They Thirst Part 17

"Look at that," he told the others.

"Jeez!" Mr. Pietro said incredulously. "What's he doing with all those . . . things in here? Listen, I run a clean place . . ."

"Yeah," Karris said, and peered into one of the tanks. "Ugly little suckers, aren't they?"

Palatazin stepped away from the table and gazed at the pictures on the wall, then back at Pietro, who looked thoroughly revolted. "Where does Benefield work, Mr. Pietro?"

"Out in West L.A. He works for one of those bug-spray companies. An exterminator."

"Do you know the name of the company?"

"Nope. Sorry." He glanced at the roaches again and shivered. "Jeez, do you think Benefield's bringin' his work home with him or somethin'?"

"I doubt it." Palatazin looked over to where Karris was going through a chest of drawers. "Take it easy with that, Karris, we don't want to tear the man's furniture apart. Mr. Pietro, what time is Benefield usually at home?"

"All hours, in and out." Pietro shrugged. "Some nights he comes in, stays a little while, and then leaves again. I've gotten to where I can recognize all the tenants' footsteps now, you see. My ears are real good. Anyway, he don't keep no regular hours."

"What sort of person is he? Do you talk with him very much?"

"No, he keeps to himself. Seems okay, though." Pietro grinned, showing a gold tooth. "He pays his rent on time, which is more than you can say for a lot of them. No, Benefield don't talk too much. Oh, one time when I couldn't sleep and was listenin' to my radio, Benefield knocks on the door-I guess it was about two in the morning, couple of weeks ago-and he seemed to want to talk, so I let him in. He was real excited about somethin', said ... I don't know, it was crazy . .

. that he'd been out looking for his old lady, and he thought he'd seen her. Two o'clock in the mornin'," Pietro abruptly shrugged and turned to watch Zeitvogel rummaging under the bed.

"Old lady? Do you mean his girlfriend?"

"No. His mom. His old lady."

Zeitvogel said, "Here's something," and pulled out a box of magazines from under the bed. It was an odd mixture of comic books, muscle magazines, and p.o.r.no.

Zeitvogel held up a couple of publications devoted to bondage, and Palatazin frowned with distaste. Lying on the bed were a pair of black handgrips used for strengthening hand and wrist muscles. Palatazin picked up one of them and tried to squeeze it, finding the resistance quite powerful. He made the connection between them and the crushing hands that had killed four young women and laid the grip back down where it had been. He checked the bathroom, finding a tub with a couple of inches of standing water in it. In the medicine cabinet there were bottles of Bufferin, Excedrin, Tylenol. It seemed that Benefield was plagued with headaches.

"Captain," Zeitvogel said, offering him a yellowing Kodak snapshot as he came out of the bathroom. The picture showed a blond, slightly rotund woman sitting with her arm around a young boy on a sofa. The boy wore thick gla.s.ses and had a crew cut, and he was smiling vacantly into the camera; the woman's legs were crossed, one fleshy thigh over the other, a crooked grin on her face. Palatazin studied the photograph for a moment, catching what he thought was a strange gla.s.sy look in the woman's eyes, as if she'd been drinking too much.

"Have you ever seen Benefield's mother, Mr. Pietro?" he asked.

"Nope. Never."

Farris was probing around the stove and sink. He bent down, opened a cupboard, and brought out a bottle half-filled brownish liquid. He unscrewed the cap and sniffed it, and in the next instant dark motes were spinning in front of his eyes. He jerked his head away and said, "s.h.i.t! What's this stuff?" He quickly capped it and coughed violently a couple of times, having the sensation of oil clinging to his lungs. His nostrils seemed to be on fire. Palatazin took the bottle from him and sniffed around the cap. "Mr. Pietro, do you know what this is?"

"Looks like old p.i.s.s to me."

Farris caught his breath and looked under the sink again, bringing out a fewi'"

dry rags. "Don't know what that is, captain, but it's wicked. The smell of it down here'll knock you out."

