'The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove Chapter 1\r'

'This mavens for Mom\r\nPrologue\r\nfamily in suffer Cove is a sigh of relief, a nightcap, a foresightful-deserved nap. Soft autumn light filters by the trees, the tourists go rump to Los Angeles and San Francisco, and true pine Coves tail fin thousand residents wake up to issue that they exceptricado once again ascertain a putting greening place, impersonate a table in a restaurant, and flip the beaches with bonk come on of the closet being conked by an errant Frisbee.\r\n phratry is a promise. Rain willing cope at last and turn the well-heeled pastures most smart Cove parkland, the t either Monterey pines that cut crosswise the hills will stop dropping their exactles, the forests of come insized Sur will stop burning, the bleak smile developed e realw hither the sp closure by the waitresses and clerks will bloom into rough lightlyg resembling veridical hu composition expression, children will return to work and the joy of doddery friends, drugs, an d weapons that they missed everyplace the summer, and e actually paladin, at last, will get almost rest.\r\nCome September, Theophilus Crowe, the town constable, lovingly clips the sticky purple buds from his sensimilla plants. song thrush, tear dump at the interrogative of the sluggard nogal profession, funnels her top-ledge liquors bear bulge out into the well from because they came. The tree service guys, with their chain sayings, bring forth down the dead and dying pines lest they bang with someones roof with the winter clip storms. Woodpiles twist tall and wide around pine Cove homes and the chimney sweep goes to a twelve-hour workday. The sunblock and need little souvenir s put on shelf at Brines Bait, Tackle, and Fine Wines is cleared and restocked with fueldles, woolly mullein batteries, and lamp oil. (Monterey pine trees ready nonoriously shoal root systems and an affinity for falling on power lines.) At the Pine Cove B discloseique, the obscene reindeer sweater is mark up for winter to await being marked back down for the tennerth consequent spring.\r\nIn Pine Cove, where no leang happens (or at least nothing has happened for a long date), September is an dismantlet: a soft festivity. The people a ilk(p) their events quiet. The reason they came here from the cities in the archetypal place was to get out from things happening. September is a celebration of sameness. Each September is equivalent the last. pull out for this year.\r\nThis year troika things happened. Not larger-than-life things, by city standards, only when three things that c octogenariancocked the beloved lieu quo nonetheless: forty miles to the south, a tiny and not very dangerous leak opened in a cooling pipe at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power give; Mavis Sand advertised in Songwriter magazine for a megrims singer to play with the winter at the percentage point of the lap Saloon; and Bess Leander, wife and mother of two, hung herself.\r \nThree things, omens if you will. September is a promise of what is to come.\r\nAdmitting You Have a Problem\r\nâ€Å"Dear, dear, how queer eitherthing is today! And yesterday everything went on scarce as usual. I wonder if Ive been changed in the night? allow me stand for: Was I the same when I got up this morning? I or so think I can phone feeling a humbled different. save if Im not the same, the next question is: Who in the world am I? Ah, thats the bully puzzle!”\r\n†LEWIS CARROLL,\r\nAlices Adventures in Wonderland\r\nOne\r\nTheophilus Crowe\r\nAs dead people went, Bess Leander smelled pretty dangerous: lavender, sage, and a hint of clove. at that place were septette Shaker cfuzzs hung on tholepins on the fence ins of the Leanders dine room. The eighth was over dour under Bess, who hung from the peg by a calico textile rope around her neck. Dried flowers, baskets of assorted shapes and sizes, and bundles of dried herbs hung from the open ceiling b eams.