The Pressure of Darkness (15 page)

SIXTEEN

Nicole Stryker insisted on taking her own car, a brand new ragtop Mustang. The combined racket of wind, traffic and the rock music blaring from her stereo neatly prevented him from asking many follow-up questions. Perhaps she only wanted more time to process things. What Burke didn't know was whether or not she was hiding something.

The Stryker mansion appeared less ominous in the sunshine. Nicole popped the glove compartment and used a battery-operated opener. The metal gate slid soundlessly out of the way. She gunned the Mustang up the driveway and parked before the front steps. In daylight, the two-story house was a cream color, with a forest green trim that allowed it to blend in nicely with the foliage and trees.

Nicole got out quickly. She slammed the door without looking back. Burke, who couldn't help but follow her buttocks with his eyes, thought those tennis shorts did wonders for her personality. He slid out of the car, closed the door gently. He stood watching for a moment.

Nicole jiggled the key in the lock. She was facing the door, head down and hair obscuring her face, when she spoke. "Are you finished looking at my ass?"

Burke cleared his throat and moved around the front of the ragtop. "Sure. For the time being, anyway."

"Good."

She opened the door and walked briskly through the wide room, going directly for the stairs. Burke kept his eyes focused on her shoulders and that bouncing blond hair. He was surprised to find himself blushing. Nicole raced up the staircase. He noted an odd tension in her shoulders; she became marionette-stiff as she reached the upper floor and also slowed down. Perhaps her memories of her father had begun to intrude? If not, she clearly had something else of import on her mind. He followed.

Nicole turned into what Burke had taken, the night before, to be a bathroom. She opened the door, which was set a few feet into a darkened alcove, and turned the lights on. Burke closed the distance, expecting her to move further into the room, which was actually a guest bedroom of considerable size. Nicole stopped abruptly, unaccountably, and Burke found himself pressed up against her shapely cheeks. She stiffened and so did he. The sensation in his groin was as sharp and precise as the explosion of static electricity from a doorknob.

"Excuse me."

She waited to move. It was a sliver of time that smoothly signaled her positive response to his interest. Then, without turning around, Nicole Stryker walked to a long closet and yanked it open.

"Shit."

Burke followed her eyes. The closet was long and deep, larger than the one in the master bedroom. There were wigs along a top shelf and some dresses, blouses, and women's business suits hanging from the center rod. A few pairs of shoes littered the floor.

"What?"

Nicole turned to face him, pretty features pinched and white. "There are a bunch of things missing, Mr. Burke."

"What kind of things?"

"A few of the women's clothes and most of the purses. Someone has definitely been here."

Burke moved closer. "We could have it dusted for fingerprints, but the guy I saw wore gloves. I don't think he'd be that stupid."

"And look down there." Nicole pointed to a long wooden shelf set low to the carpet. "He had some icons and artifacts there, and some incense for when he meditated."

Burke's interest was piqued. "He meditated? You didn't mention that."

"Some kind of crazy Hindu shit," she replied. "Now watch."

She slid the shelf to one side, and a panel in the wall opened. It was large enough to step through. The room beyond lit up automatically as Nicole entered, motioned to Burke. There were more shelves here, and also antique statues, carvings, and religious icons of figures he easily recognized: Buddha, Bodhi Dharma, some solid gold Yin-Yang pieces, Kwan Yin, Ganesh, even Shiva dancing before the wheel of suffering. Burke whistled. He carefully examined up one image of Siddhartha, deep in meditation beneath the Bodhi tree. It appeared close to a thousand years old.

"Do you have any idea what this is worth, Nicole?"

She shrugged. "A lot."

"More than a lot. You didn't tell me about this."

"My father had an extensive collection of very expensive antiques. He paid cash for the majority of them. I told you that there would be religious artifacts, but frankly I was not in a hurry to let anyone else know how extensive of a collection it was. I'm sure you can understand why."

"Because some of them were stolen."

Nicole faced the wall. "Let's just say that I don't know precisely how he acquired them, but he paid a lot and he always paid in cash."

Burke followed her gaze. "And some of those rare pieces are missing now?"

