Voodoo Moon

SIX

Back door. Opening just now. Patrolman coming through in rain poncho. Smelling of cigarettes and cold air. Didn't see me at first.

I shoved him out of the way. He bounced off the doorframe back at me. I had to shove him again. Ran into the night.

Rain was so hard it was like soft bullets exploding on my head, shoulders, and back.

Running out of the circle of light in the rear of the police station. Darkness. Had to reach the darkness.

Asphalt alley. Splashing through pooling water in the sloping center of the asphalt.

Garages. Tiny loading dock. Dumpsters. Two, three back doors of businesses. None offered much hope of a hiding place. They'd comb the alley for sure.

I needed a car. But hot wiring didn't happen to be a specialty of mine. I could do it, but it would take a long time. Too long.

The street. Small dark businesses on either side. Wind whipping signs and trees and overhead traffic signal viciously.

Had to have a car. And that meant Tandy. The car she'd rented would be at the motel. I couldn't take mine. Too easily spotted. The motel was seven, eight blocks from here.

I jogged three blocks over. If I stuck on a straight course, they'd find me for sure.

I wanted to stop and get out of the rain. Just for a second. There's an old Ray Bradbury story, one of my favorites in high school, about a couple of astronauts marooned on a planet where there's no escape from the rain. Eventually, they go mad. I knew the feeling. I hadn't been out in this stuff ten minutes yet and I was already starting to feel disembodied. Soon, I'd be nothing more than another puddle.

Night. Cold. Rain.

Alleys. Backyards. Streets.

Backed-up sewers. Wind tearing off tree branches. Lightning surgically severing the black sky with a shining silver blade.

Running. A hitch in my side. Slowing down. Gasping. Until this moment, I would have said that I was in reasonably decent shape for a man my age. That's what I told the ladies in the bars when they remarked on my slim body. Now I knew better. Slim wasn't the equivalent of healthy. It just meant you did a better job of hiding your unhealthiness.

And then it was there.

I was just coming out of another alley when it appeared, apparition-like. Big, hot, heavy, throbbing in the rain.

A squad car. Fuller driving. Aiming a spotlight back and forth across the front of the alley. He must have glimpsed me. Or thought he had.

I dove behind three garbage cans set into a wooden frame. I had developed a nose bleed and the blood was flooding hot into my mouth. I was shaking all over.

I peeked up just enough to see the spotlight whip back and forth, forth and back a few more times.

Was he going to pull into the alley and search it?

The nose was becoming a problem.

I ripped a piece of my shirt off, wrung it out as well as I could, and then pressed it to my nose. Teach me not to carry handkerchiefs.

Fuller still sat at the head of the alley.

Why?

Then I was able to hear the squawk of the radio. He was talking to the dispatcher. I couldn't catch most of the words. But I did get a sense of the exchange.

I lay against the ground. I was already so wet, so cold, it didn't matter. I was so close to the garbage cans that the sweet, fetid stench of last week's dinner leavings were starting to gag me.

I had to get a car. I was sure I knew what was going on. But I needed proof. Fuller wouldn't be easy to convince.

And then he left.

Just as wraithlike as his sudden appearance had been, so was his leaving.

No siren. No quick acceleration. He just left. All that heat and power of the souped-up Ford just vanished.

I got up and started running again.

For a block or so, I got disoriented and had no idea where I was in relation to the motel.

But then I saw a small radio tower that was a block west of the motel and that set me right again.

Sirens in the distance. Probably for me-what could be more exciting than an honest-to-God manhunt for an escaped prisoner? — but then again maybe not. This was perfect fire weather, cops and firefighters alike often converging on the same scene.

I ran.

I was a block from the motel, in an alley, when the dog found me.

Wind, rain, and a ripped branch had worked together to knock down the fencing that was the only protection the civilized world had from him.

His barking was terrifying. All sorts of images of me as his dinner flooded my mind. I was paralyzed.

My fear, of course, was that he'd attack me. But just as the mutant Rottweiler-or whatever the heck he was-started to think about moving on me, I saw a flashlight beam cutting faintly through the mist and rain.

