Hush

by Anne Frasier

  Ryan's constant chatter was getting on Ethan's nerves. He'd asked him to come along to the record show at Navy Pier for purely selfish reasons: Ryan had a car. Ethan had justified it by telling himself Ryan would get off on the show as much as Ethan. He thought that once Ryan actually got there, he'd enjoy it.

  Vendors were there from all over the country, all over the world. If you were looking for some obscure album from a short-lived group nobody had ever heard of, chances were you'd find it there.

  They'd both purchased three-day passes, but now, only five hours into the first day, Ryan was already bored. He'd hit the first heavy-metal tables he'd seen. Then, without bothering to do any comparison shopping, without bothering to go any deeper into the myriad of tables and people, he'd spent all of his money in the first hour.

  "How much for the Cocteau Twins box set?" Ethan asked the sleepy-looking guy with a nose ring and pony- tail who stood at a long display table. Behind him hung a black Stereolab T-shirt. Next to that was a long-sleeved Radiohead shirt.

  "Eighty bucks."

  "I can order it through Cheapo for sixty-five."

  The guy took a long sip of soda. "If you can get it. They might tell you they can order it, but it'll never come in. Been out of print for years."

  Ethan knew that. "How about this Guided by Voices?"

  "Twenty-five."

  Guided by Voices were amazing, but this was live, recorded at somebody's birthday party, which meant Robert Pollard had probably been wasted. You don't want to listen to Guided by Voices when they're wasted. You can be wasted, but they can't. Music that was normally floaty and haunting turned into harsh punk rock, and the vocals turned to shouting, not singing. Shouting was okay in the right place, take the Clash, for instance. It just didn't work for Guided by Voices stuff.

  "Thanks." He put the CD back.

  "How about Under the Bushes, Under the Stars?" the vendor asked.

  "Got it."

  "Alien Lanes?"

  "Got it." Ethan picked up a My Bloody Valentine album. Loveless. He had the CD, but didn't know they'd put Loveless on vinyl. He'd never seen it on vinyl before—and that amazed him.

  "Is this a reissue?" he asked.

  To his right, just off his shoulder, Ryan continued his prattle. "Ever noticed how it's hard to tell the difference between a punk and a scurve?"

  "No. That's really rare. They only pressed a couple thousand."

  Vendors always told you that crap. Ethan wasn't stupid. And yet, it was really weird that he hadn't known about it. Could it be a bootleg?

  "It's because punks have that 'haven't washed my hair in two weeks, just got out of bed thing' going— and it took them hours to look like that. Where scurves, on the other hand, really haven't washed or combed their hair in two weeks. There's no shine to it, and they have a real bed-head thing going in the back."

  Ethan slid the album back into place and turned to his friend. "Do you wanna leave?"

  Ryan looked around, as if trying to find a reason to stay. "This is boring," he said, apparently not finding anything interesting.

  "What would you be doing if you weren't here?"

  Hands deep in the front pockets of his cargo pants, Ryan shrugged. "I don't know. Playing video games. That's more interesting than this."

  Ryan was addicted to video games. A lot of Ethan's friends were addicted to video games.

  "I'm not ready to leave," Ethan said. "I won't be ready for a long time. Why don't you go on home?"

  "Are you still spending the night at my house?"

  It seemed pointless now. "Nah. I'll go home after I'm done here."

  "How will you get there?"

  "I'll figure something out. Maybe I'll take the el to the police station and catch a ride with my dad. Or I'll call him and he can pick me up."

  It was always such a downer when you tried to draw someone into your infatuation, thinking all they had to do was listen to Galaxy 500's cover of Yoko Ono's "Listen, the Snow Is Falling," or Spiritualized's Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, The Chambermaids Down in the Berries, to see that music was art in its most multilayered form, a combination of lyrics and notes that could create a unique, cinematic wonder in your head.

  But they never got it. They didn't want to get it. Ryan would rather sit in front of the TV playing Killing Time with heavy metal blasting in the background than listen to something with any depth.

