Crosscut (29 page)

I hugged him good-bye, but when he turned to go I felt wrong about the argument hanging between us. I caught him on his way out of the terminal.

“I don’t want to fight,” I said.

He put his hands on my arms. “We’re not fighting.”

“No?”

“I know not to engage in a battle I can’t win.”

I sighed. He hugged me again.

“Stay safe, and don’t do anything rash.”

“Like get married.”

He kissed me and got back in the car.

An hour later, taxiing to the runway in the tin-can airplane, Valerie leaned back and turned her head toward me.

“You and your dad seem close.”

Outside the windows, scrubland rolled by. “Yes.”

She was quiet a long moment. “Back in school, I never really knew you.”

“Even though you stole my journal and read it cover to cover?”

“Even though.”

I made a
heh
sound. Twenty years I’d wanted that confession, and now vindication felt flat.

“What you wrote was sweet and funny. You really liked your parents and your brother.”

“Are you saying you actually thought I was okay?”

“No. You were a hopeless dork.” Traces of a smile. “But then, I was an asshole.” Her voice faded. “Thank you for all that you’re doing today.”

She closed her eyes.

The plane turned, held at the end of the runway, and powered into its takeoff roll. As we lifted off the tarmac, I glanced down. The ground swooped past. At the end of the runway beyond the chain-link fence, I saw Dad leaning against the hood of his rental car. He raised a hand and waved. I put my own hand to the window and pressed my face close to the glass, watching him as long as I could.

Only when he passed from view did it cross my mind. What did he have to take care of in Santa Barbara?

Climbing down the narrow steps to the tarmac, I pulled out my earplugs. The plane glinted in the sun like a silver mirror. Valerie eased her way down the stairs and we walked slowly to the terminal. Heat swarmed off the concrete. I glanced up at the endless blue sky and down again, overcome by its brilliance.

Tommy was waiting. He had on shades, his porkpie hat, and an aloha shirt, and was chewing gum behind lips drawn tighter than a guitar string.

“You look worn-out,” I said.

“Ditto.”

“At least you’re not smoking.”

He pulled open the collar of his shirt. A dozen patches clung to his chest like leeches. He smiled at my expression, revealing a wad of gum the size of a golf ball.

“Nicorette.” He took Valerie’s suitcase and handed me the
China Lake News
. “Page one.”

Once he had pulled out onto the highway in the unmarked department car, I unfurled the paper.

 
“Is this in their online edition?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Good. I put in as many key words as I could. Figure Coyote’s trawling the Web for news of himself.”

The wind gusted and sand danced across the road. Tommy accelerated, revving the car up to seventy.

“Forensics has come up with some strange stuff.”

I looked up from the paper. “On Coyote?”

“Both murder scenes were wildly clean. No fingerprints, no hairs, no skin under the victims’ fingernails, no bodily fluids.”

“So you’re saying this is a careful cat. We already knew that.”

“We got a partial boot print from the Colfax scene. Size ten, but our techs say the depth of the print indicates the killer may have been wearing extra-large boots to make himself appear taller and heavier than he is. The one other interesting thing we’ve picked up is a hair from a wig.”

“Whose wig? Coyote’s?”

“Blond, two inches long. Short hair, maybe a man’s wig.”

“He had blond hair when I saw him in L.A.,” I said. “Any more information about Kai Torrance?”

“We’re waiting for military records to come back to us. It’s a tedious process even for law enforcement.” He glanced at me. “And in this case it seems that the records clerks are always out to lunch. Nobody really wants to dig this stuff up.”

We sped along the highway in the dazzling sunshine. On one side of the road trees struggled in the wind and a trailer park hunkered under the heat. On the other, cyclone fencing and razor wire scrolled past, interspersed with warnings to keep out. Beyond the wire, the base unrolled across fifty miles of sand and rocks and bruised mountains that chewed the horizon.

