Moon Music (40 page)

By eight in the evening, Poe was back on the road. Weinberg sat shotgun; Rukmani had fallen asleep in the backseat within the first ten minutes of the ride. The loo made a few weak stabs at conversation, then succumbed to slumberland. Heavy blankets of exhaustion pressed down on Poe's brain. He thought about the case to keep awake.

Alison and her breakdowns. Alison as an animal. She sure had acted like one the night she'd gone after his face. More than just a jealous woman, she had had a feline quality.

Catlike in action as well as in her beauty. A sleek, muscled woman with magnetic eyes. And her legs—long and slender. He remembered a time that they had wrapped around him as they panted in the backseat of his claptrap Buick.

So young.

Twenty years ago.

Where had the time gone?

Where had Alison gone?

That night he had searched the cave, the coyote looking at him with doleful eyes—human eyes. How it had howled—as if in deep psychic pain….

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.

It was his own imagination working overtime. So absorbed with fear and dread, he had chosen to anthropomorphize a wild beast to make it more palatable. Besides, why would Alison imagine herself to be a beast?

Rukmani stirred, opened her eyes. "My mouth feels like sandpaper."

Poe handed her a bottle of designer water. She downed it in three gulps. "Thanks."

"Have a nice nap?"

"Yes, I did, thanks. Where are we?"

"About an hour from home."

"I've got all this dictation to go over." She blinked several times. "And since Bruckner was kind enough to release the corpse to Clark County, I should start the autopsy."

"Are you up for it?"

"I'm sure I'll be fine as soon as I eat. I'm hungry."

"I'll take you out to dinner."

"What about Mama Emma?"

What about her, Poe?
He felt his head throb. "I should peek in on her. Do you mind a late dinner?"

"Actually, it would be preferable. Fewer chemical changes in the corpse. Let's go out afterward. Would you mind Indian?"

"As long as you don't mind me eating tandoori chicken in front of you. I don't want you to feel I'm eating second cousin Shoba—" He stopped talking, then said, "Rukmani, in your thesis, did you only analyze the werewolf legends? Or did you actually study people who had werewolfism?"

"I related myths of the
Panchatantra
to medical case studies of lycanthropy."

"In these myths, did the people turn into beasts? Or did they just
think
they were turning into beasts?"

"Depends on the legend." Rukmani gave the question some thought. "Some actually transformed their whole form at will. Some needed a concrete object to bring about the transformation. Usually it was an animal skin. If I remember correctly, skins were pretty much a cross-cultural requirement for transformation. As a matter of fact, the word 'berserk' comes from the Berserkrs—old-time marauders and murderers who wore animal hides and went on spree killings in Scandinavia. They were objects of intense fear, and the subjects of many a scary ghost story.
Ber
means "bear" and
serkr
means "shirt"—they wore bear skins."

"These Berserkrs were real people then."

"Yep."

"And they'd don bear skins and go around killing people, believing they were bears."

"Exactly."

"Ed Gein's predecessors."

Rukmani wrinkled her nose. "Yes, Gein did flay his murder victims and wear their skin."

"I suppose he got the idea from somewhere." Poe paused. "I didn't see any kind of animal skins in Alison's house."

"Which means?"

"She doesn't fit the mold."

"Romulus, there's no mold. There are only legends to explain medieval psychosis. As long as Alison believes she's a wolf, she's a wolf. Besides, didn't you say something about Alison dressing up in men's clothing? That she might be the guy who was in Nate Malealani's bar?"

"I
suggested
it as a possibility—"

"Seems to me she's already in the process of doing some kind of transformation."

"Ruki, it's speculation."

"If she's delusional enough to believe she's a man, she's delusional enough to believe she's a wolf."

"Maybe." They rode in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Poe said, "I never stated explicitly that Alison dressed up as the ponytail man."

"But you did say something about finding a sneaker belonging to your mysterious hat man—"

"
Maybe
it belonged to him—"

"And it was Alison's size—"

"
Maybe
it was Alison's size. I was tossing out ideas."

"Fine. We'll leave it at that."

