The Fever Kill Part 9

She shook her head a little sadly, like he was nowhere near in focus and never would be. "What are you going to do next?" Angling her chin at the window. "About him."

"We're gonna run around the block for another couple of days, and then we'll get past the rap and we'll see what happens."

She grabbed the sides of his face and looked him square in the eyes. "You can't beat him. You might be crazier than him, but he's faster. You can't win that way."

He didn't like hearing it out loud, in her voice, the truth that had been circling around in his head for days. Not only that he wasn't fast enough, but that he was nuts. He didn't mind walking the edge but he didn't want her seeing him there.

He was fast, he was so fast his hands moved without him, but Tucco was something else altogether. "You're probably right, but that doesn't change anything."

"What if I said I loved you and wanted you to be with me? That I had enough money to get away, start over?"

"I'd probably say I loved you and wanted to be with you too," he told her. He wasn't sure if either one of them really loved or could ever love the other one the way they should, but you did the best you could. "It'd give me more reason to fight, but it wouldn't affect the outcome much. That's what I'd probably say."

She released his face and poured herself another drink. "Go then, finish what you've got to finish. His patience is going to wear out soon, you don't have more than two more days."

"That's all I need," he said.

He'd have done all he could do by then, and would either have an answer or would give up. He expected to give up.

"Good," she said, "because I don't have much patience either. Oh, and don't be surprised if he kills somebody in this town first, just to ramp himself up. It might be somebody you know."

She opened the door and made him climb out over her.

Cruez was waiting in the street. Tucco was staring up the road. He glanced at Crease and said, "These llamas, they on farms?"

"Yeah."

"What if I told you all is forgiven? Really. You being a cop, it doesn't matter to me. I've got plenty on the payroll, and none of them helped me like you have. Never had better times with anybody else. There's no outlaw as good as a dirty cop. You're my right hand."

"What about me?" Cruez asked.

"You. How many times do I have to tell you? You, you're my left hand."

"Oh."

Crease knew there would be a lot of talk, but he hadn't expected it to be like this. Tucco was serious. It could all go back to the way it was. He could still work for the cops and still do what he did in the underground. Maybe quit the cops and just let himself go.

But Morena. And the baby.

Strange he should give up his wife and son to the life, but now, Tucco's mistress pregnant with his child-a kid he might never even hold-should somehow drive him from it.

What the h.e.l.l did it mean?

"So?" Tucco said. "Open your mouth, tell me what you're thinking. Come on, you know what I say is true. I don't lie. You ready to pick up where we left off? Maybe start bringing in some c.h.i.n.ks from Canada? Got that nice s.h.i.+pment of H coming up next week. Need you with me on that."

Tucco lied all the time, to everyone about everything. It was sort of funny to realize he thought he was honest, maybe even n.o.ble in his own way with the people who mattered to him. He had the straight face and dead gaze for everybody, and the lies poured out of him so easily that he often mistook them for sincerity.

"No," Crease told him.

"No? You sure about that, man?" He showed his teeth for an instant and then the smile, or the grimace, was gone. "You know what you're doing?"

"Yeah."

"I don't think you do. You're not yourself, and anybody who knows you, really knows you like I do, can see it. I think this place has got you all confused, it's s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g with your head. Coming back here, it was bad idea. All these trees, they'd drive anybody crazy. You're concrete and steel and asphalt. This clean air is killing you."

Maybe it was true. "Could be. How about you? How are you feeling?"

"It's making me sick too. So let's get the h.e.l.l out of here and go home."

"In two days we'll see what we see," Crease said. "Until then, you go visit with the llamas, all right? Don't snuff any old ladies."

Chapter Nine.

He tried Burke's hardware store first, but Sam Burke had already gone home for the day. A teenager putting away six-foot lengths of copper tubing told him the store would be closing up in ten minutes, it was already after six. Crease had let the time get away from him. Morena's scent was still on him and it was making him a little heady.

Crease asked the teen if Burke still lived out on Deerwood Road, and the kid told him he wasn't allowed to give out that kind of information. Crease got back in the 'Stang and got turned around twice before he remembered which direction Deerwood Road was in. Not everything from the past was that close to the surface.

He drove slowly into the hills and found the place pretty easily, as if it had always been intended that he wind up here. It didn't take much to get you believing in fate, thinking your life was wrapped around someone else's who you hardly even knew. For years the thread connecting you would go unnoticed, and then one day it started to tug from the other end and you got reeled in.

He parked the 'Stang out front and made his way up the wide walkway to the front door. He hadn't rung the bell yet when Burke appeared. Like he'd been perched in the window for hours, waiting for Crease to come along.

