One Door Away From Heaven (44 page)

For only the second time in years and for the first time since Preston had driven away in the Durango with Lukipela into the late-afternoon dreariness of the Montana mountains, Leilani was seized by a fear that she couldn’t cast off, not a passing terror such as the snake had aroused in her, but an abiding dread with many hands that clutched her throat, her heart, the pit of her stomach. This new strangeness, this irrational and sick scheme to make psychic miracle babies, shook her confidence that she would be able to understand her mother, to predict the upcoming patterns in Sinsemilla’s madness, and to cope as she had always coped before.

“Litter?” Leilani said. “All your puppies? What’re you talking about?”

Still smoothing the rumpled pages in the paperback, looking down at her hands, Sinsemilla said, “I’ve been taking fertility drugs. Not that I need ’em to make just one fat little piggy.” She smiled. “I’m as fertile as a rabbit. But sometimes with fertility drugs, you know, lots of eggs plop in the basket all at once, you get twins, you get triplets, maybe more. So harmonizing with Mother Earth through peyote and magic mushrooms, plus other healthy highs, maybe I’ll persuade old Gaea to help me pop out three or four wizard babies all at once, a whole nestful of pink little squirming superbabies.”

Although Leilani had long known the true nature of this woman, she had never been able to admit that one word above all others best described her. She had lived in denial, calling her mother
weak
and
selfish,
excusing her as an
addict,
resorting to evasive words like
troubled,
like
damaged,
even
crazy.
Sinsemilla was undeniably all those things, but she was something worse, something far less worthy of pity than was any addict or a merely troubled woman. Beautiful, blessed with clear blue eyes that met yours as directly as might the eyes of an angel with no reason for guile or shame, flashing a smile warm enough to enchant the sourest cynic, she was defined by one word more than any other, and the word was
evil.

For many reasons, until now Leilani had found it hard to admit that her mother wasn’t just misguided, but also wretched, vile, and rotten in the heart. All these years, she’d longed for Sinsemilla’s redemption, for a day when they might be at least a normal mother and a mutant daughter; but genuine evil, the pure cold stuff, couldn’t be redeemed. And if you acknowledged that you’d come from evil, that you were its spawn, what were you to think about yourself, about your own dark potential, about your chances of one day leading a good, decent, useful life? What were you to think?

As when she’d lost Luki, Leilani sat in the tortuous dual grip of fear and anguish. She trembled in recognition of the thread by which her life hung, but she also struggled to hold back tears of grief. Here, now, she surrendered forever all hope that her mother might one day be clean and straight, all hope that old Sinsemilla, once reformed, might eventually provide a mother’s love. She felt stupid for having harbored that naive, impossible little dream. In the instant, a termitic loneliness ate away the core of Leilani’s heart and left her hollow, shaking not only with fear, but also with a chill of utter isolation. She felt abandoned, deserted, forsaken.

She detested the weakness in herself revealed by a tremor in her voice: “Why? Why babies, why babies at all? Just because
he
wants them?”

Her mother looked up from the book, slid it across the table to Leilani, and repeated the interminable mantra that she had composed to express her satisfaction with herself when she was in a good mood: “I am a sly cat, I am a summer wind, I am birds in flight, I am the sun, I am the sea, I am
me
!”

“What does that even
mean
?” Leilani asked.

“It means—who else but your own mama is cool enough to bring a new human race into the world, a psychic humanity bonded to Gaea? I’ll be the mother of the future, Lani, the new Eve.”

Sinsemilla believed this nonsense. Her belief imbued her face with a beatific radiance and brought a sparkle of wonder to her eyes.

Maddoc surely wouldn’t put any credence in this garbage, however, because the doom doctor wasn’t moronic. Evil, yes, he had earned the right to have his towels monogrammed with that word, and he loved himself no less than Sinsemilla loved herself. But he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t believe that fetuses carried to term in a bath of hallucinogens were likely to be the superhuman forerunners of a new humanity. He wanted babies for his own reasons, for some enigmatic purpose that had nothing to do with being the new Adam or with a yearning for fatherhood.

