Ukiah - Alien Taste Part 5

The television continued on behind his back. "Janet Haze had been killed in a police shootout yesterday. Police say that they believe Haze acted under the influence of a hallucinogenic drug. We go live to Hap Johnson on the scene."

"Um-huh." Mom Lara murmured, eyes on the main screen as the uncoupling countdown started.

Ukiah glanced out the kitchen window to see if he could spot his other mom. The moon was a few days from full; it coated the wheat fields beyond the yard in soft silver. In the center of the field stood his oak. The tallest tree on the farm, it had been his sanctuary since the first day he arrived here. Its leaves tipped with moon glow, but his tree house was lost in the dark shadows of the night.

"Thanks, Ashley," the remote, Hap Johnson, was saying. "I'm here at the county morgue, where early this morning deputy coroner Earl Frakes was the victim of a grisly murder-"

Ukiah felt the desperate need to escape the television. "Good night, Mom. I'm going to go out to mytree house. Don't wait up for me."

"Okay, honey."

He strolled out to the tree, climbed the battered ladder up to the large platform built in the ma.s.sive limbs. He hadn't been out to it in months. Strange how he used to all but live up here. When Mom Jo first brought him home, he'd hid from punishment up in the branches of the oak. The tree house had been built as a compromise, a place for Mom Jo when she came out to comfort him. He hid up here for days after they brought Cally home from the hospital. His first conversation with Max had taken place here.

He stretched out on the worn boards, still slightly warm from the sun. He was never sure why the tree made him feel so safe. It was something inside him buried too deep to touch. Maybe it was open sky, removed from all the chaos and noise of civilized life.

There was something digging in his side. He reached into his pocket and found the ballpoint pen thing from Schenley Park. He scowled at it. What was this? Was it of any importance at all? Too many mysteries had been dropped on him today. This one he didn't care about. He slipped it into his stash hole for safekeeping, then rolled over onto his back to stare up through the branches at the night sky.

The stars filled the sky; Mars glittered like a bright star. The night insects were deafening, and Ukiah could only think of Haze, her eyes wild, shouting about them. Why had Rennie Shaw said Ukiah was one of them? How could he have anything in common with a man like that? Yet few people in Pittsburgh-in Pennsylvania-recognized Ukiah's name as the name of a place. "Ukiah," they would say, "is that a family name?"

The kitchen screen door squeaked open, banged shut. Minutes later Mom Jo came up the ladder.

She paused on the top rung to peer over the edge at him.

"You mind company?"

Ukiah patted the board beside him, and she climbed up the rest of the way.

"Mars is bright tonight." He pointed out the planet.

She nodded, her chin eclipsing the constellation Ca.s.siopeia from his sight as she did. "Lara can't take her eyes off the newscast." She suddenly pointed off to the far eastern horizon. "Shooting star, make a wish."

I want to know who I am. The sudden, clear desire went through him as painfully as the sword cut. He shuddered from the thrust, and Mom Jo reached out to smooth his hair.

"You okay?"

"Mom, tell me again about how you found me."

She sat silent in the darkness, only her scent marking her as his mom. What had his real mother been like? "I was a grad student." She started at the same point she always did. "A wolf pack had been sighted in Oregon's Umatilla National Park, the first time in almost sixty years. I jumped at the chance to do my thesis work on them. When I arrived, I discovered their situation was desperate. It had been a hard winter. The park's elk herds were overcrowded and starving. Due to the deep snow, snowmobile trails proved to be the easiest paths for the elk to follow. The trails lead down into cattle and sheep country.

Where the elk went, the wolves followed."

The familiar tale was normally comforting in its cadences. This time he waited impatiently for new information, something to shed light on who he was.

"The Oregon wildlife department was using humane cages to try to capture straying wolves and relocate them. My job was to monitor the cages, checking each day to see if any wolves had been captured. One day I went and found a boy inside the cage, growling with wild eyes and chewing on the bait like he hadn't eaten in weeks-"

"No," he interrupted her. "Not the way you usually do. Tell me as an adult.""What do you mean?"

He shrugged. "I know you don't trust the government, but why didn't you tell someone that you found me? Didn't you wonder if someone was looking for me?"

