Moon Music

by Faye Kellerman

  "Yes." Lucky guess? "She couldn't have told you."

  "No, she didn't tell me. I haven't even spoken to your mother. What you described…it sounded like cancer."

  Poe felt droplets pouring down his neck even though it was cool inside the casino. "She has some weird kind of leukemia. But Rukmani's optimistic."

  Y sipped vodka and said nothing.

  Poe said, "She needs chemotherapy. Without it, she'll die. And please don't feed me shit that we all have to die eventually. I'm not in an existential mood."

  Y took out one of Poe's rolls of quarters. He could hear the desperation in the kid's voice. "I'll talk to her. No promises."

  A millstone was suddenly lifted from Poe's neck. He felt his eyes water. "Thank you."

  Y looked at the boy, handed him his vodka. Poe shook his head. "I've already had too much. I feel like my head's being attacked by a woodpecker."

  After dropping a quarter into the slot, Y dug into his pockets and pulled out a cellophane packet. "Take this. It'll make you feel better."

  "What is it?"

  "A home remedy. You could get a vision, but don't pay it any mind."

  Poe looked at the powder, put the envelope in his shirt pocket. "Is this some kind of peyote?"

  "A little peyote, a little mushroom, a few other desert plants, and cayenne pepper. Mix it with tomato juice and vodka for one hell of a Bloody Mary." Y pulled in an ace-high against the machine's pair. He put another coin in the bottomless pit. "This is what you do. You take this shit, strip naked—it's warm enough—then go out into the desert and howl at the moon."

  "There's no moon tonight."

  "Then howl at the stars, howl at something. Beat your breast and be at one with the desert. I'm telling you, it works. Oh, you'd better wear boots. Lots of snakes out."

  "Could you come by tomorrow to talk to Mom?"

  Y managed a half-smile. "Tell Emma I'll come by."

  "What time?"

  "Daytime."

  "Could you be a little more specific?"

  "No. I'll come after dawn but before dusk."

  Poe gave up. "Thanks."

  "No promises." Another quarter into the machine. "I don't make promises, no one gets hurt."

  From the moment his mother was admitted into the hospital, Poe ran in fast-forward. His life was a blur of death and disease, of decisions with consequences for which he was ill-prepared. At least, his brother and he became a united team, bombarding the doctors with questions, pressuring them until they got answers. They adopted a pugnacious us-against-them mentality, making them unpopular with the staff, causing Rukmani some heat. But neither cared, because too much was at stake. The animosity thrust against them reminded Poe of his painful youth. But along with the pain came the warmth of a revived fraternal relationship.

  Remus lived a hellish commuter's existence, grabbing the last outbound plane from Reno, then flying back for work in the early morning. His energy seemed boundless, in stark contrast to Poe, who woke up every morning feeling exhausted and drained.

  Pleasure became only a word in the dictionary. He spent all his conscious hours either at work or at the hospital—nursing, comforting, waiting to see what might happen next. Holding an old woman's hand as she slept fitfully, conked out on methotrexate. His mother's breathing was raspy, her breath stale and often fetid. Her hair turned brittle and cracked at the roots. Her skin was as parched as the desert floor. Rukmani was still puzzled by Emma's cellular presentation: the histology didn't quite conform to anything in the books. But the chemotherapy was working, and that was all that mattered.

  For all his size and girth, Remus was able to adjust to sleep in a hospital room. Poe became an insomniac—restless and testy. After two weeks of frenetic hours, Weinberg ordered him home one sizzling afternoon. Three hours of blissful sleep in his own house, in his own bed. Alone with the world. It gave heaven a whole new meaning.

  When he awoke, it was three o'clock and a scorcher. He was drenched, as wet and itchy as a Southern swamp. He ran cold water over his head, dressed in clean clothing, then stripped the soaked sheets, piling his linens and heading for the Laundromat. Pulling into a spot, he could see the heat rays emanating from the asphalt parking lot, feel the fire run through his shoes.

  He stuffed his clothes in a washing machine, intending a quick trip to the hospital. But the thought of stepping through those doors, hearing the hushed tones in a room redolent with antiseptic smells. Life amid a sea of panicked, confused faces as white-uniformed staff scurried about like speed-driven specters. He couldn't muster the strength.

  Instead, he made a detour for Records.

  Bun-headed Madison was still manning the desk. She still wore the same distasteful expression. "You're back."

  "Me and herpes—just can't get rid of us."

  Madison screwed up her face. "Any specific reason why you compare yourself to a virus?"

  "It's what I am—an invader." Poe rocked on his feet. "No, I haven't filled out the proper papers. But you're going to let me in anyway, because I outrank you and I'm feeling extremely violent. Next person who gets in my way is roadkill." He held out his hand. "The keys?"

  Madison frowned, but stood up. "What year?"

  "'Seventy-three."

  "Homicide?"

  "Actually a suicide."

  "Those are filed under Homicide." She pulled out a key ring, unlocked the door to the vault, and switched on the light. "This way."

  "Madison, you deserve a raise."

  "I deserve to win the lottery. But I'm not going to win any more than I'll get a raise, so why dream."

