Coven. Part 17

"You mean Dean Saltenstall," Jervis prodded. "Everybody knows that his wife cheats on him. Even the dean knows that. Why would he hire you to find out something he already knows?"

"Because he has a tremendous life insurance policy," Czanek admitted. "If you were an old h.o.m.os.e.xual millionaire married to a thirty five year old bombsh.e.l.l, wouldn't you want to know what your wife was up to, regardless of any mutual s.e.xual agreements made within the marriage?"

"So that's it," Jervis said, smoking slowly.

"Here's what I'll do," the detective offered. "I'll go into Besser's office tonight and replace that bug with one on a different frequency. Then it won't b.u.t.t in on your transmissions anymore, and the problem'll be solved."

Jervis lit still another cigarette.

This kid smokes more than a coal furnace.

"I'd appreciate that very much, Mr. Czanek."

Czanek watched Jervis leave. The kid was cracked-Czanek could see that-just like most of Czanek's clients. Paranoia, jealousy, and inferiority complexes were more nuggets in Czanek's treasure. But that wasn't what bothered him. It was what the kid had said. The fourth person, he thought. A voice like running water.

The kid, it seemed, knew more about Czanek's case than Czanek did.

County police headquarters loomed like a neoteric brick fortress. TV cameras probed the enclosed entry. Two uniformed cops ID'd Lydia at the door and searched her suitcase. She took out a tiny pistol in a wallet holster and gave it to them to lock up. Then they frisked Wade, a bit too thoroughly for his liking. The only gun I'm packing is the love gun, buddy. These boys didn't fool around.

They pa.s.sed doors with queer plastic signs: Toolmarks, SEM, Electroporesis, and finally Spectrometry.

A sergeant showed them in and left.

The room was long and narrow. Bulky machines hummed in ranks, regurgitating rolls of paper. One machine sported a face of dials and jumping meters, with a hatch for a belly. Lydia told Wade this was a BV Model 154 peptide a.n.a.lyzer. It identified trace foreign substances in the digestive system by measuring peptidal deviations. It cost $100,000.

A stoop shouldered bald man was reading a book at the desk. Wade caught the sensational t.i.tle: U.S. Bureau of Standards, j.a.panese Automotive Paint Index, 1991 1992. A tag on his lab coat read "Glark, TSD." "I hope you're the cop from Exham," he said.

"That's me," Lydia said. "Thanks for making a s.p.a.ce for me."

"What have you got?"

"Oxidized residuum, two eight inch counterabrasions."

"Depth?"

"About .23 mils."

Glark whistled. "Anything that thick should be easy. Let's get to it." He seemed not to notice Lydia's cutoffs and top. Was he a county eunuch? Rust, evidently, was his turn on. Lydia withdrew from her case, of all things, a King Edward cigar box. Glark pulled up a stool behind the biggest microscope Wade had ever seen. It had the word "Zeiss" on its condenser. Glark removed a cutting of old grayed wood from the box. He placed the "cope" under the triple objectives and focused down through dual eyepieces. His mouth twisted up. "This is funny," he said.

"I know," Lydia commented. "That impactation was the first strike; I'm a.s.suming the striking object hadn't been used for a long time."

"You a.s.sume right," Glark said. "And I can tell you, if it's stainless steel, it's something way down in the low scales."

"How could it be stainless steel?" Wade asked. "Stainless steel doesn't rust."

"Anything made of metal rusts," Glark grumbled to him. "Lead rusts, t.i.tanium rusts, aluminum, lithium, mercury, anything. If it's metal, its surface molecules rust. You just can't see it without some form of magnification."

"I knew that," Wade said. "I was just testing you."

Glark frowned. Lydia leaned over. Wade found her cleavage much more interesting than whatever they were inspecting. "The color's what threw me," she said. "It's too..."

"Asperous," Glark finished for her. He changed to a higher objective. "It's old, whatever it is, and I don't mean the residuum, I mean the source metal. Usually you can see the alloy const.i.tuents, but I don't see any here. This stuff is crude, adulterated."

"Do you think it's indexed?"

"Unlikely," Glark said. "But let's run it anyway."

Wade smirked. This was Dullsville. He followed them to a bank of low machines. Glark closed a circular lid and turned on a CRT. Actually four machines made up this apparatus. Lydia explained that the process was called A/N spectrophotometry spectrography. Wade didn't know what the "N" stood for, but he thought he could make a pretty good guess when he noticed a label on the hatched machine: "Warning, this device contains radioactive isotopes."

Great, Wade thought. A miniature Three Mile Island.

