Dead Mans Hand wc-7 Read online

"Why don't you just leave Wyrm to me?" Brennan suggested.

  Ackroyd looked at him, shrugged. "Okay. You want the lizard, he's yours."

  "What makes Quasiman a suspect?" Jennifer asked. "You mean besides the fact that his brain has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese? Well, Barnett saved his life with a faith healing. Brought him back from the dead through the power of prayer. Or so some of Barnett's people claim."

  "And?" Brennan prompted.

  "And Chrysalis hired someone to do in the Bible thumper." Brennan frowned. "Are you sure?"

  "Reasonably. Elmo gave some hired muscle her order to make a hit on one of the politicos in Atlanta."

  "Why?" Jennifer asked.

  Ackroyd shrugged. "I'm not sure. Because she was afraid of Barnett's politics?"

  Brennan shook his head. "She wasn't stupid. She'd realize something like that would push the country right into his hands. But," he said thoughtfully, "perhaps you're not the only one who misinterpreted Elmo's mission. Perhaps one of Barnett's people also found out about it and told Quasiman. At any rate, we should look into it." He glanced at Jennifer. "Perhaps we should have Father Squid lend us Quasiman for a while."

  "For what reason?" Jennifer asked.

  "Ostensibly in case we run into the Oddity again."

  "The Oddity?" Ackroyd echoed.

  "I found him trashing Chrysalis's bedroom. He said that he was looking for something that Chrysalis was using to blackmail him. But I didn't buy it. Chrysalis never extorted money from anyone."

  "You're right," Ackroyd said.

  "That leaves just one name," Jennifer prompted. Brennan looked down at the list. "Who the hell is Doug Morkle?"

  Ackroyd shook his head. "Beats me. Let me know if you find out."

  "All right." Brennan looked at Jennifer, then back at Ackroyd. "That's all you've got?"

  "Yup. Except for a few questions."

  "Like?"

  "Like did you know that Chrysalis had taken up with Digger Downs?"

  "Who's he?"

  "He masquerades as a reporter for Aces magazine."

  "I wouldn't know," Brennan said. "I haven't seen or spoken to Chrysalis since October '86."

  Ackroyd nodded. "Elmo said she was desperate for info on you." He watched Brennan closely. "Well. We all know you're pretty good with a bow, but how about a chain saw?" Brennan scowled. "Is that supposed to be a joke?"

  Ackroyd shrugged. "No. Not really. One last thing. What do you know about the Palace's neighbors?"

  Brennan was tired of Ackroyd's bizarre questions. "The Palace has no neighbors," he said flatly. "It's alone on the block."

  "That's right," Ackroyd said. "That's entirely right." Brennan took Jennifer by the arm. "We're even," he said as they turned to go.

  "Just so you know," Ackroyd said as they stopped by the door. "I didn't pop you into the Tombs this time, but our next meeting will be an entirely new matter."

  "Next time," Brennan said, nodding and smiling. "I'll look forward to it."

  "Good-bye," Jennifer said. She blew Ackroyd a kiss and went through the door.

  Brennan stopped to open it and turned to look at Ackroyd a final time. "Take my advice," he told the PI, "and either cut down on your drinking or switch to a better brand. You smell like you've been swimming in formaldehyde."

  "Real good," Ackroyd said. "You could almost be a detective."

  Wednesday July 20, 1988

  5:00 A.M.

  The sign before the rambling three-story Victorian house said COSGROVE MORTUARY, COSMO, TITUS, AND WALDO COSGROVE, PROPRIETORS, in suitably somber, Gothic-style lettering. The building was as quiet as death, as dark as the tomb. Brennan crept onto the wooded porch that encircled the house, moving slowly and carefully lest one of the ancient floorboards reveal his presence by creaking in the silent night.

  He jimmied a window and stepped through it into the lobby. He paused for a moment and shone his pocket flashlight around the small room. It had dark wallpaper and was cluttered with antique furniture and bric-a-brac. Chrysalis, he thought, would have loved it.

  The directory, hanging in a glass case on the wall, listed several viewings. The one he wanted-Jory-was in the West Parlor. He clicked off the flashlight and gave his eyes a few moments to readjust to the darkness, then moved into the bowels of the mortuary.

