Authors: Alex Dolan
An alarm blared, like a toy ambulance racing through the house. We both jumped. The gun barrel bounced about, and I was worried she might squeeze off a round by accident. Smoke hit my nose a moment later.
“Goddamn it!” Tesmer ran to the kitchen. “Don’t even itch.” Fish burned. Maybe catfish. That stink would get worse once it had time to breathe.
I could have run, but the house wasn’t that big. She had a good chance of hitting me if she had a second to aim. With the gun pointed toward the living room, she dropped the pan into the sink and ran steaming water into it. I craned my neck to watch her. Like a compass needle, the barrel always found a way to point in my direction. “Now we have no dinner,” she said. On top of everything else, she was trying to make me feel guilty about dinner.
Tesmer spoke with the crisp confidence of an educated professional. Something about her voice was familiar, but I couldn’t place it yet. Her range was lower than the typical woman’s voice, with buttery tones.
I tried to defuse the tension. “I’m not what you think.”
“And what’s that? A burglar or a predator?” She’d spoken to Cindy Coates. Had she seen my sex offender profile? I had to assume so.
“Either of those.”
“Don’t you dare make a joke of this.”
“I don’t mean any harm. I just want to speak to your daughter.”
“Daughter?” For the first time she regarded me without seeming threatened. “I don’t have a daughter.”
This stumped me. Immediately I thought I might have visited the wrong house. In which case this wasn’t Tesmer Moon, and we weren’t waiting for Veda Moon. But Cindy Coates had called her, so this had to be the place. I was confused. My eyes tracked where the gun pointed, especially when she pointed it at me, employing the revolver the same way one might raise an accusatory finger to shut someone up.
Opposite the sofa, she sat down on an ochre hog leather reading chair. “Why are you here?”
Now that I wasn’t certain about her relation to Veda Moon, I didn’t want to mention the girl by name. “Because I’m in trouble. I thought someone lived here who could help me.”
“How would they help you?” Her gun hand rested on the armrest, and the barrel angled so its would-be target was two cushions away.
I chose my words carefully. “I hoped they would tell me something that would help me figure out my problem.”
“This girl—you were looking for a girl—would say something and you’d figure it all out.” It sounded bad the way she said it.
“That was the plan.”
“You expected this of a child?”
“She’s not a child now.”
“No, he’s not.” She turned the gun so it angled father away from me. Now if it discharged it might clear the couch and hit the wall.
I was in the right place. “You’re Veda’s mother.”
“That I am.”
“He’s your son.”
“That he is,” she confirmed.
I nodded to myself as I absorbed this. “I assumed it would be a girl.”
“People take boys too.” Some humanity eked into her voice. “What did you expect him to tell you?”
“I don’t know. His story. Walter Gretsch and Helena Mumm.”
She waited for me to elaborate.
“Somewhere there’s a man who wants me to kill Helena Mumm. I don’t know why, although it’s becoming clearer. I don’t even know who this man is. I just wanted to learn more so I could figure it out.” I felt compelled to add, “I’m not trying to exploit your son. I’m not a reporter.”
“I know you’re not, Kali.” My name came out of her so easily, it took a moment to remember that I’d never said it. I brimmed with dread. The gun turned again, now pointing back toward my chest. This woman shouldn’t know that name. Cindy Coates had only met Pamela Wonnacott.
“Who are you?” I asked her.
She said flatly, “You know who I am. My name is Tesmer Moon, and you’re in my house.” She brushed back a tendril that had fallen on her face.
She hadn’t phoned the police. We were just waiting, her as much as me, for what would happen next. “Was that Veda on the phone? Is he coming home?”
“He is coming home,” she smirked at me. “Soon.”
Her voice. It was starting to come to me.
Emmanuel yipped in my lap. I corralled the dog awkwardly, like fumbling with a wet bar of soap.
Tesmer concluded, “That’s not even your dog, is it?” For some reason this seemed to disappoint her.
