Serpent's Kiss

by Ed Gorman

  Kathleen got up too quickly to get it. She hoped Marie didn't notice the anxious way she'd half leapt to the phone.

  "Hello."

  "Mrs. Fane. This is Sergeant Knowles. I'm downstairs at the door."

  "Oh. Yes, Sergeant."

  "There are two people here who'd like to talk to Marie."

  "I'm afraid that's impossible, Sergeant. Marie is resting."

  "They said they wouldn't need more than a few minutes."

  "I'm afraid not."

  "Who is it, Mom?" Marie said.

  "Excuse me a moment, Sergeant."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Kathleen cupped the phone. "Two people are here to see you."

  "Who?"

  "I didn't ask. You don't want company now." Marie shrugged.

  "Why don't you ask who it is?" Into the receiver, Kathleen said, "Who is it, Sergeant?"

  "Chris Holland from Channel 3 news and a friend of hers."

  Kathleen told Marie who it was.

  Marie said, "Why don't we see them, Mom?"

  "But why?"

  "I'm feeling better right now, Mom. It'd be okay for a few minutes."

  "You sure?"

  Marie nodded.

  Into the receiver, Kathleen said, "Why don't you send them up, Sergeant. But tell them they can stay only a few minutes."

  "All right, Mrs. Fane."

  "And thank you. I feel much better knowing you're down there."

  "Just doing my job, ma'am."

  Kathleen hung up.

  "I like her," Marie said.

  "Who?"

  "Chris Holland. On Channel 3."

  "I'm not sure which one she is."

  "You like her, too. You've told me you do."

  Kathleen came over and looked at her tired, drained daughter. "I still don't know why this couldn't have waited till tomorrow or something."

  "I'll tell her everything that happened to me. Then I can tell the other reporters that I've already told Channel 3. Then maybe they won't bother me so much."

  Marie put out her hand and Kathleen took it, holding it tenderly.

  "I'm not sure what I'm up to, Mom. Everything's just kind of crazy right now. I figure why not see Chris Holland. You know?"

  Kathleen smiled. "Well, honey, anytime you want them to leave, you just tell me."

  Marie managed a smile, too. "My mom the bouncer."

  Then the two women were at the door. They came in and made pleasant hellos and then proceeded to ask many strange questions, particularly the beautiful but distraught woman who was tagging along with Chris Holland.

  It was when the Lindstrom woman asked if Marie had noticed the killer's stomach-any movement inside the killer's stomach-that Kathleen began to doubt in a serious way if the woman was sane.

  ***

  When you came right down to it, Security Chief Andy Todd sort of liked Jeff Claiborne, even if the male nurse was gay. Jeff liked all the things any normal young man would-baseball, politics, the tyre sales Goodyear was always having-and never once expressed the least interest in anything such as ballet, longhair music, or sculpture. Jeff had even expressed an interest in getting involved in some 'security action' sometime. Andy just figured that maybe Jeff hadn't met the right young woman yet and when he did he'd probably slide on the ol' condom and start screwing his brains out. In the meantime, Andy had to suffer Jeff's subtle allusions to his roommate Ric, as if the R-i-c didn't tell you all you needed to know. Anyway, Jeff always worked in some reference to Ric in their conversations and every time he did Andy got tight. Real tight. It was a crime against nature and for Jeff's own sake Andy wanted to punch Ric's face in and then tell him to go join the Marines and leave Jeff alone.

  All these thoughts had been brought up earlier tonight when the two men had taken their late coffee break together. One of the security guards had come down with flu so Andy was spelling him and there was no way he was going to put in an eighteen-hour day without plenty of breaks. So, anyway, shaggy-haired Jeff had eaten his apple while ample-bellied Andy had snarfed down his Twinkie (he figured it was okay to cheat on his blood pressure as long as his wife didn't find out). Things had been going fine, the two men talking about the Cubs (or the Cubbies as Andy always called them) and World War II (while Andy had never been in the armed forces, he did have the entire Time-Life World War II collection) and the tractor pull that would be going on out at the fair this summer. Everything was going fine. No mention of R-i-c.

