The Pressure of Darkness (26 page)

"Don't. Please."

But he did and the knife probed her vagina lightly, like the cold, sharp mandible of an insect. Meanwhile, the man leaned forward and kissed her tears away. "Tell me where it is and I promise I'll make this quick."

Nicole understood him perfectly; her mind was as focused and pure as a nuclear implosion. She would suffer the torments of the damned if she did not speak the truth, answer his question immediately and do what he asked. She would die horribly, much as her father had, and it would surely be far better to die at once. There was only one problem.
She did not know what he wanted!

"I don't know what you mean or where it is. Please, believe me. I don't even know what you're talking about."

The knife probed and tender flesh protested. Nicole closed her eyes. She was panting, needed to vomit, felt herself tottering on the edge of madness. She wanted to fight but was frozen in a block of cold, steaming, ice and could not move for fear of the sharp blade.

But then nothing else happened. The blade was withdrawn.

Nicole opened her eyes. The man had hopped soundlessly as a tarantula and was now crouched a few feet away. He waited, listening and sniffing the air, senses reacting to some pure, atavistic instinct. Nicole's own desire for survival finally kicked in. She was already scuttling away, back on buttocks and heels and palms, when the man lashed out with the blade, so instead of her throat, he sliced empty air. The man jumped to his feet, intending to pursue her—

And Jack Burke flew into the room like a hurricane of feet and hands. Burke had her robe over one arm and used that to block and parry the knife. The fight was so fast and furious it seemed choreographed. It was over so quickly that Nicole would later be unable to describe much of what she'd witnessed. Something—an extended leg, perhaps—eventually slammed Burke back into her bedroom dresser. He lost his footing, slid down with his back to the furniture. He seemed dazed. Nicole wanted to call his name. The foul killer moved in, knife extended. Before the intruder could cut his throat, Burke produced a small, but wicked-looking gun. The killer moved. Nicole heard two quick sounds, a bit like balloons popping. The stranger rolled across the bed and scrambled out the door and was gone.

Burke did not follow, seemed to intuit that he'd never catch up. He got to his feet and jogged down the stairs. She heard him locking the front door, talking to someone on the cell phone as he moved back up her staircase. He entered the room.

"I came back to say I'm sorry."

Nicole was now gasping, shivering, snot running from her nose. She barely noticed when Burke draped the robe around her shoulders to cover her nakedness.

"I called my partner, Gina." He spoke softly. "She is going to come and spend the night. I'll arrange for a bodyguard to stay with you in the morning."

"Who was that?"

"I don't know."

"W-w-why can't
you
stay?"

"I have too much work to do." He kissed her forehead, quite gently. "What did he want, Nicole? Did he say anything to you?"

"Where is it?"

"Where is what?"

Nicole shook her head, hugged him tighter. "That's what he kept on saying to me, over and over while he . . . hurt me. 'Where is it?' Burke, I don't know what the hell he was asking about. Do you?"

"No."

"Should we call the police?"

Burke glanced down and away. He was thinking about Scotty Bowden. After a time, he shook his head. "I don't think we can."

Nicole's eyes focused on an invisible tunnel to China. "Burke, he said he'd go easy on me if I told him, but if I didn't . . ."
Don't think about Daddy.

"Don't talk. Relax."

"He said if I didn't he'd . . ."

Don't think about Daddy
. . . But she could not help thinking about it now, and soon the tears overcame reason. Perhaps because of the stimulus of her fear, all the buried grief, need, and loss exploded. "Oh, my God, my poor Daddy . . ."

Burke accepted her into his arms. Nicole cried in roaring bursts. He held her tightly, gently, a bit like the father she never really knew.

THIRTY-TWO

MONDAY

Scott Bowden again watches his breath stream out into the frigid air in a long, feathered plume. His hands burrow into his armpits. He hugs himself against the cold. His bleary eyes search the cement corners, battered trash cans, and piles of corrupting garbage. It is still the dead of night, when the desperate and the violent own the mean streets, so Bowden is anxious, yet depressed and angry enough to block that feeling and transform it into aggression. He is alert but moving slowly, carefully, with the calculated stiffness of an aging man who knows he is drunk but believes he can still pass for sober.

"Who is she?"

"They call her Bloody Mary."

