Blood Walk Part 21

Schoning left them there to disappear into the rear of the house.

"You ought to have a good chance." Toews said. "I don't know who else in town she'd have to rent to."

Garreth crossed his fingers.

He needed somewhere besides the hotel to live, somewhere free of the fear of a maid coming in to find his earth pallet on the bed or in the closet and gossiping about it. A town this size had no apartments, though, just houses. Except maybe one over the garage of Helen Schoning, the Clerk of the Munic.i.p.al Court.

Miss Schoning appeared, a slender woman in her late forties with only a trace of gray in short chestnut hair. Blood-smell eddied warmly from her. Garreth fought a sudden surge of hunger.

She smiled at them. "What brings you here, Nat?"

"This is our new officer Garreth Mikaelian. He's interested in the apartment."

"Ah, yes, the Frisco Kid." She studied him keenly for a minute, then extended her hand. If the coolness of his skin surprised her, she did not show it. "Welcome to Baumen. The garage is this way."

Out a side door into the portico and back along the drive to a large two-car garage. She led the way up a set of steps on the side to the second floor.

"It's small. I take it you don't have a family."

"No, ma'am."

Unlocking the door, she stood back to let him enter first. "Call me Helen, please. Here you are."

Half the area had been furnished as a den, with wood paneling, built-in bookcases, and a large leather couch and chair. A rear corner was part.i.tioned for the bathroom. Between it and a set of french doors leading out onto a deck above the garage doors stretched the cabinets and small appliances of an apartment kitchen.

Helen opened the couch out into a bed. "I can provide sheets and blankets. The phone is an extension from the house. You can use that and pay part of the bill or put in a private line. Half the garage is yours to use, too. It's $75.00 a month."

"Baumen 303," the radio on Toews's hip muttered. "See Mrs. Linda Mostert at 415 South Eighth about a missing person."

"En route," Toews said. "It sounds like Mr. Halverson is out again, partner. Come on."

Following him out, Garreth called back, "I'll take it. May I move in tonight?"

"Just knock on the side door and I'll give you the key."

He waved thanks.

Mr. Amos Halverson turned out to be Mrs. Mostert's father, a healthy but sometimes confused old man who regularly took walks and forgot his way home. By talking to people in yards along the street, they learned the old man had headed north. Twenty minutes later they located him working on his third beer in the Cowboy Palace and drove him home.

Returning to patrol, Garreth said, "I wonder if he's all that confused. Do you realize we just paid for his beer and gave him transportation home?"

Toews grinned. "He's earned it. He ran a grocery store when I was a kid and I remember a lot of times when he gave me and my sisters free candy. Where do you want to eat tonight?"

Not that they had a great deal of choice. Garreth said, "The Main Street."

"We ate there last night. How about the Pioneer?"

Garreth's lungs clogged just remembering the garlic reek from it. He thought fast. "I . . . got sick once in an Italian restaurant and since then I haven't been able to stand the smell of garlic."

Toews grinned. "So how long have you been a vampire?"

Every nerve in Garreth overloaded. He gaped at Toews, feeling the bomb explode in him . . . unable to move, scarcely able to think. "A . . . what?"He guessed; he knows! What an idiot you are, Mikaelian, to ever have opened your mouth about garlic.

The other's grin broaded. "You're a little slow on the uptake, city boy. Vampires can't stand garlic, so if you can't, you must be one, right? Tell me, how do you manage to shave without a mirror?"

Garreth groped in confusion for almost a minute before he realized Toews was joking. Then he cursed himself.A guilty conscience obstructeth logic . . . not to mention strangled the sense of humor. He had better say something quickly, though, before the lack of reply betrayed that he had taken Toews seriously. "I use an electic razor."

Toews chucked. "The benefits of technology. Okay, it's the Main Street again."

Garreth drank tea and pretended to study the Criminal Code. Inside he still shook. That had been a near call.

Toews wolfed down a cheeseburger. "You better eat something more than tea, partner. Friday and Sat.u.r.day are our busy nights."

