Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (28 page)

G
et the gear yet?
comprised the note that Becca passed to Jenn during Western Civ class the next day. Jenn made a face that indicated she still hadn’t done so, and Becca figured the mysterious girl at Possession Point might be why. So her next note to Jenn was
What’s with this Cilla chick? I saw it in the paper
, to which Jenn mouthed
Tell you later.

Later
happened after school, since immediately at the end of Western Civ, Jenn got accosted by Squat Cooper who wanted to know “Look, d’you want my help or not ’cause if you do, you got to do your part,” to which Jenn said, “Hey. Chill, dude. It’s not like I’m not trying.” And
later
only happened at all because Becca followed Jenn onto the school bus.

She plopped down on the seat next to Jenn and said, “Well?”

Jenn said, “Geez, you’re the persistent one, aren’t you?” But then she told the story of the girl she’d found hiding beneath Annie’s trailer: how they’d taken her to the clinic, how they’d tried to get her inside the McDaniels house, how she’d acted like someone being dragged to the guillotine and only settled down when they deposited her in Annie’s trailer. She’d been really sick and she’d stayed really sick and the only good thing about the entire enterprise of having her on the property was that Annie hadn’t been able to get away long enough to try to trap Nera.

Bet ol’ Chad is hurting for her what a joke
came with this story, and along with the tale of Annie being trapped on the property, Becca figured out that the longing looks Chad had been casting on Annie Taylor’s body had led to something. But before she could ask Jenn about this,
antibiotics should have helped
slipped out among the whispers, and Becca wasn’t surprised when Jenn went on to say that the antibiotics given to the girl didn’t seem to be making a dent in her illness.

“She had this old roller suitcase with her,” Jenn said, “and it looked like it had been dragged from Canada, I swear. There were clothes inside and a bunch of old rotting fruit and some Clif bars and a note. That’s how we knew she could hear but not talk. All she does is make noises.”

“What kind?”

“Like . . . I dunno, Becca. You have to see for yourself. If she’s awake. She might not be ’cause, like I say, she’s sick.”

Noises, Becca thought. She frowned and wondered and looked out the window as the farmland on either side of the road they were on morphed to deep forest where shadows lay thickly on the ground. Not being able to talk didn’t equate to not being able to think, Becca figured. Chances were good that the girl would have whispers.

• • •

THE AFTERNOON WAS
gray upon gray. The sky and the water were the color of stainless steel, with a cloud cover high above that spoke of rain and choppy waves below that slapped against the piles of driftwood on the shore.

Annie opened the trailer door at Jenn’s knock. She said, “Thank
God
. I’ve been in jail all day. I need a freaking break. Your mom’s been gone for hours with the taxi, and your dad’s . . . I have no idea what happened to him. Testing beer probably. Under the table. Passed out. Whatever.”

“Hey,” Jenn said sharply.

“Sorry,” Annie said. “Like I said, I need a break. You good to stay?” She said hi to Becca and ushered them inside. She said, “She’s not any better and I keep telling your mom she needs to go to the hospital. I told your dad, too. But nothing’s happened.”
Chad could but . . . not enough time and I need to
made a background to this.

The trailer, Becca saw, was cluttered with Annie’s belongings, and it looked as if she’d been trying to work. There were documents on the table, filing folders on the floor, her laptop was running, and papers with diagrams and scribbles on them were scattered on the banquette.

Jenn looked around and said to Annie, “So, where is she? I thought she was sleeping on the couch.”

“In the bedroom. Since she wasn’t getting better, I thought if I put her in the bedroom . . . It’s warmer there, and when she’s out here, she just stares. It’s unnerving. I’ve called Rhonda Mathieson and she’s been here twice but all she says is, ‘These things take time.’ Like I’ve
got
time to waste?”

She strode to the couch and picked up her jacket, which lay upon it. “So you’re on duty now. I’m out of here for a while,” she told Jenn. “Nice to see you, Becca,” she added.

Becca nodded and offered a wry smile. But the smile was more to cover her astonishment at what she saw. The limp curtains hanging over the window above the couch were the curtains she had seen in her vision. So was the couch. So was the route along which the toddler had walked.

• • •

BECCA THOUGHT THAT
Jenn would lead the way to the girl Cilla once Annie left them alone in the trailer. But instead she made a dive for the marine biologist’s laptop. She said, “Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah,” and she began typing frantically on its keyboard.
Transmitter picture and those numbers
explained what she was doing, but Becca asked her all the same.

