“When’d you eat today?” David asked.
“Today?” Mel opened his eyes. “Had a sandwich brought in this afternoon. Looked good, too. Ham and … mozzarella.”
“Didn’t you eat it?”
“Della. She got the pickle, too.”
David shoved the onion rings in Mel’s direction.
“Della says to tell you that Stephen Arnold is in Minneapolis. The cops there got him under lock and key. So what’s up?”
A piece of grilled onion fell off David’s sandwich. He picked it up and put it in his mouth. A burst of laughter sounded from the booth at the end of the room. Mel glanced over his shoulder, then back to David.
“Stephen Arnold lived with the McCallums. He’s Charlotte’s father. He’s a full professor at Edmund University and he presented a paper a few months ago, some conference in Austria. Care to guess what about?”
Mel chewed an onion ring. “Angel Eyes?”
“The Guardians.”
“Same thing. He pro or con?”
“Not sure. Pro’s my guess. But his daughter’s mother-in-law says he always left a memo chip with his itinerary on the refrigerator door.”
“You find one?”
David shook his head.
“You thinking the killers took it?”
“Could be.”
“So in one pocket they got Charlotte’s finger, and in the other her Dad’s itinerary.”
David set his sandwich back on the plate. “Something like that.”
An alarm bell went off and the conversational roar quelled. The man behind the bar made a hand motion to the waiter, who nodded and disappeared down the hall toward the men’s room.
David and Mel turned around to watch the hallway. A man, potbelly swelling over cheap blue cotton pants that were belted below the waist, came loping from the hallway, wiping grey foam off his neck, forehead, and arms with a wad of paper towels. The waiter followed, towel roll in hand.
Mel frowned. “That’s new. When did they get the smoker’s friend installed?”
“Had it since last summer,” David said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“City ordinance. Everybody had to have them by spring.”
There were hoots of laughter, but the man with the paper towels ignored them. He tossed towel wads in the center of the floor and left, disgust etched into his ruddy face.
Mel’s hot dog arrived. He opened the bun.
“There’s no mustard on this. No catsup, either.”
The waiter consulted his order form. He ran a fingernail across the bottom of the pad, and Mel’s voice could be heard, sounding grainy.
“Chili dog. Onions, cheese, and kraut.”
Mel grimaced. “Anybody orders kraut, onions, and cheese, kid, it’s a given they’re going to want mustard and catsup.”
“I thought so.” The waiter pulled a jar of mustard and a bottle of catsup from his apron pocket.
David grinned.
Mel picked up the jar and gave it a sour look. “What’s this Dijon shit?”
The waiter, expressionless, took a jar of yellow mustard from another pocket.
Mel shook his head, a reluctant half smile on his face. “You new here, kid? ’Cause you’re born to the business.”
The waiter permitted a small smile and left.
Mel doctored the hot dog and took a bite. “No question, is there, David?”
David shook his head. “Political hits. Teams of two or three. We let it out—FBI will take the case.”
“Then they’ll bury it, like cats in a litter box.”
“We keep it quiet and the press finds out.” David shook his head. “If Ogden finds out—”
“Same difference.”
“We get buried. Same analogy.”
Mel took another bite of his hot dog. It was two-thirds gone. Clumps of kraut and chili dotted with cheese and onion fell to the plate in mounds. Mel picked them up with his fingers and shoveled them into his mouth.
David frowned. “Where did String go this afternoon?”
Mel cocked his head sideways. He chewed heavily.
“You said he went ahead of us—to the murder scene in his van. But we were there a long time before he was.”
Mel frowned. “So where did he go? Not right, is it? Go somewhere else first.”
David nodded slowly.
“Van’s in the lot,” Mel said. “You want we should take a look?”
“Soon as you’re done.” David handed him a napkin.
EIGHTEEN
David slid his id into the elevator slot and the door jerked, hesitated, then opened partway. Mel started to squeeze through.
David shook his head. “Take the stairs.”
“Claustrophobia getting worse?”
“I’m not getting in any cranky elevator.”
“Claustrophobia,” Mel said.
They headed left, to the stairwell. The overhead light was harsh bright fluorescence. The concrete steps were slick, worn, and grey—treacherous when wet. Small cracks ran like veins of old age. The walls were cinder block, musty-smelling.
The underground lot was cavernous, well lit in the center, with dark corners. Here their footsteps echoed. Oil stains had dried like black velvet mold. The air was soiled with the smell of exhaust.
“When you love the love you’ve loved so long—” Mel sang loudly.
“Give it all you’ve got,” David said. “There might be somebody out there doesn’t know we’re here.”
“And wake to find that love is GONE …”
David looked for the blue Chevy van with the rusty bumper—String’s favorite. It was easy to find—parked at an odd angle. The rest of the PD vehicles were lined up with mechanical uniformity, though there were no guiding parking stripes. The vehicles knew where they should be berthed. The van had skewed the lineup.
Likely, David thought, String had parked it himself. He was a tearaway driver, tending to leave the van in odd places, leaping out the instant the urge hit him. He had none of the driving habits instilled by the rules of the game during pre-grid days.
