Night Shifters

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  “Is there a problem?” Kyrie asked taken aback.

  “No. I just wish your boyfriend had given us some warning before he decided to disappear.”

  “He’s not due for an hour or so. I came in early,” Kyrie said. “And he’s not my boyfriend.”

  But it was hardly worth arguing. And Frank looked to be in a worse mood than she’d ever seen him. “I’ll take a break now,” she said. “If Tom doesn’t come in, it’s going to be a hellish shift, and that way I’ll be able to stay till five a.m., okay?”

  Frank shrugged, which looked like consent. He was grilling a bunch of burgers, though Kyrie had no idea why, given the deserted look of the diner. Perhaps he was precooking them a bit to allow him to cook them faster later on. It wasn’t any of her business, in any case.

  She backtracked to the enclosed-porch addition. Rafiel must have heard, or watched her conversation. He was standing as she approached. “Ready?”

  She nodded. And gestured with her head toward the door at the back of the extension that led to the parking lot. She didn’t want to go to the parking lot again. Truly, she didn’t. On the other hand, neither did she want to talk to Rafiel in front of Frank. Frank was likely to decide that Rafiel was also her boyfriend and hold her responsible for whatever the policeman did in the future.

  She had no idea what had gotten into her boss. He was usually grumpy, but not like this. And then there was Anthony’s idea, which made her make a face, as she led Rafiel out the back door and onto the parking lot.

  This time the parking lot was deserted, there was no smell of blood, and she took care to stay in the shadow of the building, out of the light of the moon.

  Rafiel made a sound that seemed suspiciously close to a purr as he got outside, and he stretched his arms. “Do you feel it?” he asked, giving Kyrie a sidelong glance. “Do you feel the call?”

  “No,” Kyrie said, as curtly as she could. It was a lie, but only in a way. Yeah, she could feel the call, but she could feel the call every night. And it seemed to her Rafiel was speaking of another call. And there, as if on cue, she noticed his smell again. No, not his smell. His smell was soap and a little aftershave, nothing out of the ordinary. But the smell exuding from him right now was a thick, feline musk that made her think of running through the jungles, of hunting, of … “You said you had news that pertained to the corpse?” she said, turning her head away.

  “Yeah,” he said, and looked away from her, as though her turning her head to get fresh air, slightly less tainted by his musk, were an insult. “Yeah. We got a chemical analysis for the green stuff we found.”

  She looked at him. He nodded as if she’d asked a question. “The … Well, the lab thinks it’s of insect origin, although not quite like anything they know from any insects.”

  “And?” Kyrie asked.

  “And those things … the white stuff on the lungs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They think it’s eggs.”

  Kyrie frowned at him and he shook his head, looking impatient and annoyed, as if resenting that she couldn’t read his mind. “Not chicken eggs,” he said. “They’re insect eggs. They don’t know what type yet, but they’re getting in an entomologist from the Natural History Museum in Denver tomorrow. He’s someone’s brother-in-law or brother of a brother-in-law, and he’s driving down day after tomorrow. He’s supposedly one of those guys who can tell on sight what kind of insect laid eggs where. He’s used for investigating crimes by all the local police departments.”

  “Okay,” Kyrie said. “And why did I need to know this right now? Why was this so urgent that I had to take a break to hear it?” His smell was growing stronger. It seemed to fill her nose and her mouth and to populate her mind with odd images and thoughts. She found herself wondering what his hair would feel like to the touch.

  “Because I think there was the same powder on your porch last night,” he said. “Where those windows were broken.”

  “My porch? Insects?” she asked. “But Tom said something about dragons and his friend was going on about aliens.”

  “Well, yeah,” Rafiel said, and shrugged. “But I don’t think those two were exactly in the state necessary to testify in a court of law. Or for that matter anywhere else.”

  Kyrie conceded. And yet, she wondered what had happened in the porch while they were gone. Had bugs broken the window? In her mind was an image of masses of bugs crawling out of the loam, pushing on the window, till the sheer weight of their mass broke it. Yuck. Like something out of a bad horror movie. “Any dead bugs, or other pieces of bug in that powder?”

