Willie stood in the kitchen in a frilly apron and his favorite boxers saying “Kiss My Grits” across the back. Hooker had groaned so many times, he almost didn’t see them anymore. Finally, he just stopped trying to retrain the seventy-year-old.
Hooker smelled bacon. Either Willie was feeling energetic, or Hank was coming over tonight. Either way, Hooker was just happy for him. He walked up beside him and put his arm around the naked shoulder and squeezed. He leaned over and kissed the man on the ear. The reaction was quick and predictable. Willie had the most sensitive ears. It sent shivers all the way to his toes, and he squirmed cross-legged.
“Gosh damn it, Hooker. I’ve told you a hundred times my neck is not fat. It makes me feel perverted or something.” He slowly squirmed, shaking his legs back into working order and went back to his cooking.
Hooker walked away with his mug of coffee. “I’ve told you a hundred times not to wear them boxers... but I know you won’t change, either.”
Hooker could hear Willie doing something, but he wasn’t going to turn around and give the man any satisfaction. He pulled the chair out and sat.
The thrown boxers landed on the table in front of Hooker. Chuckling, he took the fork from Willie’s place and fished up the boxers and tossed them to the large trash can. “Besides, Willie, you already are a pervert. Just ask Hanky Panky... it’s your most endearing quality.”
“You, sir, are just prejudiced.”
“Well, it isn’t from your choice in wardrobe.” Hooker looked up at the ceiling. “Although, there was a lavender dress you were sporting—that was a nice one. It brought out the highlights in your hair.”
The man grumped as he turned the bacon. “It burned up Friday.”
Hooker stopped and at the risk of going blind, turned around. “You sure burn up a lot of clothes.”
Willie didn’t turn around. “It doesn’t matter. The dresses are only fifty cents or less at Goodwill.”
“Why don’t you buy some bib overalls like Maddie has?”
Willie served the eggs and bacon and came to the table. Thankfully, the apron was long enough. “They want two bucks for pants and three for bibs. I can buy new jeans for ten.”
Hooker just nodded. He knew the rest of the story. “And they would burn up just as fast.”
Willie reached out and rumpled Hooker’s hair. “Oh, how cute. The boy has been paying attention.”
Hooker dodged out of the head petting. “Speaking of Maddie, what time did she leave last night?”
“Who said I left?”
Hooker looked over at the usually prim and proper librarian. Her hair was a wild mess with only an attempt at control. The T-shirt only barely covered whether she was commando or not. It did nothing to hide the ropey mass of scars where the surgeons had put her legs back into some kind of working order.
The summer she had turned twenty-one, she had attempted to set a land speed record. If she had gotten to the end, she would have been the first woman to drive a motorcycle faster than one hundred and forty.
Halfway across the salt flats, the front end developed a high-speed shimmy, and she stepped off the machine as it passed down through the hundred and sixty mark. She lay crumpled in the desert heat for over six minutes until an ambulance could drive its top speed of eighty to retrieve her shattered body from the sand.
Willie had spent all of his leave time for the next three years at her side. She relearned to walk using his arm as much as a cane.
Many years later, the two had taken the Granny car to Monterey for some seafood and too much alcohol. The corner was the same corner Willie had taken many times before, but it had never been full of a deer and two fawns before. The result was Willie’s retirement from the Navy and a year of Maddie learning to walk again.
Maddie petted and then kissed Hooker’s head and then Willie’s as she rounded the table to get herself some coffee. Sitting, she folded her hands and bowed her head. Hooker was used to her version of saying grace. “Smells good. Let us prey successfully. Amen.” She raised her head and stuck out her hand in time to take the bowl of scrambled eggs from Willie. “Thank you, William.”
As they ate in silence, and Hooker could feel the eyes on him. He started running his assignments over in his head. One popped up. His report on the Fall of Cromwell and the following reformation of England was a week or so past due. He looked up at Maddie in horror.
