Crosscut (27 page)

 
Outside in the sun, I looked down the mall past chic stores and restaurants hung with wisteria. Jesse was cruising toward me shaking his head, indicating that Pepa was gone. My phone rang. When I pulled it from my pocket it slipped from my fingers and bounced across the sidewalk toward Jesse. He scooped it up, put it to his ear, and said, “Hang on.” He listened a moment, and threw it to me as if it were a live snake.

I caught it but heard a dial tone.

“What’s wrong?” I said. “Who was it?”

“Tater.”

I stared at the phone, and again at him. “What did she say?”

He looked like he was about to gag. “She called me Spanky.”

My skull nearly exploded right then. The phone rang again. I flipped it open.

“People claim we’re related by blood, but I fully believe that you were birthed by a hyena and switched in the crib at the hospital. And if you ever,
ever
—”

“He’s killing kids now.”

I cringed. “Valerie?”

“Becky’s little boy. I’m so fucking scared,” she wheezed. “I can’t stay here. I have to get away.”

“Valerie, is anybody with you?”

The wheezing intensified. “Some weird shit is going on.”

I looked at Jesse. “Define weird.”

“Phone calls where nobody’s there. Hang ups,” she said. “And they’re messing with my e-mail.”

“Messing how?” I said.

“I can’t explain. I don’t have the words anymore. Catching it?”

“Intercepting your e-mails?”

“I’m not imagining this. I’ve seen a car driving past. Four or five times, then parked down the street.”

“Val, I think you should call the police.”

“No.”

“If things are this weird, and you’re this scared, do it.”

The wheezy frailty evaporated and her voice came out strong. “
No
. The police are watching me. They’ll try to touch me.” She coughed. “They put a camera in the mailbox.”

My blood pressure pumped higher. “Listen to me. You need to call a neighbor or a friend and get somebody to come over and help you out, right now.”

“No. Don’t you understand? There’s nobody.”

I didn’t care that I was on the cell phone. “Valerie, where are you?”

“Canoga Park.”

That was the west end of the San Fernando Valley: an hour-fifteen in a fast car.

“Give me the address.” I pulled a pen from my back pocket.

“What are you doing?”

“Coming to check on you.”

There was a moment of dumb silence, and then a sob that sharpened into another bout of coughing. “Thank you.”

“Give me your address.”

“It’s . . .” Dead air. “I don’t know it.”

My stomach clenched. “Try.”

“I can’t remember.”

“Val. Do you know the street name?”

“Northridge Road.”

“Good. Can you look out a window and see the number out front?”

“It’s an apartment building. I can’t see it.”

“Neighbors?”

“They’re men. They won’t help.”

“How about your driver’s license? Get it and read me the address.”

“My license has an old address.” The tears were coming back into her voice. “I have to get out. I’ll go someplace public. I can walk to Kimo’s. It’s a big coffee shop on Northridge Road.”

“No, Val—going outside alone doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“Kimo’s on Northridge Road.”

“Valerie—” But I was talking to silence. “Damn!” Jesse looked grim. “She’s being stalked?”

“Maybe. She sounds paranoid. She’s afraid of the police and afraid of men.”

“You really want to go?”

“She can’t defend herself. She can barely function. I can’t leave her there alone.” I clenched my jaw. “Besides, I’ve been trying to talk to her for days. And maybe I can get hold of her doctor. Or if nothing else, Social Services.”

I weighed the phone in my hand. Jesse glanced at it.

“You going to call the police?” he said.

“FBI. Heaney can get the police there faster than I can.”

 
Northridge Road was a shopworn thoroughfare jammed with pet shops, thrift stores, and mattress showrooms. A police car sat at the curb outside Kimo’s. I’d made it here in an hour and three minutes.

One police car. Please tell me that’s a good sign.

Inside, the hostess looked at me apprehensively and pointed across the restaurant. In a booth at the back, hunching into a corner as far from the female police officer as she could, was Valerie. She was huddled inside a black hoodie, looking like a cornered rabbit.

“Val.”

Her eyes lit, feverish and needy. “I don’t believe you actually came.”

