The Panic Zone (23 page)

Santa Ana, California

A
stern-faced police officer stood before Emma's car and pointed at her then at the curb, commanding her to park.

What was going on?

Traffic clogged Third Street. Emma was still a block from Polly Larenski's duplex when she got out and started walking toward the emergency lights splashing red and blue on the neighborhood. Excited children on bicycles and worried adults hurrying behind them gathered at a cluster of police cars, fire trucks and news crews that ringed a spectacle down the street.

The smell of charred wood permeated the air.

Emma heard the roar of a pumper truck, the bursts of radio chatter. The pavement was wet from water leaking from the lines of fire hoses. As she got to the yellow plastic tape that cordoned the site, she stopped.

Polly's duplex had burned.

Firefighters hosed the ruins. Spears of scorched walls rose from smoldering heaps of rubble and ash. Emma's heart raced.

Where was Polly?

The boy beside her was sitting on his bicycle and talking to the boy standing next to him.

“I heard the fire guy say that a lady died.”

“Do you know who it was?” Emma's intensity startled the boys.

“I think it was the lady that lived there.”

Emma cast around the area and rushed toward a firefighter carrying a hose to a truck.

“Excuse me. This is my—my friend's house. I'm supposed to see her. Was anyone hurt?”

The firefighter's face was smudged with soot.

“There was a female fatality. Better talk to the captain. He's in his van over there.”

Emma spotted the fire van and hurried toward it, the ramifications of what happened enveloping her with each step. She felt something fracture, felt something break off and slip away.

She couldn't believe this was happening.

The captain's window was down. He sat behind the wheel reading from a clipboard, ending a conversation on his radio.

“That's right—get back to me. Ten-four.” He clicked his handheld microphone.

“Can you help me, please?” Emma said. “My friend lives here. We're supposed to meet today. What happened?”

“Your name?”

“Emma Lane.”

He glanced at his clipboard. “Well, Emma, unfortunately a fire started in the garage. We suspect the cause was faulty welding equipment belonging to a neighbor, a male resident working on his car.”

“Was someone hurt?”

“Yes, I'm sorry. One fatality, likely due to smoke inhalation, a female resident. Everyone else got out, both homes were destroyed. We estimate damage at—”

“Polly Larenski? Did she get out? I need to see her.”

The captain checked his clipboard, flipped a page, his chin tensed. Before he flipped it back, Emma glimpsed
Larenski
on his sheet.

“I can't confirm anything until next of kin are notified.”

“It
is
Polly! Oh, my God!”

The earth shifted under Emma; the world swirled around her.

“My baby's files are in there. My baby was saved from a fire!”

Concern registered on the captain's face.

“Your baby's in there?”

The captain seized his microphone, called for assistance then got out.

“Ma'am, are you aware of other people in the residence?”

“No, no! I've come here from Wyoming. My husband was killed. My baby was rescued from a fire. Polly knew! Are you sure she's dead?”

Incomprehension flooded the captain's eyes.

“Ma'am, you're losing me. Are you all right?”

“What am I going to do now? She knew about my baby, she knew everything!”

Emma covered her mouth with her hands and gazed at the remnants of Polly Larenski's home as a circle of faces emerged around her—firefighters, police officers and paramedics. An officer with the Santa Ana police touched her shoulder.

“Do you have any identification, ma'am?”

Emma fumbled in her bag. The officer studied her Wyoming driver's license. “Will you come this way, please? These folks just want to make sure you're okay.”

Emma sat in the back of an ambulance.

While paramedics observed her, she told the officer her story. He listened, then went to his patrol car beside the ambulance. The door was open. Emma saw him checking her name through the car's small dash-mounted computer and talking on his radio.

At one point she heard him say, “Not a relative, a bystander. Wyoming DL. Right. Seems disoriented, overcome. Then it goes to OCSD?”

Some fifteen minutes later, a black-and-white cruiser with a six-point gold star on the door arrived. The new of
ficer took Emma's license from the Santa Ana officer, then they both approached her.

“Emma, I'm Deputy Holbrooke with the Orange County Sheriff's Department,” the new officer said. “I'm going to take your information.”

Emma sat in the deputy's car. Again, she told her story while he entered information into his computer. Then he left the car to make a call on his cell phone, pacing near the trunk where she overheard him say, “Right, not ours. Thanks, Lou.”

