Chapter 18

Kettering drove back from the neat little house where his partner lay dead to his new apartment. He made the return trip much more slowly than he had come. The sky in the east had lightened enough so he could see the dark outlines of the San Bernardino Mountains. It was a pretty sight, if anybody cared. Kettering did not.

His mind seethed and bubbled with plans unformed, action untaken, puzzles unsolved. His back teeth ached with the need to just do something. However, the rest of his body ached with weariness. His brain was mushy and unable to complete a thought.

His emotions said, Kill somebody!

His weary mind said, Go home and go to bed, asshole.

Kettering went home.

***

The tiny eye on his answering machine stared at him red and unblinking. At least there were no more bad-news phone calls preserved on audio tape to be spilled like poison into his ear. He yanked the phone jack out of the machine and dropped it to the floor like a thin, dead snake. There would now be no jangling interruption of his rest.

He stripped off his clothes and let them fall where he stood. Wearing only his shorts, he cranked the convertible sofa out into the bed position and fell into it.

Outside, in somebody's backyard, a rooster crowed. An automatic garage door rumbled up. A motorcycle revved. Sounds of the Valley coming awake.

Kettering slept.

***

He came to suddenly and with that disoriented feeling that makes the armpits tingle for a few seconds. The walls and the furniture in the room were vague and unfamiliar. The slice of the day that showed between the window curtains was gray and impersonal. It could be any time, any place.

Where the hell am I?

The watch on his wrist, which he hadn't bothered to remove, told him it was just short of noon. A huge crow settled on the railing of the stairway outside his door and screeched. A sound like broken glass on a blackboard.

Kettering remembered where he was and why. And he remembered Al Diaz lying on his stomach in the neatly mowed grass of his lawn and looking up with dead, bloodshot eyes. Kettering would have liked to go back to sleep, but he knew he could not.

He took a long hot shower to wash the stink of travel and death off his body and out of his hair. He scrubbed his teeth until his gums hurt. He dressed in a soft blue shirt and gray cotton pants.

In the kitchen he filled a pan with water, put it on one of the gas burners, and stood by impatiently waiting for it to boil. He used the water to make a cup of instant coffee that helped him feel a little better. Just a little. It also made him hungry.

Abruptly he remembered the phone call from Charity last night. The call he had forgotten and never answered after he heard the voice of his dead friend. I miss you, she had said. Well, damn it, he missed her too. Right now he could not think of anyone he would rather be with.

He dug her card out of his wallet and reached for the telephone. The line was dead. Remembering, he plugged the little jack into the side of the instrument. It rang.

Kettering snatched his hand hack as though the thing had struck at him. It rang again. He picked it up.

"Hello."

"Bri? Are you all right?"

The sound of his wife's voice brought an unexpected tightening around the stomach muscles. An irrational cramp of guilt because he was about to call another woman? Ridiculous.

"I'm fine, Mavis."

"I've been calling all morning. Kept getting a busy signal."

"There was some trouble with the line," he said.

"Bri, I ... I'm really sorry about Al."

"You heard?"

"Lieutenant Ivory called me. It was on the news this morning too."

"Oh, great. With pictures?"

"I don't know I just heard it on the radio."

"Yeah, well, cops die."

There was a moment's silence on the line. Kettering heard his wife's familiar little sigh of exasperation.

"I hate it when you do that John Wayne thing," she said. "I know how close you and Al were, and I can guess how you must be feeling now. Why don't you let it out for once?"

"Mavis, this is a lousy time to get into that old argument."

"Right. I'm sorry. I'm not thinking too clearly. So. How's the new place?"

"Livable."

"Are you going to stay there?"

"I don't know. For now."

"I see."

There was an uncomfortable space where neither of them spoke. Finally Mavis said, "I'm sorry about us too, Bri."

"Yeah, well, things don't always work out the way we want them to."

He could hear her draw a deep breath on the other end of the line. "Things weren't working with us for a long time. We both know that."

"So it seems."

"It was bad long before ... before the other night."

"Sure. So are you moving in with the Wister woman?"

"Yes."

