China Lake (30 page)

But I wondered if the Remnant could be stocking its weapons cache with arms stolen from China Lake. They thought the base was the Super Death Weapons Emporium—they’d probably love to get some of its hardware for themselves. I kept the thought to myself, not wanting Luke to hear it. I said, ‘‘What’s your lawyer doing?’’

‘‘He’s planning strategies. I told him the only strategy that counts is to catch the fu— catch whoever did it.’’

‘‘I’m working on it,’’ I said. ‘‘Does the name Mildred Hopp Antley ring a bell with you? She owns the Remnant’s retreat, and we went to high school with—’’

‘‘Casey Hopp.’’ He started. ‘‘Christ.’’

‘‘You know this person?’’

‘‘She was a hard case, a loser with a big red L on her forehead. She had a thing for me. Don’t you remember?’’

‘‘I didn’t even know that Casey was female.’’

‘‘She and this gang of girls used to park up the street from our house, hoping for me to come out. Next morning we’d find beer cans and cigarette butts piled along the curb.’’

The vaguest recollection stirred in me. ‘‘That was Casey?’’

‘‘Oh, yeah. Is she involved with the Remnant?’’

‘‘I don’t know.’’

He was sitting up taller. ‘‘You’ll find out, right?’’

‘‘That’s my plan.’’

The door behind him opened. A guard stepped in and said visiting hours were over. Brian didn’t even turn around. ‘‘Fine.’’

I told him good-bye and stood to go, but Luke didn’t move.

He said, ‘‘When are you coming home?’’

Brian looked at me. I felt like barfing, wanted to shrivel up and die.

He said, ‘‘I don’t know, bud. Soon, I hope.’’

For a six-year-old, hearing that from his father was like tumbling beyond the rim of the solar system into a vast empty nighttime where not even the sun could reach him. The silence stretched.

Brian said, ‘‘You be good for your aunt Evan.’’

Luke’s shoulders rose and fell. I thought he was going to start bawling. But instead he anchored himself, found his own gravity. He stood on the chair, pressed his hands to the Plexiglas, and planted a kiss there for Brian.

‘‘I love you, Daddy.’’

‘‘I love you too.’’

I thought Brian couldn’t say any more, and I took Luke’s hand to go. But near the door my brother called to me. His eyes were narrow, fighting tears. I asked Luke to wait there, and walked back to the barrier.

Brian said, ‘‘Don’t bring him back here.’’ Then he turned and walked away.

Casey Hopp. The name couldn’t be coincidence. This town was too small, this nightmare too heated, too tightly coiled around my family. Where was Casey Hopp today?
Who
was Casey Hopp today?

I headed for Abbie Hankins’s house. Her toddler, Hayley, was riding a trike on the driveway, blond hair haloing around her head in the breeze. Abbie pushed open the screen door, giving a big wave, saying, ‘‘Hey, woman.’’

I said, ‘‘Remember the yearbook photo of Casey Hopp? Can I see it again?’’

She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘‘I’ve got something better.’’

She had found a yearbook from the subsequent school year. ‘‘Senior portrait of Miss Hopp,’’ she said. ‘‘And guess what? Casey wasn’t her real name. It was a nickname for her initials, K.C."

I leaned over her shoulder, examining it.

Hopp was named Kristal, and in the photo she looked incensed, perhaps because the photographer had posed her wearing a fake fur stole that was a million miles from her Detention Club clothes. She had prominent cheekbones, long straight hair, deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows. Something seemed familiar about her, perhaps the way she held herself, the way the loathing poured off the page. I felt suspicion trickling through my mind.

‘‘I’d like to take this to the police,’’ I said. ‘‘Maybe they have an artist who can do an age progression.’’

‘‘A police artist? In China Lake?’’

Right. Probably the only person around who could draw an age progression was Tabitha. What I needed was the computer-imaging program from Neil Jorgensen’s medical practice. I mentioned this to Abbie and she said, ‘‘Stop. Miss Thing, you are in luck. Wally uses that program to show parents how their kids will look after orthodontia.’’

Wally’s office was in a strip mall near the center of town. We walked into that dreadful dentist’s-office Muzak-and-crepe-sole hush, hearing the squeal of a drill in the back. A hygienist stood near the front desk with a green surgical mask hanging around her neck. ‘‘Emergency,’’ Abbie said, coming through, ‘‘need to use the computer.’’ The hygienist didn’t blink at seeing her, me, Luke, and the three Hankins kids, and I wondered how often she rolled in here like this.

