Sixteen

I walked back out into the car park trembling, almost swooning as the peak of the day’s high-bake-setting hit me. I had got this seriously wrong. I had watched too many Inspectors—between Morse, Frost, and Lewis—and not nearly enough of The Wire. I had genuinely thought she didn’t mind me poking my nose in and I had even wondered if maybe we might be friends one day, Plainclothes Mike and me. I remembered Roger’s knee-jerk plea to leave the cops out of it and his flat look when I asked him why. I didn’t know if he’d been picked on for being gay or picked on for being black, but I felt stupid for not guessing, at least, that he’d been picked on.

I chirped open the Jeep then jumped at a voice behind me.

“Is that your vehicle, madam?” It was Soft Cop.

“It belongs to a friend of mine.”

“And do you have written permission confirming your right to be in possession of it?”

“Aw, come on!” I said. “Did Mike send you out here to hassle me?”

“If you don’t have proof that you’re in legal possession, you’d better leave it here until you get some.”

“It’s bloody boiling!” I said. “I’ll get sunstroke walking in this and I’ll sue the city.”

The cop looked up at the sky. “Pfft,” he said. “It ain’t even close to hot yet. Mid-nineties. Start moving. No loitering on police property.”

I was beginning to get how this worked. No one—not Noleen, not Della, not this guy—would entertain the notion that it was even warm until it hit a hundred. And they were all as wrong as they were crazy. It was melting. Even in the shade under the tunnel, I sweltered.

All of a sudden, I wished with all my heart I was in Dundee, even with the drizzle and the roadworks and the only thing stopping the kebab wrappers blowing along the streets on a Sunday morning being the puddles of vomit. I looked at the ground here in the darkest part of the tunnel. No litter, no puke, not even a dogshit. It wasn’t natural. Then a car coming up behind me slowed and I heard the window going down. My gloom deepened. A kerb crawler. Perfect.

“You look really unhappy!” came a familiar voice, and I turned to see Father Adam hanging out of the driver’s window of a Mini Cooper and grinning at me. Grinning for all the world as if he was really what he dressed as: a laidback, anything goes, California priest who would surf to work if we lived near the beach.

“You’d know all about that,” I said. “Sorry to snatch away your chance to ruin my day. It’s ruined already.”

“Huh?” he said. “Can I give you a ride?”

“Much as I’d love to sit beside you and tell you what I think of you on a long road-trip,” I said, “I’m just up here.” I pointed to the motel. “So it’s not worth fiddling with the seatbelt.”

“Huh?” he said. He checked in his rearview mirror, such a conscientious driver, not wanting to be holding anyone up. But no one was coming. Where was he going anyway? There was nothing this way except the motel and the Skweeky Kleen, a self-storage facility, and then a back road to the next one-horse town. “Lexy, have I done something to upset you?”

“Ha!” I said. “No, but you’ve done something to piss me off and make me despise you and everything you stand for.” Partly I just wanted to enjoy talking to someone who wouldn’t threaten me. Mike had seriously given me the willies. But partly it was true. “Visalia needs love and support and a listening ear right now. She doesn’t need you standing there with your rolling pin and she doesn’t need saints and popes giving her what for.”

“What are you talking about?”

I rubbed my eyes with my knuckles. This felt like the fiftieth conversation today where I couldn’t make myself understood or understand what was being said to me and it was exhausting.

“She blew your cover, Holy Boy.”

“What the hell does that mean?” he said, jerking his chin into his neck and staring at me.

“Visalia told me you won’t give her communion because she won’t agree to a church funeral.”

“What?” said Father Adam. “She … what? Oh my God! I knew she wasn’t listening. I think she was drunk.”

“Two daiquiris,” I said, “but she hadn’t slept well.” I took a deep breath and tried to sound a bit more friendly. “What really happened then?”