  “No,” he said. He looked directly at her, as if her face were a puzzle he was hoping to decipher. His eyes were huge and golden, and his lips looked soft. The musky smell of him was everywhere, penetrating her nostrils, her mind.

  He leaned in, very close to her, and asked in a voice that should be reserved for indecent proposals, “So, can I come by? After your shift?”

  The tone and the closeness startled her enough to wake her from the trance induced by his scent. She stepped back. “No. Why would you? No.”

  He took a deep breath as though he, too, had been affected by something, and stepped back. “So I can see if you have that powder in your porch or not. And to have it analyzed if you do.” He shook his head. “What did you think I meant?”

  “All right,” she said, reluctantly. “If you want to come. But not when I get off work. Come later, around one or so.” She wanted to get some sleep tomorrow. And besides, she was not absolutely sure about Rafiel Trall yet. She’d rather face him in the full light of noon, without the effects of whatever this smell was. “I’d better go back in. Frank is in a mood and I have repairs on a porch to pay off.”

  Edward Ormson got out of the taxi in front of the diner where he’d been told Tom worked. Finding this information had been a fast job.

  He, himself, had found Tom’s address on the Web, and his secretary had then called—from New York, that much more impressive—the boy’s landlady and asked questions.

  Closing the taxi door and waiting till the driver pulled away, Ormson frowned. In fact, in the whole story there was only one thing he didn’t understand. And that was that his secretary had told him the landlady seemed fond of Tom.

  Oh, it wasn’t at all strange that a woman should have some interest in Tom. Even at sixteen, when the boy had left home, there had been to him that roguish charm that attracts a certain class of females. What was odd, though, was that he had reportedly been living within the apartment complex this woman managed for about six months, and she said he’d never been late with the rent, didn’t have loud parties, hadn’t given the neighbors any cause to complain. He didn’t, in fact, seem to have any life beyond going to work and—according to the woman—reading out on the steps of the building when the weather was warm. Reading? Tom? Perhaps it was the wrong Thomas E. Ormson?

  But no. It wasn’t that common a name. And besides, there had been the dragon. Edward swallowed, as he headed toward the gaudy facade painted all over with the prices of specials in what appeared to be a full pack of primary color markers. It wasn’t just that “Fresh Rice Pudding” was scrawled in vivid red that offended Ormson’s sense of aesthetics. It was that above it “Fries Always Fresh, Never Frozen” was done in at least five different and mutually clashing colors.

  And above the door, something that looked very much like a pink pig wearing a cook’s hat and apron was tossing a succession of pancakes up in the air. The whole was so horrendous that it might very well be considered kitschy chic if it were in the right place. But around the diner, head shops, used record stores, and closed warehouses clustered. This was the type of area that would never be fashionable.

  It stood as a bulwark against the fern bars and lofts proliferating just a few blocks away. Here dingy and strange would hold the line against quaint and overpriced.

  Wondering about the hygiene of the place, and if it was quite safe to go in, he opened the door. A clash of b
ells greeted him, and a rough-looking, dark-haired, bearded man glared at him from behind the counter.

  Ormson had intended on approaching the first person he saw and asking for Tom. But this man didn’t look like the greatest of prospects. His eyebrows were beetled low over his dark, sunken eyes, and he looked positively murderous, an impression not improved by the fact that he held a very large knife in his right hand.

  Hoping that his hesitation hadn’t been noticeable, Edward made for the most distant of the many booths upholstered in dark green vinyl. He was about to slide into it, when the man behind the counter barked, “Hey, you.” Edward looked up, not even daring to ask what he’d done wrong.

  “That booth is for groups, Mister,” the dark man said. “Take one of the smaller ones.”

  Edward obeyed, though wondering why the booth was being held for groups when, clearly, there was no one else in the place. But he really didn’t want to argue with the man.