Another moment of silence. Then, Poe said, "Don't laugh at me, okay?"

"I'd never laugh at you, Rom. What's on your mind?"

"The ni…ni…" Poe took a deep breath. "The…night I got bitten by the snake, there was this coyote." He tapped on the wheel of the car. "It looked very human to me, especially the eyes."

"The eyes looked human?"

"Yes. Human…and very familiar."

"Alison?"

"Ruki, it was very dark and I was in a lot of pain. I could have been hallucinating. But yes, the eyes looked like Alison's eyes. That same color, and the same expression." He hit his forehead. "Maybe I'm going nuts."

"You were under stress, Rom. You were frantically searching for Alison, and you found her wherever you could."

He exhaled forcibly. "You're probably right."

"On the other hand, Alison bolted as soon as she gouged you," Rukmani continued. "Maybe she had been to that cave before. Maybe she kept her skins there. Someone should go back and check."

"There're rattlers in the cave, girl. Remember?" Poe blew out air. "I suppose I could go back wearing boots and gloves."

Rukmani patted his hand. "You've just pulled a body out of an attic. The cave can wait."

"But it should be checked out. Worse comes to worst, I confront my own demons." Again he blew out air. "Maybe Alison's mother acted that way…like an animal? Linda
was
involved in the Bogeyman murders."

Rukmani said, "But as the victim, not the killer."

Poe thought about the note.

This is for what I did.

What if she had murdered Janet Doward? Later, in a more lucid moment, she had realized what she had done, had come to regret her deed and couldn't go on knowing what she had done?

This is for what I did.

Poe said, "When I broke into Alison's house, I found a shoe box filled with articles about her mom."

"Did Alison ever mention her mom in connection with animals?"

"No. But she rarely spoke about her mother, period."

The car turned silent except for Weinberg's gentle snores.

Poe said, "She had three shoe boxes, actually. One concerning her mom. But the others dealt with the Nevada Test Site."

"Well, there's a non sequitur."

"Not really," Poe said. "I think in her demented mind, she blames the NTS and the atmospheric testings for her mom's mental condition—all the radiation and fallout. I think that's why she was collecting articles on the bomb shots."

"Mostly the fallout has been linked to thyroid cancer from I131." Rukmani shrugged. "Of course, we're only at the tip of the iceberg. The complete NTS story hasn't even begun to be told. There was so much bureaucratic lying and paper-shredding we'll never know what really went on."

"I agree. As a matter of fact, I truly believe that the fallout caused my mom's cancer. She was a downwinder."

Rukmani sat up. "She was?"

"Yep. St. George, Utah. Right in the downwind path."

"That could explain her atypical leukemia."

"So I'm right? The fallout could have caused her cancer?"

"Certainly."

Poe said, "I found out that the government had passed some kind of downwinders' compensation act in 1990. Maybe I can get some money from them to help defray her medical bills."

"I think you have a legitimate case." She paused. "Rom, you said that Alison blamed the tests for her mother's condition?"

"I
suggested
it."

"Was her mother also in the line of fallout?"

"Yep. She was also from St. George. She was two years younger than my mom."

"What about Alison? Where was she born?"

"St. George."

"Same as you. Your families go back, then."

"Yes. Except Linda Hennick was a white Mormon, Mom was a brown Mormon."

"A little discrimination."

"Just a tad."

"And Alison and you…you two were…an item."

"Yes, we had sex. It lasted about six months. After she started high school, she blew me off. Mr. Brown Tic Boy was cramping her style. I understand how it is…the need to be popular…but…" He threw up his hands. They landed back on the steering wheel. "It still gets to me. That was almost twenty years ago. I'm such a doofus."

"We're all prisoners of our past."

"I'd settle for parole."

"You, me, Alison." Rukmani shook her head. "Look at Alison and her shoe boxes of her mother."

"One shoe box of her mother. But
two
shoe boxes of NTS."

"Meaning?"

Poe smiled. "More people wrote about NTS than about Linda Hennick."

Rukmani paused. "I think you've hit on something."

