Crosscut (14 page)

“Sorry, I know it’s an imposition.” Coyote gave Becky a look of angst and expectation. “But I have to pick up Madison from her playdate in ten minutes.”

Becky eyed the photo of the child on Soccer Mom’s T-SHIRT. Coyote smiled anxiously and glanced at her watch.

Becky came over to the van. “What do the glasses look like?”

“Turquoise frames. They may have fallen down in the crack between the seats.”

Becky leaned into the van and peered around, running her hands along the edges of the folded seats.

“Unless they went in here,” Coyote said.

She pulled items from the gym bag. A sports bottle, a box of matches, a gym towel.

Becky looked over. “Any luck?”

Her gaze caught on the neck of Soccer Mom’s shirt. The ragged tracks of the scar were visible. Coyote pulled the neck up, but Becky was drawing back. In the Volvo, the child fussed. Becky turned toward him.

Coyote put a smile in her voice. “Hey, what do you know? Here they are.”

Becky looked. Coyote raised the sports bottle and squeezed, spraying Becky in the face.

Becky blinked and spit. Coyote shot out an arm and punched her in the chest. Becky fell gasping against the back of the van.

Clutching her chest, she staggered to right herself. “What are you—”

Coyote pressed the Taser to Becky’s thigh and hit the switch.

She bundled Becky into the back of the van. Becky was twitching and drooling, attempting to spit and blink away the liquid Coyote had sprayed on her face. It would be chill. It should sting. Ingested, it would render her blind. But the Taser strike had disrupted Becky’s nervous system, and she was helpless. Her feet stuck out of the van like hooves. Coyote shoved them in.

She had to decide. Prudence said to shut the tailgate and drive the mare to an isolated spot. People were milling inside the lobby of the community center. But the mare’s young was in the car seat in the Volvo wagon, kicking its legs. Soon it would cry. Transferring the child from the Volvo to the van would be risky. Time. It was all about time.

The she-horse stopped twitching as the Taser shock diminished, and began to moan. Coyote took a match from the box. They were windproof, waterproof matches, and they burned hot. She struck it against the box and held it up. Horsey looked at the flame. Its white glow reflected in her eyes.

Coyote flicked the match at Becky’s face.

It landed on her cheek. The methanol from the spray bottle ignited.

Becky jerked. She shut her eyes and shook her head. Coyote grabbed her legs and pinned them. Becky flailed her hands, trying to raise them to her face, but her coordination remained disorganized. Coyote watched.

Methanol burns with a flame that’s nearly colorless. Only the merest hint of blue rose from Becky’s writhing skin, as if she were fighting a ghost. Though the alcohol fire was charring her at 3,450 degrees Fahrenheit, it seemed that a tiny aurora borealis had awakened, exquisite, inside the van.

Becky screamed.

Coyote snapped out of the reverie. If the mare inhaled flame and burned her airway, it would confuse the data for the experiment. She grabbed a real sports bottle, unscrewed the top, and threw water on Becky’s face. The fire died.

Becky twisted in the back of the van, her hands hovering above her face. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were burned away, her hair singed. Her eyes were swelling shut. Her skin was red and already blistered. Good. She tried to scream again but her mouth was burned, her lips slick and cherry red. The smell was intense.

Coyote pressed the Taser to her thigh. “Hold still or you’ll get another jolt. And then you’ll never get out of here. Do you want to get out?”

Wheezing, Becky stilled.

Her face was mostly red, not black. The burn had gone to the correct depth, down into the dermis, down to the hair follicles, blood vessels, and nerve endings. Second-degree. Much longer and the flame would have charred too deep, destroying the nerves in her face, preventing her from sensing pain. Second-degree burns were always painful. Horrifyingly so.

At least, they should be.

Coyote watched. Becky’s face was degenerating. A few patches of skin were white, almost transparent, and she could see coagulated blood vessels beneath the surface. There was charring on her nose. Give her a few days more to live, and the nose would have to be cut away. She flailed, little sounds coming from her throat.

“Hold still,” Coyote said.

Becky seemed to be trying to look out the window at her car. Was she actually thinking of her offspring?

“Stay still for five seconds. That’s all this will take.”

