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50.
Midmorning: Jack Simon sat on the patio at his and Linsey's house and tried to organize a plan of action on paper. Sitting in the shade of an outdoor café-style Cinzano umbrella Linsey had ordered from Italy, he sipped hot coffee and scribbled with an expensive ink pen on a quadrille pad. Jack's theory was that if you had an expensive pen and expensive paper, it should help your thinking. Unfortunately, it made him hesitant to put expensive ink marks on expensive paper. In the end, he resorted to his old favorites—a mechanical pencil and some cheap looseleaf paper. His laptop sat nearby, just in case he decided to start writing. A news feed with AP and other images rolled through a constantly refreshed slide show on the screen, and he glanced up occasionally to keep up with events.
He'd hoped to go on the road with Linsey this morning, but she was in a series of meetings with Louise Trost at the task force office downtown.
Jack understood what he must do the instant he got hold of Linsey. He must get Linsey and Louise Trost to join him in a meeting with the newspaper's owners and his own boss, the executive editor. He had already asked the newspaper to take him off all other work so he could devote his full attention to a major story that would break soon. He had told Griff Wilkins, his boss, that he couldn't reveal the nature of the story yet but that it was related to last week's alleged crop dusting incident and the yellow mushrooms that had by now faded away. With the growing incidence of huge mushrooms all over town, any fool could readily make the connection. In fact, there were news people all over the world starting to note San Diego's infestation of giant mushrooms. Wilkins had given Jack 48 hours to either bring a report and fire the opening salvo so the The San Diego Times could break the story and scoop the world—or Wilkins would bring in a team of seasoned, independent professionals from around the country, hired direct by the U-T, to investigate and report. Already, Japanese and European journalists were arriving, and there were colonies of foreign journalists hanging around the hotels in Mission Valley, downtown, at the Convention Center, and in the beach communities.
Even from his patio, Jack could see a trio of intertwined cap mushrooms growing in the garden next door. They were almost eight feet tall and resembled the triplets of king palms or fan palms that San Diego gardeners were fond of growing.
Glancing across the table, Jack noticed his cell phone. It was off. He tried to turn it on, but the battery was low, so he went into the house and attached it to its recharger. Pouring himself another cup of coffee, he returned to the patio.
While he waited to hear from Linsey, he might as well get something going. He brought the portable house phone outside and dialed a number. Mrs. Nellie Walesky answered.
"Hi, Mrs. Walesky. Jack Simon here, Lieutenant Linsey Simon's husband?"
"Who?"
"The police officer who spoke with you the other day."
"Oh yes. And you're also a policeman?"
"Not exactly. I am a writer, working for the same task force that Linsey is on. In my spare time, I work for the Times."
"Yeah, and?"
"I'd like to come by and have a chat with you and the boy."
"You mean Jimmy."
"Yes. I understand he's been telling some stories about a terrible thing that happened to his mom and dad."
"Yeah, well, mister, I'm starting to believe him. I haven't heard a word from my sister and brother-in-law. At least my own worthless husband called once to say he's tied up, which means he's probably in a Mexican jail sweating off a hangover."
"Can I come by to visit you?"
"Yeah, sure. I have to go shopping later, but you can talk with the kids. Maribel will be there to help."
Jack took a shower and dressed in a moderately official outfit—summer kakhi trousers, light leather knockabouts, a white shirt, narrow red tie, dark blue blazer. It was a preppy outfit that seemed more nonthreatening than some corporate uniform. Before leaving, he made sure the coffee pot was off, stove off, lights off, burglar alarm on, radio playing softly to give the illusion someone was home. Oh, cell phone—call from Linsey—he checked his voicemail. She wanted him to call her. He tried her number, got voicemail, left a brief note that he'd be interviewing Jimmy Mendez, and that he needed to speak with her asap (the upcoming meeting with Griff Wilkins). That done, he sprinted from the house, to his car, and drove to Linda Vista.
The late morning sun was intense in a cloudless blue sky, and Jack donned his sunglasses. He enjoyed the wind whipping through the sparse tendrils of his hair, but enough was enough—he put the top up on the gray Ford Mustang convertible.
The Waleskys' house, by contrast with the heat and light outside, was comfortably shady and gloomy, in a friendly rumpled way that smelled faintly of this morning's toast and stale coffee. The dominant smell at the moment came from the garage—detergent and fabric softeners, to go with a ton of laundry generated when one had two children running around and school was out.
