Wounded Earth (2 page)

“It's usually safest to give people what they want,” Norma said, handing her a sheaf of pink message slips.

“It's good for business,” Larabeth said, “but it does get old.” She rifled through the pink slips and sighed.

The afternoon was half-gone when Larabeth reached the last message. She'd averted a half-dozen crises and initiated yet another round of telephone tag with the other callers. She patted herself on the back. It could have been worse.

As she read the final slip, her self-congratulatory mood faded. Norma, ordinarily so cautious with her message-taking, had neither taken down the name of the caller nor recorded his number. The message said:

Enjoyed your speech, Doc. It was informative, even if you did water down your topic for the comfort of the masses. By the way, you look great in orange. Stay close to the phone.

Norma had added a note saying:

(Larabeth—This man insisted that I take his message verbatim. He wouldn't leave his name, but he said he was a friend of yours. I thought he might be J.D. Hatten, since we're still waiting for his return call.)

Larabeth read the note again.
Enjoyed your speech, Doc.
The crank caller had called her "Doc". An air conditioner breeze blew cold on her cheek. After a moment, the slip of paper fell from her fingers. She checked her fingernails with the practiced eye of a former medic and found the blue tinge of mild shock. She closed her eyes. It was important to think rationally.

How could he know what color she was wearing? For that matter, how could he know that her message had been "watered down"? Her speech wouldn't be broadcast for hours. He could only know these things if he'd been there. She willed herself not to tremble. So what if someone drove out to Audubon Park and took his place under an oak tree? So what if that someone stood there and listened to her admittedly insipid speech? Hundreds of others had done the same thing.

This was different. Larabeth's hand began trembling again. She couldn't stop her hand from shaking, but she could still use it to take action. She activated the intercom.

“Norma, have we heard from J.D.?”

“Not unless he was the one who left that weird message.”

“No. In fact, he'll want to ask you about that. I'm certain it was the same nut. I refuse to panic for no reason, but I'll feel better when I get J.D.'s opinion. Would you hold my calls for the afternoon?”

“You bet.”

Larabeth switched off the intercom and sat quietly for a moment. She didn't know what to do and it was an odd feeling. She always knew what to do. If she were ever forced to describe herself in a single word, “competent” would be the word. If she were allowed a few more words for self-description, “businesslike”, “practical”, and “diligent” would come immediately to mind.

She couldn't remember having time to waste. Not when there was a business to be built and nurtured. And not, before that, when there were classes to take, and research to do, and a doctorate to pursue. And certainly, before that, there had been no time to waste in Vietnam, when men might die for want of the medications in her hands.

This feeling came upon her rarely, this paralyzed confusion. It struck her once a year, maybe twice, and she just sat at her desk and looked at her telephone, her computer, her to-do list. She was utterly incapable of deciding which task was the most urgent, so she swept her desk clean and did what she always did when life blindsided her one time too many.

She took a sheet of personal stationery and began—actually, began again—a letter she had spent most of her life trying to write.

More than twenty-five years had passed since she began framing the words in her mind. Larabeth was at ease speaking on television, to political figures, to the rich, to the influential. She had written dozens of articles for academic and popular presses. But she was left inarticulate by the thought of introducing herself to the daughter she had never seen.

* * *

Four sheets of stationery lay crumpled in Larabeth's wastebasket. There was still no graceful way to say
, You don't know me, but I'm your mother
. She had thought it would be easier, that someday she would have the maturity and perspective to finally introduce herself to the girl. No, she corrected herself, to introduce herself to Cynthia. She had a name, even if it wasn't the one Larabeth would have chosen for her.

She put her pen away and retrieved a pair of jeans from her desk drawer. There was no more sure cure for a hard day than a long drive in a classic Mustang with the top down.

