Rippler (20 page)

A man approached the cemetery. This was unusual. Visitors usually turned aside rather than disturb the weeping girl whose story they knew all too well.

Oh. He couldn’t see me.

As he approached my mother’s resting place, I scowled, irritated by his presence. He peered through me at the words on the stone, muttering the date to himself and nodding. He looked around as if to see who else might reside in the ground beside my dead mother. There was no one; Dad had purchased the nearby plots. The man looked puzzled, even annoyed, as he took one last turn around my family’s domain. He grunted and turned to go.

I watched as he strode towards Main Street. Who was he, and what the hell did he mean by coming to stare at Mom’s grave? I rose, intending to run and catch up to him, but something funny happened when I tried running invisibly for the first time. I didn’t think about the lack of resistance, about how rippling caused me to “glide” instead of moving normally. I reached the opposite end of Main before I realized how fast I could move in my friction-free state. I’d covered eight blocks in a matter of seconds! I knew I’d never done that before in a car, so I must have been running well over the twenty-five mile-an-hour speed limit. Weird, but not something I had time to think about at the moment.

I whirled back to face my quarry and saw him turning into Las ABC. Using a controlled stride this time, I followed the man as he pushed on the carved door of the café.

Gwyn looked up from texting behind the bakery case—her mom must not have been

around—and welcomed the stranger. He ordered coffee and a slice of pie. Gwyn rang up the order, asking what brought him to Las Abuelitas.

“That obvious, is it?” he asked, smiling.

She shrugged. “I don’t recognize you is all.”

“I’m doing some research for the upcoming Sesquicentennial of the Yosemite Grant.”

“Uh-huh,” she responded, passing the pie slice across the counter. “What’s the . . .

whatever got to do with us?”

“The earliest European settlers here, the owners of the Las Abuelitas Rancho, were

involved in the birth of the National Park. Exciting stuff for interpretive historians like myself.”

“Hmmm.” She poured his coffee.

“Would you mind if I asked you some questions about Las Abuelitas?”

“You can ask,” she said, with a short guffaw.

I smiled: she hated history even more than biology.

“I’ll bet you know more than you think. Sit with me a minute?” He held out his hand, flashed a toothy smile. “Nat Wilke.”

The café was empty. The guy had movie-star good looks. She shook hands and joined

him.

“It looks to me like there are a couple of very old buildings in town. What can you tell me about the cabin by the ‘Welcome’ sign? On the highway by the gas station?”

Will and Mickie’s house.

I held my breath, figuratively speaking.

“It’s old. You got that right.” I saw a defensive wall come up; she wasn’t willing to chat about Will and Mickie.
“That’s all I really know.”

He nodded. “The next place down the highway is impressive. Is that a bed and breakfast inn? Innkeepers know more local history than anyone else, I find.”

She snorted. “No, that’s the Ruizes’. They’re super-rich thanks to some fruit the dad invented.”

“A farming family?” Nat Wilke nodded as he sipped coffee. “The joy of tilling the soil and seeing it yield forth. Farming must be the happiest of all professions and farmers the happiest of all men.”

Gwyn looked at him with a “get real” expression.

“What? You disagree with me?” he asked, movie-star smile on his face. “I think the

evidence is there: a mansion on the edge of a sleepy town. Wouldn’t you call that lucky?” His face had this look, like hunger, almost, and I felt like I’d seen him before with that exact expression.

My invisible frame quivered.

“I think most farmers work pretty hard and don’t have a big house to show for it at the end of the day,” said Gwyn at last.

“Then
this
farmer is particularly fortunate.”

Gwyn shrugged. I could tell she was losing interest in this guy with his nosiness and his attitude. “I’ve got work to do,” she said, standing.

“I believe I saw a Ruiz grave. Cemeteries are as full of information as innkeepers.” He flipped through a small notepad. “Ah, here it is: Kathryn Ruiz. Just the one grave; would that be the same farming family?”

He’s digging for information
.

Gwyn nodded, slowly wiping down an already clean table.

“I revise what I said about the farmer’s luck,” he said. “It appears she died young?” He inflected his voice just enough to try to force a response from Gwyn.

“She was pretty young,” Gwyn agreed. “A drunk driver killed her and a little girl.”

