Bloodstream (42 page)

He saw the ax, embedded in a chair, almost cleaving it in two. He saw the shattered mirror, the ripped dresses, the closet door hanging askew on a broken hinge. Then he stared at the girl’s bed.

It was empty.

Mitchell Groome was behind the wheel of Claire Elliot’s Subaru as he drove slowly down Beech Hill. He had waited until midnight, an hour when no witnesses would be awake, but unfortunately the sky was clear, and the light of the full moon reflected with alarming brilliance off the snow. It made him feel exposed and vulnerable. Full moon or not, he had to finish this tonight. Too much had already gone wrong, and he had been forced to take far more drastic measures than he’d planned.

His job had started off as a simple assignment, to keep an eye on Dr. Tutwiler’s work, and, posing as a journalist asking questions, to quietly and discreetly assess the natural course of parasitic infection in the youth of Tranquility. His job had suddenly become complicated by Claire Elliot, whose suspicions had veered dangerously close to the truth. Then Doreen Kelly had added an even worse complication.

He would definitely have some explaining to do when he returned to Boston.

He felt certain he could come up with a reasonable explanation for Max Tutwiler’s disappearance. He could hardly tell his superiors at Anson Biologicals what had actually happened: that Max had wanted to quit after he’d learned how Doreen Kelly really died.
I was hired to find the worms for you,
Max had protested
Anson told me this was nothing more than a biological treasure hunt. No one said anything about murder and for what? To keep this species a corporate secret?

What Max refused to understand was that the development of a new drug was like prospecting for gold. Secrecy was paramount. You cannot not let the competition know you are closing in on a fresh vein of treasure.

The treasure, in this case, was a hormone produced by a unique invertebrate, a hormone whose defining effect was the enhancement of aggression. A minute dose was all it took to hone the fighting edge of a soldier in battle. It was a killing potion with obvious military applications.

Only two months ago, Anson Biologicals and its parent company, Sloan-Routhier Pharmaceuticals, had learned of the worms’ existence when the teenage sons of a Virginia couple were admitted to the psychiatric wing of a military hospital. One of the boys had expelled a worm—a bioluminescent species that none of the military pathologists could identify

The family had spent the month of July in a lakeside cottage in Maine.

Groome turned onto Toddy Point Road. In the seat beside him, Claire groaned and moved her head. He hoped, for her sake, that she didn’t fully regain consciousness, because the end that awaited her was not a merciful one. It was another unpleasant necessity. The death of a woman as pitiful as Doreen Kelly had raised few eyebrows in town. But a local doctor couldn’t simply vanish without questions being asked. It was important for the authorities to find her body, and to conclude her death was accidental.

The road was only gentle rises and dips now, a lonely drive at this hour of night. Groome’s headlights skimmed across deserted blacktop crusted with ice and road sand, the beams illuminating an arc just wide enough to see the trees pressing in on both sides. A black tunnel, the only opening a swath of stars overhead.

He approached another curve, where the blacktop veered sharply left, and braked to a stop at the top of the boat ramp.

Claire groaned again as he dragged her from the passenger seat and positioned her behind the steering wheel. He buckled her seat belt. Then, with the engine still running, he put the car in gear, released the hand brake, and let the door swing shut.

The car began to roll forward, down the gentle grade of the boat ramp.

Groome stood on the roadside, watching as the car reached the lake and continued rolling. There was snow on the ice, and the tires slowly churned through
it,
the headlights jittery on the barren expanse. Ten yards. Twenty How far before it reached thin ice? It was only the first week of December; the lake would not yet be frozen thick enough to support the weight of a car.

Thirty
yards. That’s when Groome heard the
crack,
sharp as gunfire. The front of the car dipped down, its headlights suddenly swallowed up by snow and fracturing ice. Another
crack,
and the car tilted crazily forward, the red glow of its taillights pointing toward the sky. Now the ice beneath the rear wheels snapped, disintegrated, and the car splashed through. The headlights died, the circuits shorted out.