She thought about that, stroking his hair. "Well, I guess, I didn't tell anyone because I was young and arrogant. I never questioned that I could civilize you, that me adopting you was the best thing for you, and that I could give you everything you would ever need. Part of it was, back then, it wasn't possible for Lara and me to have our own children, and it was unlikely that the state would let two women adopt. Deny something to someone, and that becomes their focus. We wanted a child so much-"

She laughed and hugged him tight. "My Mowgli," she whispered, rocking him. "At first I figured that if someone was careless enough to lose you, then I deserved to keep you as your finder. But then we had Cally. Raising an infant changes you. You see things so differently. I started to have nightmares that we went camping and we would wake up in the middle of the night and Cally would be gone."

She had never told him this before. He held silent beside her, afraid to talk, to break the confession.

"I knew that I would never, ever stop looking for Cally if I lost her, not to the day I died. I realized then your mother and father might still be looking for you, never giving up hope. So I hired a private detective."

A memory clicked into the framework of her story. The Cherokee pulling up to the house for the first time. Max, then a mysterious, tall, lean stranger, getting out and scanning the front yard with new eyes.

That long summer evening, sitting in the tree house with Max, answering one odd question after another.

Have you ever lived in another house? Do you remember eating cookies when you were little? When you were little, did you watch television? "You hired Max."

She laughed softly. "Yeah, Bennett Detective Agency. I picked Max because of his yellow page ad. It said 'Specializing in Missing Persons.' Odd how little decisions become so important later on."

He recalled those first meetings with Max. Max had tried every angle to dredge up information.

Ukiah only remembered then what he remembered now-the endless seasons of running with the wolves.

Any previous time he had ever spent with humans, however long or short, was gone.

"Did he go to Oregon?" Even as Ukiah asked, he knew Max would have gone. Max loved to dig until he found the hidden truth. He would have searched missing-persons databases, using age progression/ regression photos with pattern matching algorithms. When electronic means failed, Max would have visited every police station in Oregon, reviewed old regional newspapers, and talked to every local who would chat. He might have even hacked spy satellites and searched the park itself from orbit-looking for what, only G.o.d knew. "Did he find anything?"

"No." She breathed, as if she knew how much he wanted her to say yes. "No one ever reported a child matching your description missing in the United States or Canada."

Why wouldn't his parents make a report? It occurred to him that perhaps they were dead. A scenario unfolded in his mind. A car accident on a deserted road. The parents killed instantly. A young child-a toddler? an older child with a head wound?-wanders off. When the car was found with the dead parents, would anyone realize that a child was missing?

It was too horrible to bear. Things like that don't happen. But he knew they did. It had happened to Max, who came home from a business trip to find his new house mysteriously empty, his beloved beautiful wife gone forever, her body not found until months later.

He hugged Mom Jo tight, trying to drive away the nightmarish thoughts.

Mom Jo patted his back. "It doesn't matter, though. It only means that you're mine forever. I'll never have to give you up to someone else. At least, till you get married."

As usual, Max was slightly late for breakfast as he spent half an hour in the guest room makingphone calls on his wireless phone. He came down the steps as he finished up the last call.

"We'll be by later to pick it up. Bye."

"My bike's done?" Ukiah guessed.

"Yeah."

"Pancakes, Max?" Mom Lara asked, flipping the last ones off the griddle.

"Yes, thank you." Max settled down into one of the kitchen chairs as Mom Lara set a stack of pancakes before him. "You're going to have to teach Ukiah how to cook like this, Lara. Currently his idea of cooking is popping frozen waffles into a toaster."

"He'll learn." She collected Cally's empty plate. "Cally, go wash your hands and get your shoes on.

When Jo and I first moved out of the dorms, I needed a cookbook to boil eggs. Come on, Cally, we're running late."

"I'll get the dishes, Mom," Ukiah volunteered as he finished his pancakes.

"Thanks, love." She kissed his cheek as she s.n.a.t.c.hed up car keys and a stack of books. "I should have never stayed up to watch the landing. Remember to lock the door."