Somehow it is always harder on Bowden when the stiff is a female. He turns to the young, cherub-faced cop who called him. "And you kept this just between us, right? Nothing went out over the radio?"

Officer Mike Gallo looks shaken as well as cold. He rubs his hands together. "I kept my mouth shut. Scotty, I'm hope I'm not going to get in trouble for this."

"Are you kidding, Mike? You did the right thing. And believe me, the man upstairs will appreciate it when he hears about this."

"You sure this is straight from Parker Center?"

"You have my word, kid."

Mike Gallo nods rapidly, a man eager to vanish. "Can I go now?"

"Yeah, sure. And remember, you never saw this."

"Yes, sir."

Hurried footsteps crunching through the frost, the sound fading away. Bowden kneels a few feet from the corpse, sets his torch down for a closer look. The middle-aged homeless woman formerly known as Bloody Mary is sideways on the ground, bloodied eyes enlarged, face contorted in a twisted grimace. A small clump of purplish vomit lies several inches from her half-open mouth like a puddle of expelled afterbirth. Like most of the homeless, she wears several sets of filthy clothing, but the stench from her evacuated bowels is unmistakable.

Bowden trembles, but this time it is not from the cold. He wonders what the woman was thinking when her time came. Initially, just that she had the flu, or maybe needed to go to the emergency room. Then the creeping awareness that something more serious was at work, deep in her body. The panic would have started with the convulsions, but by then it was already way too late to seek help. Bowden has only seen one other body that looked as tormented as this one. It was a street whore whose pimp had punished her for holding out on him by pouring a can of drain cleaner down her throat. The chemicals had eaten her alive from the inside.

Damn, what happened to her? What have I gotten myself into?

Bowden leans back on his haunches and lights a cigarette. Now the fear has washed his system clean and the warm alcohol buzz has vanished. He sucks the nicotine into his lungs with a greedy gasp. It helps a bit.

He grunts to his feet and looks around the filthy alley. Eventually his eyes settle on a black garbage bag that has split open. He yanks on one lip and pulls the bag free. He spreads it out and lets it float through the cold air and settle down over the body like a plastic blanket. Then Bowden scatters some empty cans and milk cartons over the surface to make things look good.

Jesus.

One bony hand, fingers blue and crooked, is sticking out like a lobster claw. Bowden takes a deep breath and uses his foot to push it back under the makeshift tarp. He stands back to look things over.

Fucking with a crime scene, I'm fucking with a crime scene
. The thought plays and rewinds, pops and fries his brain like something searing on hot griddle. Bowden could lose his career and his pension over this, and couldn't even say why.

All he knows is that someone upstairs wants this done.

Bowden finds a broken broom in a pile of trash. He uses it to sweep the pavement—and remove any footprint evidence—as he slowly backs out of the alley. He surveys the scene to see if he has missed anything, then stays in the shadows and dials his cell phone.

"I found her."

He listens, gives the address. "Better send someone . . . tactful to pick her up. Yeah. I'll wait here for a while." Bowden listens again, interrupts. "Look, I said a while. I'm not going down over this." Bowden closes the phone. He stands alone in the dark, trying to remember what the hell happened to the feeling he used to call integrity.

Bowden joined the force fresh out of the Army. He'd intended to be a good and ethical cop. In the beginning he'd resisted the smallest of bribes and even been known as a tight-ass in the ranks, but somewhere along the way, he'd lost himself. Maybe, he thinks now, it was after that second marriage failed and he was broke and on his ass again. Or when Marjorie sued him for the back child support? No, it was when one of the wise guys hanging around the Sunset Strip dealing upscale coke had offered to let him 'wet his beak' a little. Scotty Bowden had opened his mouth to say 'no,' but nothing came out. Finally he'd nodded to the little bent-nose fucker and bargained away the first piece of his soul. That's when it officially began, and from there on it only got easier. Accept a little bit of a kick-back from guys taking small bets on the football games, just for looking the other way. Harmless enough, especially since Bowden had become a betting man himself by then.

Nowadays, Bowden doesn't often ask himself why or when, he just takes the bribe. Oh, he isn't a pimp hustler, doesn't take free blowjobs from the working girls or anything, but he isn't above shaking down a high-rent escort service that works the Hyatt for a little protection money either. If you're on the wrong side of something you might have to buy your way out. That's the way of the world, right?