The end was played out in the glow of moonlight, in a landscape silvered by the luminous whiteness of snow, the car bobbing for a moment, engine flooding, the water dragging it down, claiming it as its own. Now the sound of splashing, the liquid turmoil as the car slipped deeper and began to turn over, rotated by the buoyancy of the tires. It sank upside down, its roof settling into the mud, and he imagined the swirl of dark sediment, blacking out the watery moonlight filtering from above.

Tomorrow, thought Groome, someone will spot the break in the ice and will put two and two together. Poor tired Dr. Effiot, driving home in the dark, missed the curve in the road and veered onto the boat ramp instead. A tragedy.

He heard the distant wail of a police siren and he turned, his pulse suddenly racing. Only when the siren passed and then faded did he allow himself to breathe easier. The police had been called elsewhere; no one had witnessed his crime.

He turned and began to walk at a brisk pace up the road, toward the blackness of Beech Hill. It was a three-mile hike back to the cave, and he still had work to do.

25

She felt the darkness lurch around her, felt the shocking embrace of icy water as it engulfed her body, and she jolted awake into a reality far more horrifying than any nightmare could be.

She was trapped in blackness, in a coffinlike space, and was so disoriented she had no sense of up or down. All she knew was that water was creeping up around her in a numbing flood, lapping at her waist, now her chest. She flailed out in panic, instinctively craning her neck to keep her head above it, but found her body was strapped in. She tore at the restraints but could not free herself. The water was licking at her neck, now. Her breathing turned to frantic gasps and half-sobs of panic.

Then it all turned upside down.

She had time for one deep breath before she felt herself rolling sideways, before the water rushed over her head, flooding into her nostrils.

The darkness that swallowed her was total, a world of liquid blackness. She thrashed, trapped head-down underwater. Her lungs ached, straining to hold on to that final breath.

Again she clawed at the strap across her chest, but it would not loosen, would not release her.
Air. I need air!
Her pulse roared in her ears and streaks of light exploded in her brain, the warning flashes of oxygen depletion. Already she was losing strength in her limbs, her efforts reduced to tugging uselessly at the restraint. Through thickening layers of confusion, she realized she was grasping something hard in her hand, something she recognized by its contours. A seat belt buckle. She was in her car. Strapped in her car.

Thousands of times before she had unbuckled that belt and now her fingers automatically found the release button. The strap fell away from her chest.

She kicked, limbs thrashing, battering against the inside of the car. Blinded by water, disoriented in the darkness, she could not even tell which way was up. Her frantically clawing fingers brushed against the steering wheel, the dashboard.

I need AIR!

She felt her lungs rebel and begin to draw in a fatal breath of water when she suddenly twisted around, and her face popped through the surface, into an air pocket. She gasped in a breath, then another, and another. There were only a few inches of air, and even that was rapidly filling with water. A few more gasps, and there would be nothing left to breathe.

With the fresh inrush of oxygen, her brain was functioning again. She forced back the panic, forced herself to think. The car was upside down. She had to find the latch—had to get the door open.

She held her breath and plunged into the water. Quickly she located the door release and gave it a tug. She felt the latch pop free, but the door wouldn’t swing open. The roof of the vehicle was sunk too deeply in mud, miring the door shut.

Out of breath!

She surfaced back in the air pocket and found it reduced to a bare six inches. As she gasped in the last of the oxygen, she desperately tried to reorient herself to an upside-clown world.
The window. Roll open the window.

Last breath, last chance.

She sank back underwater, feeling frantically for the window crank. By now her fingers were so deadened from the cold, she could barely feel the handle, even when she finally managed to grasp it. Each revolution seemed to take an eternity but she could feel the glass slide open, the gap widen. By the time she had cranked it all the way open, her hunger for air was growing desperate. She wriggled her head and shoulders through the opening, and suddenly could go no farther.

Her jacket! It was snagged!

She thrashed, trying to squeeze all the way through, but her body was trapped, half in, half out of the car. She reached for the zipper, loosened the jacket.