“Wizard babies by late April, early May,” said Sinsemilla. “I’ve been knocked up close a month. I’m already a brood bitch, filled up with wizard babies that’ll change the world. Their time’s coming, but first
you.
”

“Me what?”

“Healed, you ninny,” said Sinsemilla, getting to her feet. “Made good, made right, made pretty. The only reason we’ve been haulin’ ass from Texas to Maine to shitcan towns in Arkansas all these past four years.”

“Yeah, healed, just like Luki.”

Sinsemilla didn’t hear the sarcasm. She smiled and nodded, as though she expected Luki, fully remade, to be beamed back to them at their next rest stop. “Your daddy says it’ll happen soon, baby. He’s got a feeling maybe in Idaho we’ll meet some ETs ready for a laying-on of hands. North of a hunch, he says, and south of a vision, a real strong feeling that you’ll get your healing soon.”

The brood bitch went to the refrigerator and got a beer to wash down whatever baby-shaping cactus or mushroom snacks were medically appropriate for midmorning.

On her way back to the co-pilot’s chair, she ruffled Leilani’s hair. “Soon, baby, you’ll go from pumpkin to princess.”

As usual, Sinsemilla got her fairy tales screwed up. The pumpkin had been transformed into Cinderella’s coach. Mater was remembering the story of the frog that became a prince, not a princess.

Hula-hula, grass skirts swishing.

Sun god on the ceiling.

Sinsemilla giggling in the co-pilot’s chair.

The mirror. Preston’s twitchy eyes.

Beyond the panoramic windshield, the vast Mojave blazed, and sunshine seemed to gather in molten pools upon the desert plains.

In Nun’s Lake, Idaho, a man claimed to have had contact with extraterrestrial physicians.

In the Montana woods, Lukipela waited for his sister at the bottom of a hole. He was no longer her precious brother, but just a worm farm, gone not to the stars but gone forever.

When she and Preston were alone in a deepness of forest, as he and Luki had been alone, when they were beyond observation, beyond the reach of justice, would he kill her with compassion? Would he press a chloroform-soaked rag against her face to anesthetize her quickly and then finish the job with a lethal injection while she slept, sparing her as much terror as possible? Or in the lonely cloisters of ancient evergreens, where civilizing sunlight barely reached, would Preston be a different man than the one he played in public, perhaps less man than beast, free to admit that he took pleasure not from the administration of mercy, as he called it, but from the killing itself?

Leilani read the answer in the predator’s eyes, as he kept a watch on her by angled mirror. The quiet deaths that were arranged with genteel rituals as complex as tea ceremonies—like that of penguin-collecting Tetsy—didn’t fully slake Preston’s thirst for violence, but in the solitudinous woods, he could drink his fill. Leilani knew that if ever she were alone with the pseudofather in any remote place, her death, like Lukipela’s, would be hard, brutal, and prolonged.

He married Sinsemilla in part because in her deepest drug stupors, she seemed dead, and death stirred Preston as beauty stirred other men. Furthermore, she’d come with two children who, by his philosophy, needed to die, and he had been attracted to her because he possessed the desire to fulfill her children’s need. So was his purpose in breeding new babies really so enigmatic? Preston was fond of saying that death was never truly a tragedy but always a natural event, because we are all born to die, sooner or later. From his perspective, could any significant difference exist between children being born to die, as are we all, and children bred to die?

Chapter 50

ELSEWHERE, the California dream might still have a glowing tan; but here it had blistered, peeled, and faded. Once a good residential street, the neighborhood had been rezoned for mixed use. Depression-era bungalows and two-story Spanish houses—never grand, but at one time graceful and well maintained—now wanted paint, stucco patches, and repairs to crumbling porch steps. Some sagging residences had been torn down decades ago, replaced by fast-food outlets and corner minimalls. These commercial properties, too, were beyond their best days: bottom-feeding burger franchises you’d never see advertised on television; shabby beauty salons, themselves in need of makeovers; a thrift shop selling all things used.