She and Cally swept out of the house a minute later. As Ukiah washed the breakfast dishes, Max and he discussed their various open cases. He had been taking a semivacation while the breakdown of his motorcycle stranded him at the farm, doing odd jobs about the house as he made dozens of time-consuming long-distance calls to cross-check background information. He had noted all his findings on his PDA and uploaded them to Max.

Max had been working with their two part-time detectives, Chino and Janey, on a surveillance case. He had E-mailed Ukiah several updates. It was, however, the first time they could compare insights and gut feelings. Max finished up his stack of pancakes and brought his plate up to the sink.

Ukiah washed it quickly, set it with the other plates in the dish rack, and dried his hands on a tea towel. "So what's up for this morning? We pick up my bike first, or what?"

Max led the way outside, pausing on the wide porch. "I realized last night that it's been almost a month since our last target practice. I think we should drive to the back forty and get in a solid hour."

Ukiah grimaced, locking the front door behind him. "I hate guns."

"The .45 saved your life yesterday." Max cuffed him as they walked to the Hummer. "You let your skills go rusty, and next time you won't be so lucky."

Ukiah reluctantly nodded. The kick of the .45, the muzzle flash lighting the woman's eyes, the report mixing with her scream flashed through his mind. When did I start to remember that?

While Max drove to the back of the farm to the target range, Ukiah reviewed the day before. All his memories were complete now. Some were cloudy, as if seen through fogged gla.s.s, but intact. Why couldn't he remember them when he was in the hospital and could now?

It was a short bouncy trip to the target range, a long flat field on the very edge of the farm. At the one end of the field, the land dipped to the creek bottom and the neighbor's property line. At the other, the hundred-year flood plain line rose sharply. It was into that deep soft bank that they shot.

Max wheeled the Hummer around so the tailgate faced the bank and killed the engine. In the cool morning sun, nothing stirred in the field except occasional gra.s.shoppers. "Quiet."

"Me or the field?"

Max considered, swinging open his door. "Both."

"Max, did you ever kill anyone?"Max gave him a surprised look. "I killed that Crazy Joe Gary."

"Oh yeah."

No wonder Max looked surprised. Joe Gary was the whole reason they started to target shoot. It had been a b.l.o.o.d.y turning point in Ukiah's life-only three years ago, and yet seemingly in some other lifetime. Before that case, Max had worked mostly solo, only showing up to fetch Ukiah for rare tracking cases. There had been no talk of "partner" and never even a question of Ukiah carrying a gun. Then Max had taken him out to find a hiker lost on the Appalachian Trail. It was a difficult tracking job on rock, gravel, and hard-beaten dirt paths with hundreds of other searchers confusing the trail.

They were twenty miles from nowhere when Ukiah discovered a clear set of tracks and the truth of the woman's disappearance. She had been force-marched by a man to his secluded cabin. They found out later that the man was Crazy Joe Gary. That he was built like a bear. That he had more guns than Max. And much later, that he had two dozen dismembered skeletons buried about his cabin, and one cut-up Boy Scout in his refrigerator.

But they didn't know all of that.

When they found the cabin, they called the local police on Max's wireless phone. A woman on the other end politely explained that all her officers were out on foot searching for the missing hiker, and it could take hours to get someone to them. It was then that the screaming started, horrible terrorized screams. Max decided to storm the cabin, counting on surprise and a drawn gun to win the day. Being Max, he also set up a backup plan. He gave Ukiah his spare .45 and told him to stay outside unless things went bad.

Maybe if they had known more about Crazy Joe Gary, they would have waited for the police backup. Maybe not. As it was, Max crashed into the cabin barely in time to stop Gary from bashing the woman's head open as the first step in a much practiced slaughtering ritual. Gary had stood, sledgehammer in hand, slack-jawed at Max's entrance. His shock lasted for only five heartbeats, then he exploded into action.

A minute later, Ukiah stood over the half-conscious Max, eye to eye with Joe Gary's rifle. He patiently explained that he could pull his trigger just as fast as Joe Gary, that the .45's slug would kill Gary just as quick as the rifle's bullet would kill Ukiah, and that they would simply both be dead.