“I offered confession and communion. She refused. It’s quite common to be angry at God when something terrible happens. And of course we’re having Clovis’s celebration of life in the church. Of course we are. No internment, because of his last wishes. Have you heard what he wanted done with his bodily remains?”

“I heard what’s being done,” I said. “Visalia thinks you think she’s doing it against Clovis’s wishes and thereby disobeying her husband. Which, as you know, is a big fat sin.”

“What?” said Father Adam, again. He put the car in neutral and pulled on the handbrake. Then he just sat there gaping up at me.

“And it’s not as if he’s here to see it.”

“Although I would say he’s looking down with interest,” Father Adam said. “But can you back up a bit there to the sin of disobedience?”

“Was she not supposed to tell me? Was it hush-hush? Understandable.”

“Hush-hush?” he said. “It’s bullshit.”

“Vi said two saints and two popes—”

“Oh, yeah, yeah, they sure did. Peter and Paul. Big fans of docile wives. And slavery. Every family has a couple of crazy uncles.”

I laughed out loud. I couldn’t wait to tell Visalia how firm a grasp she’d taken of the wrong end of this stick. I gave Father Adam my best smile, hoping he’d forgive me for calling him names and telling him I despised him.

Then I kind of ruined it, mocking his beliefs. “So,” I said, “you really believe Clovis is up there watching all this?”

“I really do. Fluffy cloud, harp, the whole enchilada.” Then he laughed at me and I let him.

“Even if he died in a state of … whatever it is? Because of almost running off with Barb?”

“God is love,” he said.

“’Kay,” was all I could dredge up in answer.

Father Adam leaned out of the open window and twisted until he was facing the roof of the tunnel. “Who killed you, Clovis?” he yelled, his voice booming in the echo chamber.

I glanced up at the dome of cobwebby brickwork above my head.

“Made ya look!” said Father Adam. Then, seeing a car coming up behind him, he pulled his head in and drove away waving. I noticed that his licence plate was JESUS FTW and I was grinning as I waved back.

The Mini Cooper and the car coming up behind it both turned in at the Last Ditch. Father Adam stopped in front of the launderette and hauled a huge sack of laundry out of the little boot. The other one, a Land Rover, stopped at the fifteen-minute space at reception and a tall woman jumped down. She didn’t look like the Last Ditch’s typical client: too prosperous to be staying here by choice and not knackered enough to be stopping because she couldn’t find the strength to drive another yard. She gave me a friendly nod and threw open the back doors. When I got closer I saw the refrigerated cases and the selection of butterfly nets and binoculars, so I took a guess.

“Are you Cindy Slagle?”

“At your service,” she said.

“Is there more trouble?” I said. “I saw the … ”

“Anoplura,” she said. “It was quite remarkable, wasn’t it?”

“It was disgusting,” I said. “Are they really all dead?”

“Of course they’re dead,” she said. “They were parasites with no host.”

I knew it was irrational, but I started to itch. I willed myself not to scratch my head but I failed. At least it made Professor Slagle happy, laughing at me.

“Do they carry disease?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, which wasn’t a great start. “Of course, there’s pediculosis, but it’s nothing to worry about.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So, it’s none of my business of course, but if the nanopurples—”

“Anoplura.”

“Yes. If they’re dead, why are you back?”

“I put one in Plexiglas as a souvenir,” she said, opening one of the cases in the back of the Land Rover and drawing out a little bubble of clear plastic. She held it on the palm of her hand as if it was a golden goose egg.

“Ahhh,” I said. “You might not want to be waving that around here.” But just then I saw Kathi coming out of the Skweeky Kleen to say goodbye to Father Adam. “Well, actually, if you give it to Noleen right now you’ll be okay.”

I even kind of wanted to follow her in and see what Noleen made of the gift, even just see what Noleen had selected as a t-shirt message that day, but I was exhausted and hungry and I’d sweated through my posh undies and t-shirt walking from the cop shop, so I left them to it and climbed the stairs to the walkway and my room, not touching the metal rail. I was half sure I could see it pulsing with heat.

