The_Amazing_Mr._Howard (2 page)

Killgood wiggled out of the desk, which screeched on the linoleum floor, and stood. “Mr. Howard, we’re not here to waste your time talking about books.”

“No, I should think not.”

Killgood moved alongside Willard. “Could you do a psychic reading for us?”

“Is this in regards to the girl Willard referred to?”

“Sorry I didn’t call to let you know we’re coming. This girl might be in danger.”

Mr. Howard glanced at his watch to give the impression he was in a hurry. “I wish I could help you, but I have a dinner date, so tonight is not good for me. And besides, on such short notice, I could not provide useful information.”

“Can you come to the station tomorrow afternoon?”

“Afternoon?”

“I realize it’s hard for you to go out during the day.”

“And still you ask.” Mr. Howard pulled his car keys from a pocket. “Very well, Chandler. When should I be there?”

“One o’clock work for you?”

“I may lose sleep, but anything to help my friends in the department.”

Killgood smiled and started toward the door. Willard glared for a moment before turning to walk away.

“Detective Willard,” Mr. Howard called.

Willard stopped and looked back.

He pointed at the crushed cigarette. “Littering is a crime in this state.”

Willard shot him an angry glare. “I’m not the one who put it there.”

Mr. Howard fought off a grin as Willard stamped out the door. He picked up the crushed cigarette, tossed it into the trashcan, and stepped to the light switch near the door. “And so our game is ’in book,’” he said, and turned out the lights.

The clouds that brought the rain moved east, leaving behind a black sky dappled with stars. Mr. Howard drove with the top down on his Mercedes. Warm air rushed over his cheeks and his hair flew straight out behind him. He imagined himself Odin, creating verse on the way to battle, Gungnir at his side, or Jim Morrison, writhing on stage in tight leather pants, lighting the fire of desire in female admirers. Most of the kids in his classes wouldn’t know who Jim Morrison was, but he didn’t care. Mr. Howard knew a god when he saw one.

The road twisted into the foothills. Below, the lights of the city spread toward the eastern horizon. He turned onto a dirt road and stopped at a gate. A few taps on a security pad and the gate swung open with a groan. Gravel pinged against the undercarriage as he started up the long driveway. His house nestled against the rocky hillside, barren except for an occasional Utah Juniper. Built in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright’s
Fallingwater
, it had sharp angles and a large deck out front. When the sun went down, he sat on the deck and suffered in isolation. The house was far too big for one person and he spent many hours wandering through its passages like a ghost in search of a purpose.

The garage door opened and he parked beside a black-panel van. He slipped inside the dim house, ears attuned for unusual sounds. “Lights,” he said, and color flooded the rooms. He entered his office, furnished with an eighteenth-century Georgian style desk, Arts and Craft sideboard, a burr walnut bookcase that once belonged to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and a file cabinet that held Bram Stokers papers in the Lyceum Theatre.

At his desk, a few keystrokes on his computer keyboard and the monitor crackled to life. He opened the webpage of the
Coloradoan
newspaper, put on his reading glasses, and leaned toward the screen to read an article about a missing teenager, Stephanie Coldstone. The seventeen-year-old had vanished following an argument with her parents. Authorities speculated she headed to her boyfriend’s house, but never arrived.

He sat back in his chair and stared at the girl’s picture. Terrible image. Probably taken at the DMV. Notebook and pen in hand, he started toward the basement. There was much work to do before he met with the investigators. His shoes pounded down the unfinished steps. He flipped a switch and the darkness became a yellowish glow. The girl’s head snapped up and her eyes opened wide. He strolled over to check the ropes that kept her splayed upright against the wall like a butterfly on a spider’s web.

“Good, good, everything is secure.” He gently peeled off the duct tape covering her lips. She gasped. “There, there Stephanie, everything will be all right.” Her eyes were red and glassy. “Why must you cry?”

“Please don’t hurt me.” She had been sweating. A rancid stench lingered beneath her armpits and between her legs.

“Why do you think I am going to hurt you? Have I hurt you so far, other than the little prick on your arm?” He patted her clammy cheek and she flinched. “Do not worry, child, I have no intention of sexually abusing you. That would be rude. Do I strike you as a rude man? I should hope not.”

