CHAPTER NINE
The next day, early in the morning, Wally and Mimi dressed up in their finest and left for their son’s funeral. Nightbeat waited until he heard their car leave the driveway. He looked to Angel. “Still gun-shy about helping me?”
“I wouldn’t know how to,” Angel said. “Not anymore.”
“I have a lot of ground to cover, and it would be nice if you could help me out. I don’t know how long they’re going to be gone.”
“Do it, you old poof,” Spike said.
“Shut up, Spike.”
“What else you got going on? Still brooding over Buffy? Aw, boo-fuckin’-hoo, you wanker. Get over it. You’re not even the real Angel. You’re a bleedin’ puppet made from him.”
“You take that back right now,” Angel said.
“Shan’t!”
“Guys!” Nightbeat yelled. “Stop! We need to work together! We need to know if Joey’s parents murdered their only son!”
Cat slithered up out of nowhere. “Ooh! And if they did? What do we get to do to them? I want Wally’s mustache. It would make an excellent trophy, don’t you think so?”
Nightbeat hadn’t considered that. The punishment for this kind of thing was unstuffing, or if the toy was more like Nightbeat, it would be irreparably broken. They couldn’t exactly do that to humans, could they? They certainly shouldn’t, at least. He remembered a movie from when he’d belonged to a young Wally about dolls that killed people. The stuff of fantasy, to be sure, but they couldn’t do anything like that, could they?
“No,” he said. “We’ll figure something else out.”
“Such a brave heart,” Cat said. “Admirable, young Nightbeat. But there is one thing the rest of us have been wondering.”
“And that is?”
“What if you murdered Joey?” Cat uttered a smug laugh that grated on Nightbeat’s soul.
“Yo!” Don Snowy said. “Cat’s got a . . . got a point! What if Nightbeat did it? Who interviewed him?”
“I did,” Ratchet said. “And—”
“Nightbeat would never do that,” Bunny said. “He’s a nice toy.”
“All serial killers seem like nice guys,” Don Snowy said.
Nightbeat rubbed his forehead. “Why are we even discussing this? You all had eyes on me when Joey died. The very second that he was pushed down the stairs, you all saw me. Except Felix, I guess.”
“I was passed the fuck out,” Felix said.
“Yo! What if you set it up before? Like a trap?”
“Yo! Yo! Yo! Yo!” This from the goombas.
“That’s nonsense,” Ratchet said. “It’s Nightbeat we’re talking about, here. No one is more straight and narrow than he is. Felix, you know everyone’s vices, right?”
“The better to blackmail for booze with,” Felix said. He looked more than just a little drunk right now. One of his eyes was noticeably larger than the other.
“Does Nightbeat do anything unusual?”
“I don’t have any dirt on him,” Felix said.
“There you go. If anyone would know, it would be Felix.”
“Except young ‘Lix doesn’t know who the killer is, does he?” Cat asked.
“Well . . . no,” Felix said. Although his chest plumped up a bit at being called young.
Cat grinned like the Grinch. “There you go.”
Don Draper let out perhaps the phoniest laugh Nightbeat had ever heard. “Shut up!” he said to Cat.
Cat purred. “I hope you drown in bourbon.”
“I said shut up!” And the horrible drunken laugh happened again.
“This is getting us nowhere fast,” Nightbeat said. “If you all want to do some investigating of your own, you have my blessing. If I’m the killer, I should be brought to justice. But right now I need to search the rest of this house. You can help or not, but I’m going now.” He headed for the bedroom door.
“Fuck,” Angel muttered. “I’ll come with.”
“I’ll ‘ave a butcher’s at it,” Spike said.
No one else said a word. Nightbeat said, “Thanks, guys. I’m going to take the parents’ bedroom. You guys want to check the bathroom before we head downstairs?”
“Sure thing,” Spike said.
The three of them left and closed the door behind them. They looked down the corridor, already making their way. Nightbeat could have changed into his mod-form, but he didn’t want to race ahead of the puppets now that he finally had them on his side.
“You have an idea of who did it?” Angel asked.
“I was actually going to ask you two that question,” Nightbeat said. “Do either of you have any inkling? Any suspicion? I’m all ears.”
“Cat,” the puppets said at the same time.
“Jinx,” Spike said.
“Fuck you,” Angel said. He turned to Nightbeat. “That’s kind of an easy guess, though. Maybe too obvious.”
“Sometimes obvious is obvious,” Spike said. “I can’t think of anyone else who might do it.”
“That’s what it all comes back to,” Nightbeat said. “But my gut doesn’t agree. I would love to unstuff Cat, but I really don’t think he did it. It doesn’t feel right.”
They reached Wally and Mimi’s bedroom and went their separate ways. The door was open just a crack, and Nightbeat pushed through and glanced around. It was dark in here, but not so much he couldn’t see anything. Gray light edged in through the curtains. Though he knew no one was home, he walked carefully and slowly, making sure not to make sound.
There was a desk in the corner, so Nightbeat climbed up the chair and managed to pull himself up to the surface. There were some papers and bills and a check book. He looked at Wally and Mimi’s finances and decided that they were not in desperate need of money. No big deposits, either. No life insurance payouts, for example.
He also found Wally’s personal journal, which he opened up and scanned. He had difficulty in turning the pages, but he managed to flip to the last couple of weeks. Nothing out of the ordinary, at least not until he got to the day of Joey’s death. These pages were wet, probably from Wally’s tears. He read:
“The unthinkable has happened. My boy—my Joey—died today. It was a stupid accident. Nothing anyone could have done. I heard him thump down the stairs, and I thought I’d hear him start to cry. I’d then go to cheer him up and get him some ice cream and . . . and then I heard Mimi screaming and crying. I rushed over and saw Joey at the bottom of the stairs.
