Red House Blues Read online

  A woman’s voice called out from down the street and the two young girls evaporated into deepening shadows. Called home so they won’t be out after dark. Won’t be here when the predators - the drug dealers and worse - claimed the street. Parents everywhere knew the dangers in the dark. Suzan thought of her own dad. He’d kill me if he knew where I was.

  This might not have been the best plan. Nothing much was visible of the house anyway. As she had that thought a light went on in an upstairs window of the house, followed by a yellow light on the wide front porch. Someone was in the house, though she hadn’t seen anyone go up the steps. So either they’ve been there all along or they came in the back. What did that say? Nothing.

  Suzan was feeling a little foolish sitting on a cold bench as the sun set. And hungry. She shouldered her purse, zipped her jacket and decided to head back to Linda’s for a hot meal and a good night’s sleep.

  Then she spotted him - walking past the park in the direction of the house. She sat very still on the bench, not wanting him to notice her. Get a grip. A man from the neighborhood walking home from work. What could be less threatening than that? At least he was alone. The last thing Suzan wanted was to have an unpleasant encounter with the local gangbangers.

  The man stopped, as if listening for something. She was sure it was a man, fairly tall, wearing what appeared to be a hooded sweatshirt. But it was hard to make out any details in the gloom. A blade of fear slipped between her ribs. All the worst possibilities rushed to mind. Marla’s description of the dead punk singer swept over her in a sick wave. Oh, God, what am I doing here? Please don’t let him see me.

  Her breathing stalled as she watched him turn, looking in the direction of the tree where she sat imperfectly shielded by a curtain of young willow leaves. For several heartbeats he stood still. But then unbelievably he continued along the street.

  He didn’t see me. He’s going on up the hill. Suzan stayed where she was as the man reached the house at the crest and ascended to the porch, heard his footsteps loud on the plank steps. He paused as if looking through pockets, opened the door and stepped inside, a harsh orange glow enveloping him. He was in and the door closed behind him before she could determine whether he was one of the Scalplock trio she had seen at Jax’s last night, though with the hood up she couldn’t have seen if he had tattoos on his head. It was useless.

  She hurried out of the park and back to Linda’s as if the devil were on her tail. What was I thinking? I’m some pathetic coward, a sad castoff who can’t let go of what might have been. If only Marla hadn’t gone back to Portland. Maybe she should after all take Claire up on her offer to come down and lend moral support. Right at that moment she didn’t want to see that house again but she knew she was way too deep to back out. She had no choice but to return to Fir Street and she would be doing it alone. She would have to find a spine and quick.

  The ugly old house did sort of fascinate her. As if it were a person, an intelligence, as if the house were consciously holding captive within its walls the secrets she had come to unravel. As if it were intentionally withholding them from her.

  Her imagination was clearly careening out of control. On the face of it, the house had become a kind of focal point for her frustration and anger. She would have to be careful of that. It wasn’t healthy. That was the way people went crazy.

  Next morning, she deliberately walked to work up Fir Street past the house. Bathed in clean morning light it looked sleepy and smaller than it had the previous night. It was primarily red, something that had been impossible to see under the yellow illumination of the streetlight. On one side someone had started to paint it grayish blue but had quit half way up one wall, so that the blue reached from shaggy bushes at the foundation to the second floor windows, no further. Maybe they couldn’t locate an extension ladder. Maybe it was that simple. The blue reminded Suzan of mildew. The house was obviously old by Northwest standards. Mid-Victorian, in not the best of taste, built by someone with little understanding of style.

  One length of gutter hung by a nail at a crazy angle. The front door’s oval window was cracked down the center and patched with duct tape. A thick pad of green moss furred the roof. This was a sad, injured house caught in the downward spiral of a stagnating neighborhood economy. It was shabby but not particularly malevolent or intimidating. It squatted on its scrap of land like a hundred other old houses in the vicinity, just a beat-up building sheltering the usual assortment of impoverished students and out-of-work artists. No reason at all not to walk right up and knock. What’s the worst that could happen?