“No.”
“Jesus Christ,” she rolled her eyes. “That’s deplorable.” Emmanuel pawed at my arms. “He wants to run around. You should let him.”
But I didn’t want to let Emmanuel off my lap, because then I wouldn’t have a cute baby mammal to dissuade her from firing her pistol at my stomach. “He’ll pee,” was the best protest I could produce.
“I’d rather he peed on the floor than the couch.” She waved the gun. “Let him run wild.”
She didn’t seem eager to hurt me. I hoped I could talk her out of holding me there. “Honestly, I can just go. This was an honest mistake. I don’t need to speak with Veda. I crossed a line, and I don’t want to add insult to injury by letting my dog pee on your rug.”
“It’s not your dog. And you’re not going anywhere.” She lifted the revolver just to remind me she had it. The weight of the gun was apparent in the effort it took to aim it, and that reminded me of its explosive power and how a bullet would rupture me if the gun discharged. I’d seen my share of gunshot wounds. If they weren’t lethal, they were messy and painful.
I lowered the wriggly Emmanuel onto the carpet. He romped over to her, but she ignored him, so he scampered off to explore the house.
It dawned on me. “You were the doctor on the phone.” A second later, I remembered the name she’d used. “Dr. Jocelyn Thibeault.”
She huffed; a sound intended to pass for a laugh. “You want a gold star for that? It took you long enough.” She chided, “You should have insisted on meeting me. I couldn’t fathom why you didn’t. Don’t you have a vetting process for what you do?”
One of the few things I had once everything else had been taken from me was pride in my work. I resented the criticism. “I made an exception for you.”
“What would make you do that?”
“I felt sorry for your patient.”
Car brakes whined outside. The way Tesmer’s face relaxed, I could tell it was a familiar sound. She eyed the door.
A young man walked through it. “Whoa, fish!” He fanned his hand in front of his nose. An instant later he froze when he saw me, his mother, and the gun.
Tesmer soothed, “It’s all right, baby.”
Veda Moon was Cindy’s age, early twenties. Only a few years younger than me, he seemed younger, and rolled his shoulders forward like a kid. Six feet tall and bony all over. Trim-fit Oxford shirt and skinny jeans. Clean-cut. He was so light on his feet. I could see how he’d make a fast runner. His face was sharply defined, with smooth amber skin and light hazel eyes. He was a beautiful young man. Some African blood had mixed with his mom’s, angled his features and turned his eyes into gemstones. I understood why Veda was chosen by Walter Gretsch and Helena Mumm. If seen in public, people might actually think Veda was Walter’s blood son. He was the closest approximation of the biological son they could have borne together.
“Mom?”
I don’t know why I expected Veda and Cindy to be similar, but he didn’t have her huggy energy. I could already tell he tiptoed through life, and he was scared now. I guessed he’d never seen his mother hold a pistol. Maybe he didn’t know they owned one. It was that moment when the mafia kingpin’s kid stumbles across his dad stuffing a corpse into an oil drum. Veda Moon was trying to reconcile what he knew of his mother with the woman who would hold a stranger hostage.
His voice warbled. “What’s going on?”
Walking in on this scenario would have been confusing to most—I got that—but confusion is different from fear. Veda was afraid, for his safety and of his mother. As if the gun itself were an IED that could blow us all to chum. He looked at me curiously and cautiously, trying to see if he recognized me from somewhere.
Tesmer told him, “Cindy Coates called today. She told us to keep an eye on this one. Said she’d try and find you.” She gestured to me. “She’s been passing around a fake story about how she just got abducted and released herself.” To me she faux-praised, “Balls on you, girl.”
Veda hovered within a lunge of the open door. Part of me wanted him to back out through it. His mother might follow him, and I might excuse myself.
I suppose not knowing what else to say, but feeling like he needed to interject something, Veda asked, “Why does it smell like fish?”
“Because I burned it.”