Nellie Walesky was a heavy-set, gray-haired woman in a shapeless mumu the color of lime ice cream speckled with tiny strawberries and other fruits. She gasped a little when she walked, and waf miffing a few teef, so that she talked like dif. She sat Jack down in a brown couch in the livingroom and pressed a sweaty-cool ice tea in his paw. Then she went to the backdoor and bellowed: "Jimmy! Maribel!" several times until Jack detected faint answering shouts in childish voices from afar.
Minutes later, the four of them sat together in the livingroom. Jack asked for permission to set up a small recorder on the table. He also had his PDA ready, with the stylus hovering over the text pad. He listened in horror as the boy began describing the same nightmare that Linsey had told him about.
Nellie rose. "I can't hear that story again." She trudged out into the kitchen with a distraught look on her lined features.
Maribel bit her lip and had wide eyes, but held Jimmy to comfort him, one arm over his shoulders. Jimmy told his story about the two impostors spooning in bed, and the black tube running from the dad thing's mouth into the mom thing's neck. "I have this nightmare almost every night. Annette, the social worker, says I have to get into therapy, but Aunt Nellie won't let them dope me up. I like to go out and play, ride my bike, play basketball, and I don't want to be on some stinkin' drugs."
Jack said: "Well, I'm no doctor, but I think it's good for you to ride your bike and play sports. Best thing in the world for a growing boy."
Maribel added: "Growing girls too. I play shortstop in girls' softball and I plan to be in the majors one day."
"Good for you," Jack said. Two normal kids, the thought. This black tube stuff can't just be a stray fantasy.
Jack thought about the guards in the hummer at the Volcan Mountain plant. What if they were some kind of invaders, from outer space or from some other dimension?
There was a knock on the door. Maribel opened, and in came a woman who resembled Aunt Nellie. Aunt Nellie came into the livingroom. "Kids, I'm going to Fashion Valley Shopping Mall. Aunt Joanie is going to babysit while I'm gone." Aunt Joanie was a heavy-set, graying woman with blue eyes and a red dress with rocking horses on it, in the same spirit as Aunt Nellie's lime dress with fruits on it. Scientists had discovered that pediatric nurses made children feel more at ease if they wore hospital scrubs with these sorts of colors and motifs—a set of knowledge already known by these grannies.
Nellie said: "Gotta get out of this house, and I have so much to do. Jimmy, I'll see about that soccer ball pump you need."
"Thanks, Aunt Nellie."
"Maribel, do you need extra leggins for softball?"
"I'm good, but I could use some thick crew socks."
"You got it, babe. Mr. Simon, nice to meet you." Nellie extended a hard, firm hand, and Jack shook it. With women like this, the world will be safe, he thought. She reminded him of his own grandma who had done much for him.
After Nellie left, Jack sat with Aunt Joanie and the kids and watched cartoons. It was very restful, almost like being home at his own grandma's house. He decided to stay put for a bit, while waiting to hear from Linsey. He made small talk with Aunt Joanie, while keeping eye on Jimmy to see if he said or did anything strange; but the boy just seemed utterly normal except for the grief that was tearing his life apart. Maribel served up ice tea for the four of them.
The phone warbled, and Jack opened. It was Linsey. "We've been playing phone tag. Where are you?"
"I'm watching Donald Duck with Jimmy Mendez and Maribel Walesky and Aunt Joanie from next door."
"You are nuts, Jack Simon."
"I'm an investigative reporter. This is important stuff."
"Okay," she said, laughing. "Cleve called and said he wants to meet me for some reason. He sounded a little strange. I thought he got his jammies stuck around his neck or something."
"Want me to come along?"
"Nah. You're way across town. I'm sure he's got something I need to sign, or he wants to have lunch, or whatever."
"Right."
He made more small talk with Aunt Joanie. Jimmy laughed, and Maribel patted him on the back, as he happily watched the road runner go beep beep and varooommmm while the stupid coyote had his head stuck in a board that went ratta-tatta-ratta-tattle. Maribel and Aunt Joanie laughed. Jack was thinking he might wander to the corner store and bring back a box of popsicles for everyone.
Just then, there was a noise outside. Maribel climbed over the couch and pulled up the curtain to look. "Daddy!"
Jack turned, leaned over, and lifted the curtain also. Standing on the curb outside was a man heavily muffled in a khaki outfit of some kind, with work gloves and a baseball cap, and black sunglasses that glinted in the sunlight. The man's expression was flat—unemotional, hard, enigmatic. Weird.
Maribel darted for the front door, but Aunt Joanie stopped her, caught her in an embrace with a pale, heavy arm. Her arm was sunburned red on top, and flaccid underneath. "No you don't. We don't know what condition your daddy is in, honey. Come on, you know the score. I'll go check him out first."