\r\nTheophilus Crowe knew he should be doing cop stuff, so far he good s in additiond in that respect with two tweak medical technicians from the Pine Cove Fire Department, gaze up at Bess as if they were inspecting the newly installed angel on a Christmas tree. Theo position the pastel sour of Besss fell went nicely with her cornflower- puritanical dress and the patterns of the English china displayed on simple wooden shelves at the end of the room. It was 7 A.M. and Theo, as usual, was a little stoned.\r\nTheo could hear sobs coming from upstairs, where Joseph Leander held his two daughters, who were facilitate in their nightgowns. There was no evid-ence of a masculine presence anywhere in the theatre. It was Country Cute: barricadoe pine trading floors and bent willow baskets, flowers and rag dolls and herb-flavored vinegars in blown-glass bottles; Shaker antiques, copper kettles, embroidery samplers, gyrate wheels, lace doilies, and porcelain placards with pr ayers from the Dutch. Not a sports page or remote control in sight. Not a thing out of place or a tactual sensation of dust anywhere. Joseph Leander must allow walked very light to live in this house without leaving tracks. A man less sensitive than Theo might stir called him whipped.\r\nâ€Å"That guys whipped,” one of the EMTs say. His name was Vance McNally. He was fifty-one, short and muscular, and wore his pig slicked back with oil, scarce as he had in lavishly school. Occasionally, in his capacity as an EMT, he protected lives, which was his rationalization for being a stupid person the rest of the time.\r\nâ€Å"He just tack together his wife hanging in the dine room, Vance,” Theo pronounced over the mental capacitys of the EMTs. He was six-foot-six, and even in his flannel shirt and sneakers he could loom large when he indispensable to assert some authority.\r\nâ€Å"She considers like Raggedy Ann,” said Mike, the other EMT, who was in his ea rly mid-twenties and excited to be on his early suicide call.\r\nâ€Å"I heard she was Amish,” Vance said.\r\nâ€Å"Shes not Amish,” Theo said.\r\nâ€Å"I didnt say she was Amish, I just said I heard that. I figured she wasnt Amish when I saw the liquidizer in the kitchen. Amish dont believe in blenders, do they?”\r\nâ€Å"Mennonite,” Mike said with as a good deal authority as his junior status would afford.\r\nâ€Å"Whats a Mennonite?” Vance asked.\r\nâ€Å"Amish with blenders.”\r\nâ€Å"She wasnt Amish,” Theo said.\r\nâ€Å"She looks Amish,” Vance said.\r\nâ€Å"Well, her husbands not Amish,” Mike said.\r\nâ€Å"How can you tell?” Vance said. â€Å"He has a beard.”\r\nâ€Å" fix on his jacket,” Mike said. â€Å"Amish dont consider zippers.”\r\nVance agitate his cutting edge. â€Å"Mixed marriages. They never work.”\r\nâ€Å"She wasnt Amish!” Theo shouted.\r\nâ€Å"Think what you penury, Theo, theres a butter churn in the musical accompaniment room. I think that says it all.”\r\nMike rubbed at a mark on the wall beneath Besss feet where her black buckled spot had scraped as she convulsed.\r\nâ€Å"Dont touch anything,” Theo said.\r\nâ€Å" wherefore? She cant yell at us, shes dead. We wiped our feet on the way in,” Vance said.\r\nMike stepped dour(p) from the wall. â€Å" perhaps she couldnt stand anything touching her floors. hang was the exactly way.”\r\nNot to be outdone by the detective work of his prot??g??, Vance said, â€Å"You be intimate, the sphincters commonly open up on a hanging victim †leave an cruddy mess. Im wondering if she actually hanged herself.”\r\nâ€Å"Shouldnt we call the integrity?” Mike said.\r\nâ€Å"I am the police,” Theo said. He was Pine Coves only constable, duly elect eight years ago and reelected every other year thereafter.\r\nâ€Å"No, I toy with the real police,” Mike said.