Coyote reached out with an index finger. The glove was going to blunt the sensation Becky experienced. A fingernail would have been better, but time was short. She poked at Becky’s cheek, pushing her finger into a blister. Becky shrank back.

Coyote lowered her voice to the baritone register.
“Hold still, horse
.
”

Becky had shriveled back against the side of the van. She could retreat no further. Coyote shoved the tip of her finger into the blister. It popped. Clearish liquid ran down Becky’s cheek. Coyote pushed harder and scraped her finger down Becky’s face. Becky wheezed like a dumb frightened mare but didn’t move.

Coyote’s lips drew back. She reached out with both hands, clawed her fingers into Becky’s face, and scored downward from her cheekbones to her jaw. Blisters ripped open and wept. Becky held absolutely still.

It didn’t hurt.

Coyote pulled back. She wiped her fingers on the mare’s beige stretch pants.

“Get out of the van,” she said. “Go.”

Whimpering, Becky fumbled to the edge of the tailgate and staggered out. Horses, stupid animals. Doing what they were told. Coyote grabbed her by the hair. The other hand swept out with the KA-BAR knife and slashed it across Becky’s throat.

Arterial spray gushed across the parking lot. Becky’s body dropped to the ground. Coyote tossed the knife away. Cheap knife, USMC spec, easily replaced.

She grabbed the gym bag. Gritting her teeth against the screaming of the kid, she walked to Becky’s Volvo station wagon.

“Ev. Honey.” Mom’s hand was gentle on my shoulder. “It’s six thirty.”

I moaned at her and rumpled the covers up to my chin. Even without opening my eyes I could tell that it was a sunny morning. Teeth to toes, I felt as though I had been injected with glue.

Mom touched the back of her hand to my cheek. “Still feeling puny?”

“Everything aches. My hair. My tongue. Even my thoughts.”

“Want to sleep in?”

“No, I want to catch a flight.” I sat up. “Jesse’s going to pick me up at LAX.”

My laptop rested on the pillow beside me. Forty pages of printouts spread across the covers, bedtime reading downloaded from the
Cincinnati Enquirer,
the
China Lake News,
Classmates.com
, a personal site called
Sharlayne’s Spirit
, and the Web site of Primacon Laboratories, Los Angeles.

I handed the Primacon page to Mom. “Guess who I found.”

She flicked her index finger against the page. “Well, what do you know. ‘Director of Research and Development, Maureen Swayze, PhD.’ ”

“I’m going to pay her a visit.”

“Excellent idea.”

I set my feet on the floor, and my stomach swooped. I gripped the edge of the mattress, willing the wave to pass.

No good. I dashed to the bathroom.

Afterward, red eyed, exhausted both physically and emotionally, I stood under the shower and let hot water pound the back of my neck.

Linda Garcia’s obituaries were written in code. The
China Lake News
said she had died after a long struggle with illness. On the
Classmates.com
message board, her sister had posted about the tragedy of her illness, how “this disease” wasn’t limited to supermodels or rich teenagers, and of the speed with which it devoured her sister’s life following a series of personal heartbreaks. It had to be anorexia.

A couple of classmates replied with condolences, including Abbie. Reading them punched the oomph out of me.

The Sharlayne’s Spirit Web site was even more depressing. A photo montage showed Sharlayne Jackson with her parents, with her husband, Darryl, and with the little kids in her school classroom. In every shot she smiled warmly, a comforting and reliable daughter, wife, and teacher. Beneath the photos a caption read,
Resting in the arms of our savior: Sharlayne June Jackson and Darryl Jackson, Junior
. Identical dates of death.

The site was set up to encourage donations to the Sharlayne Fund, which raised money for the NICU at Le Bonheur Children’s Medical Center in Memphis. It wasn’t just my classmate who died following childbirth. So did her baby.

I rolled my head, hoping for the hot water to do its work.