“A mother and her daughter killed by a drunk driver; that is a tragedy.” He looked

appropriately sorrowful.

Gwyn’s eyes narrowed. She was deciding whether or not to correct his error. “I didn’t say it was her daughter. You’re not putting all this in your history-whatever, are you?”

His mouth pulled up into a smile on one side. The smile didn’t extend to his cold, blue eyes. “Only what’s relevant to the Sesquicentennial. But a healthy curiosity about the present often teases out truths from the past, I find.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go around town being all curious about the Ruizes. You’ll find most people in Las Abs are pretty protective of them,” said Gwyn.

“Of course,” said the man. “I was being insensitive. A professional hazard for a

historian, I’m afraid. Could I get the pie wrapped to go? I need to be in Oakhurst by 11:30.”

“I’ll get that boxed up right away,” she said, her voice all business-like.

The man strolled beside the bakery case. “And I’ll avoid asking questions about the unfortunate farmer, shall I?” He smiled his big Hollywood grin again.

Gwyn softened. “Yeah, well, small towns are . . . different. I lived in L.A. for seven years.”

“So,” said the man, leaning forward against the bakery case. I thought I saw a flash of something like eagerness in his expression. “Just between us, then, there was perhaps a child who lived? Someone to put some joy back into that poor farmer’s life?”

“Yeah, something like that.” She finished boxing the pie. “There’s a daughter.”

Nat took the pie from Gwyn, white teeth gleaming. “Thanks so much for your help.”

“Come see us again,” she replied.

What is it about you?
I racked my brain. He must look like someone famous. Gwyn or her mom would know who. I followed him outside: the viscous glass of the old door

embraced and released me.

Nat Wilke marched decisively down Main. Passing a trash can a block down from Las

ABC, he chucked the pie in the receptacle. Okay, this guy did
not
go into the café for snacks.

He wanted information.
Why?

Standing in the middle of Main Street, he waited for an oncoming car to pass. He threw a quick glance over his shoulder and I knew: I knew where I’d seen him.

He was the
flashlight
man.

I suppressed a mental shudder. Moments after I’d seen Mom and Maggie run down, I’d

thought I’d seen someone, a man, hovering over their bodies in the middle of the street. He was there and then gone, like when someone turns a flashlight on and off. I’d thought maybe he was an angel who had come for Mom and Maggie. Dressed all in white, he’d turned his face into the streetlight so that it seemed to glow before he disappeared.

But this was no angel; he was flesh and blood.

Who was he? I needed to know.

Syl and Dad would be gone another six hours easy. I made a decision. As Nat Wilke hit the key clicker to his sports car, I passed invisibly into the back seat.

He took the wrong turn as he left town, punching buttons on his cell phone. He wouldn’t make Oakhurst by 11:30 unless he turned around soon. I listened as he left a message in perfect French:
The daughter lived.

He’d been asking about
me.
And if I lived.

Nat took the straight stretch of road nearly forty miles above the speed limit, but he slowed for the first big curve as we headed towards Mariposa. A half-dozen neatly stacked books slid through me upon the back seat of the vehicle. I glanced down and realized these looked exactly like the volume Mickie had given me. Except that all of these had been marked with sticky-notes. Some had a rainbow of stickies, some only a few. I saw the name
Elisabeth
on a couple of the notes, spelled like my mom’s middle name, with an “s” instead of a “z.”

Another chill ran through me.

Who are you?
I thought, staring at the man driving.

We slowed through Bootjack. Nat Wilke had apparently lied about going to Oakhurst. He drove like he knew where he was headed, but not like someone who truly knew the roads.

He’d zoomed right through two speed-traps that locals slowed down for.

I began to calculate in my mind how far I could go with flashlight-man before I’d need to exit the vehicle and start back home. Of course, I’d just learned I could run faster than cars could lawfully drive through Las Abs. I figured that wherever we were at 3:30, I would leave him and retrace the journey back home.

We continued through Mariposa, and I started to think that coming with him had been a stupid idea. What did I think I would learn riding in a car with this stranger? He could be driving to San Francisco. Or Seattle. We passed a sign that said Merced was in forty-three miles.

“Ein halb Uhr,” he murmured.