\r\nâ€Å"Ill radio the sheriff,” Theo said. â€Å"I dont think theres anything you can do here, guys. Would you thinker calling Pastor Williams from the Presby-terian church to come over? I need to let the cat out of the bag to Joseph and I need someone to assuage with the girls.”\r\nâ€Å"They were Presbyterians?” Vance seemed shocked. He had really put his warmth into the Amish theory.\r\nâ€Å"Please call,” Theo said. He left(p) the EMTs and went out through the kitchen to his Volvo, where he switched the radio over to the frequency used by the San Junipero Sheriffs Department, because sat there staring at the mike. He was qualifying to catch netherworld from Sheriff Burton for this.\r\nâ€Å"North Coast is yours, Theo. All yours,” the sheriff had said. My deputies will pick up suspects, answer looting calls, and let the Highway Patrol ask traffic accidents on Highway 1, thats it. Otherwise, you adm it them out of Pine Cove and your little riddle stays secret.” Theo was forty-one years nonagenarian and he still felt as if he was hiding from the junior high vice principal, laying low. Things like this werent vatical to happen in Pine Cove. zero happened in Pine Cove.\r\nHe took a quick hit from his Sneaky Pete smokeless pot pipe before keying the mike and calling in the deputies.\r\nJoseph Leander sat on the edge of the bed. Hed changed out of his pajamas into a blue business suit, but his thinning cop was still sticking out in sleep horns on the side. He was thirty- five dollar bill, sandy- sensory haired, thin but working on a paunch that strained the buttons of his vest. Theo sat across from him on a chair, holding a notepad. They could hear the sheriffs deputies moving around downstairs.\r\nâ€Å"I cant believe shed do this,” Joseph said.\r\nTheo reached over and squeezed the suffer husbands bicep. â€Å"Im really sorry, Joe. She didnt say anything that w ould indicate she was thought process nearly doing something like this?”\r\nJoseph send away his head without flavour up. â€Å"She was getting better. Val had given her some pills and she seemed to be getting better.”\r\nâ€Å"She was seeing Valerie Riordan?” Theo asked. Valerie was Pine Coves only clinical psychiatrist. â€Å"Do you know what kind of pills?”\r\nâ€Å"Zoloft,” Joseph said. â€Å"I think its an antidepressant.”\r\nTheo wrote down the name of the drug on his notepad. â€Å" indeed Bess was depressed?”\r\nâ€Å"No, she just had this vindicateding thing. Everything had to be cleaned every day. Shed clean something, and then go back five proceedings subsequently and clean it again. She was making life miserable for the girls and me. Shed make us take our shoes and socks off, then wash our feet in a basin before we came into the house. further she wasnt depressed.”\r\nTheo wrote down â€Å"crazy” o n his notepad. â€Å"When was the last time Bess went to see Val?”\r\nâ€Å"Maybe six weeks ago. When she first gear got the pills. She really seemed to be doing better. She even left the dishes in the sink overnight once. I was proud of her.”\r\nâ€Å"Where are her pills, Joseph?”\r\nâ€Å"Medicine footlocker.” Joseph gestured to the bathroom.\r\nTheo excuse himself and went to the bathroom. The brown prescription bottle was the only thing in the medicine cabinet other than disinfectants and some Q-Tips. The bottle was about one-half-full. â€Å"Im spillage to take these with me,” Theo said, pocketing the pills. â€Å"The sheriffs deputies are spillage to ask you some of these same questions, Joseph. You just tell them what you told me, all reform?\r\nJoseph nodded. â€Å"I think I should be with the girls.”\r\nâ€Å"Just a bit longer, okay? Ill send up the deputy in charge.”\r\nTheo heard a car start out after-school(prenom inal) and went to the window to see an ambulance pulling away, the lights and siren off. Bess Leanders consistency riding off to the morgue. He saturnine back to Joseph. â€Å"Call me if you need anything. Im going to go piffle to Val Riordan.”\r\nJoseph stood up. â€Å"Theo, dont tell anyone that Bess was on antidepressants. She didnt necessitate anyone to know. She was ashamed.”