  Born in Utah, Linda Joanne Hennick née Paulson had been thirty-eight years old at the time of her demise—three years older than Poe, which gave him pause. He had always thought of Alison's mother as a pretty but much older woman.

  She had been found in a room at the Four Aces Motel and Casino. Poe knew the place. It was one of a quartet of cheap joints that sat in a dustbowl at the Nevada/California border. Twenty-five years ago, the casino hadn't been much more than a barn with tables and slots. When the wind blew, the rafters would rattle, and grit would coat the floor. Now the Aces was a hard-core gambling mecca for those who couldn't afford or couldn't wait for Vegas. Recently a grade-school child had been murdered in one of the motel's arcades. The father had been paged by security guards to take the kid home; the child had been crying and had wanted to go to sleep. But the lure of cards had been a powerful aphrodisiac, obliterating whatever little paternal love might have once existed.

  He flipped through the microfiche.

  A head-shot picture of the victim when she had been in one piece. Like her daughter, Linda had been beautiful. Alison had inherited her hazel eyes and blond hair. But Linda's face had been fuller, her lips not quite as lush. The snapshot showed a thirtyish woman with intense eyes. They were not only looking at you, but looking you over.

  Another turn of the spool. Poe read on.

  Cause of death was voluminous shock brought on by profuse arterial bleeding from multiple cuts and stab wounds to her wrists and arms. The postmortem black-and-whites showed a seminude woman sprawled on a bed, head thrown back, a pillow resting under her neck. One leg was straight, the other was bent at the knee. Her left arm rested by her side, the right draped across her wounded breasts. Her bottom torso and thighs were covered by a red dress. Her legs were bare.

  About a half-dozen close-ups of the inflicted areas, the most notable being deep incisions across the wrists. There were also cuts and slashes across the belly and face. A head shot showed superficial crisscross slices on her cheeks, a swollen lower lip, and a couple of bruised eyes.

  Poe winced, averting his eyes for a moment to catch his breath. It defied logic to classify the wounds as self-inflicted, as they were surgical in appearance. Yet homicide had been considered, then ruled out.

  Why?

  He continued scrolling through the chart on the screen.

  A snapshot of her stomach. It was also spiderw
ebbed with cuts, but they didn't appear to be as random. As he looked harder, a pattern emerged—a cross or at least something Tshaped. Faint but definite.

  Again the wounds were meticulous in appearance.

  Had she just gone crazy, or had she been undergoing some form of religious self-abnegation…some form of penitence? Or had the cuts been inflicted by the hands of another? Cults had been known to torture their subjects hideously for absolution.

  He finished with the photos on the monitors, then scrolled until he came to the pathology report. Skimming through the details, he gleaned that when she was found, Linda had been dead for approximately ten hours. Rigor had come and gone, sped up by the intense desert heat. (The room temperature had registered at ninety-five.) Lividity had set in, the blood pooling to the lowest points of her body.

  Poe flipped through the film until he hit upon the actual police report. She had been discovered by the hotel maid, who, having received no answer to her knock, unlocked the door to the room around ten in the morning. Linda had checked in at six the prior evening, listing herself as a single occupant. She had signed the register card, had given the clerk forty-nine dollars in cash for the room.

  Checked in at six, found dead at ten. Narrowing her death between ten and sixteen hours—whatever good that did.

  Articles found at the scene:

  One leather handbag.

  One medium-sized wallet containing a driver's license, a gas credit card, a picture of a little girl, and twenty-five dollars in cash.

  One gold braided necklace chain.

  One gold-and-diamond watch.

  That got his attention. The Hennicks were not a wealthy family. A gold-and-diamond watch was unusual enough. Why wear something so pricey to such a cheap dive?

  Unless she had met someone before her death. Someone she had wanted to impress. Or someone had given the jewelry to her before he had murdered her. A lover's quarrel gone bad? Yet, the death had been ruled a suicide. Why?

  Other items:

  One red dress.

  One matching pair of red shoes.

  One set of car keys on the nightstand.

  One bloodied carving knife.

  Poe shook his head.

  The last item listed was a note left by the victim.

  A note?

  Poe's eyes widened. Alison had never made mention of any suicide note. Perhaps she hadn't known.

  Frantically, Poe ripped through the microfiche trying to find the note's contents. Scrolling page after page. Where the hell was it? For some reason, it kept eluding him.

  He really didn't want to have to dig up the original file. Where did they keep them? Did it even exist anymore?

  Calm.

  Another trip through the reel. And then he found it. A single sentence.

  This is for what I did.

  Leaving Poe to figure out exactly what Linda had done.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  HE COULDN'T ask Alison about it. If he did, she'd know he'd been snooping. Besides, how reliable was an eight-year-old's memory? The next logical choice would be Gerald Hennick. But, officially, the case had been closed twenty-five years ago, and Poe was reluctant. Hennick had suffered long before his wife's death. The humiliation as the ladies gossiped…

  That poor man.

  He's such a saint.

  God will reward him his place in heaven for his devotion.

  While men snickered…

  What a cuckold!

