Night Relics Read online

  He was looking at the tree from the same angle, from underneath, looking up at the silver-white undersides of the leaves. It was a different season and a different wind, and the shadows were wrong, but what he had seen that morning had clearly been a view of the backyard willow tree as seen through David’s bedroom window, through David’s eyes. It had been something almost telepathic, like a borrowed memory—David’s memory.

  The wind picked up outside now, and the sunlit willow branches flailed away, showering the air with leaves. He stood up. It was time to go. There was no use drowning himself in memories and regrets.

  He stepped across and swung the closet door shut. Sitting behind it, where it had been hidden by the open door, was a piece of canvas luggage. It was David’s overnighter, the zipper open, the bag full of the clothes that he should have taken to Hawaii.

  7

  BERNARD POMEROY LOOKED HIMSELF OVER IN THE REARVIEW mirror. His skin was dry and itchy along the side of his nose and flaking where he had shaved that morning. He dabbed on moisturizing cream and rubbed it in carefully, then worked a little drop of cream over each eye. He took out his pocket comb and smoothed his eyebrows. Hard to believe it was only an hour ago that he’d parted company with Mr. Ackroyd. He had made a quick decision, but if you hesitated you were lost in this business. And there’d been no question that the old man’s mind was made up. He wasn’t going to move unless he was pushed.

  Pomeroy’s face was blemish free, the flesh almost translucent, his nose small and straight. Overall his appearance was perfectly bland. A woman had told him that once. She had said that he looked like someone out of a composite drawing by a police artist, facial features copied from a book of common noses and eyebrows and ears.

  Actually, it had been a fairly clever thing to say, under the distressing circumstances. Since then he had realized that a bland man is very nearly an invisible man, and the idea didn’t bother him at all. Through the windshield he could just see the creek through the trees. Bushes on the hillsides jerked and shuddered in the wind. That was what screwed up his skin—this damned wind dried everything out. He put the vial away and began fastidiously to brush his hair back. Then he opened the leeward window of the car, took a travel-sized bottle of hair spray out of his toiletries kit, and sprayed his hair until it was stiff. He checked his smile in the mirror, hauled a container of mint-flavored string out of the kit and flossed his teeth, then threw the used floss out the open window.

  One thing he had learned selling cars was that people naturally liked a well-groomed man. It sounded superficial, but that didn’t make a bit of difference. Grooming was essential to success. People understood it to be a sign of quality. He had business cards that read, “Quality, an American way of life.” One of his other cards displayed a fish symbol along with chapter and verse numbers from the Bible. He could scope a customer out in half a second and give them the right card nearly every time.

  Another thing he knew from selling cars is that you don’t let up on people. You don’t take no for an answer. If there’s any hesitation, you’ve got to tell them what they want. He had miscalculated with old Ackroyd, though, when he talked to him this morning. He knew the man was a Christian—he had learned that much from Klein—but the fish card hadn’t worked on him. It had only seemed to irritate him. Pomeroy had read him for a tough nut right then and there. Nothing that couldn’t be cracked, though, if you knew where to squeeze.

  He opened the door, stepped out into the weeds of the little turnout, and locked up the rented Thunderbird. Then he opened the trunk and pulled out a white plastic garbage bag. Carrying the bag, he set out up the road, dressed in a pair of Jordache jeans and Reebok tennis shoes and with a cashmere sweater draped casually over his shoulders. He cocked his head as he walked so that the wind kept his hair pressed flat.

  Ten feet from the car, the wind abruptly yanked the sweater off his shoulders and threw it onto the dirt road. Pomeroy grabbed at it with his free hand, but the wind was quicker, and the sweater cartwheeled backward into the side of the Thunderbird, crucifying itself momentarily against the red paint of the fender. Dropping his trash bag onto the side of the road, he lunged after the sweater just as the wind snatched it up again and dragged it under the chassis, trapping a sleeve beneath a tire.