  Figuring she would e-mail a few views of the house to Claire that night, she retrieved the camera from her bag and took a couple of shots of the front of the house, of the red and blue siding, and the sagging front porch.

  The color was peculiar. It wasn’t barn red, more a mix of brown brick and redwood. Dried blood. The words sprung to mind, and though they were accurate the thought unnerved her. It was a revolting color, leprous with peeling patches. No wonder someone had decided to paint it blue. Too bad they hadn’t finished the job.

  There was no time just then to drop in on the occupants. Suzan didn’t want to be late for work. Tia was bound to think she had been mugged. Her camera stashed once more, she trudged toward Twenty-third, promising herself she would stop by after work and this time introduce herself. Introduce herself as Ann Sullivan, that is, a student doing a paper on the Central District’s historic houses.

  Chapter 14

  He set his dripping coffee mug in the dish drainer next to the chipped porcelain sink and glanced out the window at the gathering clouds. Not raining yet but it won’t be long, he thought. Movement from the sidewalk caught his eye. A blond chick in a green jacket looking up toward the house.

  She’s out there again, like she was last night. A cop? She looks too young to be a cop, but who knows what kind of losers they hire these days?

  Pigs sniffing nonstop since that punk kid snuffed it - won’t find out who did it hassling his housemates but pigs are useless. Not as if we knew the kid that well - just one more punk renting a bed. Even less.

  But here was some woman taking an interest. Ferlin had enough experience with the system to be sure that if she were law he’d know right off. Could she be private? That was a possibility. But if so, she was not particularly good at it, standing out there in plain sight pointing a camera at the house.

  Or she could be a reporter. Plenty of those fuckers making assholes of themselves chasing ghosts, especially after Kiki. And when they found the guy they said did her. Media cockroaches. And that dude writing a biography on that Black kid who used to hang around. As if he would talk to anybody about that. As if he knew anything. Maybe this chick’s just some fan.

  Should probably tell Alexis. She didn’t like people snooping around where they didn’t belong. Sent that writer off empty, telling the dude I was just a crazy old fart who couldn’t remember anything about those times - telling him I’m senile from too many bad acid trips in the Sixties. Suits me. Wouldn’t have told him anything anyway. Especially what he wanted to know. Best to let the dead stay dead. Makes no difference when you’re dead. And they’ll all be dead. Or the next best thing.

  The chick was walking away up Fir toward Twenty-third. Maybe she wouldn’t be back and he wouldn’t have to tell Alexis after all. But he would keep his eyes open for her just in case. If she comes back Alexis will deal with it as she always deals. Nobody gets past Alexis.

  He heard a toilet flush upstairs. The house will be waking up now. All but the drummer, who had a gig last night and probably wouldn’t surface before noon.

  Ferlin decided to throw some bacon on to fry. He wasn’t into that vegetarian shit Alexis was always going on about. Funny how she freaks at the idea of killing things to eat them. Life feeds on life, thought Ferlin. Nobody eats rocks. Legs or leaves, it’s all the same thing. Just as alive. And just as dead when you put it in your mouth and chew.

  He went to t
he fridge and took out the package of maple-smoked bacon. At least Alexis doesn’t throw it out as soon as I buy it. Just hides it in the back where she doesn’t have to see it.

  God, I ache this morning. Getting too old. Every goddamn joint screaming it’s going to rain. Rain or no rain I gotta get my sorry ass down to the shop and get Jacob’s Chevy back on the road. He should have junked that piece of shit years ago.

  Could be I should have been junked years ago too. Some mornings I don’t know why I’m still in this house, doing the same crap I’ve always done. ‘Cept everybody has to be someplace and this is as good as any.

  He lined the bacon strips out in the bottom of the frying pan and turned the burner to medium. Maybe it was finally time he moved on. Maybe ask Alexis if she wants to buy the house. He’d cut her a good deal.