Micky parked at the curb and locked her car. Ordinarily, she wouldn’t have worried that her aging Camaro might be boosted, but the low quality of the other iron on the block suggested that her tired wheels might present a temptation.

In the windows that flanked the front door of the narrow house, a blue neon sign in the left pane announced
PALM READER
, and in the right glowed an orange neon outline of a hand, bright even on a sunny morning. The cracked and hoved walkway led to a blue door featuring a painting of a mystic eye, but it also branched toward a flight of exterior stairs, most likely not originally part of the house, at the south side of the structure, where a discreet sign indicated that the detective’s offices were on the second floor.

The house stood among enormous phoenix palms, one of which shaded the stairs with its great green crown. The tree hadn’t been trimmed in years; a densely layered, twenty-foot-long collar of dead fronds drooped over one another and encircled the bole, creating a fire danger and an ideal home for tree rats.

Ascending toward the covered landing, Micky heard the rustle of busy rodents scurrying along vertical tunnels in the thatchwork of dry brown fronds, as though they were pacing her, keeping her under observation.

When no one responded to the doorbell, she knocked. When the knock was ignored, she leaned on the bell again.

The man who finally responded to her insistent summons was big, good-looking in a rough sort of way, with melancholy eyes. He wore tattered sneakers, chinos, and a Hawaiian shirt. He had skipped his morning shave.

“You,” he said, without preamble, “are a woman in some kind of trouble, but I’m not in that line of work anymore.”

“Maybe I’m just from County Vector Control, want to talk to you about the rat farm in this tree right here.”

“That would sure be a waste of talent.”

Expecting a nasty crack in the tradition of F. Bronson, Micky bristled. “Yeah? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It wasn’t an insult, if that’s how you took it.”

“Wasn’t it? Talent, huh? You think I should be turning tricks or something?”

“That’s never been your type of trouble. I just meant I think you could kick something way bigger than a rat’s ass.”

“You’re the PI, the detective?”

“Used to be. Like I said. Closed up shop.”

She hadn’t called ahead because she’d been afraid that he would obtain a quick financial report on her before she got here. Now, having seen the place, she figured most of his clients weren’t the type that American Express pursued with offers of platinum cards.

“I’m Micky Bellsong. I’m not with Vector Control, but you’ve got a rat problem.”

“Everybody does,” he said, and somehow managed to convey that he wasn’t talking about long-tailed rodents. He started to shut her out.

She planted one foot on the threshold. “I’m not leaving till you either hear me all the way through—or snap my neck and throw me down the stairs.”

He seemed to consider the second option, studying her throat. “You ought to sell Jesus door-to-door. The whole world would be saved by Tuesday.”

“You did good work for a woman I knew once. She was desperate, she couldn’t pay much, but you did good work anyway.”

“I take it you can’t pay much, either.”

“Part cash, part IOU. Might take me a while to pay you off, but if I don’t, I’ll break my own legs and save you the trouble.”

“Wouldn’t be any trouble. I might enjoy it. But the fact still is, I’ve gone out of business.”

“The woman you helped was Wynette Jenkins. She was in prison at the time. That’s where I met her.”

“Sure. I remember.”

Wynette had arranged for her six-year-old son, Danny, to live with his maternal grandparents while she did her time. She’d been in the can less than a week when her ex-husband, Vin, had taken the boy to live with him. The law refused to intervene because Vin was the child’s legal father. He was also a mean drunk and a wife abuser who had frequently knocked Danny around, and Wynette knew that he would terrorize the boy on a daily basis and eventually scar him for life, if not kill him. She heard about Farrel through another prisoner and persuaded her parents to approach him. Within two months, Farrel had provided the police with evidence of Vin’s criminal activities that got the man arrested, indicted, and separated from his son. They returned the boy to the custody of Wynette’s parents. Her folks said they suspected Farrel had taken the case, even at a loss, because it involved a child in trouble, and that he had a soft spot for kids.

