Candles and Windows
by Brian Muir
Here with the perfect trick-or-treating tale is Brian Muir. The story is a return EQMM outing for the unnamed P.I. who’s so mysteriously drawn we have to infer even her sex. She’s named for the first time, we’ve learned, in the author’s just-completed novel. Mr. Muir works in movies. He has recently done English-language adaptations of four Jet Li martial arts films and worked with horror icon George Romero. He’s currently at work on a 3-D Garfield cartoon.
Ghoulish décor festooned homes throughout the neighborhood: jagged-toothed jack-o’-lanterns with heads aflame greeted visitors on porch steps; rag-doll witches on broomsticks took flight from rooftops; strings of pumpkin bulbs dangled from tree limbs, with skeletons and cobwebs and black spiders plump.
But the modest Cosseli home just south of Johnson Creek Boulevard sported no such décor. No fake gravestones in the yard nor Grim Reaper behind the hedge; the family in no mood to mock death, for it was as if the dark-hooded apparition really loomed over the home, curved scythe poised to strike, his blade nicked by the bones of countless victims.
Hence, the lone candle of hope flaring in a front window.
Halloween was a dry one, but cold. The air bit into your skin even before the sun went down. It had rained a few days earlier, knocking big broad leaves off trees, so thick on the sidewalks you had to kick through wet piles of them like used paper towels. If you weren’t careful you’d slip on the slick leafy coating.
The Willamette was high and sluggish and black running under the Sellwood Bridge, but the old gal hadn’t given up any secrets lately; little Cheri Cosseli’s body hadn’t washed onto the bank anywhere near Portland or downstream.
That’s why I thought there might still be a chance to find her, slim though it was. The police always tell us that after two days the chance of finding a missing child alive is slim to none. Hell, even after only a few hours the news usually isn’t good.
The lengthier the child’s absence, the more police presence tends to dwindle. It’s not their fault; they have a lot on their plate and playing the odds on a kid missing more than a few days isn’t an efficient use of man-hours.
Little Cheri had been missing almost a week; plenty of time for her body to wash ashore, if she’d been dumped there. But like I say, it hadn’t. Nor had it turned up at the morgue. So I opted to keep looking.
This was on my own time, you understand. I wasn’t working for the family; hadn’t even met them. All I knew of the Cosselis was what I’d seen on TV: a middle-class father and mother, he a produce man at Fred Meyer and she a housewife raising two children. Their son often appeared on the news with them, a spindly teen with mismatched limbs and ears like big potato chips, prone to wearing black T-shirts (his most recent had been a Freddy Krueger tee, perhaps inappropriate under the present circumstance, given Freddy was a child killer). He tried to appear tough and resilient but was unable to stanch the flow of tears as he talked to reporters about his little sister.
The Cosselis and their friends had posted fliers all over the neighborhood, east from Oaks Park and west past Reed College; south to the Clackamas County line and as far north as Powell. Hopefully a wide enough area, given that child predators often stay within their “comfort zone,” unlikely to stray until they’ve sufficiently mined the area and brought too much heat down upon themselves.
I traveled the search area using TriMet. It’s a great way to watch the sidewalks while someone else does the driving. I’d get off on different stops and walk the streets, checking alleyways behind rows of tiny homes, my long black greatcoat helping me vanish into shadow like Claude Rains unfurling his Invisible Man bandages.
I moved by dusk and well into night. Evenings were when the predator would most likely be on the hunt, with children out playing in their yards or at the parks. Prime time for one to be snatched into darkness, given that the sun dipped around six this time of year, its dwindling light playing tricks on the eye.
During my walks, I’d often see police cars cruising the streets, maybe searching for little Cheri and her abductor. More than once a black-and-white slowed as it rolled past me, the male cops inside checking out my long black hair and shapely rear under the coat.
It’s not only my vanity that allows me to believe I’m being eyeballed by the police. There have been a handful of times when I’ve run afoul of the local gendarmes. Not by breaking any laws (that they know of), but simply by doing their job when they weren’t able to.
I’d been hoping for a break in the case before Halloween because the predator who’d taken Cheri was still out there and in a few hours the sidewalks would be bursting ripe with prey, all dressed as little ghosts and ghouls. As the sun hung low over the Portland hills, momentarily breaking through charcoal clouds to bounce orange off the buildings downtown, I stopped by Rossa’s Coffee Shack for a boost.
Rossa knew what I needed and lazily poured me a Daily Brew, black, and slid it across the counter. The place was empty but for him and me. While I waited for my joe to cool, he closed the front door and flicked off the sign outside.
“Closing up early?”
“Don’t want trick-or-treaters,” he said. “They’re a pain.”
“Just put a bucket of candy bars out front. They’ll help themselves to what they need and won’t so much as say ‘boo’ to you.”
“You know what candy costs these days?”
“A real Halloween Scrooge, aren’t you, Rossa?”
He glowered, wiping the counter with a dirty rag, switching off the urns.
“Don’t be surprised if when you get here to open up in the morning you find the place has been egged and TP’ed.” I sipped the coffee. It was still too hot, but tasted good going down.
“You don’t usually stop by at night,” he said. “What gives?”
“Taking a stroll. Lending an eye to that search for the missing girl.”
He nodded grimly. “If you find the scum that took her, do me a favor and bring him in here before you take him to the cops. I’ll give him some third-degree burns in a very delicate area.”
“More than likely he’ll already be sore down there from my kicking boot.”
“Good luck.”
“I’ll need it.”
As Rossa dumped old grounds in the trash, I strolled to the far wall where he displayed his Trail Blazers memorabilia. I reached behind the long team photo of the near-championship ’99-2000 roster to check for messages. My personal post office.
I found nothing there. No pleas for help, no line on a new job, and last but not least, no tip regarding the missing Cosseli girl.
Maybe I was hoping for too much.
I took my coffee for a walk up into the Sellwood district, looking for a missing child and her abductor, the odds marking him as white, between the ages of twenty-five and fifty. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Strike that. At least with the aforementioned proverbial needle, the haystack is stationary and you know the needle’s in there somewhere.
But since I had no knowledge the Cosseli girl was still out there — alive, anyway — and her abductor could easily blend in tonight with myriad werewolves and aliens all swarming like ants on a cinnamon roll, that needle was looking better and better.
A high, piercing scream whirled me around. A teenaged couple dressed as Leatherface victims shot down the sidewalk, chasing a comrade down the street.
I shook my head. Even knowing it was Halloween, I hadn’t been prepared; too on edge. Lucky I had the lid on the coffee or I would’ve spilled it as I’d spun around.