  There was a peculiar odor to the place, a curious mixture of chemicals and death. The silence was oppressive, unbroken by any sounds of movement or life. Brennan had to force himself to move slowly and quietly. He badly wanted to get an answer to his question and then get the hell out into the dirty, but living, city air.

  The West Parlor was a long, high-ceilinged room, still choked with scores of flower arrangements. The flowers, like everything in this place, were dead and wilted. Their scent was stultifying in the enclosed dark. They had been placed all over the room, the most were clustered around the closed coffin that was still in place against one wall. Brennan let out a deep sigh of relief when he spotted the coffin. He was afraid that he might be too late, that it might have already been moved to the church. That would have complicated things.

  Brennan approached the coffin silently, stopped before it, stared at it. For a moment he couldn't bring himself to open the lid. But he had to know if it was Chrysalis in the coffin, he had to see with his own eyes.

  He lifted the lid and held it high. The darkness made it impossible to see any details, but Brennan thought that was a good thing. He kept his pencil flashlight off.

  The corpse was wearing a demure dress that covered it from neck to ankles. Above the neck was nothing. The head was totally missing, apparently obliterated beyond any possible hope of reconstruction. The hands, though, holding a Bible on the sunken stomach, were clear, invisible, dead flesh. They were her hands, Chrysalis's hands, of that Brennan was sure, though blood no. longer surged through their pulsing arteries. Whatever fluid that now filled them was clear and unmoving.

  "It was a difficult job," a soft voice said behind Brennan. Brennan started, almost dropping the coffin lid. He barely managed to maintain his hold on it while he turned on his flashlight and swung it around.

  There was the sound of something moving swiftly away from the light, and the voice spoke again. "Please, the light is painful to me."

  The voice was so authentically gentle and sad that Brennan couldn't help but comply with it. "All right," he said, and flicked off the flash.

  The speaker moved out from behind the straight-backed sofa. He was a vague pale blur in the darkness, very white, very tall, and very thin. He smelled of strange, powerful chemicals, but his voice was as sweet as a young boy's.

  "You work here?" Brennan asked.

  "Oh yes. I do the embalming. Light is injurious to me, so I do most of my work at night. I was just stopping by to say good-bye to Chrysalis-it was a difficult job, but I did the best I could."

  "This may sound strange," Brennan said, "but you are sure that it's Chrysalis in that coffin?"

  "Certainly," the pale man said in his sweet voice. "Why do you ask?"

  Brennan shook his head. "Never mind. I was just making sure."

  The pale man nodded in turn. "I'll leave you to your private good-byes. Even though its past our regular visiting hours." He turned to go, stopped, and looked back at Brennan.

  Brennan could see his small pink eyes shine with light reflected from his flash. "I tried to put her head back together, you know, but her killer had been terribly thorough. There weren't enough pieces to work with. I've repaired the results of many violent killings, but this was one of the most savage. Her murderer deserves to be caught. To be caught and punished, Mr. Yeoman."

  "I know," Brennan said, looking down at what was left of Chrysalis, "I know."

  6:00 A.M.

  In the still, sick moonlight, the fingers of the trees reached out for him hungrily as he passed.

  He did not look up at that grim starless sky where the moon pulsed like a thing alive, glistening palely with all the colors of corr
uption. He knew better than to look, or to listen to the terrible secrets the trees whispered in the rustling of branches as bare and thin as whips. He walked through a land black and barren, where dead gray grasses grasped at his feet, and the fear grew in his soul like a black worm.

  Huge wings of dry cracked skin stirred the dead air. Eight-legged hunters, lean and cruel as any hound, slid from tree to tree just out of the range of his sight. The endless, deep ululation sounded behind him, promising an eon of terror, an eternity of pain. He knew this place; that was the most frightening thing of all.

  When he saw the subway kiosk up ahead, he began to run. So slowly he ran, each stride consuming an hour, but at last he reached it and started down the stairs. He held the railing tight as he descended. Trains roared through mindless gulfs far below him. Still he descended, down and around on steps that spiraled round forever, until he saw the other passenger. He began to chase him, down steps that grew narrow and cruel, and so cold that his bare feet stuck fast, and each step ripped away more bloody flesh.