"Good." A beat. "Fill me in."

"The boxes of the test site material. Maybe she was blaming the tests for her mother's condition and for her
own
condition as well."

Poe paused. "That seems logical. Radiation does have this mystical, mutative aura—"

"Borne out by science," Rukmani added.

"Definitely borne out by science. That's why it would fit perfectly in delusions of a twentieth-century woman. It would make complete sense for Alison to incorporate the bomb shots into her psychosis. Hell, for all we know, she could blame fallout for turning her into a werewolf."

THIRTY-EIGHT

T
HE OLD
man appeared droopy, aimlessly plunking quarters down two poker machines, alternating from one slot to the other. His sand-colored shirt was wrinkled, his jeans sported a big brown stain, and his moccasins were coming apart. He hadn't shaved in a while and he looked like a bum. Any other establishment would have thrown him out. But in this town, as long as you had money…

Poe took the stool next to his. "How much have you played back, Chief?"

Y didn't answer, instructing the machine to deal him two electronic cards. "I want my money back."

"What money?"

"The money you took from me."

"I didn't take any money—"

"My winnings."

Poe smiled patiently.

"You want to end up on the streets, Y?"

"I'm already on the streets." He drew a pair of sixes, losing to the machine's pair of nines. "The money's mine. I want to piss it away, it's my business."

"Do we have to go through this every time?"

Y hit a three of a kind. Poe said, "There you go, old man. Chump change to blow. That should last all of ten minutes." He regarded the Indian's haggard face. "How long have you been here?"

Y didn't answer, dropped another quarter in the slot.

"Have you eaten in the last twenty-four hours?"

Again no answer.

Poe called over a waitress, gave her a fifty. "Roast beef sandwich on rye to go, please. Keep the change."

She pocketed the bill. "Thank you, sir."

"You know what? Bring me a beer—a Heineken."

"Right away—"

"And a vodka," Y grumped. "Straight up. And make it Stoly. None of that bar crap."

She smiled. "Certainly, sir. For you, it's complimentary."

After she left, Y said, "You can't eat in the casinos."

"That's why I asked for it to go."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"What about my job?"

"What job?"

Poe brought his hand to his eye, pressed down on an imaginary shutter button.

"Already done that." Y stopped playing. "Did the pictures help?"

"By the time I came back from the motel, the processing places had closed."

Y placed another quarter in the machine.

Poe said, "You can ask me about it."

Y played with his braid, twisting the end around his pinkie. "Nothing to ask. If you knew something, you'd tell me."

"And if you knew something, you'd tell me."

The old man pushed the draw button. "You think I'm holding back?" Y ended up with a king high.

"Where do you think they might have gone—" Poe covered the machine's quarter slot. "Y, I'm talking to you. Look at me."

"I'm looking. You're ugly."

Poe said, "I think Alison may be trying to imitate her mother."

Y fed the machine.

"You've got to talk about it, Chief." Poe became grave. "Too many people have died. I can't cut you any more slack."

"Can't help you, Rom." He asked for three cards. "I never understood Linda, let alone her daughter."

"Then tell me what you knew about Linda."

"Not here."

"So let's leave."

"What about my sandwich?"

"Fine. We'll wait for the sandwich."

"So I'll play while we wait." He put in a coin and drew up a two-pair hand.

The waitress returned with the to-go sandwich, the vodka, and the brew. Poe sipped suds, watching Y nurse his drink and play out his hands. This time the old guy won twelve dollars.

"You're doing fine," Poe said.

Y polished off his booze, picked up his winnings and the sandwich bag, then got up. Poe took a last guzzle, then put down his beer and followed the old man outdoors. They walked down the Strip, neither speaking. Just two guys enjoying the night. Y took out his sandwich and took a bite. "Myra makes them better."

"I'll tell my boss."

Another bite. Y said, "She should put a poker machine inside the restaurant. Right now all she has is a couple of dinky slots. One-coin odds. Typical tourist shit. You want a bite of my sandwich?"

"No thanks. I'm doing Indian with Rukmani in an hour."

"So late?"