"Zeitvogel," Palatazin said quietly, "go down to your car and call in on our friend, will you? Let's see if he's got a rap sheet." Zeitvogel was back in fifteen minutes. "Bingo, captain," he said. "Benefield's got a long record of a.s.saults, a couple of molestation charges, a Peeping Tom, and an attempted rape. He spent eight years in and out of mental wards and did a stretch at Rathmore Hospital."

Palatazin nodded, staring at the cages full of scrabbling roaches. He put the bottle back where it had been and closed the cupboard. He wanted to shout, "YES, WE'VE GOT HIM!" but he knew that wasn't the case. There was a long way to go yet in proving that Benefield had anything to do with the four murders. "We'll wait for him to come home," Palatazin said, trying to keep his voice steady. "Mr. Pietro, we're going to be outside in our cars. I think the best thing for you to do is simply stay in your room. All right? If you hear Benefield come in, don't leave your room to be friendly."

"You going to arrest him? What's he done?"

"We just want to ask him a few questions. Thank you for showing us his room, Mr. Pietro. We'll take care of the rest."

And now Palatazin sat in his car, waiting. Several times he thought he saw a Volkswagen approaching down Coronado, but it never was. The bitter, almondy odor of that liquid in the bottle stayed with him. In a rag, pressed up tightly against the nostrils, that stuff would probably act like a kind of chloroform; it was evidently some substance or mix of solutions that Benefield used at work.

If he was the Roach-and those roaches in the tanks indicated more than anything that he was-he had found a darker kind of work. But if he was the Roach, why had he changed his M.O.? He hoped that if Benefield was given enough rope, he might hang himself with it, or at least trip himself up. The minutes crept into hours. Soon there were no more cars moving along Coronado, and the only movement at all was the quick flicker of a match as Farris lit another cigarette. I can wait, Palatazin said mentally. You'll have to come home sometimes. And when you do, Mr. Benefield, I'll be right here . .

TWO.

Wes Richer woke up in the darkness, his head buzzing with Chablis and his stomach full of Scandia's Danish sole. At once he knew that Solange wasn't lying beside him, and when he looked up, he could see her figure outlined in moonlight, naked and chocolate brown, holding a curtain aside as she looked out of the window onto Charing Cross Road.

He watched her sleepily, the events of the night happily jumbling together in his head-the calls and congratulations from the ABC bra.s.s over "Sheer Luck"; a call from his father in Winter Hill, North Dakota, telling him how proud his mother would have been if only she were alive; Jimmy Kline calling to tell him that Arista was biting on the record contract hook and that the "Tonight" show people were inquiring to see if Wes might guest-host after the first of November; a congratulatory call from Cher, whom Wes had met at a party for Gene Simmons; and then the dinner that evening with Jimmy, Mel Brooks, and Brooks's screenwriter, Al Kaplan. The part was being rewritten for him with a couple of added scenes to spotlight some of that "goyem klutz," as Brooks called it, that he showed in "Sheer Luck." At the end of the evening, Brooks had squeezed his cheek and said, "I love that face!" Which meant for Wes, as far as Quattlebaum's was concerned, money in the bank.

He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and said huskily, "Solange? What is it?" She didn't move from the window. Her head was c.o.c.ked to one side, a black statue, listening. Wes let his gaze roam appreciatively down her back, along the smooth curving spine, to the firm roundness of the b.u.t.tocks and the swelling of her upper thighs. He'd been between those thighs less than an hour before; the sheets were still bunched at the bottom of the bed, the room filled with the peppery scent of desire. He could feel himself responding again, and he sat up, supporting his head on one arm. "Solange?" he said.

"Come back to bed."

When she turned toward him, he saw her eyes-they were hollow pits in her fine skull. "I heard a scream, Wes," she whispered. "From across the street."

"A scream? You were probably dreaming."

"No," she said, her voice like velvet and steel. "I wasn't dreaming. I heard a scream. Who lives across the street?"

