Ten minutes later, a red Pontiac Grand Am pulled up to the curb in front of the airport door, followed by a beat-up pickup. The bald, sad-looking man who emerged from the Grand Am had on a white shirt and an Avis name tag, and Miles quickly gathered up his map and briefcase and hurried outside. There was a form to sign, the sad man took down his driver's license and credit card number, then gave Miles the key to the car and ran back to the pickup, hop ping in. The Wuck roared off, splashing water, and Miles
tossed his briefcase on the passenger seat and headed downtown.
He hit it on the first try.
Janet Engstrom was a haggard-looking woman who was probably much younger than she seemed. She lived alone in the front apartment of a single-story complex across the street from the college. Perhaps he should have called In'st, but since he had not, he simply walked up and rang the bell.
"Are you Janet.Engstrom?" he asked the woman who answered the door.
She nodded warily. "Yes." I'd like to talk to you about your uncle."
A shadow passed over her face. "My uncle's dead. I'm
SO "
She started to close the door.
"I know. That's why I'm here."
Something in his voice must have caught her attention, because she paused.
"His body's missing, isn't it?"
"No." "
"No?"
"We buried him on Sunday."
Still, she did not close the door completely, and Miles took that as a good sign.
"Can I come in? I'd really like to talk to you."
"About what?"
"Your uncle. I've come all the way from Los Angeles."
"You're not a reporter?"
"No," he assured her quickly. "Nothing like that. I just want to... talk."
"You know," she said matter-of factly
He nodded.
She met his eyes for a second, then glanced away and stepped aside to allow him entrance. The interior of the apartment looked simultaneously as though it had been lived in
for quite some time and as though she had never fully unpacked after moving.
She sat down hard on the couch. The features on her face remained immobile, cemented into place, but Miles saw tears welling in her eyes.
"You know," she said again.
"Yeah." He sat down next to her. "I know."
The first tear escaped from the invisible barrier that had been holding it back, and a slew of others followed, rolling out from beneath her long lashes and streaming down the sides of her face.-He reached over to wipe them away, but she pulled back and stemmed the tide herself, using a thin, graceful finger to clear her cheeks.
"Are you okay?"
She nodded, a movement that started another cascade of tears. "It's... it's just that it's been so long since I had someone I could talk to, since..." She looked up at him, tried to smile. "You saw the Insider article?"
"That's how I found you. I'm a private investigator."
Her body tensed, and she moved back on the couch, away from him.
"No, that's my job he explained quickly. that is what I do. It's not why I'm here."
"Why are you here?"
"I want to find out about your uncle. I want to find out about my dad." He took a deep breath. "The same thing happened to my father."
The expression on her face was complex, a look that was at once pained and relieved, frightened and sympathetic, angry and understanding. "I knew you knew, and I thought there was something personal about it. I could tell. That's why I let you in. I had a feeling about you." She looked at him, cleared her throat. "So what happened? Your dad died?"
"Yeah." Miles nodded. "He had a stroke in November, just fell over in the supermarket. They said he would never fully recover, but I was led to believe that he could still live
for quite a while--just in sort of a diminished state. So I hired a home health-care nurse, who basically took care of him when I was at work, administered his medications and all that, did physical therapy." He was silent for a moment, thinking. "It happened out of the blue. I came home from work one day and the nurse was gone. She'd barricaded the door of my father's room with furniture, and he was inside.
Walking." "
"In a circle?"
"Yeah. Around the perimeter of the bedroom. And the bed and dresser and stuff was moved into the middle of the room. Not because he'd pushed it there but because he'd bumped into it, forced it over while he walked. I could see the marks on his body where he'd hit the edges of the fur "So what happened after that? What did you do?" "I called the coroner's office. A friend of mine works there. He eventually stopped the walking with some kind of muscle relaxant and took my... took the body. He wanted to study it, find out what was causing my dad to keep moving even though he was dead. They kept him at the morgue, kept his body filled with drugs and, I think, strapped down, but well, one day he disappeared. The coroner was looking for him, I was looking for him, the police were looking for him, and we all assumed that he'd walked away, but we couldn't find him. Couldn't find a single trace of him.
"Then yesterday I saw the article in the Insider. And here
Janet's reaction was a non-reaction. She seemed to shut down at the conclusion of his story, and when it was clear that she wouldn't be asking any questions and that she wasn't planning to say anything herself, he prodded her. "Your turn."
"It's a long story."
He smiled. "I've got time."
She nodded solemnly. "Okay." She licked her lips. "You want something to drink? Water? Coke? Wine?"
He shook his head.
"I think I need a drink first." She stood, walked into the kitchen, emerged a few moments later with a stemmed glass filled with red wine.
She sat down again, then cleared her throat and took a loud swallow.
He waited patiently.
"I loved my Uncle John," she said finally. She swirled the wine in her glass, looked down at it. "He started walking before he died, actually. You probably read in the article that he had cancer, and he did, so I guess he was like your dad in that he was bedridden and had a lingering illness. Maybe that had something to do with what happened to them. I don't know. But three days before he died, he started walking. Around his room, like your dad. He hadn't been able to get out of his bed or move at all, really, for the past week, and then all of a sudden he was pacing like a lunatic." She paused, took another sip of wine. Then another here was something weird about it, too.
About his movements, I mean. It was almost like he was a puppet or a robot---"
"Like something was controlling him," Miles said. "Exactly."
"I thought these thing."
"Well, this went on for three days, and I didn't know what to do. I wanted to tell someone, but I didn't know who to tell, and I was scared. Then I came home from work on the third day, and he was outside, walking around the house, wearing only his old pajama bottoms.
Some of the neighborhood kids were throwing things at him, mud and stuff, and I chased them off, then ran around the back of the house. I thought he was delirious, and I wanted to get him back
inside." She shivered, thinking about it, and finished her glass of wine. that's when I found out he was dead."
Miles nodded. He understood completely. The memory of touching his father's cold rubbery skin was one that would remain with him for the rest of his life.