  He tried to yank the sweater loose, but the sleeve wedged itself tighter, and he had to get down onto his hands and knees to wiggle it out. He stood up, shaking dirt out of the sweater and dusting off the knees of his jeans. There was a dirty oil smear across the chest of the sweater. He’d have to get the damned thing cleaned now. Trying to pull himself together again, he reopened the trunk, dropped the sweater in, and then checked his hair in the window reflection. Not a strand had moved. He looked professional

  A partly decomposed rat had fallen out of the open trash bag on the road. Pomeroy found a piece of stick and shoved the thing back inside, where there were two other rats, more recently dead. They stank like hell in the hot plastic bag. Pomeroy hated to touch it, but the morning was wearing on. There would be people around soon.

  The old man wasn’t home—Pomeroy had seen him leave, driving into town for his weekend grocery run. He glanced around quickly, making double sure that there was no car beside the house, nobody walking along the road, and then he walked to the rear door, where he wouldn’t be easily seen. For safety’s sake he knocked before he tried the knob. There was no answer, and the door was dead-bolted tight. The windows were latched, too. It would be easy enough to break one, climb in, and just tear the place up, but then Ackroyd would know that someone had been screwing around there, and that might blow the whole deal. Pomeroy would save that for later, if it was necessary. Breaking and entering wasn’t in the cards today. And anyway, Klein would have a coronary over it.

  Pomeroy laughed out loud. Klein was a high-blood-pressure type. His face got red like a sunburn when he was mad. Telling him about this morning might just be the last straw for him. His circuits would fry and he’d drop dead.

  The water tank was up on the hill behind the house, mostly hidden from below. He hiked up toward it, carrying the bag of dead rats along a little overgrown trail slippery with loose rock. The rats stank to high heaven, and the smell nearly made him sick. He looked behind him down the steep hillside, and right then a Siamese cat darted across the yard below. It stopped outside the back door of the house and sat staring into the trees, then started to wipe its face with a paw.

  Pomeroy hesitated, struck with his second brilliant idea that morning.

  8

  PETER PICKED UP DAVID’S BAG AND LAID IT ON THE BED. Instinctively he knew what it meant, even before his mind had come to the obvious conclusion. He sorted through it carefully, tilting the open bag toward the window to catch the sunlight. There were two pairs of swimming trunks on top. Underneath were comic books, a pair of zorries, a T-shirt wrapped around a Sony Walkman, headphones, and the little packet of postcard stamps.

  Peter dropped the bag and went out, up the hall and into Amanda’s bedroom. Her luggage was spread out over the bed, opened up, only half-packed. Bathing suits, beach towels, sandals—all the vacation stuff was there. It was clean and neatly stacked and organized, by a person systematic about packing, someone going away, not someone returning. A few pieces of folded clothing were piled on the bed and chair. There was nothing on the floor—no dirty clothes, no souvenirs.

  Peter ran out into the living room, looking for something to explain what was obvious. He found the week’s mail scattered on the floor under the mail slot. Frantically he sorted through it, checking return addresses, searching for anything at all. Nothing. Just bills, junk, magazines, some of it addressed to him. He let it lie and headed back into the kitchen.

  Leaning with both hands against the edge of the counter, he closed his eyes and forced himself to think. Amanda and David hadn’t been home for a week. That much was clear. And wherever they’d gone—if in fact they’d gone anywhere—they hadn’t taken anything with them.
/>   Possible answers to the riddle filtered into his mind, and the atmosphere of the house was suddenly threatening. He found that he was listening hard, like someone awakened by a noise in the night.

  But aside from the mail strewn on the floor, there was no sign of anything out of place in the kitchen or living room, no evidence of trouble, of an intruder. Carefully, not knowing what to expect, Peter pushed open the door of the den, letting it swing wide before looking in, half expecting something that he couldn’t picture or put into words.

  It was just another empty room. Both bathrooms were clean except for the windblown dust on the countertops and windowsills.

  The fourth bedroom, Amanda’s study, was as tidy as the rest of the house. For a moment he hoped he would find an explanatory note there, but the only thing on the desktop was a check register and last month’s canceled checks, sorted and stacked.