German for “a half hour.” We were heading to Merced. Sure enough, Nat Wilke pulled

into the UC Merced campus, sleepy on a Sunday afternoon, and parked before an impressive building. I followed him, one last curious glance at the pile of black books.

The man card-swiped himself through several doors before stepping into an

administrative office, deserted for the weekend. He ran his fingers along a row of mailboxes and located the one he wanted. It read
Dr. Gottlieb
. Had he been lying about his name or was he stealing someone’s mail? The letters were addressed to
Dr. Helga Gottlieb.
He flipped through the stack, removing one and sliding his finger under the envelope flap.

“Scheisse!” He cursed his paper cut, speaking German again. He grabbed a handkerchief but evidently decided he needed something more permanent and opened several desk drawers muttering, “Band-Aids, Band-Aids.”

I looked at the scattered envelopes. Crossed out on one of them, I saw the following:
Herr Dr. Pfeffer.
The envelope had been redirected in big loopy handwriting to Dr. Gottlieb.

Dr. Pfeffer?
I wanted that letter.

Flashlight-man crossed to an adjoining room and rummaged for a first aid kit. Before I recognized what I was doing, I had rippled solid, grabbed the letter for Dr. Pfeffer, and walked with it out into the hallway. I had a vague idea of how to exit the building and hoped the doors wouldn’t lock me
inside.
I heard Nat re-entering the office. If he stepped out, he would see me. My heart began pounding crazy-fast, and I knew I couldn’t find the calm I needed to ripple at the moment. I turned a corner and then another, looking for a place to hide and chill. At the third corner, I hurtled into a pair of guys the size of linebackers.

“What are you doing in here?” asked the larger of the two. “Can I see some ID?”

I was dressed for running, so I had no ID on me. I decided to pretend I was a UCM

student. Fiddling with the letter in my hand, I spluttered out the first thing I could think of.

“I’m looking for Dr. Gottlieb’s office,” I said, glancing at the letter I held. “My, er, roommate got her mail by mistake. My roommate, Dee.” I felt sweat gathering under my arms.

“Let’s take her to Dr. Gottlieb.” The taller one grabbed my arm above the elbow.

“Er, that’s okay. You can give it to her.” I held up my hard-won letter, hand shaking.

The two men surrounded me, and the shorter one grabbed my other arm. “This is a

secured facility,” he said. “How ‘bout you explain to Dr. Gottlieb what you’re doing inside of it?”

The two men were security guards, not football players. The rings across their knuckles looked evil; how could I have mistaken them for athlete’s rings?

We entered a room filled with scientific instruments and computers. And a woman with white-blonde hair.

“Dr. Gottlieb?” The man beside me spoke respectfully.

She looked up from a computer screen, clearly annoyed at the disturbance.

“This student was wandering the halls. She got past three security checks and claims she’s here to see you.”

“Who are you?” Her voice came out whisper-soft.

“Er, I’m Dee Gottlieb’s roommate,” I said. I held out the letter. “She got this by mistake.

I think it’s yours. You have the same last name.”

Dr. Gottlieb took the letter but didn’t move her eyes from my face. “You don’t have a name of your own?”

The larger security guard squeezed hard on my arm. I winced.

“Who are you?” asked Dr. Gottlieb.

Her soft voice terrified me. Security-man gripped down again.

“Jane,” I choked out. “Smith. I’m Jane Smith.”

“Well,
Jane Smith
, how did you get into my lab?”

I lied wildly. “The doors weren’t locked.”

“Loosen her tongue, Ivanovich.” Dr. Gottlieb tilted her head towards the shorter guard.

The blow came as an utter shock. I collapsed onto the floor, one side of my face

exploding with pain. It felt like my jawbone had been smashed through the roof of my mouth.

I reached towards my face, my hand shaking so badly I missed and grabbed only air. A part of me expected the men and the woman standing over me to recoil in horror at this terrible accident. Like they couldn’t have meant it to happen.

I took a breath to rise, but the room spun crazily with me at its center. And somehow my mouth had filled with something salty, metallic. The liquid tickled against my windpipe, and I coughed, spraying red from my mouth.
Blood.
I had a numb spot inside my cheek which was regaining sensation; I must have bitten down hard. I spat and spat, trying to rid my mouth of the flavor.