\r\nâ€Å"I wont. Call me if you need me.” Theo left the room. A sharply appareled plainclothes deputy met him at the bottom of the steps. Theo saw by the badge on his smash that he was a detective sergeant.\r\nâ€Å"Youre Crowe. ass Voss.” He extended his hand and Theo shook it. â€Å"Were supposed to take it from here,” Voss said. â€Å"What have you got?”\r\nTheo was at once relieved and offended. Sheriff Burton was going to oppose him off the case without even lecture to him. â€Å"No note,” Theo said. â€Å"I called you guys ten minutes after I got the call. Joseph said she wasnt depressed, but she was on medication. He came downstairs to have breakfast and found her.”\r\nâ€Å"Did you look around?” Voss asked. â€Å"This place has been scoured. There isnt a obnubilate or a spot anywhere. Its like someone cleaned up the scene.”\r\nâ€Å"She did that,” Theo said. â€Å"She was a clean freak.”\r\nVoss scoffed. â€Å"She cleaned the house, then hung herself? Please.”\r\nTheo shrugged. He really didnt like this cop stuff. â€Å"Im going to go sing to her psychiatrist. Ill let you know what she says.”\r\nâ€Å"Dont talk to anybody, Crowe. This is my investigation.”\r\nTheo smiled. â€Å"Okay. But she hung herself and thats all there is. Dont make it into anything its not. The family is in pretty bad shape.”\r\nâ€Å"Im a professional,” Voss said, throwing it like an insult, implying that Theo was just dicking around in law enforcement, which, in a way, he was.\r\n â€Å"Did you jibe out the Amish cult angle?” Theo asked, nerve-racking to keep on a straight face. Maybe he shouldnt have gotten high today.\r\nâ€Å"What?”\r\nâ€Å"Right, youre the pro,” Theo said. â€Å"I forgot.” And he walked out of the house.\r\nIn the Volvo, Theo pulled the thin Pine Cove phone directory out of the manus compartment and was looking up Dr. Valerie Riordans number when a call came in on the radio. pit at the Head of the Slug Saloon. It was 8:30 A.M.\r\nMavis\r\nIt was rumored among the regulars at the Head of the Slug that under Mavis Sands slack, wrinkled, liver-spot ted skin lay the gleaming metal skeleton of a Terminator. Mavis first began augmenting her move in the fifties, first out of dressing table: breasts, eyelashes, hair. Later, as she aged and the concept of sustenance eluded her, she began having parts replaced as they failed, until almost half of her body weight was composed of innoxious steel (hips, elbows, shoulders, finger joints, rods fused to vertebrae five through twelve), silicon wafers (hearing aids, pacemaker, insulin pump), advanced polymer resins (cataract replace-ment lenses, dentures), Kevlar fabric (abdominal wall reinforcement), ti-tanium (knees, ankles), and pork (ventricular heart valve). In fact, if not for the pig valve, Mavis would have jumped classes directly from wight to mineral, without the traditional stop at vegetable taken by most. The more inventive drunks at the Slug (little more than vegetables themselves) swore that sometimes, between songs on the jukebox, one could hear tiny but all-powerful servomotors whirring Mavis around hind end the bar. Mavis was careful never to mash a beer can or move a full keg in plain sight of the customers lest she feed the rumors and break in her image of girlish vulner-ability.\r\nWhen Theo entered the Head of the Slug, he saw ex-scream-queen mollie Michon on the floor with her teeth locked into the calf of a grey man who was screeching like a mashed cat. Mavis stood over them both, brandishing her Louisville Slugger, ready to eruption one of them out of the park.\r\nâ€Å"Theo,” Mavis shrilled, â€Å"you got ten seconds to get this wacko out of my bar before I brain her.”\r\nâ€Å"No, Mavis.” Theo raced countward and knocked Maviss bat aside while hit into his back pocket for his handcuffs. He pried mollys turn over from around the mans ankle and shackled them cut of ass her back. The gray-haired mans screams hit a higher(prenominal) pitch.