Out at Night (34 page)

“Oh, Grace.” Her voice was heavy. “The USDA has given approval for the commercial production of rice that contains human genes to counteract diarrhea. An antigen for E. coli’s been spliced into potatoes. There are edible vaccines now in tomatoes and bananas. Inserting a human gene that affects health is being done all the time. In this country alone there are close to two hundred million acres of GM crops, but GM crops are grown all over the world and a lot of those already have human genes in some form.”

Stuart’s van bumped slowly across the parking lot, came to the row where she was parked, and turned in. Grace tossed her bag in the backseat of her car and slammed the door shut. She leaned against the car, waiting. She pressed the cell phone hard against her ear.

“Which race?” It was an easy question, only two words; her mind was already moving in short bursts of color, energy, making links, moving on, trying new paths.

Part of her already knew.

“The soy fragment found in Ted’s shoes has been coded to target snips of Indo-Europeans. White people. The genes inserted stimulate an overproduction of interleukin—4.”

It wasn’t what she was expecting and her mind took the disparate pieces and re-sorted. Her mind felt emptied, except for the busy work, moving, humming, building.

“Grace?”

She stared blankly at the van as Stuart pulled up crosswise behind her. He left the motor running and slid open the side door. Mounds of clothing, books, and cardboard boxes crammed the back of the van. Stuart reached into the middle of the high jumble of debris and started hunting for the bag of organic soy.

“Grace? You still there?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re familiar with it.”

“Interleukin—4, yeah. It’s an essential ingredient in the human immune system.”

When she was training to be a doctor, her area of expertise had been pediatric transplant immunology, but she didn’t have the energy to tell Dr. Denise Bustamonte that.

“Why would somebody take the time to encode a human gene in a soybean plant? A gene that stimulates the production of interleukin—4. Any ideas?”

Stuart had disappeared into the interior of the van, sorting through clothes and setting aside books.

“There was a graduate study I remember at Cornell done on mice. Dealing with the overproduction of interleukin—4. The mice bred and the fertilized eggs successfully implanted, but the overstimulation of the hormone created an angiogenesis inhibitor—interfering with the growth of new blood vessels in the fetus.”

“So the mice miscarried.” Denise sucked in a breath.

“Early in pregnancy.” Grace felt as if she’d been hit in the solarplexis, emptied out.

Stuart turned in the van, half smiled, and made a face, acknowledging the mess. He retreated again inside the van.

“So it’s possible whoever did this with the soy was experimenting,” Denise said slowly. “The ‘go’switch that stimulates overproduction of this hormone is encoded in the soy, and the result is. . .what? If they eat the soy? Miscarriages in humans?”

“Miscarriages early in pregnancy.”

The mice miscarried. Early in pregnancy.

Just like Vonda and the other women in her infertility group. Is that what Frank Waggaman had done? Reengineered the soy seed he’d sold to organic farmers?

“Whoever did this is targeting the reproductive systems of white people,” Grace said. “But why?”

“Oh. And whatever else they transferred, they encoded something so that when the soy’s heated, the human genes aren’t killed. They’re intact.”

“So if something’s baked, if the soy was baked and ingested, whatever was encoded in the soy wouldn’t be neutralized.” Grace heart started to trip. “Denise, the soy is encoded to stimulate the production of interleukin—4, right?”

“Yeah, it’s shot full of the command to pump up production.”

“What’s the cutoff?”

“You mean, to cause miscarriages?”

“How high a percentage of Indo-European snips has to be present before this stuff recognizes them as white and floods the system with the interleukin—4?”

“Fifty-one percent or higher.”

Grace shifted position. The jumble of pieces that had seemed so random suddenly sifted and clicked into place. She squeezed her eyes shut. A high wind screamed in her head and all the dark angels were unleashed. “Denise—what if—somebody was tired of waiting around for the world to become less dominated by whites? What if that person had the technology and capability to ensure that this domination would no longer exist?”

“Go on.”

“The soy’s been modified so that it only affects Caucasians, right?” Grace already knew the answer.

“Where are you going with this?”

