Harry Turtledove - Supervolcano - All Fall Down

“Gabe, why don’t you take Mr. Svanda’s statement?” Colin said. “I do want to have a look at the apartment.”

“Okay. I’ll catch up with you.” Gabe pulled a notebook from an inside pocket of his blue blazer. “You want to spell your last name for me so I make sure I have it right, Mr. Svanda. .?”

The other uniformed officer from the black-and-white stood at the door to apartment 71. She looked a trifle green herself. “Your first Strangler case, Heather?” Colin asked, understanding that all too well.

She managed a nod. “’Fraid so, Lieutenant.”

“Well, welcome to the club. Now you see why we hate the son of a gun so much,” Colin said grimly. Heather nodded again, this time with more conviction.

He walked inside. The furniture was that furnished-apartment blend of tacky and functional. The Naugahyde covering on the dinette chairs had orange flowers; the couch and chair were upholstered in industrial-strength fabric with a really horrible red, white, and black plaid. But everything was scrupulously clean and neat.

A faint but unmistakable odor led him into the bedroom. Eiko Ryan had been there two or three days, all right. Her long flannel nightgown was hiked up to her waist. Alive, she might have been an inch or two taller than her sister-which would have done her a hell of a lot of good trying to fight off the bastard who’d killed her.

Colin clasped his hands behind his back to make sure he didn’t touch anything. It wouldn’t matter, but he did it anyway. Habit was strong in him, and got stronger as he got older.

He heard some kind of commotion outside. He feared he knew what kind, too. Sure as hell, Heather called, “The reporters are here, Lieutenant.”

“Oh, joy,” Colin said, and went out to meet the press.

Louise Ferguson felt as if she’d gone fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson, and he’d thrown nothing but body punches the whole time. They called it labor for a reason. She’d found that out when she’d had her first three kids. But she’d been in her early twenties then. Now she was old enough to be a granny. She felt every year of it, too, and about twenty more besides.

She lay on the bed, flicking the TV remote. Her roommate wasn’t there-they were running some kind of test on her. She was a Korean gal who didn’t speak a whole lot of English. When she was there, she kept stealing glances at Louise, as if to say What the hell were you doing? But the answer to that was only too obvious, wasn’t it?

James Henry Ferguson-seven pounds, nine ounces; twenty-one and a half inches-wasn’t there, either. They’d asked if she wanted him with her 24/7 or if he should stay in the nursery when she wasn’t feeding him. She’d had Rob with her all the time. Despite her own exhaustion, she’d started at his every twitch and sneeze and wiggle. And she’d learned her lesson. Vanessa and Marshall had stayed in the nursery. James Henry could damn well do the same thing.

Here was the local news. Living with Colin for so many years had given her a jaundiced view of it: blow-dried male robots and beauty-contest third runner-ups struggling to read from teleprompters. The newsies didn’t seem a whole lot smarter once she’d walked out on Colin, either.

But the headline behind this toothy blonde in a clinging red sweater was SOUTH BAY STRANGLER STRIKES AGAIN! Louise decided not to change the channel again. Colin had started chasing the Strangler while they were still married. He still hadn’t caught him. Neither had any of the other South Bay police departments.

“Found dead in her San Atanasio apartment was Eiko Ryan, age seventy-nine,” the newswoman said. “DNA analysis has not been completed, but the M.O. seems consistent with the notorious South Bay Strangler. Our Jerry Michaelson was on the scene.”

Their Jerry Michaelson thrust a mike in Colin Ferguson’s face. “What can you say about this latest Strangler atrocity, Lieutenant?” he asked excitedly.

“I don’t want to say much of anything till the lab team and the coroner do their job,” Colin answered.

“But it is a Strangler case, isn’t it?” Michaelson persisted.

“Right now it looks like one. And that’s about as much as I can tell you,” Colin said.

Their Jerry Michaelson wasn’t about to let him off so easily. “When will you catch this monster who’s been terrorizing South Bay senior women for so long?”

“Believe me, there’s nothing I’d like better.” Colin’s impatience was starting to show. He’d always had a short fuse with reporters. “If you’ve got any good ideas, I’d love to hear ’em.”

Michaelson started to splutter. The news cut back to the studio. The blonde in the tight sweater deplored the cops’ failure to apprehend anybody. She had a little trouble with apprehend , but managed almost well enough.

Then a Filipina nurse walked in, and Louise stopped worrying about the news. “How you feeling?” the young woman asked.

“Run over by a truck,” Louise answered honestly.

The nurse’s eyes widened. She laughed. “Oh, I bet you do,” she said. “Having a baby not easy for anybody, harder when you get a little older.” That was a polite way to put it. The nurse grabbed a gadget on a pole, stuck Louise’s finger in a clip, and wrapped a cuff around her arm. The cuff inflated painfully tight, then relaxed. The nurse wrote in the chart.

“Well?” Louise always wanted to know what was what.

“Blood pressure good. Blood oxygen normal.” The nurse stuck something in Louise’s ear, then wrote again. “Temperature normal, too. You okay.” Except you’re crazy . She didn’t come out with it, but it was written all over her face.

“Oh, boy.” Louise fought a yawn. Then she didn’t fight it any more. She’d earned the right to be worn out, by God! And she knew she’d better sleep while she had any chance at all. The baby sure wouldn’t let her once she got home. She wanted a shower, too; she was all over greasy sweat. But she lacked the energy right now. Tomorrow would do.

“Epesiotomy hurt?” the nurse asked.

“It’s starting to,” Louise admitted. They’d given her a local down there while they sewed her up. It was wearing off now. One more delight of childbirth she’d managed to forget. If women remembered all the lovely details, they would never have more than one kid, and the human race would have vanished a long time ago.

“Father come see baby?” the nurse inquired.

“I doubt it.” Louise’s voice was colder than supervolcano winter in Greenland. If Teo had wanted anything to do with his oops of an offspring. . If he’d wanted anything to do with the kid, a lot of things now would be different. But he damn well hadn’t, and they damn well weren’t. “I don’t expect any visitors.”

“No?” The Filipina girl’s eyebrows rose. “Too bad. You have pretty baby.”

Those things were relative. Newborn babies weren’t the cute, laughing things they became in a few months. James Henry was very pink, he had next to no hair, and he looked like a Conehead because he’d got kind of squashed coming out. That he would look that way, at least, Louise had recalled.

Shaking her head, the nurse went away. The news was doing the weather report. It would be chilly and rainy. It was either chilly and rainy or just plain chilly most of the time. And L.A. had it way better than most of the country.

Dinner came. It was unexciting hospital food, a redundancy if ever there was one. Louise didn’t care. In the classic phrase, she could have eaten a horse and chased the driver.

An attendant wheeled in the Korean lady in the other bed. She’d just got her tray when her husband showed up. They pulled the curtain and chattered in their own language, with occasional English words thrown in. It reminded Louise of Mr. Nobashi talking to Hiroshima, though neither side of this couple was in the habit of yelling, “Oh, Jesus Christ!”