Doubt (Caroline Auden Book 1) (25 page)

Driving home from law school with a sick feeling in her stomach, Caroline wondered what she would find . . .

Chipped cinder blocks demarked the edge of the carport as Caroline parked. She climbed out of the car. Even outside, she could feel the demon energy swirling around the tract home. A restless, edgy, dangerous sensation that tingled her mental antennae and warned her to go anywhere other than inside the front door.

When she opened the door, she found Lola, the family dog, looking up at her with soulful, apprehensive brown eyes, as if the dog was considering taking her chances on the street rather than in this house full of crazy. Caroline put a hand on Lola’s head.

“It’ll be okay,” she said, half to herself.

The dog sniffed in disagreement but leaned into the caress.

“Is that you, Caro?” Joanne’s voice called from the bedroom. A manic edge rang rip razor through the ordinary low tones of her voice.

Caroline walked into her mother’s bedroom, treading softly from longtime habit. She found her mother wearing a red bra and a faux Persian rug wrapped around her shoulders. A mound of clothing sat in the middle of the bed.

“Why are you wearing that?” Caroline eyed the unconventional accessory, the absurdity of the situation keeping her horror at bay.

“We must be practical!” her mother shot back, rearranging her grip on the rug that kept threatening to slip off her shoulders.

“Yes, we should,” Caroline muttered. “Why don’t you lie down, Mom?”

“We need to go!” Joanne said.

“Where are we going?” Caroline asked, putting calm into her voice to combat her mother’s hysteria. People often said comedy and tragedy were close cousins, and now she understood why.

“We’re going to Saskatchewan!” Joanne glared at her daughter like the destination was obvious, then she turned to her dresser and threw open the drawer. With her free hand, she began taking handfuls of underwear and socks and bras out and tossing them onto the pile on the bed.

Caroline watched in silence as her mother built a towering pile of fabric. Her mother had always tended toward the mystical, toward floating off the planet without the firm cord of her dad’s pragmatism anchoring her. But this was something new. Something terrifying. This wasn’t a flight into the mystic. This was a break from reality.

Unsure what to do, Caroline texted her dad then waited for a response. When her dad didn’t respond, the fear descended on her. She needed to deal. Alone, apparently.

“We need to see a doctor, Mom,” Caroline said. That much was obvious.

Instead of answering, Joanne speed walked to her closet and began tossing jackets onto her bed. She gave up on the Persian rug, letting it fall to the floor. With two hands now free, she could unload her clothing from the closets at an even more frantic pace.

“Come on, Mom, let’s go get some help. Let’s go to the hospital,” Caroline said. If her mother wouldn’t come willingly, would she have to call an ambulance? What would happen? Men with needles and a gurney?

“Hospital?” Joanne’s brow furrowed. “No, I don’t think I’m going there.”

“Please, Mom,” Caroline pleaded. “Just for a quick checkup. So we can see whether you’re healthy enough for Saskatchewan,” Caroline said, joining her mother on whatever plane of insanity she presently resided.

“Saskatchewan? Okay, I’ll go if I can bring my eyeliner.” Joanne began digging through the pile.

“We can get you some new eyeliner at the hospital,” Caroline said, grabbing a sweatshirt from the pile of clothing and pulling it over her mother’s head.

The orderlies at the hospital’s sliding doors had struggled to sedate Joanne. And the drama hadn’t ended that afternoon. For the next weeks, Caroline had made daily trips to the hospital, waiting for her mother to emerge from her psychosis.

Her dad had offered support on the phone, but it wasn’t enough. Watching her mother lying on the hospital bed, her eyes blank and unseeing, Caroline hadn’t known if her mother would return. She hadn’t known if what she saw was a harbinger of the end . . . or the end itself.

But Joanne had returned. And she’d stopped drinking. And she’d gotten better. Too late to save the marriage, but she’d gotten better.

Now Uncle Hitch was the one on a downward slide. A slide that Caroline could watch but do nothing to stop. She’d been there before. She had a front-row seat to a train wreck.

Caroline knew what she needed to do. She needed to keep moving. She needed to keep functioning. Even after she’d spent a night in a hospital looking at her mom’s vacant face, she’d had to get up in the morning and go to school. Even when she was racked with worry about what the next day would bring for people she loved, she needed to put on her game face and deal.

She had a pharmacist to interrogate. She had possible killers to avoid. She had no time to waste energy worrying about what she could not fix.

She drove on into the night.

CHAPTER 13

“How many nights are you staying?” the motel desk clerk asked. With his watering eyes and drooping mustache, he looked like he’d been sound asleep until moments ago. Which he probably had, Caroline reflected. A thin curl of smoke rose from a freshly lit cigarette in the ashtray beside the clerk’s left hand.