“Miscarriages, Denise. The cold virus replicates the interleukin—4 and inhibits the creation of fetal blood vessels, but only in Indo-European snips. The people we think of as white. So if those white males mate with white females, the females miscarry. Those fetuses will never be carried to term. They destruct within the first three months in utero.”

“Other races, those wouldn’t be affected,” Denise said slowly.

“Yeah, that’s the beauty of it.”

“So you’re saying if two white people try to have a kid—”

“They can’t,” Grace finished. “They just keep miscarrying.”

“But if a white woman matches up with somebody—say, with predominantly sub-Saharan snips, a black guy—”

“No problem. The cold virus hasn’t been keyed to recognize those snips, so the interleukin—4 doesn’t kick into gear.”

“You’re saying, whites would have to choose partners from minority races if they wanted to have kids.” Denise sounded stunned.

Grace shifted her grip on the phone. “Within twenty years, whites would effectively be stripped of their power. Their days at calling the shots would be over because
there wouldn’t be any white race left
. They’d be history.”

Stuart eased out of the van, a bag of seed in his arms and crossed over to where she stood next to the trunk. The burlap bag looked heavy, awkward.

“But this is just how it looks on the computer.” Denise’s voice held a faint tremor. “It would have to be tested in real life.”

Stuart lost his balance and shoved the bag into her and she felt the cold snub nose of a gun. Fear coiled in her gut. A cold sweat washed over her. He put the bag down, the gun up. He pressed it against her head.

“Grace?” Denise’s voice was tinny.

Stuart folded up the cell phone and tossed it into the parking lot and it skidded under a car. He grasped her arm and they half trotted around her car to the back.

“Now you’re going to get into the trunk of your car, Grace. And we’re going for a little drive.”

Chapter 43

She curled into a ball, trying to still the sound of her heart. She heard scraping as he yanked the keys out of the trunk lock. Her keys. Hers. He relocked the doors, a quick grinding sound that delineated the walls of her prison.

A fine sheen of sweat creased her back. It wasn’t daylight in the desert. Not yet. In daylight, the temperature inside the trunk could easily soar to over 160 degrees Fahrenheit, even in November. She knew that because there had been a smuggler in Calexico who’d been stuffed into a trunk as a payback. He’d literally cooked to death.

But that wasn’t going to happen to her.

A little drive.

His shoes scraped across the gravel, receding. She heard the sound of a car door slamming. The rumble of his van retreating. He was driving away.

She replayed everything she’d learned about being trapped in a trunk, all of it easy, all of it things she’d never done, never had time to do.

Hide a second remote in the trunk. Keep a flashlight handy. A screwdriver, crowbar, tire iron. She rolled onto her side and started feeling along the carpet for the tab that would open the spare tire compartment.

She found the tab and yanked it up. She put her hand down in it cautiously.

It was nasty, working at a crime lab.

Her memory was crammed with stories of six hundred-pound boa constrictors named Baby Alice slithering loose in neighborhoods and winding up coiled inside spare tires.

The compartment was empty. She patted it again, harder this time, as if she could command the spare tire to appear. Nothing.

She remembered then she’d loaned the tire and the iron to Marcie, her crime lab friend. Helped change the flat in the police parking lot, both of them rushing out afterwards, her friend’s grateful promises for dinners or cookies or a movie trailing in the air above her like a small galaxy of silvery lies.

Grace had been late picking up Katie from soccer practice; that had been the only thing on her mind. How could she have forgotten to get back the tire and iron? She felt a flash of anger at Marcie, but it was old anger, not hot enough to use.

She rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and started patting down the cage. She’d believed his lie about rheumatoid arthritis. She’d never checked it. Never asked for confirmation. Believed him.

Believing the other lies had come easily from that one. A man with swollen fingers, fingers where the immune system was attacking cartilage, would live a life of compromise. A life that never could have included pulling back the inflexible swift cord, steadying the bucking fiberglass bow, taking delicate aim, letting the bolt fly.

Killing a man in a field of soy.