Garreth quickly learned what he meant. As dark approached, every parking s.p.a.ce along Kansas Avenue and up the side streets filled with locals coming downtown to the bars and private clubs, the latter the only place dry Kansas allowed hard liquor.

Garreth and Toews wrote up two accident reports for fender benders resulting from trying to park more cars than intended in the diagonal s.p.a.ces along the tracks.

Every teenager in the area also appeared to be downtown, but since they could not drink, the ones not attending the movie theatre drove, making a loop that went north on Kansas to the Sonic Drive-In, across the tracks, south seven blocks to the A & W, and back across the tracks to go north again, endlessly. They drove cars, pickups, and vans, and carried on conversations by driving alongside each other and leaning out the windows to shout across the s.p.a.ce between.

Toews ticketed only flagrant violations, the most flagrant being a blue van weaving wildly through the traffic, and broke up a couple of impending fights. They also checked businesses along Kansas. Later came drunk-and-disorderly calls, and an accident in the parking lot outside the VFW. Taking a report from one driver while Toews talked to the other, watching a couple pa.s.s non- too-steadily toward their own car, Garreth shook his head. This was adry state?

5

Garreth had intended just to pick up the key, but Helen Schoning insisted on coming out with him. She raised one of the garage doors. "This is your side. If you want to work on your car, feel free to use my tools. Just ask first and put them back afterward."

He stared around the garage. She looked as though she could open her own auto repair shop. "You use these?"

She smiled and went over to stroke the fender of the car in the other half of the garage. "Someone has to keep this running."

He felt his jaw drop. It was a gleaming old Rolls Royce.

"My father bought it in 1955 when his first wells came in. He was so proud of it. It was the only car like it in Bellamy County.

Still is." She paused, chin down, looking at him through her lashes. "Mr. Mikaelian, I do have one favor to ask. If you should come home some night and find a car in your side, will you please park in the drive behind my side so the other car can get out? And say nothing about it to anyone?"

He felt himself staring again and closed his mouth with a snap. "No problem."

She smiled. "I hoped you'd understand. I enjoy my solitude-which is not the same as loneliness despite what most people around here think-and am single by choice, but I also like companionship from time to time. Discretely, of course. This is a small town and some of my friends are married."

Garreth regarded her with amazement. She was not what he would have expected to find here. "You don't miss the stability of a long-term relationship?"

She laughed. "What stability? Nothing ever stays the same. People, either. Each of my relationships has suited my needs at the time. What more can I ask? Good night."

Moving in did not take long, just luggage and his pallet. Then he sat back in the deep leather chair and sighed happily. Privacy.

Better than that, a refrigerator. He would take his thermos with him on the run tonight and fill it.

Helen had made up the couch. Laid under the bottom sheet, the pallet would fold conveniently, safely out of sight with the bed.

All that remained was to buy some health foods, even if he had to go to Bellamy or Hays for them . . . stage dressing so his cupboard would not look as oddly empty as Lane's. Then like a spider in the center of his web, he would sit and wait for his red- haired vampire fly to appear.

6 Mrs. Bieber greeted Garreth with delight and invited him in. "How nice to see you again. Have you found your grandmother yet?"

He shook his head. "No, but I think I've found a home." While they drank tea he told her about the apartment and job. It was overcast outside, which made the room enjoyably dim. After a while he asked casually, "How are you? What do you hear from your singer daughter?"

"Mada's in Mexico. Following the herds south for the winter, is how she put it." Mrs. Bieber looked apologetic and embarra.s.sed. "People, she means. I'm afraid she's not always very polite."

"Do you know which holiday she's coming home for?"

"No." The bright eyes probed him. "Why do you ask?"

Garreth shrugged. "No particular reason."

Mrs. Bieber frowned. "You don't have to lie to me, young man."

He froze.d.a.m.n. What had he done to give himself away? "I don't know what you mean."

She leaned toward him over her teacup with a sly smile. "Deep down don't you think she's your grandmother?"

