Lost Cargo Read online

  A street sign materialized out of the night.

  “Newark!” she said. “We’re all turned around.”

  They began to climb the steep hill, past more nineteenth-century homes that rose like magnificent ships sailing in a sea of fog. The block was too long. His sides ached. Lexie struggled beside him with her damp hair plastered to her coat. The fogbank closed in behind them as they pushed up the hill.

  The sound of claws turned up Newark.

  A dog, Travis told himself. Some crazy dog hellbent on catching them. He hoped it wasn’t a pit bull. The thing could probably smell them and hear them no matter what they did. He tried to swallow his panic, but he was running out of ideas. The hill leveled off and fell away into a shallow valley bordered by dark woods. He knew Newark Street went on for blocks until it ran into Wisconsin Avenue, a busy commercial boulevard far out of their way. They couldn’t keep going in that direction.

  They hurried over the grass, keeping to the trees. A pale mansion decorated with intricate plaster swags and flowers and framed by stately hollies appeared, followed by more palatial homes. At the edge of one of the grand lawns they crept under a spreading pine tree and lay side by side on the damp needles, hiding their faces.

  The peculiar footfalls came closer. Travis lifted his eyes, expecting to see a pit bull or a Doberman pad into sight, its claws ticking on the sidewalk, but instead a familiar shape stepped out of the darkness. The giant stopped under a streetlight as though she was listening for them.

  It’s her. Don’t move. His pulse pounded. The pine boughs barely hid their bodies.

  She was even bigger than he remembered. Her head seemed too small, a mere stump. For a nightmarish moment her neck and chin seemed to be missing, melted away like heavy wax into her shoulders, but then her whole face appeared after all. Yes, she had a neck, and a chin, and her mouth was where it should be. The fog must be doing something crazy to my eyes. What kind of shoes was she wearing? Her voluminous gray cape pooled over her feet into the gutter and in the dim light seemed to be the same shade as the pavement. Seconds passed. Her figure faded in the fog until her huge form seemed to be rising out of the road.

  The seconds turned into minutes. Travis grew angry as he lay in the dirt. His pulse hammered. Following them all this time. Creeping after them like a ghoul. What was she up to? She didn’t seem to have any weapons, but in one of her huge hands she held a large, flat purse.

  A car with the headlights off rumbled up behind them and rattled off into silence. The smell of cigarettes and beer floated out into the night.

  “Pookie, look,” a man said.

  Travis met Lexie’s eyes and shifted his weight, ready to fight.

  A second man gave a husky laugh. “Boo yeow, what a hit!”

  The heavy metallic clunk of a car door sounded, followed by the soft sound of feet pattering across the pavement. A figure came out of the shadows. Sixteen or seventeen, thin, jittery, jogging up and down, with a black ski mask, oversized green hoodie, baggy black pants, and one long, black, mean looking gun. The engine rumbled as the car crept behind a screen of trees. They had it down.

  And they didn’t see Travis and Lexie after all. The mugger went after the giant, who crossed the street. He crossed with her, pace for pace, like a sauntering panther stalking his prey, cut her off, and pointed his weapon at her dull face. Her cold eyes stared out from under folds of fat.

  “Gimme your purse or I’ll kill you,” he said in a husky voice. “And I mean it.”

  Pookie. Streetlight shone over his ski mask. The enormous woman lifted an arm like a tree trunk and held out the purse. When Pookie took it, his eyes grew wide through the mask.

  “Empty. Give it to me.”

  The giant’s jaws opened down to her monstrous breast. Then she lunged, bit off Pookie’s fingers, and devoured his gun and hand in a single greedy gulp. Seconds later, she ripped his right arm out of the socket. Pookie opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out, and he stood there, tottering like a marionette.

  The giant seized his ski mask, jammed his head in her mouth like a lollipop, and snapped it off. Dark blood streamed over her cape as she turned her back to the pine tree. Like a figure from an old nightmare, she opened her threatening cape to the corpse that no longer had eyes to see, once a man, young and strong and raw and cruel, now just a bloody slab of flesh stretched out under a moonless sky. Her cape dragged over the sidewalk. One more step and she stood on the headless body, pulled it into position, and devoured the remaining arm.