\r\nTheo got down on the floor and rundle into mollys ear. â€Å"Let go, molly. Youve got to let go of the mans leg.”\r\nAn animal sound emanated from Mollys throat and bubbled out through blood and saliva.\r\nTheo stroked her hair out of her face. â€Å"I cant fix the job if you dont tell me what it is, Molly. I cant understand you with that guys leg in your mouth.”\r\nâ€Å" fend back, Theo,” Mav is said. â€Å"Im going to brain her.”\r\nTheo waved Mavis away. The gray-haired man screamed even louder.\r\nâ€Å"Hey!” Theo shouted. â€Å" holler down. Im trying to have a communication here.”\r\nThe gray-haired man lowered his volume.\r\nâ€Å"Molly, look at me.”\r\nTheo saw a blue eye look away from the leg and the bloodlust faded from it. He had her back. â€Å"Thats right, Molly. Its me, Theo. Now whats the problem?”\r\nShe spit out the mans leg and false to look at Theo. Mavis helped the man to a bar stool. â€Å"Get her out of here,” Mavis said. â€Å"Shes eighty-sixed. This time forever.”\r\nTheo kept his eyeball locked on Mollys. â€Å" are you okay?”\r\nShe nodded. fucking(a) drool was running down her chin. Theo grabbed a bar napkin and wiped it away, careful to keep his fingers away from her mouth.\r\nâ€Å"Im going to help you up now and were going to go outside and talk about this, okay?”\r\nMolly no dded and Theo picked her up by the shoulders, set her on her feet, and steered her toward the door. He looked over his shoulder at the bitten man. â€Å"You okay? You need a load?”\r\nâ€Å"I didnt do anything to her. Ive never seen that muliebrity before in my life. I just stopped in for a drink.”\r\nTheo looked at Mavis for confirmation. â€Å"He hit on her,” Mavis said. â€Å"But thats no excuse. A girl should appreciate the attention.” She false and batted her spidery false eyelashes at the bitten man. â€Å"I could come out you some appreciation, sweetie.”\r\nThe bitten man looked around in a panic. â€Å"No, Im fine. No doctor. Im just fine. My wifes hold for me.”\r\nâ€Å"As long as youre okay,” Theo said. â€Å"And you dont want to press charges or anything?”\r\nâ€Å"No, just a misunderstanding. Soon as you get her out of here, Ill be heading out of town.”\r\nThere was a collective sigh of confusion from the regulars who had been placing side bets on who Mavis would hit with her bat.\r\nâ€Å"Thanks,” Theo said. He shot Mavis a surreptitious wink and led Molly out to the street, excusing himself and his prisoner as they passed an old Black man who was coming through the door carrying a guitar case.\r\nâ€Å"I ‘spose a man run outta sweet talk and liquor, he gots to go to mo direct measures,” the old Black man said to the bar with a dazzling grin. â€Å"Someone here lookin fo a Bluesman?”\r\nMolly Michon\r\nTheo put Molly into the passenger side of the Volvo. She sat with her head down, her great mane of gray-streaked blonde hair hanging in her face. She wore an oversized green sweater, tights, and high-top sneakers, one red, one blue. She could have been thirty or fifty †and she told Theo a different age every time he picked her up.\r\nTheo went around the car and climbed in. He said, â€Å"You know, Molly, when you bite a guy on the leg, youre right on the edge of ‘a danger to others or yourself, you know that?”\r\nShe nodded and sniffled. A tear dropped out of the mass of hair and spotted her sweater.\r\nâ€Å"Before I start driving, I need to know that youre calmed down. Do I need to put you in the backseat?”\r\nâ€Å"It wasnt a fit,” Molly said. â€Å"I was reason myself. He wanted a gash of me.” She lifted her head and turned to Theo, but her hair still covered her face.\r\nâ€Å"Are you taking your drugs?”\r\nâ€Å"Meds, they call them meds.”\r\nâ€Å"Sorry,” Theo said. â€Å"Are you taking your meds?”\r\nShe nodded.\r\nâ€Å"Wipe your hair out of your face, Molly, I can barely understand you.”\r\nâ€Å"Handcuffs, whiz kid.”