Sam Burke recognized Crease immediately. His bland expression upgraded fast. It twisted and crept across his face inch by inch, emotions fluctuating as they went along. Sadness, puzzlement, even disdain showed vividly before returning to the carefully engraved contours of apathy. It was a little spooky that the guy would be so on top of him like that.

They both stood there, waiting for something to promote the moment. The dead girl was there with them. Crease felt Teddy's presence growing stronger. Crease's father's ghost wafted between them all, the man wanting redemption or maybe just another bottle of booze in h.e.l.l.

Burke finally moved aside and Crease stepped in.

The house smelled of furniture polish, floor wax, potpourri, fresh paint, and stale air. It was the aroma of somebody desperately trying to clean away events that could never be undone. Crease knew the windows would be spotless but painted shut. These were people who had closed themselves in with their pain in order to keep it alive. Mary's room would look no different now than it had seventeen years ago. Her belongings would've been touched and caressed many thousands of times, and every fingerprint washed away again. Burke probably napped in his daughter's bed, but the intense dreaming would be too much for him. The thread between them tightened up with every step Crease took.

Burke was perfectly groomed, almost prim. He wore a very short, well-kept beard. Every b.u.t.ton on his s.h.i.+rt was b.u.t.toned-right to the collar, the cuffs. The fold in his trousers was sharp enough to slice paper.

Burke evoked constraint. Inhibition, pressure, duress. Someone who killed two hours every morning in the bathroom, spent the day at work a.s.sembling and arranging and coordinating, and then faded the rest of his night sitting on the center cus.h.i.+on of the couch. Not touching anything, not moving.

The living room had been decorated by a woman but you could tell it no longer contained her living touch. Everything had been arranged where it was a long time ago and never been moved. Mrs. Burke was dead or gone. The place was immaculate as a museum. Crease didn't want to make any quick moves for fear of breaking the solemn air around him.

There were no photos anywhere. He could understand why. You couldn't put out any of your parents or your in-laws or your dog without having a few of Mary too. And to put her photos in your line of sight would just be a reminder that you couldn't protect your own kid, that your faith in the police and your friends and your neighbors was totally misplaced.

"You look very much like your father," Burke said.

The thought of it shook Crease for an instant. It got his back up, the heat rus.h.i.+ng along his spine. Then he realized Burke meant the way his father had looked before the downfall, back when he was still doing his duty.

At least it's what Crease hoped the man meant. "I'd like to talk to you, if I could."

"I can guess why you're here. All of us reach a particular crossroads, an apex, and eventually return to where we began. You've got a lot of gray in your hair. You're young to be having a mid-life crisis, but rest a.s.sured I know something about that." Burke spoke with a clipped, rushed speech. Very tight but very carefully enunciated. "Still, let me ask, don't you think it's simply a waste of time?"

Crease didn't know how to answer. Burke didn't wait for one though, and merely stepped past him into the living room.

"No," Crease said to the man's back.

"Of course it is. You're just having some other crisis of life or faith, and you thought coming back here would be the way to resolve everything. You're on a grand search, a journey of conscience. Perhaps you've left a wife home wherever it is you now come from. Yes? Perhaps children. An irritated employer, a job half done. You've dug yourself a hole, you're walking a wire in high wind, would you say? And all these things will be set right if only you can solve the case that smashed your father's career and ruined his life. Do you really expect to clean the blood off his hands at this late date?"

The guy was sharp all right. You couldn't sell him short just because he had his collar b.u.t.toned and his windows stuck shut.

"Not everything will be straightened out," Crease said. "But it's a loose end that I want to try to tie up."

He knew it was the wrong thing to say the moment it was out of his mouth.

Burke sat on the center cus.h.i.+on of the couch, crossed his legs and said, "Well, how touching. Is that how you see it? What happened to my daughter? The greed that spurred your father?" Maybe the man was inoculated, safe behind his austere wall. "I don't consider her murder a 'loose end' at all. Nothing dangling there, you see. Quite the opposite. Her death severed all ties. That's what death does. There's no point in dredging that all up. Digging up the dead. It's been so long. You not only look like your father, you act like him as well. Are you a police officer?"

Christ, Burke was on the ball. All this time in the house alone, thinking, it really exercised his gray matter. "Yes."

"Are you a good one?"

"Depends on who you ask."

"I'm asking you."

He hadn't thought about it for a while and wondered how Burke had managed to take control of the conversation the way he had. Crease had come here to ask questions, and in about two minutes flat Burke had him pinned beneath gla.s.s. Maybe he owed the man an answer, maybe not, but something about the house, and Burke's controlled energy and direct way of speaking, the way he peeled Crease apart with his gaze, made Crease feel like he should give it a shot.

