“Be careful, Henry,” the boy muttered under his breath, barely looking up from his rolling papers.
“Hi, Angel—whattya mean?”
“Just be careful.”
“Of what?”
The young man shrugged and didn’t say anything.
“Angel?” Henry stared at the waif. “Is there something wrong?”
No answer.
Henry just shrugged, turned, and started back toward the main wing, the crackle of the bug zapper making Henry’s skull throb. Walking briskly now, fists clenched, a knife edge of nervous tension pressing against his sternum, he needed to get out of this place. Right away. He needed to get out of this forlorn, pathetic place.
And he almost made it. He almost reached the bend in the corridor, which was maybe ten feet away, when he heard the voice of the woman he knew as Nurse White.
“Hennnnnn-reeeeee.”
The sultry croon drifted out from the shadows of an open unit to Henry’s left.
Henry could not resist pausing, and gazing in at the shadows. “Hey, hello…uh…how’s it going?”
“Better now that you’re here, Henry.”
He looked away, his face warming.
“Come a little closer,” she coaxed from the dim light of a single forty-watt bulb. She was sitting in the corner of a cluttered storage unit, still dressed in her nursing whites, perched on a lawn chair in front of a battery-operated shortwave radio.
An incorrigible alcoholic, Nurse White was a middle-aged woman with enormous doughy white cleavage spilling out the top of her partially buttoned blouse. Her wrinkled eyes were caked with mascara, and her lips had so much scarlet-red lipstick she resembled a partially finished clown. “You want to hear something crazy?” she said dreamily, pointing at her shopworn radio, an empty bottle of cheap bourbon on its side at her feet. “I can get Paris, France, on that thing. Or maybe it’s Paris, Texas.”
Her brittle laughter could have peeled paint.
“I’m going to need to be going, Nurse White,” Henry informed her.
“You need any help tonight?”
“No…no thanks. I’m all set.”
“I can be very handy.”
Henry blushed again. “That’s great, I’m just…I’m all set tonight. Thanks.”
“Just be careful, Henry.”
Henry wondered what she meant. “I will. Thanks.” He started to turn away.
“He’s here tonight.”
Henry froze. He turned and looked at the nurse. He knew exactly what she meant. “Excuse me?”
“He’s here.”
A long pause. “Are you sure?”
“Go look. His light’s on.”
Henry thought about it for a moment. “Nah, that’s okay, I don’t need to—”
All at once Henry stopped and stared at her, a realization sparking in the back of his mind. An idea. Why hadn’t he thought of this earlier? Of course. Of course! The perfect man for the job, the perfect way to eliminate Special Agent Ulysses Grove!
“What is it, sweetheart?” Nurse White was watching him with a lascivious smile on her painted lips. “You look like you swallowed a canary.”
“You know what…maybe I will go talk to him,” Henry murmured.
He turned away from the nurse’s lair, took a deep breath, then proceeded to the end of the corridor, where a large, scarred wooden door was hewn from filthy slats. Henry could barely see through the slats into the pitch-black emptiness of an ancient service elevator. He could smell the moldering, dusty stench of what lay below.
Every fiber of his being told him not to get in that elevator.
He reached down to the leather strap and yanked up the vertical slatted door. It rose on squealing pulleys. Henry took one last deep breath and stepped into the dilapidated conveyance, pulling the door down behind him. His heart hammered in his chest as he glanced around. The plank walls were lined with tattered canvas. He found the rusted iron lever and slammed it down…and he rode to the basement.
Some folks believed the subterranean sections of U-Store-It were once the labyrinthine honeycombs of a salt mine. Others claimed the original owners had civil defense in mind, especially since the place was built just after World War II. But all Henry knew was that the basement of the facility was a horrible place, and it seemed to have only a single tenant.
“Hello?”