He drifted past shelves that held his wine collection and went to a cabinet filled with record albums. “Let me see,” he said, moving a finger over the sleeves. “Ah yes, perfect.” He pulled out a record and placed the vinyl disc on a turntable. Soon, the haunting refrain of a piano filled the room.

A smile formed on his lips and he turned toward the girl. “Rachmaninoff. Very nice, yes? Did I tell you I saw his First Symphony premiere in Moscow? Back in eighteen hundred ninety six… no, seven. Not everyone recognized Rachmaninoff’s genius. The nationalist composer Cui said only inmates of a music conservatory in Hell would admire it. Damn fool.”

He pressed a hand over his heart, the other out to the side, and whirled across the floor in a waltz with a spectral partner. “Beautiful, just beautiful. You may have heard Rachmaninoff’s music before. Have you seen the romantic movie with Superman, what is the actor’s name? Ah yes, Christopher Reeve. Anyway, he falls in love with a woman played by Jane Seymour. He travels back in time and wins her heart by sharing Rachmaninoff’s
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
. When I watch the part where she lets her hair down, fireworks explode inside my brain and there is a tingling in my pants. If I could be with her, we would make the earth move off its axis.”

He stopped dancing. “Now for our business.” Opening a small wooden box, he withdrew a glistening needle.

“No more pain, please.”

He moved before her. “There is a trick to controlling one’s rage. When you are with someone you do not wish to hurt, you must think of them as you would the one person in the world you are least likely to harm. For example, some men may think of their mothers. However, this will not work in my case for I killed my mother and chopped her up with an ax. I dumped the pieces in the Danube and watched them sink like stones. But do not fear, dear Stephanie, she was a wicked woman and most certainly deserved it.”

He gently turned her right arm until the veins came into view. “When I look at you, I think of my cousin Astrid. She had skin like cream and skinny legs, hair the hue of strawberries, and sea-green eyes. She gave me my first kiss, but we were not in love, no, not like that. We lived in a world of dark passages and forbidden rooms, where dreams and reality merged. We admired, yes, but from a distance. There was a line we could not cross.”

He positioned the needle over a vein. “You should feel honored. This needle has drawn the blood of nobility. Josephine herself surrendered to my will in her chateau of
Malmaison
.” With a quick thrust, he pierced the skin, and a line of blood trickled down her forearm. He brought his mouth to the wound and gently sucked, the metallic flavor of blood overwhelming his palate. He drained her for only a minute. Upon finishing, he pressed a thumb against the wound to stop the bleeding, and bandaged it. “All better,” he said.

The color left her face, leaving it almost as pale as his. “What are you… some kind of vampire?”

He returned the needle to its case. “You say that as if you believe there is more than one kind.” He brought over a chair and placed it in front of her. For a brief moment, he considered turning her. She could be his companion. Someone to understand the thoughts inside his mind.

No, she deserves better. She deserves peace
.

He retrieved the notebook and pen from his coat pocket. “Let us talk now. When we are finished, I will give you supper, agreed?”

“Why are you asking me all these questions?” she asked with a frail voice.

“I need to know all about you,” he said.

“There must be more than that.”

“Are you afraid?”

She nodded.

“Put your mind at ease. I have talked to the police and tomorrow I will see them again and explain how to find you.”

She blinked several times. “Why would you do that?”

“This is what I have always done. The police are my friends and I want you to be my friend too.” He opened the notebook to a blank page. “Now let’s see, we have already discussed your family, your childhood, and your friends. Let us concentrate on more intimate details. Tell me what makes you the person you are. Tell me about your hobbies and passions. Who was your first love? What are your dreams? I want to know
everything
.”

The alarm clock went off like a ringing bomb. Mr. Howard rolled toward the sound, fingers probing to find the off-switch. Alarm silenced, he brought the clock close to his eyes. “Eleven o’ clock,” he grumbled and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “What kind of fool wakes up this early?”