Maribel nodded reluctantly. She stood with her arms akimbo, tapping one foot, and Jack was sure that the spirit of Aunt Nellie was alive and well in that little girl. Ernie Walesky would get the riot act read to him either way. Jack and the kids stayed in the livingroom. Maribel turned down the cartoons. Jack noticed that Jimmy seemed pale, frozen, and agitated.
Scared.
Jack took one last glance outside. Ernie wasn't headed for the front door, but for the kitchen door at the side of the house. As the draped figure disappeared around the side of the house into the gravel driveway, Jack let the curtain drop back into place.
Aunt Joanie went into the kitchen, entering by a small hallway to the left. She let the dark oak bar-style swinging door rattle back and forth a while.
Jimmy and Maribel tip-toed into the dining room, from which Jack assumed they could spy on Joanie and Ernie. Jack sat in the comfort of the couch, which seemed to be trying to swallow him up. This household was so much like his own childhood home. It had taken him by surprise, reminding him of his own parent's frequent travel as journalists, and his own loneliness which Grandma Simon totally relieved by being a second mother to him. She was long gone now, many years, and Jack felt memories coming back, floods of pleasant memories—
A shrill, piercing scream rent the air. It was a scream like a dental drill, 1000 decibels high, capable of shattering glass and cutting like a razor blade. The scream continued on in one large lungful that seemed to have no bottom.
Jack was on his feet, running. The scream came from the dining room where the kids were. Jack burst through the door into the dining room and saw Maribel with her mouth open and a pair of eyes like billiard balls. Jimmy stood with his back to the opposite corner, as if he were trying to blend into the dark oak paneling. He was red as a lobster, and trembling. His mouth was open, his eyeballs bulged, and his lips moved in silent words—like someone talking in his sleep in the midst of a nightmare.
Jack pushed open the door leading from the dining room into the kitchen a few inches, and looked. Maribel's scream still echoed in Jack's tortured ears, but the dining room had fallen silent. The kitchen smelled like a newly opened grave as the fungus-loam smell filled it with the scent of drifting microspores.
There was Aunt Joanie, standing in a silent embrace with Ernie Walesky. She had her back to Jack and faced out the kitchen door. The kitchen door had slipped shut as Ernie must have stepped inside to embrace her. What the hell? She wasn't actually embracing him, but stood with her plump arms hanging limply at her sides. What tiny hands she has, Jack thought, little pale hands with doll fingers, for such a big woman.
Contrast that with those ridiculous heavy gray work gloves clasped in the red cotton amid the rocking horses wrinkled up above her haunchy butt. Ernie still had the sunglasses on, and that cap jammed down over his head, and the collar of his khaki work shirt standing straight up to cover his ears. Ernie's cheek rested against Joanie's ear, so that his mouth was open over the round opening in her neck. A shiny black tube thick as a curtain rod was still moving out of his mouth and into her jugular vein.
Then one of the gloved hands fell off, revealing a gray, dessicated stump with frizzled black cords hanging out. The baseball cap fell off, revealing the rot setting in at the mushroom man's bare scalp. He was missing an ear, and as the sunglasses slipped a bit, Jack could see the blackness of the pupils.
Maribel had gathered another zeppelin-size lungful and was screaming again like a jet flying through the livingroom. Jimmy stayed silent, trembling in his corner. His eyes were closed, and he appeared to be in another reality.
Jack backed away from the door and projectile vomited so that his breakfast and his coffee and Maribel's iced tea splashed on the wall and ran down looking like a watery milkshake. About six good heaves, and he was retching on empty. His throat and eyes burned, as he reached for a tissue box nearby and started cleaning his hands and face.
"Nevermind that now," said Maribel. She had stopped screaming and had Jimmy by the sleeve with her left hand and Jack by the sleeve with her right hand. "We need to get out of here right now. Follow me."
Jack felt like a kid, running alongside Jimmy as they followed Maribel's fleet figure through the living room, out the front door, across the lawn, and to a neighbor's house. "Call the police nine one one," Maribel blurted as a neighboring gay couple, two men, stood in the doorway. "Please," Jack said, "do as she says. Call the police and tell them to meet me in the street. There is a murder in progress across the street."
The two gay men let Maribel in, and she towed Jimmy after her. "Lock yourselves in," Jack said.
"The police are on the way," said one of the men—Jack saw through the screen door that he held up a phone.
"Lock the door," Jack said, "don't let anyone in. And thanks."
"Right," the other man said and slammed the door shut.
Jack heard locks and bolts rattling. He heard Maribel's piercing voice: "Save my mom—don't let him get her."
"I will," Jack yelled over his shoulder as he ran into the street and whipped out his cell phone. Standing in the middle of the street, he called Linsey. He hoped he wasn't too late.
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