His look was enough for her. She nodded. “You have had extenuating circumstances. Please have ten pages typed and in my hands by the end of next week.”
Hooker didn’t know if he was lucky to have an ongoing education about seemingly random things, or whether Maddie was just a frustrated schoolteacher with a sadistic streak. But one thing he did know—he was a better person for her guiding hand, along with Willie as Sergeant of Arms, and Manny as Mentor.
Hooker took a bite of the scrambled eggs. “Oh, my, what did you put in these?” His eyes were wide open, as he reached for the glass of water.
“Some of Hanky’s cardamom and chili powder—gives it a nice little kick, doesn’t it?”
“Little? That’s like calling Mae a midget racer.” He drained the glass and got up for more. “Oh, wow. Where has Hank been all our lives? Who needs coffee when you can wake up to this?”
The man sat in his frilly apron as delicately as a debutant. He fluttered his eyes. “Exactly what I thought, too.” He chewed another bite, and then drained his glass and stuck it in Hooker’s stomach before he could sit. “Maybe not so heavy next time.”
The two had tears in their eyes, but in a household where one wears a dress because it’s a quarter the price of a used pair of jeans... food was never thrown out.
Maddie barely even blinked. Her tolerance for hot food ran in the same circle as her taste for the high-octane moonshine for which her family was known. She ignored the two men as she reached over and grabbed the tops of the salt and pepper shaker in one hand. She placed the bottoms in her other hand and upturned them over her eggs.
The day was bright and sunny, and the convertible rolled down the freeway as if it owned the world. The two men relaxed, knowing all eyes were on them and the car. Hooker guessed the reason Willie loved the old DeSoto Firedome so much was for moments like these. Every time they rode around on a day like this, Hooker allowed himself to slip back to those feelings as an almost fourteen-year-old kid, and the day he discovered someone genuinely cared about him as a human being. It took several years for Hooker to understand why Willie would take on a young boy he knew he couldn’t touch, take him into his house, and raise him as his own. Hooker was the heir and validation for all the man had stood for and had given so freely to his country and to Hooker. All he asked in return was Hooker be the best man he could be.
The Congressional Medal of Honor Hooker had framed for his uncle hung by the door leading to the large garage. It reminded both men who they were.
The large chrome grill nosed into the parking lot of the hospital. The big V8 engine shuddered into silence. Willie sat a moment. He looked through the front glass at the large concrete and glass structure. There was nothing graceful about the building. It was as pretty as a cast on a leg. They both had got the job done. “I swear. Between you, Squirt, and Manny, this place is starting to feel like a second home.”
Hooker gazed west along the building to the Emergency Entrance. “I know a certain blonde who would tell you it’s my first home.”
Willie studied Hooker’s head where the hair didn’t quite hide the scars on his scalp. “She might be right.”
The two men were laughing as they turned in the door to Manny’s room. The curtain between Manny and the other bed was pulled. They could see a foot under the blanket. They sobered up and moved beside Manny’s bed.
“I see they moved Stella out and gave you a new roommate.” Hooker nudged with his chin at the dividing curtain. “Was she trying to run the hospital from here?”
Manny smiled and shrugged.
Willie plowed in as he sat on the edge of the bed. “Well, this brings back memories—you in a hospital bed, unable to kick Hooker’s butt, and unable to talk. They did find a heart this time... didn’t they?”
The dividing curtain slid open from the wall end. Stella sat in the chair, and Squirt was sleeping in the bed. The traction on his right arm and left leg kept the young man looking like he was half tossed into the air. The look on Stella’s face was anything but peaceful.
Hooker laughed. “Hello, sweetheart.”
Willie smiled his canary smile.
“Not funny.”
Hooker confided. “We saw Winnie on the way up. She gave us the heads up you were consolidating your chicks into one place.” Hooker nodded his chin toward the kid.