I slid into the booth next to her. When I put a hand on her forearm, she shied as though I’d set a hot iron to it.

“Sorry.” She rubbed her arm, giving me a surreptitious glance. “People touching me creeps me out.”

“Val, you okay?”

She looked at the table. “I’m fine. I’m just a jackhole.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Yeah, I am. Nobody’s tapping my e-mail. The mailbox isn’t spying on me.”

“Glad to hear it.”

That brought a smirk. “It’s spying on you and Chariot Boy.”

I relaxed. If she could cover mortification with humor, she still had strength left.

The cop beckoned to me. I excused myself and followed her out of Valerie’s earshot.

“She showed up about half an hour ago, disoriented and toting that little suitcase.” She nodded at a case on wheels parked next to the booth. “She refuses to go to the hospital. Won’t let me touch her. A waitress got close enough to read her Medic Alert bracelet and get her doctor’s number so we could page him. We’re waiting for his call.”

“Okay. Good.”

“I’ve gone out on a limb here, holding off on calling the paramedics.”

I lowered my voice. “She isn’t crazy. She’s terminally ill.”

“Obviously.”

“But I don’t know whether this is a crisis that calls for taking her to the ER.”

“After I got here she took some pills and she’s calmed way down. Seems more embarrassed than anything else.”

Behind us a phone rang. Valerie took a cell from her purse and answered it.

“Yeah, I did. I had an episode.” She sat straighter. “No, it was stress; I’m okay now. I doubled up on my dosage.” Her brassy wig glared under the lights. “No, no aura . . . Dr. Herron,
no
. I don’t need to go to the hospital.”

The cop looked worried. Sotto voce, she said, “Word came down from above; she’s being stalked.”

“It’s possible.”

I explained. The cop’s lips pursed.

I said, “She told me a car was driving back and forth in front of her apartment building.”

She looked at her notes. “Green, late-model station wagon. A family car.” She gave me an assessing look. “What do you think?”

I thought it sounded like Becky O’Keefe’s Volvo, which had been shown two hundred times on television in the last twenty-four hours. “Let me talk to her.”

I returned to the booth.

Valerie set her phone down. “Nothing changes, does it? The diva makes herself the center of attention by acting like a nut job. But still I got myself an audience.”

“Do you want to go to the doctor?”

“No. I want to go home.”

“I don’t think it’s wise for you to be alone.”

Her face looked even paler than at the reunion. Her hands were covered with Band-Aids and had the casual bruising that very old people’s skin sustains.

“Not home to my apartment. China Lake.” She met my eyes. “You understand?”

I understood.

I turned to the cop. “I’ll take it from here.”

 
The Mustang crawled through late lunchtime traffic. Above the power lines, the sky tended toward brown. The temperature was in the seventies but Valerie huddled in her sweatshirt, hands stuffed in the pockets.

“Do you need to stop by your apartment?” I said.

She shook her head. “I never unpacked after the reunion. Everything I need is in my suitcase.” She smiled sardonically. “Benefits of paranoia. You’re always ready to run.”

“Can you get on an airplane?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you afford a ticket to China Lake from Santa Barbara?”

“No problem. It’ll be one-way.”

I let that conversational spit wad lie there, signaling and turning up the on-ramp onto 101. The freeway was cream of traffic soup, rush hour at one p.m. Los Angeles bites.

“Do you still have family in China Lake, Val?”

“And here the curtain of lies comes crashing down.” Her shoulders rose, birdlike, and fell again. “That stuff I said at the reunion, about bygones? It was bullshit. I haven’t talked to my mom in a year. I went to China Lake to make up with her, but I weaseled out. I didn’t even see her.” Color rose in her pale cheeks.

I drove. After thirty seconds she said, “No comment?”

“No.” I checked the rearview mirror. “Do you mind if we talk about your illness?”

“I haven’t slept in fifty-six nights.”

“Damn.”

“I’m like a shitty night crawler or something.” She stared out the windshield. “But I have dreams when I’m awake. I get this aura.” She held a hand up to the side of her head. “Like a gold sunrise at the side of my vision. And then I hallucinate.” She sighed. “It’s not so bad. Sometimes I’m a movie star.”

“You always wanted that.”

