stepped up to the door and pounded on it. “Open up,” she shouted. “Federal agents.”
There was no answer. She hadn’t really expected one—the music inside must be playing at an ear-shattering volume, if she could hear it so clearly through the building’s insulated walls. She hammered again and again at the door, and stabbed at the bell over and over. Finally she heard someone moving around inside. She stepped over to the nearest window and tapped on the glass with her collapsible baton.
“Shit!” someone said inside. “Did you hear that?”
“Come on,” Caxton shouted. “Open this door!”
The music stopped abruptly. Caxton pounded on the door again. Finally someone came to the door and peaked out. It was a young man, just about Simon’s age, with a mop of black curls falling to his shoulders. His eyes were deeply bloodshot and they had trouble finding Caxton’s face. “What?” the boy asked.
Caxton sighed. “Scott Cohen? I’m Special Deputy Caxton, and this is Special Deputy Benicio. We’re here to talk to Simon Arkeley. Can we come in, please?”
The boy licked his lips. He appeared deep in thought. Caxton tried to remain patient and calm, but she knew if Cohen didn’t step aside in a second she would physically remove him from the doorway.
“Um, okay,” the boy finally said. “Wait. Are you cops?”
Caxton shoved past him through the door. “Federal agents,” she said, gesturing for Lu to follow her.
“I’m not sure if I should let you in,” Cohen said, but it was already too late. Caxton was inside.
The room beyond the door was a kitchen, with a dented and scorched countertop and badly painted cabinets. The refrigerator was decorated with a poster for an organization called NORML, which showed an oversized hemp leaf. She came around the side of the counter and saw a framed M. C.
Escher print on the wall. The rest of the lower floor was taken up by a spacious living room with a tan shag carpet. Numerous spots on the carpet had been burned down to round, black-edged holes, perhaps by dropped cigarettes. There was a gigantic sofa, on which a boy who had to be Murphy Frissell lay passed out or sleeping. There was a forty-inch flat-screen television, switched off. On a coffee table sat a collection of glass and plastic bongs, as well as numerous butane lighters and mini blowtorches of the kind used to make creme brulee—or to keep a crack pipe lit.
Caxton scanned the corners of the room looking for shotguns or pistols or, for that matter, swords—she’d seen enough residences exactly like this one to expect the bizarre. There was no sign of any weapons, however.
Cohen had followed after her like a puppy, his hands up in front of him as if he were surrendering before she’d even charged him with anything. “Where is he?” she demanded. Before Cohen could ask who she meant, she said, “Arkeley. Simon Arkeley.”
The boy looked around the room, his face scrunched up. “He’s not here,” he said, and Caxton’s heart fell. Then his eyes opened wider. “He must be upstairs, then. Is he upstairs?”
“Let’s go see,” Caxton said, and nodded at Lu. “Scott, you stay here.”
The boy looked at her very hard. “Okay,” he said.
Caxton wondered what on earth Simon could be doing with these losers. He hadn’t struck her as a serious drug user when she met him. Still, that encounter had been very brief and she supposed she could have been mistaken.
The stairs were at the far end of the room. She mounted them slowly, unsure what to expect at the top.
She could see a wisp of smoke curling around the light fixtures up there and she drew her weapon. If Simon was up there smoking pot he might react badly to sight of law enforcement.
He solved that problem for her by coming out of the door at the top of the stairs and glaring down at her.
Simon was alive, she saw at once. Alive and unhurt.
It wasn’t too late.
“Mr. Arkeley,” Lu said, “I hope we’re not disturbing you, sir.”
“Not at all,” Simon told him. “Hello, Trooper.”
Caxton gritted her teeth. “It’s Special Deputy now.”
Simon nodded. “I suppose we have to talk. Come on up.”
Chapter 40.
Caxton turned to Lu at the top of the stairs. “Keep an eye on the two down there. They’re probably out of commission, but I don’t want them leaving until I say it’s okay.”
Lu nodded, but he grabbed her arm before he went back down. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” he said, frowning.
Did he expect her to beat information out of Simon? Or maybe just violate his civil rights some other way? For the moment she didn’t feel the need to break any laws. Not as long as Simon was still okay.
She followed the boy down a short hallway to a bedroom.
Two mattresses lay in opposite corners, lying on the floor with no frames to support them. The walls were covered in posters for jam bands and deceased rock stars. Clothes were strewn around the floor and a pile of pornographic magazines was stacked neatly in one corner. Blue, slow-moving smoke filled the ceiling and made all the objects in the room indistinct. It came from a silver mixing bowl full of smoldering herbs on the floor.
Simon sat down on the carpet next to the bowl in an easy lotus position and gestured for her to do the same.
She preferred to stay standing. “We figured out the trick you pulled with Linda, obviously,” she said.
“I figured you would, given your reputation. I just wanted enough time to escape. Of course, that was hours ago,” Simon said. His eyes were closed and his head tilted slightly back.
“I got a late start this morning and just got into town. So you’re not going to help me out, are you?”
His shoulders rose a fraction of an inch. “I’ve done some research. Law isn’t my thing, normally, but when your underlings showed up to harass me I looked into my options. I can’t actively interfere with your investigation. Beyond that you have no power over me—I don’t even have to answer your questions if I don’t want to.” He opened his eyes. “And I don’t want to.”
Caxton smiled. “Why not?”
He only smiled in return.
“I could bust you. I could drag you down to the local station house and have them book you,” she threatened.
“Really? On what charge?”
She waved a hand through the smoke that filled the room. “Drugs.”
Simon turned his head from side to side. “Actually, no, you can’t. No one in this house has broken any kind of drug law. I see by your face you don’t believe me, but if you search this place from top to bottom—and I don’t doubt you would—you won’t find so much as a stem or a seed of any illegal drug.
This is where I come when I want to smoke
“Not yet,” Caxton said. “The legislature is working on it.”
“But until a new law is passed—well,” Simon said, and smiled again.
Caxton knew about the drug. It was still legal in New York state. In Pennsylvania, too, though her state had a reputation for its very tough drug laws. Salvia was a plant from Mexico that had been used for thousands of years by the Indians there in their religious ceremonies. It was also a potent hallucinogen, and in recent years it had become quite popular with bored suburban kids who used to do LSD until the old suppliers of acid had all dried up. In small doses salvia produced a fifteen-minute high with visual effects. In very large doses it produced stupor and unconsciousness—which explained the behavior of the two boys downstairs.
“What do you see when you smoke it?” Caxton asked.
Simon shook his head. “I used to believe it would open me to other states of consciousness and I would learn something useful. It never really worked. I haven’t smoked any of it tonight.” He used a glass stick to stir the burning herbs in his bowl. The embers flared into new life, then died down to orange coals again as a new wave of smoke lifted into the air. “This,” he said, “is white sage,
