The Fever Kill Part 11

Enough of the tension had dispersed from the situation. Crease walked up close. The Jimmys had a tough time holding their ground. They didn't move their feet but they reared their chins back. Jimmy with the .32 stuck his chest out, like the pistol would protect him somehow even in his pocket.

Crease said, "She's not worth the aggravation. You're a bigger man than that, Jimmy Devlin. Go on out with your boys tonight and they'll help you hook up with a real woman, one who won't treat you as poorly as Reb has. You deserve much better. Give your heart away more carefully, to someone who will value it."

He'd been forced to say much more important things with a straight face before, but it had never been quite so tough. He stuck the cigarette between his teeth and champed on it.

Another Jimmy said, "I never liked her much, to tell the truth. She always seemed to have an agenda, that one."

Another Jimmy said, "We're only thinking of you, man. You need somebody new. Wife material, like my Betty. She's got friends, I think we could probably fix you up with somebody nice, if you want."

Jimmy with the .32 said, "Remember Lydia Miller? You always liked her. She's getting divorced and only has one kid. A four-year-old. They're not much trouble at that age. They usually sleep through the night."

Jimmy Devlin said, "Lydia's getting divorced? I didn't know that."

"I told you."

"You never told me."

"I told you over at Bammer's house a couple of weeks ago, but you were stewing over Reb. It happened fast, Lydia and Stan breaking up. Stan had a gambling problem, was always at the Indian Reservation."

"I saw him there a couple times."

"He took a second mortgage out without even telling her and eventually lost his job. Pretended to go to work every day and would go to the strip clubs for their brunch buffet."

"I didn't know that."

"Lydia was in the dark until one day she answers the door and it's the bank, guy serving her papers. She packed up the kid and her belongings on the spot and went home to her parents. They got a nice bas.e.m.e.nt apartment."

Another Jimmy said, "She's got to look after her kid's welfare. I bet a responsible guy would impress her-"

The music and laughter inside throbbed out an invitation. The parking lot lights snapped on, humming and burning. Beyond, the dark sky frothed over the final rays of the sun.

Crease finished up his cigarette, flicked the b.u.t.t off into the dark, turned back to the phone and started dialing a number, thinking that the Greenwich Village boys definitely would've had a frickin' field day.

Chapter Eleven.

Tucco's tech whiz kids weren't really in the loop so Crease figured it was safe enough to give them a whirl. The word that Crease was a cop probably hadn't filtered down yet, even though they're the ones who would've looked up his father's badge number. They had the info and didn't have the info, that's what the tech boys were so good for.

He got a whiz kid and gave him Sarah Burke's name and all the relevant information he had on hand, which wasn't much. It didn't have to be. Within two minutes the kid spit back the name of a state-run a.s.sisted living group home where she'd been shuffled off to after banging around mental hospitals for the better part of a decade. The kid MapQuested the address and gave Crease the directions. Turned out to be just over the New Hamps.h.i.+re state line in a town called Langdaff.

It would be after ten by the time he got there and he wasn't sure what the rules of the place would be. Did you have to call ahead and make an appointment? Could you walk up off the street? Did you have to be family to visit? He decided to give it a go anyway, and if need be, he'd find a cheap spot to stay overnight and try again in the morning.

The Jimmys were still dialoguing. Crease got in the 'Stang, ga.s.sed up around the block, drove out to the interstate and headed to New Hamps.h.i.+re.

The directions were perfect and went right down to the tenth of a mile when the next turn was coming up. He made it in no time, listening to an Oldies station, his mind a flat, empty lowland periodically broken by someone running by in the distance.

The group home was a converted Victorian house that on the open market would bring in one point two, one point three mil. A sign on the front lawn said it was the Sinclair Mayridge Home for the Needful. It sounded like a methadone clinic in Harlem.

Crease parked at the curb and stepped up. Several people sat on the porch conversing lazily. One guy was reading a paper, two women convened in the corner crocheting and discussing what sounded like a romance novel. A teenage boy leaned against the railing where he typed on a laptop, and a teenage girl sidled at his shoulder watching him. n.o.body looked particularly needful. They all looked well-rested and happy as h.e.l.l.

Crease climbed the stairs but wasn't sure what the etiquette was. If you were supposed to knock or if you just walked right in. He looked around wondering if anybody would make eye contact and give him a hint, but n.o.body seemed to notice him. He turned the k.n.o.b and wandered inside.