“I did get a job with a microphone, you know. I got to yell, ‘Cleanup on aisle two.’ ” She snickered. “And the box boys jumped when I said it. I was the bitch diva of the supermarket check stand. So the movie-star delusion is okay. Too bad the paranoia and weird compulsions take the fun out things.”

When I looked at her, she gestured at the wig.

“You thought it was because I was having chemo.”

“I did wonder.”

“No, it’s trichotillomania. Compulsive hair pulling. I turned myself into a cue ball, strand by strand.” She rested her voice a moment. “And I can’t feel pain. My brain’s going to shit and I’m falling apart and it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts. Hit me with a brick and I wouldn’t bat an eye.”

She dug her hands deeper into her pockets. “Why do you think I wear long sleeves? I’m not just cold. My arms are covered with cuts and bruises. Burns. I’m not careful because I can’t feel it.” Her voice was as dry as fallen leaves. “That’s why I can’t stand to have people touch me. They could hurt me and I wouldn’t know it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“They did an MRI. It found evidence of amyloid plaques and spongiform encephalopathy, and the doctors freaked. This thing is like mad cow, and they’re afraid of getting infected by it. They had a conference on how to handle their implements after they examined me. They’d already done a lumbar puncture and were flipping because the way they sterilize them doesn’t kill this kind of disease.”

She glanced at me. “Am I freaking you out?”

“No. A week ago you would have, but not now.” I took a breath. “Dana West died of the same thing, Val.”

Her mouth opened.

“Shannon Gruber, too. Linda Garcia. Phoebe Chadwick. Sharlayne Jackson, I think.”

She blinked repeatedly. Her chest rose and fell, sparrow-like. “Tell me. Tell me everything.” Quizzical, she turned to me. “Wait. Santa Barbara to China Lake?” As if only now noticing that we were heading out of L.A., she scanned the surroundings. Car dealerships and fast food outlets and a pet cemetery. “LAX or Burbank’s closer.”

“Yeah, but I need to pack, and all my stuff’s in Santa Barbara.” I punched the accelerator. “I’m going with you, Val.”

 
We reached Ventura before I finished telling her about the illnesses, the accidents, the hospital fire killing Dana West.

Traffic had emptied out. We flew through Ventura, passing orchards and malls, rolling along beside the surf. Valerie’s face was white. Truth, in my view, is generally for the best. But maybe it had been too much.

“You all right?” I said.

“I’m about to fudge my pants. I need a bathroom.”

I hit the next exit and pulled in at a busy gas station. It had a minimart and looked clean and safe. Valerie opened her door, got halfway to her feet, and sat back down.

Her voice was dim. “Little help?”

“Need me to come in with you?”

“Sorry.”

I opened my door and a feeling passed over me, akin to bug wings brushing the back of my neck. I looked around. The gas station was bustling, but my inner voice said,
Watch it
.

Grunting, Valerie gripped the door for balance and hunched to her feet. I opened the glove compartment and pulled out the Glock. She saw it and gaped.

“Christ, what’s that?”

“It’s me listening to the voices in my head.”

My own, and Jesse’s.
You don’t stop on the freeway, even if somebody hits you. You drive to a police station. And you
keep a round chambered
. I shoved the gun in my purse, got out, and walked around to her side.

“Is that thing loaded?” she said.

“Absolutely.”

She hung in the doorway of the car. One of her hands was twitching.

“Come on. Let’s find the women’s room,” I said.

She didn’t move. Her gaze lengthened. Her hand continued trembling.

“Val?”

Cars whined past on the freeway. Her eyes began clicking back and forth, fast. The twitch climbed her arm to her shoulder. Oh, man. Drool slid from the corner of her mouth. My pores opened, adrenaline flooding me.

“Valerie.”

For a second I thought it was a seizure, until I recognized what I was seeing: REM dreaming. Except that she was wide-awake and standing up. I called her name again and shook her arm. She blinked and stepped back, bumping the door of the car.

She gazed around, breathing rapidly. “Did I go out?”

“Apparently.”

She put a hand to her head. “Shit.” She looked at me, and my purse. “Did I dream that fucking gun?”