Chapter 17

It was three o'clock in the morning when Kettering dragged himself up the outside stairs to his one-room apartment. Three o'clock - the dark night of the soul.

Kettering was discouraged and he was tired as death. Tired because flying always tired him; there was no way he could get comfortable in those cramped airline coach seats. Discouraged because the trip to Prescott had added essentially nothing to his small store of information, unless he could count the fact that Jessie's child had been called Dorcas. Crazy name. No help at all.

Somehow, mysteriously, records had been lost or destroyed and people's memories clouded to leave no traceable record of the child or what became of him. Coincidence? Not very damn likely. Somebody ... something was orchestrating the disappearance of the kid.

He keyed open the door off the third-floor landing and walked into his single room. It looked small and lonely and cold. It smelled of stale cigarette smoke. It was home.

The tiny red eye of his answering machine blinked at him from the telephone table. Kettering decided it could wait. He grabbed a cold Coors from the fridge, popped it open and took deep, grateful swallows. Out of long habit he looked around for the friendly old recliner. Then he remembered he didn't have it anymore. It was part of another life.

He carried the beer over to the telephone table, cycled the answering machine to PLAYBACK MESSAGES, and rewound the tape. The machine gave him a chipmunk chatter of speeded-up, backward voices and beeps.

There had been a time when Kettering hated these machines. Whenever he encountered the self-conscious greeting: "Hi, I'm not home right now, but you can leave your name ..." and then the annoying electronic beep, he was tempted to tell the disembodied voice to go fuck itself and slam down the receiver. Usually he withheld comment and simply hung up. It took a long time before he felt comfortable talking to a machine.

When Mavis started to spend more time away from home, he was persuaded, reluctantly, that the family needed one. Before long, as with most of the high-tech gadgets he resisted at first, Kettering wondered how he ever got along without it.

Now he listened to the playback of a couple of hang ups. That would be the salesmen and wrong numbers and people who had nothing to say. No loss there.

He sat forward at the sound of Charity Moline's voice.

"Hi, big fella. It's eight o'clock. I'm sitting here alone trying to read some stupid book about why women love men who don't love them back. I'd lots rather be with you. I miss you, dam it. If you feel like it, give me a call when you get in. Don't worry about waking me up. Anyway, I'm eager to know what you found out in Prescott. Besides, I miss you. Whoa, I already said that, didn't I? Mustn't get you overconfident. Talk to you later. Bye."

Kettering smiled. He started to shut off the machine and call her, but decided he might as well hear the rest of his messages, if any.

Another hang up, then Al Diaz's voice.

"Bri, if you're there, pick up ..." A pause. "Okay, then, give me a call when you can. I found out something today that could be important."

Kettering stopped smiling. Something in his partner's tone snapped him wide awake. He rewound the tape and played Diaz's message again.

Something important. Diaz wouldn't screw around. If he said important, you could bet your ass it was. Kettering checked his watch again. Three-fifteen. He forgot all about calling Charity Moline. That could wait. If Diaz had something, it was worth waking him up for. He dialed his partner's number.

"Hello." A voice Kettering did not recognize.

"Who's this?" A dumb question, he realized as soon as he said it.

"Who are you calling?" Decidedly unfriendly.

"Is this 555-0226?"

"That's right. Who is this?"

"I'm calling Al Diaz."

"He's unavailable. Who's calling?"

In the background Kettering could hear a faint keening sound. A cold hand clamped his throat as he recognized the sounds of crisis on the other end of the line.

"This is Detective Sergeant Brian Kettering, badge number 256. What's going on?"

The voice on the other end relaxed. "Oh, hello, Sergeant. This is Jim Orkney. We've got some bad business here."

Kettering recognized the name of the young officer. "What happened?"

"Somebody did Al Diaz."

"How bad?"

"Real bad."

"He's dead?"

"'Fraid so."

"How?"

A pause. "Looks like a broken neck."

"Jesus. Not an accident?"

"No way."

"Anybody in custody?"

"Not so far."

"Witnesses?"

"Negative."

"Wife and kids?"

"They're okay."

"Who's in charge there?"

"Sergeant Youngman. Lieutenant Ivory's on his way over."

"Tell Youngman I'm coming," Kettering said.

He dropped the phone into the cradle, left the half-finished beer beside it, and ran out the door.

***

The drive from Kettering's new apartment to Al Diaz's house on the east end of the Valley would take about twenty minutes in normal daytime traffic. With nobody else on the road it was possible in ten. Kettering made it in five.

The scene was garishly lit with floodlights and the rotating red and blue flashers on the roofs of two West Valley Police cars. Also on the scene was the coroner's ambulance and one of the department's unmarked Plymouths. He was relieved to see no reporters or television paraphernalia. Apparently, news that broke at three A.M. would have to get by without live media coverage.

Kettering jammed the Camaro to a stop behind the coroner's van and jumped out. He flashed his shield at the uniformed officer who approached him.

"You Orkney?"

The young policeman took the time to look at Kettering's badge, then relaxed. "You beat the lieutenant here."

"Good. Where's Al?"

Orkney hesitated. "He, uh, was your partner, wasn't he?"

"That's right. Where is he?"

"Around the side of the house. It's pretty bad, Sergeant."

"I've seen bad before. Show me."

Orkney led him around between Diaz's house and the neighbor's. Al Diaz lay on the lawn he would never mow again, halfway between the house and the tall laurel hedge that marked the edge of his property. Another uniformed cop and a couple of night-shift detectives stood around the body while Wilson Buckner, a young black man from the coroner's office, knelt beside it.

