“No.”
Sticking her hands out for balance, she began walking toward the minimart, taking baby steps. I reached to support her elbow.
“Don’t touch me.”
She sounded as much frightened as angry. I opened the door and followed her back through the minimart to the women’s room. My little voices were still nagging at me, so I went in with her, closed the bathroom door, and put my back against it.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” I said. “But this is a serious situation.”
“I hate guns. The police have guns.” She pointed near the sink. “Put your purse down on the floor.”
“No. Listen to me. Coyote’s a chameleon. He changes his appearance to suit the situation. We have to be careful.”
“It might go off. I don’t want it around.” She peered at me, looking equally hurt and suspicious. “Maybe I don’t want you going to China Lake. I want to go there to be safe, not to have somebody following me around with a gun.”
I sighed. “Full disclosure. I don’t think China Lake’s any safer than Canoga Park or Santa Barbara. In fact, other people are getting out of there.”
That brought her up short. “You’re kidding. Who’s that scared?”
“Abbie, for one.”
“Are you saying I shouldn’t go?”
“I’m saying other people are leaving town.”
“How far out of town?”
“Real far.”
“Where?”
“Never mind. The point is—”
“Someplace else is safer? Should I meet my mom there?”
“Forget that. I’m just trying to make the situation clear to you.”
“If China Lake’s dangerous then how come you’re going?” she said.
Because I’m compos mentis, and healthy, and armed.
“You know a safer place? Abbie knows a safe place and told you?”
Calming a paranoid is like putting out a fire by throwing matches at it. Every remark merely provides more fuel for their fears. I was starting to think my Good Samaritan act had been a bad idea.
“Why are you guys trying to keep this from me?” she said.
Because not only had I promised Abbie, but I didn’t think Valerie could control her tongue. And she was lucid enough to know that. She looked offended.
Then she rolled her eyes. “I get it. You’d tell me, but then you’d have to kill me.”
I exhaled. Every time I thought she was going to skid over the edge, she managed to pull it back.
“Something like that,” I said.
“You won’t take the gun on the plane,” she said.
“No, Val. Of course not.”
She nodded and went into a stall. “Okay then.”
I didn’t tell her that I planned to stick close to Tommy. He would have a gun. Plenty of them.
Back in Santa Barbara I stopped by Jesse’s office to return the Glock. He met me in the parking lot, knowing better than to let a weapon cross the threshold at the law firm. Sanchez Marks was jokingly called the Militant Wing because of his boss’s political leanings, but in fact she was solidly antigun. Jesse was glad to see me, and concerned.
“You look kind of ragged,” he said.
I accompanied him to the truck, glancing over my shoulder to make sure that Valerie was out of earshot back in the Mustang. She was staring at the mountains. She hadn’t spoken to me since Ventura.
“No good deed goes unpunished. Richard Nixon was less paranoid than she is,” I said.
“Get her on a plane as soon as possible.”
“About that. I’m going to China Lake too.”
I told him why. He took it in, grim but understanding. “I’ll drive up tonight.”
“Great.”
I ran my index finger over his new blue tie. It matched the button-down shirt he’d bought.
He nodded. “Yeah. Tragic clothing I can handle, but contempt of court gets expensive.”
I drove home to pack some extra clothes for the trip to China Lake. Mr. Martinez was in the bathroom grouting the new floor tile. In the afternoon light the house glowed red with roses. Valerie lay down on the sofa in the living room and I turned on the television and gave her the remote.
“Thanks.”
That was the first word she’d spoken to me in an hour. I went outside, sat at the table in the dappled shade under the oaks, and phoned Tommy.
He sounded brisk. “Your article, it’s good stuff. You really know how to hit the emotional angle hard. I think we can go with this and get some mileage out of it.”
“I need to know something. Was Kelly Colfax pregnant?”
The stark silence at the other end provided the answer.
“That’s in the autopsy report but hasn’t been released to the public. How did you know?” he said.
“Playing the odds.” Woman’s intuition. Terror.