Still employing her right foot as a doorstop, Micky said, “A little girl’s going to be killed if I don’t help her. And I can’t help her alone.”

This dramatic claim had an effect opposite of the one that she expected. The detective’s expression of weary indifference hardened into a glower, although his sudden anger seemed not to be directed at her. “Lady, I’m exactly who you
don’t
need. You want real cops.”

“They’re not going to believe me. It’s a strange case. And this girl…she’s special.”

“They’re all special.” Farrel’s voice was flat, almost cold; and perhaps Micky should have heard a dismissive platitude in those three words, or even callousness. But in his eyes, she thought she saw pain instead of genuine anger, and suddenly his glower seemed to be a mask that concealed an anguish he’d long kept private. “Cops are who you want. I know. I used to be one.”

“I’m an ex-con. The girl’s sonofabitch stepfather is rich and well connected. And he’s highly regarded, mainly by a bunch of fools, but they’re fools whose opinion matters. Even if I could get the cops to take me seriously, I couldn’t make them move fast enough to help this girl.”

“There’s nothing I can do for you,” he insisted.

“You know the deal,” Micky said stubbornly. “Either hear me out—or throw me down the stairs. And if you try throwin’, for starters you’ll need Bactine, Band-Aids, and a sitz bath for your balls.”

He sighed. “Pushing me like this is a mile past desperation, lady.”

“I never claimed I wasn’t desperate. But I’m glad to hear you think I’m a lady.”

“Can’t figure why the hell I answered the door,” he said sourly.

“In your heart, you were hoping for a flower delivery.”

He moved backward. “Whatever your story is, just spit it out plain and simple. Don’t bother strumming on the heartstrings.”

“Can’t strum what I can’t find.”

His living room also served as his office. To the left stood a desk, two client chairs, one file cabinet. To the right a single armchair was aimed at a television set; a small table and a floorlamp flanked the chair. Bare walls. Books piled in the corners.

The drab furniture had probably been purchased in the thrift shop on the corner. The carpet looked as cheap as any loom could weave it. Everything appeared to be scrubbed and polished, however, and the air smelled like lemon-scented furniture wax and pine-scented disinfectant. The place might have been the austere cell of a monk with a cleaning obsession.

A cramped kitchen lay visible beyond one of two interior doors. The other door, closed now, evidently led to a bedroom and bath.

As Farrel sat behind the desk, Micky settled in an unpadded, rail-backed chair provided for clients, which was uncomfortable enough to serve as dungeon furniture.

The detective had been working at his desk, on the computer, when Micky had rung the doorbell. The printer fan hummed softly. She couldn’t see the screen.

At a few minutes past ten in the morning, Farrel had also been working on a can of Budweiser. Now he picked it up, took a swallow.

“Early lunch or late breakfast?” Micky wondered.

“Breakfast. If it makes me look any more like a responsible citizen, I also had a Pop-Tart.”

“I’m familiar with that diet.”

“If it’s all the same to you, let’s can the chitchat. Just tell me your sad story if you really have to, and then let me get back to my retirement.”

Micky hesitated, wanting to start her story well, and remembered Aunt Gen’s prophetic words from Monday evening, not yet four days past. She said, “Sometimes a person’s life can change for the better in one moment of grace, like a miracle almost. Someone so special can come along, all unexpected, and pivot you in a new direction, change you forever. You ever had that experience, Mr. Farrel?”

He grimaced. “You
are
peddling Jesus door-to-door.”

As succinctly as possible, Micky told him about Leilani Klonk, old Sinsemilla, and the pseudofather on the hunt for extraterrestrial healers. She told him about Lukipela gone to the stars.

She withheld Preston Maddoc’s identity, however, afraid that Farrel shared F. Bronson’s admiration for the killer. If he heard the name, he might never give her the opportunity to win his involvement.

More than once as Micky talked, Farrel gazed at the computer, as though her story wasn’t sufficiently involving to keep him from being distracted by whatever was on the screen.