  And he was there again, on that platform, hanging out over the endless subterranean dark, and there was the man before him. Don't turn, he pleaded silently, while inside he gibbered in fear, oh please don't turn.

  He turned, and Jay saw that white, featureless face, tapering to one long red tentacle. It lifted its head and began to howl. Jay screamed…

  … and grunted in pain as he fell out of bed, cracking his elbow hard against the hardwood floor. He doubled over and clutched the elbow, making a whimpering sound deep in his throat. It hurt like a motherfucker, but he was almost grateful. There was nothing like a good sharp pain to chase away the nightmare.

  He lay there for a good five minutes, until the throbbing in his elbow had finally subsided. Figuring out that his childhood trauma in the Dime Museum had caused the nightmare didn't seem to have cured him of it. He'd wet the bed anyway. At least this time he'd had the sense to sleep in the nude.

  He started the water running in the tub, then went to the kitchen, spooned some Taster's Choice into a cup, and waited for the kettle to boil. When the coffee was ready, he took it back to the bathroom. The tub was just about full. Jay set the coffee on the rim, turned off the faucets, and stepped in gingerly. The bathwater felt as hot as the coffee, but he forced himself to stand there until the heat started to feel good. He stretched out in the scalding water and drank his coffee. It made him feel clean again.

  Otherwise he felt like shit. Both his elbows hurt, one from falling out of bed, the other from where that psychopath son of a bitch Yeoman had twisted his arm. His nose was still sore from getting mashed against the wall. He had a big bruise on his stomach where he'd gotten mugged by the Monstrous Joker Baby.

  He drank his coffee and considered what to do with this good early start he'd made. He had his list, down to four names now: Wyrm, Quasiman, the Oddity, and Doug Morkle. It had to be one of them. So why didn't he believe it?

  The problem was, none of his four finalists seemed real tied in with all this other crap that kept turning up, the assassins and eskimos and imposters, and the agile little homunculus that Jay had chased futilely through the Dime Museum.

  He sat nursing his coffee until the bathwater was tepid, but all he came up with were more questions. It sure as hell looked like he was dealing with at least two different killers, the strongman who'd done Chrysalis and the chainsaw psycho who'd butchered Digger's neighbors just for the hell of it. Were they working together? That suggested a conspiracy.

  Or maybe it was just one lunatic with lots of different powers, like the late, great Astronomer. Someone ought to go dig up the old mais grave and see if he was still in it. But it wasn't going to be Jay; he'd been there the night the Astronomer dropped by Aces High to have dessert and kill a few people, and he was perfectly willing to let someone else swing that spade.

  Besides, if he started considering dead suspects, he'd wind up checking where Jetboy had been the night of the murder.

  Chrysalis had hired George Kerby to go assassinate Leo Barnett. If Barnett had found out, maybe the killers were working for him. Except what ace in his right mind would work for Leo Barnett? Quasiman? Presuming he could even remember that Barnett had saved his life? Okay, so somehow Quasiman stayed smart long enough to do Chrysalis, so what about the chainsaw man and the body in the trash bag that Elmo had left for the neighbors last year, who was that, Friend o' Quasiman? Jay tried to picture Father Squid whipping a chainsaw out from under his cassock, but the thought just gave him a headache.

  Digger Downs was the key. But Digger Downs was missing, maybe dead. It was a real big city out there, and a bigger country beyond it. He could be anywhere.

  On the other hand, there was sure as hell one place he wasn't, and that was here in Jay's bathroom. He took one last swig of ice-cold coffee, grimaced, set the cup aside, and climbed out of the tub to towel himself dry.

  9:00 A.M.

  When Brennan awoke, Jennifer was still asleep in the rumpled bed beside him. He was so tired that he felt as if he hadn't slept at all, and his back and shoulders were still aching from the pounding he'd taken from the Oddity. He wondered if age were creeping up on him, or if it was just that he was already bone weary of the city.

  He sat up and swung his feet off the bed, planting them on the threadbare carpeting of the cheap hotel room.

  It didn't matter. He couldn't leave until he'd found Chrysalis's killer. He was clear of the murder, but now Elmo was the patsy. He couldn't trust the police to get it right. Of course, Ackroyd was also on the case, but Brennan had never relied on anyone to do what had to be done.

