Can we sit down and talk about ... us?
Good God, no, that sounded like something out of a crummy soap opera.
Mavis, I've been thinking. You and I haven't exactly been hitting it off lately.
Now there was a news flash for you. And what did he mean lately!
Honey, I love ya. Let's go to bed.
And what if she said no thanks? Or what if she said fine and nothing happened for him? Or what if ...
Wait a minute? What if there was another man? He considered the possibility for a moment, then discarded it. Not Mavis. He would have bet his gun and his badge that she had never been unfaithful to him. He discarded the notion.
To hell with this, he decided. If he sat around here waiting for her to come home and imagining scenarios, he'd rehearse himself right into incoherence. It was time to use some male initiative and go get her.
He found Mavis's address book in the drawer of the nightstand on her side of the bed. He had a pang of guilty Peeping Tom feeling as he thumbed through it looking for Gabrielle Wister's name. His job as a policeman had required him to search through the most intimate belongings of complete strangers, discovering secrets, spying on lives. When you thought about it, there was something warped about that. Like sniffing other people's underwear. But it was his job.
Still, in all the years of his marriage, he had never looked through Mavis's purse. Never read her mail, never eavesdropped on her telephone conversations. Now he was thinking maybe he should have.
Gabrielle Wister, he discovered, lived on Ladonna Place. That was one of the keyhole cul-de-sacs west of Reseda, north of the local branch of Valley State College. It was a nice, quiet residential neighborhood. Kettering memorized the address, replaced the book in the drawer as he had found it, and left the house.
The car was cold. He turned on the heater, a device you rarely used in Southern California. The night was without stars, and it seemed to grow blacker as Kettering drove. The headlights had trouble piercing the darkness, and he drove slowly, straining to see the street signs.
He located Ladonna Place and turned into the short block. All the houses along both sides were dark. No cars were parked along the curb. Had he memorized the wrong address? A mistake like that would be most unlike him, but was it possible an art class was being taught in one of these dark, quiet little houses?
He drove slowly up the street and stopped when he saw Mavis's Honda in the driveway of one of the houses at the keyhole end of the cul-de-sac. That didn't compute. Where were the cars of her classmates? Had Mavis stayed after the class was over? Reluctant to come home, maybe. Kettering knew that feeling. He parked the Camaro and sat for a minute studying the house. Heavy curtains covered the windows in front, but a smudge of light showed dimly around the edges. He got out of the car and walked up to the front door.
Through the narrow center gap in the curtains he could see the pale light from somewhere inside. It was not coming from the living room.
A faint alarm sounded in Kettering's head. Something wrong here? Almost twenty years as a policeman had given him a sense of the abnormal, and something definitely was off center.
He thumbed the door bell, clearly heard the bing-bong of the chimes inside. He waited, the hair prickling as a cold breeze touched the back of his neck.
Again: bing-bong.
Instinctively, Kettering checked to be sure the button of his jacket was not obstructing the hip holster. Not that he expected to have to draw his gun, but when there was no response from behind a door where you knew there were people, you just naturally got set.
He balled his hand into a fist and pounded on the panel, swallowing an impulse to call out, Open up! Police! From inside came a rustle of movement. The door opened three inches. The strip of face he saw was pale and clear in complexion. Delicate mouth. High cheekbones, narrow nose. The eye that peered out at him was dark, with long, moist lashes. Through the open crack he could see that the owner of the eye was wearing a maroon velour robe.
The chill hit him again and Kettering shuddered. His left eyelid began to twitch.
"Yes?" The voice was deep and resonant, but distinctly feminine.
"I'm Brian Kettering."
The eye stared at him, unblinking.
"Mavis Kettering's husband. Is my wife here?"
"What is it, Gaby?" Mavis's voice from somewhere inside.
The eye turned from the doorway. Kettering got a look at dark, close-cropped hair, shaved at the neck.
"Oh!"
Mavis's voice again, with surprise and shock packed into the one syllable.
Kettering put the flat of his hand on the door and gently pushed it all the way open. The woman behind it backed away and did not resist.
Mavis stood in an open doorway that led to the room where the pale light was coming from. Behind her was a double bed with the satin spread thrown back and the powder-blue sheets rumpled. Mavis made a gesture to cover herself as Kettering stepped into the living room, then slowly lowered her hands and faced him.
For what seemed like many seconds the three of them stood there. It was the classic discovery situation. Almost.
The lean, dark woman stood beside the door, eyeing Kettering cautiously. Ready to jump either way. Mavis, wearing only brief panties, her small breasts defiantly upthrust, was framed by the bedroom door. Kettering felt large and clumsy, the cuckolded husband. Or was that the proper term for this situation?
He had to clear his throat before he could speak.
"Is this ... what it looks like?"
One corner of Gabrielle Wister's mouth lifted in a phantom smile. She turned to Mavis. Kettering's wife nodded slowly, her eyes never leaving his.
When she spoke her voice was calm. Calmer than he had heard it in a long time. "That's the way it is, Brian."
