Climbing the four steps to his front door, he slid the key into the lock, turned it, and shoved the door open. Then he turned and looked back again at the lawn and the shrubbery. He left the front door ajar as he switched on the foyer light, two living-room lamps, and the overhead fluorescents in the kitchen. Then he went back and shut the front door, flipped the knob of the double-lock closed, and connected the security chain.
Frank had never been in this house, at dawn, alone.
He stood for a few moments in the silence of the well-lit downstairs. Then he walked stiffly into the kitchen, feeling his muscles ache with exhaustion, and pulled open the refrigerator door. Plenty of milk (you could always tell when Chris wasn’t home), cold cuts, salad greens, cheeses, various leftovers. Nothing appealed. He pulled open the freezer door of the side-by-side. Piles of meat—steak, chops, roasts, hamburger. He was too tired to wait while a frozen hunk of meat cooked. He closed the door.
He wasn’t really that hungry.
He crossed the living room to the den, to the bar, and poured himself two fingers of Chivas. He wasn’t really thirsty, he never drank much, but he needed to relax, and sleep. He took off his shoes. Taking a sip, he leaned on the bar. Ice. Could never take it straight. He traipsed to the kitchen, grabbed some cubes from the freezer, and headed back for the den, glancing up the stairs as he passed.
When he reached the den, he halted. Slowly and quietly he put his drink down. He looked back at the stairwell. Nonsense. He padded across the living room and looked up the stairs. Foolishness. Still . . .
He went quietly up.
Upstairs he switched on the hall light. Doors to all four bedrooms were closed, as usual. Habits. Shut the doors when you leave. You too, Chris. He opened the door to Chris’s bedroom and flipped up the light switch. Just as Chris had left it—bed not made. Ordinarily there was a rule. Not last night.
He went into his bedroom and turned on the light. Of course, their bed was not made either. Lenore’s dresser drawers were still open. Imagine. She’d be appalled.
The guest room was spotless, tidy, sterile, as always. Necessary, in his business. Never could tell when you had to entertain a client. Couldn’t tell an overnighting client to wait in the hall while you fixed up his bed. No client had ever slept in his house. But you never could tell. Never have anything messy, in your office or your home, that a client might see. “Good PR men,” Buck had once said to him, “wear clean underwear.”
The nursery room. He turned the knob, pushed the door open, and reached around, before entering, to feel for the light switch.
A yowl. Something leaped from the darkness. Frank swung his arm in front of his face and stumbled backward into the hall.
The cat landed at the top of the stairs, arched its back, then sat down and licked itself.
“Biscuit! Damm it. Whew! Been locked in there all night?” He went over and picked up the Siamese, rubbing its belly, then put the cat down and went back to the nursery and turned on the light.
Everything just as they had left it, the toys Lenore had been playing with still in the middle of the floor. He knelt to pick them up, and put them neatly back in their place in the corner. The white crib with its gay quilt stood like a forlorn shrine.
Frank backed out of the room, and quietly closed the door, as if not to wake the baby.
He went back downstairs and drained his drink. Pulling off his tie, he slumped into his soft leather den chair. The phone rang. He reached over and picked up the bar extension.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Franklin Davis?”
“Who’s calling?”
“This is the Los Angeles Times. This Mr. Davis? We’d like to ask you a few—”
“Davis don’t live here anymore. This is the cops.”
“Please don’t pull that on us, Mr. Davis. We’re a responsible newspaper. There is no way of avoiding this. It’s an important story, no getting away from it. And we’d like to give you the opportunity to—”
Frank slammed down the receiver, breathing heavily. Then he took the receiver off the hook and laid it on the bar.
“No more calls from those cranks!”
Then he unlocked the antique desk and pulled open the top drawer; he took out a .38 revolver, checked to see that it was unloaded, then aimed it at the wall.
“Any of those nosy newsmen come around here, I’ll scare the pants off ’em.”
