Cage of Night

by Ed Gorman

  CAGE OF NIGHT

  By

  Ed Gorman

  MORE PRAISE FOR ED GORMAN

  "One of the most original crime writers around."

  —Kirkus

  "Gorman has a wonderful writing style that allows him to say things of substance in an entertaining way.

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  "...the dialogue is snappy, and Gorman writes brightly and crisply."

  —The Washington Post Book World

  "Gorman's writing is tight; he skillfully keeps the story moving to its dramatic denouement."

  —Library Journal

  "Gorman is the poet of dark suspense..."

  —The Bloomsbury review

  "One of the world's great storytellers."

  —Million (England)

  "Aliens or Shared Psychotic Disorder? In the end, it doesn't really matter when people die, but the question and how Gorman's characters have to deal with it make for fascinating reading."

  —Charles de Lint

  "Gorman's sardonic vision, hard-bitten style and talent for surprise make him one of the most distinctive voices in today's crime fiction."

  —San Diego Union

  "In the truest sense, Gorman is a supreme spinner of yarns..."

  —Interzone

  "Gorman's stories are interesting and readable because he is intelligent, literate, mature and compassionate. And he writes some very attractive prose."

  —The Talley (England)

  "Gorman has set his own very personal standard for the hard-boiled genre."

  —Fear (England)

  "The modern master of the lean mean thriller."

  —The Rocky Mountain News

  ED GORMAN

  CAGE OF NIGHT

  Copyright © 1996 by Ed Gorman. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written permission of the publisher, except for the purpose of reviews.

  The characters and events described in this book are fictional. Any resemblance between the characters and any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  The mention of or reference to any companies or products in these pages is not a challenge to the trademarks or copyrights concerned.

  Because of the mature themes presented within, reader discretion is advised.

  Table Of Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Part Two

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part Three

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Excerpt of Different Kind Of Dead

  Biography

  IN MEMORY OF ROBERT BLOCH

  "Darkness

  dwells

  within even the best of us.

  In the worst of us,

  darkness not only dwells,

  but

  reigns."

  Dean Koontz, "Down in the Darkness"

  PART ONE

  Richard Mitchell, KNAX-TV:

  "The big question here today is will the equipment work effectively. Not many people will forget what happened seven months ago when another man was executed in this prison. Lethal injection is supposed to be the most humane way to put somebody to death, but last time something went wrong with the hypodermic needle. The prisoner's entire nervous system was paralyzed, but he didn't die immediately. In fact, it took him forty-eight minutes to die, and the medical examiner listed the cause of death as suffocation. A pretty grim way to go. Everybody's hoping for a much quicker and more humane execution today."

  Tape 4-D, June 23. Interview between Attorney Susan Amerson and her client in the Clark County Jail (A=Attorney, C=Client.)

  A: I want you to tell me about the alien again.

  C: You don't believe me, do you?

  A: I thought we worked through this already. I'm not your enemy. I'm your friend. I'm trying to help you.

  C: But you don't believe me.

  A: (Long sigh) I want you to tell me about the alien.

  From a Police Report—August 23, 1903

  Officer Henley became very ill when we reached the victim up in the attic. He had to go home for the rest of the day. That's why I, the junior officer, am writing this report to you, Chief Sullivan. The thing is, he cut off her head. That's what made Henley so sick. We opened the attic door and looked up the stairs and there was her head, very bloody and with the eyes torn out, sitting right at the top of the stairs. Henley never did go upstairs. He went down to the main floor and vomited. Then it was left to me to go upstairs and find the rest of her body.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I guess by now you pretty much know what happened the last year or so in the Valley here. My name is Spence.

  All I can hope is that you'll give me time to tell my side of things. Nobody ever did. Not the cops, not the press, not even my own parents. They all just assumed—

  Well, they assumed wrong, each and every one of them.

  I'm here to tell you about Cindy Marie Brasher.

  Night we met, I was twenty-one and just out of the Army, and she was eighteen and had just been voted Homecoming Queen. She was not only good looking, she was popular, too.

  Which is something I'd never been. Popular, I mean.

  Maybe I wasn't an outright nerd but I came pretty close. The few dates I'd had hadn't exactly been spectacular successes, and the only kids who asked me to hang around were the ones I always saw out at the mall playing video games and buying science fiction paperbacks. I was buying them, too.

  I wasn't ready for college—mediocre grades, and no real desire to go—so I enlisted in the Army. I have to admit, I had pretty fancy dreams. I'd come back looking like a movie star and possessing secret knowledge of at least forty-eight ways to kill a man in less than ten seconds.