  And then Andy noticed the earring.

  It wasn't a big earring.

  No bigger than a pigeon turd, as a matter of fact.

  But it was an earring.

  And it was riding plain and bold in Jeff's right earlobe.

  And the whole thing just frosted the shit right out of Andy.

  "Whoa," Andy said.

  "Huh?"

  "What's that?"

  "What's what?"

  "In your ear?"

  At least the little bastard had sense enough to blush. "Oh, Ric gave it to me for my birthday."

  "Ric did, huh?"

  "Yeah."

  "You ever think maybe it was time for Ric to sort of move out and find his own place and leave you alone?"

  "He's a nice guy."

  Andy stared at him, the way he would at his own son. "I think you're a fine young man, Jeff."

  He could see how nervous this all made Jeff.

  "I appreciate that, Andy."

  "But that doesn't mean I approve of everything you do. You understand what I'm trying to say?"

  And Jeff, embarrassed and uneasy, dropped his gaze. "I understand, Andy."

  "You don't want folks to start makin' fun of you, do you?"

  Jeff just sort of vaguely shook his head.

  "Once they see that earring, that's just what they're gonna start doin', I'm afraid."

  "You wouldn't make fun of me, would you, Andy?"

  Andy could feel the young man's pain and suddenly Andy felt for shit and wished he hadn't brought it up in the first place. Maybe it was the kid's own business and maybe Andy should just keep his mouth shut.

  And it was then the phone rang and Andy leapt to it with a gratitude that was impossible to contain.

  Gratitude till he heard who it was. Frank Dvorak. The same front gate guard who had let Dobyns escape.

  "Yes, Frank, what is it?" Andy knew that he should have been over his mad by now, but he wasn't. Couldn't get over it.

  "I thought I should tell you somethin'."

  "What?"

  "There's somebody down by the garage. Can't make out who it is. Maybe Dobyns."

  "Can't you go check?"

  "I'm waiting for a call."

  Andy sighed: Can't leave the gate. Waiting for his goddamn girl friend again. "You want me to check it out?"

  "If you wouldn't mind."

  Goddamn Dvorak wanted to be petted like a dog.

  "Okay," Andy said. He hung up and turned to Jeff. "You're always saying your job gets dull. You want to try mine for a while?" Maybe being a security guy would make a man out of Jeff yet.

  "Really?" Jeff said.

  "Really."

  "Great!" Jeff said. He polished off the last of the diet Pepsi, got up from the wobbly plastic table, took his empty food wrappers over to the communal garbage can, and then joined Andy on his way to the elevator that would take him to the basement parking garage adjacent to the tower.

  ***

  Two and a half minutes later, the elevator door rolled open and yellow light spilled into the dark garage, touching on the fenders and grills of the hospital vehicles. The concrete garage smelled of dampness and car oil.

  When the elevator door closed, Andy snapped on his flashlight, leading the way through the gloom. "You still glad you came?"

  Jeff laughed. "Sure. Am I supposed to be scared or something?"

  "It's pretty dark down here."

  "I'll be fine, Andy. Honest." There was a laugh in his voice.

  When they reached the middle of the g
arage, Andy stopped and shone his light down a wide row of vehicles that was four deep. Somebody could easily be hiding between the cars.

  Andy drew his Magnum.

  "Stay right by me," Andy said.

  "You really think Dobyns came back here?"

  "Guess we'll have to ask him if we run into him, huh?"

  "Guess so."

  They took a few more steps and then Andy heard the noise.

  He crouched down in front of a panel truck, waving for Jeff to crouch down, too.

  Andy killed his light.

  The moon lay a thin veneer of cold silver over half the garage. All the vehicles looked like slumbering animals inside the vast cage of wire mesh that ran across the back windows of the big garage.

  "You wait here," Andy said.

  "How come?"

  "For Christ's sake, Jeff, just do what I say."

  Andy still wasn't sure what he'd heard. His first inclination was to say that it was a car door squeaking open and shut.