Henry’s voice echoed dully as the elevator reached the bottom, and the door jiggered opened on to a passageway. The stone walls were sweating. The air was thick with mold. A single bare lightbulb hung from the stalactites thirty feet away, casting a thin beam down the seemingly endless tunnel. Country music played somewhere.
“Hello? It’s Henry. From upstairs. Unit 213!”
No answer, just the faint weeping of a steel guitar from some old Hank Williams tune crackling from a tiny speaker somewhere. It made Henry’s flesh crawl as he moved deeper into the passageway. A bruise of light could be seen maybe fifty feet away where the wall opened up like a wound.
“Anybody home?”
Henry approached the opening and looked in at the darkness of the storage unit.
“Two thirteen? What the hell you want?”
The disembodied voice was deep and sepulchral, coarsened from a lifetime of Lucky Strikes and sour mash whiskey, cured in the twang of Kentucky coal mines. Henry could see the glowing orange tip of a cigarette floating in the dark, and not much else.
“I have a…I have…I…”
“Spit it out, son.”
“I h-have a job for you.” Henry’s bladder threatened to loosen and give way. His heart galloped. “That is…if you’re interested.”
At last the shadows moved and coalesced, and a large human form emerged into the yellow half-light. “Might be and might not be…keep talkin’”
They called him The Hillbilly, and he had been skulking around down here for as long as any other aboveground tenant could remember. He stood a full seven feet tall, and was gaunt as a scarecrow and covered with jailhouse tattoos. He stank of BO and had nicotine-yellowed skin. Above his five o’clock shadow and sunken cheeks were two mean little eyes as hard and black as Indian corn.
Henry swallowed his nerves. “There’s s-s-somebody…s-somebody I need you to kill.”
The Hillbilly smiled, revealing a row of green, rotting teeth like tiny tombstones. He pulled a massive bowie knife from his belt and commenced cleaning the dirt from under one of his yellow nails.
“I’m still listenin’…”
PART II
Through the Caul
“Good and evil lie close together.”
—Lord Acton
NINE
The next day, Grove’s little colonial two-story was awash in the laughter of women. Vida made a big deal out of how huge the baby had gotten in the months since she had laid eyes on him. For most of the afternoon Vida sat in the bentwood rocker in the living room and bounced the plump little infant on her knee. She cooed Swahili lullabies to him in a hoarse voice that sounded like Tiny Tim with a hangover, while Grove shuttled back and forth from the kitchen, doing the prep work on an elaborate dinner. Maura looked on with weary amusement, every once in a while asking Vida about life in Chicago, her diabetes, her parakeet, and her back problems.
Grove had a hard time concentrating on all this while he basted his Greek chicken. He could usually lose himself in his cooking—he was practically a three-star chef—but not today. Today he went through the motions of roasting the garlic and making the lemon-rosemary reduction and adding the cornmeal to the bits of rendered bacon while ruminating on the Mississippi Ripper. Gliane’s rapid DNA tests on the St. Louis scene had been inconclusive. More tests were being conducted. Grove had been compulsively checking his e-mails all day, but nothing had come through yet. They would come soon enough, and they would match up with somebody, and Grove would find this mother. Very soon.
It was all Grove could think about anymore. Which was fine. Perfectly fine. As long as he didn’t d
iscuss it with his wife. He knew Maura was at her wits’ end with Grove’s workaholism, but that was okay because Grove could segregate the different parts of his life into compartments in his brain. When he was home, he would not talk about his work. He would keep his file folders locked up in his office credenza. All the gruesome crime scene photographs and diagrams of entry wounds and pathology reports and horrendous details of off-the-scale madness were tucked into secret slots. His family would never come into contact with it. His wife and child were safe. When Grove was home he was a doting father and a loving husband…and now a dutiful son.
“Mom?” He called out from the kitchen. “Can I get you a glass of wine?”
“In a minute, Uly,” she replied. “Right now Granny must go out and smoke one of her nasty cigarettes.”