“It smells like shit.” He pinched his nose. I didn’t know if this was the awkward spilling of a random thought, or if he was trying to diffuse tension. Hard to read this kid.
Tesmer seemed irritated—at her son, at me for putting her in this situation, and possibly at the gun for being so heavy. “He’s sensitive to smells.”
“Can we open a window?” he said.
“No, because then people will hear us.”
An unseen voice through the door announced an adult man. “Veda, you don’t have to be here for this.” That familiar voice.
My tendons tightened like gurney straps as Leland stepped into the house. He wore a gray suit and rooster-red tie, with shoes scuffed around the toe box. The jacket under his arm bulged from where he carried his semiautomatic. He had brought a second gun into the room. Leland looked at me with a victorious smugness, and I felt invisible fingers encircle my heart and squeeze.
Chapter 9
My fingernails dug pink crescents into my thighs.
The Moon family conversed with a rote ease that might make one think they didn’t in fact have a stranger on their sofa fighting to breathe.
“Where am I going to go, Dad? This is our house.” Veda’s voice was deep like his dad’s.
“Your son has a point,” Tesmer said.
Leland, or the man I knew as Leland, waved at his nose. “That is strong.”
“It’s nasty,” Veda said.
Tesmer dismissed it. “You’re sensitive to smells. It’s not that bad.”
Now would have been the time to scream. Bunched all together as a family, perhaps they would be less likely to discharge their side arms. Tesmer and Leland seemed concerned about alerting the neighbors. They should have been. We were close enough that a slingshot could have pinged pebbles off the adjacent roofs. Unlike the ranch house in Clayton, someone might have come running in Berkeley. But I didn’t scream. Stiffened in terror, I could not move or make a sound.
The man I knew as Leland Mumm gently shut the front door. Like his wife, he peeled back a flap of the shade to peek outside and make certain no one else was out there spying. Once my exit closed, anything could happen. Tesmer could shoot me as an intruder. Leland could whip out the handcuffs.
He stood behind the ochre reading chair and affectionately rubbed his wife’s neck. He said to me, “I was coming for you anyway. You just beat me to it.”
I found my voice. “What’s your real name?”
Tesmer and her husband exchanged looks. Veda suddenly understood that his father knew me.
“Leland Moon.”
“Are you even a cop?”
“Not exactly.” He dug into his suit jacket and flopped a badge, too far away to read anything but the abbreviation, FBI. It looked real, but I couldn’t be sure I could trust anything he said or showed me.
“Why don’t I believe you?”
Leland sauntered to the front closet and opened the double doors to a rack of coats. He pulled one off the hanger—a deep blue windbreaker. Across the back, in giant yellow block letters: FBI.
Holy shit, I was fucked.
The soft mound of black and white fur scampered back into the living room and sniffed around Leland’s feet. “What the hell is this?”
Tesmer said, “It’s not even her dog.”
“She brought a dog?”
“She said its name is Emmanuel.”
Leland asked, “Did you steal this?”
“I borrowed it from a shelter.”
“Pathetic.”
“Exactly,” Tesmer added.
Emmanuel got the hint that Leland Moon wouldn’t play with him and romped over to Veda. Their son moved for the first time since he’d come inside. He squatted and stroked the dog. Cuteness aside, playing with the puppy was one way to withdraw from whatever his parents had going on in their home. Emmanuel flopped on his back, and Veda gratefully stroked his stomach.
Tesmer warned, “We’re not keeping it.”
The dog gave Veda some courage to speak up. He nodded at me. “Who this is?”
“Don’t worry about her. It’ll be all right,” his father said.
“She’s here because of me, right?” Apparently, Cindy Coates hadn’t spoken to Veda. When the threat arose, she’d called the parents instead.
His mother echoed, “It’s all right, Veda.”
With no answers from his parents, Veda addressed me. “Why are you here?”
I admired this. First impressions what they were, I didn’t think he’d have the fortitude to speak to me directly.