  When she finished with the top half of Pookie, she ate through the bottom. She gorged on his baggy pants and swallowed all the pathetic incidentals of his brief life buried in the blood-soaked pockets, gnawed his organs, splintered his bones, and ended with his feet, hard, agile feet that must have jaywalked ten thousand times across the rotten city streets, timing the traffic, daring the cars, predatory feet that sauntered and stole and stretched and ran, now just two bloody stumps oozing onto the sidewalk.

  The grisly feast ended. She trailed her cape over the smear that had been a human being and stared through the shifting fog.

  Get down. Travis pulled his dark coat over Lexie’s pale hair and threw his arms around her, but to his shock she struggled to her elbows.

  The bloodstained giant turned her back again.

  Click, click, rapid and soft. The flash went off in succession. Lexie got off ten shots before he could grab the camera and shove her down again. Fog blew over the road in streaming clouds as the giant turned around.

  The car crept forward into the fog.

  “Pookie? Pookie?” The driver screamed. “Monster monster monster monster!” He gunned the motor, threw the car in reverse, hit a utility box, ripped up the grass, and bounced with a bone-jarring thud over the curb. “Monster monster monster monster monster monster!” A headlight smashed against a parked car. Glass and metal scattered and burning rubber filled the air. Then the spinning tires squealed as the one-eyed car fishtailed and roared down Newark Street.

  “Kree-ee-ee-ee,” the giant shrieked in a murderous wail down the middle of the dark road, narrowing the gap. The car let out a loud blatt and chugged uphill. The giant seemed to give up the chase, but then she rushed across a lawn, her cape extended like great wings, and soared to the housetop. She scrabbled across the tiles where she squatted like a gargoyle and turned her fiendish gaze on the fleeing car lights.

  A yellow square blinked on in the house. An upstairs light. Seconds later a smaller yellow square appeared. A bedroom and a bathroom. The bedroom drapes opened and fell back. Somebody was up, probably calling the police. The thing on the roof moved over the peak and disappeared in the shadows behind the house.

  “Now,” Travis whispered. If they ran for it, they had a chance.

  He crawled out from under the pine tree, heart racing, moving through a dreamscape to the bloodstained sidewalk. Glass glittered under the streetlight. The light would expose them when they crossed the road.

  Run. Run for it. Run run run now. When he turned to Lexie, he was horrified to see she’d moved away. She was off in her own world, bending over the sidewalk, kneeling, then standing, black coat moving in and out of the light, camera clicking, the flash going off, recording the dreamscape, the river of blood, the bashed-in utility box, the glittering glass-strewn street, the rooftop at the bottom of the hill where the thing had flown only a moment before.

  Travis took long strides to her side. “No, we have to get out of here,” he whispered.

  She lowered the camera and took his hand as they ran into the shadows. He didn’t care where they were going or what was in their way. Darkened houses passed by in a blur until a sign for Macomb Street appeared out of the fog.

  Chapter 6

  Lexie’s House

  “Which way?” Travis barked. For a frightening moment he didn’t recognize the street. Porch lights glimmered up and down the hill. They were on Macomb, but where? The wrong side of 34th again? All at once he got his bear
ings. A familiar hedge appeared, and the pickets of an iron fence, and a tall shape with grasping arms that shrank to an old oak he’d passed hundreds of times before. Just tree limbs. Just a few blocks to go.

  Then they heard a thump, and another thump. Two lights gleamed through the shifting fog. At first he thought two burning yellow eyeballs were pursuing them, rolling up the hill. He held his breath. The lights blazed. A white truck appeared, and an arm shot out the window, tossing newspapers in long arcs toward the porch steps. They landed with soft thumps in the wet grass.

  “Stop, stop, help us, please,” Lexie shouted, who still had her wits about her.

  The driver gave them a startled look, gunned the motor, and took off.

  They kept running uphill. At last the hedge around her house appeared, followed by white columns and railings. They made the porch. “Let me find my key,” she whispered, tearing through her pockets. Once they were inside, she slammed and locked the door and turned on the hall lamp. Black shadows flew like long distorted arms over the walls.