Abbie set Hayley on the counter and started scanning the yearbook photo into the computer. Over her shoulder she said, ‘‘By the way, our canine friend who tried to make a meal out of me?’’ She raised her arm, showing how well the bite was healing. ‘‘It wasn’t a coyote.’’

‘‘Say again?’’

‘‘It was a coydog. A coyote-mastiff cross. Some wild boy got in with Fifi and bred a litter of hybrids.’’ She stared at the computer screen. ‘‘And’’—she typed— ‘‘Animal Control says it was domesticated. Its last meal was Pedigree Chum. Somebody owned that thing, and they’re going to be in a world of trouble if Animal Control finds out who. And I can’t wait.’’

Wally finished his drilling and joined us, his huggybear face unnaturally serious. When Abbie brought the photo up on-screen, he said, ‘‘Let me.’’

A man who spent his days staring at people’s mouths, he was adept at visualizing the changes that time causes in a face. He drew down the mouth, added the start of jowls, thinned the eyebrows, lengthened the nose. ‘‘It’s not conjecture,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s based on the subject’s underlying anatomy—bone structure, muscle attachments—and on what we know about the aging process.’’ The image changed, and a hot prickle began inching up my spine.

I said, ‘‘Give her a rough life and some weight.’’

He added puffiness around the eyes. Sun damage. Alcohol damage. Widened the neck to accommodate rolls of flesh. Finally he said, ‘‘This?’’

The simulacrum had an artificial quality, but was recognizable.

I said, ‘‘It’s Chenille Wyoming.’’

Chenille knew Brian. She had known him for almost twenty years. She’d had a thing for him. I drove toward the police station, puzzling over it. The meaning of it eluded me. Kristal C. Hopp, K.C., Casey, had progressed beyond the Detention Club into drug abuse and sexual licentiousness. She had landed in Santa Barbara, ever-popular destination for high school grads bailing out of China Lake, such as I. Along the line she had become Chenille Krystall. I remembered the showy name from her wedding announcement. Finally she had emerged as Chenille Wyoming, insurgent wannabe with designs to become history’s most famous reformed whore. She planned to outdo Mary Magdalene in the biblical byline—to be known not as disciple, but dominatrix.

I stared at the road. Waves of heat hovered above the asphalt.

Chenille Wyoming, would-be whip cracker of kingdom come, had once loitered up the street from my house, smoking and drinking and watching for Brian. All for nothing; all for his silent rejection. And then, this year, he had crept back into her life when Tabitha joined the Remnant. Tabitha, Brian’s chosen and Pastor Pete’s new darling, with her pure drawings and clean hand. How many flavors of envy could we cook up here?

As I’d told Jesse, I believed that the Remnant had deliberately incited Tabitha to ruck up my life, Luke’s life, and Brian’s life. Could a decrepit high school jealousy lie behind it? If so, Brian had not given Chenille reason to relent. When he had seen her, he hadn’t even recognized her. He had treated her as
nothing
.

Now she believed that he had killed her husband, and she wanted retribution. She wanted it against the whole world. My palms felt sweaty on the steering wheel.

Detective McCracken, however, had a different reaction. Holding the age-progression picture in his cigar-stub fingers, with his breath whistling through his nose, he thought about it and said, ‘‘A high school crush. So what?’’

‘‘So . . .’’
What?
‘‘At the very least, it shows that she withheld information from you. That she knew Brian.’’

‘‘You’ve forgotten what it’s like in a town this size. Everybody knows everybody. I don’t expect them to tell me about each romance they had back in high school.’’

‘‘It wasn’t a romance,’’ I said.

"Oh, an
unrequited
crush. An even stronger connection."

I sagged. All I could think was to change the subject. ‘‘Have you found the murder weapon yet?’’

He said, ‘‘Do I work for you?’’

Driving back into Santa Barbara the next day, Luke and I heard the radio news report that a car had crashed into the HoneyBaked Ham store on State Street, apparently after running down a stray cat. ‘‘Let us remind you,’’ the reporter said, ‘‘that a Previa mini-van is not the appropriate tool for dealing with loose animals. If you suspect an animal is rabid, phone Animal Control.’’

Back at Jesse’s I checked for phone messages, but had none. I tried again to reach Dr. Jorgensen’s inventory nurse, but got no answer. My intuition was poking me like a sharp fingernail, telling me that the stolen drugs had something to do with the Remnant and with Jorgensen’s death, so I called Kevin Eichner. I got him on his cell phone at a construction site, and told him my suspicions.

