Ukiah - Alien Taste Part 4

"What about arrests and convictions?"

Max scrolled downward. "Looks like they've never managed to catch and hold him." Max suddenly killed the window and started to type. "Let's hope that I'm consistently paranoid."

"What do you mean?"

"This man, this very bad man, is curious about you, and he knows your name. I'm doing a search on your name to see what he can learn about you."

Ukiah glanced up the driveway to his mothers' house. "He's not coming here?"

His driver's license photo came up on the Pennsylvania Motor Vehicle database. Name: Ukiah Oregon. Address: 145 Maryland Avenue, Pittsburgh. He blinked at it and pulled out his wallet to check the hard copy. "The office address?" He flipped through his wallet. His private detective license. His weapons permit. His motorcycle registration. "They're all to the office."

"Technically, my house. Gifts of my paranoia. We were heading into Annie Krueler's kidnapping trial when we started to establish your ident.i.ty. I wanted to make sure you were safe from any stray idiots, so we put my house down as your residence. If anyone official questioned it, we were going to say you lived with me."

Three years ago he had been too ignorant to even notice the oddity of his paper trail. Now he knew where the holes could develop. "What about next of kin? Who to contact in case of emergency? Life insurance beneficiary?"

"We figured all the angles. I'm listed for next of kin, emergency contact, and beneficiary."

"Mom Jo agreed to this?"

"She hated it. You would have thought I was trying to steal you with legal mumbo-jumbo, but Lara pointed out that it was for your safety and Cally's."

"So the farm is safe?" Ukiah shifted the Hummer down into first.Max nodded, but the worried look remained.

CHAPTER FOUR.

Tuesday, June 16, 2004.

Evans City, Pennsylvania.

His five-year-old sister, Cally, was in the front yard when they pulled up, playing with a mix of Tonka trucks and Barbie dolls in the sandbox. She sprang to her feet and ran to the Hummer shouting, "Ukiah's home! Max is here!"

She slammed into Ukiah's legs and hugged them hard, giggling as if all the joy of the world was flowing in her. "You're home! You're home! Mommy said you were sick and might not be home for a while."

Ukiah tousled her curly black hair, soft as puppy fur. "I got better and Max brought me home."

"I'm so glad. I prayed special for you last night. Do you think G.o.d heard me and made you better?"

"I'm sure of it, pumpkin." Ukiah shook his head, amazed at how much Cally seemed to love him for how little time he had spent with her over the last three years. He left in the morning before she was awake and often worked days in a row, doing stakeouts or traveling cross-country for out-of-state jobs. Yet every time she saw him, she showered him with a child's pure, strong love.

It amazed him more because when she was born, he had been miserably jealous of her. Envious of the time his moms took caring for her. Covetous of the love they showered on her. Resentful that they never seemed angry with her. His moms and the farm had been his whole world, and Cally had suddenly appeared to take it all away. He'd sit in his tree house and sulk whenever she was awake.

His change of heart had come when he started to work with Max. It gave him a new, all-consuming world to explore. Slowly he left his childhood behind, and at some time arrived at being an adult. The farm was still a comforting retreat, but it wasn't his life. With no need to compete, he'd been able to stand Cally's presence, then welcome it.

Mom Lara came out of the house and hugged Ukiah warmly. She smelt of yeast, sweat, and honey. Her gold hair was swept up into a bun, and flour streaked her face. White hand prints-her own and Cally's little ones-decorated her blue jeans and crisp linen shirt. "Oh Ukiah." She gave him a radiant smile.

"I'm so glad you're home in one piece."

"Thanks, Mom."

She turned, one arm holding Ukiah securely, to look up at Max still in the Hummer. "Where do you think you're going?"

Max tried his normal dodge. "I just ran Ukiah out. I was heading back to the office."

"You look worse than Ukiah, Max. We're grilling steaks for dinner tonight and having a picnic. Why don't you stay, take a nap, and eat with us later?"

She merely stood there, smiling up at him. As always, Max sighed, tucked the Hummer's keys over the visor, and climbed down to join them on the lawn. "You made your potato salad?"

"Of course I did." She kissed Max on the cheek in greeting, wove her free hand into his arm and guided them toward the house. "I was making bread to celebrate the Mars landing, so the house is beastlyhot, but it's nice out on the porch."

An hour later the house was silent.

Mom Lara took Cally off to pick strawberries at a neighboring farm. Max was dozing on the porch hammock. Ukiah slipped into the house and cut off a still-warm heel of bread, smeared it heavily with blackberry jam, and ate it with a gla.s.s of cold milk. Done in from the night before, he went yawning up to his room.

Mom Jo's family once had been well-to-do, and the old house was a huge three-story Victorian with breezy rooms filled with sunlight. The entire attic was his, although he owned little more than a bed and a dresser. He had been too old for toys when Mom Jo found him; too illiterate for books; too solitary for most sports equipment. For a long time it had been one large empty echoing room. Mysteries and criminology books-spillover from his work-were starting to fill up the vast s.p.a.ce. On the one tall wall, he had hung framed newspaper clippings, awards, commendations, and letters of thanks from the people he had found-lives he had saved. He fingered them, trying to drive away the strange hollowness the latest case formed in him.

