Voodoo Moon

FOUR

It was a two-story frame corner house with the kind of junky garage behind that seemed common in this area. Isolated from its neighbors by half a block on both sides. The garage doors hung awkwardly, seeming about ready to fall off. The backyard was littered with pop cans and beer cans and paper scraps, as well as some gray clumps that might have been boxes that had collapsed when they were left out in the rain. A defeated-looking dog dragged himself from one end of his cage to the other. He barked once but it was a pathetic performance. You could see where somebody had tried to scrape dog poop off the front sidewalk. Maybe they were going to have a party.

The garage was empty.

So their car was gone and I had to make a decision. Should I risk trying to get inside, upstairs to where Claire rocked back and forth and sat silhouetted in the attic window?

The baby picture.

Claire might be the only one who could help me with that.

I got out of the car and started across the sidewalk. Three kids on the tricycles sat two doors down, watching me and whispering to each other. I waved to them. They didn't wave back. I didn't blame them. Earthmen should never humble themselves by waving at Martians.

No sounds from inside as I mounted the three paint-shorn steps. I walked across the age-slanted porch and knocked on the screen door. I angled my ear to the door. No sounds from inside, either.

The shellacked pine door behind the screen door was relatively new. As was the lock mechanism. It was a cheap one.

"Hey," somebody said, and I spun around, scared. I'd been so involved in appraising the lock-seeing how much trouble it represented-that the voice had startled me.

"Hey," I said back.

The mailman was chunky and gray-sideburned and suntanned.

His near-empty bag said he was near the end of his route.

"Nice day," he said. "Sure hope this keeps up. Maybe we can slide by until December."

"Wouldn't that be nice?"

He jammed the mail into the rusted black box on the pillar connecting porch floor with porch ceiling.

Then, "Be even nicer if the Hawks'd have a good season."

"Sure would."

He was suspicious of me, of course. The babble was meant to cover his suspicion.

I said, "Doesn't look like they're home."

"I had to drop an overnight package off here this morning. Said they were going to look at a new car this afternoon. Their other one's falling apart."

Still looking at me. Judging me. Still very suspicious.

I faced him and walked to the front of the porch. "Guess I'll stop back later."

We both heard it. Claire's cry. The exotic call of a forlorn night bird.

"Poor gal," he said. "I went to high school with her."

"You did, huh?"

He smiled. "Had a crush on her then-and even after she came back from nursing school. She sure was pretty back in those days. But of course Paul Renard took her away from me."

"You knew Renard pretty well?"

"Hell, no. He wouldn't spend any time with somebody like me."

"But you knew Claire?" I wasn't sure why that was especially interesting. But it was.

"Almost everybody knows everybody else in a town like this. And Claire was a real beauty."

I had to finish the charade.

I came down off the steps and walked with him to the sidewalk.

"She went to nursing school?"

"Yep. Worked with her mom out there. The bughouse, I mean."

Another cry.

He looked up at the attic window. "You'd think they'd be used to it by now."

"Who?"

"The people on the route. The neighbors around here."

"Oh."

"They say her voice still gives them shivers. All the little kids think she's a witch." He nodded to the tricycle trio down the block. "Those kids think she's a Martian."

I laughed. "Well, they're a little more creative than other kids their age." Then, "Well, see you," I said.

I walked back to my car and drove off.

I parked two blocks away and came back up the alley.

The garages in the neighborhood, like the houses, were old, sagging. The alley floor was gravel.

A woman hanging out her wash on a clothesline waved, apparently mistaking me for somebody else. A pigtailed little girl jumping rope stopped abruptly to watch me. And a young sweet-faced collie growled proudly at me as I passed her backyard.

When I reached the backyard of the Giles house, I moved quickly to the screened-in back porch.

Amazingly tidy, given everything that surrounded it. Twelve packs of empty Pepsi cans stacked neatly in one corner; an old divan tucked in another; even a small, thrumming refrigerator for cold beer and pop.

The back-door lock wasn't any more troublesome than the front-door lock would have been.

I carry a number of Burglar's Helpers. That's what this cop I knew used to call them. Open most any kind of lock, most any-time I care to. Superman should have such power.

I got inside. The cat stench was an acid physical presence. Two litter boxes sat next to an ancient white stove. The boxes hadn't been emptied in some time. A small cat with pinkeye looked up at me, lost and heartbreaking. Even from here, I could see the fleas.

I had to move quickly.

Kitchen. Dining room. Living room. Cramped and junky, each. Stairway.

I went up the enclosed stairs between the swollen slabbed walls that were still rough and unpainted long years after being plastered into place.

I came to a landing.

The second floor was a junk room. Sort of what the attic probably should have been.

Dusty boxes, the dust already playing hell with my sinuses; coat trees; three table-model TVs that apparently hadn't worked for a long time; two large steamer trunks, neither with gay travel stickers on it; a set of twenty-year-old supermarket encyclopedias; and little girls' things-dolls that wet, dolls that talked, dolls that sang, dolls that went at least number one and maybe even number two, two single beds, a giant Mickey Mouse, a Schwinn ten-speed, high school pennants, and an array of framed photos of a very beautiful young woman at various ages. Claire, I was sure.