  Instead, he slid into the smaller booth and made a big show of picking up the menu and studying it. Normal diner fare, all of it, as far as he could see, with a few Greek dishes thrown in. And though he wasn’t sure he wanted to eat here, or even that the food here would be safe to eat, the place didn’t smell bad. Greasy, sure. There was an underlying smell of hot oil, as if the place were used, day and night, to fry stuff. Which it probably was. But there were appetizing smells of freshly grilled burgers and fries riding on the sheer greasiness that put a sticky film on every vinyl booth and table. And those were making his stomach clench, and his mouth start to water.

  It had been too long since he’d eaten anything. Since lunch the day before. The clock on the wall here showed eleven o’clock, which meant it was one in the morning back home. No wonder he was starving. And he’d eaten in diners when he was in college. To no ill effects. Of course, he’d been younger.

  He looked around the still empty diner, hoping that the very angry man behind the counter was not the only person here, hoping that a waitress—or, for a choice, his son—would materialize somewhere, out of the blue.

  Not that he had any wish to see Tom. Not really. He had no idea what he would tell the boy, or what the boy’s reaction to him would be. Their last parting had been far less than amicable. But if he saw Tom and convinced the stupid boy to give back whatever it was to the dragons—and what kind of an idiot did you need to be to steal from organized criminals?—then he could go back home in the early morning flight. And wash his hands of the boy. And resume his lonely life. Lonely, yes, but at least untroubled by the stream of acts of self-destruction that was Tom’s way of living.

  He looked around enough, and no one came, and rather than order from the guy behind the counter, Edward thought he would leave. Leave now. The man would probably curse him, as he left, but it was obvious Tom wasn’t here. And if Tom was the reason the man behind the counter was so furious, then what would happen if Edward mentioned Tom?

  He’d started rising when a couple came in through a side door that seemed to lead to another part of the diner—the covered porch he’d seen from the outside. He first thought of them as a couple—tall, blond man and slightly smaller girl, with multicolored hair. But then he realized the girl was wearing an apron with the logo of the diner, and that the blond man was just following her. In fact, he headed for the door as the girl rushed toward Edward.

  “Hi,” she said, and smiled. “My name is Kyrie. What can I get for you?”

  He thought of asking her for Tom right away, but … no. He was hungry, anyway. “I’ll have coffee,” he said. “And your souvlaki platter, and one of the large Greek salads.”

  “What dressing on your salad?” she asked.

  “Ranch is fine,” he said.

  She nodded, and went over to the counter. He watched her, from behind as she went. She was quite an attractive girl, probably in her early twenties, with a trim body, hair dyed in an elaborate pattern, and the sort of face that reminded him that America was supposed to be a melting pot. Seen in a certain light, he supposed she could be Greek, or perhaps Italian, or maybe even Native American… . Or, he admitted, some other, far more exotic combination. He wondered what the truth was. He also wondered if anything was going on with her and Tom and if that was what had the cook’s nose out of joint.

  The girl came back in a moment, set a cup in front of him, and put down a container of sugar and another with creamers. She filled the cup and he—ignoring the sugar and the creamers—took a sip.

  His surprise at the quality of the coffee must have shown, in raised eyebrows or some change in expression, because the girl smiled at him. And, oh, she had dimples. He grinned back. She wasn’t that much younger than him, really, and besides, he went out with girls her age every other week. But was she involved with Tom? Or how did she feel about Tom? He had to ask about Tom, but was it going to ruin everything?

  “Excuse me?” he said, before she could turn away. “I don’t suppose I could ask you a question?”

  She tensed. He saw her tense, as she turned around, even if her face didn’t show anything as she said, “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “But does Thomas Ormson work here?”

  For a moment her face stayed absolutely frozen, and he thought she was going to tell him to go to hell or something. Instead, she put a hand on the table, and it trembled. Oh, no. What was going on here? Was she Tom’s girlfriend.

  “I thought you looked like him,” she said. “But I thought …” She swallowed and didn’t say what she thought.

  “I’m his father,” Edward said, low enough that the gorilla behind at the grill wouldn’t hear him. “My name is Edward Ormson. Do you know where he is?”

  She opened her mouth.