  Whoever it was-and Jeff had a good point, why would Dobyns come back to the hospital?-may have just climbed into a vehicle to hide.

  Andy spent the next five minutes walking up and down the dark aisles between cars and trucks. His rubber soles squawked loudly against the damp concrete floor and his light seemed to grow fainter, particularly as the beam was lost in the shadowy confines of a back seat.

  Several times he paused to listen but all he heard were the sounds of the night and of his own breathing. He was getting a little old for this kind of thing. His weight and his bad heart didn't exactly make him an ideal guy for this sort of thing. He wondered how Jeff was doing, if the kid was spooked by now. But Jeff had more balls than Andy had given him credit for.

  Then Andy found the station wagon with one of the side doors open. The wagons got taken home a lot and used by some of the more prominent staffers as temporary second or third cars.

  Andy came even with the station wagon and began playing his light around inside. Back seat was empty, as was the cargo area in back. Couple issues of Time magazine and a brown paper bag filled with empty cans of Diet-Rite cola, apparently on their way back to the supermarket.

  Finished with the driver's side of the wagon, Andy decided to go around and check the left side. That's what they taught you to do in security school, anyway. Check both right and left; check both up and down. Because you never know.

  Stuffed into the well between front seat and firewall, he found the body, or at least what was left of a security guard named Petry.

  Andy had missed this the first time because he hadn't' bothered to shine his light on the front floor.

  Now, he stood cursing himself for his incompetence and staring down at the ugliest sight he'd ever seen.

  Petry's throat had been cut so that his entire raincoat was soaked with blood. His eyes had rolled back so that now only the whites stared up at Andy. The security guard shivered. My God, this would give him nightmares for years. Petry's arm was extended in such a way that it looked as if he were grasping for a lifeline. His arm and hand blended in with the dark dashboard and seat covers because they were soaked with his own blood.

  Then Andy heard the cry.

  For the first time since he'd come down to the garage, he felt real fear, something Andy didn't readily admit to. He thought of himself as a competent, rational human being who could meet virtually any challenge life put in his path, and meet it with optimism and courage.

  But now there was a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach and an embarrassing twitch in his gunhand. He kept thinking of Petry's white eyes and red bloody face. It made Andy feel as if he were ten years old and in bad need of his father's reassuring voice. The old man was fourteen years dead now (heart attack, the way he'd wanted to go anyway) and there wasn't a day Andy didn't think about him.

  Andy hoped the old man was with him right now. Somehow. Somewhere.

  "Jeff?" Andy called out, shining his light into the cavelike darkness of the huge, echoing garage. "Jeff, are you all right?"

  But there was no response.

  Andy moved, inch by nervous inch, to the back of the garage.

  And then he saw the elevator door roll open. The elevator car was a yellow rectangle in utter blackness.

  A man got on and turned around to face Andy. At first Andy was under the impression that this was Jeff. He even relaxed a little. It was Jeff and Jeff was fine and everything was going to be all right, despite the way Andy had found Petry.

  Andy, cognisant of the extra rolls of weight on his belly, hips, and thighs-and certainly cognisant of his high blood pressure- started running toward the yellow rectangle.

  "Jeff! Wait for me!" Andy shouted in the echoing gloom.

  But then as he drew closer-breath searing through his chest now, his head a little dizzy-he saw that the man standing in the elevator car was not Jeff at all.

  It was Dobyns.

  The elevator door rattled shut.

  Andy was left alone in the darkness.

  And then his left foot kicked against something. Andy angled the flashlight beam down on Jeff's face.

  Laid out on the floor, Jeff looked like a corpse in a morgue awaiting his turn under the autopsy knife.

  Dobyns had done pretty much the same things to Jeff that he'd done to Petry. Throat slashed, defence cuts all over the hands and arms from where Jeff had been trying to defend himself, blood and pus and excrement pooled around Jeff's hips. The kid smelled pretty bad.