  Why does he put up with it?

  The man has no pride.

  Hennick the henpecked.

  In truth, Hennick hadn't deserved the shameless pity or the callous scorn. His wife had been a victim of mental disease, and he had coped—just like millions of others plagued with tragedy, illness, and bad luck. God was a fickle dealer.

  Without the Hennick family as sources, Poe was left with only one option.

  He pulled out of the hospital parking lot at eleven in the evening, knowing that Y wouldn't hit the bars much before then. For the first time in several weeks, he felt upbeat.

  Emma would be discharged on Monday. Yes, she'd need more treatment, but her body required a break—a three-week interlude to build up strength for the next assault of chemotherapy. While Emma recuperated, she'd be living with him. Poe had also hired on a full-time nurse. Three people living in his clay oven. Privacy would be done Japanese-style.

  His mother had completed her first round with flying colors. Her white cell count was close to normal, and her neoplastic neutrophils seemed to be in fast retreat. If only she could gain some weight. Every time Poe saw her stick frame, her frail movements and labored breaths, he felt a nagging twinge in his gut.

  Enough of worries. Onto the streets, into civilization. He kept the windows of his car rolled down. The night was beautiful and balmy, studded with stars, colored by neon, and a full moon acted as a spotlight. He breathed deeply, savoring the air of freedom as he inched his way up the Strip. The sidewalks held people and laughter—a glorious city of anonymous millions.

  Turning his Honda into the Luxor's driveway, Poe stopped, stepped out of the car, and handed the attendant the keys. He took another deep breath, staring at the holographic face of King Tut, who looked middle-aged, not like the fourteen-year-old boyking he had been.

  He went inside the towering black glass pyramid, his eyes immediately drawn to the up escalator, angled as steep as the Eiger. The triangular ceiling was pitched so high that it often gave momentary vertigo. A fantasy Nile riverboat ride encircled the lower casino like a moat. During the ride, tourists saw the various Ramseses and their consorts, adorning rock-coated walls speckled with graffiti in hieroglyphics. Poe often wondered what the words actually said.

  For a good time, call Thutmose at…

  Once again, Poe craned his neck upward. Suicidal people loved to leap from high places, and the Luxor had not gone unscathed. A few years back, a distraught woman had jumped from one of the top floors of the hotel and landed smack in the middle of one of the hotel's sumptuous buffet tables. The force of her fall had been so great it had blown off her fingernails. It wasn't one of the cleanest jobs Poe had ever seen, but it had been effective.

  He started out by playing a couple of dollar slots, losing five hundred dollars in fifteen minutes. He then moved on to a table, nabbing a thou before being asked to go. Apparently his luck was pissing off the losers at the table. Before he left, Poe searched the bars; the old man was nowhere to be found.

  Out the door, making his way down the Strip, the neon flickering in the warm breeze. The blocks were long, the traffic was thick, and Poe was happy to be counted among the living. From the Luxor he went to the Excalibur, from the Excalibur to the Tropicana. As the clock struck midnight, Poe began to feel restless. He had come on a mission and refused to admit defeat.

  Moving north, into New York—New York. Built to simulate the Great Apple, the hotel and casino held the city's famous sights and buildings, including a replica of the Statue of Liberty scaled down to a third the true size. Poe supposed that the hotel had been meant to conjure up nostalgia in transplanted East Coasters. To him, it was an urban nightmare of noise, shadows, and graffiti, giving the impression of being dirty even though it wasn't. Choppy in design, the casinos were separated from one another by waterways, shops, and restaurants, making it difficult to spot people.

  Poe's eyes traveled up, following a sizable flow of people being transported by the up escalator leading to the Coney Island Midway and Arcade. Lots of games and prizes, but the main attraction was a roller coaster which coursed through the entire hotel and casino. Those staying for the night were often wooed into slumber by the dulcet tones of grinding gears and bloodcurdling screams.

  Lighting a cigarette, Poe stopped in front of a concrete brook of water spangled with pennies. Behind him stood a restaurant reeking of garlic. Off to the left was a bank of dollar slots, to the right were shops faced in phony brick and covered with fake tagging. Whenever Poe examined the walls carefully, h
e'd inevitably find the real stuff mixed in with the ersatz defacing. Bloods and Crips logos…signs of the notorious L.A. Eighteenth Street Gang. In the city that hosted the shooting of rapper Tupac, he wondered about the wisdom of elevating anything associated with thugs.

  Bouncing on his feet as he looked around. No sign of Y.

  Instead, he caught a glimpse of the bowler.

  He realized he was already moving in Hat's direction. His legs had processed the information quicker than his brain. Pushing through the crowd, he took off after the blip of felt. But the man tore away as fast and fluidly as a raging river, through the endless mazes of shops, stores, and restaurants. Poe kept pace with him, squeezing through the throng of people, darting down the casino's mock alleys and dingy side streets. The bowler jumped across his visual field, materializing, then disappearing. As Hat rounded corners, Poe saw flashes: the flapping motion of a loose double-breasted suit jacket and the hint of a rubber-soled shoe.