He put the gun back. No I won’t, he thought. Think if it hit the papers that a gun-crazed father threatened members of the press. Think of Clayton Associates.
He sat down and stared at the wall.
In moments he felt himself dozing. He shook his head, pulled himself painfully erect, and dragged through the living room. Checking the locks on the front door, he headed for the stairs. Then he stopped, turned, and went back through the kitchen.
The hook was in place over the cellar door.
He started again for the stairs when Biscuit brushed past him languorously. Getting no attention, the cat shrugged its shoulders and continued through the kitchen to the back door. It looked back once to see if there was any final chance for petting, and, discerning none, nosed through the two-way flap at the bottom of the door and disappeared into the night.
The back door was bolted. Frank watched the flap drop shut behind the cat, covering—he blackly enjoyed taunting himself—a hole something of the size of that he had seen at the hospital, in the skylight.
He chuckled at his own morbidity, and went to bed.
The light of dawn spread dark shadows from buildings along the street. A bus stopped at an intersection lined with factories which, while silent now, would hum with activity in a couple of hours. A man in a cheap tuxedo with rhinestone-studded lapels got off the bus, carrying a trombone case in one arm and a morning paper in the other.
The bus pulled away and the man put down the case and took the newspaper from under his arm, unfolding it for the front page, when he heard a faint whimpering.
He looked up. The whimpering came again.
He knitted his brows and turned his head slowly, listening. The sound came again, low, plaintive.
A baby’s cry.
“What the . . . ?”
He picked up the case and began walking slowly past the darkened factory. The cry was a bit louder. The hiccuping cry of a tiny infant. He stopped at the head of a narrow alley between buildings. The cry was coming from deep in the alley.
“Who in hell would leave . . . ?”
He searched the shadows with his eyes for signs of somebody—surely somebody was in there with the baby. He could see nothing.
Putting down his case and paper, he walked tentatively into the alley, feeling his way along the building.
“Hey, baby, easy now, it’s okay. Somebody leave you here in the dark all by yourself? It’s okay. No wonder you’re upset. We’re going to take you to a nice, warm police station. Where the hell are you?”
The cry became a wail, then a shriek.
“Hey!”
The shriek was joined by his scream. He could not see what quickly clawed the life from him.
Across a nearby back lot, a house window went up. A woman’s voice. “Who’s out there?”
She could hear nothing more, not even the sound of something slithering or crawling away.
The window closed.
Police Sergeant Whipple thumbed through the pile of the night’s arrest records and reports. Then he pushed them aside and picked up the morning Times. His eye fell immediately to the headline halfway down the front page:
FIVE DIE IN HOSPITAL;
BIG INFANT SOUGHT
WESTWOOD, October 10—Police today would not, or could not, reveal any clues in the mysterious deaths last night of three doctors and two nurses at Community Hospital.
The five had reportedly been involved in the delivery, moments before, of a baby to Mrs. Franklin Davis of Westwood. The baby is listed as missing.
The five victims (names listed below) app
arently died from throat wounds similar to what might be inflicted by, as one source put it, “one of those little hand rakes you use in flower boxes.”
Police spokesman Det. Lt. Pinkins said that rumors that the attacks were carried out by a mutant infant were “premature.”
He said that the police were not ruling out possible murder-kidnapping, or even the explosion of some warfare anti-personnel device that could have killed the adults and propelled the infant out through the skylight, leaving a small hole (see pictures, page 5).
A confidential hospital source, however, insists that the Davis infant, as yet unnamed by the parents, was in fact a huge mutant, and that it is currently the primary suspect in the attacks.
Attempts to reach Mr. Davis, a public-relations executive with Clayton Associates in Beverly Hills, have been unavailing.
Police, already under fire recently for lackluster performance, have shrouded their investigation in secrecy, except to say that a “special unit” has been formed to work on the case and to search for the missing infant.
As often pointed out by this newspaper, such “special units” in the past have had no success at all in apprehending . . .
