When She Was Bad

6

After sunset, Pender and MacAlister strolled back down the hill to the Cadillac. Mick raised the top to protect the leather upholstery from the evening dew, then opened his laptop again to keep an eye on the Sportster.

For most people, sitting in a parked car for two hours would have been stultifying, but for the ex-cop and the private investigator it was just another day at the office. They watched the green dot not moving, talked about sports, about old girlfriends and even older cases, then watched the green dot not moving some more.

At nine forty-five, MacAlister turned to Pender. “I sink ve’ve got ein problem, Professor,” he announced in a stagy German accent.

“Give it another few minutes-and why are you talking like Dr. Strangelove?”

“Was I? Maybe I should lay off the weed for a while.”

At ten o’clock-the transponder was still broadcasting the same coordinates-they agreed that a look-see was definitely in order.

With MacAlister driving and Pender navigating by the green glow of the laptop screen, they rolled slowly along the back roads of Shasta County for close to half an hour. As they neared the designated axis, Mick pulled over to the side of the road and turned off his headlights. All was darkness-no lights, no dwellings. He double-checked the coordinates on the laptop against the Caddy’s onboard GPS system, looked over at Pender, and shook his head, baffled. State-of-the-art technology was assuring him they were within two hundred feet of the transponder, while his eyes were insisting they were alone on a dark country road.

“Mama Rose probably spotted the bug, tossed it into the weeds,” said Mick.

“Ssh!” A faint noise from the hillside looming up on their left had caught Pender’s attention. He signaled for Mick to turn off the engine, then closed his eyes and held his breath, listening for all he was worth and hearing at first only the rasp of crickets and the soughing of wind in the treetops. “Never mind, you’re probably right,” he whispered-then he heard it again, a faint groaning sound, like water rushing through pipes.

So did Mick-he reached across Pender, unlocked the glove compartment, took out a nine-millimeter Czech automatic with a flat black Stealth finish, popped in a fifteen-round clip, and jacked a round into the chamber, but left the safety on.

“Does your friend have a friend for me?” Pender asked him, nodding toward the pistol.

“You’re not packing?” It was too dark to see MacAlister’s face, but he sounded surprised.

“I’m retired, remember?”

“What’s that got to do with anything? This is America, goddamnit-everybody’s supposed to have a gun. It’s in the constitution or something.” MacAlister handed Pender a long, heavy six-cell flashlight. “Here, take this.”

Pender hefted it. “You call this a weapon? What am I supposed to do, hit him over the head?”

“Actually, I call it a flashlight-I was hoping maybe you could sort of shine it around so we could see where we’re going.”

“Wise guy,” muttered Pender. He climbed out of the car, closed the door quietly behind him. The piney air was cool and thin; somewhere out there a cricket was going batshit. Shielding the beam with his palm, he shined it back and forth, waving it slowly and carefully like a Geiger counter, until it picked out a dark paved surface climbing steeply upward from the road. Leaning forward against the pull of gravity, Pender preceded Mick up the face of the asphalt mountain. When he next heard the noise, he was close enough now to identify the sound of a toilet flushing-he was reminded of Archie Bunker’s noisy crapper in All in the Family-and water groaning through old pipes.

Neither Pender’s rubber-soled Hush Puppies nor Mick’s rubber-soled, negative-heeled Earth Shoes made any noise as they padded up the asphalt. There was a pickup truck parked at the top of the driveway, but no sign of Mama Rose or her bike. The garage door was locked. They walked around the side of the garage, saw Mama Rose’s Sportster parked next to a much larger Harley. Mick stooped to retrieve the transponder from the gas tank, then followed Pender around to the back of the darkened ranch house.

Pender shone the flashlight around the narrow patio, illuminating, in turn: a trellis twined with pink roses, a wrought-iron patio table lying on its side, a redwood hot tub with a plywood cover, and when he trained the flashlight straight down, a puddle of some thick, black, half-congealed substance pooled in a shallow declivity in the concrete at their feet.

Pender stooped, touched his forefinger to the sticky stuff, and brought it to his nose. The smell of blood was dreadfully familiar-his head jerked away from it so violently he almost sprained his neck.

Ka-whoooshhh! The toilet again. Mick signaled for Pender to turn off the flashlight, then sidled through an open, sliding-glass doorway flanked by curtains. Pender followed. The house was even darker inside than out. From the end of a short hallway to their left came an indistinct grunting sound. Moving in lockstep, one behind the other like a baggy-pantsed vaudeville team, MacAlister and Pender followed the noise to the open doorway at the end of the corridor on the left.

Inside, candlelight flickered. Mick signaled for Pender to wait in the hall, then slipped into the room sideways to present a slimmer target profile. A fat candle burned on a saucer on the bedside table; Mama Rose lay mummified on the bed, cocooned in winding sheets from neck to ankles, with a strip of torn linen serving as a gag, through which she grunted frantically, rolling her eyes toward the adjoining bathroom.

Ka-whoooshhh! Mick held his pistol in a braced, two-handed firing position as he approached the open bathroom doorway. The DeVries girl, all but lost in an orange, hibiscus-pattered muumuu several sizes too large, was standing over the toilet, aiming a pencil flashlight straight down into the tank and watching in rapt fascination as the water level rose. She didn’t appear to have noticed Mick.

“Pender, in here!”

Pender hurried into the bedroom, caught sight of the girl in the bathroom. “Lily,” he called. No response. “Lily, it’s Uncle Pen.”

Still no response. Pender put his arm around her and gently ushered her out into the dim light of the bedroom, where Mick had put his gun down, and was sawing through Mama Rose’s gag with his pocket jackknife.

Goddamn pothead, thought Pender, seeing the gun lying useless on the bed. “For shit’s sake, Mick-”

But it was too late. “Hands up, please!” called a high-pitched male voice, from the doorway.

They all froze in place like a kid’s game of Statues, their shadows dancing nervously in the flickering candlelight. “Take it easy there, son,” said Pender, standing just outside the bathroom door with his arm still draped around Lily’s shoulders.

“I said, everybody put your hands up,” Lyssy called petulantly, turning the gun from MacAlister to Pender and the girl, then back to MacAlister. But when Pender raised his hands, the girl darted into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her. Lyssy’s eyes flickered toward the sudden movement and noise. Seeing him distracted, Mick dropped the jackknife and dove for the gun.

Lyssy whirled, his finger tightening on the trigger. Blam, blam, blam, blam-four shots. Blue flashes like lightning lit the room. A gobbet of something wet flew past Mama Rose’s head and hit the candle; the flame sizzled and died.

“How come nobody ever listens to me?” Lyssy whined in the darkness, as the toilet began flushing again in the bathroom. “Nobody ever listens to me.”