  Then Andy's beam lingered a moment on Jeff s ear, on the silly goddamn little earring that his friend Ric had given him. And Andy felt like shit. Who was he to make judgements on how other people lived? He was just this silly fucking middle aged fat man who was still playing at cops and robbers. Hell, he'd never even been in the armed forces.

  "So long, kid," Andy said softly, there in the gloom of the garage.

  It was then that he became aware of the elevator door opening again, of the yellow rectangle glowing like a hole in the ebon wall of night.

  Dobyns stood in the door of the elevator car.

  What the hell was he doing? What the hell did he want?

  Andy killed his flashlight.

  Stood there breathing so heavy and so ragged he was getting scared. The old man just pitching over one night on the back porch, dead. With a family medical history like that, it sure could happen to Andy easy enough.

  Andy had to be careful.

  His heart was just as much a threat to him as Dobyns.

  Andy put his head down, seeing the vague outline of Jeff s body on the floor. Andy wanted to be respectful, not brush against the corpse. He took small, precise steps, moving around the body, then starting to walk away from it, toward the elevator door.

  By now his gun hand was twitching badly and the Magnum was as heavy as a bag of cement.

  He raised his head again to glance ahead to the elevator car.

  Still there. Still open. A glowing yellow hole.

  But there was one thing wrong. Badly wrong.

  Dobyns was no longer in the elevator car.

  He had come out here to the garage.

  Given what he'd already done to Petry and Jeff, could there be any doubt what fate he had in mind for Andy?

  It was then that the pain, like a piece of jagged summer lightning, crossed Andy's chest right to left and forced him to slump against the wall.

  My God, he was having a heart attack.

  And a sociopathic butcher named Dobyns was somewhere nearby with a knife.

  And getting closer.

  In the damp darkness of the garage.

  Andy could hear Dobyns breathing every once in a while; hear his foot scraping, scraping against the concrete floor.

  Getting closer.

  Andy rubbed the area just above his sternum, where the pain had last been. The tightness in his chest was beginning to disperse, and the dizziness was gradually leaving his head.

  Andy narrowed his eyes, scanning the gloom surrounding hi
m. He felt as if he were a tiny life raft adrift on a chill, fogbound ocean with no possible hope of rescue.

  He wanted to run to the elevator, but he was afraid that the exertion would cause a heart attack.

  Or he could run out of the garage through the doors at the other end.

  But somewhere behind him lurked Dobyns. Waiting.

  The scraping sound again.

  Dobyns moving.

  Andy started to crouch next to the car and that was when he saw the keys in the ignition of the Dodge. Or thought he saw them.

  Andy was filled-with the happiness of a biblical prophet discovering the light and the way and the truth-with a wonderful idea.

  What if he got in the car real fast-like, locked the door, turned on the ignition, and then drove out of there?

  Dobyns couldn't do a damn thing about it.

  Except get out of the way.

  Andy would be safe. And he could go to a nearby hospital and have them put him on an EEG and see if there'd been any heart damage or not.

  Of course the tricky part would be getting inside the car.

  In this kind of darkness, the dome light would go on like a bank of night lights at Wrigley Field.

  Then he realised he was being ridiculous. He had a Magnum; Dobyns had only a knife. And Dobyns, however murderous he might be, was no superhuman monster. He would pay proper respect to a Magnum.

  Still crouching, Andy put his hand on the door handle, then paused, listening for Dobyns.

  Outside the hospital's fences, he could hear traffic. Thrum of tyre on pavement; honk of irritated driver.

  He eased open the car door.

  Wishing he weighed fifty pounds less, he heaved himself up into the seat.

  The first thing he did was close the door. The second thing he did was lock the door. The third thing he did was start the engine. Or tried to.

  Nothing happened. Not a single fucking thing. Oh, a little clicking noise, if you wanted to get technical. The tiny clicking noise made by the key as it tripped the lock. But other than that-nothing.

  Then he vaguely remembered Schmitty, the man who took care of all the hospital vehicles, telling him that some new cars needed batteries and that he was going to take out all the old batteries and trade them in for new ones.