All these cases, he told himself, and I've only done good. One bad case shouldn't taint it all.

Memory was an odd thing. It felt like he had always been Max's partner, but there was a definite day that he went from a part-time tracker to a full partner. Max had taken his moms by surprise by announcing that his promotion was a done deal. Memory being what it was, he also recalled that had been the last time his moms sent him to his room. He had lain in bed listening to his moms and Max shout at one another, arguing about his future.

"You went behind our backs!" Mom Jo had shouted for the third time.

"If you want to see it that way, then there's nothing I can say to change your view, but I didn't."

"What gives you the right to-?"

"Can we get off my rights and all this other s.h.i.t and talk about what is important? He's eighteen, or close to it as far as we can tell. What is he going to do for the rest of his life? What can an ex-wolf boy who has no education, no driver's license, no birth certificate, no Social Security number-no legal ident.i.ty at all-do? Nothing! What would happen to him if you both were killed in a freak accident? People would fall over themselves to adopt your daughter. Ukiah? There would be nothing. No one takes an eighteen-year-old in, the welfare system won't recognize him, and if you don't do something to get him set up in work, he won't be able to take care of himself. You're all he has right now. If there were a fire in the house tonight or a car accident tomorrow, he'd be screwed. I learned the hard way that s.h.i.t happens unexpectedly "

They were shocked to silence. That was as close as Max ever got to talking about his dead wife.

After several minutes of the silence, Max started again, much quieter.

"He needs a means of taking care of himself. I can take him on as a partner. He'd make good money with full benefits, including a retirement plan."

Ukiah remembered a moment of silence, which probably meant Mom Jo and Mom Lara were doing their marriage telepathy thing and communicating only in glances. "Are you sure he could qualify for a PI license?"

Ukiah had let out a deep sigh of relief, surprising himself with how much he wanted his moms to say "yes," "maybe," or even "we'll think about it and let you know."

"You've told me he reads and writes at a high enough level to pa.s.s a GED. I can help him study for the Pennsylvania Private Investigator licensing test. If he can pa.s.s a GED, with his memory, the licensing test shouldn't be any problem. He'll have no trouble with the physical. Bonding might be trickier with his weird background. But to get it all started, you have to go to the courts and get him recognized by theUnited States legal system. You have to get him recognized as a legal adult. You have to get him a Social Security number."

He hadn't thought Mom Jo would go for all of it. She hated and feared "the system." He had heard her whisper more than once to Mom Lara, "If they ever knew Ukiah wasn't legally adopted, they would take him away from us." When he had been younger, he had had nightmares about "they." He had been amazed that she said yes.

Memory being what it was-three years later and almost asleep on his bed-Ukiah realized that probably the only reason his moms had said yes was because Mom Lara had been told she might have only weeks to live.

Cally woke him for dinner. She crawled onto his bed and hugged him awake with more sharp knees and hard elbows than a human child should have. She gave him a blackberry jam kiss, a sticky smile, and then demanded a horseback ride down all three flights of stairs to the yard.

He recalled his last thoughts before going to sleep and the horseback ride went down into Mom Lara's rose garden to visit the grave of one Miss Pretty Lightfoot. Sometime over the years the rock marking the grave had been moved. If Cally even remembered the burial, she gave no sign. To have the memory of a child-he wondered what it was like.

The ride went to the big wraparound porch where his moms and Max were laughing. His feet boomed on the painted wood floor, so he made a complete circle of the porch, making the most of the effect. Finally he collapsed onto the top porch step to drop Cally off.

"Again!" Cally cried, half-choking him with one of her misplaced bear hugs.

Mom Lara saved him by gently prying her off. "Cally, honey, it's almost dinnertime. Go wash your face and hands."

Mom Jo gave him a hug and let him go with a "Now let me look at this." She tilted his head aside to look at his neck.

"It's nothing, Mom."

"Nothing? An inch over or wider-" She shook her head and scowled first at Ukiah and then at Max. "Sometimes-"

"Mom, I'm fine." He grinned at her, silently vowing that she would never see the disc in Max's Hummer. "I cut myself worse than this the first time I shaved."

They heard a shout of laughter from inside the house, and Mom Lara called, "You have to admit Jo, he did."

With that, it was over-the least amount of fuss they had ever put up over him being hurt while working.

They had steak, medium for Mom Lara and mooing for Ukiah, Max, and Mom Jo. Cally announced proudly she had picked all the salad ingredients, and the mangled vegetables showed it. Max talked Mom Lara through grilling summer squash instead of her normal pan-fry. Mom Jo brought out a bottle of wine and a gla.s.s of grape juice for Cally. Dusk fell and the yard became bejeweled with fireflies. Cally begged a jar off of Mom Lara and went off chasing the gleaming insects.

Ukiah sat on the porch, watching her play, drinking the wine with the other adults. When did I become one of them? It had happened sometime when he wasn't looking. Was it this year? Last year?

