Gary Brandner

by Doomstalker (v2. 0) (epub)

  "Fuck your rights. Where were you?"

  DuLac's eyes ping-ponged around the room. He shrugged, and seemed to grow even smaller. "Right here. This is where I work. Where else would I be?"

  "What time were you here?"

  "From nine till almost five A.M.."

  "Why so late?"

  "We're an after-hours club. We close the bar at two, but we stay open for the kids. Any law against that?"

  "Anybody see you here during that time?"

  DuLac's confidence began to grow as he sensed Kettering's frustration. "Only a hundred people or so. You want me to start calling them in?"

  Kettering fought down an impulse to squash the little cockroach. It would be fun but pointless. After a few years in police work you had a pretty good idea when some asshole was finally telling the truth. DuLac was telling the truth.

  He said, "I'll find them if I need them."

  Kettering started out the door.

  "Wait a minute." DuLac, smirking like a winner, pulled a pad and a ballpoint pen from a desk drawer. He looked up. "I want to let a few people know about this visit. What did you say the name was, Sergeant?"

  "Callahan. Harry Callahan."

  Kettering slammed the office door, marched down the hallway, pushed his way into the ear-busting outer room, elbowed through the swarm of punky kids into the night. He felt like he'd come out of a toilet.

  Chapter 20

  Moving is not much fun under the best of circumstances. No matter how you look forward to the new home, you are always leaving a little of yourself at the old. Moving when it is part of a rotten situation like the breakup of a marriage is pure hell.

  The headlight beams of the Honda picked out the familiar street, and Mavis Kettering drove in slowly. Until now she had lived her entire life, thirty-eight years, at just four addresses. She thought about the homes she had known as she drove past the secure, comfortable houses of her late neighbors and parked in front of her own.

  The first was her parents' big old house in Columbus. She was still living there as a twenty-year-old part-time student at Ohio State and working for the district attorney at city hall when she met Brian Kettering. When they were married, their first home was the tiny apartment where he lived when he worked the graveyard shift on the Columbus Police Department.

  Then came the move to California and half a duplex in North Hollywood. There, with Trevor growing like a weed, they finally had to admit they needed more room.

  Then, eight years ago, they achieved what had seemed to Mavis to be the American dream - a three-bedroom California ranch-style tract home on a cul-de-sac in West Valley. Now she was leaving that one. Alone.

  Four homes in thirty-eight years. In Southern California it was not uncommon for people to move that many times in a year. Mavis was from the midwest, where getting married meant settling down. Putting down roots.

  Ironically, she thought, in the late 1980s, when even Californians were sinking roots, Mavis Kettering was yanking hers up. Not that she had any doubts about what she was doing. Any real marriage to Brian had ended long ago. They both knew it, even if they had never talked about it. Brian would go on without her much as he had when she was with him.

  And it was clear that Trevor didn't need her. He was no more than an occasional visitor now. And with Gabrielle Wister she had discovered unsuspected resources in herself.

  Had it been only a month since she and Gabrielle became ... close? Mavis had resisted her feelings at first, but the other woman seemed to exert some magical magnetic pull on her. When she casually lay a hand on Mavis's shoulder as she studied a piece of ceramic jewelry, it was all Mavis could do to keep from crying out. When, finally, she had admitted to herself and to Gabrielle what she felt, it was as though a dam burst inside her, loosing long-held emotions. Strange, she had never experienced anything like it with another woman, ever. Even now, when she was alone in the dark, sometimes she wondered ...

  No, she told herself severely. This was the right thing to do. But that didn't mean it was easy.

  She got out of the car and stood in front of the house that had been home for so many years. It was the only house on the street in which all the windows were dark. The morning paper lay unwrapped on the front stoop. She must remember to stop it. The house looked deserted already. Abandoned.

  Mavis started up the walk toward the twin junipers that flanked the door. She pulled the sweater closer around her against a sudden chill.