In the time since she'd arrived at the fire, Emma had pinballed from the fire department to the Santa Ana Police Department to the Orange County Sheriff's Department, and through a maze of police bureaucracy until she landed in the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Now here she was in the office of the FBI's Santa Ana Resident Agency on the top floor of the bronze three-story building on Civic Center Drive. For nearly forty-five minutes, special agent Randy Sikes had listened to her. Occasionally, he'd excused himself to take a phone call on the status of an ongoing identity theft investigation.

Before Emma had arrived at Sikes's desk, he'd been briefed on the phone by the Santa Ana Police and Orange County.

Sikes was a quiet, cerebral agent in his mid-forties. He wore a suit with a white shirt, conservative tie, and his hair was combed neatly. He said little as Emma spoke, but from time to time he paused to study his computer monitor and the results of his query to the National Crime Information Center, the FBI's major database known as NCIC.

It contained records on a range of files submitted by every law enforcement agency across the country. NCIC contained records on subjects such as guns, fugitives, warrants, stolen vehicles, sex offenders, license plates, gangs, terrorist organizations and missing persons.

After Emma had left her home in Big Cloud, her wor
ried aunt and uncle went to the County Sheriff's Office to report her missing. The sheriff's office submitted a report to NCIC that contained all the background about the accident: Emma's reaction, her claims about the phone call. The Big Cloud County Sheriff's Office had characterized Emma as a traumatized, grief-stricken accident victim who'd refused to accept the deaths of her husband and son.

NCIC security forbade police from sharing the file with unauthorized people. Emma never saw it. After Sikes read it, he said, “You've been through a lot lately, haven't you, Emma?”

“Yes.”

“There are people in Big Cloud worried about you. Why don't you think about going home?”

“But what about everything I've told you about my baby? What about what I told you about Polly, that she said my baby was ‘chosen'? She said someone was planning some kind of action and they chose my baby! Please help me!”

“Yes, it's quite a story,” Sikes said. “And I understand you've been under tremendous stress lately. The tragedy of the house fire today must have subjected you to more anguish.”

“What about what I told you about Polly?”

“We'll follow that up with authorities here in California and Wyoming, but our first concern is your well-being and getting you home. It might be the best thing, don't you think?”

She stared at the wall.

“I could call someone for you, if you like,” Sikes said.

Emma shook her head.

He thinks I'm crazy. They all think I'm crazy.

Emma collected her things and left.

Santa Ana, California

A
smoky haze rose from the blackened remains of Polly Larenski's house.

Two men in blue coveralls, wearing gloves and surgical masks, used shovels and crowbars to probe the debris. Another man stepped carefully through the aftermath, accompanied by a German shepherd that sniffed the bits and pieces.

It was late afternoon and Emma watched from the yellow plastic tape protecting the site. Much of the commotion had subsided; nearly all of the fire, police and other emergency vehicles were gone. The street was still sealed. A funereal calm had descended upon the scene, scored by the crack-twist-tear of the investigators shifting and lifting pieces.

And there was the eager chink of the panting dog's collar.

Somewhere in that charred heap was the key to Emma's search for her baby and she prayed that somehow she'd find it. She noticed one of the men in blue coveralls walking to a van marked Arson Unit.

She followed him.

“Can you help me? Was this arson? I thought this was an accident.”

He shoved his mask down.

“Are you with the press?”

“My name is Emma Lane. My friend died in the fire.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he said. “It's no secret what we do. Whenever there's a fatality fire, Arson investigates. The dog is sniffing for accelerants.”

“Accelerants?”

“To tell us if someone used gas or anything to purposely start it.”

“Do you think it was an accident?”

He assessed her before giving her a guarded answer.

“We're not done.” He rummaged in his truck. “Do you have information about this fire?”

“No. It's just that Polly had papers she was going to give me today.”

“What kind of papers?”

“Personal records.”

He looked at her for a moment.

“Tell you what, why don't you show me some identification and I'll let you know if we find anything.”

Emma showed him her Wyoming driver's license and a card for her hotel. “Well, you've come a long way, haven't you?” he said as he jotted everything on the back of the card and slid it in his notebook. “Unfortunately, everything in that house is gone.” He dropped some tools into a bucket. “Now, if you'll excuse me.”

He ducked under the tape and returned to the scene, where his partner hefted a chunk of wall with a crackling twist that released a small flare.

The dog yelped.

The other investigator doused the fire with an extinguisher. Smoke rose over the site and a gust blew clouds toward Emma, burning her eyes, swirling over everything.

Ashes to ashes.

Death was winning.

Emma's only hope was gone. Tentacles of smoke pulled her back through the horror that had descended upon her.

Back to the crash, back to Joe and Tyler.

She could not succumb to her pain.

She had to keep moving.