She slung her jacket over one shoulder and bolted for the elevator, closing her mind to the piles of work on her desk. Norma was gone for the day and the hall was empty except for a slight, fiftyish maintenance man limping behind a garbage bin. Larabeth, well-bred Southerner that she was, smiled and nodded as she passed him. He acknowledged her smile without quite catching her eye and continued his deliberate progress down the hall.

* * *

The man paused as Larabeth disappeared behind the elevator doors. He reached into his bin and gently drew out a length of discarded strapping tape. It wasn't a showy weapon but, wrapped properly and quickly around a neck, it would suffice. He had made do with less.

Killing Larabeth on the spot would have been pleasurable, and it would have been easy. But it wasn't part of the plan, at least not now. Babykiller had patience and he had brains, and those two things alone had been enough to earn him a fortune and to keep him alive. He let the tape drop into the bin.

He reached in his pocket and withdrew a pair of sheer rubber gloves and a key. He let himself into the door stenciled with the words: BioHeal—Fifteen Years of Service to Industry, Government, and the Earth. It had been a long time since he did his own legwork but, for Larabeth—well, nothing was too good for Larabeth.

He perused the documents on Norma's desk, then moved into Larabeth's office. He ignored her computer. There was nothing there he couldn't access from the comfort of his own home. No, he was checking for hard-copy information, and Larabeth's wastebasket held the jackpot. He skimmed four crumpled pieces of stationery as he dumped the remaining trash into his bin.

A daughter. Not only did he know Larabeth had a daughter, now he had her name and address. He threw the letters into his rolling bin and began rifling through Larabeth's files. As soon as he got to his car, he would call Gerald and have him tail the daughter, peer into her shadowy closets, chase her into a trap she couldn't even see. Then he would see whether Larabeth was made of sand or stone.

This was too easy, but that would change. Larabeth was too smart to leave herself open to his feeblest tricks. She would learn, but not soon enough. He would win.

The
Mississippi River crawled beneath Larabeth's baby-girl pink '67 Mustang convertible. Downtown New Orleans was behind her, out of sight and out of mind, as long as she ignored the image of the Superdome in her rear-view mirror.

It was a relief to cross the river. The daily act of putting a broad, deep, muddy force of nature between herself and the corporate world felt good. Descending from the great span and passing the toll booths, she made an executive decision to skip the gym, for once. A swift drive through the rural area around Belle Chasse would do far more to calm her nerves.

As she pulled into her garage, she found that the Mustang cure had worked again. Maintenance costs on two forty-year-old cars could be steep, but they were surely cheaper than a therapist, and far less nosy. Summer in New Orleans was an interminable curse, but at least she could put the top down and drive away her troubles most of the year, as long as she stayed alert for the other curse of the subtropics, afternoon thundershowers.

There would be just time for supper before she caught herself on the evening news. She hoped her orange suit photographed well and that the cameras didn't reveal any lipstick on her teeth.

She kicked her shoes off in the laundry room and rummaged in the dryer for a clean tee-shirt. Going straight to the kitchen and piling ham on a slice of whole wheat, she threw caution to the wind and laid the mayonnaise on thick. Thinking that a bowl of soup would taste good with the cold sandwich, she listened to the familiar pop-whir of the electric can-opener, dumped the tomato soup in a pot, then held the can under the faucet without looking.

The water spurted out with a strange gurgle. Not another plumbing problem, Larabeth prayed. She glanced at the sink, then looked again. Her water was green. Not pale green and not the natural green of a swimming pool gone bad. It was the sick green Hollywood uses in its fake toxic waste.

The unnatural fluid overtopped the soup can and flowed onto her hand. She let the can clatter into the sink, jerking her hand away and shutting the faucet off.

The fluid didn't burn her hand, at least not yet. There was no smell and no sticky or slimy feel to it. Nevertheless, Larabeth wanted her hand clean. Immediately.

She wiped it on a paper towel, picked up a bar of soap, then reflexively turned on the faucet and stuck her hands under the flow. It was still green.