Lydia went on to explain. A trace substance was burned at a phenomenal temperature. The light from the combustion was then focused through a prism structure and photographed. The photograph was processed as a line of colors ranging from white to dark purple. This was called the source spectrum. The colors represented the trace substance's const.i.tuents, which were then identified by comparison against indexed control samples. The total cost of the four machines was over a million dollars.

Wade noticed bright white light leaking from the hatch lid's seam. Numbers and letters, the numerical equivalents of the combusted molecular factors, began to pop up on the CRT. Within seconds the machines clunked off. A slit in a fat Canon film processor ejected a slip of paper, the source spectrum. All this work for that? Wade thought. A million f.u.c.king dollars?

Lydia and Glark began to pore over thick ring bound books full of similar colored strips. Wade doubted that he'd ever been this bored in his life.

"I think I found it," Glark announced almost an hour later. He removed a laminated sheet from the binder. Atop read the index listing: Antiquations.

Lydia looked at it and frowned. "Iron? How could it take us so long to find iron?"

"Because it's not commercial," Glark said. "We couldn't find a manufacturer's index because there is no manufacturer. This control sample isn't exact but it's close enough to give us our answer."

"I don't get it," Lydia said.

"The tool that caused your impactation was hand forged," Glark enlightened her. "According to this index, you're looking for something that's at least three hundred years old."

CHAPTER 17.

At the red light, the Camaro rumbled through Hooker headers and chambered pipes. Bright red tails, like liquid, reflected off the slope of the immaculate white hood. The car shimmered.

Tom stared. The sister was showing him things.

Beyond the dusk, Tom saw cities, or things like cities: a geometric demesne of impossible architecture which extended along a vanishing line of horrid black-a raging terra dementata. Concaved horizons crammed with stars, or things like stars, sparkled close against the cubist chasms. He saw buildings and streets, tunnels and tower blocks, strange flattened factories whose chimneys gushed oily smoke. It was a necropolis, systematized and endless, bereft of error in non Euclidean angles and lines. It was pandemonium. Gutters ran black with noxious ichor. Squat, stygian churches sang praise to mindless G.o.ds. Insanity was the monarch here, ataxia the only order, darkness the only light.

Ingenious, unspeakable, the monarch stared back.

Tom saw it all. He saw time tick backward, death rot to life, whole futures swallowed deep into the belly of history. And he saw people too. Or things like people.

Tom shook out of the terror's glimpse. The light changed green and he pulled through. In the pa.s.senger seat, one of the sisters grinned. She was hideous. White faced, red lipped, and hungry-always hungry, for food or whatever. Thank G.o.d the sungla.s.ses hid her eyes. Tom could feel the madness buried there, the sheer disorder.

-Tom, what's that?

In the headlights, a matty white poodle sniffed at the shoulder. "It's a dog," Tom said.

The sister looked puzzled. -What's a dog?

"You know, an animal, a pet."

-What's a pet?

Jesus, Tom thought. These b.i.t.c.hes are stupid. He swerved and promptly ran the poodle over. Its little body was dribbled beneath the car, then crunched. The sister shrilled with delight, looking back. The crushed poodle twitched in the road.

-Tom! What's that?

Up ahead, some big redneck looking guy had his thumb out. A cardboard sign about his neck read: "Bowie, Maryland, or Bust."

"It's a hitchhiker," Tom said.

-What's a hitchhiker?

Tom snickered. "A hitchhiker is a person who, on dark nights, gets run over by cars. That's what a hitchhiker is."

-Oh, replied the sister.

Tom shifted down the Hurst. The hitchhiker's face beamed. This f.u.c.ker thinks he's gonna get a ride, Tom thought. He began to pull over, but at precisely the proper moment, he swerved and mowed the hitchhiker down. Jesus Christ, it was fun running things down! The sister shrieked over the m.u.f.fled thump. Tom smiled. The hitcher's head popped under the wheel, then his crumpled body was spat out behind them.

The sister was exhilarated, giddy and wriggling her white fingers. -I liked that! she exclaimed. -Let's find more dogs and hitchhikers!

Tom wished he could, but he'd almost forgotten there was business at hand. He drove a ways, then pulled over. Sure, running people down was fun but it wasn't a good idea when you had a college student in your trunk. She could bang her head or something, break some bones. h.e.l.l, she could die back there.

Tom got out and opened the trunk. She was all right, just a little jostled. "Sorry about that last b.u.mp, Lois," he apologized. She was kind of cute. Nice rack too, he concluded when he pulled open her blouse. She would at least appreciate it all in the end. f.u.c.k college. This was destiny.