No wonder the mailman had had a crush on her. She wasn't the obvious sexpot or the shy honor-roll beauty. Instead, there was a simple and clean beauty to her face and slender body that grew more imposing and fetching the longer you studied them. And there was the sorrow, too.

From the youngest shots to the oldest-which I marked at about age twenty-there was a somber quality to the blue eyes and small but erotic mouth. The older she got, the more pronounced the sorrow became. In the later shots, the inherent grief of her eyes belied her sensual charm, made her look older and more severe than she should have.

I sneezed. And felt for a moment like my dear friend Inspector Clouseau, as played by the late Peter Sellers. Certainly, sneezing should be a part of everybody's stealth equipment.

There was a short staircase at the far end of the second floor. This no doubt led to the attic.

The boards creaked even though I walked on tiptoe. Given my sneeze and the squeaking boards, all I needed was a trombone to announce my presence.

The interior of the enclosed stairs held four steps.

I stood at the base of them, listening.

A fey song, an off-key ballad of some kind, sad and sweet at the same time. The voice singing it was barely a whisper, so fragile it was heartbreaking and more than a little unnerving with its hint of madness. The Ophelia scene every actress longs to play.

I crept up the steps one at a time, pushing out at both walls for balance.

The door was padlocked. Big-ass Yale lock.

I tried very hard not to sneeze. I managed to swallow it down.

I put my ear to the small and dusty door. Claustrophobia was starting to fill my chest, increase my heartbeat. The enclosure was small. Buried alive. The day was suddenly sunless.

I listened.

Chains. Singing. And then, without warning, weeping.

And then the rocking chair squawking back and forth.

No more singing.

Rocking chair now. And violent weeping. But all of it done quietly, warped somehow, like a soundtrack played in slow motion.

Drugs. That was what I was hearing. She'd been sedated. She wanted to scream at full voice but couldn't. Didn't have the energy or quite the focus. Drugs took care of that.

I knocked gently. "Let me help you, Claire." Not much more than a whisper.

Rocking. Weeping. As if she hadn't heard me whisper at all.

"Claire. Please let me help you."

Rocking and weeping suddenly stopped.

"Is that you?"

I had no idea who she was talking about, but I had nothing to lose playing along. "Yes."

"You're really back?" Getting excited now. Happy.

"I'm really back. So I can help you."

"Oh, Lord, thank you so much for answering my prayers."

The rocking chair squeaking as she stood up. A long and ragged sigh. "Oh, I don't want you to see me this way. After all these years."

"I want to help you, Claire. I don't care what you look like. I really don't."

She started rattling the door. Uselessly. No way she was going to open the Yale lock from the other side.

Nor any way I could open it from this side. I had the proper pick, but I didn't have the proper experience. It would probably take me hours.

Rattling the doorknob with insane fury. "We've got to get this open! We've got to!"

Screaming now. She had hurtled over the drugs. Full voice.

And then pounding her fists on the other side of the door. Hammering. And kicking with her foot.

"Please! Please! You've got to get me out of here! You've got to get me out of here!"

And then, "If you move, I'll kill you, Mr. Payne. Right where you stand. And there's no jury in the world that would convict me, either."

I turned to face Giles. Bottom of the stairs. Formidable Remington pump-action shotgun in his hands. Dressed like someone who hadn't been clothes shopping for thirty years. Out buying a car, trying hard not to look like a yokel.

He said, "Now, you come right down those stairs and right now."

"No! No!" Claire screamed behind the door, pounding and hammering again. The sobs starting to submerge her speaking voice. "No! No!"

"You get your ass down here, Mr. Payne. Or I'll blow it off."

The hell of it was, I believed him.

He marched me downstairs.

His wife went up to the attic.

I could hear her opening the Yale lock.

Hear Claire screaming.

Hear Betty Giles slapping her once, twice, three times. Hear Claire collapsing in her rocking chair.

And then the door slamming.

He marched me out to the kitchen. I'd been a bad boy and he was going to punish me.

"You sit right there while I call the police."

"You sure you want to do that, Mr. Giles?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Why wouldn't I be?"

To make his point, he walked over to the brown wall phone and lifted the receiver. He wore his leisure suit again. The blue one. The long-pointed collar of his white polyester disco shirt worn outside. His gold neck chain still looked strangling-tight. His face was blotchy from booze. His dyed red hair was a hairdresser's night-mare. The wife obviously did it for him. Or maybe he did it himself.

He started to punch in some numbers.

"All I came here for was the baby picture. Up in Claire's room."

He stopped punching numbers. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

But it obviously did mean something. His whole lumpy body froze suddenly, and his mouth was tight as a dead man's. There was true fear in the dark blue eyes.

"You'd better hang up."

"You go to hell. I want to call the cops, I'll call the cops."

"Be my guest."

"You sonofabitch."

He stared at his hand on the receiver.

"You think I'm afraid to call them?"