I told him about Dana West and Sharlayne Jackson, and about Valerie: They apparently had a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, and I suspected the others had it too.
“Holy shit,” he said.
There was another long pause. “Tommy?”
“I’m just digesting all this.” His voice picked up steam. “How would Coyote know about people from our class who are sick?”
“My mother told me something. After the explosion, parents were asked to sign waivers allowing the Office of Advanced Research to access our medical records.”
“You think they’re using that? That Coyote has access to our records? Today?”
“I think he has a source. Somebody’s feeding him information.”
“Targeting information.”
“Tommy, I don’t think this is a coverup. I think it’s a cleansing operation.”
“So he’s wiping us out ’cause, what—we’re the dirt they left behind?” He was wound up now. “Do you think that’s why he killed Ryan O’Keefe?”
“I do. I’m really afraid Coyote’s killing women who are having kids.”
“Shit.”
“I need to talk to Dr. Cantwell,” I said. “He would have been involved with the medical waivers. And he kept tabs on half the families in town.”
“You think he’s the source?”
“Stranger things have happened. And I’ve called his office six times but haven’t heard back. I think he’s avoiding me.”
“This isn’t the kind of thing you should discuss on the phone.”
“Damn straight. I want to go with you to talk to him.”
He almost said something, but just let the air hang. I held back the reason I wanted to see Dr. Cantwell. My own doctor couldn’t tell me if my baby was in danger. Maybe Cantwell could.
“Good. That’s just what I was going to suggest, because the
China Lake News
is going to run your piece today. I want you to add one item before you submit it. Kelly’s funeral is tomorrow morning. Holy Cross, ten a.m. You should come. There’ll be photographers and news crews. If we’re going to draw Coyote out, we want to pull out the stops.”
I was in my bedroom zipping my suitcase when I heard someone knock and open the front door.
“Kit?”
I hauled my suitcase off the bed and out to the living room. Dad was standing by the door,
Abraham Lincoln
cap in hand, his white hair bristling in the sun. I hugged him and pulled him toward the couch.
“I’ve been trying to get you. I’m going to China Lake,” I said.
We approached the sofa. Carefully, Valerie sat up.
“Dad, do you remember Val Skinner?”
She was shrunken inside her black sweatshirt. “Mr. Delaney, it’s been a long time.”
“It certainly has.”
He held out his hand but she merely crossed her arms. His posture was slide-rule straight, his mouth tense. He looked disconcerted. He looked, in fact, horrified at the sight of her.
I returned to my suitcase, fighting to close the zipper. “We’re on the three-thirty flight. Want to come?”
He didn’t answer. He was watching me, his expression disconsolate.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
Valerie stood up. “I’m going to go sit outside in the shade. Let me know when you’re ready to go.”
When the door closed behind her, he said, “My Lord. She looks like one of those little dried-apple dolls.”
“She has it.”
“God almighty.” He kneaded his hat in his hands. “It’s like Dana West.”
“I know.” I tugged at the zipper of the suitcase. “I took the video and Dana’s MRI to my doctor. She agrees; it’s what they call a TSE. Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.”
“Your doctor?” he said.
I straightened. “Is this what’s got you so worried?”
Unexpectedly he swooped me into his arms and hugged me tight. “How am I going to keep you safe?”
A bright silver fear ran across me. My father might occasionally admit to worry, in a cool and distant way, but he never showed dread like this. I held on to him.
“Dad, I’m going to be secure. Tommy’s picking me up in China Lake and I’ll have police protection the entire time. And Jesse’s driving up tonight.” I rested my face against his chest, smelling Old Spice, the scent I associated with him from earliest memory. “Please don’t make me more scared than I already am. I have to do this. If there’s any way I can help bring this to an end, I have to do it.”
“It’s more than that. This is something I never thought I’d have to face, and now . . .”
I looked up, and felt myself wilting. He was gazing at me in a way I hadn’t seen in forever. As if he saw me eight years old in a white dress and veil, processing to the altar to receive my First Holy Communion.