“God, it was the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It crushed my heart to nothing. I would never see my little boy grow up to be a man. I would never watch him become a dad. I would never play with his kids.
“Why did this have to happen? I know God has a plan, but what fucking good does this do Him? The murderous bastard! I’ll fucking kill Him when I see Him.
“Or is this just luck-of-the-draw free will? Dammit, God can do anything! I want him to bring back Joey. I prayed for that before I started drinking and writing this. Did I get an answer? Hell no. God must be a hard man to hear prayers like mine and to then ignore them.
“This is so fucking senseless! This isn’t supposed to happen! Parents aren’t supposed to bury their children! I’m supposed to get old and die and he would have to set up my funeral arrangements with Mimi, because God knows I’ll go before her. My old man had a bad ticker, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have a heart attack when I’m sixty or so. By then, Joey would be in his twenties. He would mourn, but he would already have his own life. Maybe he would even have his own family by then.
“But none of this is going to happen. The world is fucked up, and there is no way to fix it. I’m starting to suspect that God isn’t even there. I know it’s a sin to think it, but I can’t help it. How long do you talk into a phone before you realize that no one is on the other line?
“I don’t know what I can do about this. I don’t want to think about it. I guess that’s why I’m drinking so much tonight. Maybe it will wipe my mind of this horror.”
The passage ended, and Nightbeat closed the journal. It was hard to believe that a man who would write this was capable of killing his own son.
He looked through a few more papers and checked out the drawers, but he didn’t find anything suspicious. He wanted to get a look at their night table, so he transformed into his vehicle mode, backed up a bit, and went full throttle for the edge of the desk. He zoomed off and fell a bit, but he landed perfectly on the bed. He transformed as he made contact and rolled with the momentum until he stopped.
The night table itself offered nothing but an empty water glass and a pair of reading glasses. Also, a phone charger. The drawer was a bit harder to deal with, as it was made from heavier wood. He finally managed and was shocked when he looked inside and saw a toy of a different sort. It was silver and long with a rounded end. There was a switch at the bottom.
“Who are you?” Nightbeat asked.
“Please,” it said. “Don’t look at me.”
Nightbeat backed away from the edge. “Is that fine?”
“Just ignore me.”
“I’ve never seen a
toy like you before. Hasbro?
“Call me Intensity.” It sounded on the verge of tears.
“Are you okay?” Nightbeat asked.
“I’ll never be okay,” Intensity said. “You have no idea. The sights I’ve seen.”
Nightbeat’s heart raced. “Did you kill Joey?”
Intensity sniffed. “No. I would never. Joey didn’t even know I existed. Mimi made sure of that.”
This baffled Nightbeat. A toy that could not be shown to a child? It defeated the purpose, didn’t it? “Why? What are you talking about?”
“You really have no idea what I am?” Intensity asked.
“No.”
Intensity offered a wet, teary sigh, but its voice didn’t sound depressed anymore. “I’m a vibrator. Do you know what that is?”
“You vibrate?” Nightbeat asked. “That sounds . . .” He was about to say stupid, but he didn’t want to offend his new friend. “. . . different. Why?”
“For Mimi’s pleasure. And sometimes Wally’s.”
“You bring them pleasure? I’m still not understanding.”
“They put me inside them,” Intensity said. Sounding on the verge of tears again. “Over and over again.”
“What? How?”
“They shove me up Mimi’s pussy!” Intensity screamed. “And her butthole! And Wally’s butthole! Sometimes.”
Nightbeat felt all the soul in him get crushed like a can of Coke under a boot heel. He didn’t understand much of human anatomy, but he had some idea. The thought of them shoving Intensity in . . . those places . . . was ugly. An image of Wally doing the same to Nightbeat tried to sneak up his brainstem, but he violently shook it from his head, refusing it any purchase.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right,” Intensity said. “How could you? What I would give to be one of Joey’s toys, never having to be . . . inserted anywhere.”
“I’ll . . . I’ll leave you alone now.” Nightbeat moved to close the drawer.
“Thank you.”
When the drawer was closed, Nightbeat jumped down to the carpet and moved to the closet. He didn’t find much. A lot of boxes of past paperwork and tax returns. Lots of clothes. He couldn’t reach the top shelf, but he didn’t think he’d find anything. He gave the room one final pass before stepping out.
Angel and Spike were waiting for him. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Not a bloody thing,” Spike said.
“We looked everywhere,” Angel said. “I hope you had better luck.”
Nightbeat considered telling them about Intensity, but he decided that the less people who knew about it, the better. “Nothing. I guess we’ll try downstairs.”
Spike shrugged as they walked to the steps. Both he and Angel were able to navigate them well, but Nightbeat was smaller than them. He bent down so he could sit and then push himself down to the first step, but something sparked up in his mind. A sudden feeling that something wasn’t right.
Someone pushed on his back, and he tumbled down the stairs. He choked down a scream and gritted his teeth as he bounced off the steps. Pain wracked his body as he finally hit the floor at the bottom. He thought one of his legs might be broken, but it was only scuffed a little.
Angel rushed down the rest of the stairs. “You okay?”
“Who pushed me?” Nightbeat yelled. “Spike, you see anyone?”
Spike bounded up the stairs, but he didn’t see anyone there. He turned back to Nightbeat and shook his head. “No one’s up here. They must’ve gotten back to the room without anyone seeing them.”
“Fuck,” Nightbeat said.
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