The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (14 page)

Well, when it’s handed to
you, you’d be a dummy to throw it away. So I said, “Mrs. Brewster,
would you like for me to check inside their house...and make
sure?”

She let out a big sigh,
such a big sigh I’d have bet a sawbuck to a nickel that it was what
she’d been working up to all this time. “Oh, would you?” she said.
“It’s been such a constant worry on my mind.” After a pause, she
added, “If they are in there, somebody will have to take them out.
And fumigate, or...whatever.”

“
Don’t worry. I’ll handle
all that, Mrs. Brewster.”

“
Oh, thank you, thank you,
Mr. Scott.”

I felt a little guilty,
but I believed I could handle that, too. “No problem,” I said.
“Might be a good idea, though, if neither of us tells anybody else
about this.”

“
Oh, I wouldn’t” she said
fervently.

Sure, I thought. Only her
doctor. But I asked her, “Before I check inside, would you mind
another question or two?”

“
No, not at
all.”

Now that she knew I was
willing to haul out the decaying corpses and bug-bomb the premises,
Mrs. Brewster was ready to answer a dozen questions. “You mentioned
the Vungers getting laid off, and presumably working before then,
at Omega. The only Omega I know of around here is the Omega Medical
Research Institute, about ten miles north of Hollywood.”

“
That’s the one. Guenther
and Helga worked there for two years, until they caught—well, they
said they caught the IFAI there, and then Dr. Wintersong fired
them, and they couldn’t get other jobs right away. Partly because
they got so sick.” She shifted her weight slightly, moved the
walking sticks an inch or two. “I don’t know, really, what all they
did at Omega. Except I think they do research work on viruses, and
other deadly diseases, out there.”

“
They sure do.”

Just as I’d heard a whole
lot about IFAI and the dangers of an incurable epidemic wiping out
the population, I’d also heard more than a little about Omega, its
vital medical research, and the brilliant head of that research
program, Dr. William Wintersong. These days, about every second or
third time you heard “IFAI” you also heard “Wintersong,” because he
was the nation’s, even the world’s, best hope for production of a
vaccine to prevent IFAI and/or a wonder drug to cure it.

I vaguely recalled Dr.
Hernandez saying something about “Omega” earlier today. At least, I
thought he’d mentioned the place. Maybe it had been in connection
with his comments about animals, because I knew there was a lot of
animal experimentation carried on at the well-known—actually,
world-famous—research facility. I’d always assumed it was necessary
and often fruitful research, but the truth is I hadn’t really
thought much about it until Hank started spouting his “the stupids”
tirades.

Hank and his damned
paranoid arguments, I thought. He hadn’t convinced me that everyone
else except him was out of step in his parade or that all the
“allopaths” or orthodox docs were conspiring against him; but he
had done enough and said enough to get me at least
confused.

“
I don’t blame you for not
wanting to go inside, Mr. Scott.”

That was Mrs. Brewster.
She’d misinterpreted my sour expression.

“
Oh, it’s not that,” I
said. “I mean, piece of cake. But, about the Vungers, did they say
they contracted IFAI at Omega?”

“
No, just that it was while
they were both working there they caught it. She—it was Helga
mentioned it to me, right at the beginning, before they got so
sickly. Just said they were tested when they had jobs at Omega,
like the law makes them do, and it was in them. You can catch it,
you know, just breath-ing.”

“
Uh-huh. Well, I’ll give
the place a quick toss, and let you know if I find
anything.”

“
Oh, yes, do let me know.
Maybe I can sleep tonight.”

“
Sure. Umm, we’ll let this
breaking, uh, my looking around inside your neighbor’s house, be
our little secret, okay?”

A private eye has a
license authorizing him to make investigations, but he is still a
private citizen; and private citizens are looked upon with
considerable official disapproval if they engage in
breaking-and-entering, or looking around uninvited in other
people’s houses. But I felt I could trust Mrs. Brewster. Unless her
doctor squealed on me.

“
I wouldn’t,” she said. “I
wouldn’t mention it. Probably you can get in easier the back way.
It’s just a screen door there, and a kind of little patio room back
of the kitchen.”

“
Thanks. Well, see you
later.”

I started walking up the
driveway toward the garage and rear of the house, and heard Mrs.
Brewster saying behind me, “Oh, I hope, I hope, they’re not really
dead in there.”

I noticed that I had
stopped moving, so I quickly started up again. I wasn’t entirely
sure what had made me stop moving. Certainly I hoped I wasn’t
entirely sure. I want everyone to understand that, despite the best
efforts of the entire medical profession for thousands of years I,
personally, am not afraid of dinky little bugs. Perhaps because no
hordes of them had ever attacked me with much success, and
definitely hadn’t caused any parts of me to rot away yet. However,
invisible little bugs crawling around aimlessly are one thing; but
little bugs crawling around on a couple of dead people is sort of
something else, especially if those people were dead because of
those dinky little bugs.

This was silly. If I kept
stopping like this, I’d never get to the back door. I hummed a
little tune and started walking again, rapidly, to the rear of the
house and the screen door there.

The door was secured only
by a small metal latch inside, and it was the work of no more than
a few seconds to unlock it. Then I opened the door, paused the
briefest of moments, and went on in.

This was the “kind of
little patio room,” as Mrs. Brewster had described it. I looked
around, went on into the kitchen.

“
Hello!” I called. “Anyone
home? Hello!” Nobody answered.

The kitchen was bright,
almost too bright, with alternating yellow and white plastic tiles
on the floor, yellow cloth curtains on windows overlooking the
backyard, yellow pots or sauce pans on a red-enamel electric range,
next to which was a conventional oven. No microwave. Next to the
wall on my left was a square table and two cushioned wooden chairs.
The cushions were red, and a white cloth covered the
table.