When he had arrived, he wasn't sure, but he could recall the signposts along the road. The first had been certainly Max taking him on as a partner. The second probably had been buying his motorcycle. If hewas going to work full-time with Max, he had to be able to commute into Pittsburgh daily. Max and his moms took turns teaching him how to drive, with some vague notion he'd drive Mom Lara's '95 Neon to work. He found the whole process of driving a car awkward, and it left Mom Lara without a car all day.

He pitched the idea of the motorcycle to Max first, pointing out that he had ridden dirt bikes on the farm for years. He could put a down payment on a brand-new, reliable machine with his first paycheck and only use Mom Lara's car on days of bad winter weather. It took a while to get Mom Lara over the amputation rate in motorcycle accidents, but his moms agreed. Max drove him to the bank and then to the dealership, but he let Ukiah pick and buy his machine, stepping in only at the end to haggle down the price and help fill out the registration paperwork.

Another signpost had been his moms telling him but not Cally that Mom Lara had a brain tumor and might not survive the surgery. Ukiah was never sure if this was a blessing or a curse. Cally had remained happily ignorant the day of the surgery while Ukiah was sure he'd die of worry.

Another had been when he discovered that the medical bills were driving his moms into bankruptcy, so he used his paychecks to pay off the debtors. At first they protested, but he pointed out that if he was working, he should pay rent and his share of the food. Then he extended his health benefits, covering Mom Lara as part of his family, something Mom Jo couldn't do, despite their marriage.

Mom Jo took Cally off to bed and then went to exercise her pack of ten wolf dogs. Mom Lara was in the kitchen, watching the Mars mission on the NASA channel as she washed up dishes. Max sat rocking back and forth on the glider. Ukiah lifted the wine bottle to pour himself another gla.s.s and discovered it was empty.

He glanced over at Max, realizing that he had been quiet for some time. Max was a quiet, introspective drunk. "You okay?"

Max waved a hand at the empty bottle. "I never know when to stop anymore."

"Staying the night then?"

"Looks like it."

Ukiah stood, holding out his hand to Max. "Want a hand up?"

"I guess so."

In the guest room, as he helped Max with his shoes, Ukiah realized how much Max had become part of their life. His alarm clock was on the nightstand. A change of his clothes was in the dresser. His spare toothbrush hung in the guest bathroom.

"There are times," Max said quietly, "that I wish one of your moms would marry me. I wish that this was my place, that these were my kids, that this was my life. When I was young, this was the life I wanted, it was the life I thought I was going to live, it was the life I worked hard to have."

Ukiah wasn't sure what to say. He gripped Max's shoulder, a little ashamed at the inadequacy of the gesture. "I'm sorry."

"Kid, if you ever find a girl that loves you, that you love, grab hold and never let anything happen to her."

"I will."

"Good night, kid," Max muttered, sprawling out onto the bed.

"Good night," Ukiah whispered, and closed the guest room door on Max's quiet misery.

Downstairs, he heard the click of dishes and soft drone of the news. He drifted down to the kitchen. "Anything I can help you with, Mom Lara?"

"No, thank you, dear." She patted his cheek with a soapy hand without taking her eyes from thekitchen television. The NASA channel showed an odd still picture of closed-quarters machinery. In a small side window, Mom Lara was watching the local news channel. More thunderstorms rushing down on Pittsburgh. "I'm just puttering around during the communication delays. The ship's landed on Mars and they'll be dismounting the rover soon." Her eyes were sparkling with excitement. She was always so vibrant when she talked about stars and planets. He wondered how she ever gave up her work to raise Cally. "Is Max staying the night?"

"Yeah."

She sighed slightly, rinsing the soap from her hands and drying them on a tea towel. "He was never meant to live as a bachelor. He's one of those men that needs a wife and kids to be happy."

"I know."

"Does he ever talk about starting to date again? It's been almost six years since his wife was killed."

Ukiah shrugged. "He didn't look at women before, but lately he's been checking them out. He asks me occasionally what I think about certain women, you know, a waitress at Kilter's diner, one of the 7-Eleven cashiers."

"What do you tell him?"

"The truth."

"Ukiah, your truth is so brutal at times. I hope you've tried to be nice about it."

"Well, I try."

"Good boy." She turned back to the TV. The weather ended without the Mars shot changing. A remote story started up with a pretty blonde reporter playing with a rover prototype apparently developed locally.

He frowned at something wrong, out of place. Then he remembered. He had put a mouse in his pocket earlier. He tented his breast pocket and looked in. The mouse was gone. When had he lost it? In Schenley Park? At the morgue? In the Hummer? When he took his nap? He grimaced at the thought of losing it in his bedroom-Mom Lara would freak. Surely if he had had it until he had gotten home, it would have moved around, tried to get out, or otherwise drawn his attention to it. He must have lost it earlier, probably when he was tracking and too focused to notice its escape.

The obligatory local take on the world news over, the studio reporters came on the air, their faces grave. "Early this morning deputy coroner Earl Frakes was killed while conducting an autopsy on a woman suspected of murdering her three roommates and a policeman."

Ukiah turned away from the television, wishing he could tune it out. "Mom Jo still running the dogs?"