Valley of lights

by Stephen Gallagher

  I crouched down alongside her. 'Loretta?' I said softly. 'You hear me?'

  She took a moment to respond, like somebody swimming up from the depths.

  'Nick?' she said.

  'It's Alex, Loretta. Don't try to turn your head.' Now that I was closer, I could see the silver screws that were holding the arrangement in place like a crown. I moved around a little so that she'd be able to see me.

  'Alex?' she said. 'I'm sorry.'

  'That's okay.'

  'He found us. I think he'd been waiting. He followed us all the way down.'

  I said, 'Did you get a look at him?'

  For a moment I thought she hadn't heard, but then she said, 'You were right. I couldn't believe it, but you were. He had a different face, but it was him. He'd thought you were in the jeep, and then he thought you were trying to make a fool of him because you weren't. You've scared him, Alex.'

  'Scared him how?'

  'He stood over me and he kept asking, how much does he know?' And then she frowned, as her doped memory dredged up something new. 'Then he said he was going to take Georgie… did he, Alex? Did he take her?'

  'No,' I said, feeling ashamed of myself. 'No, he didn't.'

  'Thank God,' she said, closing her eyes. She was as pale as the sheet beneath her, and I could see a blue pulse of life beating at her temple. 'Is she hurt?'

  'She's fine,' I said.

  Loretta opened her eyes and looked at me again, and I was afraid that she'd be able to see right through my lie; but the pain and the drugs had clouded what was normally so sharp, and she only said, 'Don't bring her here. I don't want her to see me like this. Tell her… think of something to tell her, Alex.'

  'I will,' I said.

  God Almighty, I was thinking as I walked away.

  Imagine the bill.

  SEVENTEEN

  I found what I was looking for midway through the afternoon at the Tempe Community Hospital on Mill Avenue, barely three blocks from the cheap hotel where I'd left Woods his little surprise. I'd done a couple of the uptown hospitals before I'd thought to come down here, because it had taken me a while to realise that once he'd flown and found his refuge gone, there might be some kind of limit on the time he could spend and the distance he could cover before coming up with an alternative. I mean, just because he was something that I'd never come across before, it didn't mean that he could ignore the natural laws that the rest of us lived by. He wasn't God, he couldn't be everywhere at once.

  His name was Bob Winter, and he was a sophomore student on some kind of land studies course at the State University. He'd been rushed into the Emergency Room after taking a steep dive into the wrong end of a swimming pool; after cracking his head on the tiles, he'd been floating face-down with his lungs full of water when the lifeguard had reached him. They'd pumped him out on the poolside, and a paramedic had forced oxygen into him from a breather-bag during the short ride to the ER. As they'd been running him up the ramp, he'd suddenly opened his eyes and started to cough up chlorine.

  This, as far as I could work out the timing from the ER log, had been about four minutes after my hunting rifle had practised a little cranial surgery of its own on Woods. Not bad going. Winter had immediately established himself as a problem patient, refusing to give his name and demanding his clothes; it was only when these were sent along from the pool that they were able to find out who he was. It was a telling detail, as far as I was concerned; he couldn't give them a name because he didn't know it himself. When he made a transfer, all he got was the body – its skills and its memories having died with the owner. He'd have to go through his own pockets just to find out where home was.

  Damn his luck.

  I got an address for Winter, a room in a student residence on the Tyler Mall. I was half-ready for trouble, but I didn't really expect him still to be around.

  I can't remember when I last saw so many bicycles. Car parking was on the outside fringe of the campus so I had to walk in the rest of the way along a palm-shaded boulevard. I felt really conspicuous, even though nobody paid me any particular attention; it was just kids flocking from one place to another or sitting around on the grass. Maybe it wouldn't have been such a bad place for him to hide out after all; he could have seen me coming a mile away.

  But no, I knew him better than that. He was a loner, and this was all too public. He'd have flown; but at least I might get a clue as to where.