Grove went over to the threshold of the living room and watched his rheumatoid mother heft herself out of the rocker and hand the baby back to Maura. Then Vida creaked and shuffled across the room toward the front door. Grove wiped his hands on a towel, then turned and followed his mom outside.
They both sat down on a wrought-iron bench that was nestled in a patch of morning glories. At length Vida snubbed out her filterless Camel on the bench’s leg. Sparks fell into the flower bed. “I have not been completely truthful with you, Uly, I must tell you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“The truth…” Her voice trailed off. She seemed to be groping for words.
“Uh-huh.” Grove waited patiently. He didn’t know exactly what was coming…but he had an idea.
Best not to rush it.
At last Vida looked at him with her sad, soulful eyes. “You are in danger, Mwana.”
“Hmmm.”
“I cannot explain how I know this, but I do, I know you are in danger.”
After a long pause Grove asked her if that was the real reason she came down to Virginia, to warn him.
“I am afraid so…yes.”
Grove looked at her. “More visions?”
“Yes.”
“Figured that was the case.”
Vida looked worried. “After all we have been through, you’re still the great skeptic?”
“I didn’t say that.” Grove kept his gaze leveled at her. “I’d be an idiot not to take your visions seriously, Mom. It’s just that…”
Now it was Grove’s voice that trailed off.
Vida waited. “Yes, Mwana?”
Grove looked into her eyes. “I’m supposed to be in danger, Mom. That’s the way it works. We’ve talked about this. You’ve seen it. Whether it’s my bloodline, my destiny, whatever. This is what I’m supposed to do.”
“I never said—”
“There are people out there, Mom, people with one prime directive—”
“Uly—”
“These people are rare. Okay? Thank God. But they’re out there. They feed off pain and misery and death. And they have to be weeded out and removed, and I know how to do it. I don’t know why it happened but it did. I was born into this.” He softened then, and he put his hand on her bony brown arm. “You were the one who taught me that.”
Vida looked at him. “I understand all this, Mwana, believe me, I do.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
She licked her gray lips. “It is not only you who are in danger this time, Uly.”
Grove stared at her. “What do you mean?”
“It’s your family this time.”
A stab of dread ran through Grove’s guts like a hot poker. “My family?”
Vida nodded slowly, deliberately, her gray eyes glinting in the failing light.
TEN
The dinner hour came and went in a series of awkward silences, and once again the Grove household settled down for the night. By eleven o’clock, Ulysses Grove found himself alone in the kitchen, sitting at the island counter, drumming his fingers on the marble top, watching his cell phone as though it might sprout wings and take flight at any moment. It sat on the counter in front of him, next to the remnants of the night’s dinner, the wadded napkins, the polenta-crusted plates, and water rings. Moonlight streamed in through the Levolor blinds and, under an adjacent counter, a single fluorescent tube added a cold blue cast to the room. Grove kept staring at that infernal wireless phone.
A watched pot never boils.
A watched cell phone never rings.
Grove was about to crawl out of his skin with nervous energy. Still nothing conclusive from Gliane at the Bureau lab. No results. No DNA matches. And now Vida had dropped her bombshell that Grove’s family was in danger, and it might have something to do with the Mississippi Ripper, but she had been maddeningly vague. Grove had prodded her, demanded to know what the hell she was talking about. But all she could tell him was that it had come to her in a vision, another vision, something about a shadowy figure on the edge of a desert. How the hell was Grove supposed to use that little nugget of information? Go station a surveillance van at the local beach? Stake out the sand traps at the local golf course?
“What are you doing?”
Maura’s voice startled him, and he turned with a jerk. “Oh…sorry…I was just…thinking.”
“Thinking, huh?” She crossed the threshold of the kitchen, her bare feet padding silently on the cool adobe tiles. Maura was draped in an oversize fleece sweatshirt, nude underneath, and her porcelain pale flesh looked almost luminous in the gloom. “I was doing a little bit of that myself.” She paused at the end of the island, hands on her bony hips. “Always a dangerous proposition, all this thinking going on.”