His voice was quiet. ‘‘She couldn’t get me to steal for her, so she put the thumbscrews to Glory. Man, Glory’s gift of submission really did come in handy.’’

I asked if Chenille had been specific about the drugs she wanted him to obtain.

‘‘Morphine—she said we’d need to lay in a supply for treating casualties during the Tribulation. And any therapeutic drugs the neurologist had, in case we had to counteract nerve gas or chemical attack. I’m telling you, she’s a few beers shy of a six-pack.’’

A short while later I drove to the doctor’s office for my second vaccination. Dr. Abbott had ordered a supply of the vaccine. As she swabbed my arm I said, ‘‘What kinds of drugs would a neurologist keep in stock? Someone who treats cerebral palsy patients?’’

She had been expecting a question about rabies. ‘‘Why do you ask?’’

‘‘It’s for a case I’m working on.’’

‘‘Well, antiseizure and anticonvulsant medications, mostly. Dilantin, Tegretol . . . as well as migraine meds, and drugs for Parkinson’s.’’

‘‘And how about a plastic surgeon?’’

‘‘Anesthetics, sedatives—Lidocaine, Vicodin . . .’’

‘‘Any that would overlap with therapeutic drugs used by a neurologist?’’

Her forehead crenellated. ‘‘Maybe Botox.’’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘‘It’s not just a beauty treatment? ’’

‘‘You know how Botox works, don’t you?’’

I knew. ‘‘It paralyzes muscles so a person can’t frown. That smoothes the skin, giving a younger appearance.’’

Voluntary paralysis for the sake of vanity: It was death-mask chic.

‘‘Neurologists sometimes use Botox to treat CP,’’ she said. ‘‘It can control severe spasticity when other drugs fail.’’

I thought about it. ‘‘This is the poison that causes botulism?’’

‘‘Botulinum toxin, yes. It’s an extraordinarily lethal substance. That’s why only physicians should administer it. Neurologists inject it in minute doses, intramuscularly. ’’

I drove back to Jesse’s, distracted. I knew what he thought of the concept that paralysis perfected the body—that you had to be brain-dead to believe it.

He phoned shortly afterward, and we talked about meeting when he finished work. I told him about the Botox. Then, starting to feel that I was closing in on something, I once again phoned the nurse from Neil Jorgensen’s office who handled the drug inventory. This time I got her.

‘‘The robbery?’’ she said. ‘‘They mostly took pain medications.’’

‘‘What about Botox?’’

‘‘Huh.’’ She paused. ‘‘Funny you should ask.’’

‘‘Why?’’

‘‘Because we expected to read about dead addicts the next week. Anybody who injected that stuff would have turned up stone-cold within a few days. And you know what? It would have been poetic justice. But it never happened, so maybe the robbers actually read the label on the vial.’’

Or maybe, I thought, they were saving it for another purpose.

Disquieted, I turned to my usual angst supplier, the Internet. A search for Botox found hundreds of Web sites, 90 percent belonging to plastic surgeons and bearing good tidings of great joy. ‘‘Dramatic results! Just one injection can immobilize muscles for up to six months!’’ But farther down my list of search results, the tidings darkened.

This wasn’t Doctor Rex’s Beauty Page; it was the Department of Defense, and I didn’t have to read very far before my mouth went dry. The site couldn’t have been clearer: Next to anthrax, Botox tops every bioterrorist’s Christmas list. It’s not just a party favor for trophy wives. It’s so deadly that inhaling mere nanograms will kill the subjects who receive it. For
subjects
read airline passengers, the UN General Assembly, and your grandmother.

Still staring at my computer screen, I phoned a weapons expert I knew, a graduate of the Naval War College: my father. He was just waking up at his Singapore hotel.

‘‘Biological terrorism? The poor man’s nuclear bomb,’’ he said, ‘‘and I don’t like hearing questions about this from my daughter. What’s going on?’’

I gave him a thumbnail sketch of what I’d just learned.

‘‘Biological warfare agents are a weapon of mass destruction that can be gotten on the cheap,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t need isotope separation plants, nuclear physicists, or even plain old gunpowder and cannons. Pathogens occur in nature, or you can mail-order them from pharmaceutical houses. You get a terrorist with a high school chemistry set and some stick-to-itiveness, he could brew enough germs to kill tens of thousands of people. Or,’’ he said, ‘‘a perpetrator could take the easy route and steal the prepared toxin.’’