"That's right."

Burke replaced the Siddhartha and released a deep breath. "Do you have any idea which ones?"

Her shoulders were sagging. She was sinking fast. "Does it matter?"

"Let me put it this way, Nicole." He spoke gently, soothingly. "There are probably hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of pieces here. If the motive was purely financial, then why not take them all? If you can remember what's missing, you may put me on the trail of whoever killed your father."

"China. No, maybe India."

"Excuse me?"

"Some of the pieces that are gone were from India. I don't remember which ones, but I know he said most of the ones on those shelves were from some obscure sect in, I think Hindu."

"No idea of the name of the sect or the deity?"

"Not a clue."

"Could you sketch me what they looked like?"

Nicole grew irritable. "I wasn't paying that much attention, Burke, okay? This isn't my thing. It was his."

"What I don't understand," Burke mused, ignoring her anger, "is the missing women's clothing. Why take only some of that? Why any of it, why not everything he had? What were they looking for?"

"I want to go now."

She was hugging herself. Her voice sounded thick and Burke could see rows of goose bumps growing on her bare arms. He held her shoulders. "I'm sorry. Sure, let's get out of here." She sobbed at the touch, a sound fraught with vulnerability, dark from remaindered grief. Nicole Stryker whirled around and glued herself to Burke's chest.

When they left, his shirt was smeared by mascara, damp with tears.

SEVENTEEN

"There is something most seriously fucked up going on here, my brother."

Doc was sitting in his specially modified van, tugging on an unfiltered cigarette. The tip glowed orange in the gathering gloom. Tiny sparks soared through the smoke when he exhaled. "The Assistant ME reamed me a new asshole for copying those files."

Burke scuffed his running shoe along a crack in the asphalt. "I haven't shown that stuff to a soul except Gina, Doc."

"You sure?"

"Definitely. How do you think he found out?"

"Maybe he's got a mole in my office or it's bugged up or something. But I don't think so. That leaves one possibility."

"Your computer?"

"Somebody must have hacked into the main frame and downloaded whatever I had accessed and printed out. Now I ask you, white boy, why the fuck would they care about that?"

"Scotty called me. He said he's getting heat to close the case file. I got the feeling he'd rather I drop the ball on this one."

Doc rolled his eyes, snapped the smoke out onto the pavement. "What's up with the brother, man? This sucks swamp water. Damn, I'd best not lose my job over some dead horror writer."

Burke spat on the ground. "It has to be one hell of a lot bigger than that if people at Parker Center and City Hall want to shut things down."

"Fucking great."

"Sorry if I'm making trouble for you."

"I just thought you should know," Doc said. "You figure maybe this is the spooks again?"

"I can find out soon enough."

"Major Ryan?"

"Yeah, it's time I talked to him again anyway."

"Red, just so you know, I lied my black ass off. I told them I have no idea how the file got pulled, much less copied. I don't know if they believe me or not, but you know what that means."

Burke shrugged. "It won't take them long to run the film from the security cameras in the hall and check the logs and see that I was there. Relax. If I get hassled, I'll say I did it all on my own."

"But that's a felony, man."

"Fuck them. The company will cover me."

"We better hope so." Doc started the van. "Man, I don't know what is going on here, but I think you really screwed the pooch this time."

"You checked those pages I e-mailed you?"

"Yeah, I did. Sweet. So a piece of the dude's bowel is flat fucking
gone
. Now, how did the coroner miss that?"

"It was cut in two places, clean as a whistle, probably by a scalpel. And now it's missing."

Doc shivered, grimaced. "Yeah, and then somebody buried that fact for some reason. Look, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to know this whole mother stinks. The guy has already fucked with himself for hours, he's drugged out of his mind, he's sitting in a bathtub, disemboweled and deep in shock, and he stops to cut a piece of bowel out and then what, flush in down the toilet? Or does he
eat
it or something?"

"Because if he committed suicide, where the hell did it go?"

"Exactly." Doc put the van in gear. "And some other dude can re-check his stomach, cause that idea even grosses
me
out."

