The Poison Artist Read online

  As Caleb poured, Will stood and watched.

  “La fée verte,” he said as the drink started to change color.

  “What’s that?” Caleb asked. “The verte part, what you just said.”

  “The green fairy,” Will said. He took the carafe. “That’s what they called it, those guys. Van Gogh, his crowd.”

  “All that hallucination stuff, it’s not just a myth?”

  “You’re the chemist,” Will said. “Enjoy.”

  Caleb held the glass under his nose and breathed in. He closed his eyes and he could picture her perfectly. The way she’d touched the back of his neck while she breathed her thanks into his ear, her hand cool and light. The nightshade scent of her. He imagined her ivory fingers gripping the edge of a theater’s screen, her muscles trembling as she pulled herself out of a silent film and into this world. He put the glass to his lips and drank the absinthe in one slow swallow, then set the glass down and put his elbows on the bar and his head in his hands.

  At midnight he walked out of the Palace Hotel and stood looking at the red neon sign: HOUSE OF SHIELDS. When the letters flickered, there was a low buzz. An empty paper cup blew down the middle of the street, rolling in tumbling, uneven arcs. There was a black SUV parked next to a fire hydrant ahead of him. The only other car within two blocks was his own. It didn’t surprise him at all when it began to rain.

  “This is pointless,” he said.

  He started for the door to the bar, but it opened before he reached it. Two men came out. The older one was adjusting a gray fedora but stopped when he saw Caleb. He put out his arm to check the man behind him, who moved to block the door.

  The older one looked down at Caleb.

  “You going in?”

  He had gray stubble and a salt-and-pepper mustache. He looked tired, but not like he’d been drinking. He reached into his overcoat and brought out a leather badge holder. Caleb saw the golden, seven-pointed star. There was just enough light to see the words on it before the man snapped it shut and put it away.

  “I was. Inspector.”

  “You a regular here?”

  “Getting to be, maybe.”

  “You here last night?”

  Caleb nodded. The detective turned to his partner.

  “Let me have it, Garcia.”

  The other man handed over a white rectangle of paper. It must have been a photograph, but Caleb couldn’t see it. The detective was holding it to his chest, to keep its surface dry.

  “What time were you here?”

  “Midnight, till maybe past two. I’m not sure.”

  “Let’s do this in the truck,” Garcia said. “C’mon, it’s raining.”

  “Fine,” the older detective said. “We’ll do it right. You mind sitting in the car with us?”

  “What is this?”

  “Just some questions.”

  “About last night?”

  “Let’s talk in the car, like Garcia said.”

  “What’s wrong with talking right here?”

  “It’s raining,” Garcia said.

  “It’s just a few questions. We’re not driving anywhere.”

  “All right.”

  They walked to the black Suburban, Caleb in between the two detectives. Garcia reached into his coat again and came out with a key fob. He hit a button and the truck’s fog lights flashed as the doors unlocked. The older detective opened the rear door for Caleb.

  “Push over. I’ll sit next to you.”

  “Okay.”

  He slid across the bench seat and the other man got in and shut the door. Garcia got into the driver’s seat, slammed that door, and then reached up to switch on the dome light.

  “Better now?” the older one asked his partner.

  “Yeah.”

  The man next to Caleb turned and held out his hand, a business card between two of his fingers.

  “Inspector Kennon. Guy up front is Inspector Garcia—he grew up in L.A., doesn’t understand about weather.”

  Caleb reached for the card and Kennon took in the Band-Aids that wrapped each of his fingers. Garcia was watching in the rearview mirror, his brown eyes steady on Caleb’s when they met in the glass.

  “So you walk into House of Shields around midnight, leave at maybe two a.m. That right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’d you drink?”

  “Jameson and Guinness. Three rounds, maybe.”

  “Come alone or with a group?”

  “Alone. And I left alone.”

  “From the city, or you here on business?”

  “I’m from the city. What is this?”

  Kennon ignored him.

  “What happened to your forehead?”

  “Look, it’s none—I got in a fight with my girlfriend on Saturday morning. She blew up and threw a glass at me. I left the house to cool off and came down to the Palace Hotel to spend the night. Right there.” He pointed out the window, but Kennon’s eyes never moved from his face. “I came over to the bar around midnight and had some drinks.”

  “What was the fight about?”

  “Personal stuff. I don’t see what that has to do with this.”

  “What’s this have to do with?” Kennon asked. His wire-rimmed glasses had slipped low on his nose, and he was looking over them at Caleb.

  “Why don’t you tell me?”

  He pulled the handle on his door and opened it a crack, so they couldn’t lock him in.

  “Close the door,” Garcia said.

  “You want me to close it, you put me under arrest. You just want to ask me questions, go ahead. But the door stays open.”

  Kennon just pushed up his glasses.

  “Leave it,” Kennon said. “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t want to talk, he can go.”

  “Fine,” Garcia said. “Let him get wet.”

  “And the hand?” Kennon said, facing Caleb again. “She do that, too?”