  Well, I wasn't quite a movie star when I came back but I had shed my baby fat and my zits, and I had become a fair sandlot softball player. I still knew only one way to kill a man, and that was with a gun. The Army had turned me into a pretty decent marksman.

  Right here I probably should tell you about Josh, my younger brother. I wouldn't have met Cindy Brasher that night if he hadn't taken me to the kegger.

  When I left for the Army three years earlier, Josh was a skinny, gangly kid who spent most of his time in front of the TV screen watching The Three Stooges and really dorky horror movies. He was even more of a social and academic disaster than I'd been.

  But while I was gone, frog became prince. He became one of t
he three best forwards in state basketball, he developed into a damned good looking kid with all the social skills I lacked, and he managed to accomplish these feats while maintaining a 3.9 grade average.

  It was supposed to be the other way around, wise older brother teaching naive younger brother about the ways and wiles of life....

  But in my case, I found myself a little intimidated by my brother. We'd be walking down the street and at least half the people we'd meet, young and old alike, would stop to make a fuss over him, to compliment him on his basketball playing, or to tell him how much they liked the particular shirt he was wearing, or to invite him to some function he clearly didn't want to go to.

  Josh always dutifully introduced me, making a big thing about my Army years, but very few of his admirers paid me more than passing interest. Josh was the star here.

  I suppose he was feeling sorry for me the night he invited me to the kegger out in Hampton Woods. I was just sitting around the kitchen table talking with Mom and Dad about my plans to start community college next spring.

  He came in the kitchen and said, "Why don't you go to that kegger with me tonight?"

  I laughed. "You want to invite Mom and Dad, too? Don't you think I'm a little old for a high school kegger?"

  He grinned. "Everybody'll be so drunk they won't even notice how old you are."

  Mom frowned, obviously thinking of drunken teenagers driving cars. Josh leaned over and gave her a kiss and charmed her worries away. "Just kidding, Mom." Then: "C'mon, brother. You're going with me."

  "Go on, Spence," Dad said. "You might have a good time." He winked at Josh. "Anyway, you'll get to see that Cindy Brasher. She's the Homecoming Queen and a real beauty."

  "I'm sort of surprised they let her be queen," Mom said. "You know, after her troubles last year and all."

  I wanted to ask what kind of troubles but Josh was tugging me away. He was like somebody from a different species—tall, poised, good looking, self-confident. Sometimes it didn't do my ego a whole lot of good to stand next to him.

  "We'll be home early," Josh shouted merrily as we walked through the house to the bedroom we shared. "No later than dawn for sure."

  Then he laughed so Mom and Dad would know he was joking.

  In my room, while I changed shirts and pants, he filled the wallet I'd bought for his birthday last week. He dumped the contents of the old wallet on the dresser top, then transferred everything to the new wallet.

  "You ever use these?" he said, flashing me a kind of condom I'd never seen before. It came in an aqua wrapper. "French ticklers. Girls love 'em."

  I wondered if I should tell him, then decided against it. He'd only feel sorry for me—or think something was wrong with me—if I told him I was a twenty-one-year-old virgin.

  In the car, a convertible a jock-happy Pontiac dealer let him drive gratis, we rolled through the warm, smoky October night with the top down and the radio loud.

  "You dig chicks, right?" he said.

  "Sure," I said. "Why?"

  "Just wondered. I mean, you never have any dates."

  "Guess I just haven't found anybody to date yet. I've only been home two weeks."

  "I'm going to find somebody for you."

  I almost laughed. He was still my little brother, despite his size and physical acumen, and here he was conducting a father-son conversation with me. And he was the father.

  "I can probably find my own."

  "You mind if I say something?"

  "Be my guest."

  "The way you dress, and your hair—"

  "Bad, huh?"

  "Real bad. No offense, I mean."

  I felt a kind of isolation, then. I'd never fit into any kind of social group before and apparently I wasn't going to start fitting into any now. Not even one that included my own brother.

  "How about if I send you down to Peyton's?"

  "The men's store?"

  "Yeah. Peyton's a big basketball booster. He lets me charge a lot of clothes. He says as long as I score 30 points a game I don't have to worry about paying him back. I'll see if he'll let you put some clothes on my account. Then I'll take you over to King's."

  "What's King's?"

  "This styling salon."

  "Oh, like a barber."

  He shook his head. "That's why your hair looks like that, brother. Because you go to a barber instead of a styling salon."

  I tried to make a joke of it even though he was starting to irritate me some. "I guess I've got a lot to learn."

