“Yeah, whatever. Just drive.”
I shut up and drove. Took about two minutes to head east, but when we turned down the street the kid had directed us to, its streetlights were already out. Joanne whispered, “Fuck,” and me, still feelin’ like a jackass, offered, “That one’s still on.” Just one light, ugly and orange against the sky.
Joanne stared at as we went by, then flung herself around in the seat. “Oh my God, that’s it! Holy shit, that’s it, there’s the church! Stop! Stop the car!”
A guy as old as me shouldn’t get his heart rate up with excitement like that, but for a second I was just as pleased as she was. I hit the brakes, slamming her around in the back seat a little, then backed us into an empty church parking lot. “Maybe you’re not dumb, doll. Maybe you’re lucky.”
“Yeah, well, God watches over fools and little children, right?” She tumbled out of the cab and me, I put the parking brake on and charged after her. She slowed down and looked back at me. “What, you’re coming?”
“You just made me drive from Hell to breakfast, sweetheart. I’m not missin’ the grand finale. Besides, I never seen a fresh murdered corpse before.”
She muttered, “Have you seen stale ones?” then gave me a look like she was really seeing me for the first time. I was taller than her, not by much, which was sayin’ something, as I’m six-foot-two. She got done looking me over and said, “You look like a linebacker.”
Now there was a compliment to turn an old man’s head. I waved it off, tryin’ not to feel too pleased. “College ball, back before it turned into a media fest. It’s all about money and glory now.”
“It didn’t used to be?”
“Nah.” I gave her my best grin. “Used ta be about glory and girls.”
She laughed, which was a whole lot better than the tight face and almost-crying from a minute ago. Feelin’ better about myself, I headed for the church—big A-framed thing, nothin’ like the one-room plain wood church I went to when I was a kid—but the fare took off down the parking lot. I bellowed, “Thought your dame was inside!”
“Well, I hope she is! I just want to make sure there’s no blood.”
“Blood?” I’d been teasing about a corpse, but I sure as hell didn’t really want to see one. I bet Joanne didn’t either, even if she was hell bent for leather trying to find one.
“If the guy with the knife caught her—”
“What guy with a knife?” This was gettin’ a whole lot more serious than it had seemed five minutes ago. I followed the fare down the parking lot, where she was lookin’ over the cement. “You didn’t mention nobody with a knife.”
“Didn’t I? I said somebody was chasing the woman—”
“You said somebody was in trouble. You didn’t say nothin’ about a knife!”
“Oh. Well, there was a knife. A guy with a knife, and he was good, graceful with it, like he’d learned to use it on the street.”
She didn’t look crazy. She looked kinda like a supermodel, with the long legs and arms and a kinda big nose that made her interestin’ instead of gorgeous. I guessed nobody said supermodels couldn’t be nuts, though, and if she thought she’d seen all that, a woman and a guy after her and a knife, from a plane, then I figured she was nuts. “Lady, you better have 20/200 vision or something.”
She stood up from surveilling the parking lot. “I wear contacts.”
“Yeah, well, get ‘em checked, ‘cause you mighta seen a guy from a plane, but you missed the tooth fairy’s visit.” I stomped past her to prod a bloody tooth another fifteen feet away.
Joanne said “Ew,” which was pretty fastidious for a dame lookin’ for a corpse. She came past me, looked over the ground, and pointed. “Somebody got cut, too. There’s spatter like blood off a knife.”
“From your dame in the church.”
“Maybe. I hope not.”
“Lady, if your broad’s in the church, what’re we doin’ lookin’ around out here?”
She wrinkled her nose, and kinda hopefully said “The light’s better over here?”
I couldn’t help but grin. “That joke was old an’ dumb when I was a kid, doll.” I threw her a quarter and we both went into the church.
It was worse inside than out. There was nothing homey about the place, nothing welcoming. Christ on the cross hung up there like an accusation above a plain white pulpit and an altar that looked big enough to sacrifice a bull on. Joanne tip-toed like she was afraid to make any sound on the hardwood floors. Me, I wasn’t so fussy. A house of God had to be either older than me or have some heart to get respect. I stomped along behind her, making extra sure be noisy and off-set her quiet.
There wasn’t a soul in the place besides the two of us, though, which didn’t seem too positive for the broad she’d seen. She caught my eye, and, looking none-too-happy about it, said, “I don’t know. I thought she’d be here. Hello? Hello?”
Turned out the church had one thing going for it: great acoustics. Joanne’s voice bounced to the rafters and rang around up there. She looked up like she could see the words themselves. “Wow. I’d love to sing in here.”
“You sing?” Dunno why it surprised me. She just didn’t seem like the singing type, not with the crazy gotta-save-the-girl thing she had going on.
She shrugged. “I don’t scare the horses.”
The way she said it made me think she probably had a great set of pipes and didn’t like admitting she was proud of it. People were funny like that. No skin off my nose either way. I took a look under the pews. “Yeah, well, maybe you can sing yourself up a dame, ‘cause there’s nobody here, Jo.”
Her spine stiffened like somebody’d pushed an iron rod up it. “Nobody calls me that but my dad.”
“Yeah? What, did he want a boy?”
“Not exactly.”
Compared to that, the scarin’ the horses tone of voice had been just beggin’ me to ask questions. I leaned on a pew, looking her over. Poor kid was all but bristling, waiting for me to push it a little too far. I was a nosy old bastard, but not dumb. “So what do they call you?”
“Joanne. Or Joanie. Sometimes people call me Annie, but not very often.”
My back reminded me I was an old man. I straightened up, rubbing the middle, and shook my head. “Not Annie. My wife was named Annie. You don’t look like one.”
She relaxed a little. “What’d your wife look like?”
“’bout four eleven, blonde, brown eyes. Petite. You gotta be at least a foot taller than she was.”
“Yeah. So call me Jo, I guess, if you want.”
We ain’t gonna be bosom buddies, the undertone said, and I figured she was right. Didn’t matter what I called her. But if I was giving her nicknames she didn’t like, she probably oughta know my name, at least. I stuck out a hand. “Gary Muldoon.”
She glanced at me, then shook my hand. “Yeah, I know. Your license said so. I mean, it said Garrison, but I never met anybody who went by that.”
“Me neither. I think my ma saddled me with it ‘cause she hoped I’d be President.”
Joanne grinned. “President Garrison Matthew Muldoon. Sounds pretty good to me. Except, no offense, but they don’t elect guys as old as you anymore.”
“And when they did I wasn’t this old yet.”
Her mouth twitched like a laugh was tryin’ ta get out. “You realize that makes almost no sense.”
I leaned against a pew, arms folded smugly over my chest. “You understood.”
The laugh almost got out. “So I did.”
“Arright then. Look, lady, either there’s nobody here or you gotta do your thing and find your dame.”
“My thing?”
“You got some kinda thing goin’ on here. Normal people don’t stick their heads out plane windows and see somebody needing rescuing, so do your thing and find her. My meter’s still runnin’.”