Grove turned back to his vigil with the cell phone. “I promise you my mom’ll only be here for a few days.”
“She can stay as long as she likes.” Maura rubbed her neck. “That’s not the problem.”
“There’s a problem?”
She let out a big sigh. “God, no. What gave you that idea?”
“What’s on your mind, Mo?”
“That.” She pointed at the cell phone as though it were a termite infestation. “We’ve talked about this, Uly…how many times now?”
Grove shrugged. He knew this was coming, and yet he felt an odd sort of fatalistic calm. He had segregated these components of his life so rigidly that they now felt like different TV stations in his head. He had just been enjoying the Rattled Criminologist Show and now, as abruptly as the click of a remote, he was tuning into the Henpecked Husband Hour. He wiped his eyes. “Tell me we’re not gonna go through this again.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, Ulysses.” Maura spoke evenly, a trace of weariness in her voice. “We agreed the weeknights are ours.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Actually you’re still on the banks of the Mississippi.”
He looked at her. “You know how close I am to grabbing this guy?”
“And you will, I have no doubt.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
A long pause here, Maura letting out another sigh and trying to put something very thorny and complex into words. After a moment she said, “Maybe I’m feeling a little needy tonight.” Her voice softened. She came around the counter, and she put a hand on Grove’s tense shoulder. “Postpartum dragons rearing their ugly heads again maybe.”
“Maura—”
“I know what I signed up for, Uly. I know you’re going to catch this one.” She came around behind him and put her arms around him. “Matter of fact, I’m planning on doing an article about it for Graydon over at Vanity Fair. It’s not the job. You know I’m proud of the job. I’m just asking you to give it a break for one measly night.”
Grove drank in her scent, the powdery melange of lotion, milk, patchouli oil, and sweat. He closed his eyes. Cradled her hands against his chest. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” He closed his eyes, leaning his head against hers. He could detect a faint hint of cigarette smoke. “You’re absolutely right.”
She gently turned him around, faced him. Her nipples had stiffened under her nightshirt. The gray cotton
material clung to her now. “Aaron’s out like a light,” she said, reaching up and touching Grove’s grizzled brown cheek. Her hand was warm on his face. Her breath smelled of toothpaste and musk. “And your mom’s dozing in the rocker in his room.”
“Mom’s asleep?” Grove said, his nerve endings down in his solar plexus waking up.
“Dead to the world,” Maura whispered, planting a kiss on Grove’s neck, then under his ear.
“Hmmm.”
“Let’s turn the phones off,” she uttered, nibbling Grove’s earlobe, flicking her tongue across his ear.
“Best idea I’ve heard all day.”
“You know me, always thinking.”
“An honest-to-goodness genius.” He put his hands under her sweatshirt and found her heavy bosom. He kissed her, his tongue probing, his hands cupping her warm, swollen breasts. His erection strained at the seams of his boxers. “I’m nominating you for the Nobel.”
“Mmmmmmm…put the cell phone on vibrate, Uly.” A tiny, slender hand squeezed his crotch. “Then put it between my legs and call me.”
One hand still on her breast, he fumbled blindly in the moonlight for the cell phone. He snatched it up and thumbed it into the silent mode.
Somewhere in the back of his mind he told himself he would check it before he fell asleep that night.
“Do me on the family room floor.”
Their lips stayed locked as they edged their way across the kitchen wall, knocking a bowl of apples to the floor. Grove’s shoulder nudged the wall phone off the hook. The receiver dangled as apples rolled across the tiles.
They stole down the basement steps, pulling off each other’s clothes.
By 3:00 A.M. the stillness that precedes the dawn had plunged the house into a deep, dark well of silence. The drone of crickets and cicadas outside had dwindled now until only the ceaseless cycling of the central air conditioner stirred the tomblike quiet of the two-story.
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