Jeffery Deaver - Bloody River Blues

"I…"

A nurse entered the room. She smiled at Donnie. She had a tray with a small container of ice cream and two cookies.

She gave him two pills in a cup.

"Snack time," she said.

Buffett smiled back. "What are these?" he asked. "The pills."

"Sedatives. Usual."

He took the pills. "Ativan? Half a milligram?"

She called him "Doctor" as she said goodnight.

"I always ask. They make mistakes sometimes. About the pills, I mean. You ever in the hospital, always ask."

Pellam took a kleenex from Buffett's dresser and was carefully wiping the agent's-ID case.

He said to Pellam, "You want some ice cream?'

"Uh-uh. I don't like ice cream."

"You sure?" Buffett opened the ice cream and began to eat it. He stopped and set down the spoon. "Pellam, you did what

I would've done."

"Yeah."

Buffett picked up the spoon again. "You know, there's something else." Pellam took a cookie from the tray and ate it. The cop continued, "Let's assume you're right and this guy, the one you shot, was working for Peterson."

"Uh-huh."

'Then the one who's looking for you, the one who killed your friend, he's still out there."

"I guess he is." Pellam had not thought about this. "But what can I do about it?"

"Dusting off your passport might be a good idea."

Nina, on the other end of the phone, said, "I'd like to see you tonight."

She sounded seductive. Pellam was not in the mood to seduce or be seduced. He was sitting on a banquette three feet from where the carpet had been stained with an FBI agents blood. He had used Clorox to scrub it. This had worked pretty well but the camper smelled fiercely of bleach.

"I called three times and you never answered."

"I don't have a machine in the camper," he said, although he did. He often did not turn it on.

"There's all kinds of talk around the set about you. Mr. Sloan's been saying some things that aren't real nice. He's talking about suing you. I'm real sorry about your friend, John. I don't remember him, but I think I met him once. He seemed real nice."

"He was."

"So you want to be alone tonight?"

"Something like that."

"I don't think it's good for you."

"What's not good?"

"To be alone. Come over. Cranston's only twenty minutes away." Her voice was a breathy singsong.

"It's just not a good time."

"Okay, if that's what you want." Melodious became brittle.

Oh not now please.

"Are you trying to tell me something?" she asked.

Brother.

"No, no, it's just, this thing with me being the witness and all."

"What about it?" she asked testily, and obviously wanted an answer. It seemed patently unfair to have to argue like this with someone you were not sleeping with.

"It's taking up a lot of my time."

"It's probably not taking up time tonight."

"Well, it is. There've been some complications."

"Complications? I thought you were a simple kind of guy." She was being playful now.

Perhaps their fight was over.

"I don't know…" He kept picturing the way the FBI agent fell, surprised, spiraling down. That was it. Just a fall. Then he was dead, just like that.

Please, he heard Nina saying. She had to see him. "Please, John."

The man had just lain there, and Pellam had walked into the kitchen and dug under the sink for garbage bags in which to wrap up the body.

"Its only twenty minutes?" he heard himself asking.

Because his brother was a union carpenter and had taken him on dozens of jobs, Stevie Flom appreciated good woodwork. He took pleasure in the way joints and studs met and how crown molding fit perfectly in the corners of ceilings. Tonight he wandered through the dark basement of a ramshackle Victorian house by the riverfront and checked out the handiwork.

Not bad, not bad at all.

Though he wondered why anybody would renovate a house here, where the only views were of a cement plant, a trailer camp on its last legs, and Pelican Island.

Stevie looked at the structural work again. He approved of the wooden studs, instead of the metal ones most builders used. That meant the wall was going to be nice and solid. He looked at the wiring. Electricity was one thing he wanted to learn about. He was good with hydraulics and mechanics but the idea of electricity was land of weird.

The concrete floor, he observed, was not in good shape. A lot of cracks and places where it had crumbled. He saw evidence of standing water. That was one thing his brother had told him to look for in basements.

Evidence of standing water.

Stevie wished he had something to read. He thought of his old man, who kept newspapers and Time magazines piled up n the basement at home-stacks and stacks-with a few Playboys hidden between them, their places marked with twigs.

But here-nothing but the boiler instructions encased in plastic. His brother had once returned with three hundred bucks he had found in an old book while doing some work in Alton. This place was nothing but old basement.

With evidence of water damage.

He was dying for a cigarette but he knew he shouldn't smoke. The ash would be evidence. He had seen that on Magnum PI one time. Evidence of a killer. Or was it a Matlock rerun?

So he just walked to a half window and gazed outside, across the street to the empty trailer court.

Wondering when the hell was the beer guy's Winnebago going to return.

He put his head against Nina's hair and inhaled.

He liked the smell. Animal-musky and sweaty and perfumed. He breathed in again and woke her up.

"Hm?' she asked.

"Go to sleep," Pellam whispered.

"I was asleep."

"Go back to sleep."

"Hm."

Regardless of Pellam's mood and inclination several hours ago, a seduction it had been.

Cranston, just off the expressway, was a town much smaller than Maddox and more affluent and ginger-bready. A riverfront tourist trap, the town was filled with shops selling antiques and gadgets and Cute Things. Nina apparently did much shopping there; her apartment was filled with gingham pillows, needlepoints of children holding hands, plaques of geese dressed in colonial garb, wooden hearts and stuffed animals and silk flowers.

Pellam hated it all. He had hoped the bedroom might be less cute, but of course, it was just the same. Worse, in fact, because Nina's hobby was photography. No, not even. Snapshooting. The bedroom contained her collection of photos-fifty, sixty, a hundred Of them, all in precious little Lucite and pewter and china frames, lining the radiator cover and windowsill and bedside table. Pellam was afraid to turn around-abruptly. They made love under the eyes of Nina's extended family, and during one particularly energetic moment, a round frame fell to the floor, bounced several times, and rolled for a long time in an exorbitantly distracting way.

Oh, yes, a seduction.

But an odd one.

She had greeted him at the door wearing a white T-shirt and short, tight, dark gray skirt sans stockings. Barefoot. She reminded him of Lynn Redgrave in Georgy Girl. They had ordered out Hunan beef and cold noodles in sesame paste and eaten while they watched a bad TV show. Nina had loved it. A murder mystery. Pellam watched her lips moving as she whispered to herself, reciting the clues and trying to figure out who the killer was. He sat closer and put his arm around her.

She rubbed her head against his as she announced that the victim's brother-in-law had done it.

She had been wrong. Then, instantly, she was tired of mass media. Just as the Midnight Movie came on, Nina turned off the TV, hiked her skirt up, and sat on his lap. He got an unabashed view of sensible white panties and she began kissing him. Her arms lashed around his shoulders and in a frenzy she pressed her mouth to his, shoving her tongue into him, rocking her hips desperately.