A Grave Talent km-1

by Laurie R. King

  The room was lit solely by the corner reading lamp that sent its beam across the guard's paperback novel and laid a stretched circle of light along the wall and across a corner of Vaun's bed. She gazed passively up at the reflection of her face in a bit of polished metal overhead, distorted but familiar. One tiny part of Vaun saw it and recognized it, but that part was disconnected from her now, in abeyance, hiding.

  The brain of the woman who had been Vaun Adams and Eva Vaughn was not physically damaged, not badly at any rate. Her mind, however, and her spirit—those had been severely wounded. The spark of being that was Vaun Adams, the spark that had flamed into being as Eva Vaughn, lay smothered beneath a burden that had finally proven intolerable. Vaun was covered by a blanket of despair, a thick, gray blanket that was crushing her, stifling her will to move and create and live, a thick gray blanket that said, "Enough."

  Enough.

  Enough was the ruling principle that governed what there was left of this life. Enough. I can no more. Since I was two years old I have fought for the right to be what I am, and I can fight no longer. I yield. I give up. I can no more. Enough.

  I choose to die.

  The blue eyes were still open when a nurse came in ten minutes later to check the drip. Vaun's ears registered sound waves, and some dim hidden part of her automatically deciphered them as words, but they did not connect, did not penetrate the thick gray blanket. The nurse leaned over her eyes, and behind the white shoulder appeared the face of a man above a dark uniform. More sounds came, a few squawks and a rumble, and the male face withdrew.

  The nurse addressed Vaun with professional cheeriness, though even the guard could hear the uneasiness in her voice. Vaun was a problem, a VIP who was in an unclear state of either arrest or protection, or both. She was also, to all appearances, a vegetable. This mysterious black-haired woman with the unseeing, crystalline eyes gave a number of people the creeps, and the night nurse was one of them. She left after servicing the body in the bed, and eventually the eyes drifted shut again.

  In the dark hills between Vaun Adams's hospital bed and the city where two detectives slept, a shadow moved onto Tyler's Road. The man who had been Andy Lewis closed the door on its oiled hinges and slipped silently away from the house he had thought of as home these last years. He felt no regret at leaving the woman who slept behind him in the bed he had built from a single oak tree, and only slight regret at leaving the child in the room his hands had made. There was no room for any feeling other than the white-hot, piercing-cold, all-consuming rage that trembled and bubbled throughout his body like dry ice furious in a bucket of water. In his mind's eye the leaves scorched and blackened overhead, small animals dropped down dead with his passing, the road cringed from his boots—and Vaun Adams woke screaming from her hospital bed to feel the approach of his terrible hate.

  None of these things happened, of course. The muted beep of Vaun's monitor kept its hypnotic rhythm, small night animals rustled leaves, a dog barked once, the breeze from the ocean stirred the fragrant needles.

  By dawn he had crossed the mud slide's remnants, avoided the guards posted at the upper end of Tyler's Road, and entered the adjoining state park. At eight a neatly dressed man with a mustache, carrying a thick briefcase, caught a ride with a computer programmer who worked over the hill. The driver's daughter was with him in the front seat, going to spend the day with her grandmother. The child was six years old and had shiny brown hair and one loose front tooth, which she delighted in wiggling precariously with her tongue. The man who had been Andy Lewis smiled at her with his charming smile, chatted easily with her about kindergarten and with her father about computers and the problems of remote automobile breakdowns, and thanked them both when they got to San Jose. By noon he was in Berkeley, completely invisible.

  Long before that—shortly after he left the park, in fact— Angie Dodson woke to find that her husband was gone.

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  Angie's pounding echoed through the house and roused the sleepers, Trujillo among them. He wrapped himself in a borrowed bathrobe and walked yawning down to the kitchen. Angie's face was tight with worry despite her deliberately casual words, and Trujillo was far from sleepy as he unobtrusively left the room and sprinted for the upstairs telephone.

  Hawkin cursed viciously, Kate cursed with less imagination and opened her back again, and two hours later they burst into Tyler's kitchen.