  I found his room up on the fourth floor of the residential block, and knocked on his door. The corridor was all new wood and exposed brick, with maroon-colored carpet tiles on the floor; it was fairly hushed apart from somebody's sound system playing a few doors away. I knocked again, but it was clear that nothing was going to happen, so I moved along and tried next door.

  I disturbed a curly young guy and his girlfriend, but they'd obviously been going at their books rather than at each other so I didn't feel too bad about it. They were both shoeless, and came out to talk to me rather than letting me in.

  'I'm looking for Bob,' I explained. 'Is he around?'

  'Nobody knows,' the boy said. 'He was in an accident a couple of days ago, and I think it shook him up.'

  'That's why I'm here. Has he been acting strangely, or what?'

  'We found him downstairs, that same evening. It was like he knew he lived here, but he couldn't remember the layout. But then we brought him upstairs, and he was fine.'

  I'd have bet that he was. I could imagine him getting his bearings, playing a part, fooling people. After all, he'd been doing it almost forever.

  The girl added, 'Then he went in his room and closed the door, and we haven't seen him since.'

  'Except in the parking lot. That time he was trying all the cars with his keys, like he couldn't even remember which one was his. It was scary to watch. Like another person altogether. We went straight to the medical center to tell them about it and they said for us to bring him over, but after that he never came back.'

  I said, 'What kind of car does he drive?'

  'A blue Toyota,' the boy said. 'He calls it Joshua. Are you with student welfare?'

  'My name's Alex Volchak,' I said. 'I'm with the police department. Your friend could be in some danger. He walked out of the hospital against advice and he never even signed a waiver.'

  'Is that all they're worried about?' the boy began, but I raised my hand in a calm-down gesture.

  'Of course it isn't,' I said. 'Have you any idea where he might have gone to?'

  He glanced at the girl, either for inspiration or reassurance. 'I don't know of anywhere. This is where he lived. His family are all halfway around the world, somewhere… something to do with the diplomatic service. I don't know that he could locate them in a hurry, let alone join them.'

  I said, 'Any way that we could take a look in his room?'

  I was expecting suspicion and evasion – it's almost an article of faith with a lot of college kids to regard the police as natural enemies, until they get mugged or have something stolen – but what I got here was more reluctance. Seeing Bobby Winter with a demon on the inside had disturbed them both deeply, although of course they didn't know the real reason why.

  The boy said, 'I don't see how. He left the door locked.'

  'And since when did a locked door count for anything in a student hall?'

  There was a flicker of a masked response in his eyes then. He hesitated for a moment, but then he said, 'Give me five minutes.'

  He went back into his room, leaving me out in the corridor with the girl. She was nice-looking and freckled, and looked as if she might get fat one day if she didn't watch herself. There was an embarrassed silence for a while as she tried to think of something to say, and what finally came out was, 'You want a coffee, or something?'

  'No, thanks,' I said.

  'This is just a welfare thing, isn't it? I mean… Bob hasn't done anything else, has he?'

  'You think he might have?'

  'I don't know. Before the accident, I'd have said no…'
>
  'Was there something specific that happened?' I pressed her. 'Something he did, something he said?'

  Further down the corridor, a door opened and closed. Rock music surged for a second, then shut off again. She said, 'He did say something,' and she looked at her bare feet and the floor, starting to blush a little. 'We were standing right here and he asked me to come back later, on my own. Kind of leaned over and whispered it, so Jack couldn't hear. I mean, Bob's a nice guy. He knows how it is with Jack and me. Why'd he say a thing like that?'

  I wouldn't have cared to dwell on what might have happened to her if she'd taken him up on his offer. I said, 'A bang on the head can mess people up. Does Jack know about this?'

  'No,' she said quickly. 'And please don't tell him.'

  'Trust me.' I looked at the door behind her, which was still closed. 'What's he doing in there?'