Burke tapped his forearm with stiffened fingers. "One more thing, Doc."

"Not a chance, man. I'm in deep enough already."

"Hang on a second. The baby powder by the doorway, the stuff in the carpet. What kind of baby powder was it?"

Doc scans his memory bank. "Johnson & Johnson."

"You're sure?"

"It was that chemically loaded, lanolin-type stuff. Mind saying why you're asking?"

Burke removed his fingers. "Because mine was corn starch baby powder. I bought it at a health food store."

"Oh,
shit
."

"Yeah. That means somebody else used surgical gloves in that room. And whoever it was also slipped into the next room, drugged Peter Stryker, then tortured him to death."

"And someone heavy wants this covered up."

"Looks that way."

Doc started to drive away. "Red, I think you just got even more dangerous to be around than usual, my friend. Are you going to tell Scotty about all this, or is he on the shit list now?"

"I haven't decided."

Doc seemed bothered. "He's old school, our asshole buddy. Our brother. Somehow it don't seem right to hold out on him."

The van rolled forward a few feet, Doc's face began vanishing into the shadows.

"I know," Burke said. "But somebody is leaning on him, so he's out. Just let me decide, okay? You play dumb from here on out."

"Glad to." Doc steered the van away. "Color me flat ignorant." He rolled off into the darkness, hissing tires and the fading low drone of an engine.

At first Burke savored being alone. He stood in the parking lot, lost in the gloom, deep in thought. Suddenly he trembled. He did not know if he was feeling the cold or finally becoming afraid.

He needed to speak to her. He drove to the hospital without awareness. Soon he was again by her side . . .

"I'm in trouble again."

"What?"

"A new case. Looked really easy at first, but now . . ."

"Oh, Red."

"I know. But we do need the money."

"Oh, Red."

She did this sometimes. Repeated things in a feathery whisper before moaning back down into carefully measured breathing. Burke hugged his knees and listened for her voice. The hospital seemed even colder than the grounds. Burke was seated near the window as usual, staring out at stars covered by a wispy gauze strip of clouds. The austere room, with its pale walls and lack of furnishings, seemed distorted, oddly elongated this evening, like something from a horror film about a mental institution.

"I love you."

Her voice was a bone sigh, borne on the wind: "I know."

"Are you ever coming back to me?"

There was no answer. Burke felt his eyes begin to water. He forced a wide smile. He did not wish to upset her. He got to his feet, kissed her on the cheek and tucked her in a bit more carefully.

"Sleep well, Mary."

He replaced the chair precisely where he'd found it and took one final look around the room. He found a small scrap of paper on the floor and tossed it into the trash bin.
Nothing but net
. Straightened the one painting on the wall and wiped some dust from the top of the frame. Burke knew that he was stalling, avoiding the dread he would experience once out of her presence, but could not bring himself to hurry. Finally he waved, although her eyes were closed, and walked out.

In the hallway, his own footsteps booming from freshly painted walls, he allowed himself to sob. The moment of weakness was brief, tightly controlled. Ashamed, Jack Burke wiped his eyes.

A faint ping caused him to glance back at the elevators. The doors slid open. An old man, bright-eyed and with a wild shock of white hair, was chatting with a plump Hispanic nurse.

Jesus.

Burke's blood turned to ice. He cringed at the sight of Harry Kelso. He stepped away, and flattened against the wall, then ducked into the refreshment alcove to hide between the giant coffee and soft drink machines. Kelso entered her room. The door whooshed shut.

Burke did not leave until he heard the voices fade.

EIGHTEEN

The wind whips sideways and then flows downward between towering twin pillars of concrete and glass. It feels hostile by the time it reaches the street; there is a biting chill in the air. The apparently legless man is of indeterminate age, his race obscured by layers of grime and sweat, hair long and tangled. He is known to the others as Willie Pepper. Willie is hunched in the corner of the sidewalk next to the Bank of America building, seated on a small wooden platform. He is counting out change into one filthy hand. He wears an army jacket with sergeant's stripes, a tee shirt, a blue work shirt and two pairs of wool pants.