He got back in the car and drove on. He paused to wonder. The sister had settled down, placated by her own nameless thoughts. Tom couldn't imagine what went on in their malevolent little heads. Who were these b.i.t.c.hes? Who were they really?

The girl in the trunk had been on Besser's list. Lois Hartley, an art history major who lived on the Hill. Tom had seen her around. She was into the art scene-avant garde, formalism, and all that. She hung out with the campus dilettantes. They all pretended to be bored and disaffected, sw.a.n.k in resigned ennui. They wore dark clothes and freaky hairstyles, listened to the Communards, and smoked blue cigarettes while they discoursed over the decline of aesthetics: phony misplaced Dadaists who thought it stylish to have nothing to do.

Plucking her had been easy. They'd found her wandering the Pickman Gallery's abstract expressionism exhibit, which always gave Tom a hoot. You could slop paint randomly onto a canvas, blindfolded, call it Mother with Child, and that would be abstract expressionism. Lois had been standing in front of a mural ent.i.tled The Fighting Temeraire Part II, which looked like someone had gotten drunk after a big Burger King meal and then vomited on the canvas. Lois Hartley barely turned when the sister put the zap on her. That was some trick. All Tom had to do was carry her out and toss her in the trunk. Mission accomplished.

But he wondered what it must be like for them, what they must feel and think during the process. What did destiny feel like?

Tom pulled up at the Town Pump. "Beer stop," he said.

-What's beer?

Tom didn't bother answering. "Howdy, partner," said the proprietor when Tom came in. "We gotta special on the Rock this week."

"No thanks," Tom said. "Get me two cases of Spaten Oktoberfest."

"Comin' right up," the prop replied. He was chunky and old, with a gray crew cut. He wheeled up a handcart with the two cases, then rang the total. "Say, fella, you don't look so good."

"I know, but I feel great," Tom said. Then he picked up the two cases and held them easily under one arm. "Thanks," he said.

"Hold up a sec, son." The prop t.i.ttered nervously. "You're forgettin' somethin'."

"Oh, yeah? What's that?"

Another t.i.tter. "You owe me $52.96. Tax included, of course."

"Oh, but I'm not paying," Tom said.

"Uh, ya mean you're robbin' me? Is that what you're sayin'?"

"Well, I guess you could put it that way," Tom agreed.

Now the prop's voice gave way to cracks. "I don't want no trouble, son, so do us both a favor. Just you set that beer down, turn around, and walk out that door."

Tom grabbed the man by the throat and lifted him over the counter-the two cases of Spaten still under one arm. The man's legs pumped like he was trying to run away in midair. "Listen, Pops," Tom explained. "I don't expect you to understand this, but I have to get back to the Supremate. I have destiny to tend to. You get the message yet? I'm not paying. I've got more important things to do right now than pay for beer."

The prop made choking noises, trying to nod. His face was turning blue. Tom flung the man sideways into the sale display, a six foot high pyramid of six packs of Rolling Rock. The pyramid toppled, green bottles exploding. So much for that sale, Tom thought.

He felt more like himself with a cold Spaten in his hand and the ca.s.sette deck going; he felt more human. Back on the highway, he opened his smallblock up and hit it. The sister giggled wetly. They traveled the Route into darkness, trees and fields sweeping by, on their way to the old dirt utility road which would take them home- To the labyrinth.

All Lydia knew was that she liked him.

She thought of a mouse in a maze. She felt as though something was expected of her, but she didn't know what.

The answer, she knew, was in her heart. In her heart she wanted to sleep with Wade St. John. She wanted to physically love him.

But...

Why was it you never knew when to trust a man? Too often, the good ones, the ones who seemed honest and sincere, were the ones who wound up writing your name and number on the bathroom wall, with a list of proficiencies. Then they'd brag to their friends about the latest h.o.r.n.y b.i.t.c.h they'd knocked the bottom out of. Jesus, what a nightmare-d.a.m.ned if you did and d.a.m.ned if you didn't, because if you didn't, you were frigid or a lesbian. Reading men was like reading foreign magazines. All you saw were the pictures.

Lydia felt jittery. She knew what she wanted-of course! She wanted things to be perfect. Didn't everybody?

She lit the Marlboro she'd been tapping for the last two days.

"I don't believe it," Wade exclaimed. "You finally lit it."

Lydia smiled moronically. She rested back and caught that beautiful first drag wallop to the upper bronchi.

"You look like you just took a toke of Jamaican."

"s.h.i.t on that garbage," she said. "This is better." She dragged again; she was stalling. The exit signs were coming up in their lights. What am I going to do? she pleaded to herself.

"It's still early," Wade said. "How about a nightcap?"