  "Where's Angie?"

  The huddled group all busied themselves with their cups or studied their hangnails. Blond-braided Anna told them that she was upstairs with Trujillo. Hawkin took the stairs two at a time, Kate on his heels, and when they got to Tyler's door he threw the door back without knocking.

  Angie Dodson looked up from where she sat crouched in front of the fire. She had passed through tears and now looked old and beaten and utterly without hope. Hawkin walked over to her and put his arms around her, and she clung to him and began to moan in a breathless, high-pitched animal noise. Trujillo turned to look out the window. Tyler smiled sickly at Kate and lurched through the door, muttering something about coffee. Kate studied the watercolors and gradually she realized that Angie's moans had resolved themselves into a monotonously repeating phrase.

  "She was my friend. She was my friend. She was my friend."

  "You mean Vaun," said Hawkin in a gentler voice than Kate would have thought possible.

  "Yes. She was my friend. She was—"

  "Where's Amy?"

  That got to her. She took a deep and shaky breath and sat up. Hawkin's arms fell away, but he sat close to her and bent his head to her.

  "She's with the Newborns. I told Rob to watch her every minute, and not let her go off anywhere, not even with—Oh God…" She collapsed again. "She was my friend, and they say he killed her. Is it true? You must tell me."

  "She isn't dead, Angie."

  "She might as well be. Did he do it?"

  "Does the man you know as Tony have a tattoo on his arm?"

  His non sequitur caught her full attention.

  "What?"

  "A tattoo," he repeated. "Does Tony have a tattoo?"

  "How did you know?" She straightened and blew her nose. "He never let anyone see it; he was embarrassed by it. He'd had it put on when he was real young. Not even Amy knew he had it. He always wore a T-shirt, even when he went swimming."

  "What was it?"

  "A dragon."

  "A dragon? Not a snake?"

  "No, it was one of those long, skinny dragons. I suppose it looked a bit like a snake, but it had little legs. It was on his left arm, up high. I only saw it clearly two or three times myself. He'd usually only take his shirt off in the dark. What does his tattoo have to do with it?"

  So he told her. Tyler came in with a tray of coffee, and Hawkin broke off until he had gone; then he resumed and told her all, or nearly all.

  "So you see, Angie, at this point the only positive identification we have is that tattoo."

  "He always was funny about having his picture taken, I know. Even at our wedding." She giggled softly and sighed, dazed with the impossibility of what her life had become in a few short hours.

  "Angie, I have to ask you some questions now."

  "I won't testify against him," she threw out at him. "I'll talk to you, but I won't testify against him."

  (Andy… he was a real charmer… she wouldn't press charges…)

  "Just talk to me, then. Tell me how you met."

  They had met at one of the Road's yearly Medieval Faires, three years ago come June. He had come as a visitor, not in costume, and though he had bought his ticket from her early in the morning, it was not until afternoon that he had reappeared and made her teach him the steps to a pavane, and they'd danced and drunk and laughed on into the evening, and on the Sunday he'd been back first thing and spent the whole day with her and with Amy, and that night he'd gone up the Road with them and slept on her couch. Two weeks later he moved his few belongings int
o the small house, and in November they married. Not a church ceremony, but one they wrote, and Tyler conducted. It wasn't a legal marriage, because Angie's husband had neither divorced her nor been in touch since he deserted her, but it had not mattered.

  "What is he like, Tony? With you and Amy?"

  "Very good with Amy. I don't think he'd ever been around kids much, before he moved in with us, but he was a good father to her. Quiet, polite. Private, but not like he was hiding anything. A gentleman, I guess."

  "Always?"

  "With Amy, yes. And almost always with me. He… he has a temper. Had. He never hit me, I don't mean that, but once he got really mad at me—for something small, too, I was just teasing him about a stupid mistake he'd made when he was building the addition onto the cabin. He didn't like it."

  "What did he do, Angie?"