The alibi. Time-stamping egg pods for quality assurance. Sarah Conroy’s husband, the ex-con arrested in the cargo theft bust, could have stepped in, taken Stuart’s place for an hour or so, while Stu killed Bartholomew and slipped back to work. Grace wondered what Stu had traded for it.

In her mind’s eye, she saw Stuart gazing tenderly at Vonda, Vonda smiling back, the way they looked at each other with love. Grace was a sap for the happy ending, the moment where the cowboys rode over the hill into the sweet, fragrant night.

It was harder when evil had a pretty face, a striking personality. Juice.

Solzhenitsyn had it right. Evil didn’t separate countries, nations, ideologies. It ran through the middle of every human heart. Stuart had set it up perfectly. His grief over losing babies. His instinctive need to protect Vonda, protect Sam.

Only he’d orchestrated Vonda’s heartbreaking miscarriages. He’d used her and her friends as research subjects. He must have been ecstatic when it worked.

He’d wanted to get next to Grace from the first time he’d seen her at the jail, find out why she’d been called in, what she knew.

When she’d asked for samples of the organic soy seed that Frank Waggaman had sold them, Stuart knew he’d have to act. The next step would have been comparing the organic soy that Frank Waggaman sold them to the soy seed he sold to other farmers. When the other seed came up untainted, Grace would have known Frank was innocent.

Known it was Stuart. Had always been Stuart.

Footsteps grated across the asphalt, coming closer, and for an instant, she thought maybe if she banged on the ceiling and yelled hard enough, whoever it was would stop walking to their own car and investigate. She pounded the ceiling and screamed.

A key turned, opening the driver’s door and she stopped. She heard Stuart slide in and slam the door shut. It amazed her how different things sounded, trapped in a trunk. Close. Sweat pooled off her face, or maybe tears.

In a normal tone of voice Stu said, “I could fire this gun right through the back seat, use the cushion to muffle the sound. Have a pretty good shot at killing you.” His voice was pleasant.

He started driving. He wasn’t leaving her there. He was taking her somewhere.

Stu tapped on the brakes and she rocked backward and pressed against the cage with her hands and feet, bracing herself. He drove faster than she was used to. The sound of other cars was close.

Grace’s car was a Nissan Subaru she’d bought from a dealership. She’d gotten a good deal on it because it was that year that manufacturers were required to install trunk releases. Her car didn’t have one. But it got good gas mileage and had some zip when she changed lanes.

The way Stuart was doing. The car tilted slightly and she splayed out her hands, trying to brace herself. She could feel the motion of the wheels under her.

A horn blasted right on the bumper, the sound mechanical and angry at the same time, and Grace instinctively braced herself and covered her head.

The car made a sharp left turn and sped up. She took a breath. The air was hot. She needed to slow her thoughts, think. The traffic sounds were freeway noises: tires against pavement, occasional snatches of a song through a car window, metal grinding when gears were shifted. They were on the 10, heading out of town.

Under the carpet, a cable ran from the driver’s side to the trunk. If she could find that cable and pull on it, the trunk would open and she would be free. She did a cursory pat and found nothing.

Brake lights. If she could get to the brake lights, rip out the wires, a CHIP or patrolman would stop the car, write a ticket. Except everybody was at the Convention Center.

Time had lost meaning. Her feet were numb. She shifted position and pressed the soles of her feet against the far side of the trunk. Stinging pain shot up her legs.

The car was slowing. She heard the far-off sound of a train at a crossing signal light. The car bumped down a road, a dirt road, from the way the tires seized. He was taking her to the switching yard.

Her face was wet now and she wiped it. If they at the yard, where was everybody? Where was the clang of machinery coming from the building, the grinding gears of boxcars as a train was built?

The car picked up speed, bouncing over ruts, and Grace squeezed her eyes shut and gritted her teeth. It was just the two of them. And whatever came next.

She felt a shifting in the underbelly of the car. He was slowing down. There was another sound, coming closer, one that filled her with hope.

It was a car. Somebody was coming toward them. She scrambled to the driver’s side of the trunk. The car would have to pass by. It was her one chance to make noise, to alert the driver, get help, end the nightmare.