  “She killed that guy,” Lexie said, wild-eyed.

  “Killed him?” Travis said. “She ate him like a ham sandwich.”

  “She flew. Did you see that? She flew up on the roof of that house.”

  “I’m going to check the doors and windows,” he said, and forced his feet to move. They went through the first floor together, closed drapes that had been open all day, checked locks, and turned on every lamp in every room. Light flooded the spacious house, drove away the evening shadows, and lit up Burke’s antiques and paintings.

  Lexie went back to the kitchen, set her camera on the black granite counter, took out a French press to make coffee, and put the kettle on to boil, but she just seemed to be going through the motions.

  Travis took off his coat and sat down, watching her.

  “She killed that guy,” Lexie said again. “And she went in that building on Connecticut Avenue. How many people live in that place?”

  “Hundreds.” He shook his head. “My sister and her husband are buying a condo there. She told me on the phone tonight.”

  Lexie gave him an incredulous stare. “You’re serious?”

  “They’re signing the papers this week.”

  “You’ve got to say something! Tell them the truth. Tell them we saw her kill somebody.”

  “Yeah, but what am I really going to say? I can’t tell them we saw her eat some guy like he was a stack of pancakes on a plate.”

  “I don’t know, but you’ve got to do something.” She sat down beside him. “We have to go back for my brother and that thing goes in the woods. Her photo was in that camera you found.”

  “There’s a gun in my mother’s house. It’s an heirloom, but it’s a gun.”

  “You know how to shoot it?”

  “No, but it can’t be that hard. It belonged to Harry, my great-great-great-grandfather, I forget how many greats. He was in World War I, and he finagled something somehow, and he brought his gun home. It’s a Colt 45, the kind they named the beer after. I think the bullets are around, too.”

  Lexie looked relieved. “I want to see if the photos came out,” she said.

  Travis followed her up the long staircase to her bedroom and watched her turn on lamps and draw the curtains. Once he saw her unmade bed with its mountains of plush pillows, he felt consumed with wanting her, but he stood there awkwardly, staring at the cluttered room.

  More antiques. Three oriental carpets at different angles on the wide plank floor. Lamps with low, intimate light. Her brother was neat and orderly, but Lexie couldn’t be bothered. A jumble of silver earrings lay on her dresser, thrown in with lipsticks and nail polish, books, papers, bottled green tea, and framed photos. What was she reading? He was too far away to make out the titles.

  The room opened up beyond her bed into an alcove with a small fireplace, a curved desk, and a baby blue camelback couch. She’d thrown sweaters, jeans, and stockings across the couch and tossed more clothes in an open closet. Dresses. He wondered what she’d look like in a dress.

  Travis piled the clothes at one end of the couch and sat down, feeling too big for the delicate furniture. She sat at her desk and began to download the photos. The lamplight turned her skin golden and cast little shadows under her eyelashes. She wore a beautiful pearl ring on her left hand. He remembered he’d held her hand when they ran through the fog and ended up with his arms around her under the pine tree. Now he couldn’t get it out of his mind.

  “Nice ring,” he said.

  “Thanks. My boyfriend gave it to me.”

  His heart crashed. “You have a boyfriend?”

  She nodded. “He’s out of the country.”

  “What, in the military or something?”

  “No, working on his doctorate. Research in the Brazilian rainforest. He’s an entomologist.”

  “A PhD in bugs,” Travis joked, but to his own ears he just sounded jealous.

  She smiled. “His name’s Tom Feldman. He’s flying here in December. Maybe you’ll meet each other.”

  Travis took another look at the photos around the room. The pictures showed a handsome man with dark hair and a slanted, reckless grin standing with one arm draped around her shoulders. Her boyfriend didn’t look like a scientist. His wide open face was too impatient for such a meticulous profession, and his smile suggested speed and force. Racing cars, maybe, or spending somebody else’s money on the stock market. The couple stood in one photo on a perfect beach, Lexie in a killer black swimsuit, her boyfriend with his hand on her bare waist. Next to the photo sat a glass bowl filled with seashells. They must have collected the shells together.