“Fine.” She relaxed. The mother hen was where she was the most comfortable. “They brought him up about an hour ago. He will probably be out until after dinner. They had to go back in and scrape the femur. There was a scar ball starting to stop the blood flow. He’s better now, but he’ll be on morphine for about a week. And just so you know—you are not allowed to make him laugh or do anything to make him cough. It is very painful and can cause him to pass out.”
“But he is finished with all the surgeries?”
“They had hoped. But they will be watching to see if he is prone to growing large scar balls.”
“Well, we already know he has the other kind in cast iron and huge.” Hooker owed his life to the kid knocking him out of the way, taking the two loads of dimes from the shotgun and still killing the killer—all while diving out of the cab of Mae West eight feet in the air. Stella didn’t reprimand Hooker for his crude reference. She simply patted the boy’s hand.
“So what did Dolly say?”
Hooker looked down at the detective. “Oh, so now you can talk?”
The man chuckled. “You didn’t expect me to spoil Stella’s fun, did you?”
“Naw, fair is fair.”
“And... did she know anyone?”
“She called an old professor of hers who used to teach at Stanford.”
Stella’s forehead worked into a cluster of wrinkles. “Was the guy something like White or Whites?”
“Doctor White.”
“Right. Doc White. He taught Indian stuff up there. I had never seen a man wear so much silver and turquoise jewelry before in my life.”
Hooker cleared his face and returned to Manny. “Where to start...” His eyes rolled up into his head as they closed. He washed his face with his hands, trying to remember it all.
“We were right about it maybe being a native Indian thing. He pretty much called it right off. It was a shaman thing going on. As we talked, we narrowed down the tribe, so we could get a handle on the kind of ritual or something.
“He asked about a snake line next to a straight line, and I remember seeing those but with an arrow in them... when I told him, he about had a heart attack. He pushed us off and called another guy who is serving time over in Carson City area but has a direct phone line.”
Manny smiled. “Charles Pells. He killed his wife and her mother before hunting down five of her lovers and dismembering them. The guy is brilliant and poses no threat to anyone else, so he’s given free rein to do research for police departments all over the world.”
“Right. So anyway, this guy has been working on a series of kills stretching up and down the Central Valley and over many years. All of it has the raven bone and hair of the victim bound with their skin from their sex organs.
“So Willie and I went over and had a chat with him.”
“You saw him?”
Hooker nodded. “The guy had some serious insight into our killer. It was as if the Cowboy was his son or something. There was some serious psycho stuff going on there, but we got our information and got out before the guy blew a mental gasket or something.”
Manny thought for a minute. Finally, he looked at Hooker.
“So, now what?”
“So, tonight I go meet up with The Mouse and see what she has on her mind.”
“Where?”
“The old mill.”
“Think she’ll be alone?”
“Pretty much. It’s why we’ve used the mill before. It’s when she wants to talk to me without the regalia of her contingent group.”
“No backup. Wouldn’t it be dangerous for her?”
“She knows I’m not a threat to her. But it gives her standing that she would one, meet me alone, and two, do so at the old mill.”
Willie’s forehead crumpled. “What makes this mill so bad news?”
Manny turned. “It was actually part of an old meatpacking plant. They also packed some fish there back in the olden days, but it is the killing floor that has them freaked.”
Willie frowned even harder. Hooker picked it up. “They don’t see themselves as humans. They are in touch with the animal world, so the slaughterhouse was used to kill what they think of as their kind.”
“So if they take on the names of animals, and they think of themselves as animals, could this raven thing be connected?”
“It’s possible.”
Manny looked at Hooker. “You didn’t tell Paul about The Mouse, did you?”
Hooker stood silent. Finally, he shook his head. “I didn’t see any reason to get her involved before I heard her out about what she really knew, or if she was involved.”
“So we know The Mouse told us when and who, just not where, and you think he doesn’t think she’s involved?”
“I don’t know. But she’s my sister.”
“Okay, okay. So we wait until moonset.” Willie sighed.
“No. I go alone.”