More blithe folks sat in a living room watching television, pleasantly chatting. If anybody was in charge, he couldn't tell who it might be. He lit a cigarette and two middle-aged ladies playing cards told him in unison, "No smoking here."

He ground the b.u.t.t out against his heel and said, "Sarah Burke?"

"Upstairs. Room twelve."

He took the stairs two at a time, feeling like a thief in the night. Strange it should be that way since n.o.body cared he was here. Still, he could just imagine someone leaping out of a chair and pointing at him, screaming hideously, falling into convulsions. Somebody might slip a dirty pair of panties in his pocket and send him up the river for a nickel.

Door ten was painted yellow. Eleven was green. Twelve orange. Flowers and bunnies and other cuddly creatures had been carefully depicted on each of them. Rainbows arced across the walls of the hallway, multicolored groups of children danced harmoniously across blue globes. Crease thought he could very easily bug out in a place like this.

Someone had snuck Jesus way up top, almost on the ceiling, smiling down upon the puppies and tulips. One of the needy could call a lawyer and start yelling about the separation of church and state, maybe walk out of this place with a laundry bag full of money.

He knocked on the door of room twelve. No sound from inside, and he got no sense of movement. He knocked again. He imagined the woman in there staring at the door, wis.h.i.+ng lethal thoughts through the wood, into his head. Willing murder, demanding death, spilling blood from afar.

You could get yourself pretty jazzed in front of a closed door in a state-run facility.

He swung it open and walked in.

A forty-watt bulb burned through a smoke-stained, dust-covered lampshade, giving the room a sickly yellow pallor.

Sarah Burke was seated in a ladder-back wooden chair in the far corner, huddled inside a ratty cotton nightgown. Her slippered feet didn't quite touch the floor. It was a crazy place to be, sitting over there far away from the rest of the furniture, the windows, the closet, everything. She was drawn up into herself-her body twined against and within itself-staring out at everything else like she found it all so peculiar.

A bony, ragged face, all you really saw were her eyes.

He'd dealt with a lot of bad dudes in his time, but only a couple of them had ever given him the w.i.l.l.i.e.s on sight. She did it to him. Plucked a nerve deep inside that you never wanted touched. Some people, you just looked at them and knew the seriously bad juju was at work. It was all over her.

Her white hair stuck out in clumps and tufts. This was a witch, a queen gone bad in the deep forest who plotted your death while she fed you gingerbread cookies. Stevie's kiddie books were filled with creepy broads like this. She was so thin that he found it hard to believe her bones didn't break just carrying out the most casual acts. Just walking across the room would cause her kneecaps to burst through her skin.

He remembered he'd thought something similar about her brother, Sam Burke. Sitting there in his living room with his anguish pulsing under his face, pulsing, like it would come cras.h.i.+ng through his flesh at any second.

She was needful all right. What she needed you couldn't give her. If you could give it to her then you'd be as wracked across the rocks as she was.

Crease said, "I'd like to talk to you."

The woman turned her lifeless eyes on him. She stared hard, harder than most people were able to do no matter the reason. You couldn't get angry enough to glower that way. You couldn't be thoughtful enough. It was something that happened when you went so deep in the well that you couldn't climb back out again.

Yeah, the lady had taken a fall and dug in when she hit the ground. He c.o.c.ked his head and studied her another minute.

We're going home, Teddy.

The fever scrambled over him again. The sweat flowed down his neck and back, his scalp p.r.i.c.kled. Soon his hair was dripping and his face was wet, the taste of salt flowing into his mouth. If nothing else, it perked her up. Her tiny body began to churn in the chair. He did the math. Burke had said she was older than him by four years. That made her no more than maybe fifty on the outside.

She grinned at him and Crease grinned back. She drew her chin back and her wrinkled lips dropped back into place. She said, "You my new neighbor? You number thirteen?"

"No."

"They always say no. All the thirteens say no."

"I guess they were lying then. I'm not."

"What do you want from me? I don't have anything for you." She started slowly nodding, certain of something. "You're sweating. It's not hot in here. Why are you sweating like that?" Her feet began to swing, the bottom of the slippers slapping her heels with each pa.s.s. "None of the other thirteens sweated."

"I want to talk about Mary."

The name got to her.

