“Sit down,” Lennie says quietly. “You’ll want to hear this.”
Wilson looks at his watch and decides to give Leonard Crocker five more minutes, possibly even ten. Maybe he can decide if the man is really crazy or trying to play him. He should be able to do that; he’s a detective, after all.
“Five or six years ago, someone figured out what’s going on. It’s on the dark web, Detective, and spreading like ink in water.”
“I’m sure it is.” Wilson is no longer smiling. “Along with blood-drinking Democrats, rough sex hookups, animal crush videos, and kiddie porn. You killed your wife, Lennie. You need to cut the shit and think about that a little. You stabbed her with a butcher knife and watched her die.”
“They change. They become short-tempered and critical. They’re not content with just being here, they want to dominate. But we have a chance because some computer wizard figured out a way to detect them. If we survive, there’ll be a statue of him in every country, all over the world. The aliens trigger a deep command, okay? Automatic. Foolproof. Only a few people know about it now, but the information is spreading. That’s what the Internet’s good for, spreading information.”
Not to mention mental illness, Wilson thinks.
“It’s going to be a race.” Lennie’s eyes are wide. “A race against time.”
“Whoa, rewind, okay? You killed your wife because she got short-tempered and critical?”
Lennie smiles. “Don’t be dense, Detective. Many women nag, I know that. It’s easy to dismiss the preliminary indications.” He spreads his hands as far as the cuffs will allow. Which isn’t very far.
Wilson says, “I think that married to you, Arlene had a lot to be short-tempered and critical about.”
“She started picking,” Lennie says. “Picking and picking and picking. At first I just felt depressed—”
“Old self-image took a hit, did it?”
“Then I became suspicious.”
“My own wife does some picking,” Wilson says. “Likes to tell me my car’s a traveling pigpen, gets pissy if I forget to put down the toilet seat. But I’m a long way from using a butcher knife on her.”
“I got the red screen. It’s only for a second or two, so they won’t see. But when I saw it, I knew.”
“What I know is this interview is over.” Wilson turns to the mirror on the wall to his left and runs the side of his hand across his throat: cut it.
“It’s subtle,” Lennie says. He’s giving Wilson a look that’s both pitying and superior. “Like that story about how you boil a frog by turning up the heat very slowly. They take from you. They take your self-respect, and when you’re weak…” He jerks his hands upward to the length of the chain and makes a choking gesture. “…they take your life.”
“Women, right?”
“Women or men. Then the next one moves in.”
“So it’s not The Exorcist, it’s The Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
The wife-killer breaks into a wide grin. “Exactly!”
“You stick to that, Lennie. See how it works out for you.” ‡
Wilson gets home at quarter of seven. Sandi’s in the living room, watching the evening news. One place is set at the kitchen table. It looks lonely.
“Hey, babe,” he calls.
“Your dinner’s in the oven. The chicken’s probably dried out. You said you’d be home by five.”
“Things came up.”
“They always do with you.”
Did he tell Sandi he’d be home by five? Wilson honestly can’t remember. But he remembers Crocker—probably now cooling his heels in Metropolitan Detention— saying It’s subtle.
He gets chicken and potatoes out of the oven and green beans out of the steamer on the stove. He thinks the potatoes will be okay, but the chicken and beans look elderly and unappetizing.
“Did you pick up the dry cleaning?”
He pauses, a slice of chicken breast half-cut. Half-sawn, actually. “What dry cleaning?”
She gets up and stands in the doorway. “Our dry cleaning. I told you last night, Frank. Jesus!”
“I—” His phone rings. He pulls it off his belt and looks at the screen. If the call was from his partner, he would decline. But it’s not. It’s from Captain Alvarez. “I have to take this.”
“Of course you do,” she says and turns back to the living room so as not to miss the latest coronavirus death count. “Honest to God.”
He thinks of going after her, trying to smooth this over, but it’s his boss, so he pushes accept. He listens to what Alvarez has to say, then sits down. “Are you shitting me? How?”
His voice brings Sandi back into the doorway. His slumped posture—phone to ear, head bent, one forearm resting on his thigh—brings her to the table.
Wilson listens some more, then hangs up. He takes his plate to the sink and dumps everything into the garbage disposal. “The perfect fucking end to a perfect fucking day.”
“What happened?” Sandi puts a hand on his arm. Her touch is light but very welcome to him.
“We had a guy in custody who killed his wife. I was at the scene, a real mess. Blood all over the kitchen, her lying in it. Back at the station, I did the preliminary interrogation. The doer was crazy as a loon. He claimed she was an alien, part of an invasion force.”
“Oh my God.”
“He killed himself. They were doing intake at MetDet. He picked up a pencil, snapped the chain it was on, and stabbed himself in the jugular vein. Alvarez says maybe it was dumb luck, but the intake sergeant says it looked like he knew right where to put it.”
“Maybe he had medical training.”
“Sandi, he was a plumber.”
That makes her laugh, and that makes Wilson laugh. He puts his forehead against hers.
“It’s not funny,” Sandi says,“but the way you said it was. Plumber.” She laughs again.
“He fought them, Alvarez said. All the time the blood was pumping out— spurting out—he fought them. When he passed out they got him to Presbyterian, but it was too late. He’d lost too much blood.”
“Turn off the TV for me,” Sandi says. “I’ll scramble you some eggs.”
“And bacon?”
“Bad for your cholesterol, but tonight…okay.” ‡
They make love that night for the first time in…weeks? No, longer. A month at least. It’s good. When it’s over, Sandi says, “Are you still smoking?”
He thinks about lying. He thinks about the now-deceased plumber saying She started picking. Picking and picking and picking. He thinks about how nice this evening was. How different from the last six or eight months.
They change, Lennie said. They become short-tempered and critical.
He doesn’t lie. He says he still smokes, but not much. Half a pack a day at most, expecting her to say Even that can kill you.
She doesn’t. She says, “Have you got any handy? If you do, give me one, please.”
“You haven’t smoked in—”
“There’s something I need to tell you. I’ve been putting it off.”
Oh God, Wilson thinks.
He turns on his bedside lamp. His keys, wallet, phone, and a little change are scattered across the top of the table. He’s put his service weapon in the drawer. He always does. Behind it is a pack of Marlboros and a Bic lighter. He gives her one, thinking After all these years without, a single puff will probably knock her flat.
“Take one for yourself.”
“I don’t have an ashtray. When I want one, I usually go in the guest bathroom.”