“Squat says that the transmitter on Nera’ll have numbers on it and if we c’n get them, we c’n find out more about her. Like maybe where she’s from and why she never shed it or something.”

Becca wasn’t sure how this got them anywhere—like close to Eddie Beddoe’s boat—so she went in the direction of the bedroom, where she could see the form of someone lying beneath the covers, her face toward the wall. Becca murmured, “Hey. Hi. You awake, Cilla?” and the figure turned. She fixed great dark eyes on Becca’s face. She gave a start of fear. Becca said, “S’okay. I’m a friend of Jenn’s,” which didn’t seem to reassure the girl, so she added, “She lives in the big gray house? Her family’s helping take care of you?”

The girl whined, a long low sound akin to a dog waiting to be fed. She scrabbled her fingers on the pillowcase beneath her head. She showed her teeth briefly. She backed away.

Becca listened hard. In the otherwise silent room, she heard the sound of Jenn’s typing on the laptop’s keyboard and she heard Cilla’s breathing, which was strained and uneven. But that was all. Not a single whisper was coming from the girl. She was wide awake, but there was nothing recognizable escaping from her head.

She should have been dead for this to be the case, Becca thought. Everyone on the planet had whispers. Unless . . . There was one person on Whidbey Island who had absolute control over her own whispers.

They needed Diana Kinsale to look at Cilla. If anyone could read her, it would be Diana.

J
enn didn’t get why Becca wanted Diana Kinsale to visit Cilla. But on the other hand, she didn’t much care about it. She’d gotten what she needed from the pictures stored on Annie’s laptop, and once she had them she was willing to agree to just about anything so that she could get back across the property to her own house where there was a phone. She had to call Squat with the information. She’d found a perfect shot of the transmitter and she’d scored the numbers on it. But she’d also found among the papers scattered on the banquette notes in Annie’s writing telling her that the marine biologist was one step ahead of them. The transmitter’s numbers were there. So was a phone number. So was
Monterey Bay
with two exclamation points. Obviously, they had to find out what it all meant.

So when Becca mentioned Diana Kinsale and could they come back so Diana could try to talk to Cilla, Jenn said, “Whatever. S’okay with me. We finished here or what?” and she tried not to shove Becca out of the trailer ahead of her. She did point out that Becca was one hell of a long way from town and how did she intend to get home now that she’d come all the distance to Possession Point. Becca’s answer was, “C’n I use your phone?” which was fine by Jenn, since that got them out of the trailer and one step closer to where she herself wanted to be. She would have vastly preferred Becca never to see the inside of her house, but she didn’t see any option but to allow her the use of their phone.

Becca used it to call Seth Darrow. She explained where she was. She struck a deal. If she started walking, would he be willing . . . ? Thanks, Seth. I owe you. He said something. Becca laughed.

Jenn felt a little stab at all this. Jealousy? she asked herself. Of
what
? No way.

Becca was heading out to start hiking up Possession Point Road when Jenn’s dad tromped up onto the porch. His “Hey, hey, hey,” at the sight of Becca told Jenn he was tipsy from home brew testing. But he wasn’t actually drunk, and what Jenn thought was maybe he’d be tagged by Becca as just the oddball friendly type. He sure as hell looked the part. His hair was Ben Franklin to the max today, and for some reason he’d decided on running shorts for his garb. His legs stuck out like a rooster’s from them, his feet and legs encased in sandals and striped knee socks.

She introduced them. Before she paused to consider what it meant, she said, “This is my friend Becca King. From school and from diving,” and then she felt flustered that she’d used the word
friend
without even thinking.

Becca shot her a smile. For his part, Bruce was thoroughly delighted. Jenn could see this one all over his face. Had her mom been home, her parents probably would have built an altar and sacrificed something in thanksgiving. Up to this point, her friends had been boys, her acquaintances had been her fellow soccer players, and that was it. That she would actually
have
a girlfriend, that she would—as far as her dad knew—bring this friend home from school to hang out, that this could possibly mean their kid was somewhat of a normal teenager after all . . . It was major hallelujah time, Jenn thought with resignation.

Bruce said expansively, “Welcome, welcome, wel
come
. Be it ever so humble—and it sure as heck is, eh?—you’re welcome to our palatial abode. What brings you here?” And to Jenn, “I hope you’ve offered worthy refreshments.”