  “Kyrie,” the gorilla said. And she looked around, as if wakening. People had come in while they were talking, and there were five tables occupied. And she was alone. Also, his dinner was now sitting on the counter, ready. She went to get it.

  “I get out at five,” she told him. “It might be easier to talk then.”

  It was night from hell. Or at least night from next door to hell. Nothing bad happened. Kyrie even managed—despite her mounting exhaustion—to not drop any trays full of plates, and not to mix up any orders.

  But Tom hadn’t shown up. She was of two minds about this. Part of her wanted him to show up. She wanted to … Well, for one his father had been at the Athens, and his father was asking about him. That certainly didn’t seem like the kind of father who had thrown his son out of the house at sixteen. Then again, she thought—who knew what Tom had done, and how much he could goad people beyond their natural limits?

  His father had left after half an hour, and she hadn’t given it much thought, until, as she was getting ready to leave, she saw him waiting by the door, looking very proper in his expensive-looking, if somewhat rumpled, business suit.

  She nodded to him, and went toward the counter, to tell Frank she was leaving. He glared at her, which was not really a surprise, since he’d been glaring at her—and to be honest at everyone else—all night. Then he motioned with his head toward Tom’s father. “Another one?”

  She sighed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. He’s just …” She stopped short of telling Frank this was Tom’s father. She wasn’t even sure why. Just she didn’t want the jokes following on Tom being her boyfriend and his father supposedly visiting her. “He just wants to ask me something,” she said.

  And anyway, she thought, as she walked toward Mr. Ormson, if Frank couldn’t see the resemblance between Tom and his father—same pale skin, same dark hair, same blue eyes—then he didn’t want to see it.

  They stepped outside the diner, and the morning was lovely, just warm enough to promise heat later at midday, but not warm enough to actually be uncomfortable. Kyrie took a deep breath of the air that seemed much cleaner than it would be later on in the day when Fairfax became clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. “I don’t know where Tom is,” she told his father,
quickly. “I saw him last about twelve hours ago. He left with a friend. I don’t know where he is. I can give you his address if you want.”

  “I have his address,” his father said. “His landlady said that he worked at the Athens and that she thought his girlfriend worked there too. You wouldn’t—”

  Kyrie felt herself blush. “No. He doesn’t have a girlfriend, that I know.” There was no point explaining, and yet she could tell he was looking attentively at her, as though trying to read her expression. Or most probably wondering why she was blushing. Damn her blush, really. For a woman who could and did tan easily enough, she had the most inconvenient blushes. And it really didn’t mean anything, except annoyance at Frank thinking she was Tom’s girlfriend.

  “Can we go somewhere and talk?” Mr. Ormson asked, leaning slightly forward, as if eager to have her answer.

  Kyrie shook her head. Her feet hurt, and she felt sticky all over, as she usually did when she’d been working long hours at the Athens. And this time she’d worked ten hours. “I really don’t think I have anything else to tell you,” she said. “I only know Tom from work.” And why was her mind, unbidden, giving her images of his coming out of the shower, his hair still dripping. He’d been perfectly dressed too. Well, almost perfectly. One thing her house didn’t have any of was male underwear. “And I really don’t know where he could have gone. If you go where he lives, talk to his downstairs neighbor. I think his name is Keith. He might know where Tom went from there.”

  “Oh, but I think you might know more without realizing it,” he said, and in response to what she was sure was very annoyed frown, he said, “I’m not underestimating your intelligence, it is just that I know people absorb things about other people, without meaning to. And you might know something about Tom, something that will give me a clue.” He hesitated a long time, as if he were not sure a clue to exactly what. “A clue to where to find him.”

  Kyrie was sure, too, that this was not what he had meant to say. She looked up—Tom’s father was considerably taller than him—at Mr. Ormson’s chiseled profile, and she wondered what he was trying to find a clue to exactly, and why he’d come looking for his son these many years later. Or had he looked for Tom before? Had Tom refused to see him? Perhaps that was what he wanted a clue for? A clue as to why his son would reject him? Kyrie shouldn’t be getting involved with this. She really shouldn’t.