David absently felt the hood of the engine. Cool.
Mel ran his ID past the door handle, releasing the lock. The door hinges, large, unwieldy, and shedding rust, creaked loudly. David looked back over his shoulder, but the garage was empty.
Mel sat on the floor of the car, and leaned sideways to fiddle with the navigator. David rested his arm on the open windowsill of the van door.
“Hello, Detective Burnett,” the navigator said suddenly. “Navigator operational. Need something?”
“I got a query,” Mel said. “Give me a list of locations. Anywhere you went today after twelve noon.” Mel took a notebook from his jacket pocket.
The navigator’s light glowed green. “First location after twelve noon—left parking garage, Saigo City Police Department. One-fifteen P.M. stopped at Clarissa Sarkey Building that serves as the political science hub of Edmund University. I then went to the overflow visitors’ parking, twelve miles away on Hudson Avenue. At two-thirty I was again summoned to Akers Drive, which circles the Sarkey Building, and went from there to the Taco Stand on Mill.”
Mel glanced at David. “Maybe he was hungry.”
“I idled my engine at the corner of Mill and North Upper until three-fifteen.”
David raised an eyebrow. “Picked somebody up,” he said softly.
“Proceeded to the Museum of Human Behavior. Idled ten minutes on Sidley Alley. Proceeded from Sidley Alley to Napier Street, on priority one, arriving at four-eighteen P.M.”
“The McCallum house,” Mel said.
“I was sent to wait on Ridge Road, a nearby side street, by uniformed officer Berkson, until—”
David caught movement from the corner of his eye. The elevator door was opening.
“Elaki coming,” he said. People would take the stairs, quirky as the elevator was. But stairs were hard on Elaki.
“String?” Mel asked.
; The door slid open.
David shook his head. “Not String. One of the Elaki-Three.”
Mel bent toward the navigator. “Emergency computation—figure the best route between Deerfield, Ohio, and Madison, Wisconsin, including as many Polish vegetarian restaurants in the route as possible.”
The navigator made an odd hiccup. “This will require all memory, possibly resulting in the loss of—”
“Shut up and do it,” Mel said. “Priority speed.”
David watched the Elaki. Walker, he decided. The female.
“What you do here?” Walker’s voice was rough and overly loud.
David’s first inclination was to bring her to heel. He heard Mel take a deep breath, and decided to sit back and watch.
Mel poked his head out of the van. “Hey, there, sweetheart. You been looking for me?” He untangled his legs from the van and shut the door. The slam echoed.
She was very dark, this Elaki. Dark and thin.
“If I look for types of you, Detective, I go look in alcoholic serving houses.”
Mel glanced at David. “I think I’m in love.” He studied his fingernails, and stopped to scrape dirt from under the rims. “So what you doing down here, then?”
She was still for a long moment, stiff beneath the scales, in the way of distressed Elaki.
“Took wrong floor on elevator. And you here why?”
“We’re here to meet String,” David said.
Mel winked. “This is String’s van.”
The Elaki’s eye prongs swiveled to the van.
“How did the interviews turn out?” David said. The Elaki faced him, but stayed quiet. “In the hospital waiting room? Any leads?”
“Leads? You mean the clue?”
“Yes. I mean the clue.”
“No one is to see Izicho who take Dahmi.”
“If it was Izicho,” David said.
“It is you that needs convincing.”
“And you that needs evidence.”
“Interesting thing come up.”
David leaned against the van. “Tell me.”
Walker canted to one side. “This overflow of the waiting room. It is most unusual. This I got from the … the acid mouth.”
“The blonde.” Mel nodded. “Would have liked to been a fly on the wall for that encounter.”
“So I talk with Elaki patients. And learn they have been misinformed to be there.”
David folded his arms. “How so?”
“Call in to one health care farm for the problem—told to come here instead.”
“You’re losing me,” Mel said. “Health care farm?”
“For animals.”
“Hospital?” David said.
“Procedures for animals. Human influence.” The Elaki skittered sideways. “Is farm.”
Mel looked at David. “She been talking to Rose? How’d we get farm animals in here?”
David leaned forward. “What you’re saying is they called their problems in to one hospital, but got told to go to Bellmini General?”
“Yesss.”
“It’s like playing charades,” Mel said. “Figuring out what she says. Next thing you know she’ll be wanting to throw us all into trees.”
“And you will want to say that the London Bridge is falling. And it is not here London. And bridges falling on children is funny?”
“About as funny as throwing pouchlings into trees.”
“What hospital?” David said. “What hospitals did they call when they got directed to Bellmini General?”
“Is just one. Edmund University Health Center.”
“Hot damn,” Mel said. “She does got a lead.”
“This is clue?”
“This is clue,” David said.
“Then we find Izicho at Edmund?”
“Izicho didn’t take her,” David said.
“Gabilla.” Walker turned her back on them, but her voice was loud. “I think that you only wish to hide their rectums.”
Mel looked at David and grinned. “Translate that one, I dare you.”
The elevator groaned and the door slid partway open. Walker hissed and David looked up.
String sidled through and stopped. “Is department meeting?”