Surprisingly, there was no sign of Todd and no evidence that he’d been in my room. I made for the bathroom, already stripping my damp t-shirt off. The door seemed sticky and in the extra two seconds it took me to shove it open I had time to think he’s been in and put a fluffy carpet down then that sounds like duct tape letting go then why would my door be duct-taped shut from the inside then what’s that funny noise. Then a pall of stink so thick and strong that I thought I could see it (it was yellow) rolled over me and a cloud of enormous oily-green insects rose like a tiny tornado from where they had been feasting, in my bath, on a raccoon, deader than any roadkill I had ever seen or smelled or dreamed of after French cheese for supper.

I took a breath to scream and inhaled one of them. Coughing and gagging, I reeled out and across the room. I pelted along the walkway and down the stairs. The Land Rover was still there. I burst into reception, hacking and whimpering, and shot straight through to the office, where Cindy and Noleen were sitting with cans of Coke.

“CRGHK!” I said.

Noleen leapt to her feet, got into position behind me, and wrapped her arms around my bare midriff. It was only then I twigged I was running about in my bra. Noleen jerked her elbows in and then, like the pro she was, Professor Slagle caught the insect in her baseball cap.

“Oh, Noleen!” I said and threw my arms round her.

“Chew your food,” Noleen said, patting me once on the back and then extricating herself firmly.

“Hmm,” said Professor Slagle. “Protophormia terranovae. Rather pedestrian after last night’s adventures.”

“Pedestrian?!” I said. “Are you kidding me?”

“It’s a Northern Blowfly,” Professor Slagle said. “Or bluebottle.”

“Come with me,” I said to her. “You too, Noleen, please.”

I was hurrying because I thought, now the door was open, the bluebottles would soon be gone. I hadn’t reckoned on the attractions of a very dead raccoon, bloated and stinking, though. When we got back to the bathroom, most of them were still there, resettled on their treat, so that the grey fur rippled and hummed with life as if a breeze was blowing through it.

Noleen dropped down onto the closed toilet lid. Her t-shirt today read Loan me a damn and I’ll give it but it was lying now. She gave a damn about this.

“Entomologically speaking,” said Professor Slagle, “this is of no interest, compared with the Anoplura, but in other respects, it raises questions.”

“Questions like how did a dead raccoon get into my bathroom and close the window behind itself and tape round the door?” I said.

The prof stepped up onto the rim of the bath and opened the small window there.

“Cindy,” said Noleen, with a break in her voice, “I swear to God, if you slip and put your foot through that critter, I will kill you. Once I’ve stopped throwing up, I will kill you with these two clammy hands.”

“It must have been someone pretty small and agile,” Cindy was saying. “I wouldn’t fit through here, although I could easily get up the tree. I do a lot of tree climbing on my collecting trips. Entomology is pretty much a licensed lifelong childhood in a way.”

“That’s great,” I said. “But how could someone climb the tree and get in the window carrying a dead raccoon?”

Cindy looked over her shoulder at me with a look doing its best to tell me I was an idiot.

“You’re an idiot,” Noleen said.

I opened my mouth to disagree but just then I heard footsteps on the metal stairs and went to shut and lock my door.

“Thank you,” Noleen said when I was back again.

“I am an idiot, though, aren’t I?” I said. “He would have brought the raccoon in through the door, sealed this door, and then left through the window.”

“Probably releasing the Protophormiae just before closing it,” Cindy said.

“Do you have security cameras?” I asked Noleen. She nodded. “So how about you and I sit and look through the tapes?” I said. I left a big outrageous pause.

“I need to clean all this up first,” said Noleen, leaving another one.

“Actually,” said Cindy, “if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to take this with me.”

“The raccoon?”

“And the Protophormiae. Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got a student doing a thesis on larval distrib—”

“Be my guest,” said Noleen. “Can you move it without anyone knowing what it is?”