Amazing. The cup remained steady in his hand despite a surge of relief that left him feeling limp as low-test spaghetti. "How can I? The pictures are nowhere alike."

"Maybe your picture is wrong. I can ask Mada a few questions the next time she calls."

"Good G.o.d, no!" Garreth lowered his voice as her eyes widened in surprise at his pa.s.sion. "Please don't. That would be so embarra.s.sing to both of us." Not to mention fatal to his hopes of trapping Lane here. "Please don't say anything about me to her."

Her eyes danced but she agreed and he changed the subject to casual conversation about his job. What he wanted most to talk about, though, he could not . . . his run the previous night.

He had taken the thermos with him. Filling it involved more than he antic.i.p.ated . . . biting a large hole in the cow's carotid artery, then spending the extra time necessary holding off the place until the blood clotted. By that time he had collected an audience of three coyotes who stayed back at his orders but later accompanied him most of the way back to town. Memory of the run still exhilarated him . . . the stars brilliant in the black velvet of the moonless sky, his breath white on the night air, the coyotes running like ghosts around him. He would so love to be able to discuss it with someone. How could Helen think solitude was not lonely?

He stood finally. "I'd better go. I'm due at the station for roll call in a few minutes."

She saw him to the door. "Thank you for coming. Visit again if you like."

h.e.l.l and garlic could not keep him away.

7

The thick layer of clouds, drooping in dark, waterlogged folds, prevented Garreth from seeing the sun, but he felt it set, felt the welcome cessation of pressure and the renewed flood of energy through him. In the distance, thunder rumbled. He stretched, drawing a deep, contented breath. "Nice evening."

Nat rolled his eyes. "Californians have strange taste. It ain't nice at all for someone who wants to rope calves tomorrow afternoon, partner. Say, why don't you come over for Sunday dinner? You can meet my wife and kids and then watch Skipper Flint Jubilee and me work."

Before he stopped eating food, Garreth had never realized how much social activity revolved around it. He hunted a diplomatic refusal. "Thanks, but I intend to sleep in late. Give me a time and I'll meet you at the fairgrounds for the roping, though."

They moved down the street trying the doors on the Light House electrical shop and Sherwin-Williams paint store. The Sat.u.r.day night parade of cars rolled past in a bright string. The blue van they had cited the evening before slowed down opposite them long enough for the adolescent boy driving to lean sideways and flip them off. They pretended not to see him.

"I got a guy for that once," Garreth said.

Nat tried the door of Rivers Hardware. "How?"

"I wrote him up for an illegal signal. He was using his left arm and indicated a right turn which he then failed to make." Garreth grinned. "And the judge fined him."

Nat's radio said, "Baumen 303. 717 Landon. Tom Loxton."

Nat rogered the call and sighed as they hurried up the street to where they had parked the car. "d.a.m.n. He's right on schedule."

"With what?"

"Tom's half Indian. Every time he gets liquored up, about twice a month, he sits on his front porch taking pot shots at pa.s.sing cars. He's never hit anything yet, but there's always a first time."

They parked the car across the intersection at one end of the block and walked down to the house. "You wave off traffic at the other end of the block while I talk to him," Nat said.

A reed-thin man with long hair and a red bandana tied around his head lounged in a porch swing at 717, pointing a rifle at them.

Garreth eyed him. "Maybe I ought to stay with you."

"I'll be all right. You just stop cars from coming past here."

Garreth went reluctantly, itching to reach for the .38 on his belt under his coat. He kept Nat and Loxton under observation while he watched for cars.

Nat leaned on the gate and called casually, "Hi, Tom. Why don't you put the gun down?"

"Not 'til I get me some whiteyes." Loxton's voice slurred.

The silhouette of a woman appeared in the doorway from the porch. Loxton yelled at her.

"Tom, let's talk about it," Nat called, and started to open the gate.

"Guard, Cochise!" Loxton yelled.

A huge black-and-tan dog hurtled around the corner of the house to plant himself barking and snarling in the middle of the sidewalk.

Nat jumped back, slamming the gate.