  At the door she paused to pass her fingers over the temporary patches that had been used to seal the bullet holes. Doing a crazy thing like that was not at all like Brian. He was meticulous in his care and use of firearms. Mavis was still unclear on what happened. What had he thought he was shooting at that night, anyway?

  She would take some of the blame for the incident. It was, after all, the night he drove over and found her with Gabrielle. Any man might react violently to that. Brian had been remarkably controlled at the time. Or so it seemed.

  Mavis had planned to tell him. She had discussed with Gabrielle how to go about it. But she kept putting it off. And when Brian found out the way he did, it was not without some relief that she accepted it.

  She unlocked the door and went inside. The place smelled musty and stale. She sniffed the air. Her stomach lurched. Had something got inside and died here? That didn't make sense. The house had not been empty that long. Surely Trevor had been in since yesterday. She flipped the light switch. Nothing happened.

  "Damn." Her voice sounded flat and muffled in the dark living room. Had the light bill been paid? Of course it had. A fuse, then. Or what did Brian tell her to call them? Circuit breakers. The box was out in the kitchen.

  On the way through the living room she tried switching on a lamp. It too was dead, so a burned-out bulb was not the problem.

  "Damn," she said again. Home repairs were a man's job. She winced at the thought, remembering there wasn't going to be a man in her new home. She was going to have to make some changes in her thinking.

  She considered leaving and coming back in the morning. No, there were a few things she needed from the bedroom, and as long as she was here, she might as well take them. If fooling with the circuit breakers did not restore the lights, she thought there was a flashlight in Brian's tool drawer.

  Mavis continued through the dining area, feeling her way, using the faint light that filtered in through the living room from the streetlamp outside. The kitchen doorway, a darker rectangle in the darkness, loomed ahead of her.

  Schuss.

  What was that? It sounded like something softly sliding across the kitchen floor.

  Thump.

  Faint, barely audible, but unmistakably coming from the next room.

  "Trevor?" Her voice had gone all weak and quivery.

  Silence.

  "Is someone there?"

  Schuss. Thump.

  Slowly, carefully, trying very hard not to make a sound, Mavis backed away toward the front door.

  Something jabbed her. She sucked in her breath and almost screamed before reaching back to feel the edge of the dining room table which she had backed into. Her feeling of relief evaporated instantly as something scraped on the other side of the door to the kitchen.

  Mavis had never been easily frightened. When Trevor had gone through his horror-movie phase a few years ago and loaded up on rented gore videos, the blood and the monsters on the television screen had only bored her. After years of marriage to a policeman, she had known too much real-life horror to be chilled by anything concocted in a special-effects lab.

  Now, though, she knew a sense of terror deeper than anything she could have imagined. Something was in her house. She knew that with a cold dreadful certainty. Something alive was in her house. Alive and deadly.

  She edged, back around the table, taking care not to move the chairs and make noise. Part of her mind scoffed at the idea of being careful. Did she think whatever it was didn't know she was here? Ridiculous. It knew, all right.<
br />
  It knew.

  The, glow from the streetlamp outlined the curtained front window. Just to the left of the window would be the front door. Beyond it, safety. Mavis made her way toward the door across the deep wall-to-wall carpeting. How pleased she had been when Brian had agreed to put it in. Thick, camel-brown. Stain resistant. How little all that meant now. All she wanted was to cross that carpet and escape.

  Step by hesitant step she moved toward the door.

  Almost there now. Almost safe.

  The lights came on.

  Mavis gasped and threw her hands before her eyes as every bulb in the house suddenly blazed. She stumbled, caught herself on the back of a chair to keep from falling.

  Still dazzled by the sudden brilliance, she turned back toward the kitchen. There, filling the doorway, shoulders hunched, long arms dangling, was the figure of a ... a man? No, not a man. Too large. Wrong shape.

  What then?