Jenn didn’t say that they had worthy refreshments exactly like they had gold bars under the house. Becca hurriedly said, “Oh, I was just leaving. I just came over to . . .” and she looked at Jenn.

“She wanted to see Cilla,” Jenn said.

“There was a story in the paper,” Becca explained.

Bruce looked from Becca to Jenn to Becca again. He seemed thoroughly unconvinced by this tale. “Bit of a curiosity, eh?”

“When the paper said she could hear but she couldn’t talk,” Becca offered.

“Thought you might be able to I.D. her?”

“You never know,” Becca agreed.

And then as far as Jenn was concerned, Becca asked the strangest question of her dad. She said, “Did a little kid ever live over there, Mr. McDaniels?”

“Over where?”

“Inside that trailer.”

“Not hardly,” Bruce said. He shot Jenn a look and then went back to Becca. “Why d’you ask?”

Becca said, “Just wondering, is all. I guess I thought maybe Cilla showed up ’cause she used to have a friend here or something.”

“That wouldn’t be the case,” Bruce said. “No how and no way.” And to Jenn, “Did your mom leave a note about starting dinner?”

Jenn could tell her dad was very deliberately dismissing the subject and she could see from Becca’s expression that she was thinking the very same thing. But Becca said nothing else except, “I better get going,” and left Jenn alone with her father.

Bruce didn’t waste time after Becca left. He said to Jenn, “Should I or should I not be thinking something’s going on?”

“Going on where?” Jenn asked him innocently.

“I b’lieve you know what I’m talking about.”

Jenn went to the kitchen to inspect the dinner possibilities. There were two lone pork chops in the refrigerator. Five potatoes, a bunch of limp carrots, and four onions sat on the counter. A pork stew? she thought. Light on the pork and extremely heavy on the stew? Looked like it to her. She got out a pot.

“Jenn,” her dad said, “you want to answer me?”

“You know what I know,” she told him.

He said, “Don’t be smart.”

“I’m not being smart. All’s I know is she wanted to see Cilla so she came with me on the bus. Annie took off and left us with her and we stayed for a while and now she’s asleep and that’s all there is to know. Becca works afternoons sometimes for Ivar Thorndyke, though. An’ he lives with Sharla and Sharla lived in the trailer and maybe Sharla said something about a kid who used to live there before her or maybe a kid who used to live in Possession Shores and maybe . . . I dunno.”

She rustled around for the potato peeler. She found the vegetable brush in a drawer. She went for peeling the potatoes first. She waited for her dad to depart.

He didn’t. He said, “No one lived there before Eddie and Sharla, okay? And that place did a job on them. Ended up with Eddie thinking he was a charter fisherman and Sharla wandering the beach, crooning to a stuffed seal, saying it was her baby, and getting herself put away in the loony bin.
That’s
what that trailer does to people when they spend too much time in it. Annie Taylor’d be wise to get herself away.”

“A
trailer
doesn’t make people crazy,” Jenn scoffed. “Like . . . what’s it supposed to do? Pollute someone’s brain? This isn’t a Stephen King novel, Dad.”

“Stephen King, Stephen Schming, I do not care. All’s I know is Eddie Beddoe didn’t wear a hazmat suit when they were cleaning the beach from that oil spill all those years back, and he carried that oil right inside that trailer, and he and Sharla were cooped up with it, and from that moment on, neither one ’f them was the same person they’d been. Come to think, you’re spending way too much time over there. Let’s call a halt to that.”

“Come on. That trailer’s not hurting me.”

“No? When’d you last attend to your soccer, Jenn? You want to tell me that?”

“I been practicing.”

“Like hell you have. Your mind’s taken up with other things and that’s what happens. You start thinking wrong. It happened to Eddie, it happened to Sharla, and I will not have it happening to you.”

Jenn rolled her eyes. “As if,” she said.

“You prove to me otherwise, or you stay away,” he warned her.

• • •

WHEN JENN HANDED
over to Squat the information on the transmitter that she’d scored from Annie’s laptop along with the phone number and the location Monterey Bay, he told her that there was one hell of a
very
serious aquarium in Monterey Bay and a serious aquarium meant serious scientists associated with it, which may or may not mean serious information available on seriously different seals.
Scientists
and
seals
triggered thoughts of Annie being ahead of them in her quest for information about Nera. It also equated to Annie being way ahead of them when it came to plans.