“There is one piece of potential luck. They found a dental implement outside Wally Hankins’s office called a scaler. We sent it to the Kern County crime lab over in Bakersfield.”

“What are they hoping to find? DNA?” I said.

“DNA, his blood, Ceci’s blood, anything helps. We also sent the bodies and evidence to Bakersfield. But that lab’s underfunded. They’re backlogged even for a high-profile case like this. And after you told us this might be a prion disease, the doctors went apeshit. They had to lock down the lab where the autopsies were performed and institute strict decontamination protocols. They freaked but good.”

From the backseat, Valerie said, “Welcome to my world.”

He looked in the mirror. “Is it cooling down back there?”

She gave him thumbs-up. He turned up the volume on the police radio and focused on the road. Whatever else he wanted to tell me, he didn’t want Valerie to hear.

“Where we going, Val?” he said.

“The Sierra View Motel.”

“Not your mom’s house?”

“She works at the motel.”

We pulled in a few minutes later. Tommy got Val’s suitcase out of the trunk, and I got out to tell her good-bye. I was extremely relieved at getting her off my hands, but seeing the expression on her face made me feel guilty. She stared at the motel looking stoic, almost hopeful.

“Will you be okay?” I said.

“Fine. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll get a room. Order champagne and whatever passes for caviar in this town, trash the place like a rock star.”

“Good luck.”

Tommy said, “Kelly’s funeral is tomorrow morning. Do you want us to pick you up?”

“No.” She looked rueful. “I’m only going to attend one more funeral. You know me, the diva. If I’m not the star, I ain’t going.”

She walked toward the office. Tommy waved good-bye, looking sympathetic, but he couldn’t peel out of the parking lot fast enough.

“What didn’t you want her to hear?” I said.

“Kelly had this same neuro thing Valerie has. Her brain was eaten up with holes.”

“Ceci?”

“Early stage.” He grimaced at the road, chewing his giant wad of gum.

“He’s killing people who were exposed to the pain vaccine,” I said. “It’s more than an obsession. It’s a cull.”

He nodded, grim. Fumbling in his shirt pocket, he pulled out a pack of Nicorette and shook two more pieces of gum into his mouth.

“You know how hard it is to get rid of prions? At a forensic laboratory? Places like that reek of formaldehyde. It kills most infectious agents, but it only makes prions stronger.” He shook his head. “This is fucking scary.”

“Does heat destroy them?”

“If it’s real hot.”

“Like the fire that killed Dana West.” I waited for him to look at me. “Or the explosion we witnessed at Renegade Canyon.”

“Which is why we’re going to see Dr. Cantwell right now.”

Frowning, he reached over, popped the glove compartment, and fished out a pack of cigarettes. “Excuse me.” Rolling down the window, he hawked his gum across the road.

“I know, littering’s a five-hundred-dollar fine. You can turn me in for the reward when Coyote’s under arrest.”

He shook a cigarette out of the pack and punched the lighter. “Guess I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue.”

 
Dr. Tully Cantwell’s office was bright and dreary. The receptionist looked as though she spent her time tut-tutting about the maladies patients brought upon themselves and then dragged into her waiting room. She was the doctor’s chief of staff, and she didn’t want Himself to be disturbed.

Tommy flashed his badge.

“No appointment?” she said.

I leaned on the counter. “He’s been waiting for us for twenty years.”

An office door opened. Dr. C nodded us in.

His white coat hung limply on him. His belly slurped over the waistband of his slacks, his tie riding the swell. He slumped into his desk chair and smoothed his combover.

“I can’t say I’m surprised to see you, Detective. But Evan, this is unexpected.”

Tommy spoke conversationally. “How soon after the explosion did Maureen Swayze ask you to start tracking the health of our class?”

“Quickly.” Cantwell fingered his
Go, Hounds
tie clip. “Glad we’re skipping the blarney. Dr. Swayze contacted me a week or so after the explosion. She asked me to work with the school and parents to track any health problems that developed. She was concerned.”