  “Didn’t have my keys, so I punched out a window. It’s not against the law. I own the place.”

  “You mind showing some ID?”

  “Sure.”

  Caleb leaned to reach his back pocket. Kennon’s hand disappeared inside his overcoat but came out empty when he saw Caleb’s wallet. Caleb got his driver’s license and tossed it on the seat. Kennon took it and looked at it briefly, and then passed it up to Garcia. Garcia set it on a clipboard and started copying off the information.

  “That address current?” Kennon asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Nice street. What do you do for a living, Mr. Maddox?”

  Garcia stopped writing and looked up without turning around.

  “I run the toxicology research lab at UCSF Medical Center.”

  In the rearview mirror, Garcia’s eyes snapped over to look at Kennon’s, and then he bent back to his clipboard. The pencil made a dry scratching noise.

  “You a doctor?”

  “Not a medical one. Ph.D.”

  “We met before?” Kennon asked.

  Kennon was older, probably a year or two away from retirement. He’d have been a young patrol officer when Caleb was twelve. It was an easy enough calculation, and Kennon had apparently already done it, or he wouldn’t have asked. Caleb felt the absinthe in his blood, warm and alive. He wanted to take it and wrap himself in it, wanted to disappear down inside himself where there would be no questions and no answers, where the only thing was the clean burn and the memory of the woman’s lips next to his ear.

  “Mr. Maddox?”

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” Caleb answered. “If we did, I don’t remember.”

  “You’re probably right. I talk to so many people, after a while they all blend together.”

  “Yeah.”

  Garcia reached back and handed Caleb the license. He slid it into its holder, put Kennon’s business card behind it, and then stuffed the wallet into his pocket.

  When he looked up, Kennon was holding out the rectangle of paper Garcia had given him earlier. Caleb took it an
d looked at the four-by-six black-and-white photograph. It was a blow-up of a driver’s license photo. A middle-aged guy in a white shirt and tie, a light gray background.

  “Know him?”

  Caleb held the picture closer to the light.

  “Know him? No.”

  “But you’ve seen him.”

  “Maybe last night, at the other end of the bar. There was a group of men. Six, seven. A couple of them turned around, checked me out when I came in. He might’ve been one of them.”

  “Checked you out how?” Kennon asked.

  “Just—you hear a door open behind you, you turn around. See who’s coming. That’s all.”

  “It bother you?”

  Caleb shook his head.

  “I’d have done the same.”

  “If you saw any of the others he was with, could you pick them out?”

  “Maybe if I saw pictures.”

  “Could you describe them?”

  “No.”

  “You talk to him?”

  Caleb shook his head.

  There was a stretch of silence and they listened to the rain hitting the metal roof. Then Kennon tapped the window with his gold wedding band. Garcia turned around.

  “Start the engine if you want. Get some heat going.”

  Garcia put the keys in the ignition and cranked the engine. He let it idle a while and then he turned on the heater. Caleb felt the warm air around his ankles. He could still taste the absinthe every time he breathed out. Next time, she had said. Like a promise.

  “You see him leave?”

  “Huh?”

  “You been drinking tonight?”

  “I had dinner at the Palace Hotel. So, yeah.”

  “You eat dinner, you have a drink,” Kennon said. “One goes with the other.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “The guy in the photo. You see him leave?”

  Caleb shook his head.

  “I don’t think so. I left after last call. There were still some people in there. I don’t know if he was one of them or not.”

  “You talk to anybody while you were in there?”

  “The bartender. To order drinks.”

  “That it?”

  “Yeah.”

  The lie came out easily, without hesitation. He didn’t understand what had happened between him and the woman in House of Shields, but he’d already decided he wasn’t going to talk about it with anyone. Especially police inspectors who wouldn’t state their business. He’d tell them everything about his fight with Bridget before he’d tell them what it had felt like to sit next to the woman, to have her whisper in his ear.

  “There’s no television in there. No music. You didn’t talk to anybody. You bring a book or something?”

  He shook his head.

  “I was just sitting there.”

  “Just drinking. Thinking about your girlfriend.”

  “And minding my own business. I didn’t pay much attention to anyone else—and I was pretty drunk.”

  “Where’d you go after that? After-hours place?”

  “Just across the street. Back to my room.”

  “Valet working that time of night?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t driving. I just walked across the street.”

  “Anyone open the door for you?”

  “No.”

  “Which door did you use?”

  Caleb turned and looked out the SUV’s window at the hotel across the street. He saw the valet stand, where he’d seen the woman. When she turned around and met his stare, it was as if she’d been waiting for him.

  “That one,” Caleb said, pointing at the door he’d used.

  “You went straight up to your room?”

  Caleb nodded. “And I didn’t leave until noon—maid woke me up.”

  Kennon looked at Garcia in the mirror for a moment, then pushed up his glasses and had another long look at Caleb’s forehead.

  “Well, Mr. Maddox,” he said, finally. “Thanks for your help.”

  Kennon opened the door and got out, then waited while Caleb came across the bench seat and stepped back into the rain.