There was not, Kettering thought, a hell of a lot a man could do in this situation. If he had caught her in bed with another man, he could have punched the guy's lights out and raised some vocal hell with his wife. But another woman? Kettering had been a cop long enough to have come in contact with deviations from the norm that were beyond most people's imaginings. But Mavis? And another woman? And a little while ago he had been assuring himself there was no chance she was seeing another man. He could still be right about that.
He realized that he was standing there awkward and silent, holding his breath for much too long. Trying to stay calm, he exhaled, nodded once at Mavis, turned away from the scene and walked out.
The night was blacker than ever as he drove home. He met no other traffic. Kettering kept his speed down, fighting the animal rage that wanted to stomp the Camaro's accelerator to the floor and torture the tires as he slid around corners. His mind buzzed without accomplishing anything, like a jammed garbage disposal. Painful images of Mavis and the other woman flicked in and out of his consciousness. He did not even want to think about what they did to each other on those powder-blue sheets. And yet he wanted to know. Perversely, the flickering images excited and disgusted him at the same time.
When his mind finally began to unclog, Kettering saw he had almost driven past his own street. He hit the brakes and made the turn. The neighborhood seemed foreign to him now. His house was like the house of a stranger. Nothing looked quite the same. And it was so very dark.
As he slowed to turn into the drive, he saw a movement between the decorative junipers that framed his driveway.
Kettering's mind instantly voided itself of all extraneous images, and the cop's instincts took over. He drove on slowly past the house.
He traveled half a block to a point that was shielded from his front door by a neighbor's bougainvillea. There he parked, eased out of the car, and walked silently back toward his house. He held the S&W Centennial in his right hand, the muzzle pointed straight up, according to regulations.
Someone, or something, was at his door. For a brief moment Kettering had feared it was a hallucination brought on by the traumatic scene he had witnessed between his wife and
Gabrielle Wister. But no. He had seen it, all right.
It appeared to be a man. A tall man, bent over, intent on what he was doing. Trying to break in? Not likely. With windows all around and the sliding glass doors on the patio in back, no burglar would try to get in the front. Whatever he was doing, the man made no sound. The hunched shoulders moved in small, jerky spasms. A twinge of familiarity tugged at Kettering's consciousness.
"Freeze!" he yelled, as dictated by proper police procedure.
The figure at his door rose slowly and turned to face him. In the dim light from the streetlamp at the corner, Kettering could make out no features, but the shape was chillingly familiar - the tall body, the elongated, misshapen head, long, dangling arms, heavy legs. One of the arms came up. Clutched in the talons was something metallic.
"Freeze!" Kettering shouted again. "Drop it." But his voice had lost its authoritarian bellow. It was the piping cry of a small boy.
In the gloom he thought he could make out a smile on the face of the figure at his door. The long arm extended toward him. Metal glinted dully in the diffused light.
When there is an unmistakable threat to your life, you shoot. It might be hard convincing the police board of inquiry and the civilian review board and the city attorney and, especially, the media that you really were in danger, but you could worry about all that later. When you were about to die, you used your piece.
Kettering leveled the revolver and fired. Again. Again. Again.
Kettering was a good shot. He always scored high on the police range. There was no way he could have missed four times at that distance. Yet the figure that loomed in his doorway did not fall.
The 160-grain hollow-point bullets, duly authorized by the police commission over the objections of the ACLU, should have stopped the intruder in his tracks, knocked him back against the door and off his feet.
Then, finally, as Kettering watched with the smoking gun in his hand, the figure sank slowly, almost daintily, facedown on the flagstones in front of the stoop. Kettering raced forward, pistol held high and ready. He knelt beside the victim.
A sour vomit rose in his throat and Kettering had to swallow hard to keep it back. It was not a man who lay there in front of his door. It was smaller. Much smaller than it had looked from the street. More like a woman ... or a little boy.
His hand shaking, Kettering grasped one thin shoulder and turned him over. He groaned aloud as he looked into the face of a child. A dark-eyed, pale-haired boy of about six. Beside his outstretched hand was a spray-paint can. The boy's eyes looked up into his with a terrible familiarity. He opened his mouth as though to speak, but all that came out was a bright red bubble of blood.
"Oh, Jesus God, no!" The strange voice was his own.
Kettering raised his eyes to the door. There, in fresh crimson, was the tall mocking figure that had dogged him since that long-ago summer day in Indiana.
Doomstalker.
Kettering's howl into the night sky blended with the oncoming bray of a siren. The darkness thickened and closed in around him.
Chapter 9
From the darkness came a rumbling growl.
A smell of leather and motor oil.
Male voices.
Motorcycles.
Brian Kettering, age twelve, lay wide awake, fully dressed on the narrow bed in his room. He was listening, listening for the sound of motorcycles, and thinking about the Greasers.
***
When the Greasers came to town, the sensation of Harlan Kettering's death had long since faded, but not without leaving its marks on his children.
Each of them had reacted differently to the new situation. Jessica, who had been a quiet, courteous child, became loud and unruly in school, and careless about her personal habits. At home she turned sullen, distancing herself from her mother and brother. Her grades, which had always been excellent, dropped precipitously.