  Seeing them there propelled him back into Amanda’s bedroom. He pulled open her carry-on bag and hauled out a sweater, a paperback novel, a hairbrush, and a crossword puzzle magazine. He unzipped the inside pocket. Three stacks of traveler’s checks lay inside, tucked into plastic cases along with three hundred dollars in twenties. Two sets of airline tickets were slid in alongside, enclosed in a heavy paper envelope advertising Slotsy Tours and Travel. His hands shook as he set the tickets down on the dresser.

  Move, he told himself, and he sprinted to the back door, pulled it open, and ran to the garage, going in through the side door. He flipped on the light switch, half expecting to see Amanda and David slumped in the parked car. But the Honda Accord sat there as ever, empty, bad brakes and all.

  He shut the light off and went back out into the sunlight, knowing that he wouldn’t find any answers in the house. Amanda and David hadn’t come home since their trip out to the canyon to visit him last Sunday afternoon. There was no use quizzing the neighbors. He would make one phone call and then go to the police. He found Amanda’s telephone book in the kitchen, scanned a couple of pages, then punched a number into the phone.

  It rang once, twice, three times; he closed his eyes, listening to the fourth and fifth rings. “Answer it!” he said out loud, straight into the mouthpiece, and a voice on the other end, sounding puzzled, said, “What?”

  “Peggy!”

  “Peter?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said. “It’s Peter.”

  “I nearly hung up on you. What were you yelling about?”

  “I thought you weren’t going to answer.”

  “Oh,” she said. “How’s it going? What’s up? Hear from Mandy?”

  “No,” Peter said. “Not yet. I’m over at the house, though. I came over to work on her car.” He watched through the window as he talked. The wind was tearing across the backyard now, blowing the limbs of the willow tree nearly horizontal. Leaves whirled away up the driveway. He forced himself to sound calm and reasonable.

  “She told me you were going to fix the brakes. I think she thought it was a little funny. Don’t be too nice, Peter.”

  “I’ve never been accused of that before, actually, but thanks. What I want to know,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “is how upset she seemed a week ago when you drove her home from my place.”

  “You mean when I drove her up there. I didn’t drive her home.”

  Peter sat down hard on a kitchen chair. “That’s what I meant,” he said.

  That was it. He could hang up now. He knew what he had to know.

  “Well, she was kind of upset,” Peggy said, “because I didn’t have time to stop at the store so she could get the stuff you wanted. Frankly, she said you’d be a pain in the ass about it.”

  “I was,” Peter said. “That’s just what I was.”

  “It was my fault, really. I left something at home and then had to go back for it. It was a real mess. I was late for work, so she said to pass on the groceries. Did you yell at her?”

  “No,” Peter said. But actually he had. Both of them had done some yelling—very quietly so that David wouldn’t know about it. Over the years they had got used to yelling quietly. Peter had wanted to make an early dinner for Amanda and David that afternoon, in celebration of their leaving for Hawaii. He had asked Amanda for a bottle of olive oil and a bunch of garlic and some slipper lobster tails along with a few other odds and ends—stuff that he couldn’t buy at local stores. She was going to be passing a gourmet sort of market on the way out with Peggy, so he had left it up to her. She hadn’t brought any of it.

  After all the yelling, Peter had gone after it himself, driving all the way out to east Orange when he would have saved time just driving down into El Toro or across the canyon into Coto de Caza. He could have made spaghetti, for God’s sake, hamburgers. Somehow, though, he had wanted to show her. He didn’t know exactly what that meant now.

  When he had gotten back, something like an hour and a half later, Amanda and David were gone. Amanda had threatened that before he left. She had told him that Peggy would gladly give them a ride home. Peggy was only working a four-hour shift at the Trabuco Oaks Steak House. Amanda and David could walk across the ridge and down into the Oaks in about forty minutes, not much longer than the time that it took to drive there on the dirt road. Peter had taken off for the more distant market anyway, despite Amanda’s warning. Because of Amanda’s warning. When he got back they were gone.