Sarah Burke was gone but not as gone as she wanted everyone to think. Her eyes cleared and she tilted her chin at him. Her brow knotted, the bottom lip quivered and drooped. He saw a pink flash of jutting tongue. Her hands gripped the arms of the chair, and the tendons stood out in her forearms as clear as polished marble.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"Tell me what happened, Sarah," he said.

"No."

He walked to the window nearest her. The shade was drawn. He tugged on it and the shade inched up over the gla.s.s. A ray of moonlight stabbed into the room and she flailed in her chair.

"Don't do that, thirteen," she told him. "My eyes, I've got a condition."

"I bet I know what it is. Tell me what happened to Mary."

"I could yell, you know. I could scream."

"You've been screaming for seventeen years. How about if you just talk to me instead?"

The condition of her eyes grew worse as the memories began to burn through her mind. He saw it happening, one small flame igniting a patch of dry woodland. The fire spreading, leaping across treetops, spanning all the hidden acres marked off with barb wire. It was alive and inescapable.

The blaze ran rampant as if on a mission. Sarah Burke sat gaping and wide-eyed with only purified, burning sparks of remembrance left behind in her head.

It made her slump even further down in the chair. Her feet were now swinging so fast that both slippers had launched across the room. He tried to enforce his will over her, make her spit out the truth. She seemed to be slowing down, waking up. Crease wondered why she'd outlasted all the thirteens next door.

He walked over and sat on her bed. It was a basic psychological ploy. You made yourself at home, showed them that you were there to stay, that what was theirs was now yours. He s.h.i.+fted the pillows behind him and lit a cigarette.

Sarah Burke stared at him with a kind of grudging respect.

Surrendering she said, "Where do you want me to start?"

"You know where."

"I suppose I do."

He waited, and time drifted quaintly in the house. The screen door slammed and the other needy occupants took advantage of the state of New Hamps.h.i.+re's and Sinclair Mayridge's good graces and settled in for the night. Doors opened and shut around the home. Toilets flushed, a shower went on.

Finally he had to prod her by saying, "With the upset."

"I've had a few. Haven't you?"

"Yes. Talk about the first one that counted."

She let out a cackle. It went on and on as the bones in her small body grated against one another. He could vividly picture her throwing back her head and letting that noise go on for another half minute before leaping out of the chair and diving through the window. Crease got ready to tackle her if need be.

But instead the laughter ended as abruptly as if she'd been strangled. "Who are you?"

"Tell me about the broken love affair."

"I've had a few of those too."

"No," Crease said. "I don't think you have."

"You're right, I'm too ugly. Hardly any man would ever have me."

"Just tell about the one who mattered. The one that meant everything to you."

What was inside her began to move closer to the surface. He could almost see it there in the black depths, rising, fighting to break free.

"What was his name, Sarah?"

That's all it took. The legs stopped swinging. She untwisted a little, and groaned from somewhere in the center of her chest as if awakening from a long sleep. The unfolding of her body became the unfurling of her past.

She drew her fingers through her hair and brushed it back across her head, and the witchy lady became just another battered woman who looked twenty years older than she was. He had arrested her many times. Under Tucco's tutelage he had created many variations of her.

She said, "Daniel. Daniel Purvis. He was a gambler."

"Ah."

"He couldn't help himself. It was a sickness. It had nothing to do with money, but with the excitement, the rush it gave him. He'd ride his truck on empty to see how much farther it would go. He'd pa.s.s a gas station and get a wild thrill that he'd made it that far, and then he'd still keep going, and pa.s.s another, and another. He always ended up stuck on the side of the road. Always. You ever meet anybody like that?"

Everybody had, whether they knew it or not. "Yes."

"Daniel was the only one who ever showed any interest. I was never pretty. Men made me feel ashamed. But not Daniel. He held me. He talked to me. He made me happy. Whispered my name. Can you understand that?"

"Yes."

She had a few psychological ploys of her own. Throwing it back in Crease's lap, so he sympathized. Maybe she'd picked it up off her psychiatrists on the mental wards.

"My family didn't approve. They tried to wedge themselves between us. My brother hated Daniel. He kept telling me to wait for someone better, a man who would truly love me. He always stressed the truth of love, but never understood what that meant. The truth of love is that you accept what's wrong and ugly and stupid and tainted in your lover. Sam is a very foolish and naive man. Ultimately, that's the reason why Vera left him." She glanced over at Crease and said, "May I have a cigarette?"

He got off the bed and offered her the pack. She stared at it in disgust. "Are those menthol?"

"All the store had left."