by Ed Gorman
Then he rammed his tongue deep into her mouth.
She pushed him away as gently as possible.
"Wow," she said, "you don't waste any time."
"I thought that's why you came up here," he said, a most unpleasant whine in his voice.
"Maybe I did," she said. "But you think we could use your bedroom instead of this couch?"
"I'll never understand women."
No, you won't, she thought. But she said, "I just want to make it as nice as possible for both of us."
He rubbed a hand across his face. He was getting drunk. "You know what that bitch had the gall to say to me the night she left?"
Linda Fleming didn't have to acknowledge him. He'd tell her anyway.
"She said that we were sexually incompatible. It took her four years to find that out? And maybe it would've helped a little if she'd gotten that boob job. Hell, I was going to pay for it and everything. Wouldn't've cost her a dime. I mean, in the old days, a girl couldn't help it if she didn't have any boobs. But today, hell, there's no excuse." He glanced at her chest and said, "You don't have any problem, boob-wise. You've got some nice breasts."
"Thank you."
"Are they real?"
"Oh, yes."
"You'd get a boob job, wouldn't you, if you needed to, I mean?"
"Oh, I'd rush right out."
He didn't pick up on her sarcasm.
"Maybe I would've been better in the sack if she'd had a little more upstairs. I mean," he said, "I'm not blaming her."
Oh, no, of course not.
"But it couldn't have hurt if she'd had a little more boob-wise, could it?"
"No," she said, "no, it couldn't have."
He took her hand, then, staring greedily at her breasts all the time, and said, "Let's go have some fun, wench."
Wench? God, what a dipshit this guy was.
***
Twenty minutes later, wearing only her panties, she slid beneath the covers and lay there staring up at the ceiling. The streetlights made patterns on the ceiling, leaf patterns mostly, and it was relaxing to lie there and watch the patterns play and entwine. Mostly, it was a pleasure not to have the dipshit's voice pounding on her. He was in la toilette doing some damned thing or another. He'd been in there for some time.
Then her headache was back and she closed her eyes. She heard a voice. It was strange. The last couple hours she kept hearing this female voice she identified as "Jenny." It was very strange. Jenny was this cautionary voice. Telling her to get up and go-fast…
He came out of the john wearing a pair of red bikini panties. He had hair in black silky thatches all over his body, little goatees of it. There was something ticking in his hand.
"What's the ticking?" she said.
"Stopwatch."
"Stopwatch? What for?"
"Make sure it's time."
"Time for what?"
"Well, you know. My erection."
"What, is somebody delivering it?"
He laughed and came over and sat on the edge of the bed. He didn't seem so self-confident now. "Viagra." He spoke the word with an almost mystical emphasis.
"I see."
"Ever since she dumped me, I've had erectile difficulties."
"Oh."
"I took the pill as we were leaving the club tonight. But we've been moving a lot faster than I thought we would." He gravely consulted the stopwatch in his hand. "We still have four-and-a-half minutes to go. It's always the same. Fifty-three minutes and bingo. I'm in business. I like to watch it come up. It's like a rocket at Cape Canaveral or something. You want to watch it?"
"No, I've already had enough fun for one night."
Four minutes and eight seconds later, he said, "Bingo!"
And with that, he pounced on her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
The first thing that Coffey did was roll over in bed and reach under the mattress where he kept his .357 Magnum.
The second thing he did was ease himself off the bed, trying to be as quiet as possible. He wore pajama bottoms, nothing else.
The third thing he did was make his way across the bedroom to the door. It was open an inch or so. He opened it another inch.
The solitude of the middle of the night. Thrum of kitchen appliances. City water gurgling in the pipes. A car passing in the street. The aches and groans of a fifty-six-year-old house.
And one more sound, one that shouldn't be part of this diminutive cacophony: an intruder.