The
Cincinnati Enquirer
archives had several articles about the wreck that killed Marcy Yakulski and everyone else in her car. There was a blowout. The SUV ran off-road, flipped, and hit an electrical transformer. The gas tank ruptured. The fire immolated Marcy, her husband, their four-year-old daughter, and her next-door neighbor. The neighbor’s husband later filed a lawsuit against the SUV manufacturer. How sad. How American. If I’d been him, sifting carbonized hunks of my wife from the smoking hulk of the vehicle, I might have done exactly the same. I grabbed the soap and scrubbed.

Something was hideously awry. I could feel it in the air, near and dangerous and as hypnotically insubstantial as the flying propeller that sliced Ted Horowitz to death. But there was nothing to pin it to, no common denominator to my classmates’ deaths. Just the sense that this thing was spinning ever closer to me.

Mom knocked and called through the door. “Phone. It’s Valerie Skinner.”

I shut off the water. Wrangling a towel around myself, I stuck my arm out the door to grab the phone.

“Valerie.”

“Your e-mail? Not funny.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

Her voice was coarse. “Plenty of people spout dumb-ass ideas about why I got sick, and offer me half-baked cures. But your conspiracy theory, that’s a new one. And it hurts like hell that you’re dumping it on me at a time like this.”

I wiped water from my eyes. “I’m not loony, and I’m not playing emotional games with you. Call Tommy. He’ll back me up.”

Quiet on the line.

“You there?” I said.

More quiet. “You’re serious, right? You swear to God there’s something to this?”

“I swear.”

“Shit.” Her raspy voice began trembling. “Okay. I was testing you. I had to make sure you weren’t yanking my chain.”

I pulled the towel tighter around myself. “Why would I do that?”

“Don’t act like I’m paranoid. You aren’t paranoid if they’re really out to get you.”

Good point.

The tremor in her voice was worsening. “I’ve been shit-ting bricks since I got back from China Lake. Thinking about all those pictures on the obituary board. And that day, remember how they took our clothes and made us shower? And afterward how they monitored us, like they knew something might happen?”

“I know.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“It seems to go back to a project at China Lake called South Star. Does that ring a bell?”

“No.”

“Maureen Swayze?”

“No.” Her voice faded. “You think the navy did something to us and they’re trying to cover it up?”

“Not the navy. And as far as I can tell this isn’t a coverup. I don’t know why, but a serial killer has gotten it into his head that we’re his prey.”

More ragged breathing. “I’m truly fucking scared.”

My stomach tightened. “You’re not alone, are you?”

“Right now I am.”

“Why don’t you call somebody to come over?”

“No.”

“Being alone doesn’t sound like a good idea. How about a relative? A friend? Could—”

“There’s nobody.”

The way she said it sent a pang through me. I searched for something to say, but she beat me to it. Her voice toughened.

“It’s okay. The clinic’s sending a van to bring me down for my appointment. I’ll be surrounded by med techs.”

“Val, you’re not going home by yourself after that, are you? I mean, I know chemo is awfully tough—”

“It’s not cancer.”

That shut me up. “What is it?”

“That’s the jackpot question.”

“Don’t you know?”

“Yeah. But . . .” Her voice drifted away. “I have to go. Can I call you back?”

“Sure. Soon.”

A quiet came on her again. “This thing in my head. It’s digging holes in my brain.”

My stomach slithered. I bent over and hung my head between my knees.

“Just a little more tunneling and I’ll be finished. Months, maybe,” she said. “So how come this asshole wants to put more holes in me?”

At eight a.m. Mom and I were in her car crawling along in traffic on El Camino Real across from campus, on our way to the San Francisco airport. The gold light and Mom’s lime green blouse and the silver in her hair felt too vivid against my eyes. I hid behind my sunglasses and sent a text message giving Jesse my flight number.

Mom glanced at the phone. “He’s terrific to drive down to Los Angeles and meet you.”

“Dad put the fear of God into him about sticking close to me.”

“Ha. Jesse’s one of the few people your father cannot intimidate.” Her smile was acerbic. “He’s a keeper, Ev.”

Guardedly I smiled back. She was making a joke at my dad’s expense, but she was also giving me a nudge.

“Good to know,” I said.

“I mean it.”

“Also good to know.”

Her smirk faded. “Honey, you don’t ever need to defend your relationship to me. I knew you loved him from day one.”

Unaccountably, I choked up. “Thanks.”