"I'm effective because I spend my time down in the mud with the guys I'm trying to stop. I'm good at my job but that just means I'm rotten at everything else. You understand that?"

"It sounds as if you're striving for n.o.bility."

"If that's what you heard then you're mistaken." And he was. Burke was burned up with a fever of his own. "Perhaps," Burke said. "In any case, I think you should let the dead rest."

He was surprised to hear Burke speaking like that, no matter how far down the man had gone to get away from his pain. Crease felt his father's presence all the time, often very strongly, and thought Burke would never be able to let his murdered daughter go, not even if he wanted to. Especially when you lived in the same house where she'd lived, from where she'd been stolen.

"Is that what they're doing? Is Mary at rest?"

"Are you prodding me?"

"Would you want me to?"

Crease finally decided to sit in a chair opposite Burke. The cus.h.i.+on made a heavy rasping noise. No one had sat here for a h.e.l.l of a long time. The sound took on a whole new meaning in the silent house.

"Mrs. Burke?" Crease asked.

"My wife no longer resides with me. To be truthful, I don't know where she is, it's been some years since I've seen her. Perhaps with her sister in Terrytown, Connecticut. Or . . . elsewhere. I have no idea."

It wasn't the kind of thing you could say you were sorry about, but there was no point. Crease looked around and couldn't help thinking about security. No burglar alarm. No lock on the front screen door. No deadbolt. A good second-story man could get up onto the roof, and the screens could easily be popped out of the window frames. Just like he used to do when climbing up to Reb's room.

He lit a cigarette-still only had the menthols on him, he had to get to a store soon-and was surprised when Burke didn't show any upset about smoking in the house.

Crease leaned forward and pulled a s.h.i.+ning gla.s.s ashtray close to him.

He said, "Tell me what happened."

"What's the point?"

"Maybe there is none. But explain it to me anyway. Give me the details."

"Don't you already know them?"

All that Crease knew about Mary's kidnapping, and everything that followed, was mired in memories of his own shame and urge to run. He had to start over, disconnect from it, get it clear. "Not in the broader sense."

"How broad a sense do you want them?"

Crease sat back, took a deep drag, and said, "How about if you quit running me around the block and just tell me what happened the day Mary was taken?"

The voice got a rise out of Sam Burke, who raised his chin an extra inch like he was expecting to get jabbed. He folded his hands over his knee and focused himself, going way deep inside. Crease could see him diving.

"This isn't about my little girl. This is about you and your father. That's the only reason you're interested. For your own selfish reasons. "

"So what?" Crease said. "Maybe I can get done what the others were never able to do."

"I don't see how."

"You don't have to see how."

"Your father killed her."

"I know that."

Sam Burke sat waiting for more. It was going to be a long wait. Crease had never apologized for his old man and wasn't about to start now. Saying you were sorry for somebody else, ten years dead, just wasn't going to get the job done.

Crease wondered if Burke would get some kind of a kick out of hearing how he went to the mill and ran around pointing his finger and going bang bang, pretending to be his father, imagining the girl right there in front of him. Probably not.

"You've got nothing to lose," Crease said.

"Don't I? Are you quite so sure of that? Because you shouldn't be, no, you truly shouldn't be, I would say. Every time I see her photo, every mention of her name, the name 'Mary', I lose myself. Can you understand that? Can you possibly know what I mean? I disappear, I cease to exist for an instant. I go someplace where my girl is still with me, where she is looking up into my eyes, and holding my hand, and my wife is not in Terrytown or elsewhere. I vanish off the earth. And then I come back, you see. There's the trouble. That I come back. And yes, she's still dead, and I am alone, and the things that once mattered most can matter no longer. So I say to you, I do have something to lose, and it will be very costly to me to lose any more of it."

So that's how it was for him. Crease got it now.

He'd been wrong. Burke didn't have nearly as much control over himself as he did over his environment. The man was ready to shake loose at any second. He didn't want to say anything more, but his mouth wouldn't stop working. You could tell it panicked him, but it had been so long since he'd spoken about Mary that he couldn't turn it off.

"You know what she enjoyed doing more than anything else? Playing hide-and-seek. It was more than a child's game, you see. This house is over one hundred and twenty years old. There are many nooks and niches in it, places for a little girl to hide herself away from the world. She would grab something from us-my watch, her mother's gloves or some kitchen utensil, and she would run. She would hide. A girl who likes to hide so much came out into the open and was stolen from our own yard. Yes, that's what happened. Appalling. She stepped into the open and was shot down by the sheriff whose duty it was to get her home safely again. Don't you find that ironic?"

"No," Crease said. "I find it tragic."

"You only say that because it is," Burke said. "I'm vanis.h.i.+ng, you know. Inch by inch, I'll soon be gone."