Sergeant Whipple wadded the newspaper into a ball and threw it at the ceiling. “This rag has been out to get us for years!” he bellowed. “And who the hell is Pinkins?”
“Perkins, sir,” said a patrolman nearby. “After twenty years, they still never get it right.”
“Hogwash! They make it sound like we’re doing nothing! We got twenty guys out all night on this one case, risking their damn lives, and they make it sound like we don’t know our assignment from a hole in the ground!”
“You call me, sergeant?”
“Oh, Lieutenant Perkins. No sir. Just this story in the paper got me so upset.”
“Live with it, sergeant. That’s cause we can’t give ’em any of the true facts at this point in time. We’re trying to play it low key. But don’t worry, we’ll get this kid. We’ll solve this like we solve most tough cases.”
“Sir?”
“Informants. Sooner or later somebody’ll spot this kid, or mutant, or whatever, and tip us off.”
“I sure hope so, lieutenant. My wife is scared to death.”
“Everybody’s scared. Six deaths already.”
“Six?”
“Yeah. Musician on his way home early this morning. Kid caught him in an alley. We think it was the kid. It’s alleged to be the kid. Same wounds—throat ripped out. We’re saying it was a dog. Playing it low key.”
“Whew!”
“Yeah. Whatever it is, it really gets around—fast. We’re trying to get some triangulation on its movements now, see what direction it’s headed in.”
“Any clues?”
“Nothing solid yet. We got people calling in from everywhere. They see a shadow, they call in. They hear footsteps, they call. My guess is it’ll try and get out of town.”
“So the thing is still alive.”
“Oh it’s alive, all right. It got through one night, it’ll get through more. Let me look at those reports.”
“This whole thing’s got me damn wrought up.”
“I don’t blame you, sergeant. Monster baby on the loose. But we’ll get it. I won’t sleep until we do.”
“Nobody will, sir.”
Frank pushed his way through a mob of shouting newsmen at the door to his office building. Photographers’ flashes went off in his face.
“Mr. Davis, can you just tell us . . .”
“What’s your reaction to . . .”
“How’s your wife taking all this . . .”
He shoved and elbowed reporters away. “Leave me alone! I’ve got nothing to say!”
Building security guards kept the press back as Frank at last reached the elevator and rode up to his floor.
As he stepped out, the heads of both the receptionist and the assistant secretary turned toward him, their conversation ceased. Then quickly they looked away. He walked quickly to his office, straightening his tie as he went.
His secretary followed him into the inner office. “Oh, good morning, Mary. I can only stay a few minutes. I have to pick up my wife at the hospital at eleven. Can you reschedule my appointments for the rest of the day?” He thumbed through his desk calendar without sitting down.
“Sir, I think Mr. Clayton wants to talk to you.”
“Tomorrow. Now, about that meeting with Marcus—maybe we could make it for cocktails at 6:30 at the Hilton. I know he wants to approve the campaign by the end of the week.”
“Excuse me; sir, but I think you better see Mr. Clayton now. He said it’s urgent.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll be right in. Take care of my schedule, will you?”
“Surely.”
Clayton smiled broadly as he met Frank at the door. “Come on in, Frank, good to see you.” He clapped him on the back. “Come on, sit down. You look exhausted.”
Frank dropped into the leather chair.
Clayton stood behind his desk. “You eaten anything, Frank?”
“No.”
“Sylvia.” His secretary appeared at the door. “Get Mr. Davis a couple of poached eggs on English muffins and a side of Canadian bacon. And a tall glass of fresh-squeezed O.J. That oughta do the trick for you, Frank. Can’t have you collapsing on us, right?”
“Look, Buck, I can’t eat anything—”
“Go ahead, Sylvia, scoot.” She bowed and left. Buck leaned forward over his desk, planting his square hands on several file folders. “You can’t let this get you down, Frank. It could happen to anyone. That’s what they say.”
“They?”
“I spoke to the hospital.”
“They tell you anything?”