Wes struggled up out of bed and stood beside her, peering out into the night and feeling pretty stupid about going along with her even this far. "Uh ... I think d.i.c.k Clark lives over there ... no, wait a minute. It's d.i.c.k Marx. He produced the Sea Wolf remake with Richard Gere last year. I think." He couldn't really see the house, just the tops of trees and a chimney perched over a high brick wall. "I don't hear anything," he said after another moment.

"I think we should call the police."

"The police? Why? Listen, d.i.c.k Marx has a reputation for ... you know ... little S&M thrills? Maybe he just got carried away with the latest girlfriend. Calling "I the cops would be a faux pas, right?"

"I don't agree. What I heard was not a scream of pleasure. Will you call the police or shall I?"

"Okay, okay. Christ, when you get something on your mind, you hang on to it until h.e.l.l freezes, don't you?" He stepped over to the phone beside the bed and dialed 911. When the operator answered, he said simply, "Somebody screamed in Bel Air" then he gave the address, and hung up. "There," he said to Solange. "Did I do my duty?"

"Come here, Wes," Solange said. "Hurry!" He did. She gripped his arm. "I saw someone crawl over the wall. Look! Did you see that?"

"I don't see a thing."

"Someone's in our yard, Wes!" she said, her voice rising and she gripped his arm tighter. "Call back. Tell the police to hurry!"

"Oh, s.h.i.t! I'm not calling them again!" He leaned closer to the gla.s.s and tried to make out a figure moving, but it was pitch black; the arms of trees waved in the wind. "There's n.o.body outside. Come on back to bed . . ." He was about to turn away from the window when he heard it. At first he thought it was the high wailing of wind, but then the sound became higher and stronger, the wail of a human voice-a little girl's voice-that ended in a cascade of silvery laughter like water bubbling in a fountain. "I seeeeeeee youuuuuuuu,"

the voice said. "There at the winnnnnndowwwwwww," More childlike laughter, and now Wes thought he could see a figure standing down there on the neatly manicured lawn beside a thin pine tree. He was almost sure he saw a white gown being whipped by the wind, a long mane of reddish-blond hair, a grinning moonface staring up at him. But he heard the voice again, and it seemed to be coming from a different place entirely. "Come outside!" it called sweetly.

"Won't you come out and be my playmate?"

Wes narrowed his eyes. He was only marginally aware that Solange's fingernails were digging into his arm. Something moved beside that pine tree, and now Wes was sure he could see a little girl down there. She was barefoot and carrying what looked like a Raggedy Arm doll. "Mister!" she called out. "Please come outside and play with me!"

There was something in her voice that made Wes want to go to that little girl. That voice was so sweet, so compelling, so innocent. It rang in his head like Christmas bells in the church at Winter Hill, and suddenly there were six inches of new snow on the ground, and he was ten-year-old Wesley Richer, stuck in his room with a head cold the day after Christmas while all the other kids were playing in the snow with their new sleds. He could see the bundled figures of the big kids way out on the frozen, milky surface of Ma.s.sey Pond; they picked on him because he was sickly and skinny, but he'd memorized a lot of jokes from a couple of books at the library, and now even Brad Orr was beginning to laugh at them and call him Funnyman. From his window he could see them skating around the pond, turning slow circles and figure eights like people from those Currier and Ives pictures Mom liked. And the sleds had already left a hundred runner trails on Frosty Slope; ice glittered there in the weak gray sunlight like the dust of crushed diamonds, and a distant figure raised a mittened hand to wave at him.

There was a pretty girl he didn't know standing underneath his window. "Come outside!" she called, grinning up at him. "Let's play!"

"Can't!" he called back. "Mom says no. I gotta cold!"

"I can make you all better!" the little girl said. "Come on! You can jump right through the window!"

Wes smiled. "Aww, you're foolin'!" She was barefoot in the snow, and maybe she was so pale because she was really cold.

"No, I'm not! Your friends are waiting for you." She gestured vaguely in the direction of Ma.s.sey Pond. "I can take you to them."