“Two,” Caroline said, noting a gamy odor beneath the smell of cigarette smoke. With an embarrassed shock of recognition, she realized she was smelling herself. She needed a shower. She needed a nap. She needed a meal and probably also a hug. With little hope of the latter, she turned to taking care of the former two as fast as possible.

She pulled the firm’s credit card from her wallet and placed it in front of the desk clerk. Two nights at a seedy motel on the outskirts of Mendocino would be her first charge to Hale Stern. And an ignoble one at that.

The desk clerk shook his head. “Cash only. Up front.” He took a slow drag from his cigarette while he waited for Caroline to replace her credit card and find the correct denominations of currency.

Once she’d paid, he placed a key on the stained oak counter beside a plastic case holding brochures for the Nightaway Motel chain. Caroline couldn’t recall ever having seen another Nightaway Motel. Perhaps it was a chain more in aspiration than in reality.

“Thanks,” said Caroline, glad to be on a fast trajectory toward bed. She had only a few hours before the pharmacy opened. She needed to hurry to get some rest before then.

And yet, when she stepped through the lobby door, she paused to admire the night sky. The sun would rise in an hour or two; darkness reigned supreme except for the bright, almost-full moon. A wind blew from the north, stirring the clouds casting a ring around the moon, splaying white around the clouds like the iris of an eye surrounded by a glowing cornea. If old seafarers’ lore were true, it would rain tonight.

As if in answer, the first pattering of drops made dark marks on the pavement, barely visible in the parking lot’s floodlights.

Ducking her head against the moisture, Caroline jogged to the Mustang to pull her suitcase and laptop bag from the trunk.

She paused at the door to the hotel and checked her phone. She had one text.

Uncle Hitch had written two hours earlier:
Went to Ivy Lounge.

“Damn it,” Caroline said to no one.

Three quick hours, one long nap, and a drought-inducing shower later, Caroline stood at the counter of the Arborville Pharmacy, telling her most recent lie.

“Annie Wong asked me to pick up her son Nolan’s prescription,” she said.

The bespectacled man behind the counter squinted at Caroline as if trying to identify her.

“She’s a friend,” Caroline explained. “I told her I’d be in the neighborhood, so it would be no trouble for me to come by to grab it for her.”

In answer, the man shuffled over to a long plastic shelf of white-bagged prescriptions. With all the speed of a snail on sedatives, he thumbed through them.

He returned to the counter, shaking his head. “There’s nothing here. Are you sure she didn’t pick it up herself?”

“Guess she did,” Caroline said, turning away. She felt the pharmacist’s eyes on her back as she pushed through the screen door.

Outside, Caroline spotted a wooden bench. Lodged in the corner of the porch of the Victorian building housing the pharmacy, its whitewashed comfort beckoned. It was as good a place as any to try to figure out what to do next.

Caroline pondered her options. The pharmacy had been a dead end, as had been the Internet, since Annie’s name didn’t appear in any of the local Mendocino directories. Whatever she’d been doing since she’d left Los Angeles, she hadn’t participated in any civic events that had recorded her attendance.

And yet, Annie was close. Somewhere. But where?

Caroline studied the view across the parking lot. The rain that had pounded the roof of the motel had stopped just after dawn. In the storm’s aftermath, the air tasted like a drink of cool water. In the sky, tall, white clouds piled high in confectioners’ heaps, glowing against a deep-blue sky.

A minivan pulled up in front of the pharmacy. Matte blue and covered with small dents, the vehicle looked like a class full of kindergarteners had surrounded it and kicked the crap out of it. A woman climbed out of the driver’s seat, her used-to-be-blonde hair tied back in a hasty ponytail. Then the door of the minivan slid open to reveal a boy holding a ratty blanket. White blond, with a head too large for his body, he ran to keep up with his mother’s stride as the two of them approached the door of the pharmacy.

The mother slowed as she passed, meeting Caroline’s eyes.

“Good morning,” she said with small-town friendliness before opening the screen door for her son to pass.

“Wait a second,” Caroline said, rising from the bench. “Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Yes?” said the mother, still holding the screen door.

“How many elementary schools are there in Mendocino?” Caroline asked.

“Just one. Mendo K through eight.”

“Thanks,” Caroline said, already in motion to her car.

Caroline pretended to look at her phone while she surreptitiously scanned the faces of the parents leaving the elementary school. She hoped she looked enough like a parent to blend in. Plus, she had the advantage of being a stranger to Dr. Anne Wong. The scientist shouldn’t startle if she saw her.

The stream of departing parents flowed through the doors, some wearing jeans, others wearing scrubs or suits or other uniforms of other trades.

Caroline saw no one that resembled Dr. Wong.