  "I'll find a way home," Ethan said. "Don't worry. And hey, thanks for the ride."

  "No sweat."

  Ethan watched as Ryan bobbed away, moving through the crowd to finally disappear.

  He expected too much from people, that was the problem, Ethan thought. He expected too much from life. In a way, he wished he could be like Ryan, so easy to please, satisfied to sit in front of the TV all day, killing imaginary people and sometimes getting killed himself. Lyrics from a Kurt Cobain song played in his head, the ones about wishing he could be easily amused like everybody else.

  After Ryan had gone, Ethan continued to wander among the people and tables. He had a hundred dollars to spend, and he was going to have a hard time deciding how to get the most mileage out of his money. He had to take into account the rarity of his purchases. If it was something he could get somewhere down the road, then he should wait. But if finding a treasure was a one-time deal, he should act now.

  But eighty bucks for the Cocteau Twins box set? Damn. That was a lot of money. He didn't know. He just didn't know. Then there was the Velvet Underground box set with outtakes from the Loaded sessions—

  Somebody bumped into him, turned around, grabbed him by the arm with a clawlike grip, and apologized. "Sorry. Really sorry."

  "That's okay," Ethan said, shaking him off, even though he didn't think it was okay. Why didn't the jerk look where he was going?

  The guy was staring at him as if he expected Ethan to say something else.

  "You don't know who I am, do you?" the guy asked.

  Now Ethan remembered where he'd seen him before. The hockey game. "You're my dad's friend, uh . . . Mr. . . . Mr. . . ." Ethan didn't have a clue, but he was hoping Mr. Whoever He Was would fill in the big blank space floating between them.

  "Grant."

  "Mr. Grant."

  He laughed in a good-natured way that Ethan found irritating. "Grant's my first name. Grant Ruby. So, you're taking in the big show, huh? Looks like we have some of the same interests."

  Ethan looked down and saw that in the guy's hand was the burgundy, fabric-covered Cocteau Twins box set. What the hell? Guess he could mark that one off his list. "You know somebody who likes the Cocteau Twins?" Ethan asked, thinking it couldn't be anybody at his school.

  "It's for me. Rather an indulgence at seventy bucks, but I've been looking for it for a long time, and it's getting rarer and rarer."

  Ethan didn't know what was more amazing, that he'd been able to talk the vendor down to seventy bucks, or that here was somebody else who liked the Cocteau Twins, and the guy was a middle-aged fucking nerd.

  He asked Ethan what he was looking for. Side by side, they began walking through the crowd, past tables, as Ethan ran through his list, expecting the geek's eyes to glaze over the way everyone else's did whenever he talked about his obsession.

  But they didn't. He jumped right in and kept up. He knew all about Portishead, and Stereolab. He knew that Doug Yule sang vocals on "New Age," not Lou Reed. He knew about the history of groups and artists. He knew how Morrissey used to be in the Smiths, and how he was a strict vegan, and how he wouldn't let anybody eat pork rinds at his concerts.

  "Are you hungry?" the guy asked. "I am. Wanna grab a piece of pizza at one of these places?"

  In front of them were the food vendors. Ethan said, "Sure."

  Ruby offered to pay for Ethan's, but Ethan wouldn't let him. They found a table that was away from the main traffic flow and sat down across from each other.

  "That just blows me away that you know so much about music," Ethan said, picking up
his slice of pizza.

  "I majored in music theory," Ruby said.

  "Cool. What do you do now?"

  "A lot of self-taught musicians can't read music. So they record something, then send it to me to transcribe."

  "Then how do you know my dad? I figured you worked with him."

  "We're practically neighbors. I live on Davern Circle and I've run into your dad a few times. I used to have a nephew who played hockey. He graduated a few years ago, so you wouldn't know him. But I kept going to the games. I dig hockey almost as much as music."

  When they were done eating, they sat there, continuing to talk. They talked about record labels, about how the majority of labels didn't care anything about the music, they just wanted a pretty face they could saturate the media with. The people who were doing the good stuff weren't being signed.