  "He chopped up my loom." Her face remembered frightened bewilderment as she studied her clasped hands. "He got really quiet, and his eyes… He went out to the woodshed and got the big ax and came back with it and chopped my loom up into little pieces, and then he hauled it off and burned it. Afterwards he was sorry, he kissed me, and the next day we went to Berkeley and he bought me another one, a better one, too, an eight harness I'd been wanting for a long time. We never talked about it again, but, well, I never teased him again."

  "And with the other people on the Road? How did he get along with them?"

  "Really well, with most of them. As far as I know he never lost his temper with anyone else, not that I heard of. He's never been tremendous buddies with anyone, he likes to keep to himself, but when he's in the mood he can be a lot of fun. Anyway, he was approved for residency in the October meeting, so obviously everyone thought they could get along with him." Her tone was defensive, as if wondering why her friends had not protected her against her choice. "They all like him. He seems to get along best with Tommy Chesler," she added.

  "What about Vaun? How did he act toward her? Did she vote for him?"

  "I don't remember anyone not voting for him—wait a minute, she wasn't here, I think. It was the Harvest Meeting, and she wasn't here, she had to go to New York, I think it was. How did he act toward her?" she repeated. She chewed on her lip and fixed her shiny eyes on a part of the carpet, and sobbed a small laugh.

  "I thought he was jealous of her. She was my friend, before he came here. My old man took off about six months before she came, you see, and then she built her house, and we were neighbors, and she admired my needlework and weaving and helped me with the colors and the designs and—she was my friend, you know? And I thought he was jealous, though he never said anything. I thought it was funny, cute in a way, that he'd be jealous, but I didn't want to bother him, so mostly I'd see her when he was away, or when I was up working in the garden. She let me use her sunny hillside for vegetables, you know, so we could use our open space for the ponies. Tony was never nasty about her, he'd just quietly go out the back if she came to the house, or look away if we met her on the Road. Nothing obvious or rude, you understand. I thought he was just being nice to me, not wanting to break up my friendship with her, but if what Paul says is true, if he is this Andy Lewis, then I suppose he wanted to avoid being recognized by her." Her voice dragged to a halt, and her face looked drawn and haggard.

  "But he transported some paintings for her."

  "Yes, four or five times. She knew he had a truck, and she asked him once about a year and a half ago when Tyler's was broken down and she was desperate to get them off to some show."

  "Did he pack them up for her, too?"

  "No, Vaun had Tommy Chesler help her. They built these big crates, one for each painting, and Tommy'd help Tony load them. A couple of times Tommy went with him to the airport, but Tommy doesn't much like cities."

  "Did Vaun go?"

  "No."

  "Tell me about when Tony was away. Did he go regularly? What was he doing? Do you know where he went?"

  "Earning money, doing odd jobs in town or over the hill. Never anything regular, just a day here and there or overnight. Never more than four days in a row. It worked out to about two or three days a week, I suppose, just to keep us in spending money. It wasn't regular. Sometimes his friends would leave a message with Tyler telling him there'd be work on a certain day, other times he'd just go."

  "Do you know the names of any of those friends?"

  "There was a Tim who left messages sometimes, and another guy in San Jose named Carl, but I don't remember ever hearing their last names. Tyler or Anna might know."

  "I'll ask them. You can't think of anywhere he might go, any favorite places?"

  "San Jose, I guess. We went there, once. He took me to a bar. I don't like bars, but he thought I might enjoy it. It had a funny name, like a joke. Gold something. Gold girl? No, that's right, Golden Grill. Stupid pun. On one wall they have an enormous painting of a naked blond woman tied to a barbecue. Disgusting, really." She suddenly noticed the identical expression on the faces of her three listeners, the sort of expression an Olympic archer makes when he hits the bull's-eye in the final round. "Did that help any?"

  "My dear Angie, you have given us much food for thought, almost as nourishing as your onion soup. I thank you, profoundly."

  The matchbook found near the body of Samantha Donaldson had come from a bar in San Jose called the Golden Grill.