To get in the house, the intruder had to know how to disarm a pretty darned good security system. Meaning the guy was a pro. And if he was a pro, it wasn't likely he was here to nab Coffey's piggy bank and collection of Travis McGee first edition hardcovers.
No, a pro would only enter a house like Coffey's this time of night if he was on a far more serious mission. Like murder.
Coffey listened intently. Whatever sound had awakened him was lost to him now. Or maybe he was imagining the whole thing. Maybe he'd been dreaming and simply dreamed a certain sound.
Then he heard it. Faint though it was.
The scrape of a shoe on the floor below. The basement.
Coffey's grip on the handle of the Magnum got a lot tighter. No dream. No imagined sound. Somebody was in the basement.
Coffey opened the door quarter-inch by quarter-inch. He needed to be very, very quiet now. Then he went into his ballet-dancer routine, moving quickly across the hardwood floor to the end of the hall, and then to the living room. All on tippy-toes.
The kitchen was a pretty motif of shifting shadows. Everything was neat and clean. He imagined that the intruder would give him good marks for cleanliness.
He moved to the kitchen door. It was open a quarter-inch or so.
He had to make a decision. If he crept down the stairs, then he could possibly catch the intruder in the act. Whatever the act was. The downside here was that at any time in his slow descent to the basement floor, the intruder could glance up, see him, raise his weapon, and off him right there on the stairs.
He placed his ear to the open space between door and frame. Ambient sound overwhelmed him at first. He heard a dozen tiny sounds all at once. But eventually his ear focused on a single sound, a ratcheting kind of sound. Only after a time did he realized what he was listening to. Something metal was being dismantled. He could hear the sound of a wrench turning, he could hear the sound of a piece of metal being put quietly on the floor. Then more sounds of the wrench being used.
Even from here, he could approximate which part of the small basement the sound was coming from. The furnace, a new Lennox, was in the far west corner. He wouldn't have been able to hear it being taken apart, not that far away. Which meant the intruder was working on either the washer or drier, which were against the wall to the immediate right of the steps, or the gas water heater, which sat off to the left at the bottom of the steps.
As soon as he thought of the water heater, he came up with an idea about what was going on. One of the best ways to pass off arson as an accident-most cops knew their fair share of firefighters-was to tamper with the water heater or furnace. When the weather was hot like this, the arsonist wouldn't fool with the furnace. That would send up red flags immediately. Who'd be using the furnace on a night like this? But the water heater, yes. An expert could get past all the fail-safe mechanisms in the heater and make it look as if the heater had malfunctioned, thus setting fire to the house. It was well known among arson investigators that too few fire departments ever looked carefully enough at water heaters and were thus frequently deceived.
If that was the case, the next question was, who would want to kill him and why? His mind turned inevitably back to his wife and daughter. Another convict he'd helped to send up? Was that what was going on here? Somehow, he didn't think so. Somehow, he knew that this had something to do with Jenny.
He decided on a plan.
He tiptoed back to the butcher block island in the center of the kitchen. Pans hung from a rectangle above the isla
nd. This wouldn't be easy, getting three pans down without making any noise. As he worked, sweat began to chill him. He wished he had a shirt on. Once, he almost banged two pans together. Another time, he almost dropped a pan on the floor. Then there was the business of getting them over to the door without one pan nudging the other.
He reached the door, paused. If this didn't go right, the intruder would likely kill him. The intruder would have a clear shot at Coffey on the stairs. What Coffey hoped was that in the sudden clamor and confusion, the intruder would turn around and look for a place to hide. In that moment, Coffey would be able to snap on the basement light and shoot him.
He got the pans ready and pitched them down the steps. Moments after they started clanging down the stairs, Coffey fired two shots into the basement.
A curse, a cry. A man stumbling over some tools which made metallic sounds on the concrete floor. Another curse, sharp, angry, as the same man stumbled into the edge of the washing machine, scraping it several inches from its base.
Coffey descended the steps, snapping off two more shots as he did so.