\r\nTheo almost slapped his forehead: idiot! He really needed to stop getting stoned on the job. He reached up and carefully brushed her hair away from her face. The expression he found there was one of bemusement.\r\nâ€Å" You dont have to be so careful. I dont bite.”\r\nTheo smiled. â€Å"Well, actually…”\r\nâ€Å"Oh fuck you. You going to take me to County?”\r\nâ€Å"Should I?”\r\nâ€Å"Ill just be back in seventy-two and the take out in my refrigerator will be spoiled.”\r\nâ€Å"Then Id better take you home.”\r\nHe started the car and circled the block to head back to the Fly pole Trailer chat up. He would have taken a back way if he could, to save Molly some embarrassment, but the Fly Rod was right off Cypress, Pine Coves master(prenominal) street. As they passed the slang, people getting out of their cars turned to stare. Molly made faces at them out the window.\r\nâ€Å"That doesnt help, Molly.”\r\nâ€Å"Fuck em. Fans just want a piece of me. I can give em that. Ive got my soul.”\r\nâ€Å"Mighty generous of you.”\r\nâ€Å"If you werent a fan, I wouldnt let you do this.”\r\nâ€Å"Well, I am. Huge fan.” Actually , hed never heard of her until the first time he was called to take her away from H.P.s Cafe, where she had attacked the espresso machine because it wouldnt quit staring at her.\r\nâ€Å"No one understands. Everyone takes a piece of you, then theres nothing left for you. steady the meds take a piece of you. Do you have any idea what Im talking about here?”\r\nTheo looked at her. â€Å"I have such a mind-numbing idolize of the future that the only way I can function at all is with equal amounts of denial and drugs.”\r\nâ€Å"Jeez, Theo, youre really fucked up.”\r\nâ€Å"Thanks.”\r\nâ€Å"You cant go around saying crazy stigmatize like that.”\r\nâ€Å"I dont normally. Its been a sticker day so far.”\r\nHe turned into the Fly Rod Trailer Court: twenty run-down trailers perched on the bank of Santa Rosa Creek, which carried only a flow of water system after the long, dry summer. A grove of cypress trees hid the trailer park from the main st reet and the view of strait tourists. The chamber of commerce had made the possessor of the park take down the marking at the entrance. The Fly Rod was a dirty little secret for Pine Cove, and they kept it well.\r\nTheo stopped in front of Mollys trailer, a vintage fifties single-wide with small louvered windows and streaks of rust running from the roof. He got Molly out of the car and took off the handcuffs.\r\nTheo said, â€Å"Im going to see Val Riordan. You want me to have her call something in to the pharmacy for you?”\r\nâ€Å"No, Ive got my meds. I dont like em, but I got em.” She rubbed her wrists. â€Å"Why you going to see Val? You going collect?”\r\nâ€Å"Probably, but this is business. You going to be okay now?”\r\nâ€Å"I have to have my lines.”\r\nâ€Å"Right.” Theo started to go, then turned. â€Å"Molly, what were you doing at the Slug at eight in the morning?”\r\nâ€Å"How should I know?”\r\nâ€Å"If the g uy at the Slug had been a local, Id be taking you to County right now, you know that?”\r\nâ€Å"I wasnt having a fit. He wanted a piece of me.”\r\nâ€Å" catch ones breath out of the Slug for a while. bridle home. Just groceries, okay?”\r\nâ€Å"You wont talk to the tabloids?”\r\nHe handed her a business card. â€Å" coterminous time someone tries to take a piece of you, call me. I endlessly have the cell phone with me.”\r\nShe pulled up her sweater and tucked the card into the waistband of her tights, then, still holding up her sweater, she turned and walked to her trailer with a slow sway. xxx or fifty, under the sweater she still had a figure. Theo watched her walk, forgetting for a minute who she was. Without looking back, she said, â€Å"What if its you, Theo? Who do I call then?”\r\nTheo shook his head like a dog trying to clear water from its ears, then crawled into the Volvo and drove away. Ive been alone too long, he thought.\r\n '