Уолтер Мосли - Blue Light

Horace watched with fatalistic fascination. He was less than a ghost, no more than a common cold to his demonic host, and he, in his powerlessness, didn’t feel much for the doomed woman. But then the groaning of the tree became louder and more strident. The ground began to tremble. Esther O’Halloran, who had risen upon unsteady feet, danced away while trying to keep upright.

Gray Man and Horace turned to the tree just as it exploded in a shower of splinters and bright blue light.

Horace, fully aware, felt the brunt of the explosion and then ran down a dark asphalt alley under a heavy downpour. Blue streetlights were placed at uneven intervals down the lane. He ran into walls and trash cans and old rotted fences. He fell and stumbled back to his feet, ran and collapsed, all the while followed by the silent specter of pain. It came after him like a flood of thick blood. He ran and fell tumbling right out of Gray Man’s life.

But Gray Man didn’t see Horace go. He was running himself. The splinters and timbers didn’t hurt him, but the light of the life of that tree went down to his marrow. He caught fire from the vitality and sanctity of the tree. And all he could do was run with the curse of the tree etched deeply on his soul.

Beneath the desert, at the same moment of the explosion, Winch Fargo’s door broke open. Wild-eyed and impossibly skinny, the black-toothed felon staggered up the mine shaft into the clear desert twilight. As he climbed to the surface, the sun disappeared and the stars slowly winked to life. Thousands and thousands of stars. Each one, he knew, like a flower for the honey bee gods who left him here long before there was time or love.

Winch Fargo sought her in the air. There was a trace and a direction — and many fewer steps ahead than there were years behind.

After two weeks Christian Bonhomme decided it was time for him to enter Claudia Zimmerman’s cell again. This was no light decision. He had put it off until the day before the inquest. The only men that had been allowed in to see her were Miles Barber and Felton Meyers, the ex-detective and the court-appointed attorney. And Felton was thoroughly searched before he was allowed into her cell. She fired Felton after their first meeting, however, and spent the next two weeks alone.

Bonhomme was not a religious man, nor did he believe in magic or voodoo or any other such nonsense. But he had seen the depraved survivors of the zombie sex camp. One man, a carpenter named Stanley Brussels, stayed on his knees begging from the time he awoke to the moment he collapsed into sleep. He had to be force-fed through a rubber tube the hospital attendants shoved down his nostril once a day. Others mutilated themselves or became so violent that they were restrained twenty-four hours a day.

Each man wanted only one thing: to see Claudia Zimmerman, to be put in a cell near hers. They begged and cajoled and threatened.

“If that’s what you call love,” he’d said to Briggs and Barber the day he was to go into Claudia’s cell, “then you can have it.”

He wasn’t the same man that Barber remembered. Outside the detention room Bonhomme stalled, clenching his pipe between visible teeth.

“Did you ask the judge for an extension?” Bonhomme asked Lonnie Briggs.

“You know I did, Chris. They said that they have to see her for the indictment as soon as she’s sitting up straight. I don’t know what’ll happen if they find out that she hasn’t seen a doctor.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it,” Bonhomme said through his pipe. “Is Clemmens out there?”

“I told you he was.”

“Then go get him, I guess.”

When the sergeant went through the door Bonhomme was left with Barber and a guard in a special detention wing of the Sacramento jail.

“She scares you, huh?” Barber asked softly.

“Yeah. Yeah, I never felt anything like it. Nothing. It was like pure sex. I went home and my wife, she... well, she went to visit her mother after two nights with me. I was all over her. I couldn’t help myself.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know it doesn’t. I’m no sex maniac.”

“No, not that,” Barber said. “Everybody we interviewed about Zimmerman said that her effect was to make them love only her. No one in the Haight slept with anyone but her — if she allowed it.”

“What are you talking about?” Bonhomme was angry. “Some kinda hocus-pocus? I don’t think the woman has some kinda power. What happened to me was what you call suggestion . All this talk about sex and perverts brought on a sorta temporary anxiety, that’s all.”

“Then why’re you scared to go in there?”

“I’m not scared. I’m just waiting for Briggs to bring Clemmens.”

Miles allowed the lie to go unchallenged. He knew that the small woman had power. He felt her presence, but not like other men did. There was something obscene in his experience. He didn’t hear a silent siren’s call. The dark place in his heart responded with distaste and anger.

After a few minutes Lonnie Briggs returned with George Clemmens. Clemmens was tall and heavy, Barber once told me, with loose flesh that fit him like a suit a size or two too large. He also had big shiny eyes and nearly no chin.

“Okay, Lonnie,” Bonhomme said. “Let’s stop acting like kids and get this thing over with.”

Lonnie Briggs pulled open the door with a solemnity that made him blush. George Clemmens, who was the state prosecutor, looked from one agent to the other with an uncomprehending frown on his face.

Barber was introduced as a special consultant on the case.

“What’s wrong with you guys?” George asked. “You act like you got an armed and dangerous in there. I mean, you know this is late for me to be talking to someone we’re about to indict.”

“You trust me, George?” Bonhomme asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I guess.”

“Then hold on to your hat and don’t touch her, no matter what you do.”

Claudia was sitting on a three-legged wooden stool, her legs crossed and lips red. Her skirt was hiked up to her thigh, and she was smiling.

There was the look of hunger in her small eyes.

Miles found that his distaste had grown nearly into hatred.

“Claudia Zimmerman,” the prosecutor said.

“Claudia Heart,” she purred.

“You know you should have a lawyer present. These are serious charges you are facing.”

Bonhomme and Briggs watched the prosecutor closely.

“I don’t need a lawyer, Mr. Clemmens,” Claudia replied. “And if there are too many people in the room at the same time, I sometimes lose my concentration.”

A dog howled outside. Claudia looked up with the light of recognition in her face and smiled.

“All you have to concentrate on are the concerns at hand, Mrs. Zimmerman,” George Clemmens said. “We would like to know how you plead to the charges, if charges are brought, and it would be better if you had a lawyer on hand to do that for you.”

“I don’t plead to anyone.” The love goddess tossed her limp brown hair back out of her face.

“Has your attorney explained to you the charges?”

“What color are your eyes, Detective Bonhomme?” Claudia asked.

Later the inspector told Barber and Briggs that he was surprised not by the question but by the simple fact of how plain she was. “Just a plain-looking woman in her thirties. Not ugly exactly, but homely, unattractive, you know?”

“Answer the questions, honey,” Bonhomme said with the harshest tone he could muster. “You’re going to be indicted tomorrow for second-degree manslaughter and inciting to riot.”

His manner struck Claudia as if it were a bucket full of ice. She got up from the stool and went into her little water closet, half closing the door behind her. The men could hear the retching grunts and then the toilet flushing. A few minutes later Claudia came out of the stall pale and uncertain.