  * * *

  Tony felt like a dog reading Claire’s saved e-mail. He shouldn’t be doing it. Sure, it didn’t have quite the sense of violating somebody’s privacy as opening a physical envelope and reading the folded sheets of a letter. Still ... Claire would think he was out of line, even if it was his computer she used. She wasn’t exactly coming forward with any information lately - sleeping at Suzan’s and just dropping by their house for a change of clothes and to check her e-mail. Not that he didn’t know he deserved the deep freeze.

  As he suspected most of the entries were from Suzan. She updated Claire on where she was staying and her job at the supermarket. Then a name practically leapt off the paper at him. Kiki Zell. He remembered that name. Not too long ago he’d seen her murder profiled on cable. Was it “Cold Case Files”? Since Sean’s death he’d found himself drawn to programs recounting cold cases solved, as if to reassure himself that it could happen - someday they’d reopen the case and find the pond scum that ran Sean down. It’s not over. It will never be over.

  And see, they found the guy who killed Zell. Ten years after her murder they locate a fisherman in Alaska who just happened to be in Seattle the week Zell was killed. They found DNA. It was comforting to see the guy in cuffs doing the perp-walk on the network news. Tony imagined how he’d feel watching Sean’s killer surrounded by cops and media.

  But Sean hadn’t been a rock star. He had wanted to be, but he hadn’t made it. He hadn’t had the chance. Anything he had wanted to do with his life was a moot point now. Only a hand-full of people even cared that he was killed - his family and a few friends.

  Gradually the shock and pain would fade. If they broke Sean’s case after ten years like they did in Zell’s how would Tony himself feel by then? Would it be a triumph? Would he finally feel some sense of relief? Or would he, after a decade, just think, hey I once knew that guy?

  Kiki Zell - something was nagging at him - something someone said on the program that he just couldn’t quite remember. What had it been? He closed e-mail, opened Google and typed in “Kiki Zell”.

  It wasn’t going to be as easy as that. There were seemingly endless entries, mostly dealing with the initial crime reports, and write-ups on actions her friends and fans took to keep her murder before the public. Fund raisers. A flurry of pages detailing the arrest and trial of her “alleged attacker”. It promised to be a daunting task plowing through so much data, a virtual needle in an internet haystack. Tony narrowed the search to locational references in the material.

  And there it was. Just one mention in a Seattle alternative newspaper.

  “Zell was last seen alive after midnight on May first when friends say she left the Comet Tavern on East Pike Street. At 3:20 a.m. her body was found in the 100 block of 24th Avenue South, not far from a Fir Street house where a friend lived. Police say Ms Zell was found lying in the middle of the street with arms outstretched and ankles crossed.”

  God, what are the chances of a homicidal maniac from Alaska wandering by looking for a victim just as a young punk rock singer goes for a stroll in the small hours of the morning? The odds must be astronomically against. And yet the poor kid came up craps. The exception that proves the rule that Little Red Riding Hood should stay out of the deep dark forest at one a.m.

  Who doesn’t know that these days, he thought. Of course we’re talking about ten years ago. No telling what the circumstances were that night. Maybe she was a little drunk and wasn’t thinking clearly. Tony knew - or at least hoped - that if Claire were in a similar situation she’d have better sense than to walk out alone in an inner-city neighborhood at night. Equality be damned, stupid is stupid. Anyone with a firing brain cell calls a cab even if she’s only going six blocks.

  Fir Street. So that’s the neighborhood Suzan Pike is hanging around these days. Wonder if she knows Fir Street was connected to the Zell murder?

  Should he mention it to Claire? No, no way to do that without letting on he’d been reading her e-mail. And anyway, did he really want to warn Suzan? And warn her about what? This is nothing but the illusion of coincidence. Nobody twisted her arm into going down there. Claire couldn’t talk her out of it so if Suzan gets in over her head, he thought, it’s her own damn fault. Tony logged out and went to the kitchen for a beer.

  Chapter 15

  Suzan woke thinking winter had double backed or that she had slept through summer and fall. A steel drizzle pelted the window of her pink room at Linda’s, watery light seeping through its thin panes like a false promise. Would spring ever make an appearance? Her hand was aching again where the knife went in. She wondered if it would continue to bother her in damp weather for the rest of her life. The knife had missed tendons, thank heavens. Small favors. There would be an impressive scar.

