The Dark Country (5 page)

For a time, I don't know how long, I balanced there. The white sound was blowing in from the ocean.

"You see?" she was saying. "I need someone. I need to know, to be free and know that I'm free. You will be free, too. We will be the fortunate ones, because we'll know no remorse."

I faced her.

"The voice," she said, "remember the voice." She reached to touch me. "Everybody has a price," she said. I had not realized until that moment how unfeeling she was. Her touch was almost cruel; her words were almost kind. "That may be true enough," I said slowly. "How much is it worth, then?" "Nothing." Then I just waited. "And we are?" she said.

I took a long time trying to think of a way to answer her.

Now the circling gulls were gone; only a single kingfisher remained to patrol the waters.

I walked, touching each post on the pier.

At first the sound was so familiar I didn't notice it.

The sound of footsteps.

Without looking up, I stopped by the rail.

The footsteps stopped.

Below the pier, the skin of the sand had been polished to an unearthly sheen. I stood there, looking down. "You got a light, by any chance?" said a voice. It was a man I had seen walking the boards earlier. I told him I didn't.

"Don't ever depend on these throwaway lighters," he said, clicking the wheel uselessly against the flint. "Once they're empty, they're not worth a dime."

He pitched it underhand into the water. It fell end-over-end, disappearing from sight.

"The bar has matches," I said.

He made no move to leave. Instead he leaned his back against the rail. I shifted and glanced around.

Back at the bar, on the other side of the glass, bodies were moving, rearranging. I couldn't help but notice. The filtered moonlight caught one face out of all the others, at the small table by the hall to the cigarette machine and the pay phone.

I must have stared for a long time. Then I got it, finally.

Kirby.

I said it, I thought it, I don't know which. "Who?"

"Kirby," I said, snapping my fingers again. He was old enough to remember, so I went on. "A comic book artist, back in the Forties. See that girl in there, the one with the face like a broken moon? She looks like she was drawn by Jack Kirby." A portrait of Poe's sister, in fact, but I didn't say that.

There was no reason he should have answered. He probably thought I was crazy.

I turned oceanward again.

The moonlight had broken up on the surface of the water now, like so much shattered mercury. I watched the edges of the tide foaming around the pilings, bringing a wet, white reflection to the hidden rocks.

His elbow was almost touching mine. He was already off-balance. It wouldn't have taken much to send him backwards over the edge.

I said to the man, "How would you like to set someone free for me." It was somewhere between a statement and a question. "Lean on, snuff. For money, of course. It'll have to be on the installment plan. But for her, I'll come up with a hell of a down payment."

I felt a laugh starting, deep down.

"Come on, come on," I said, "what's your price, man? Everybody has his price, doesn't he?"

"Yeah," he said right off. He had been following it. "Only sometimes," he said, playing it out, "it may not be worth paying."

I managed a look at him. His face was leathery, but the skin around the eyes was still soft. He squinted, and a hundred tiny crinkles appeared.

"Before you say any more," he said, "I ought to let you in on something. I guess I ought to tell you that I'm what they call a private investigator."

I couldn't read his expression.

"I also ought to give you a free piece of advice," he said. "You seem like a decent guy. Do yourself a favor. Drop it right now."

"What?" I tried to get a fix on him. "Is she a client of yours or something?"

"The husband, pal," he said confidentially.

"I think you're trying to tell me something. So who is he?"

He gazed off down the beach. He gave a nod, meaning, I figured, one of the big stilt houses, the ones with the floodlights aimed at the waves.

Then I noticed something moving.

It looked like a man. I watched as the figure passed between the pilings, laying a long, stooped, crooked shadow over the stones.

"He looks old," I said.

"And rich," said the detective, if that's what he was. "Filthy, like Midas. Otherwise I wouldn't be bothered. Domestic surveillance isn't my style. Can't take the hours anymore."

"Wait a minute," I said. "The old man. The husband." It stuck in my throat. "He has a dog, right? And he takes it for walks. Same time, every night?"

"Take a look. Christ, the mutt's only got three fucking legs. Can you beat that?"

I couldn't.

"He's got an idea she's a tramp, you get the drift? So I tail her. Everywhere. I should blush to tell you how much he pays me. But all I got to do is wait and watch. ..."

"No, I can't beat that, man," I said. "I really can't."

And started walking.

And heard footsteps on the pier,
footsteps echoed as from far below,
my footsteps, saw shoes falling on the boards,
my shoes when I looked for them seemed very far away
my shoes,
as I watched the water, then the sand under the pier,
the cracks between the planks shuttering over the sand,
and I saw as from a height, the distance growing, from all angles, directions, lengths, myself there,
the sand pocked with breathing holes leading to sand crabs, remains of mussels, clams, oysters, lobster, squid, anemones, puffers, eel, sea snakes, sharks, rays, barracuda, lungfish, trilobites, sea spiders, spiny horrors, sentinels buried in the layered scape, as /
approached the bar,
footsteps passing the split moorings,
the black layers on the roof,
drying ropes frayed by the sojourns of rats from out the tumbling foundations,
the high tilted windows, their panes pulsing with the passing of the tide, the frames beginning to crack,
footsteps,
giving in, giving out,
my footsteps
the laughter and the absence of laughter
nearing the wooden buildings, the restaurant, the bar
beating like wings against the glass.

And I watched her.

She sat in the concrete building, in an office with frosted glass partitions and barred windows, her fingers moving like praying mantises on the table. Her eyes half-closed, she saw:

A body. The body of a woman. The nude body of a young woman, the shiny flesh slipping from its bones, floating face up in a swimming pool. What was left of the face.

"Right," someone said, after she told them.