  "Same with radio," Ruby said. "It has nothing to do with music. For the station, music is just the noise in between the ads."

  "No shit. It's even hard to tell the songs from the ads."

  "I know. It's like solid ads."

  "And nobody cares. Nobody cares that they're being spoon-fed shit. They just think, I like this shit because everybody else likes this shit."

  "I know, I know!"

  They both laughed.

  And Ethan suddenly began telling Ruby everything, about how Max had adopted him, and about how Ethan had tried to find his birth father, only to find out that the woman he'd always thought of as his birth mother had actually adopted him. It all came pouring out. It was because of the music. That's why it happened. It had unlocked a door, and left Ethan thinking that here, finally, was somebody who understood him, somebody he could talk to.

  They wandered around some more, Ruby saying that he'd better not spend any more money.

  Ethan wondered if he should get the My Bloody Valentine album. "The guy said there were only a couple thousand pressed, but I don't know if I believe him."

  "It's true," Ruby said. "You'd better get it."

  So Ethan bought the album for twelve bucks, and walked around with it under his arm, the blood red cover protected with a plastic sleeve. He bought a couple of other CDs that he'd been looking for, then decided he'd try to come back tomorrow. The vendors always dropped their prices as the days progressed.

  "How you getting home?" Ruby asked.

  "I don't know. I thought I'd stop by my dad's office, see if he's around."

  "I can give you a ride. I only live a couple of streets away."

  "You wouldn't care?"

  "I'd like the company. And we can listen to the Cocteau Twins on the way."

  "Cool."

  Ten minutes later, they were in Ruby's car.

  One of the things that was so great about the Cocteau Twins was the way the vocals sounded like another instrument, not like words at all but sounds, melody. There was a part in "Iceblink Luck," from Heaven or Las Vegas, where you could actually make out a few words—something about burning a madhouse down.

  Around there was when Ethan began to wonder about Ruby. That was when everything his dad had drilled into him from the time he was little came rushing back. Stuff about never getting into a car with a stranger. But Ruby wasn't a stranger. Was he?

  Maybe he lied. Maybe he doesn't really even know my dad.

  But Ethan had seen him wave to his dad at the hockey game, the one he'd brought Ivy to.

  But had his dad waved back?

  As far as Ethan could tell, they were heading in the right direction, northwest out of metro Chicago.

  It was late, after nine o'clock, and it was dark.

  His new buddy's car was one of those big jobs that old lady losers or rich people drove. The bigger the better, they must think. But Ruby's was old, and the shocks weren't good, because whenever they hit a bump, the front end would start to bob, bob, bob, gradually stopping, only to start again as soon as they hit another bump.

  Ethan wanted him to shut off the music. This kind of music, the kind that should be worshipped, didn't belong in a crappy, creepy car like this, coming out of little speakers. The music didn't go with a man who, when you took away his interest in music, was just a little weird. He didn't actually look weird, but now that they were together in his claustrophobic car, Ethan was picking up an uncomfortable vibe.

  "This your car?" Ethan asked.

  You'd think somebody who liked music so much would have a good stereo. This one sounded like shit.

  "It belongs to my mother," Ruby said.

  No explanation of where his car might be. In the shop, probably, Ethan told himself. People were always getting into fender benders in Chicago, that's one of the reasons his old man refused to get a new car. He said it would just get run into, so why bother? And some people had crappy cars they kept just to drive downtown. Maybe that was the deal with Ruby.

  If Ruby was his real name.

  Where had that come from? Why wouldn't Ruby be his real name?

  "Do you mind if we shut this off?" he asked, motioning toward the CD player even though the interior of the car was dark and Ruby couldn't see him.

  "I thought you wanted to hear it."

  "Not through those crappy speakers. There's no high or low end. Can't you tell?"

  "I know this car's a piece of junk. I'm going to trade it in for something else."

  "I thought it was your mother's."

  "It is, but she can't drive anymore."

  "Why? Too old?"

  "I don't want to talk about her," he said, his voice rising in obvious irritation. "Let's talk about you. What would you say if I told you I could hook you up with your real mother?"