  Travis caught himself in the mirror, his hulking frame crammed on her elegant couch beside a mountain of her underwear and her jeans. Just an ordinary guy who wanted to teach English Lit someday. Nothing for Tom Feldman to worry about.

  “Downloaded,” she said. “Here they go.”

  He forgot about himself when a human foot appeared on the screen. More terrible images followed. Blood-soaked concrete. Glittering glass. The smashed-in utility box and long ruts in the grass where the car ripped up the ground. Damp asphalt shimmered under the streetlight and trees and shrubs floated in the fog. And there was the giant’s monstrous cape swirling in the darkness. The flash caught her menacing shoulders and long arms.

  “What do you think?” Lexie asked him. “Take them to the police?”

  He leaned forward. “They won’t do anything with them.”

  She looked surprised. “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t tell who it is. You didn’t get her face.”

  Lexie sighed and turned off the computer.

  He waited downstairs while she changed clothes for the second time that night. Finally she appeared in black jeans, hiking boots, another white sweater and a quilted jacket, her hair brushed over her shoulders and the camera around her neck. She looked stunning.

  Maybe there was a chance they’d find Burke in the daylight. Travis called a cab and watched the sunrise as the streets rolled by from behind the safety of the cab’s windows. They’d been up all night, but he was so wired it didn’t matter. He left Lexie at Bustelo, a cafe on Connecticut Avenue, and took the cab to get the gun, planning to meet up with her within the hour.

  The Washington Times was still on his mother’s porch, a good sign. Nobody seemed to be up when he unlocked the door, another good sign.

  He crept through the dark hall to the den and opened the curio cabinet. Where was the gun? Shadowy keepsakes crammed the shelves. Old tickets to Europe, cork coasters from a German beer hall, photos of his grandfather on a troop ship, dog tags, military patches and pins, and pink-cheeked Hummel figurines with umbrellas, books, and ducklings. He moved down the shelves. Ancient rosary beads, a yellowed baseball from some long ago game, and more photos of people he didn’t recognize wearing old-fashioned clothes. There was the Colt 45, all the way in the back.

  He held his breath and slipped it out, tryin
g not to bang the barrel against the glass doors. The gun smelled of oily metal and dust. World War I. He could feel the weight of history in his hand.

  Triple-great Harry stared down from a painting over the fireplace, stiff and formal behind a drooping gray mustache. The last person to handle the Colt 45, once a vibrant young man fighting on the faraway fields of Europe.

  Travis saluted the portrait with two fingers, whispered “For luck,” put the gun in his coat, and remembered the bullets. He sifted through the cluttered shelves again. Then he saw the clip, had second thoughts about arming the gun, put the clip and the gun in separate pockets, and banged the glass doors.

  “Travis, is that you?” came his mother’s clear voice from the kitchen.

  “Damn it,” he swore under his breath. There was no point in trying to sneak out now, so he went in the kitchen and grabbed a cinnamon roll. His mother was standing at the counter with flour all over her hands, and he could feel the bad vibes before she even turned around.

  “So you couldn’t make it to Lisa and Ian’s welcome home dinner,” she said.

  “No, I had an emergency,” he said.

  “Who’s this girl that you took to the hospital?”

  “You don’t know her.”

  “Where did you take her?”

  “Hey, I’m not here for the third degree. I just came by to borrow a book.” Think fast. Mr. Electricity. “That Ben Franklin biography you were reading it a few months ago. What’re you making?”

  He could see her fuming.

  “Walnut bread,” she said at last. “We have a budget meeting today and we’ll be at the office for hours so I’m bringing something for us to nibble on. That book’s in the living room. Don’t get coffee on it.”

  The unopened Washington Post sat on the breakfast table. How many newspapers did she take? Another shooting on Capitol Hill. The Redskins and the Cowboys playing at one. He ignored the headlines and thumbed through the city section. The murder they witnessed on Newark Street didn’t make the paper.

  “Lisa looked great last night,” she said, kneading the dough. “After they settle in, she can take the Metro and forget about her car.”