Then the first shot came his way, a noisy, wood-eating crack that took a huge chunk from the wall just behind him.
Coffey reached over, clicked on the light and then threw himself to the floor, rolling across a stretch of new linoleum. He rolled behind the old sofa that the cats liked to sleep on during the hot summer. He lay there for long moments, getting his breath, listening. With the lights on, he could see the ceiling of the basement. They'd always been going to fix up the basement, cover up all the wiring in the ceiling. But somehow they'd never gotten around to it.
He sat up. Took another deep breath. Got ready to raise his head and peek over the top of the couch. Which he did. And that was when the intruder opened fire again. He put three bullets where Coffey's head had been only a millisecond before.
Coffey had already ducked back behind the couch. He still hadn't gotten a look at the intruder.
Then, something heavy being pushed aside. Then-footsteps, fast-running footsteps. The intruder making his break.
Coffey sprang up from behind the couch. There was no way he was going to catch the intruder before he got up the stairs and disappeared again into the night.
Now, for the first time, he saw the man. Dark blue zippered jumpsuit. A sinister, clear plastic mask that completely distorted the face it covered. A long-billed ball cap. Black leather gloves.
The man had no choice but to leave his tools behind, sprawled across the floor where he'd kicked them when he'd jumped up from the water heater.
He was running fast. No more than three steps away from the stairs. Firing wildly over his shoulder. Anything to keep Coffey off-balance. But his bullets weren't coming close enough to worry Coffey.
Once again, Coffey had to make a decision, but this one had to be decided instantly. He could easily shoot and kill the man. Or he could injure him and then try and find out where the man was from. Who he worked for.
Coffey needed information more than he needed proof of his machismo.
He shot the fleeing intruder right in the center of his left calf. It was a good clean shot, right into the meat of the leg, and the intruder had the grace to scream and clutch dramatically at his wound.
The thing was, the gunshot didn't slow him down. Or if it did, it was so slow a slowing down that it was imperceptible to Coffey. The sonofabitch in the zippered jumpsuit kept right on trucking up the steps.
Even in retreat, the intruder was a man of cunning. From the pocket of his jumpsuit he took the same kind of red plastic ball the woman in the van had used earlier on Coffey. He crushed the ball in his gloved hand and then flung it at Coffey.
The explosion was quick and sure. A heavy gray smoke instantly began to work its way through the basement in several simultaneous directions. But that wasn't all. This wasn't simple smoke. It was corrosive smoke as well. Even before the gray stuff had reached him, Coffey felt its invisible effects. His eyes itched, watered. He sneezed violently. His stomach began to wrench and lurch.
He dove through the smoke to the stairs. Just as he was scrambling up the steps, past the smoke, he was able to see, blearily, the back of the intruder as he reached the basement door.
Coffey fired again. He might well kill the man this time. He couldn't see. But he kept firing, anyway. Somehow, not one of the four shots hit the man as he lunged through the doorway at the top of the steps.
Coughing, rubbing his eyes with his left hand, then stumbling and banging his good knee one time, Coffey kept in pursuit of the intruder.
The house. Dark. Silent. The intruder knocking into furniture. Cursing on his headlong flight to the front door. Crystal the cat, sleeping somewhere in the living room, meowing in protest at the disturbance that had awakened her. Crystal didn't appreciate having her beauty sleep disturbed.
He got him in the hand.
The intruder was silhouetted against the square of beveled glass in the front door, the glass glowing with misty streetlight. Coffey saw his chance. Shot him in the hand.
Once again, the intruder gave Coffey the satisfaction of crying out. The impact of the bullet was sufficient to slam the man into the front door. His bloody glove fingers and palm left a red imprint on the glass. It was a dark symbol against the soft glow of the streetlight.
