartbreaking. Even from here, I could see the fleas.

  I had to move quickly.

  Kitchen. Dining room. Living room. Cramped and junky, each. Stairway.

  I went up the enclosed stairs between the swollen slabbed walls that were still rough and unpainted long years after being plastered into place.

  I came to a landing.

  The second floor was a junk room. Sort of what the attic probably should have been.

  Dusty boxes, the dust already playing hell with my sinuses; coat trees; three table-model TVs that apparently hadn't worked for a long time; two large steamer trunks, neither with gay travel stickers on it; a set of twenty-year-old supermarket encyclopedias; and little girls' things—dolls that wet, dolls that talked, dolls that sang, dolls that went at least number one and maybe even number two, two single beds, a giant Mickey Mouse, a Schwinn ten-speed, high school pennants, and an array of framed photos of a very beautiful young woman at various ages. Claire, I was sure.

  No wonder the mailman had had a crush on her. She wasn't the obvious sexpot or the shy honor-roll beauty. Instead, there was a simple and clean beauty to her face and slender body that grew more imposing and fetching the longer you studied them. And there was the sorrow, too.

  From the youngest shots to the oldest—which I marked at about age twenty—there was a somber quality to the blue eyes and small but erotic mouth. The older she got, the more pronounced the sorrow became. In the later shots, the inherent grief of her eyes belied her sensual charm, made her look older and more severe than she should have.

  I sneezed. And felt for a moment like my dear friend Inspector Clouseau, as played by the late Peter Sellers. Certainly, sneezing should be a part of everybody's stealth equipment.

  There was a short staircase at the far end of the second floor. This no doubt led to the attic.

  The boards creaked even though I walked on tiptoe. Given my sneeze and the squeaking boards, all I needed was a trombone to announce my presence.

  The interior of the enclosed stairs held four steps.

  I stood at the base of them, listening.

  A fey song, an off-key ballad of some kind, sad and sweet at the same time. The voice singing it was barely a whisper, so fragile it was heartbreaking and more than a little unnerving with its hint of madness. The Ophelia scene every actress longs to play.

  I crept up the steps one at a time, pushing out at both walls for balance.

  The door was padlocked. Big-ass Yale lock.

  I tried very hard not to sneeze. I managed to swallow it down.

  I put my ear to the small and dusty door. Claustrophobia was starting to fill my chest, increase my heartbeat. The enclosure was small. Buried alive. The day was suddenly sunless.

  I listened.

  Chains. Singing. And then, without warning, weeping.

  And then the rocking chair squawking back and forth.

  No more singing.

  Rocking chair now. And violent weeping. But all of it done quietly, warped somehow, like a soundtrack played in slow motion.

  Drugs. That was what I was hearing. She'd been sedated. She wanted to scream at full voice but couldn't. Didn't have the energy or quite the focus. Drugs took care of that.

  I knocked gently. "Let me help you, Claire." Not much more than a whisper.

  Rocking. Weeping. As if she hadn't heard me whisper at all.

  "Claire. Please let me help you."

  Rocking and weeping suddenly stopped.

  "Is that you?"

  I had no idea who she was talking about, but I had nothing to lose playing along. "Yes."

  "You're really back?" Getting excited now. Happy.

  "I'm really back. So I can help you."

  "Oh, Lord, thank you so much for answering my prayers."

  The rocking chair squeaking as she stood up. A long and ragged sigh. "Oh, I don't want you to see me this way. After all these years."

  "I want to help you, Claire. I don't care what you look like. I really don't."

  She started rattling the door. Uselessly. No way she was going to open the Yale lock from the other side.

  Nor any way I could open it from this side. I had the proper pick, but I didn't have the proper experience. It would probably take me hours.

  Rattling the doorknob with insane fury. "We've got to get this open! We've got to!"

  Screaming now. She had hurtled over the drugs. Full voice.

  And then pounding her fists on the other side of the door. Hammering. And kicking with her foot.

  "Please! Please! You've got to get me out of here! You've got to get me out of here!"

  And then, "If you move, I'll kill you, Mr. Payne. Right where you stand. And there's no jury in the world that would convict me, either."

  I turned to face Giles. Bottom of the stairs. Formidable Remington pump-action shotgun in his hands. Dressed like someone who hadn't been clothes shopping for thirty years. Out buying a car, trying hard not to look like a yokel.

  He said, "Now, you come right down those stairs and right now."

  "No! No!" Claire screamed behind the door, pounding and hammering again. The sobs starting to submerge her speaking voice. "No! No!"

  "You get your ass down here, Mr. Payne. Or I'll blow it off."

  The hell of it was, I believed him.

  He marched me downstairs.

  His wife went up to the attic.

  I could hear her opening the Yale lock.

  Hear Claire screaming.

  Hear Betty Giles slapping her once, twice, three times. Hear Claire collapsing in her rocking chair.

  And then the door slamming.

  He marched me out to the kitchen. I
'd been a bad boy and he was going to punish me.

  "You sit right there while I call the police."

  "You sure you want to do that, Mr. Giles?"

  "Yeah, I'm sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

  To make his point, he walked over to the brown wall phone and lifted the receiver. He wore his leisure suit again. The blue one. The long-pointed collar of his white polyester disco shirt worn outside. His gold neck chain still looked strangling-tight. His face was blotchy from booze. His dyed red hair was a hairdresser's night-mare. The wife obviously did it for him. Or maybe he did it himself.

  He started to punch in some numbers.

  "All I came here for was the baby picture. Up in Claire's room."

  He stopped punching numbers. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

  But it obviously did mean something. His whole lumpy body froze suddenly, and his mouth was tight as a dead man's. There was true fear in the dark blue eyes.

  "You'd better hang up."

  "You go to hell. I want to call the cops, I'll call the cops."

  "Be my guest."

  "You sonofabitch."

  He stared at his hand on the receiver.

  "You think I'm afraid to call them?"

  I shrugged.

  "And I don't know anything about no baby picture."

  I just watched him.

  He slammed the receiver down. Lifted his shotgun from where he'd leaned it against the wall. He pulled a chair out from the Formica kitchen table and sat down.

  "I need to talk to the missus."

  I said nothing.

  "You forget how to talk or something?"

  "Nothin' to say, Giles. You're the one with the gun. You're the one who makes all the decisions."

  "Breakin' into my house like this."

  I said, "Who's in the picture, Giles? The baby picture?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "What's a child got to do with any of this? Maybe it was something that Kibbe turned up."

  "Kibbe. That fat piece of shit. I got tired of him nosin' around here."

  "You kill him?"

  He smiled. His dentures looked pretty good today. "Yeah, I killed him all right. I shot him. Then I cut him up. Then I set him on fire. Then I fed him to some wild dogs. I just wanted to make sure he was dead."