  “Think of anything else, my number’s on the card. Office on the front, cell on the back.”

  Kennon shut the door and started around the hood of the Suburban to get in next to Garcia.

  “Wait a sec,” Caleb said.

  Kennon paused and put his hand on the hood. Garcia switched on the headlights. The beams lit up the raindrops falling onto the already wet and glistening street.

  “This guy in the photo, what’d he do?” Caleb asked.

  “Him? He didn’t do anything. He’s dead.”

  Kennon reset his fedora and went to the passenger door. He climbed in and then the Suburban rolled off. Caleb stood with his hands in his pockets and watched the truck. It went a block, then paused behind his parked car for a moment, headlights on his license plate. It pulled back into the lane and took the next left without signaling.

  Four

  CALEB SAT IN his car with the heater running. He stayed until he stopped shaking, until the rainwater evaporated from his hair and his coat.

  “Just go home,” he said.

  Just go home, and go to work in the morning, and wait for Bridget to call. Sit by the fire for a while and then go to sleep in your bed. If you can’t sleep, if the smell of her hair on the pillows won’t let you, then pour a good nightcap. Or two. Knock yourself out. But just go home.

  He got out of the car and locked it, then walked the block and a half to House of Shields. He stepped inside and waited by the door as it closed behind him, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. There was a different bartender tonight. Just the one. Aside from him, Caleb was the only person in the place. He came across the room, his wet feet clipping on the tile floor, and took the place he’d had the night before. He ran two of his fingers lightly across the leather top of the stool next to him.

  The bartender came over.

  “You still open?” Caleb asked.

  “Till two. But nothing clears a place like cops. Even a nice place. Hit the lights, roaches scatter. They talk to you outside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thought I saw you. They had you awhile.”

  “They’re thorough. I’ll give them that.”

  “It wasn’t my shift last night,” the bartender said. “So I couldn’t help them much. But I’d seen that guy a lot. It’s weird, him disappearing. Turning up dead.”

  “They give you any details?”

  “Just said they found him. His body. That it looked suspicious. They were trying to trace who he was with, where he was last night.”

  “Who was he?”

  “A banker. A lawyer, maybe,” the bartender said. He shook his head. “I never asked him. His name was Richard. You didn’t know him?”

  “Last night was my first time in here.”

  “It’s not always this way, you know? Our customers getting killed. I’m a little freaked out, tell you the truth.”

  He looked up from the wineglass he was drying, and Caleb noted what was getting to be a familiar movement of the eyes: a slow drift from his forehead to his fingers, then back up. A little click somewhere. The sound of one thought connecting with another.

  “So am I,” Caleb said.

  He shrugged and saw the bartender relax. The man put away the wineglass, the tension coming out of his shoulders. He turned back to Caleb.

  “You know what the weirdest thing is?”

  “I guess not.”

  “His car. He always drives here, parks out front. Has a couple drinks, then drives home. I’ve seen it, his car. On my cigarette breaks. It’s a BMW, one of those SUVs?”

  “Okay.”

  “When I came to work today, I saw it five blocks down the street.”

  “On New Montgomery?”

  The man nodded.

  “And I didn’t think anything, because I didn’t know he was missing. Then the cops come, and everything’s goin
g nuts, and I take one of the detectives—”

  “Kennon?”

  “Yeah, Kennon—so, I take Kennon down the street and show him the car. They run the plate and tow it away.”

  “Okay.”

  “So you know what’s weird?”

  “No.”

  “They come back two hours later, and they’re questioning people, and I overhear a lot of it. And from what they’re saying, they found out from his friends that Richard—guy who got killed—he filled the tank at that station on Harrison, right before he came here.”

  “Half a mile from here,” Caleb said.

  He looked to his left, at the stool she’d used last night. He wanted to put his hand on it again, but stopped himself.

  “That’s it. But this is the weird part. The detectives, they take the BMW to the yard after I show it to them. And when they come back, when they start questioning the regulars, they let on he’d driven twenty miles after filling the tank.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And they didn’t find the body anywhere near here.”

  “Where’d they find it?”

  “I don’t know—but not here,” the bartender said. “So whoever killed him must’ve been waiting outside, right? They go somewhere together, in his car. Guy kills Richard, dumps him, then drives back and ditches the car. That’s what I think.”

  “Makes sense,” Caleb said. “But why drive back?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he’d parked his own ride around here, needed to get it,” the bartender said. “What’re you having?”

  Caleb looked at the empty stool again.

  “Berthe de Joux.”

  The bartender tilted his head and looked at him.

  “French pour?”

  “Yeah.”

  The man came back a moment later with the tray, setting out the glass and the spoon. He put the drink together except for the water, which he left for Caleb to pour himself. When Caleb was done, he stirred it with the spoon and looked up at the bartender. There was already hesitation on the man’s face.

  As if he knew Caleb was about to tread on something special. Something forbidden.

  “You know a girl, comes in here and orders this? Dark hair, green eyes? I need to find her.”