The single syllable hit him like a fist in the gut. He had thought he was being sarcastic.

"I know what you're probably thinking," she went on. "I can guess the names you want to call me. But it doesn't matter anymore."

"Do I have to hear this now?" he said.

"You'll have to hear it sometime. I'm not asking you to understand or forgive, or anything like that. I just want you to hear me. I've found something with Gabrielle that I never thought I would have. And I don't intend to lose it."

"Uh-huh." It was all Kettering could manage with his throat all tightened up and the taste of bile in his mouth.

"We'll talk about it later. When you're ready. There are arrangements we'll have to make about the house and the furniture, but for now I'm just going to close it up. Is there anything you want?"

"My chair."

A faint, familiar smile edged her voice. "I figured that. I've already arranged to have it delivered to you."

Kettering closed his eyes and swallowed a couple of times. "Thanks."

"C.O.D., of course."

"Of course."

"Well, Bri, I guess that's it."

"I guess so."

"I really am sorry about Al. Do you think I should call Michi?"

"I think she'd appreciate it."

"There's one more problem I have to bother you about, then I'll leave you alone."

"Let's hear it."

"Trevor. He didn't come home last night."

"It's not the first time, is it?"

"Well, no, but considering the way things are with you and me, I thought he'd want to stay around."

"Where did he go?"

"Where he's been hanging out lately. The Pit."

"He's working there, isn't he?"

"Yes, but not all night. He's always come home."

"Did you call his friends?"

"The ones I know haven't seen him for weeks. He's been running with a new crowd. People he's met at The Pit. And I don't know any of them."

"I'll look into it."

"Thanks. Call me if you learn anything."

"Sure. You'll be at ..." He couldn't get it out.

"At Gabrielle's. Do you have her number?"

"I've got it."

"Well ... all right, then. Talk to you later."

"See you."

With that exchange of banalities they hung up. Closing the book on nineteen years of marriage. To Kettering it seemed disappointingly flat. There should be shouting, recriminations, tears, shouldn't there?

He sat next to the silent telephone, absently wiping the palm of his hand against his pants leg. Outside the sky was leaden. It was starting off to be another bad, bad day.

Enough moping, he decided, and dialed Charity Moline's number.

She answered on the first ring, her voice low, eager, anxious.

"Hi," he said.

"Brian. Thank goodness. I tried to call but got a busy signal all morning. What did you do, unplug your phone?"

"Yeah."

"You sound down. Bad news?"

"Bad. Al Diaz got killed last night."

"Oh no. What happened?"

"Somebody ... something twisted his head around backwards."

There was a sharp intake of breath from Charity. "Brian, I'm sorry. You two were pretty close, weren't you?"

"Yeah." He shifted the subject along with the tone of his voice. "You hungry?"

"I can always eat."

"You don't look it."

"A lucky metabolism. I have a Godzillian appetite."

"I'll pick you up in half an hour."

"Did you learn anything on the trip back to Indiana?"

"I'll tell you about it over lunch."

***

Charity was waiting for him when he pulled up in front of her funky cottage in the hills behind Hollywood. She wore a full flowered skirt and a scoop-neck blouse, and hardly any makeup. She looked like a high school girl. Well, not one of today's high school girls, Kettering amended. That one would have half her head shaved and the other half moussed into spikes and be wearing a black leather mini over spandex tights. He preferred the way Charity Moline looked.

They went for lunch to one of the ubiquitous Mexican restaurants around Los Angeles where the busboys kept a watchful eye on the door for immigration officers. They ordered combination plates including refried beans, Spanish rice, enchiladas, and chili rellenos - L.A.-style Mexican food such as you would never find in Mexico. Kettering drenched his plate with fiery red salsa and ordered two bottles of Bohemia, an authentic Mexican beer that came with frosty cold mugs.

"So Indiana was a bust," Charity said when Kettering had given her his appraisal of the trip.

"Thanks to a lot of very peculiar circumstances, the trail of my sister Jessie's child ends when he was sixteen or so and his foster parents were murdered."

"Do you think he had something to do with their death?"

"I'd bet on it. Remember, this is no ordinary child."