“It’ll be in something as innocent as a cooler,” Cindy said. “It’ll look like a picnic.”

Noleen gave her a sickly grin, and I managed one too.

“It’s okay,” Cindy said. “I know I should be grossed out and it grosses you out that I’m not, but it’s just like being an eye surgeon, you know?”

It was a good analogy, but when your stomach’s turning somersaults from putrefying raccoons and bluebottles laying eggs on them, thinking about surgeons slicing eyeballs doesn’t really help much. We left her to it, stopping to pick up a t-shirt, and went back to the office.

Noleen’s face was as grey as her hair when she flumped down into her Barcalounger.

“What’s going on, Lexy?” she said. “Is it Todd? You understand more about these things than I do. What do you think? Is it Todd and Kathi?”

“Kathi?”

“If we look at this video, will we see one of them going into your room with a garbage sack?”

“I have no idea what would make you think that,” I said.

“It doesn’t seem too big a leap to me,” said Noleen.

I knew where she was pointing. Pathological cleanliness and cleptoparasitosis seem so disordered to anyone who doesn’t suffer from them. Why not sprinkle a little Münchausen dust on top and have Kathi douse a bathroom in mysterious ketchup to prove that life is crazy and the world is filthy, like she’s been saying? Why not have Todd lure a thousand bluebottles with a dead raccoon, and a million Anoplura with whatever nasty little treat they’d been lured by? I took a deep breath and prepared to explain why it couldn’t happen in a hundred years and I was personally willing to guarantee that it hadn’t happened here.

“I know you argue about dirt,” I said. “And I know Todd and Roger argue about bugs, and it must seem as if they’ve won a round with all this happening. But the thing is, their problems are their problems—all the time, twenty-four-seven, whether you’re arguing or not, whether you’re there or not. They could no more do those things than you could … what? I know you don’t have a pathology like Kathi, but there must be something you hate. Cotton wool, nails on blackboards?”

“Worms,” said Noleen. “Bait worms. I used to have to bait my daddy’s fishing line, sitting in that little boat, heaving up and down on the swell, sick as a dog. It’s one of the house rules here: no bait in the rooms. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t have you pegged as the fishing sort, but if I see a man in the right kind of hat, I tell him straight away.”

“Okay,” I said, “so worms. You wouldn’t go and get a bucket of them just to win an argument, would you?”

Noleen shuddered. “I need a drink,” she said. She leaned over sideways and got a bottle of Jack Daniels and two glasses out of a low drawer. She held it up to me enquiringly.

Now I shuddered. “Whisky is my worms,” I said. “First time I ever got drunk was on whisky at a school disco. I’ll never forget it and I’ve never drunk it again. I’d die for a cup of tea, though.”

I did my best with the microwave, Lipton’s, and powdered creamer while Noleen found the file we needed from the security camera.

“Funny how we still say ‘tape’ when it’s not even a disc anymore,” I said, settling down beside her. “Okay, you’re in charge. You’ll know who belongs and who doesn’t.”

God, it was dull. We sat there looking at a grainy picture of a car park, a fence, half a dumpster, and the bottom of a metal stairway. The most excitement was when I left, then when Todd left, then when three sets of tourists left. And that was exactly as exciting as it sounds.

Kathi crossed the frame a few times, once going upstairs wiping the banister rail with her cloth and once coming down, wiping the underneath of the banister rail with a different cloth. Then nothing. A blue jay sat on the dumpster lid for a while but flew off again.

“Aren’t these usually motion-sensitive?” I asked.

“The expensive ones are,” Noleen said. “This just loops. And the loop’s going to run out pretty soon. We’re at lunchtime already.”

We sat, stupefied—her by whisky and me by the truly godawful cup of tea—and kept watching. I started glancing at the little sideyways egg-timer that showed how much tape was left to play. It was getting tight.

“If it runs out, we can always ask around the other rooms,” I said.