She was just about to give up when she saw her. Birdlike and petite, with coal-black hair and crescent-shaped eyes, Dr. Wong looked like her picture on Dr. Heller’s desk. In person, she had a brittle, breakable quality to her, as if she were made of toothpicks, not flesh. She wore a black fleece jacket zipped up against the cold.

At the top of the steps, Dr. Wong paused, scanning the landscape. Although the scientist didn’t pause long, Caroline instantly knew what she was doing. She was looking for signs of danger. When the scientist reached the bottom of the steps, she put her head down and hurried toward the parking lot, looking neither right nor left.

Caroline left the sanctuary of the tree and trailed this stranger that she felt like she knew, having so thoroughly stalked, investigated, and pondered her. She shadowed Dr. Wong down the walkway until she reached the edge of the parking lot.

“Annie?” Caroline called. She hoped the use of the scientist’s nickname would induce instinctive trust.

“Yes?” Annie stopped walking. She stood perfectly still.

“My name’s Caroline Auden. I’m on the
SuperSoy
legal team—”

Annie’s eyes widened.

“I represent the plaintiffs,” Caroline continued, and she thought she saw Annie relax slightly at the news she didn’t represent the defense.

“I don’t know anything about that,” Annie said. “I’ve got to go.” The scientist went from repose to jogging so quickly that Caroline almost staggered to keep up with her.

“Wait,” said Caroline, jogging after her. “I just want to talk to you. SuperSoy is on trial. We’re trying to show it causes kidney damage. Your article shows it does, but the judge wants to talk to you about it—”

“I can’t help you,” Annie said, approaching the side of a silver Toyota. Reaching into her purse with a shaking hand, Annie hastily withdrew her keys and climbed into her car.

“But we’re going to lose this case if you don’t come to New York with me to testify. The judge is trying the science—”

Without a backward look, Annie slammed the door and drove away, leaving Caroline standing alone in the parking lot.

Information is power.
That’s what Louis always said.

Caroline knew he was right. When the police had come to the Audens’ door that dark day, eager to bust the hottest new cybercriminal in town, William had sat down and explained to his daughter that the reason cybercrime was so serious was that people needed to protect their information. Their Social Security numbers. Their tax identification numbers. But even more than that, their secret aspirations. Their kinks. Their quirks. Their private lives.

Information was indeed power.

And now Caroline needed power over Dr. Wong. She needed enough information to deliver a reluctant witness three thousand miles across the country to testify at court. To do that, she needed to get to Annie Wong. She needed Annie’s secrets.

Sitting down on the motel-room bed, Caroline pulled her laptop to her. The mattress sagged under her weight, the springs weak from years of guests sleeping in approximately the same spot where Caroline now sat. Ignoring her discomfort, Caroline looked up at the cracked acoustic tiles gracing the motel room’s ceiling, seeking inspiration in the yellowing patches left by the cigarettes the room’s occupants had smoked over the years.

What did she know about Annie?

She knew Annie had run. She knew Annie might have tried to destroy the article she’d invested years of her life researching and writing. Annie must’ve been scared when Franklin died, but why didn’t she talk to the police? Why did she just . . . run?

So then someone got to Annie. Someone bribed her. Or, more likely, threatened her. A threat to the scientist and her son would explain just about any deal with the Devil. But if Annie had repudiated her life’s work to save herself and her son, how could Caroline get Annie to rethink that deal?

The answer lay in the intertwined lives of Franklin Heller and Annie Wong. The two scientists had known each other for over a decade. Together, they had turned down funding from the biotech companies. Together, they had run a lean but successful laboratory, turning out important papers on cutting-edge topics. Together, they had stood strong against financial pressures and even threats by powerful interests. Together, they had been brave.

Had they been brave together to the end? Or had Annie repudiated Franklin, too? Had Annie known about the escalating frequency of the phone calls to Franklin’s house? Had she told her research partner to give up on the article? Perhaps he’d courted dangers she hadn’t wanted to court? Or had something between Annie and Franklin changed before he’d died?

Look for anomalies.
That’s what Uncle Hitch had said. Fine, then. What were the patterns of Annie’s life, of Franklin’s life? Had they changed in any way before he died?

The answer struck Caroline quickly. There had been a change. But it had been Yvonne’s change, not Franklin’s. Six months before Franklin’s death, Yvonne had finally accepted that her husband wasn’t going back to his lucrative surgical practice. She’d started winding up the medical group, liquidating assets and closing its books.

Bringing her fingers to her laptop, Caroline ran a search for “Heller Medical Group.”

The query retrieved old news articles about the plastic surgeon who’d shuttered his gold-plated practice to pursue a life of scientific research. The query also retrieved a real estate report on the value of the properties held by the Heller Medical Group. The oldest reference was to the sale of the medical group’s office building.