“Well,” he smiled, “I’m very well connected over there. Vice-president of the fund-raising committee and so forth. They were very helpful. Listen, any little thing I can do for you, just . . .”
“No, nothing, thanks. We’re getting Lenore out of there today. This morning, in fact.”
Buck raised his eyebrows. “You think that’s wise, health-wise?”
“Mary said you needed to talk to me.”
“Yeah.” Buck nodded thoughtfully, turned to stare out the window for a few seconds, then looked back at Frank. He folded his arms across his chest. “Look, Frank, you’ve got three weeks’ vacation coming, and I think it would be a good idea if you took it now.”
“But Buck, I can’t. The Marcus account. The Sturbridge campaign. I’m up to my ears in work. These things can’t wait, you know—especially Marcus, because he wants to approve by the end of the week. Besides, the truth is I need to work, Buck. It’s something to take my mind off things.”
Buck smiled and waved his hand. “Hey, fella, everything’s gonna be fine. We’ll take care of everything for you.” His gaze hardened slightly. “Frank, our business is public relations. Images. You’re so good at that, you know all about it. The best. You know what goes into it, what a good position for us is, PR-wise. And right now the fact is you’re too . . . well . . . controversial. Just for the time being, of course—no fault of yours. But our clients want their PR men to be, well . . .”
“Anonymous.”
Buck grinned and slapped a fist into his palm. “Right! You got it. I knew you’d understand. Nobody’s got a better grip on this stuff than you. So the idea is, until you become a little less of a, a celebrity—”
“You’re not taking the accounts away from me? Not now, at the last minute? Hunh, Buck?”
He waved his hand. “Oh, I know how you feel, Frank baby, but you and your wife need a vacation—more than ever. Perfect time for it.” He leaned across the desk and smiled. “I’ve got this little place near St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands—you’ve heard me talk about it: exquisite spot, gorgeous, nothing but sun and sand, no phone, no newspapers. I’ll let you have the key. And you can stay as long as you like. How’s that? Hunh?” He spread his arms, beaming.
“Whatever happened wa
sn’t my fault,” Frank said softly, eyes on the floor, his hands damp with perspiration. “It had nothing to do with me.”
“Well, about that, unh . . . course not, Frank. Nobody’s talking about fault around here. Nobody’s to blame. That’s not the name of the game in our business, right, Frank? Only results. That’s all we care about. You’re top-notch in results. But these things happen, Frank. You know O’Connor, down in accounting? He’s got a retarded kid. Insisted on keeping him right in his own home too. And nobody thinks about that. Nobody blames him.”
“We’re not talking about a retarded kid, Buck, and you know it. We’re talking about a monstrosity of some kind.”
“Well, sure, I just meant that your baby is—”
“Not my baby, for chrissake!” Frank was suddenly on his feet, his fists clenched. “It’s not my baby! And it’s not a baby at all!”
“Hey, hey, calm down.” Buck came around the desk and put his arm across Frank’s shoulders, pushing him back down into his chair. “Maybe we’d better not talk about it right now.”
“Buck, I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” He looked up, his eyes moist, his voice pleading. “I just don’t know how to behave. Everybody saying awful things, asking nasty questions. People sticking microphones in my face, calling me up . . .”
Clayton laughed weakly. “What you need is a good public-relations firm to handle this for you.”
“Yeah,” Frank tried a smile, “but you know as well as I do, this matter won’t be cleared away until that—whatever it is—is dead.”
“Yeah.” Buck went over to the window and stared out. “Frank, on your way down, why don’t you take the service elevator so you won’t have to face all those media jerks, okay?”
Frank numbly hoisted himself from the chair and started out. He bumped into Buck’s secretary, arriving with the tray of food. Frank nodded to her and left.
She stood uneasily with the tray.
“Sylvia,” Buck said, “dump that stuff. And have them clear out Frank’s desk and send all his personal belongings to his home. He won’t be coming back.”
It's Alive! Page 5