“Who got access to the medical data, exactly?”

“The high school and the Office of Advanced Research out on the base.”

“In other words, you and Swayze.” Tommy reached in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, and stopped himself. “You got permanent access to all the health records for our entire class.”

“No. Not all parents signed the waivers.” Cantwell looked at me. “Your mother particularly refused. And we only had legal access until you reached majority. After that, you could withdraw consent.”

“Could. How many actually did?” Tommy said.

Dr. C looked at his desk blotter.

“So, you what? Kind of forgot to remind people of that when they turned eighteen?”

Cantwell blushed.

“Is Swayze still getting reports on our health?”

“No, of course not. Her project wrapped up and she moved on. I haven’t heard from her in almost twenty years, and nobody from the base has asked for information in nearly that long.”

“So if she’s not providing our medical records to Coyote, who is? You?”

Cantwell froze.

“You were the doctor for the high school. That means you got access to all our records, not just those kids whose families were your patients. Did you give the information away, or sell it?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Coyote is being fed information about our class. I think that information originates in this office.”

“My God. No. I wouldn’t do that.”

“Then who? Your receptionist? Your file clerk? Do you have computer firewalls, so nobody can access your system from outside? Does your office link to the records department at China Lake Hospital?”

Cantwell flushed. His chumminess had disintegrated.

Tommy inched forward on his chair. “That’s okay. I’ll be coming back with a search warrant, and we’ll question your entire staff. When did you realize that our class was getting sick?”

Cantwell’s eyes unfocused for a moment. He attempted his jolly helpful-confessor smile, and abandoned it. His fingers worried the tie clip.

“Doctor,” Tommy said.

Cantwell sat unnaturally still, saying nothing. I spoke quietly.

“Phoebe Chadwick, Shannon Gruber, Linda Garcia, Dana West, maybe Sharlayne Jackson. We know they all had some form of TSE. And now Valerie Skinner has it too.”

“When did you know, Dr. C?” Tommy said.

Cantwell stared at his desk blotter.

“Funny thing,” I said, “at the reunion Valerie avoided you because she didn’t want to face an unhelpful doctor.”

I waited for him to flinch, and he did.

“But she’s been talking to me. She has complete insomnia. She’s covered with bruises because she can’t feel pain. Her brain is riddled with holes, and her own doctors are afraid to perform invasive tests. She says they talk about amyloid plaques and spongiform encephalopathy.”

His voice was little more than a mumble. “I suspected with Shannon Gruber. The panic attacks and insomnia.”

My blood pressure spun up. “Did you know it was a TSE?”

“Not for several years. Linda Garcia was a patient of mine. The anorexia was secondary to profound total insomnia and sensory deficits. That’s when I knew.”

Tommy looked incredulous. “And you did nothing?”

“They were my patients. I cared for them.”

I performed a gut check. My throat was dry. “When did you know that this disease could cause birth defects?”

Few things are more awful to watch than a man breaking inside. He stared at the green blotter on his lovely desk, and he crumbled. His head sank forward until his chin rested on his chest. He held very still for a moment, and then, heaving in a breath, he cracked into sobs.

Tommy sat stunned. So did I.

“I didn’t mean for this to happen. I didn’t know. You have to believe me.”

Cantwell slapped a hand over his face and turned away in shame. “Linda Garcia. She got sick after she lost the baby.”

Tightness in my throat. “What baby?”

“It was born nine weeks early, with profound neurological deficits. It died shortly after birth,” he said, and spun around, red eyed. “And you have it wrong. It’s not birth defects. It’s worse than that.”

I gripped the arms of my chair. Tommy watched me with concern.

“Teratogenesis. You know the word?” Cantwell said.

Though it sounded familiar, I shook my head.

“From the Greek
teras
, meaning monster. Literally translated, monster making.”

Tommy was clenching his fists. “What?”