Noleen shook her head firmly. “I’m trying to run a business here,” she said. “How would you feel about a place where you were asked if you’d seen strangers running around with bloated animal corpses? Would you book for same time next year?”

“I’ll make something up,” I said. “I’ll say … ” I stared up at the ceiling, hoping for inspiration.

“That you’d ordered take-out and they swore they’d delivered and charged your credit card, so they must have gone to the wrong room?”

“Kind of a big take-out order,” I said. I looked back at the monitor but Noleen was rewinding, the screen a Missoni scramble. “Have you seen something?”

“Watch,” she said grimly.

The grainy car park, fence, half-dumpster, and stair-bottom sat there for a moment or two and then from the right we saw a small figure with a logo on the back of his striped shirt that matched the logo on the front of his baseball cap and the logo on the top one of five pizza boxes he carried. He bustled to the bottom of the stairs and took them two at a time without pausing or raising his head.

“That’s a lot of pizza,” I said.

“That’s five fake pizza boxes with a dead raccoon inside,” said Noleen firmly. “I know every pizza joint in Cuento, and that ain’t any of them.”

“Did you recognise the guy?” I said.

“Sure I did. He’s the guy small enough to fit through the bathroom window and he’s a pro. I recognize that much.”

“How do you know he’s a pro?”

Noleen rewound the tape again and this time, as she let it play, she hunched forward and pointed to the clues. “He knows where the camera is. Look at the angle of his hat! And then when he turns at the bottom of the stairs, he twists his head away. He’s not looking where he’s putting his feet and he’s not looking up at where he’s going. He knows where he’s going, because he scoped it out. He’s done this plenty.” She sat back. “Now let’s wait for him coming back down.”

It was only five minutes later, right at the end of the loop. With his head bowed even lower and the cap pulled down like a Fedora, he came skipping down the stairs and, face turned away, he disappeared from view. And he was still carrying the boxes.

“But they look lighter,” Noleen said. “They look one big-ass decomposing raccoon lighter to me. How ‘bout you?”

“Why didn’t he take the boxes out the window?”

“Huh,” said Noleen. “Would they fit?”

“Oh, right. No. Or not without folding them.”

“And they tell you not to do that at pizza-delivering school, don’t they?”

“Play it again,” I said. “I know we can’t see his face but let’s look at his ears and hands and feet. There must be something somewhere.”

Noleen gave me a look. “You think we’re going to zoom in and see his irises reflected in the shine on the pizza label?” she said. “I couldn’t afford motion sensors, Lexy; this is not high-def.”

“Just humour me,” I said. “I’ll look at the head and you look at the outline. Look at the walk. See if this is anyone you’ve ever seen before.”

“Me?”

“You. Because this is a vendetta, Nolly,” I said. “This is no prank. This is a message. And it’s your motel. Who else are they sending it to?”

“Todd? It’s bugs, isn’t it?”

“Or Kathi?” I said. “Because it’s not the height of hygiene.”

“But if it was Kathi, it would be in the laundromat. And if it was Todd it would be in his room or in his car. Wouldn’t it?”

“How would they get in? Mind you, how did he get in?”

“Like I said, he’s a pro.”

We stared at one another for a bit. And then Noleen smacked her hands together and said we had nothing to lose from trying. She played the footage five more times. I saw that the guy had no visible tattoos, jewelry, piercings, bruises, scars, or unusual brand of cigarette tucked handily behind his ear.

“Well?” I said to Noleen, when she froze the frame for the last time. “What’s your gut reaction?”

“Never seen him before in my life,” Noleen said.

“Describe him in three words.”

“Pizza. Delivery. Guy.”

I sighed. “Time to call the cops,” I said. I didn’t add that I had offended the formerly friendly Detective Mike. I’d fade away in the background and hope that if she didn’t see me, I wouldn’t occur to her.

But Noleen wasn’t having it. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “They would shut us down in a hot minute. And even if they didn’t, the report in the Voyager would do it for them.”