But the hand wound didn't slow the intruder down much either. He put his bloody hand on the knob and yanked the door back. He also turned an inch or two back toward Coffey. Coffey dove at him. The two men fell through the open door and on to the front porch. The man swung at Coffey, but Coffey blocked it and then grabbed the man's arm, ripping away the sleeve of the jumpsuit. And the man's wristwatch. The gold band broke, the watch flying across the porch.
A car went by, the driver startled by the silhouettes of two men fighting on the front porch. Nearby, a dog started barking. A light went on next door. Old Mr. Enright. Entertainment for the entire neighborhood.
The man used his bloody hand to dig into his jumpsuit pocket again. He brought forth another red ball and detonated it. Coffey was just bringing his Magnum up to the intruder's face when the smoke from the red capsule exploded into his face and left him gasping and gagging and groping his way around in the darkness.
A big engine starting. Van or truck. The only information Coffey received was auditory. He'd bet it was the van.
The vehicle screeching away. Brakes being applied at the far corner. The vehicle long gone now. The street sounds returning. Dogs and the early morning birds.
He staggered to his feet, found the door, and lumbered inside, bouncing off the doorframe once as he moved.
He felt his way into the bathroom. The stinging just grew worse.
Shower. Toilet. Sink. He was blind, groping. Ran water in the sink. Cool water. Opened the medicine cabinet and felt around-knocking innumerable jars, bottles and tubes over-until he found what felt like Visine.
Here goes, he thought, tilting his head back, opening his eyes. The Visine made him jerk, jump. It stung almost as badly as the stuff in the red ball. But after a few moments, the Visine cooled the stinging, and through the blur of his vision he was dimly able to make out his face in the mirror.
He worked on his eyes for nearly fifteen minutes. It took that long to get his vision back to something resembling normal. In the meantime, cats Tasha and Tess came in and stood on either side of him and rubbed up against his legs. They comforted him, he comforted them.
When he finished in the bathroom, he grabbed a flashlight from the kitchen and went down to the basement. He checked through the tools the intruder had left behind. A good detective should be able to find some distinguishing marks on the tools, something that would point in the direction of their owner. But the wrench and the screwdriver bore the stamp of True Value hardware. With a chain of stores that big, tracing these tools would be almost impossible. Hundreds if not thousands of these things were sold every day.
He next retraced the intruder's steps, trying
to see if the man had dropped anything. Kitchen. Dining room. Living room. Nothing.
He took his flashlight and went out onto the porch. He liked this time of morning. The moon and stars, the hushed animal sounds of urban raccoons and possums as they foraged through yards, the soft sweet feel and tang of the fresh air.
He went back and forth over the front porch. He found nothing. Then he remembered the watch flying off the intruder's wrist. Apparently the watch had flown off the porch and landed in the shrubs planted along the side of the porch.
He went down the steps and along the side of the house. Just before she'd been killed, his wife had planted some Korean boxwood all the way around the house, it was a low-growing, hedgelike plant that kept its beauty for many long months a year.
He didn't have any luck at first.
The watch hadn't landed on top of the boxwood, nor had it fallen down and landed on the ground. Which meant that it was probably entangled in the hedge itself.
He took his flashlight and angled its beam through every inch of hedge from porch steps to where the house proper began. No way the watch could have gotten lost any farther back.
The search took ten minutes. He found nothing.
Crystal came out the front door and jumped up on the rail in back of the hedge. Tess was the most curious of the cats, but Crystal was the one most likely to stray out on the porch. They were all supposed to stay inside. They'd been spayed and declawed.
But here stood Crystal, looking down at her nice but dumb master. She wanted him, as always, to amuse her in some way.
"Go back inside," he said to her. "You know you're not supposed to be out here."
She just looked at him, a black and white and brown calico who could appear sweet and imperious at the same time, which wasn't easy to do.
Then Crystal made a decision. If he wasn't going to put on a show for her, she'd put on a show for him.
Crystal jumped on top of the hedge, instantly realizing that the surface of the hedge wasn't what it appeared to be. It was rough and prickly and she didn't like it.