  'There's a panel in the back of the closet, it unscrews and comes right out. Lets you straight through into the next room. They're always in and out of each others' places, playing jokes and setting booby-traps.'

  As she was saying this, Bobby Winter's door opened right on cue and the curly kid called Jack appeared. He looked as if he'd been preparing a smile of triumph and it had been knocked right out of him.

  He said, 'I don't believe this.'

  He stepped back, pulling the door all the way open so that we could follow him inside. It was a narrow single room with a washbasin behind the door, a desk over at the window, and a bed and storage cupboards along the wall in between; the whole place had been taken apart, everything pulled out of the drawers and thrown around and the books swept down from the shelves.

  'His tape player's gone,' Jack said. 'And his TV.'

  'Any chance that anyone else may have done this?' I said.

  'They'd have to go through my room to get in. And I'd know.'

  I looked over at the closet, straight through into a mirror-image of the room on the other side, except that the image was neat and empty. It made me think of some book that I'd read as a kid, whose title I couldn't remember. The tape player and the TV, I'd no doubt, would now be in a pawnshop somewhere. If Bobby Winter had kept any savings stashed, it was also probable that the new Bobby Winter had found them.

  I said, 'Listen. I'm on the case, okay? Don't worry about it. I want to find a photograph, but we'll leave everything else as it is. It's no crime to mess up your own stuff.'

  They both looked around doubtfully, but they didn't argue. They were troubled by this fierce inburst of chaos into their otherwise regulated and protected lives, and I was the voice of order telling them that the world was still a safe place to be. And I didn't want them asking awkward questions that might lead to some official departmental follow-up – Winter might get to hear of it, and then the trail might be broken again.

  We found a photograph, showing Winter with two younger sisters. He was dark, thin, bookish, nothing remarkable about him at all. He wore glasses and a smile in the picture; go outside into the Mall and throw a stick, and you could probably hit a dozen like him.

  As I was leaving, Jack said, 'I just hope he's safe. He's a good friend.'

  I looked once at the girl, said nothing, and left them to get on with putting the closet back together.

  EIGHTEEN

  I walked across the street from the campus and into a coffee shop where I could see they had a phone, and from there I rang the hospital for an update on Loretta's condition. As I waited to be put through, I turned to look behind me; I seemed to have this constant sensation of being watched, even when nobody was looking my way. The shop's counters were lined with students, books open and heads down, most with only coffee or a glass of water. A bearded kid with a philosophy text propped before him was muttering 'Shit, shit,' as he flicked through the pages of his notebook. Further down the same counter, a silent girl was going through a new hardcover book and scoring through some of its lines with a yellow magic marker.

  Now, there was a point. Every body that he'd taken so far had been male. Was that out of preference, or out of necessity?

  The desk nurse for the intensive care unit came onto the line. I gave her my enquiry.

  'Mrs Heilbron was stable until half an hour ago,' she told me, 'when she began to haemorrhage. She's having another emergency operation now. Are you a relative?'

  'No.'

  'Then I really can't give you any more than that. We've managed to contact next of kin and they're on their way.'

  'It's as bad as that?'

  'I'm sorry. Perhaps you can speak to Mister Heilbron when he arrives.'

  There was a silence while I took that one in.

  Then I said, 'Yeah… I'll call again. Thanks.'

  I dropped the pool car back at the hospital, but I didn't go in. I called a cab and then waited outside for it to arrive and take me home. I was in a daze; part of it was that I hadn't eaten since the previous night, but I couldn't even think of facing anything now. I'd found the trail again, taken it as far as I could – which had been to a ransacked room in a student mall, and no further.

  I'd pulled the lion's tail, all right, but he'd done more than turn on me… he was taking my whole world apart, one piece at a time, and I couldn't even see where he was coming from.

  The cabbie asked me if I wanted him to go a couple of blocks off the route so that I could see the 'massacre house'. I said no, thanks, and he shrugged and turned up his radio.