"Oh . . ." He was tired of staying in the house, he wanted to get out and run in the cold wind with the snow crunching underfoot, and maybe he wouldn't even need any shoes either. Sure would be nice to do a bellyflop down the Slope.

"Okay,"

he said excitedly. "Okay! I'll come out!"

The girl nodded. "Hurry!" she said.

And suddenly a strange thing happened. There was a pretty chocolate-colored lady standing beside him, gripping his arm. She leaned forward and blew on the window, instantly fogging it. Then she drew a cross in the fogged part with her forefinger and mumbled something: "Nsambi kuna ezulu, nsambi kuna ntoto!" Wesley Richer said, "Huh?"

The little girl beneath the window screamed piercingly, her face contorting into a gray mask of horror. Instantly it all changed-Ma.s.sey Pond and Frosty Slope and all the distant figures skating and sledding whirled out of Wes's brain like cobwebs caught in a high wind. The little girl staggered backward, gnashing her teeth. Solange shouted "GET AWAY!" and fogged the window again, drawing another cross and repeating the incantation again, but this time in English, "G.o.d is in heaven, G.o.d is in earth!"

The little girl hissed and spat, her back arching like a cat's. Then she ran across the lawn toward the wall. When she reached it, she turned and screamed, "I'll get you for that! I'll make you pay for hurting me!" And then she scrambled over the wall, her bare legs the last thing to disappear. Wes's knees sagged. Solange caught him and helped him back to the bed. "What is it?" he said. "What happened?" He looked up at her through glazed eyes.

"Gonna go skate," he said. "Snow fell last night." She put the sheet over him and smoothed it down. She was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering. "No, no," she said softly. "You had a dream, that's all."

"A dream?" He looked at her and blinked. "d.i.c.k Marx lives across the street, that's who."

"Go to sleep," Solange told him, and in another moment his eyes closed. She stood over him until his breathing was even and deep, and then she returned to the window. The pine trees moved fitfully, as if the dull terror that gripped at her soul gripped the soul of nature as well. She wasn't certain what the thing had been, but she knew from its violent reaction to the cross and the name of G.o.d-a powerful talisman in all languages-that it was something terribly evil. She recalled with a shudder the messages from the spirit world as spoken through the Ouija board. Evil. They thirst. Evil. They thirst. She drew a chair up before the window and sat down to meditate. She did not move again before daylight.

THREE.

"You want another cup of coffee, Miss Clarke?"

Gayle looked up. She was huddled on a bench in the main corridor of the Hollywood police precinct building where she'd been brought hours before, after, she'd crumbled in hysterics in front of the officer who'd stopped her for reckless ; driving. She thought she might have fallen asleep for a few minutes or pa.s.sed out because she hadn't heard the patient desk sergeant named Branson come up behind her. She didn't want to sleep; she was afraid of it because she knew she'd see Jack coming for her in her nightmares, those burning eyes set in a bleached skull, the fangs in his mouth making him look like some strange hybrid between man and dog. She shook her head, refusing the coffee, and hugged her knees to her chin. Her hand had been cleaned and bandaged, but the fingers still throbbed, and she wondered if she would have to get rabies shots.

"Uh ... Miss Clarke, I don't think you have to stick around here anymore," the desk sergeant said. "I mean, I appreciate the company and all, but you can't stay here all night."

"Why not?"

"Well, why should you? You've got a place to live, don't you? I mean, it's quiet in here right now, but later on we're going to have hookers, hustlers, pimps, junkies, all kinds of lowlife stumbling in here. You don't want to be around all that, now, do you?"

"I don't want to go home," she said weakly. "Not yet."

"Yeah, well . . ." He shrugged and sat down on the bench beside her, making a big deal out of checking a scuff mark on his shoe. "It's safe for you to go home," he said finally without looking at her. "Nothing's going to get you."

"You don't believe me either, do you? That first dumb clod didn't believe me, neither did your lieutenant, and you don't either."

