Draw One In The Dark(61)

She looked at him. He nodded as if she'd asked a question. "The . . . Well, the lab thinks it's of insect origin, although not quite like anything they know from any insects they know."



"And?" Kyrie asked.



"And those things . . . the white stuff on the lungs?"



"Yeah."



"They think it's eggs."



Kyrie frowned at him and he shook his head, looking impatient and annoyed, as if resenting that she couldn't read his mind. "Not chicken eggs," he said. "They're insect eggs. They don't know what type yet, but they're getting in an entomologist from the Natural History Museum in Denver tomorrow. He's someone's brother-in-law or brother of a brother-in-law, and he's driving down day after tomorrow. He's supposedly one of those guys who can tell on sight what kind of insect laid eggs where. He's used for investigating crimes by all the local police departments."



"Okay," Kyrie said. "And why did I need to know this right now? Why was this so urgent that I had to take a break to hear it?" His smell was growing stronger. It seemed to fill her nose and her mouth and to populate her mind with odd images and thoughts. She found herself wondering what his hair would feel like to the touch.



"Because I think there was the same powder on your porch last night," he said. "Where those windows were broken."



"My porch? Insects?" she asked. "But Tom said something about dragons and his friend was going on about aliens."



"Well, yeah," Rafiel said, and shrugged. "But I don't think those two were exactly in the state necessary to testify in a court of law. Or for that matter anywhere else."



Kyrie conceded. And yet, she wondered what had happened in the porch while they were gone. Had bugs broken the window? In her mind was an image of masses of bugs crawling out of the loam, pushing on the window, till the sheer weight of their mass broke it. Yuck. Like something out of a bad horror movie. "Any dead bugs, or other pieces of bug in that powder?"



"No," he said. He looked directly at her, as if her face were a puzzle he was hoping to decipher. His eyes were huge and golden, and his lips looked soft. The musky smell of him was everywhere, penetrating her nostrils, her mind.



He leaned in, very close to her, and asked in a voice that should be reserved for indecent proposals, "So, can I come by? After your shift?"



The tone and the closeness startled her enough to wake her from the trance induced by his scent. She stepped back. "No. Why would you? No."



He took a deep breath as though he, too, had been affected by something, and stepped back. "So I can see if you have that powder in your porch or not. And to have it analyzed if you do." He shook his head. "What did you think I meant?"



"All right," she said, reluctantly. "If you want to come. But not when I get off work. Come later, around one or so." She wanted to get some sleep tomorrow. And besides, she was not absolutely sure about Rafiel Trall yet. She'd rather face him in the full light of noon, without the effects of whatever this smell was. "I'd better go back in. Frank is in a mood and I have repairs on a porch to pay off."

* * *



Edward Ormson got out of the taxi in front of the diner where he'd been told Tom worked. Finding this information had been a fast job.



He, himself, had found Tom's address on the Web, and his secretary had then called—from New York, that much more impressive—the boy's landlady and asked questions.



Closing the taxi door and waiting till the driver pulled away, Ormson frowned. In fact, in the whole story there was only one thing he didn't understand. And that was that his secretary had told him the landlady seemed fond of Tom.



Oh, it wasn't at all strange that a woman should have some interest in Tom. Even at sixteen, when the boy had left home, there had been to him that roguish charm that attracts a certain class of females. What was odd, though, was that he had reportedly been living within the apartment complex this woman managed for about six months, and she said he'd never been late with the rent, didn't have loud parties, hadn't given the neighbors any cause to complain. He didn't, in fact, seem to have any life beyond going to work and—according to the woman—reading out on the steps of the building when the weather was warm. Reading? Tom? Perhaps it was the wrong Thomas E. Ormson?



But no. It wasn't that common a name. And besides, there had been the dragon. Edward swallowed, as he headed toward the gaudy facade painted all over with the prices of specials in what appeared to be a full pack of primary color markers. It wasn't just that "Fresh Rice Pudding" was scrawled in vivid red that offended Ormson's sense of aesthetics. It was that above it "Fries Always Fresh, Never Frozen" was done in at least five different and mutually clashing colors.