Now, your heavy drug dealers, Bowden always busts them hard and clean. He never takes any of the cash or drugs for himself and won't ever look the other way if someone else wants to pilfer meth, coke, or heroin. Not a chance. A guy has to have some standards to sleep at night. But somehow, between his adventures at the track and his drinking and the end of his third marriage, the worst just happened. Someway or another, the great Scotty Bowden finally stumbled a little too far over the line. And now he can't get back.

And a few bad decisions and some big-shot bets have placed him right here in the mouth of an alley full of garbage and guts, covering up a nasty situation, waiting for some kind of amateur meat wagon to come and pick up the corpse of this poor bag lady. He was all tangled up in some kind of a murder case.
But why poison some old broad who likely never hurt anyone? And for Chrissakes, why do it out here in the open, on the damned city streets, in front of God and everybody? What the hell is going on?
The risks are too great and the gain too little. This just doesn't make any logical sense.

Now, pressuring Bowden is one thing—Scotty knows he is burning out, on the edge, just a card-carrying fuck up—but then demanding that he suck in the poor beat cop likely to find the woman? That only widens the potential for trouble. What if Gallo talks to someone outside of the group?

Little Mike Gallo is a good boy, and Bowden knows the kid idealizes him and trusts him, but Gallo is also burdened with something Bowden lost a long time ago. A conscience.

So what if he talks and it's to the wrong person?

Bowden lights another smoke. An errant wind whistles down the rain gutters and ruffles his hair. He makes a mental note to check in with Gallo in a day or two, just to keep him in the choir.
This really sucks
. More wind. Bowden blinks, his eyes tearing from the cold. A second or two later, something near the body at end of the alley . . .
moves
. Bowden's mind starts flickering horrific images from a zillion B movies, one after another: the pile of trash bulges and shimmies and ripples in the wind, then slowly but surely something under it begins to stir. The milk cartons, stained napkins, and pieces of rotting food start to drop away as it sits up; that black plastic bag rolls down and peels like burned and blistered skin to reveal Bloody Mary, her face locked into a grimace that reveals yellowing, bloody teeth and a protruding tongue chewed all the way through . . .

Stop it!

Bowden inhales smoke, burns his fingers on the cigarette. He swears and drops it to the ground in a meteor shower of orange sparks. He stomps it out. He sees his own shadow where he didn't before and whirls around.

Headlights.

Instinctively, Bowden steps further back and hunches his coat up to obscure his face. The vehicle approaches slowly, cautiously, lamps on bright. It's probably the pick-up. Anyone driving through this neighborhood before dawn is bound to be cautious. Bowden shields his eyes and tries to make out the shape of the car. He can't see for shit. Bowden is no longer only worried about the safety of the young patrolman, Mike Gallo. Not for the first time it occurs to Scotty that he, too, may be dispensable.

Bowden kneels. He reaches into his leather ankle holster and pulls out his 'throw down,' an untraceable .22 with the serial number filed away. He is wearing leather driving gloves, so if he is forced to use the weapon he can leave it behind. The car stops two doors away. The make and model are still obscured, but it sounds old, like some ghetto car. The raggedy engine is still running, chuffing out foul smoke. But is the driver looking for him, or just lost? Should he wait here as instructed, or run for his life?

"Yo. Cop.
Buenas noches.
"

Bowden clutches his weapon with both hands. He takes a deep breath, releases half of it, and steps out into the light with the gun pointed up in the air. He keeps his eyes zeroed on the driver, who seems to have come alone. He moves his head to one side to indicate the alley.

"Down there. She's at the end, under a garbage bag."

"Hokay, then. You go."

Bowden risks a quick glance behind him, sees the street is empty. He starts to back away toward his car. He keeps his tired eyes glued to the front and keeps his gun at the ready. When he moves to his right, he can see the driver. The man behind the wheel is enormous. He gets out of the car. He is dressed in hospital garb of some kind, like an orderly at a mental hospital, or a nurse. He ignores Bowden and goes to the back of the vehicle. Once he opens the rear door, Bowden can see that the car is an old, wood-paneled station wagon. The man wrestles a large wooden trunk to the edge of the vehicle. He opens the heavy lid. He grabs something that looks like a body bag and vanishes into the back of the dark alley.