NINETEEN
String faced David and Mel with the acute stillness only an Elaki could achieve. Unconsciously, David and Mel moved closer together.
“Ah,” said String.
An engine started, and one of the parked cars inched forward. It emitted a warning beep. The car tires crackled against the concrete, and the car made a sharp right, then trundled toward the exit. String skittered sideways out of the way. David grimaced at the sulfurous exhaust.
“Miriam has sent me to find you Detectives. There is news from the morgue.”
“What’s up?” David was aware of the blinking nav light, inside the van.
“The object in Mark McCallum’s fist hand.”
Mel leaned forward. “What?”
“Is a memo chip,” String told them. “Itinerary for the business voyage of Stephen Arnold. The in-law father of Mark McCallum.”
Mel headed for the elevator.
“Meet you upstairs,” David said.
String swiveled an eye prong toward David. “You do not accompany?”
“He’s got claustrophobia,” Mel said.
“I do not.”
TWENTY
David stood by the downstairs exit on the empty buckled sidewalk and looked out at a world that did not sleep. It was humid. Haze burned in the bright lights; the smog was heavy, even at night.
The old Elaki female was gone from her post by the back door. David wondered where she went at night.
There’d been a message waiting for him at the morgue. Stephen Arnold had landed at Saigo International and was coming directly to PD headquarters to give a statement. It was understood that he wanted to talk to the detective in charge.
At home the girls would be sleeping, the night sky black and infinite and full of stars. So unlike the hazy, light-fogged sky of the city. He had not seen his daughters in forty-eight hours. He had the sudden nagging feeling that there was something he had forgotten, some school program he had missed.
There were noises from the garage. The voices had serious overtones—none of the jokey relief of men and women coming off shift. David leaned up against the side of the building.
Stephen Arnold, flanked by two large, uniformed officers, made his way across the sidewalk that led from the garage to the side door. Arnold moved steadily but slowly, like a man walking on the bottom of the ocean. Drugged or in shock, David thought. Possibly both.
One of the uniforms looked up and down the street, but neither noticed David, camouflaged by the shadows. If the cho invaders wanted this Arnold, they would get him. David thought of safe houses and witness seclusion.
Arnold disappeared under the overhang. David heard the side door open and close. He waited and watched, but there was no sign that Arnold had been followed. David went inside through the back door, going slowly up the stairs to the bullpen of task force desks.
Arnold was crying when David opened the door of the interrogation room. It was a small room, stark, furnished with a green slate table and two folding chairs. There was a pitcher of water and two glasses on the table, next to an old model Miranda-Pro.
Arnold was a tall man, thin. Younger and better-looking than David had imagined. He seemed too young to have a grown daughter and grandchildren.
Either that, David thought, or I’m getting older.
Arnold had brown hair, parted on the side. His face was long and narrow. He had blue eyes, with wrinkles at the corners, and his face was brown and weathered—wet now, with tear tracks. He spent a lot of time outdoors for an academic. Another surprise. Arnold wore a blue cotton dress shirt, collar open, khaki pants, and work boots. The odor of cigarettes clung to him.
“Dr. Arnold?” David said.
Arnold fished a crumpled plaid handkerchief from his pants
pocket, dislodging a handful of quarters that spilled onto the floor. David bent down and picked them up, pretending not to see the one that rolled out of reach beneath the chair.
Arnold blew his nose and stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. David offered the quarters. Arnold took them absently, clutched them in his fist, then opened his fingers. He looked at the quarters and frowned, then looked at David. He put the quarters into his other palm and extended a hand.
Arnold’s grip was firm, his palm cold and dry.
“I’m Detective Silver,” David said. “You a coffee drinker? I’ve got some going, should be ready in a minute.” David smiled. “We use the coffee to make prisoners confess. Talk or drink.”
“Coffee would be good,” Arnold said.
“Please,” David said gently. “Go ahead and sit down.”
Arnold looked behind his legs at the chair, as if he needed to get his bearings. He sat down and crossed his legs.
“Dr. Arnold, let me start by saying how sorry I am about your daughter. And your son-in-law.”
Arnold nodded. “But the boys. They’re okay.”
“Yes,” David said.
“I talked to them.”
“Yes.”
“On the phone.” Arnold paused. “They cried.”
“Dr. Arnold, we can cut this short here tonight. Would you like to go to a friend’s house or a hotel? Somewhere you can get some rest?”
Arnold’s voice was soft. A country boy, David decided, though the accents were faint. A country boy a long time ago. David would not have figured him for the School of Diplomacy.
“I want to see my little girl,” Arnold said. He opened and closed his left fist, clutching the quarters.
“Of course.” David had called Miriam. Clean her up, he had said. Give me time, she had said. “I’ll take you down in a few minutes. Dr. Arnold, what exactly did the Minneapolis police tell you?”
Arnold leaned back in the chair. “Said somebody broke in the house.” His fingers stroked the package of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, then moved away.
“It’s okay,” David said. “You can smoke in here.”
Arnold smiled suddenly. “You sure? I got no desire to be covered in foam by a smoker’s friend.”
“Neutral territory,” David said. “Go on ahead.”
Alien Eyes Page 9