  The lights stabbed into Mavis's eyes, seared her brain. Was the thing in the kitchen doorway moving? Coming toward her?

  Finally she let go the long-held scream. She whirled and ran stumbling toward the front door. Something was just behind her. Something that breathed in ragged half growls. The doorknob was slippery and cold under her touch, and it took precious seconds for her to claw it open.

  Outside in the chill night she ran across the lawn to the little car and slammed herself inside. She refused to look back toward the house, not wanting to see what might be coming after her. Another interminable moment passed while she scrabbled the key from her bag, got it into the ignition, and finally started the engine.

  With tears blurring her vision, Mavis fought the steering wheel, felt the tires bounce off the curb, and was at last on the street going away. Away from her house and ... and ...

  And what?

  She eased up on the accelerator. With her free hand she fished a Kleenex from the dispenser under the dash panel and wiped her eyes. As the car slowed to a reasonable speed she gradually brought her breathing under control.

  In the instant of panic she had thought: Call the police! Now she saw how ludicrous that scene would be.

  You say someone is in your house, lady?

  I saw ... something.

  Yes, ma'am. And what, exactly was it you saw?

  I don't know. First it was dark. Then it was all light. It hurt my eyes.

  Yes, ma'am. It was dark, then it was light, and you saw what?

  Good question. What had she seen, if anything? Half blinded as she was, how could she be sure?

  There were the sounds from the kitchen. Yes, that was something. Darkness or light did not affect sounds.

  I heard something.

  Could you describe what you heard, ma'am?

  Yes, it was a sort of sliding, shuffling, scraping bump. Something like that.

  Yes, ma'am. We'll have a man come around and have a look.

  Sure they would. She knew how the police handled crackpot calls. Promise the nut anything then forget it, hope she didn't call back.

  But there was something in that house, dammit. Something evil. She could feel it. Sense it. She could smell it when she walked in. It was not something a desk officer in a police station would understand, and she couldn't blame the man.

  There was one person she could tell. Brian. In the years they had been married, she had seen him more than once sit straight up in bed, sweating, staring into the darkness. He was reluctant to talk about what he saw, the fears that chilled him. Probably thought it was unmanly. But once in a while he would talk to her. Brian sensed things that were out there in the night. He knew things that other people were afraid to admit. Brian would understand.

  Mavis pulled to the side of the road and forced herself to relax. Her fingers were cramped into claw shapes from gripping the steering wheel. The muscles across the back of her shoulders were bunched and painful. She breathed deeply and slowly. Gradually the tension eased.

  She concentrated and came up with the address Brian had given her. His new apartment. A doubt crept in. How would he react to seeing her in the middle of the night. Would he be annoyed? What if he had somebody with him? A woman?

  What foolishness! Brian would act as he always had in times of crisis - strong, capable, reassuring.

  Mavis realized fully what she was doing. Running at the first real emergency to the man she had abandoned. No, not abandoned, dammit. He was as much to blame as she, if blame had to be laid.

  But thinking this way was pointless. She wanted to see Brian. Later she could feel embarrassed and she could explain or apologize or whatever. Now all she knew was that she wanted Brian.

  She found the street where he lived and his old wood-frame apartment building among the newer cinder-block and stucco units. Parked cars lined both sides of the street. Mavis pulled into a red zone alongside a fire hydrant. The police sticker on her rear window still brought certain privileges.

  She sat for a moment looking up at dark windows that would be his third-floor apartment. What if he weren't home? Or in there asleep? Again the image came to her of her husband in bed with another woman. She should have stopped somewhere, phoned him.

  Stopped and phoned?! Mavis expelled her breath in a little snort of exasperation. What possible difference would it make now? Get up there, she told herself, and talk to the man.

  She left the security of her little car, closing the door reluctantly. The chill of the night closed around her. She walked swiftly along the sidewalk past one of the newer buildings that stood next to Brian's. From somewhere inside came salsa music and party sounds.