He asked no questions and gave no reliable signs of interest. At times he leaned back in his chair, eyes closed, so still and so lacking in expression that he might have been asleep. At other times, his features once again seemed as hard as mortared stone, and he made eye contact of such discomfiting intensity that Micky thought he had lost patience and would throw her down the stairs regardless of her threat to put up a fight.

Breaking off a nail-you-to-the-wall stare, he abruptly rose to his feet. “The more I hear, the more I know I’m not right for this. Never would have been right, even when I was in business. I don’t even see what you could want from me.”

“I’m getting there.”

“And I suppose you
insist
on getting there. So to lubricate my way through this meeting, I’ll need another beer. You want one?”

“No thanks.”

“I thought you were familiar with this diet.”

“I’m not on it anymore.”

“Hooray for you.”

“I’ve already lost all the years I can afford to lose.”

“Yeah, well, not me.”

Farrel went into the kitchen, and a fog of gray discouragement crept into Micky as she watched him through the open door. After taking a beer from the refrigerator, he pulled off the tab, drained a couple ounces in one swallow, set the can on a counter, and spiked the remaining Budweiser with a shot of whiskey.

Returning to the desk but not to his chair, Farrel seemed to vibrate with a barely throttled fury that Micky had said nothing to evoke. As he stood there staring down at her, his voice remained low, weary rather than angry, but also tight with a tension that he couldn’t conceal. “You’re wasting my time and yours, Ms. Bellsong. But mine isn’t worth much. So if you want to wait while I use the john, that’s fine. Or are you ready to leave now?”

She almost left. Noah Farrel appeared to be as worthless as he was indifferent to her problem.

She remained in the rail-backed chair, however, because the anguish in his eyes belied his apparent indifference. On some level, she had reached him even though he didn’t want to become involved. “You still haven’t heard me out.”

“By the time I
have
heard you out, I’m going to need eardrum transplants.”

When he left the room, he closed the door to the bedroom-bath. And he took the spiked Budweiser with him.

He probably didn’t need to use the john, and he certainly didn’t need another breakfast beer. These were excuses to interrupt Micky’s story and thus dilute its impact. Leilani’s predicament had affected him, sure enough; but Farrel was determined not to be affected to the extent that he would feel obligated to help her.

From bitter experience, Micky knew how useful alcohol could be when making a morally bankrupt decision didn’t come naturally and when you needed to numb your conscience a little in order to do the wrong thing. She recognized the strategy.

Farrel wouldn’t return until he’d drunk the fortified Budweiser. More likely than not, he would visit the kitchen for a third serving before at last sitting down at his desk again. Tuning Micky out would be easier by then, and he would be able to convince himself that the wrong thing was the right move.

If she hadn’t known the great kindness he’d done for Wynette, she might not have hung in here as long as this.

But she also held on to a thread of hope because Noah Farrel clearly didn’t have long-term experience with morning drinking or perhaps with drinking binges at any hour. Evidence of his nouveau-drunk status was evident in the self-conscious way he handled the can, first pushing it aside as if shunning it, but a moment later turning it nervously in his hands, tracing the rim with one thumb, clicking a fingernail against the aluminum as if to assess by sound how much brew remained, utterly lacking the casualness of a seasoned lush’s relationship with his poison.

Micky’s history with drink convinced her that pressing Farrel harder, right now, would fail to move him and that this was one of those times when retreat—and special tactics—would prove to be the wiser course. She needed him for his expertise, because she couldn’t afford another detective; she was depending on the kindness that he had shown Wynette and on his rumored weakness for cases involving children at risk.

A lined yellow legal pad and a pen lay among other items on the detective’s desk. The moment Farrel left the room, Micky snatched up the pen and pad to write a message:

Leilani’s stepfather is Preston Maddoc. Look him up. He’s killed 11 people. Uses the name Jordan Banks, but was married under his real name. Where were they married? Proof? Who is Sinsemilla, really? How do we prove she had a disabled son? Time running out. Gut feeling—the girl dead in a week. Reach me through my aunt, Geneva Davis.