“You idiot,” she muttered as she jerked them away and reached for more paper towels. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. When the nuclear holocaust comes, you'll be the last woman on earth to stop reaching for a light switch at sundown.”

Larabeth tossed the paper towels in the garbage. She was an environmental scientist. While her specialty was soil bioremediation, she could hold her own when it came to drinking water treatment. She could think of no plausible way for the local treatment plant to create water in that shade of green, but she guessed stranger things were possible. She could also think of no plausible explanation for her kitchen sink to go haywire unless water in the other areas of her house was also affected.

She was, however, scientist enough to check her other sinks. Maybe the water ran a different color in each bathroom. Maybe she was in Oz and her kitchen was the Emerald City. Maybe the water in the master bath was blue and Glenda the Good Witch was waiting there with a kiss and a pair of silver slippers. Maybe her water was like the tonic in Mary Poppins's carpetbag, turning whatever color or flavor you chose—although she frankly would never have chosen slime green. Or maybe she just needed to get a grip.

She left her kitchen sink to its steady green drip-drip and checked all three bathroom sinks. She checked the showers and tubs, even the whirlpool tub in the master bath. She flushed the toilets, ran water into the washing machine, checked the dishwasher and the icemaker. Nothing. Everything ran fresh and clear but the kitchen sink.

She studied the offending faucet for a while. Drip. Still green. Drip. Still green. It hadn't been dripping that morning. She had repaired many a leaky faucet in her day. She didn't see how a worn-out washer could cause this problem, but scientists did like to take things apart and see how they worked.

She reached into the drawer where she kept her household tools. It occurred to her that when she got the faucet dismantled, her hands would be covered with the green water. She didn't have any kitchen gloves, so she slipped a couple of large plastic bags over her hands and went to work.

Turning the shutoff valve under the sink and taking a wrench to the faucet, she lifted the stem assembly out and turned it over. The screw holding in the washer slipped out in her hands and the washer, covered in green goo, fell into the sink. There was a wet plop, but no metal-on-porcelain clink.

Larabeth picked up the semi-solid mass of green, cradling it in her palm. It had been a temporary washer, crafted out of a powdered dye and designed to dissolve slowly into running water. If she had allowed the water to run much longer, it would have dissolved away completely, leaving her with a sink dribbling clear water.

The solution to the green-water mystery was so interesting, it took Larabeth a full minute to realize the implications. Someone had tampered with her drinking water. She was more violated by the thought than she would have expected.

She looked around the kitchen to see if anything else was askew and she saw it—a tampering so subtle only the person who last used the kitchen would recognize it.

She had left the kitchen clean. She always left the kitchen clean. There had been nothing in the sink. She knew the counters had been bare, because she had wiped every surface clean. Yet now there was a cleaver in the sink, a butcher knife beside the cooktop, and a paring knife posed casually on the chopping board as if expecting the chef to return at any time.

She checked her knife block. It was empty. Every sharp implement she owned had been painstakingly arrayed around her kitchen. A glint on the windowsill caught her eye. She moved closer and found the kitchen scissors amongst her herb garden, as if poised to clip a few sprigs of chives.

This was bizarre. She would need to call the police. They would want to investigate the breaking-and-entering, and they would need to analyze the dye residue. She wasn't sure what they would think about the knives. Maybe they could get some fingerprints. Or maybe they'd just think she was a sloppy housekeeper with a bad memory. Nevertheless, the police must be called.

Larabeth was not one to turn over her well-being to anyone, no matter how professional or well-intentioned. She got a small plastic bag and, with a clean spoon, carefully raked into it a gob of green goo from the dye tablet she had removed from her faucet. Now she could hand the police an essentially intact piece of evidence while retaining a sample to analyze at BioHeal's in-house lab. There was no sense in risking a faulty analysis or a lost sample. Her chemists were accurate and reliable, and they would do the work in a fraction of the time.