  Brian's building was silent. It was the last of the older generation hanging on among the young ethnic mix of the neighborhood.

  The wooden steps that zigzagged up the outside wall looked frail in the filtered moonlight. Mavis looked both ways on the street behind her, then quickly started up the stairs, holding onto the railing as she went. She paused at the second-floor landing and looked down over the street. No cars passed, no one strolled the sidewalks. The party music from next door was a faint tinkle. Clutching her sweater close around her, she hurried on up to the third floor.

  The door that led to Brian's apartment had a window, but it was covered with a dark cotton print curtain. Ugly. Certainly not what she would have chosen.

  God, what was she doing, redecorating for him?

  She knocked, waited, knocked again.

  Damn.

  Please be here.

  She knocked a third time, feeling empty.

  Chuff.

  A sound from inside the apartment. He was home. She let go a sigh of relief and knocked again.

  Chuff.

  Wait! The sound was not from inside. It came from the wooden stairs. Down there in the dark. Behind her.

  Chuff.

  Coming up. Coming toward her.

  Chuff.

  Brian coming home? Oh, please, dear God, let it be Brian coming home!

  Chuff.

  She turned.

  Looked down.

  Saw the face.

  Screamed.

  After that the faint party sounds from the building next door were all that disturbed the silence of the night.

  Chapter 21

  There had been other times in his life before this one when Brian Kettering had felt like an utter and complete asshole. Plenty of them. On none of those occasions, however, did he feel more utter and complete than on this warm California night as he drove away from his confrontation, if you could call it that, with Enzo DuLac at The Pit.

  He had failed to connect the little sleaze in any way with the killing of Al Diaz. He had wanted so badly for DuLac to be guilty that it knocked the props out when the little shithead had come up with an alibi. Beyond the subject of Diaz's murder, he had not even thought of a way to bring up Trevor or any of the other shit that was plaguing him.

  What made the whole fiasco even worse was that the oily little bastard had made a fool of him.

  "Shi
t!" Kettering pounded the steering wheel as though it were the greasy top of Enzo DuLac's head. "Shit shit shit!"

  When was this losing streak going to end? Kettering asked himself. He had fucked up at the department, his wife had moved in with another woman, his son was working at a pesthole. Charity Moline had walked out on him, and finally, he had come off second best against a lightweight like Enzo DuLac.

  "Shit!"

  There were, as usual, no parking places on the street where Kettering now lived. Overbuilt with apartments on both sides, there seemed to be cars permanently lining the curbs, as though they had grown there and sunk roots into the concrete.

  He swung into a U-tum to reach his usual spot in the red zone next to the fire hydrant. What the hell? Kettering hit the brakes. A car was already parked there. A familiar little Honda. He eased forward and checked the license plate. It was Mavis's Honda, all right. What was she doing here? It had to be more bad news.

  Kettering double-parked the Camaro and got out. He peered into the Honda. Empty.

  He stepped back and shuddered as though a cold breath had blown on the back of his neck. Something was wrong.

  He sprinted across the street to his old three-story building. A dark, indistinct mound lay at the bottom of the wooden stairs. An outflung hand, pale under the overhanging bulb, identified it as a body. After a quick scan of the area Kettering ran to the body and knelt beside it. He looked down into the pale, bruised face of his wife.

  "No!" he cried to the unhearing night.

  He felt her neck for a pulse. It was there. Weak and fluttery, but the pulse was there. She was alive; that was something. But the unnatural position of her limbs did not look good.

  As gently as he could, Kettering arranged her in a more comfortable-looking position. Mavis's eyes did not open, She looked fragile and young lying there in her jeans and thin sweater.

  He stripped off his coat and spread it across her upper body for warmth. Then he ran up the stairs, banged into his room and grabbed the telephone. He dragged it to the end of the cord so he could stand in the doorway to keep a watch on Mavis lying two flights down. He punched out the emergency number, 911.