Kettering walked over and looked down at his dead partner and friend. The night turned colder. The back of Al's white terry-cloth robe was stained red and there were four dark holes. The detective's arms were outflung, palms down on the grass. His feet were bare.

Finally Kettering looked at what he did not want to see. The face. The eyes were open and bulging. Tiny blood vessels had popped in the corneas. The eyes had no business looking up the way they were while Diaz's body lay on its stomach. The mouth gaped. The tongue lay pale and swollen against the lower lip. Diaz's healthy brown complexion was a sallow green under the floodlights.

"Oh, shit," Kettering said.

Buckner looked up at him. He had not been in the business long enough to act casual in the presence of violent death. His eyes showed an inner pain and sensitivity that would either die or eventually make him unfit for the job.

"First one like this I've ever seen," he said.

"What happened?" Kettering kept his voice level and his jaw tight.

"Near as I can tell without getting him on the table, is somebody held him by the shoulder and twisted his head around backwards. The massive discoloration around the neck means there's heavy tissue damage internally." Buckner's emotions forced him out of the medical jargon. "Motherfucker crushed the guy's larynx and broke his neck. Probably snapped the spinal cord too."

"Could one man do that?"

"In my opinion, no. A big strong man could do it to a weak little boy, maybe, or a frail woman. But this guy was in top physical shape. You can see where something clamped onto him by the wounds on his shoulders."

"What makes wounds like that?"

"Claws." Then quickly Buckner added, "Damned if I know," to show he was not seriously considering that.

"Ugly," Kettering said. Instinctively his eyes ranged over the scene, the house, the floodlit lawn, the hedge with its shadowy recesses. Nothing was there that did not belong, but in his mind he saw a tall, hunch-shouldered figure with long, taloned arms.

"Better believe it," said Buckner. "There's also scratches on his face and around the top of his head where he was grabbed. Ugly is the word." He stood up and brushed off his pants. "He was your partner, wasn't he?"

"Yeah. He was my partner."

"Sorry."

"Everybody gets dead."

The young morgue assistant frowned, shook his head, and returned his attention to the body.

Kettering turned to Page Youngman, the night-shift detective who stood by, looking angry and oddly embarrassed, as though this was not the way a cop was supposed to die.

"Got any witnesses yet?"

"Nobody. This neighborhood goes to bed early. Nobody woke up."

"How'd it happen?"

"The wife heard something outside, Al came out for a look. Whatever it was, I guess he found it. He got his piece out, popped four caps. No sign he hit anything."

"Where's the wife?"

"Inside. Quinlan's with her."

Kettering nodded to the detective and the coroner's man and walked back to the house.

Michi Diaz sat on the couch in the living room between their two boys. She had an arm around each of them. The boys' faces were pale and tear-streaked, but they were not crying now. Officer Rose Quinlan, a freckled, competent cop, sat in another chair, which had been pulled close to the couch. Michi looked up when Kettering came in.

"Hi, Brian. I thought you were out of town."

"I just got back."

"Hell of a thing, isn't it?"

"Hell of a thing," he agreed.

The tiny woman put on a smile for her sons. The boys looked groggy and confused. Michi hugged them to her for a moment. "You guys ought to be in bed."

"How about some hot chocolate, boys?" said Rose Quinlan. To Michi: "You have hot chocolate?"

Michi put a hand to her forehead. "Yes, it's in the ... in the ..."

"I'll find it," said the policewoman. She took the one of the boys by each hand and led them out of the room toward the kitchen.

Michi tried to recapture the smile for Kettering, but her composure broke. With a small cry she jumped up from the couch and ran into his arms. He held the tiny wife of his partner and let her cry.

"What happened to him, Brian?" Michi said, not looking up. "Who did it? Why?"

"I can't answer any of those questions," Kettering said. "But I will."

Gradually Michi's sobs eased. She stepped back and looked up at Kettering with huge black eyes. "You'll get him, won't you, Brian?"

"I'll get him," he said. "You can count on it."

"When you do ... kill him."

Kettering let his eyes answer for him.

Michi drew in a deep breath and pressed her palms together as though in prayer. She closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, her face was composed. She smiled softly. "Can I get you something? Coffee? A beer?"

"No thanks," Kettering said. "Are you going to be all right?"

"I'll handle it," she said.

"You've got my new phone number?"

"Al has it ... had it."

He scribbled the number on the back of one of his cards and handed it to her. "Call me. Any time. For any reason."

"Thank you," she said. "I'd better see if they found the hot chocolate."

Kettering watched Michi straighten her back as she walked out of the room, then turned and started for the door. Before he reached it, Lieutenant Ivory came in looking angry and still rumpled from sleep.

"What are you doing here, Kettering? You're on suspension."

"Al was my partner."

"Well ..." Ivory looked uncomfortable. "Don't interfere with the investigation."

"I was just leaving."

As Kettering started out the door, the lieutenant held him with a hand on the shoulder.

"Brian, I'm sorry. It's bad business when a cop goes down, it's worse when he's your partner. I wish there was something I could say."

"I know, Lieutenant."

"You'll be wanting to come back on duty, I guess."

"Pretty soon," Kettering said. "There are a couple of things I have to take care of first."

The lieutenant eyed him suspiciously. "What things? Brian, you're not going to go Dirty Harry on me? I can't have freelancers screwing up the investigation."

"Personal things, Lieutenant."

Ivory gave him a long look, squeezed his shoulder and let him pass.

Kettering walked back out across the well-tended lawn to the street. He made his way through the lights and the cops and the ambulance men to where his car was parked. He looked back toward his partner's house once, then got in and drove away.