He padded across the cool wooden floor toward the bathroom. Heavy drapes kept his bedroom as dark as a catacomb. The bathroom light caused him to squint. When his eyes adjusted, he turned on the shower and slipped out of his clothes. “Ah,” he said. The water snapped him awake, and in his mind, he went over his schedule for the day. Meet the police, come home and eat, off to the campus for a class, come back home, eat again, then take care of the girl.

A smile crept over his lips. The girl’s blood invigorated him invigorated and made him whole. He felt alive, the way he did as a boy walking the streets of Vienna, back when the Danube ran clear and free to the sea, before the Black Death stole the joy from the world and the Turks returned with dreams of conquest.

His smile vanished as quickly as it came. He liked this girl. Not in a sexual way, but rather how she carried herself. Despite all he put her through, she retained a measure of pride that put him to shame.

He was so deep in thought, he failed to register the click of the shower door followed by a rush of cool air. A soft body pressed against his back. He turned to stare at his new companion, taut and tanned from hiking in the mountains. Only the lines around her eyes and sagging breasts betrayed her age. She slithered up against his pale frame. In their Eden, she played the role of serpent.

“Dean Harris,” he said, “what a pleasant surprise. I thought you would be on your hiking excursion until tomorrow.”

“Consider this a perk,” she replied, and softly kissed his chest. Her lips moved down his stomach as she knelt before him.

He had known women of all sorts during his long life. Frail creatures ashamed by the pleasure they gave and received. Wild ones whose welcoming thighs made the troubles of the world vanish with each thrust of their hips. Leslie Harris belonged amongst the wild ones. She had a photographic memory and he swore she used it to memorize every page of the Kama Sutra.

Her mouth gave him an erection. She stood with a satisfied smile. “From the look of things, maybe I should start dropping by more often.”

***

She sat at the kitchen table, dressed for business in a gray skirt, white shirt, and matching gray jacket. She wore her shoulder-length blond hair in a partial ponytail, a style he considered much too informal for a woman in her fifties who ran a university. Leslie didn’t care what people thought because she could still pull off any look she desired. Even the college boys watched her walk past, their thoughts drowning in a sea of fantasies.

He shuffled to the coffee maker. “Thank you for a most enjoyable shower.”

“I’m glad you liked it.” She brushed a strand of hair behind an ear. “I do wish you’d invest in a mirror. Makes it hard for a girl to fix her hair.”

“Why have mirrors when there is nothing to see?”

She frowned. “You’re an attractive man for your age.”

“For my age,” he said, and forced a smile. He scooped coffee into a filter. “Care for a cup?”

She sprang out of her chair, slapped her palms together, and bustled toward the basement door. “If we’re going to be drinking, it should be champagne. I’ll grab a bottle.”

He dropped the scooper, coffee grounds spilling across the counter, and dashed over to block her path. “I am afraid I cannot let you go downstairs.”

She pulled back, her eyebrows drawn down. “Why not?”

“Because you would find evidence of a crime so vile, you would never want to see me again.”

She rolled her eyes. “And what crime would that be?”

He put a hand on her shoulder and steered her toward the kitchen. “Remember the bottle of Dom Perignon I was saving for us? I drank it.”

She settled in the chair. “You drank our Dom? Someone should call the police.”

He swept coffee grounds off the counter into his palm and dumped them in the sink. “Yes, it was terribly impolite. Another time perhaps?”

“Since we won’t be having champagne, I’ll take coffee.”

When the coffee finished brewing, he brought two mugs to the table. Steam curled from the cups like the smoke of distress fires. “So, what is the occasion?”

“Occasion?” she said, from behind her raised mug.

“To want champagne, you must be celebrating something.”

Her cup clanked onto the table. “I’ve decided to retire.”

The news sobered him in an instant and he tried to hide his disappointment. “You are much too young to retire.”

A laugh floated from her chest. “I’ve been at this for over thirty years. It’s time I moved on.”

“Move on, as in Florida?”

Her daughter, Melanie, who lived in Jacksonville, recently had a baby. It was Leslie’s first grandchild and she talked of wanting to live closer to her family. He just never took her seriously. The prospect of her leaving made him want to kick something. His gaze lowered to the table.