  He felt cool hands run gently over his shoulders and glanced backward. Jennifer was awake. She looked at him seriously as she caressed his bruised and aching back. Her hair was damp with perspiration. Her small breasts and rib cage shone with it. She had wanted to accompany him to the funeral home the night before, but Brennan felt that that was a job he had to do alone. She'd been asleep when he'd returned to the hotel, and he'd been careful not to wake her.

  "How's your back?" she asked him.

  He shrugged experimentally, then grimaced. "Sore. But I can deal with it. How about you?"

  "Sore," she said, "but trying to deal with it."

  She moved away from him, lay back down on the bed. "I missed you."

  "I missed you, too," Jennifer said. "Enough at least to come and find you. You could have given me more time to think about things."

  "You're right."

  Jennifer nodded, as if almost satisfied. "So. Did you find out about Chrysalis? Is she really dead?"

  Brennan frowned. "She's in a coffin in Cosgrove's Mortuary, all right."

  "Then the voices we both heard could be, what? Mimics? Her ghost?"

  "Could be…" Brennan said softly, his voice trailing away.

  "Then what's on for today?" Jennifer asked, reaching out and touching his shoulder gently.

  He looked down at her. "Her funeral is this afternoon. I thought we should attend."

  Jennifer nodded again. "What about now?"

  "Now?"

  Jennifer pulled him down to her. She was slick with perspiration and desire. Her breasts tasted salty, her tongue moist and sweet.

  11:00 A.M.

  It was beginning to dawn on Jay Ackroyd that he'd wasted the entire morning. He hung up the receiver once again and contemplated his dreary little two-room office. The air-conditioning was broken, the window was painted shut, and it was hot as hell. Jay was hungry and tired and sweaty, and he knew more about Digger Downs than any human being could conceivably want to know. "Except where he is," he told his secretary.

  His secretary stared at him with her mouth puckered in a round little O of surprise. Her name was Oral Amy and her mouth was always puckered in a round little O of surprise.

  The manager of Boytoys had given her to Jay after he'd figured out which of the employees was putting the pin holes in the French ticklers, and he'd installed her at the front desk by h
is answering machine. She didn't take dictation, but at least she was blond.

  "I've got a real bitch of a headache," he told Oral Amy. She looked at him with her face all wrinkled up in sympathy. Well, either sympathy or a slow leak.

  All morning he'd been dialing the phone, asking for favors, and calling in old markers. All morning he'd been lying and shucking and posing as people he wasn't to convince reluctant voices on the other end of the line that they ought to tell him what he wanted to know.

  The good news was, there was no one fitting Digger's description in the morgue or any of the city hospitals. The rest was bad.

  Digger hadn't booked a flight on any airline Jay could find. He hadn't taken Amtrak or Greyhound either. He carried a MasterCard, two Visas, and a Discover, but the last charge on any of them was a Friday-night dinner at an Italian restaurant two blocks away from his digs on Horatio. The bill came to $63.19, and he'd stiffed the waiter. If Digger had hit the road, he'd been smart enough not to pay his tolls with plastic.

  Of course, he might have bought a plane ticket under an assumed name, and paid cash. Or boarded the Metroliner to D.C. and bought a ticket from the conductor. Or escaped to the wilds of Jersey on a commuter bus out of Port Authority, exact change only. Or walked across the goddamn Brooklyn Bridge. There were eight million ways to leave the naked city, and some you just couldn't check.

  There were eight million places to stay in the naked city, too. Jay called a half-random, half-cunning selection of motels and hotels that struck him as Digger's kind of place. He even tried a few that definitely weren't Digger's kind of place, just in case Downs had tried to be clever. Digger wasn't registered anywhere.

  He did find Digger's aged mother in Oakland, who told him that she hadn't heard from Tommy since he sent the flowers on Mother's Day, but she was still real proud of her boy the journalist. She kept scrapbooks with every word Tommy had ever written, even the little articles he used to do for his high-school newspaper, and said Jay was welcome to look at them the next time he was in the Bay area. Jay thanked her very much and left his number in case she heard from Tommy. Mrs. Downs read it back to him very carefully and suggested he might phone Peregrine, seeing as how she was Tommy's girlfriend and all. Jay mentioned that this was news to him. Mrs. Downs said it was a secret, on account of Peregrine's image.