"That's a fact."

"My guess is that the foster parents somehow found out what he really was, and to keep the secret, he killed them."

Charity was silent for a moment while she cleaned her plate. Finally she looked across the table at him and said, "Brian, what, exactly, do you think he was?"

Kettering finished his beer and signaled the waiter for two more. "What can I tell you? He was conceived under weird circumstances. I was just a little kid when I watched the business out in that field with my sister and the Greasers, but even then I knew something was happening that was not part of the normal world. Then his birth was bizarre, coming in an alley the way it did and leaving my sister beaten up and catatonic."

He fell silent while the waiter delivered fresh bottles of Bohemia. "Then there was the accident that killed my mother and knocked me into the twilight zone. I don't believe it was an accident."

Charity's eyes were bright, watching him.

"And you think all this is tied to your personal childhood boogeyman ... the Doomstalker."

"Wasn't it you who came up with the theory first?"

"Uh-huh, but I'm trying to be rational about it now. I told you I'm willing to believe that the Doomstalker exists. And the circumstantial evidence suggests that it could be Jessie's child. Do we have any kind of proof?"

"No proof, but I don't even care. I'm convinced that whatever the Doomstalker is, it's not human, but it can live in human form. It lives in that kid right now." He corrected himself. "No, not a kid, he'd be thirty years old. He's found me now, and he's taking some kind of crazy revenge by messing up my family, killing my friends. I've got to put an end to it."

"How?"

"There's the rub. I'm damned if I know how. I know only that I've got to do it."

The waiter came by and delivered the check. Kettering swallowed the last of his second beer.

"I did some checking of my own while you were gone," Charity said.

"Oh?"

"When Al Diaz stopped by your place he told you about this Enzo DuLac who runs The Pit."

"Yeah. That's where my kid's been hanging out lately. My wife is worried."

"She's got reason to worry. This DuLac is not a very nice man. I traced him back to San Francisco in the late seventies. He did some street hustling up there and pimping for tourists and locals who wanted young amateur flesh."

"Where did you get all that?"

"Hey, I'm a reporter, remember? He was just warming up in San Francisco. Came to L.A. eight years ago. Got into and out of massage parlors, nude photography cribs, porno bookstores, and coed mud wrestling."

"Enterprising fella," Kettering said.

"He moved in as manager of The Pit a year ago, and suddenly he's in the big time."

"Al told me the guy is a sleaze."

"World-class."

"Who's bankrolling him?"

"That I couldn't find out."

"I'll drop in on his operation tonight. I'd really like to know where he was when Al Diaz got his neck wrung."

"Do you think DuLac ... ?" She left the question hanging.

Kettering was thoughtful for a moment. "Al told me he was thirty ..."

"Are you going to arrest him?"

"Couldn't if I wanted to. I'm on suspension."

"Then I'll go with you," Charity said.

"No way."

Her jaw tightened and her eyes flashed at him. "What's this 'no way' bullshit?"

"This isn't your business."

"There could be a hell of a story here, Kettering. That is my business."

"Not tonight."

"Yes, tonight. I'm going along."

"It may get ugly."

"Oh, and you want to protect the delicate little female, is that it? Well, hear this, mister, I am no wimpy broad to be left home wringing my hands while you go out and beat up the bad guys. I'm going with you."

"No you're not." Kettering's voice was hard and final. "I do this alone."

Charity glared across the empty plates at him for several seconds. Abruptly she slapped the tabletop and stood up. "Fine. Go do your macho thing. For all I care, you can start doing a few other things alone too."

And with that exit line she was gone.

Kettering peeled bills from his money clip and laid them in the little plastic tray with the check. He gave Charity time to walk out into the parking lot and cool down.

When he followed after a couple of minutes, she was nowhere in sight. The restaurant was too far from her place for her to walk home, and public transportation in Los Angeles being what it was, she hadn't grabbed a bus. She might have called a taxi, or in her present mood even hitchhiked. Whatever, she was gone.

Kettering climbed into his car and sat drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, keenly feeling the loss. He reflected sourly that this was not his day for dealing with women. After a while he started the engine and drove off.