Life Sentences (11 page)

Waiting for 4:00 a.m. to roll around
was like waiting for granite to form. Just minutes before her travel
alarm clock was set to go off, Daisy crawled out of bed and snapped open the
blinds. The sun wouldn't rise for another two hours, and the predawn sky
was dark. She could see Venus, the brightest of all the planets, glimmering
beside the waning crescent moon. Only one side of the moon was visible,
since the earth's gravity held it fast and kept it from displaying all its
faces. This phenomenon was called captured rotation. Daisy sympathized
with the moon. She felt captured forever in the gravitational pull of
her sister's planet-size drama.

She needed a gallon of coffee
just to prop her eyes open. She made a cup of instant, then got dressed in
snorts and a T-shirt and sat on the edge of her bed, sipping terrible-tasting
coffee until Jack picked her up at 4:30 and they headed east into the rising
sun. They rode along in silence while the sky gradually faded from deep
purple to a windswept pink along the horizon. Daisy put on a pair of
dark glasses to hide her red-rimmed eyes.

"How're you holding up?"
he asked. "You holding up okay?"

She nodded.

"It's not anybody who would
do this, you know. Takes a brave person."

"I don't feel so brave."
She stared out the window and tried to shrug off this encroaching, surreal
uneasiness. She was beginning to get a sense of the vastness of L. A.
The freeway was twelve lanes wide and mostly free of traffic this morning,
but she could picture the bumper-to-bumper nightmares that probably
occurred here every day, huge traffic jams that loaned the air its opaque
quality.

She swept her hair off her neck into
a loose bun-the temperature was already in the eighties, despite
the early hour. As the sun rose steadily above the horizon, the stars
blinked out like distant cars rounding a bend. "It's so hot already."

"By noon, it'll reach the
mid-nineties," Jack told her.

"The radio mentioned something
about a drought."

"Driest year in Southern California
in a century. We've had less than a third of our normal rainfall. It's affecting
everything, except for the lawn sprinklers in Beverly Hills."

She knew she should smile. She shivered
instead
. I'm going to find my sister
today. I am going to Anna's grave
.

The 1988 Ford Topaz howled as they
drove along, wind whistling through little holes in the rust. Mardi Gras
beads dangled from the rearview mirror, and a tiny beer bottle swung
from the key chain. On the floor were scattered maps and traffic tickets,
rumpled paper napkins from various fast-food joints. The engine kept
jarring her with its strident, mechanical sound.

"There are advantages to owning
a
shitbox
." He glanced at her as if he could
read her mind. "For instance, I can leave it in a vacant lot overnight
with the doors open and the keys in the ignition, and nobody will steal
it."

She smiled. "And you never have
to wash it."

"Fender benders don't bother
me."

Her smile faded, and she drew
numbly into herself. Just then the sun broke through the smog, and she could
see the snowcapped mountains in the distance, beautiful natural barriers
that kept the suburbs from sprawling infinitely in all directions.

"We're almost there,"
Jack said.

The foothills were dry and barren,
a series of twisting slopes covered with dead-looking chaparral. They
finally left the freeway and took a winding route into the slate-colored
canyons, where the waterfalls were dying. They drove past clear mountain
streams that trickled instead of poured down the sides of the wrinkled
canyons, and after about fifteen minutes they reached high country
with its dense woods of
spirelike
cedars and pines.
The serious lack of rainfall had forced the plant life to bloom much
earlier than normal, and now a startling assortment of wild-flowers
grew along the banks of the thinning streams-yellow lilies with fringed
petals, perky blue flowers, shy white ones. The foraging animals would
exhaust the habitat if it didn't rain soon and grant this parched earth
some relief.

At the Red Box Forestry Station,
they took a right | onto Mt. Wilson Road and climbed steadily uphill,
past ft craggy cliff on one side and a pine forest on the other. I As they
crested the top of the next rise, a dozen parked police cars came into
view. Jack pulled in behind them while a hot gust of wind rocked the trees
all around them, their crowns pitching and swelling like ocean waves.
Perspiring heavily, Daisy got out of the car, and they walked up a slight
incline toward a knot of detectives from the L.A. County Sheriff's Department
and the De Campo Beach Police Department.

Jack introduced her to his partner,
Detective William Tully, who stood leaning against an unmarked
Skylark with his ankles crossed. Tully was overweight and balding, a big
black man in an ill-fitting suit who reminded Daisy of a plump, sad-faced
little boy. He shook hands with exceeding politeness-part of his technique,
she figured. "How are you?" he asked with an old-school display
of concern. "You
doin
' okay? You
feelin
' up to this?"

"I'm a nervous wreck,"
she admitted.

He smiled warmly at her.
"You'll do fine."

"Where's the prisoner?"
Jack asked him.

"Down at the ranger station.
They just flew him in."

"So they'll be heading this
way soon?"

Tully nodded. "He's waived
his rights to counsel. The Sheriff's Department wants credit."

"Fuck." Jack drew Daisy
aside. "I don't know how long this is
gonna
take.
Would you like to wait in the car?"

She nodded, and he escorted her
back to the car, so formal and stilted her body squirmed in protest. Normally,
this dismissive attitude would've pissed her off, but now it just made
her want to cry. She felt so weak and useless. He opened the door for her, and
she slid inside, then wrenched her window shut. She turned on the A/C
full blast and sat wondering how long her sister had been buried underground.
One square foot of soil could contain thousands of insects and millions
of microscopic life-forms. During a drought, these populations declined
somewhat, but even very dry soil was home to countless bacteria, fungi,
algae and
protozoans
.

She sat shivering for what felt like
an eternity while Jack and the other detectives milled around, talking
in low voices, their noisy portable units squawking like exotic birds.
Jack stood with his back to her as if he were trying to shield her from something.