  Angie could tell them little more. She did not know what he'd been wearing, how much money he had, or whether or not he'd taken a gun, but she said he was a good shot with both rifle and pistol. A quick check showed his truck in the shed and no other vehicles missing. Hawkin sent Trujillo up with Angie to try to find out what her husband had taken with him, and told him to have the nurse, Terry Allen, stay with Angie for a while and then to go and pick what brains he could find in Tommy Chesler's head for any possible leads. Tyler he sent out front, requesting that he obfuscate matters as much as possible in the eyes of the media while Hawkin and Kate made their escape.

  The uniformed policewoman in Vaun's room was tall and formidable and blocked the doorway most effectively until she was satisfied with their credentials. She left them alone in the room.

  It was the first time Kate had seen Vaun since early Saturday. Her face was slack, her lips were slightly parted, her skin was almost as white as her pillow but for the red mouth and the dark smudges under her eyes. The intense contrasts of white and black and red gave her the aloof, other-worldly beauty of a geisha. Kate would have thought her dead but for the monitor.

  Hawkin grunted and left after a minute, but Kate lingered. She was struck with the irrational wish to see Vaun's hands, but they were under the covers and she hesitated to touch her. Finally she left, and the policewoman returned to the room.

  Dr. Tanaka's office held five people. Hawkin stood at the window looking down at the entrance parking lot. Kate sat with a notebook. Dr. Tanaka himself wore a neat blue suit and spoke with great precision. The other two doctors wore white jackets over their clothing, and the woman, whose name was Gardner, had a stethoscope in her pocket, an obvious sign of low status, Kate thought in amusement. Hawkin turned back to the room.

  "So, to put it in English," he said, "it's too early to know what's going on."

  "That is an oversimplification, but in essence, true. Her symptoms and her brain waves are neither those of a coma nor of catatonia, but they have characteristics of both. Until we know more, all we can do is continue to support the bodily functions."

  "Then, Dr. Tanaka, I do not envy you and your hospital the next few days. The press has arrived."

  An undignified scramble for the window ensued, the telephone rang, and Hawkin stalked off with Kate close behind. He sent her off to warn Vaun's guard and call in the hospital security for reinforcements while he went to close himself in with a telephone. Within hours the world would know that Eva Vaughn lay in this small hospital. He no longer had any time to wait. When Kate returned he handed her a slip of paper.

  "You will meet this plane tonight.
"

  "He's coming, then? Dr. Bruckner?"

  "I gave him no choice. You go home now and sleep for a few hours. It's going to be a long night."

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  The plane from Chicago was late. Kate spent the time in an all-night cafeteria at San Francisco International's north terminal, drinking bad coffee and fighting her way into an introduction to the theory of art that she had taken from Lee's shelves at midnight. At two o'clock she went for a walk through the other-worldly halls, and found herself in a display of the work of local artists. She long contemplated two pieces, one a battered briefcase that was actually made out of clay, the other a massive and highly realistic section of adobe wall formed entirely out of styrofoam and leather. She finally decided that any intended symbolism was beyond her ability to decipher, thrust the book into her shoulder bag, and retreated into the cafeteria for more coffee (Was it actually made of hot stewed twigs? Was the artificial creamer formed entirely of styrofoam?) and the evening paper. Eva Vaughn was on the front page, and Kate tortured herself by reading every word.

  The plane touched down at 3:15, and a few minutes later Kate planted herself firmly in the flow of dazed passengers, watching for the self-described "little fellow with a brown briefcase." (Presumably made of actual leather.) A likely candidate appeared, and she spoke vaguely in the direction of the short, foreign-looking man with the gray goatee, spotless white shirt, and bow tie.

  "Dr. Bruckner?"

  But it was the surprisingly young-looking man next to him who stopped in front of her and held out his hand.

  "Yes I know I don't look like a psychiatrist," he said rapidly, "and yes I know you didn't expect me to be so young, but then if you're 'one of our inspectors name of Martinelli' I wasn't expecting you either, so we're even."

  He had an unidentifiably eastern nasal voice and a crooked grin, and his hair was too long and he needed a shave, and he was indeed a little man, barely taller than Kate, and she laughed and took his hand, which surprised her with the calluses of a laborer.