  He said, quite seriously, "Yeah, brother, you do."

  CHAPTER TWO

  Back in my high school days, getting invited to keggers out at Hampton Woods meant that you had been accepted by the popular kids.

  I suppose because I'd never been invited, I'd created this picture of a kegger that looked like a beer commercial on TV—you know, lots of attractive young people having a good time being attractive and young.

  There were probably fifty cars parked in a fallow cornfield surrounding the edge of the woods that ran alongside the river. You could hear the music from a half mile away. The moonlight gave everything a slightly dangerous, nocturnal feeling.

  Josh parked his convertible and we started walking to the edge of the river, where most of the people had congregated.

  But before we got there, we saw a small circle of teenage boys forcing themselves to throw up.

  "Puking contest," Josh explained as we passed them.

  So much for my image of attractive young people having a good time being attractive and young.

  A bonfire next to the water's edge threw flickering golden images high into the autumn trees. All I could think of was the war fires Indian tribes used to have on these plains in the early part of the last century. The electric guitar had replaced the war drum.

  There had to be a hundred people gathered around the fire. Some were drinking, some were toking on joints, some were making out, some were arm wrestling, some were just sitting very stoned and glassy-eyed and staring up at the bright prairie stars that covered the cloudless night.

  Oh, yes, and some were puking.

  This time there wasn't any contest. This time it was simply a matter of kids being genuinely sick. The girls generally found this repellent—making noises like "issh" and "iccck" and "oh shit!"—while the boys, being boys, seemed to find the vomiting hilarious.

  Josh mattered.

  I saw that the moment we stepped into the light of the bonfire. People talking paused to look at him; maybe half a dozen kids surged forward to speak to him and touch him in some way; and three different people got him dripping paper cups of beer from the three huge kegs that had been neatly arranged on top of a picnic table.

  Josh didn't forget about me.

  "This is my brother, everybody," he said. "He just got back from the Army, and he's got some great stories to tell. Right, brother?"

  "Yeah," I said, finding a stupid grin on my face, making the "Yeah" sound as if I'd maybe stopped some spies from sneaking into secret Army installations. Or led some kind of guerrilla operation that not even the Senate knew about.

  But about the only stories I knew had to do with the night our barracks ran out of toilet paper, and the night that Southern kid went crazy and destroyed the communication shack, after learning that his girlfriend back home had a new boyfriend—a black boyfriend.

  "Hey, brother here doesn't have a brewski," Josh said.

  At which point three or four kids dashed to the kegs to get me one.

  Once my hand was filled, Josh said, "I'm going to check out the chicks. Why don't you just sort of mingle around, you know?"

  "Sure," I said, wanting to smile.

  When Josh was looking for girls, he didn't want me around. Not with my clothes and my haircut.

  I found a tree stump on the edge of darkness and sat there. I could watch the moonsilver river and listen to the barn owls in the darkness on the far shore. I'd never been to a kegger out here, but I had spent a lot of time in these wo
ods. I used to be a hunter and a fisherman until I started feeling sorry for the animals I killed. They had a right to live same as I did. Then I just came to the woods and walked around. That's one of the nice things about not being popular. You have plenty of time on your hands.

  Cindy Brasher and her boyfriend got there about twenty minutes after we did.

  Her boyfriend, who stood six two easily and who had rough good looks, stirred up the same kind of commotion Josh had.

  People encircled him, giving him beers, clapping him on the back, breaking out in laughter at just about everything he said.

  But it was Cindy who I really watched.

  She wasn't a classic beauty, I suppose, her features not quite fitting together, but there was a strange yearning in the eyes—a sadness that contrasted with the constantly smiling sensual mouth—that I found touching and erotic. She wore a blue sweater and jeans, nothing fancy, and had a plucky little blue barrette in her dark hair. She also had an exceptionally fine body, one a bit on the slender side but full in the hips and breasts. She was every girl who'd ever broken my heart without knowing it. Back in high school, I could fall in love with girls merely by passing them in the halls.

  She had her own groupies, girls and boys alike, but she seemed curiously disinterested in them. She looked around constantly. That sense of yearning for something was in her eyes again.

  "You think you could kill somebody?" the kid asked.

  "I'm not sure."

  "I could."

  "Oh?" I said.

  "Yeah. My old man was in 'Nam. He killed five people and he said it was easy and he said he didn't regret it at all."

  "Well, well."

  "He said it was him or them."

  "Yeah, probably," I said.

  "I wish I coulda been in 'Nam."