  I paid him off at the gates of the trailer park, and walked in alone.

  Woods, Winter, what was the difference. He was smoke, I couldn't fight him or beat him. I'd tried, and Loretta and Georgie had paid for my mistake; now there didn't seem to be anything more that I could do other than to sit around and wait for him to come. How many other innocents would have to suffer as part of the show before he decided to move in and deliver the final stroke, I didn't know. I'd have to put on the uniform again and go through the motions, but I felt as if the dying had already started, there on the inside.

  A white car was waiting alongside my trailer, parked across the end of my own. So soon? I remember thinking as I stopped in the middle of the gravel road, and the door of the car opened.

  Lieutenant Michaels got out. He was in uniform, and on duty. He said, 'Alex? You look wrecked.'

  'Got it in one,' I said.

  'Alone?'

  'Right.'

  'I called the motel and they said you'd checked out this morning. I've been stopping by on and off for the last two hours.'

  'I already heard about the letter,' I said, making a move towards the house, but Michaels was shaking his head.

  'It's not about the letter,' he said. 'Get in the car.'

  I stopped. 'To go where?'

  'I'll explain on the way.'

  'Don't I even get five minutes to change?'

  'No,' he said.

  I got in. What could I say? The mood I was in, anybody could have ordered me around. I'd known Michaels for about five years and I'd even been to his house once, but our relationship had always been professional rather than personal. Now, as we drove out towards his district within which my own squad area fell, he was giving nothing away.

  We made a turn onto a quiet street. I recognised it straight away as the street on which the 'massacre house' stood; the street was still blocked by barriers and there were some tall screens around the house itself, but a young probationary policewoman ducked to see into the car and then moved a barrier so that we could pass. Michaels cruised by slowly, and then picked up speed as we exited at the other end of the street. Apart from keeping some attention on the road, he'd been watching me all the time. I'd been tense, nothing I could help, and now he must have seen me relax a little.

  He said, 'You thought that was where we were going?'

  'If this is some kind of stunt,' I said, 'I wish you'd get to the point of it.'

  'No stunt. We're going to a murder scene, but not that one. You think you've had a heavy day, wait until you see these people.'

&n
bsp; Something was wrong with Michaels. It hadn't been too noticeable at first, but as time went on I began to see that he was edgy and disturbed in a way that I'd never seen in him before. He wouldn't say where we were going; and after the second attempt, I gave up trying to get it from him.

  It was only after another forty-five minutes, slowed by the late-afternoon traffic, that I found out.

  By then we'd travelled all the way across the city and were coming over the hills into the select north-eastern quarter where the rich people lived; I mean, the kind of people so rich that they could buy one of those places on the lower slopes of the Camelback Mountains and then not even bother to live in it for most of the year. It was an area that I only really knew as a tourist; I'd brought dates up here to the Camelback Inn for drinks a few times, when I'd really wanted to impress them, but that was about my only connection.

  When we made the turn into a long private road I realised that we weren't aiming for an individual house, but for one of those walled developer villages near to the country club. This one was mostly screened by new trees and bushes, with only barred windows or garage doors peeking through. I couldn't see what we were doing here; it was way out of our area, after all.

  The guard at the main gate took a look and then waved us through, as if we were expected. We didn't get more than fifty yards before we had to stop at the tail-end of a jam of police and County vehicles, and it was here that Michaels switched off the engine and got out. I followed, looking around. It was my first time actually inside a place like this, and I was curious. The architect had obviously had a Mediterranean concept in mind, a little piece of Renaissance Italy re-drafted for the tastes of local money so that the final effect was of a quiet corner in Disneyland. We walked around by a big fountain that splashed away as the centerpiece of the main plaza, and climbed a rock path with a white stone bell tower marking its end. I knocked on the stone as I passed, and it was hollow.

  Michaels looked back at me. 'Hey,' he said, 'come on.'