They went to Squat’s house. They used Squat’s laptop and the phone. Their first hope was that the phone number Jenn had found was associated with the aquarium, but that wasn’t the case. It took a while for them to follow the leads and work out who had received Annie Taylor’s call. For when they called the number, they ended up with the school of life sciences at California State University. That CSU was in a place called Fort Ord wasn’t particularly helpful. That Fort Ord turned out to be up the road from the town of Monterey and practically sitting on Monterey Bay . . . That was something else altogether.

Jenn watched and listened as Squat navigated his way through various phone calls to various people. Depending on the person he was talking to, he morphed himself from a graduate student to a police official to a research assistant to a volunteer for a wild life rescue operation. She marveled at his ability to converse amicably with all these telephonic strangers.

He finally narrowed things down. She’d watched over his shoulder as he’d written
evolutionary, ecological, micro, human,
and then
marine!
on a notepad. Finally, he actually found the person Annie Taylor had called. He didn’t mention her name, but he didn’t have to. All he referred to was Whidbey Island and he’d used the terms “old transmitter on a seal up here,” and then he was listening and giving Jenn a thumb’s-up and taking notes as fast as he could.

She threw her arm around his shoulder and planted a kiss on his cheek and then stuck her tongue in his free ear. He waved her off, held up a finger to say “wait a second,” and ended the call with a formal, “That’s going to be helpful to our efforts up here, Dr. Parker . . . Yes, that’s right.
F-e-r-g-u-s
. Fergus Cooper . . . In the acknowledgments? Absolutely . . . No question about it. You’ve been really helpful.”

And then it was over and Jenn was saying, “What, what,
what?
”

Squat said, “I got to say it. Sometimes I amaze myself.”

“
Tell
me.”

“You putting out if I do?”

She punched his arm.

“Ow! Okay, okay. I got the goods. Annie Taylor got there first, by the way. Once I said Whidbey Island—”

“Yeah, I figured that.”

“—the guy, Dr. Michael Parker’s his name, gave me the story.
And
he said he’d already told it to Annie. Anyway, first of all, that transmitter’s way old. Over twenty years, and this guy Parker said he was surprised Nera’s still got it on.”

“It’s older than the oil spill, then,” Jenn pointed out. “Which says Nera’s not some mutant who was
born
a mutant because of the spill.”

“Yeah. She got it put on as part of a study in Monterey Bay and here’s what’s cool. As soon as I said coal black seal, this dude Parker knew exactly who I meant. Or what I meant, since I guess Nera’s a what and not a who, huh? Anyway, Parker says they were tagging all the seals and sea lions from a whole section of the coastline in California. Part of a study of feeding patterns and breeding problems and stuff like that. It was for the EPA and they were doing a study that went from Cambria to Santa Cruz . . . something like two hundred fifty or three hundred miles. But the black seal? She moved out of range within a week, he says.”

Jenn frowned. Squat was acting like someone who expected fireworks to go off at the conclusion of his story. She said, “So?”

“So that’s not how seals behave, this guy Parker said. He was totally amazed that she was up here at all, he said. And he was totally flipped out when Annie told him that she showed up around Langley every year, practically on the exact same date. And he said that when she was down there and they tagged her with the transmitter, it was like she knew they wanted to study her down there ’cause she totally disappeared. I mean, she moved out of range. And when Annie told him Nera still had the transmitter on, he said ‘That’s one hell of an interesting seal,’
and
he said Annie’s gonna make her name in marine science if she can identify Nera, especially if it turns out she’s some new species or something like that. See, he said that everyone down there thought she just had that skin thing . . . What’s it called? Opposite of being albino?”

“Melanism,” Jenn told him. “That’s what Annie called it.”

“Yeah. That was it. He said Annie said she doesn’t think it’s melanism at all because Nera doesn’t look like any kind of seal that belongs around here anyway. So
if
she’s never shed that transmitter and if she doesn’t have melanism but is coal black because of the
kind
of seal she is,
that
means she’s some sort of new seal that no one in marine science knows about.”

“Except Annie Taylor,” Jenn noted grimly. “And she’s going to want to identify her, huh?”

“She’s going to want to figure out what she is, that’s for sure. I mean, what kind of marine biologist wouldn’t? You ask me, this guy Parker is probably buying a plane ticket right now so he can beat Annie Taylor to it.”