  Leeriness briefly forgotten, Ethan twisted in the seat so he could get a better look at Ruby's silhouette. "You could do that? How?"

  "I know some people."

  "Wow. That would be great. More than great."

  Ruby cut across two lanes to the exit ramp.

  "Wrong exit," Ethan said.

  "I know, but my oil light's on, see?"

  Ethan leaned over and saw that, indeed, the red light was on. "Oh, man." Why'd he ever get in the car with this loser?

  Ruby pulled off onto a dark side street. "Got extra oil in the back."

  He got out and went around to the trunk. Ethan heard him banging things together that sounded like tire irons or something. Then he lost track of him until he knocked on the passenger window, almost sending Ethan through the roof.

  "You scared the crap out of me," Ethan complained.

  Ruby shouted through the rolled-up window. "Come out and hold the flashlight for me, will you?"

  What a joke.

  Ethan had one foot on the ground when something unseen, something powerful, hit him full on top of the head, the force bringing him to his knees. Pain radiated through his skull, all the way to his teeth. Behind his eyelids, starbursts flashed, then the world turned black.

  Chapter 38

  "Her condition is critical," the doctor told Max, Ivy, and Ronny Ramirez as they stood in the hallway outside Intensive Care.

  "How can she even be alive?" Ivy asked. "How could anyone survive that long locked in a trunk?"

  "She couldn't have been there over eight to twelve hours—and only if most of those hours were overnight," Dr. Montoya said.

  "You're sure?" Max asked.

  "The temperature inside the trunk would have steadily increased throughout the morning," the doctor explained. "An uninjured person wouldn't have been able to withstand more than a few hours in the heat of the day."

  "I'm putting a twenty-four-hour guard on her," Max said. "She's the only one who can identify the person who did this to her. And it's extremely important that we catch him, because if we don't, more lives are in danger."

  "Well, you'd better hope to find another eyewitness, because Regina Hastings is a long shot. If she does come around she'll most likely be brain damaged."

  Ramirez made an anguished sound, and Ivy squeezed his arm in sympathy.

  Max's mobile phone ra
ng. The doctor took the opportunity to excuse himself to speak to Regina's family.

  The call was from Harold Doyle of Documents. "You know those faxes you sent down?" he asked. "Half of them were written by someone other than Regina Hastings."

  "You sure?"

  "Positive."

  "Do any of them match the letters written to the paper?"

  "Haven't gotten that far, but I'm working on it."

  "Call me when you have something."

  Max disconnected, then dialed home. Nobody answered, but that didn't surprise him. Ethan had gone to a music show and was staying the night at Ryan's.

  "He must have gone to her apartment and faxed the questionnaires," Ivy said as soon as Max hung up. "Then, after putting her body in the trunk of her own car, he went back in the middle of the night to leave her in the parking area."

  "You're probably right."

  "I wonder if he thought she was dead, or if he put her there to finish her off."

  "He's playing with us again, that's what he's doing," Max said.

  "I had the feeling something was wrong that first night," Ronny said. "Why didn't I go by her place then?"

  "You couldn't have been sure," Ivy said, trying to reassure him. "Regina's independent."

  "Yeah, but she takes her job seriously. I should have known. I should have known."

  Max's phone rang again.

  The call was from Raymond Lira, Vice Squad. "We just arrested a guy for dealing acepromazine," he told Max. "Offered him a break if he worked with us, told us who he sold to. One of his clients sounds like it might be our man."

  "Get a sketch artist down there."

  "Now? It's late."

  "I don't care. Get someone down there."

  "Should they use the Identi-Kit?" he asked, referring to a kit that contained interchangeable paper features.

  "No, get Barbara Ainsworth if you can—she's the best. If we're lucky, we might be able to make tomorrow's paper."

  He contacted the task-force office. "Call the papers," Max said. "Tell them to save us a spot. Find out how long they can wait to go to press. And get in touch with taxi companies and metro transit to see if anybody recently picked up a male passenger near the Spring Green Apartment Complex."