Inside, my joy and gratitude and fear for the baby turned momentarily to shame. My throat tightened. He might, eventually, think my pregnancy a blessing. But he would never think it had come about the right way. I couldn’t imagine telling him, not without begging his forgiveness and understanding.
Easing out of his embrace, I turned to the suitcase and wrestled with the zipper.
“Let me,” he said.
He reached for the zipper and his gaze froze. He was looking at the ring.
“Evan, is that what I think it is?”
Shoot.
He lifted my hand. “Jesse gave this to you?”
My face felt tight. I knew my cheeks were candy-apple red. “Yesterday, after we got back from Los Angeles.”
“That helps explain the truck full of roses.” He held on to my hand. “Have you told your mom?”
“Not yet. Jesse and I wanted to tell you together.”
He looked worn and worried. My stomach was aching.
“Dad, I’m happy.”
“You don’t look happy.”
“Because I didn’t want you to find out this way.”
And because he looked miserable.
Jesse and I had gotten halfway to the altar once, before seeing that we weren’t ready for it. When we called off the wedding it took me a week to tell my father, because I knew what I would hear in his voice, no matter how sympathetic he tried to sound: relief.
The heat in my face leached down my cheeks. I pulled away from him.
“I love him like nobody’s business. That’s what counts.”
“Evan, please don’t.”
Turning to the desk, I slammed my computer shut. “Don’t what? Don’t say I love the man I’m going to marry? Why don’t you say what’s really on your mind?”
“You’re jumping to conclusions here. I just . . . you took me by surprise just now, that’s all.”
“Let’s figure this out. What’s got your goat? Jesse’s honest and brave and trustworthy and . . . he’s kind to children and small animals.” I jammed my computer into its case. “And he loves me. None of that’s the problem. So what is?”
“Stop.”
My face was hot and my heart was thumping. This couldn’t be good for me, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
“Stop what? Talking about the real issue?” I said.
In the bathroom, Mr. Martinez turned up his mariachi station. Dad lowered his voice.
“Fathers find talking about their daughters’ love lives painful.” He wrung his hat in his hands. “Excruciating, truth be told.”
“Say it, Dad. Why don’t you want me to marry him?”
God in heaven, sometimes I am the most moronic woman on the face of the planet. As a lawyer, I know never to ask a hostile witness the “why” question. No way, baby. It’s cross-ex hell, the opening of Pandora’s box.
He stilled. “Because I don’t think you’ve thought through what your life will be like.”
“I’ve been living this life day in and day out. You’re the one who doesn’t know what it’s like.”
“Marriage is a far different endeavor from dating, Evan.”
“What a shock.”
“Today everything seems exciting, the right decision, even if it’s impulsive. You’re thirty-three, it’s a stressful time, and he’s here for you. I’m talking about what happens ten or twenty years from now.”
I felt sick, not physically but spiritually. “No. Oh, God. You think I’m settling.”
His dark eyes pinned me. I knew I was right.
On the television, the caption
Reunion Killer
appeared behind the news anchor. I grabbed the remote and turned up the volume, tearing away from Dad’s gaze.
“. . . authorities are seeking to question a former soldier attached to the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake. Described as white, of slight build, and approximately forty years old, he may be going by the name Kai Torrance. Anybody with information about this person is asked to contact the LAPD or FBI,” the anchor said. “The security guard attacked at a Westwood office building remains in guarded condition this afternoon at UCLA Medical Center.”
I watched the TV to avoid looking at Dad. “Let’s hope this leads somewhere.”
“Indeed.”
Heart still drumming, I gathered my things. Dad put on his hat.
“I’ll give you a lift to the airport,” he said.
The ride was tense, spattered with superficial chitchat. When we pulled up to the curb, he helped Valerie and me get our things out and wheeled her small suitcase inside to the check-in counter.
“Sure you won’t go with us?” I said.
“I have some things I need to take care of here.”