I shrugged.

"And I don't know anything about no baby picture."

I just watched him.

He slammed the receiver down. Lifted his shotgun from where he'd leaned it against the wall. He pulled a chair out from the Formica kitchen table and sat down.

"I need to talk to the missus."

I said nothing.

"You forget how to talk or something?"

"Nothin' to say, Giles. You're the one with the gun. You're the one who makes all the decisions."

"Breakin' into my house like this."

I said, "Who's in the picture, Giles? The baby picture?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"What's a child got to do with any of this? Maybe it was something that Kibbe turned up."

"Kibbe. That fat piece of shit. I got tired of him nosin' around here."

"You kill him?"

He smiled. His dentures looked pretty good today. "Yeah, I killed him all right. I shot him. Then I cut him up. Then I set him on fire. Then I fed him to some wild dogs. I just wanted to make sure he was dead."

"Kibbe knew who was in the baby picture, didn't he?"

"Just lay off that baby picture. You don't know what you're talkin' about."

"Maybe your wife does, Giles. Maybe that's why she's upstairs slapping the hell out of Claire right now. Maybe Claire wanted to tell me who's in the baby picture but your wife doesn't want her to. She's going to load Claire up on drugs now, isn't she? You're going to kill her someday, you know that, keeping her that dosed up? Just because your wife worked at the asylum doesn't make her an expert, Giles."

"She knows what she's doin'. She won't kill Claire. Claire's our daughter. I adopted her when I married her mother, because Claire was sick by then. We love her."

Mrs. Giles came into the kitchen. She didn't say anything. She walked to the sink and washed her hands. I noticed how she washed. Like a doc. Good soapy scrubbing halfway up the forearms. And held under the hot water for at least ten seconds. The minimum is eight. Your better class of docs shoot for ten. She dried off on a new square of paper towel. She turned around and looked at me and said, "You get the hell off our property." She wore a tan suit, wrinkled now, with a frilly white blouse and a pair of brown one-inch heels. She was a little squatty now, but it wasn't difficult to imagine that many years ago the fleshy face had been sharp with classic bone lines and the body sleek and inviting. The ghost of those days still somehow hung around her. Maybe it was the sullen mouth. There's a female petulance that can be sexy. Hers would have been, anyway.

"I'd like to talk to Claire," I said to her.

"No way."

"I'm working on a murder case."

"No, you're not. You're working for that TV show. You just want to dig up dirt on people in this town so that it'll make your show better."

"I should've called the law," Giles said.

"Why didn't you?" she said.

"Because I asked him about the baby picture. The one up in Claire's room."

Her reaction was the same as her husband's. Her mouth said no, her eyes said yes. "What baby picture?"

I sighed. "I don't want to go through it all again." I stood up. "I can always get Chief Charles to come out here."

"On what grounds?"

"Abusing your daughter."

"The county people are here once a month inspecting."

"Her social worker, you mean?"

She nodded. "You can check it out if you want."

Implicit in her answer was that I trusted the opinion of social workers. I don't. I don't see them as devils, as the right wing does; but I do see them as incompetents, as most judges and cops do.

I walked over to the back door. "If she's as bad off as you say, you should put her in a hospital."

"She's our daughter," Betty Giles said.

"All the more reason to see she's treated well."

"That's our business," Giles said. The shotgun lay across the table now. He seemed to have forgotten about it. Then, "And next time, I'll blow your head off, you come trespassin' in here."

In a moment of silence, we all heard it. And looked up, as if to the heavens. But it was really the attic we were looking at. Because of the noise. The soft steady thrum of the rocker going back and forth, forth and back, and the wan Irish voice of her sad song.

"She recovers pretty fast," I said.

"Recovers from what?" Betty Giles said.

Her husband said, "He thinks we keep her drugged up all the time."

"Only when she needs it," Betty Giles snapped.

I pushed open the screen door. It was a good day for yard work. The clear sky. The smoky smell. The warm clean prairie air.

"You get going," Giles said.

I smiled at them and left.

I ducked under clothesline and walked back to the alley, where I loitered for a few minutes looking at the rear of the frame house. I wanted to see how far it was from the roof of the garage to the roof of the back porch.

She had drawn six lines under the letters NBC! And then written: Down at coffee shop for interview!!!!!! Six exclamation points.

And then I noticed the lined legal-sized yellow pad she'd left on the bed.

At least twenty pages had sketches of partial faces on them. A few of the sketches-a portion of forehead, eye, nose; a portion of chin, mouth, jaw line; and so on-resembled a male; others resembled a female.

This was how she'd worked on our previous murder case. She'd drawn sketches of possible burial sites for four days before finally settling on one. And then that sketch was enough to lead us right to the body.

Could she really find the killer this way, through the process of sketching? But why not? The pattern was the same.

Half-realized images in her mind. Blinding headaches, each one of which brought her a little closer to a definitive view of what she was searching for, and finally a fully realized sketch.

Why?

The motel room was dark and cold. I went in and washed up with hot water. And then I went to see Dr. Williams.