Her eyes were still rolled up. She squirmed in her straight-backed chair, struggling against the rattle of typewriters from the next room, and said, "And there is another one."

"That's news," said the Chief. To one of his men, a lieutenant, he said, "Better check it out. Ask Fitz to run the list again, will you, Billy? You never know." Then, "Where? Can you tell us that?"

"I see . . . trees. A hill. A river. Stream. It was a stream, but now it's a river. The rains, yes. The rains. The rains did it."

He leaned over her to see that the tape recorder was still on. "Isn't there something else, Polly?" he asked gently. "Take your time, now."

"No." She began swaying. "Yes. A tower. Airport nearby. Yes. Control tower. ..."

The Chief nodded, smiling. "Now tell us about the man, Polly. Tell me about the man who did it."

"The man?" she said faintly. "Oh yes, the man. I see . . . red Pendleton shirt. Trousers filthy. Mud. Driving away. Old car, can't see . . .

"Wait. Yes. Apartment. Two oak trees. Dead-end street. West side of town. Pink stucco building."

She fell silent, breathing heavily, her eyeballs straining behind the lids.

The lieutenant hadn't moved. He stood at the door, his hand frozen on the knob. The Chief jerked a thumb at him impatiently, motioning him out.

"Blood," she said abrupdy. "Face. Skin." She scraped at her arms. "Washing the blood off. It won't ..."

The Chief put a hand out to steady her.

She stiffened, arching her back. "Branford Way," she said matter-of-factly. "Seventeen-something. Sixth door, on top. A black Toyota in the garage. No, on the street. Always park on the street. Kids play in the garage. The sixth apartment. Six. Six. . . ."

The Chief looked at the other men. He winked.

"She's got it," he said. "Just like she got the Valley Stran-gler and—what did the papers call the other one? That creep at the University, remember?"

"The Library Rapist," said one of the men, snickering.

"Right," said the Chief.

He moved with them to a corner of the room.

"Now go out and get on the horn—I want every available unit over there so fast he won't know what hit him. And get this. No leaks this time, understand? Tell the Information Officer that this investigation is strictly SOP. That's the official line, got it? We're pursuing leads, searching the area, blah blah. He can give the press the bit about the latent prints if he wants. C.I.D. says it can't be traced, of course, it's not clear enough, but don't tell Riley that. I don't trust that son of a bitch."

"What do you want on the warrant?"

"Shove the warrant! Go in on narco, traffic tickets, any damn thing, I don't care, but get in."

Suddenly the woman slumped forward and rested her head on her wrists.

"Wait," said the Chief.

He hovered over her again, his tie flopping against the worn surface of the table.

"Polly? Can you hear me?"

She inhaled deeply. Then she sat up, blinking rapidly, as if awakening from a dream.

"Hi, Jack," she said. "How'd I do?"

"Like a top. You did it again, babe. How do you feel?"

"Oh, I'm fine," she said. "Swell." She rubbed her eyes. "Hey, what're those two guys doing hiding in the corner?" She made a raspy laugh. "What'd I do, say something about their sex lives?"

"What sex lives?" said the Chief. "You were right on the money, babe. You hit it. Didn't she hit it? Everything. The hill, the pool, the victim. And the creep. You're batting a thousand today, doll."

"Don't I always? Hey, look at them. I must've popped their virgin ears. Who's got a smoke?"

The men patted themselves down. The Chief tossed a pack of Viceroys onto the table. Then he took a disposable lighter out of his coat pocket and waited while she smoothed her hair and dug out one of the cigarettes with her fingernails. A tremor passed through her hands.

"Oh, I can still see it," she said, shuddering. "The trees and the mud. The pool. And the body. How do you suppose it stayed in the pool for so long, Jack, without anybody noticing?"

"You said it yourself, Poll, remember?" He reached for a file folder, removed a newspaper clipping which he handed to her. "It was the rain. The rain did it."

She read the headline.

47 Bodies Reburied
 

ORPHANS OF THE STORM

"Oh, I remember that," she said, scanning the article. "It was on the wire services, even back where I live." She
tsked.
"What a horrible, horrible story."

"It happened over by the Point," said the Chief. "The February rains were just too much, apparently. After that last storm, forty-some bodies came floating up out of their graves—that's the estimate. Some slid down the hill next to the cemetery, into the road, into back yards, even into swimming pools like this one did. They came right up out of the mud that way, like earthworms, I reckon. Right out of their

coffins and down the hill. They still haven't found 'em all. Grisly story, all right," he added with a chuckle.

She made another sound with her tongue. "I still don't get it," she said. "How did your people know that the one in the pool hadn't just, you know, been buried up there like the rest?"

"She had, she had," said the Chief. "But not as a certified interment, you see. Someone—our man in the red shirt now, thanks to you—murdered her, hid her along with the gun in one of the fresh graves sometime around Christmas. We were there when the Forest Glade people came in with their bulldozers for the mass reburial. The city ended up footing the bill for something like fifteen grand in mudslide damages, by the way. And while they were busy tagging the remains, they found a bullet hole in this one's skull. Polly, there's one more detail I—"

The Chief turned, remembering his men.

"So what are you two gawking at? Haven't you ever seen a real live psychic before?"

As he snapped orders and sent them out, she dipped further into the news story. She didn't really want to read it, but she was both repelled and fascinated by the details.

She hadn't known what she would be in for when she accepted the invitation to fly out this morning. She had worked with police departments all over the country in these last eight years, including the Chief's. Though more often than not it was work that involved missing persons or the like, she had had her fair share of homicides, including the bodies of those laborers up in Sonoma County and that little girl they had found stuffed into the storm drain in Los Angeles.