  “So why did you call?” Peggy asked.

  “What?”

  “Why did you call? Just to talk?”

  “No real reason,” Peter said. “I’m just trying to keep on top of it all. You know. I can’t give it up just like that.”

  “It isn’t easy, is it?”

  “Not much, no,” Peter said.

  “It’s not easy on Amanda, either, you know. I’m sorry about screwing up your dinner, though.”

  “I screwed it up,” Peter said. “Just another mistake.”

  “Keep in touch,” she said.

  “Sure.” He hung up and sat for a moment thinking, his throat and stomach hollow. He had no real way of knowing that Amanda and David had ever left the canyon on that windy Sunday afternoon a week ago. He had taken it for granted that they had, and the next day he had driven cheerfully off to Santa Barbara. If he set out right now to make a list of the things he had taken for granted in his life, he’d go broke buying paper.

  9

  RATS IN THE WELL WOULD MAKE ACKROYD A SICK MAN, but a dead cat in the well would make him something worse, especially when he found out it was his own cat.

  Upending the bag, Pomeroy dropped the three rats beside the trail, then shoved the empty bag into his back pocket and started to climb back down, anxious not to move too fast and scare the cat. Then he stopped, thought again, and went back up after one of the two freshly dead rats, which he picked up by the tail, nearly gagging at the rubbery feel of the rat tail pressed between his fingers.

  He went back down, smiling in the cat’s direction, holding the rat visible. The cat watched him, its tail flicking back and forth now. Pomeroy took the bag out of his back pocket with his free hand, although he wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. He had killed small animals before by putting them into a plastic bag, then shoving the mouth of the bag over the exhaust pipe of a car. The carbon monoxide put them right out. It was very humane.

  A live cat would tear the bag to shreds, though. He looked around for something to hit it with. He didn’t like the idea of the animal suffering. There was nothing close by, and he didn’t want to go looking for something. The cat would get away.

  He decided just to grab it by the tail and slam it into the wall of the house. That would stun it long enough for him to get it up the hill and drown it in the water tank. The cat wouldn’t suffer at all that way.

  Pomeroy spoke to it, dropping the bag and flexing the fingers of his right hand. He laid the rat carefully on the wooden porch, and the cat batted at it with its paw, as if it wanted the rat to get up and run.

  “That’s right,” Pomeroy said sof
tly. And then, quick as a snake, he grabbed the cat’s tail and spun around toward the house, snatching the cat up off the porch. Surprisingly, the cat retracted, balling itself up, latching on to his forearm with its claws. Then there was the sharp, hot pain of teeth fixed into his bicep as the cat scrabbled up his shirt, clawing the sleeve to ribbons.

  Pomeroy trod backward across the porch, stepping on the rat, trying to yank the frenzied cat away from his neck and face. The creature sank its teeth into his hand, lacerating the soft skin of his palm, and when he tried to fling it away, it held on long enough to tear out a piece of flesh. Then it let go and dropped, somersaulted forward, and raced away into the underbrush.

  He held his fist closed. His whole hand throbbed. The rat’s head was crushed where he’d stepped on it, but he forced himself to pick it up anyway, by the tail again. He grabbed the bag off the ground with the same hand and walked stiffly back toward the trail to the water tank. Blood trickled down his forearm from the scratches, but it was the bite that ached, and he could feel blood leaking out of his closed fist onto the edge of his hand.

  Next time he’d be ready for the cat.

  After climbing back up the hillside, he located the other two rats, forced himself to pick them up, and then had to put them down again to push back the little trapdoor in the lid of the steel tank. He put his lacerated hand into the icy water, flexed it, and gasped when the cold pain lanced up his arm. He pulled his hand out, closed his fist again, and dropped the rats into the tank one by one before pushing the door shut.

  He tucked the bag into his pocket and started down, holding on to roots and branches with his free hand to steady himself. There was no sign of the cat anywhere, but he bent over to pick up a grapefruit-sized rock just in case it showed its face. When he straightened up, there was a woman not twenty feet in front of him, walking on the road.