Brian, on the other hand, turned inward. A friendly, outgoing boy before the tragedy, he became quiet and withdrawn. At school he spoke only when asked a direct question. At home he retired to his room after dinner to read and work out with the weights that had been one of his father's last gifts. Lucille was concerned about the change in her children, but the pressure of maintaining a home and running the bookshop she had opened after the reverend's death kept her from spending much time with them.
The months passed. A new young minister took over the Reverend Kettering's church. The congregation, willing enough to forget the curious death of their former minister, accepted him eagerly.
Lucille Kettering continued to attend Sunday services, but alone. Jessica always found some excuse for not going - her head ached, she had to study, she was catching a cold, her period had started.
Brian offered no excuses, but stubbornly refused to go to church or Sunday school. As far as he was concerned, the church had failed them all. His father had died needlessly, and now the family was unfairly shunned by their neighbors. If this was God's way, Brian wanted no part of it.
Their mother was saddened by the turning away of her children from their faith, but she was powerless to change their minds.
Jessie was in her first year of high school when the Greasers came. They were as foreign to Prescott, Indiana, as a gang of Chinese bandits. They wore leather jackets, sideburns, greasy hair. They rode big muscular motorcycles with rumble-throated mufflers. They drank beer and cheap wine straight from the bottles. There had always been the "other side of the tracks" people in Prescott, but these newcomers were different, dangerous.
No one seemed to know exactly when the Greasers arrived or where they came from. At first they were treated as a minor irritation - a transient band of bikers to be ignored until they went away. Then it became apparent they were in no hurry to leave, and the people of the town began to worry.
The Greasers seemingly had no adult supervision. They came and went as they pleased. They lived in a grubby camp on the edge of town that consisted of tents, lean-tos, and shacks made of scrap lumber and bits of metal. When the wind was from the south, you could smell them all over Prescott.
They drove the citizens from their park and then took it over, filling it with empty bottles, and tension. They struck Marlon Brando poses and harassed innocent passersby. They challenged the town boys, made lewd suggestions to girls.
The tiny police department of Prescott was ineffectual in dealing with the newcomers. No serious laws were being broken, and nobody really wanted a confrontation. Better to be patient and wait for them to tire of the town and leave.
The Greasers seemed to live in their own insulated bubble. They had no visible families, no jobs, no morals, and no restraints. They were unshaven and unclean. They talked ugly and they smelled bad. The good people of Prescott prayed silently for them to vanish.
While the adults fretted, many of the Prescott teenagers watched the Greasers from a distance with secret admiration and more than a touch of envy. They had the insidious attraction of evil.
For the most part the local kids stayed well away from the park and from the patch of ground where the Greasers had set up their camp. Those who fraternized faced big trouble from their parents.
Brian Kettering had no admiration for the strangers. In fact, he hated them with an unreasoning passion too fierce for his twelve years. He was never able to articulate the depth of his emotion, but the loathing was plain in his young face whenever one of the Greasers passed on the street. He never flinched from their glare, and they looked long and deep at the boy as though they shared some dirty secret.
What made Brian's revulsion for the Greasers even more acute was the fact that his sister was madly attracted to them. Secretly at first, then more openly, Jessie spent her time hanging around with the loud, undisciplined youths.
Lucille Kettering lectured her daughter on the dangers of associating with such undesirables, but without the threat of paternal discipline, her arguments had no effect. Brian added his own voice to the opposition.
&nb
sp; "Why do you hang out with those pukes, anyway?" he asked her.
"None of your business."
"Like heck it isn't. You're my sister, and you're too good to mess around with that crud."
"And when did you start taking such an interest in what I do?"
"Since now. Those assholes are bad news. You ought to stay away from them."
"Where did you learn words like that?"
"Never mind. I know what I'm talking about."
Jessie faced him, hands on hips. "You're a twelve-year-old kid. You don't know shit. Where do you get off telling me what I should and shouldn't do?"
"I know, that's all. If you mess around with them you're ... well, you're gonna be sorry."
***
He lay in his bed and stared up into the darkness, listening. Listening for a motorcycle. Listening for Jessie in the next room. Listening ...
"What the hell?!"
Brian Kettering, age forty-three, sat up and stared out the back door of the police ambulance. The bar atop a WVPD black-and-white flashed red, blue, red, blue.
A white-jacketed medic rubbed his head where it had banged off the ceiling of the ambulance van. "Jesus, Sergeant, you gave me a start."
"What am I doing in here?"
"You were unconscious."
Kettering swung his legs out of the pallet where he lay and was surprised for a moment to see the gray Hush Puppies on his feet. Then he remembered. And he groaned.
"I've got to get out of here."
The medic reached for him, but not seriously. "I'm supposed to take you in for observation."
"Forget it."
Kettering jumped out of the back of the van and headed for the police car.
Chapter 10
The afternoon was colorless, with darkness creeping in around the edges. A heavy overcast had kept the sun back all day. Fluorescent ceiling tubes threw stark white light on the two men who sat in the room below and the third who entered as they watched. It gave their faces an unhealthy blue-white cast, but did little to dispel the gloom.
Gary Brandner Page 7