More brightness on the
wall above the table was light reflected from three framed
paintings that looked like original and very realistically painted
oils. One was a bunch of carrots, the next several ears of corn, a
couple of them shucked and looking good enough to eat raw, and the
third—hung about an inch lower than the others, for no discernible
reason—was two shiny red apples and a bright yellow
banana.

There wasn’t any real food
in sight, no remnants of a last meal or stack of dirty dishes. Next
to the sink, in one of those dish racks made of heavy
plastic-covered wire, were a couple of clean dinner plates, bowls,
silverware.

Five minutes later I’d
checked every room in the house, without finding anything
suspicious or disturbing, certainly no people, alive or dead. In an
upstairs bedroom, on a large wooden bureau, I found an old framed
photograph of the Vungers, obviously taken at their wedding. She
was short, plump, pretty; and he was about four inches taller,
stocky, wearing a gray suit that looked a size too small for him.
But both of them were showing lots of eyes and teeth in the kind of
dazed smiles you sometimes see on lottery winners. The then-new Mr.
and Mrs. Vunger struck me as a young and attractive couple filled
with energy and hope, eyes fixed on a bright and beautiful
future.

A recent photo—someone had
written the date on its back along with “Our Twenty-Fifth
Anniversary”—showed the same happy couple approaching middle age,
dressed in party clothes, she in a simple pink dress and he in a
brown suit that fit him this time, both smiling at the camera. The
smiles weren’t quite the same, considerably less toothy, as though
maybe they hadn’t yet won the lottery but knew there’d be another
drawing next week.

They looked like nice
people, not much different from millions of others in the U.S.A.
Pleasant, simple, solid. I liked their looks. And I would be able
to recognize the Vungers now, if I ever saw them.

After making sure the
house was empty, I wound up downstairs in the kitchen, ready to
leave. But those three bright paintings caught my eye again. It
still bothered me that the one on the right was an inch or so lower
than the other two. So I walked over by the table and looked at the
apples and ripe banana. I hadn’t been close enough to notice it
before, but in the wall about half an inch above the frame’s top
edge was a small hole in the plaster. It was about where a little
nail would have been if the painting had originally been hung level
with the other two.

So I lifted the shiny
apples and banana off the wall, revealing a considerably large hole
that until then had been concealed by the bottom edge of the
painting’s frame. Several other things might have caused it, but
I’ve seen bullet holes in plaster and wood before, and to me that
was a bullet hole.

I didn’t dig into the
plaster to find out for sure if I was right, just replaced the
painting as it had been before. I could be in enough trouble
already, merely for entering the Vunger’s home without legal
authority to do so. But I did mean to inform the police of what I’d
found; I just wasn’t yet certain of the happiest way to inform
them.

A yellow Princess phone
sat atop a small desk against the wall opposite the breakfast
table. Using my handkerchief, I picked up the phone and called my
client’s number.

I recognized Eleonora’s
soft voice as she said, “The office of Dr. Hernandez.”

“
Hi, Mrs. Hernandez. This
is Shell Scott. I was in earlier—s”

“
Oh, Mr. Scott, yes. Thank
you.”

“
For what?”

“
For making my husband feel
so jolly.”

“
Jolly? Me?
How?”

“
He is filled with it, with
jolly smiling and all. He said to me, you are...how did he say it?
Just what the doctor ordered. That you measure up to what the
others he spoke to said of you, even more so once he could talk
with you in your person.”

“
Well, I didn’t actually
say a whole lot. Mostly I just listened to Hank going on and on
about... Others? What others?”

“
He did not say to
you?”

“
No, he did not say to me.
You mean he checked me out, talked to friends of mine?
To...enemies?”

“
Both. Oh, his patient is
just finished, coming out now. With my husband you wish to
speak?”

“
Yeah, I sure
do.”

I could faintly hear her
voice as she said something, probably to Hernandez, also another
women’s voice, talk of an appointment. Then, apparently from the
phone in Hank’s office, “Sheldon?”

“
Yeah, Hank. I’m calling
from the Vunger’s home.”

“
Ah, and they are not at
present resident in their residence, true?”

“
Yeah, I think. There’s
sure nobody home. And there are nine newspapers in front of the
house—I’ll bring them inside before I leave. Plus, there’s a bullet
hole in the kitchen wall. That’s where I am now, in their
kitchen.”

“
Bullet hole? Ai,
caramba.”

“
I haven’t checked for the
slug, but I’m pretty sure that’s what it is. Somebody moved the
painting an inch to cover the spot, which spot is the size of a
thirty-eight bullet, I’d say.”

“
Monstrous. Is there
blood—?”

“
No blood, no signs of
struggle. Hank, any idea why someone might have fired a gun here in
the kitchen?”

“
No. Truly, no.”

“
Okay. But I get the
impression there’s more than a little you haven’t told
me.”

“
Correct. Absolutely. To
tell you everything would require forever. But there are other
circumstances of which you should be informed.”

“
Let’s try this. A neighbor
here mentioned that the Vungers worked for a couple of years at the
Omega Medical Research Institute, apparently contracted IFAI
there—and were let go by the well-known Dr. Wintersong. I know you
didn’t mention Wintersong during our talk this morning, but I seem
to recall something about Omega. Am I right?”

“
Yes. I told you they
became infected with the so-called IFAI virus there, which is true.
Regarding Dr. Wintersong, he is one of the great animal destroyers
of all times, a typical allopathic researcher who believes health
is achieved by killing everything within a fifty-yard radius of
anyone who sneezes, a monster of unbridled fanaticism all of which
is aimed at the wrong target and therefore misses even if he hits
it. Which is approximately what I told him in person, among other
truths he was unable to recognize, two weeks ago at
Omega.”

“
You told him? Two weeks
ago?”