All at once she slithered free, and suddenly she was shooting toward the surface, toward the faint glow of light far above.

She burst through into the air, water splashing like a million diamonds in the moonlight, and grasped the nearest broken edge of ice. There she clung for a moment, shaking and wheezing in the frigid night. Already she’d lost feeling in her legs, and her hands were so numb she could barely grasp the ice.

She tried to pull herself out, managed to lift her shoulders a few inches, but immediately fell back into the water. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to pull against, only slick ice covered with powdery snow. Scrabbling uselessly at the ice, she found no purchase.

Again she tried to lift herself out; again she slid back with a splash, sinking in over her head. She resurfaced, sputtering, coughing, her legs almost paralyzed.

She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t pull herself out.

Half a dozen times more she struggled to climb out, but her clothes were soaked, dragging her down, and she was shaking so hard she could not even hold on to the ice. A profound lethargy was taking hold of her limbs, turning them wooden. Dead. She felt herself go under again, the blackness sucking her down, welcoming her into a cold sleep. All her energy was spent. Nothing was left.

She sank, drifting deeper, exhaustion claiming her body. Looking up, she saw with strange detachment the shimmer of moonlight above, and felt the darkness pull her down into its embrace. She no longer felt the cold; she felt only a weary sense of inevitability

Noah.

In the shimmering circle of light above, she imagined she saw his face, as he was when he was a child. Calling to her, reaching for her with needy arms. The circle of light seemed to fracture into fragments of silver.

Noah. Think of Noah.

Though she had no strength left, she reached up toward that phantom hand. It dissolved like liquid in her grasp.
You are too far away. I can’t reach you.

She felt herself sliding downward again, dragged into the murk. Noah’s arms receded, but his voice continued to call to her. She reached up to him again, and saw the circle of light grow brighter, a halo of silver just within reach. If I can touch it, she thought, I will reach heaven. I will reach my baby.

She struggled toward it, limbs thrashing against the pull of darkness, every muscle straining toward the light.

Her arm broke through the surface, shattering it to ripples, her head bursting through for one gasp of air. She caught a glimpse of the moon, so beautiful and brilliant it hurt her eyes, and she felt herself sink for the last time, her arm still outstretched toward heaven.

A hand grasped hers. A real hand, its grip solid around her wrist.
Noah,
she thought.
I’ve found my son.

Now the hand dragged her upward, out of the murk. She stared in wonder as the light blossomed brighter, and then her head surfaced and she saw the face staring down at her. Not Noah’s face, but a girl’s. A girl with long hair, bright as silver in the moonlight.

Mitchell Groome poured half a can of gasoline over Max Tutwiler’s body. Not that destroying the corpse really mattered. This cave had lain untouched all these millennia; Max’s remains would not be found anytime soon. Still, as long as he was destroying the worm colony, he might as well dispose of a dead body as well.

Wearing a mask against the fumes and a headlamp to light the dim cave, he took his time emptying the contents of the three gasoline cans. He had no reason to rush; the doctor’s submerged vehicle would not be found until daylight, and even if it was found before then, no

one would link Groome to her death. If anyone were to draw suspicion, it would be Max, whose sudden disappearance would only solidify those suspicions. Groome didn’t like being forced to improvise; he had not planned this move, had not planned to kill anyone. But then, he hadn’t counted on Doreen Kelly stealing his car, either.

One murder sometimes necessitates another.

He finished splashing the walls and tossed the last empty container into the shallow pool of gasoline at the center of the cavern. It was right beneath the thickest colony of worms. Already they seemed to sense impending disaster, for they were wriggling frantically in the rising fumes. The bats had long since fled, abandoning their invertebrate companions to the flames. Groome took one last look around the cavern, assuring himself he’d forgotten no detail. The last box of specimens, as well as Max’s scientific log books, were in the trunk of his car, parked at the trailhead. With the strike of a match, everything in this cave would go up in flames.