Unfortunately, crazed killers don't have the strongest grasp on logic, and Ukiah had never fired a gun before. From the b.l.o.o.d.y desperate gunfight that followed, two things were born: Ukiah's hate of guns and Max's insistence that the boy learn how to handle them. Yesterday, though, had been the first time since Crazy Joe Gary that he actually fired his gun during a case.

Actually, Ukiah reflected, a third thing had come out of that gunfight. Without lead up or fanfare, Max asked him if he wanted to be a full-time private detective. Of course he said yes. After his moms also said yes, but before his ident.i.ty was fully established and all his various licenses granted, Max took him on every case, patiently explaining everything that went into being a private detective, and began introducing Ukiah to all as "his partner."

Not that Ukiah remembered everything that happened on that day. There were holes in his memories leading up to the gunfight. Neat bullet holes in his recall. The paramedics had said memory loss was common for accident victims. Those missing memories stayed lost. Why had the memories of Janet Haze come back?

Max coded open the Hummer's gun safe. "You know, Crazy Joe Gary, he was a lot like that girl. A killer on the loose and your life on the line. I know it feels bad knowing that you killed someone. I've been there, it's horrible."

"Gary was different." Ukiah hadn't been bothered by Gary's death-but was it because he hadn't fired the killing bullet? No, that wasn't it. Maybe because instead of just his life against the killer's, it had been Max's life and the woman's versus the killer's. Had it become n.o.ble then, a selfless act to be honored?

He realized that Max was sitting on the Hummer's tailgate, watching him like he was worried abouthim. It wasn't something Max did often, and it made Ukiah uncomfortable.

"Joe Gary was different than this girl," Ukiah repeated, and struggled to put into words the gut feelings he had. "He was a monster long before we showed up. If you hadn't killed him-" Suddenly the words seemed like a lie. To be fair, Ukiah should own the bullets he had put into Joe Gary. "If we hadn't killed him, he would still be killing people. But this woman, she seemed so-lost. I don't think she had ever hurt anyone before in her life. There were teddy bears in her room, Max. She seemed furious that she had killed those people, and she seemed to think someone had done something to her to make her kill them.

What if someone had done something to her-gave her some drug? What if I hadn't killed her, and the drug wore off and she went back to being just a woman and not a monster?"

"What if, what if, what if." Max shook his head. "The 'what ifs' will drive you insane if you let them.

Much as you hate the idea, Ukiah, you only had one choice: if you wanted to live, you had to kill her. You had a split second to make the decision at gut level, and you wanted to live. There is nothing horrible about wanting to live, Ukiah. There is no creature on this earth, on that deep gut level, that doesn't want to live."

"I could have wounded her."

Max scowled at him. "What did I tell you about using a gun?"

"If you are going to shoot, shoot to kill. Otherwise you'll miss your target completely and you might as well not have pulled the trigger."

"I know you can remember that-and the entire Pittsburgh yellow pages, if you wanted. But it can't be memorized words, it has to be embodied actions. You did the right thing with that girl. You fired your weapon and hit twice in the torso. But you need to do it next time, and the time after that, or you'll be dead.

You're not a good enough shot to wound someone in a battle like that, kid. Maybe in a few years, but not now."

"I don't want there to be a next time!"

"Kid, we're hired to help people. We find lost people. We find kidnapped people. We save people from tight jams. But sometimes, like with Crazy Joe Gary, we have to fight the bad guys before we can save our client."

Max's phone rang and he flipped it open. "Max Bennett." Max's face grew dark as he listened to the person on the phone. "Agent Zheng, we've already told you all we know on this case. If you don't mind, we don't want anything further to do with it." He stood and started to pace. "If you missed the news flash, my partner was almost killed by Doctor Haze. What? No. That won't be necessary. We'll meet you at our office in an hour."

Max growled and looked like he wanted to pitch the PCS out into the field. "d.a.m.n b.i.t.c.h. Well, get in the truck, the FBI wants us in town to 'discuss the case' now."

"What wasn't necessary?"

"Agent Zheng said if we didn't want to come to town, she'll drive out to wherever we were."

"I don't want the FBI out here. Mom Jo would freak."

"That's why we're meeting her in town."

CHAPTER FIVE.