  Where were the warm breezes and blowing blossoms? It was as if she had dropped into a deep hole in the center of an ice cave. If she couldn’t shake the mood this promised to be a long, miserable day.

  The only up side to the morning was knowing it was payday - which of itself presented a new set of complications. Suzan needed someplace to cash the check. Perhaps she could convince Linda to cash it for her, eliminating embarrassing questions about identity and bank accounts. It wouldn’t be all that much anyway. If she wouldn’t go for letting her sign it over to her for rent she would have to suck it up and sign half of it away at the local Speedy-Money outlet.

  More than a week in Seattle had slipped away with very little to show for it. Suzan still hadn’t summoned the courage to approach the house closer than the sidewalk. Something has to happen today, she thought, while padding down to the bathroom for a shower. You’re not on vacation, Suzan. You can’t go home empty. After work, knock on the door before it becomes such a road block you can’t get up the first step, before you build it up in your mind to the extent you’re paralyzed. Hold that thought.

  It was one of those iconic Seattle days when the sun hadn’t a chance. Apple Market customers, what there were of them, all wore the same drowned dog scowl as they straggled in from the sodden parking lot. They came in for toilet paper, cigarettes, milk – all the things that wouldn’t wait for the storm to pass. By two p.m. Suzan was already counting the minutes to the end of her shift. She longed to be anywhere but standing at that register - almost anywhere. It would have been so easy, given the weather, to put off her visit to Fir Street, just go back to Linda’s and open a can of chowder.

  At the thought of canned soup, her hand throbbed - a reminder of the boning knife that had so effortlessly sliced through her palm only a few weeks before. The wound was healed but the pain was as relentless as an impacted molar.

  At long last Suzan punched out, collected her paycheck, her purse, coat and umbrella, took a deep breath and plunged into the deluge. By the time she reached the intersection of Twenty-third and Fir, water was sluicing off her hair into her eyes. Her underwear felt more like a swimsuit at the end of thirty laps. Surely this wasn’t the time, place, or weather to meet new people. Nonetheless she splooshed west down Fir, head tucked so tightly inside the umbrella she nearly walked smack into a light standard on the corner by the park.

  Someone was shouting. She rais
ed her head toward the sound and a gust of wind tore the umbrella out of her hand, whirling it away across the street. Something blue the size of a garage door smacked her across the face and she went sprawling backward, her kidneys taking a hit on the concrete curb.

  “Hey, moron, I told you to grab it!” shouted a male voice over the wind’s howl.

  Pain shot from tailbone to ribs.

  “What are you talking about?” screamed Suzan. Struggling to her feet, she watched a guy sprint away down the street chasing something blue. If the jerk came back to see what kind of damage he had left in his wake she would have a few choice words about his lack of gallantry.

  But the man had other plans. Down at the end of the block he gathered up a blue tarp the wind had plastered against a chain link fence. He strode, clutching the tarp to his chest, back to where Suzan stood under torrential downpour. She was about to unload on him when he walked right past her as if she were invisible, trudging toward the house at the crest of the hill.

  What a self-centered, inconsiderate creep, she thought. No apology. No nothing. Her first impulse was to muster whatever dignity she had left and run after him. Sanity quickly reasserted itself. Just let it go, she told herself. The sooner she got back to Linda’s to dry off the better. No sense adding pneumonia to her list of woes for the day.

  Half way down the block she turned and looked back at the big red house. Through a sheet of silver rain there it was - the goal right in front of her streaming face, taunting her. She was turning tail once again, this time because it was raining. The flimsiest of excuses.

  All her lost opportunities came rushing back like a wet wind. Somewhere through that door might be the key that unlocked this mystery, Sean’s notebooks or someone who could tell her what happened to him. All she had to do was walk up the stairs from the street. Was she going to fail him again as she had done so many times before? And prove as big a coward as her mother after all? This is it, I won’t get a better chance than this.