And it was while we were sitting there, clueless, that Kathi suddenly spoke behind us.

“What the hell’s he doing here?” she said. When I spun round she was staring at the monitor screen with angry blots of colour rising up from the open neck of her overall towards her jaw.

“You know this guy?” said Noleen.

Kathi came forward and peered closer at the screen. Then she straightened up and laughed. “Jeez, flashback!” she said. “He looks like someone I used to know. But it’s not him. No way the guy I’m thinking of would be delivering pizzas.”

“Kathi,” I said, “who did you think it was? It’s really important.”

“Why?” said Kathi, looking from one to the other of us. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing,” said Noleen.

“Oh sure, it looks like nothing. You drinking in the daytime and watching the security feed.”

“Okay,” I said. I held out a hand to quell Noleen before she could stop me. “It’s not nothing. He broke into my room and left a dead raccoon in the bath.”

Kathi looked over her shoulder and up towards where my room sat, as if she had X-ray eyes. “How dead?” she said. “Decomposing? Sloughing off on the floor and seeping down the cracks in the tile?”

“In the tub,” I said. “Right in the tub.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” came a voice from the front office. It was Todd. He appeared with a cardboard tray of coffee cups. “I took a chance and here you all are,” he said. “Thank you, universe! Lexy, your large English breakfast tea, with whole milk. Triple latte, Nolly. Kathi, a salted caramel iced macchiato with extra sprinkles and a shot of insulin. And for moi … What is it?”

“Someone put a dead raccoon in Lexy’s bath,” Kathi said.

“How dead?” said Todd. “Dead enough to attract egg-layers? Because those larvae hatch quick.” He put the tray down and went to stand beside Kathi.

Noleen gave me a look that spoke. It was your bright idea to share the news, the look said, it’s your problem to contain it, sweet cheeks.

“Not very dead at all,” I said. “Fresh, fresh, fresh. Practically still alive. No decomposing, no egg-laying, and definitely no sloughing. And it’s gone.”

Then Cindy joined us and ruined it all.

“I got most of the bluebottles and almost all of the putrefying host material,” she said. “Just one tiny spill and not on the carpet.”

Todd and Kathi shrank back against the filing cabinet, faces white and eyes wide.

“Great,” I said. “Cindy, this is Todd, who suffers from cleptoparasitosis, and Kathi, who suffers from severe germaphobia. They both live here.” You clueless freak, I chose not to say.

Cindy nodded slowly a few times. When she opened her mouth to speak I cast my eyes about, wondering whether to ring a fire alarm to drown out the sound or just hit her with the whisky bottle. But she surprised me.

“I’m afraid of kneecaps,” she said. “Genuphobia. I’m truly sorry to have caused you distress.”

“Is that why you went into entomology?” said Kathi. It seemed a silly question to me, but what did I know?

“It took me into the sciences, certainly,” Cindy said.

I blinked. Nothing, that’s what I knew.

“Everyone has to wear long pants in the lab and in the field. It’s the only way I can live in a warm climate. I take my vacations in the Dakotas. In February. Again, I’m very sorry.”

It was a moment of peace and fellow-feeling, like a little oasis in the middle of chaos.

“Excuse me,” said Todd, wrecking it. “I happen to have had a run of bad luck with infestations, but I don’t suffer from anything except being married to a dork.”

“And I happen to like things tidy,” said Kathi. “I’m a psychobabble-phobe, but that’s all.”

“Let me make it up to you both,” I said. “Come to the pet shop with me and help me choose fish for Diego, then I’ll take you for ice cream.”

“But not Pet Planet out at the strip mall,” said Todd, “because those filthy freaks have stick insects. In a pet store!”

“And let’s go in my car,” said Kathi. “No offence, Todd, but your Jeep hasn’t been cleaned for days.”

I thought of the pristine Jeep—which was still sitting at the police station, damn it!—and had to bite my tongue down on a torrent of scorn, but I managed to say only, “See you out front in five.”