Now a string of police cars came
speeding along the fire road toward them, four cruisers with their
lights
strobing
. As they zoomed past, Daisy craned
her neck and caught sight of a man in the backseat of one of the squad
cars-pale skin, dark hair, just a blur.

Jack jogged back and shot in behind
the wheel.

"What's going on?" she asked,
her adrenaline surging.

"We follow them."

"Where to?"

"Wherever he takes us."

They roared after the other police
cars over a confusing network of roads while a helicopter hovered above
the foothills, its rotor blades whirling. They veered up a steep rise,
where she could see a mass of mountains in the distance, jagged elevations
riddled with turquoise shadows. They drove along a narrow ridge, then
down another canyon; next they took a little-traveled road through difficult
terrain, past pine trees and dense underbrush, until at last they came
to a meandering fire road that wormed its way deeper into the woods.
After ten minutes of bumpy travel, the armada of cars gradually slowed
to a crawl, and the road abruptly ended. A cloud of dust rose up.

Daisy didn't wait for Jack to open
her door for her. She got out, and they headed into the woods together
while everybody else hung back. "I don't like this," she said.
"Try to relax."

Her lungs would not expand to accommodate
the amount of oxygen her body needed. The helicopter had followed
them. It hovered above the treetops, then banked north. Ten yards behind
Daisy and Jack trailed a small battalion of armed officers, casually
dressed detectives and uniformed deputies with their captive in his
orange jailhouse jumpsuit.

Jack held her firmly by the arm and
wore the face of the jaded detective who wasn't about to share anything
significant with her. He would dish out die truth in small, controlled
doses, and she could see she was going to have to wrestle him for the
rest.

"Why do we have to go
first?" she said in a loud, unhappy voice.

"I don't want you to have to
look at him." "But he can see me. Right?" Jack glanced back at
the prisoner. "That's even worse," she said. "And please
stop steering me around, Jack. I don't like being steered places."

He released her arm, and they veered
off the dirt trail into a bevy of golden wildflowers. "Watch
it," he cautioned. "Tick heaven." They stood beneath the
enormity of the forest while the contingent of law officers shuffled
past. The man in the orange jumpsuit approached them with long, purposeful
strides, and she could feel his eyes on her. It was horrible, as if he were
pushing a pillow into her face. Daisy wanted to run away, but her body
was frozen in place.

Roy Gaines was broad-shouldered,
over six feet tall, with elegant, almost feminine features and black
shoulder-length hair. She couldn't tell what color his eyes were, but
they observed her with an unmatched curiosity. His gaze both frightened
and appalled her. Two cops with rifles bracketed the prisoner, who was
handcuffed to a waist chain. He seemed subdued, or rattier quietly
composed, as he strolled silently past them on a trail that'd recently been
cleared of brush. Daisy swallowed back the words she wanted to scream at
him:
What have you done with my sister,
you sick fuck?

He broke off eye contact and headed
north along the trail while she and Jack got back on the dusty footpath and
followed the others through the woods. She kept catching glimpses of
the prisoner's Sunkist-orange jumpsuit in between the prison bars of
the trees up ahead, her anger flaring as she listened to the sound of
many feet crashing through the dry brush. The hike was unrelenting, the
sun surprisingly intense. "Where's he taking us?" she asked
moodily. "God only knows."

Her legs kicked out. The air felt
like dirty milk against her skin. The trail curved to the west and crossed
several dry
creekbeds
, then headed northwest
along the wall of the canyon. Soon they came upon a clearing, where the
prisoner and several detectives paused to discuss something. A negotiation
was taking place.

"What's going on?" Jack
asked irritably.

After a moment, Tully said,
"We're taking a five-minute break."

Daisy hung back in a shady spot
along the trail, safe in the shadow of the woods, while Roy Gaines stood
out in the open with his face tipped toward the sun. He asked for a cigarette,
his voice deep and lulling.

Tully pulled a pack of cigarettes
out of his shirt pocket, tapped one out for the prisoner and tucked it between
his thin lips. There was the flick of a match being struck, then a small flame
illuminated the prisoner's face.

Daisy could see his eyes. They were
shiny black like water bugs. Revulsion rose in her. "Why are they being
so nice to him?"

"
Shh
,
it's okay," Jack said. "Don't let him see you lose your cool."

She'd noticed the fire regulations
posted back at the forestry station. Smoking was supposed to be restricted
to an enclosed vehicle or building, or else limited to a campsite
with a three-foot brush clearance. "Why are they letting him smoke?"
she asked. "I thought this place was a tinderbox."

"He's cooperating, so we're
cooperating," Jack explained. "And we're well aware of the fire
restrictions."

It took her several minutes to
get her hostility in check. The day was hot and awful, like summer wrapped
in cellophane. Nobody said a word. Nobody moved a muscle. Roy Gaines
smoked his cigarette and glanced at the towering pine trees while a
meandering breeze ruffled Daisy's hair. The vastness of the forest
was humbling. The hot wind stirred the pine branches, needles drifting
down like snow.

Her stomach hurt. Lethargic bees
just waking up from a long winter's hibernation buzzed in lazy circles
around her head. The constant hum of the insects was making her nauseated.
There were too many ticks, too many spittlebugs, too many flies and moths
and bees and wasps and beetles and gnats. The forest teemed with life-not
just in the air but underground as well. A spoonful of soil contained
more bacteria than there were human beings on the planet.

She felt a vague apprehension
and caught the prisoner staring at her again. Her scalp jumped. He was
standing in the full blaze of the sun, studying her. It was obscene. His
mouth was thin and hard, and his limbs were loose and muscular. He shook
his head sideways, knocking a few inky strands of hair out of his eyes so
that he could see her better.

"What?"
she screamed. Heads turned.