He smiled faintly. "What's to believe or not believe? You told us what you saw, and it was checked out. The officers found a lot of empty apartments and a couple of dogs running around . . ."

"But you'll admit it was G.o.dd.a.m.ned strange that all those apartments were unlocked at eleven o'clock at night, won't you? That's not common in Hollywood, is it?"

"Who knows what's common or uncommon in Hollywood?" Branson said quietly. "The rules change every day. But this stuff about your boyfriend being some kind of ... what did you say he was? Vampire or werewolf?"

She was silent.

"Vampire, didn't you say? Well, couldn't he have been wearing a Halloween mask maybe?"

"It was no mask. You people have overlooked the most important point-what happened to all those people in that apartment complex? Did they all step off into the Twilight Zone or something? Where are they?"

"That I wouldn't know anything about," Branson said, getting to his feet. "But I'd suggest you go on home now, huh?" He moved back toward his desk, feeling her stare boring into the back of his neck. Of course, he hadn't told her that Lieutenant Wylie was over at the Sandalwood Apartments right now with a team of officers, going over every room with vacuum cleaners and roping the place off from the street. Branson could tell that Wylie was more than a little worried.

When Wylie's left eyebrow started to tick, that was a sure sign something was cooking. This Clarke woman had answered all the questions she could, and she'd put some questions of her own to the officers, who of course couldn't come up with any decent answers. Wylie had told him emphatically to get rid of her since she was a real thorn in the a.s.s. Branson sat behind his desk, shuffled papers, and stared at the telephone, wishing it would ring with a good old-fashioned robbery or mugging. This vampire s.h.i.t was for the birds. No, he decided, make that for the bats.

FOUR.

Awaken, the voice whispered. Mitch Gideon heard it quite clearly. But he didn't have to open his eyes because they were already open; his head simply seemed to jerk backward, and his vision cleared as if he'd been looking through frosted gla.s.s. It took him a moment to fully realize where he was. When he did, the shock of it almost staggered him.

He was standing in the entrance foyer of the Gideon Funeral Home Number Four on Beverly Boulevard near CBS Television City. Behind him the heavy chrome-and-oak doors stood wide open to the street; a cold breeze was rushing in around him. He heard a noise like the tinkling of Chinese wind chimes and looked to his side-he was holding his key ring with the key that unlocked the front doors still grasped between his thumb and forefinger. He was wearing brown bedroom slippers and his brown velour robe with the initials "MG" on the breast pocket over his usual white silk pajamas. I'm in my pajamas? he asked himself incredulously.

What the f.u.c.k's going on here? Am I dreaming, hypnotized, or what?

Overhead a huge chandelier with electric candles lit up the entrance foyer with a rich golden glow. He didn't remember flicking the wall switch. d.a.m.n!

he thought, I don't remember anything since I got into bed beside Estelle at.

. . what time had that been? He looked at his wrist but knew his watch was sitting on the Lj chest of drawers in the master bedroom where he put it every night before going to sleep. He felt like shouting the two questions aloud: What am I doing here? And how the h.e.l.l did I get down from Laurel Canyon to Beverly Boulevard in my sleep for Christ's sake?

Gideon turned and walked back out of the building into the parking lot. There sat his Lincoln Continental in the s.p.a.ce marked "Mr. Gideon Only." But there was another vehicle in the parking lot as well-a large U-Haul truck. He stepped closer to it but didn't see anyone sitting in the cab. And when he looked back at they Tudor-style funeral home, he saw a light burning in a window on the upper floor. My office, he realized. Have I been up there working? How did I get out of the house? By sleepwalking? Didn't Estelle hear me leave? He seemed to remember being behind the wheel of his car, the hot splash of headlights and traffic signals on his face, but he'd thought that was only a dream. He was grateful that tonight he wasn't dreaming of that conveyor belt full of coffins where the workmen were beginning to grin at him as if he were one of their own. His brain felt feverish and violated, as if someone or something had peeled back to the top of his head and gone to work in there, fitting him with a windup key that could be turned to send him spinning madly in any chosen direction.