* * *

Just over twenty minutes later and a few blocks away, Emma cupped her hands around a hot tea while sitting alone at the Burger King that was near Polly Larenski's house.

There was a pay phone out front. Emma had stopped to consider it on her way into the restaurant and jotted down the number. Now, she compared it to the one that had been used for the late-night call she'd received at home.

It was identical.

This was the phone Polly had used that night to tell her Tyler was still alive. Emma had come full circle.

Your son was chosen.

Polly Larenski's files were lost in the fire.

Emma had come so close to the truth. But now it was gone. Now she had nothing.

Don't give up,
she thought, as she got into her car.
Do something.

She concentrated.

There was one last thing she could try.

* * *

A horn honked behind her.

The blast yanked her from her brooding, reminding her that she was stopped in slow-moving traffic on the freeway, northbound from Santa Ana. If she could get downtown in time, she might have a shot, she thought. But traffic all around her was at a standstill.

She arrived at the Golden Dawn Fertility Corporation before closing and went to the reception desk. “Emma Lane,” she said. “I need to see Christine Eckhardt. Please, it's urgent.”

“I don't think she's available to see you.” The receptionist, appearing slightly flustered, ran a polished fingernail down an appointment sheet when Christine Eckhardt emerged with her briefcase on her way out.

“Emma?” Christine was surprised.

“We need to talk about Polly Larenski.”

“We just heard. It's terrible. One of the doctors saw it on KCAL and we got a call from police looking for family. They traced the parking sticker on Polly's car to us.”

“I need to talk to you about what she told me.”

Christine's face reddened. She started shaking her head and glanced at the receptionist.

“I really can't; I'm sorry. It's a terrible time for everyone. I'm so sorry but I just can't talk to you, Emma. I really have to go.”

Christine headed for the door, giving her a compassionate but awkward smile that vanished when Emma seized her arm.

“Emma!”

“I just came from the fire, and I need to talk to you, Chris. I am your client, remember?”

Christine stared at her for a tense moment, then nodded to the sofa in the waiting area, keeping things within view of the receptionist, who was braced to call security.

“I talked to Polly about my baby and she told me she sold private information from your files, our DNA—”

“Stop, Emma.”

“Why?”

Christine swallowed hard and dropped her voice.

“You've threatened to sue the company. I'm a partner and I was legally bound to report your threat to the board. I've been advised by our legal department not to talk to you as anything I say could potentially be used in your case against us.”

“No, Chris, you don't understand.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“I was upset then.”

Christine stood.

“You have to go, Emma. Go home, get some rest. Get some help.”

“No. I need
your
help. Please, I'm begging you.”

“It's all very, very tragic.”

“I'm begging you, please.”

“I can't talk to you, I'm so sorry.”

“No, please just listen to me!” Emma reached for Christine's wrist.

“Larissa, can you call Mac in security to help Emma to her car?”

Emma released Christine's wrist, her voice breaking when she said, “That won't be necessary.” She stood, touching her fingertips to the corners of her eyes. “You were an angel when Joe and I first came to you for help.”

“I'm so sorry, Emma.”

“Not sorry enough to help me.”

By the time Emma had returned to her hotel room she was numb.

Smelling the smoke on her clothes, seeing her disheveled reflection in the mirror, she realized she needed a shower.

As steam clouds rose around her, she sobbed in great heaving waves. Overwhelmed by anguish she slammed her back against the wall and slid down to the shower floor, letting the water rush over her as she hugged herself in vain.

She'd already come apart.

Emma was exhausted when she stepped from the shower. As she pulled on a robe, the phone in her room rang and she answered it.

“Emma?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, thank goodness, it's Aunt Marsha in Big Cloud.”

“Hi.”

“Emma, are you all right, dear?”

“I'm so tired.”

“We were so worried. You gave us a scare, leaving like you did. We didn't know where you were. A concerned FBI agent gave us your hotel number. Emma, you've been through too much. Please, come home.”

Emma didn't answer because she didn't know where home was anymore.

“Emma?”

She remained silent.

“Sweetheart, do you want us to fly there and get you?”

A long silence passed, Emma felt warm tears flow.

“No. I'll come back.”

The next morning, Emma's jet lifted off from LAX to Denver with a connection to Cheyenne. As she gazed down at the eternal urban sprawl she felt so small.

So lost.

And so alone.

She reached into her bag and touched Tyler's stuffed bear. As the plane climbed into the sky she was suddenly lying on the road again in Wyoming, reaching for her husband's hand.

I don't know if I can do this alone, Joe. Help me find him.