And then a male voice calling, "Gretchen! Gretchen!"

He hadn't taken time to dress properly, a beanpole of a bald guy in a robe and pajamas, slipping and sliding over the muddy grass of his backyard to get to his precious dog.

"Gretchen! Gretchen!"

Gretchen was out to impress him. Demonstrate just how bloodcurdling her bark could be. If he had any sense, he would have been afraid of it, too.

I was pinned against a garage on the other side of the alley. The flashlight beam found my face.

The rain hissed and hummed and hammered away. Soft bullets. "Who're you?"

"My name's Payne. Robert Payne."

"What the hell you doing in my backyard this time of night?"

"I wasn't in your backyard. I was walking down the alley to my motel."

"On foot on a night like this?"

"My car got caught in a little flash flood. Sewer backed up. Couldn't get it started again. So I was walking back to my motel."

"Oh."

"Your fence got knocked down just enough to let Gretchen out."

"Oh, hell, I'm sorry about this, mister."

He was so trusting, I felt ashamed of myself for lying about my stalled car.

Gretchen growled.

He leaned down and said something to her in dog. She quit growling.

"She really wouldn't hurt you."

"Yeah, that's the impression I had."

He caught my sarcasm and smiled. "That's actually the truth. She wouldn't hurt you unless you made some threatening move or something."

"I'll try to remember that."

"I'm going to dry off and make some cocoa. You want to come in and have some?"

"No, thanks. I'd better get back to the motel."

"Well, sorry if she scared you."

Headlights. Far end of the alley. Very good chance it was the police.

I started to edge away.

"Appreciate you coming out like that. Thanks."

Edging away.

"Busy night," he said, staring down the alley at the headlights. "I heard sirens earlier. Something must be going on."

"Well, see you?" I said.

The headlights were starting up the alley now, malevolent in the rain-slashed night.

I didn't run. But I came damned close.

In the cutting rain, the motel looked shabby and beaten, age and relentless rain more than it could handle.

No sign of cops.

I went around the back way. I didn't want the old gent in the office to see me.

I spent a lingering moment under the overhang. No more rain except the beads that bounced off the cars pulled up to their respective rooms.

I leaned against the wall. Catching my breath. Enjoying the respite.

And then I saw the cop car at the far end of the motel. Starting toward me.

I jumped around the corner and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor.

At the rate the squad car had been moving, it would be just about below me right now.

I found Tandy's room. No sound but that of spraying wind and rain as I pressed my ear to the door.

Where was she this late at night? I needed to get in there.

The door wasn't closed. Disbelief, at first, as if somebody was tricking me. But it was true. The door was slightly ajar.

I went inside. Darkness. Perfume. Wine. I stood by the window. Intermixed with the rain was the raspy sound of a police radio. He was almost directly below.

The spotlight again. Angling across the door and window of Tandy's room.

Then he worked his way down the line of doors.

Behind me, a moan.

I couldn't risk a light. I moved through the shadows to the moan, which had been repeated now two or three times. Soughing wind; rattling rain.

I knelt next to the bed. Groped for her face. Touched it. Blood. "What happened, Tandy?"

"She tried to kill me. What time is it?"

"About five."

"I've been out for a long time. She beat me with her gun. I think she thinks she killed me."

"I'm sorry. I should've figured this out a lot sooner."

"It's not your fault," she said. Then, "Giles is Renard."

"I know."

"She was afraid it was going to get out and ruin her career. She has big plans. But being associated with Renard would end them."

The moan.

"And Susan Charles is his daughter. His daughter with Claire."

The moan again.

"The face was hers, Robert. She came in here and saw the drawing-the scar-and knew what was going on."

I stood up. "I'm going to call an ambulance for you."

"Please. I'm scared, Robert. She beat me pretty bad."

In the darkness, I found the phone. Dialed emergency. "Where're your car keys?"

"You're going after her?"

"Yeah."

"They're on the dresser. She's crazy, Robert. Maybe as crazy as Renard."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, she is."