Crosscut (6 page)

“Cracked a filling,” he said. “Hurts like hell.”

“You came from the rec center?” Ceci said.

“Yeah. Robin Klijsters.”

She frowned, trying to place him. “I know you, don’t I?”

“I was Antonia Shepard’s student teacher. I’m here with Len Bradovich.”

Ceci unwound. Len Bradovich had played on the basketball team. Six-foot-three with soft hands. He never gave her a look and he threw like a girl. Well, well. Robin Klijsters couldn’t have topped five-five. He was soft and pouty and had a silly punk-rock haircut and those cheekbones. Huh. She’d always wondered if Len played for the boy-on-boy team. And here was a girlie little man he’d hooked up with.

His eyes were dark and wide, all pupil. Did pain do that to sissy boys? He dabbed the back of his hand to his forehead.

“Sorry, dentists’ offices make me nervous. Think you could get me set up? I don’t want to hang around longer than I have to.”

Ceci put on her professional smile, businesslike and wise. “Let’s wait for Dr. Hankins. In fact, why don’t I call him and see if he’s—”

“Please.” Pain spun in his eyes. “He said he’d be right here. And Len, I promised him I’d get back to the picnic as soon as possible.”

Pussy-whipped, and by another man. What a homo. He was even wearing a fanny pack. Heterosexual men didn’t wear fanny packs, except maybe artists or academic types.

She waved him through. “Come on back.”

In the exam room she gestured toward the chair, patting him on the shoulder, as she liked to do with nervous patients. He flinched. So did she. Under the baggy shirt he was rock-hard. She put on her safety glasses, snapped on a pair of latex gloves and pulled over the implement tray. He had not sat down.

She gestured again to the chair and turned on the big examination light. “Please, Mr. Klijsters. The only way we’ll repair that filling is if you sit down and open your mouth.”

She put a hand on his back, nudging him toward the chair. He lurched, grabbed the examination light, and swung it into her chin.

Ceci’s head snapped back. What the hell? She put a hand to her mouth. She’d bitten her tongue. She stared at Klijsters, appalled.

“You freaking little wussy,” she said.

He swung his arm, backhanding her across the face. Her safety glasses flew off. She crashed into the implement tray. Oh, shit.

He stood absolutely still, staring at her with those black eyes.

She grabbed a curette from the implement tray. Before she could think twice, she stabbed him with it. She shoved it straight at his chest, impaling him through his shirt.

He jerked from the impact, but his eyes remained cool.

“Fight,” he said. “Excellent.”

The curette protruded from his chest. Blood coursed down the front of his shirt. He let it run. He didn’t flinch. He unzipped the fanny pack.

Ceci ran for the door.

The Taser darts struck the back of her blouse. She went rigid, hair to fingertips, vision streaking white with the electric shock. She saw the room tipping sideways, heard the noise as she hit the implement tray. She crashed to the floor.

She heard a sound.
Snap. Snap.
Klijsters was double-gloving.

 
He hit the power button for the dentist’s chair, raising it and tilting back the seat. The examination light hung above Ceci’s face, surgically bright. Her hands and feet were bound to the chair with electrical tape.

Klijsters appeared above her. He was no longer cringing with toothache. And he wasn’t Robin Klijsters, she knew. He looked calm.

“Now.”

She heard the sound of metal implements tinging against each other. The sickle scaler appeared in his hand. The pick on the end was long and slightly curved and sharp at the tip. He leaned toward her.

“No,” she said.

She turned her head away. The Taser appeared in his other hand. It was shaped like a gun, but with electrical contacts instead of a muzzle at the end of a solid barrel. He pressed the contacts to her eyelids.

“Do not move.”

She smelled talc and latex. He touched the sickle scaler to her lips. She felt the raggedness of her tongue where she’d bitten it. Klijsters leaned closer. The sickle scaler teased her mouth and poked into her lower lip, pulling it open.

“Does it hurt?” he said.

“Stop. Don’t,” she mumbled.

His eyes examined her face. He jammed the scaler all the way through her lip and pulled it up as though she were a trout hooked on a lure.

“Answer me. Does it hurt?”

She shrieked. He hit her with the Taser again. Her vision shot white and she jerked stiff.

He twisted the scaler through her lip and ripped, tearing her mouth open like a broken zipper. She felt a warm gush of blood, and gutted flesh and numbness.

He touched the bloody scaler to her cheek. His gaze was clinical. The scaler groped its way up her face, covered with the gore of her bottom lip. The sharp tip tugged her flesh like a talon.

His face was all business. The scaler clawed its way up her cheek. Deeper, cutting open her face, again and again.

He put his thumb and forefinger on either side of her left eye and spread the lid wide.

“Answer me. Does it hurt?”

His eyes were dispassionate, but more. Like the guys Wally talked about who should never have been admitted to dental school, the
Little Shop of Horrors
dentists who loved it too much. And then a great sob welled inside her chest, because she knew that Wally wasn’t on his way over here. Nobody was.

Behind her ruined lip she worked her tongue to form the word. “No.”

He drove the scaler into her eye.

When the patrolman appeared at the rec center flanked by two Shore Patrol officers, I was talking to Becky O’Keefe. She had a little photo album open on the picnic table, showing me pictures of her two-year-old son.

“He’s a fireball.” She smiled broadly. “You’ve really written three novels? That is so neat.”

“Thanks.”

“It’s always awesome when you can find a way to make your passion work. Like me and crafts.”

Becky’s appliqué T-shirt stretched mightily to cover her beer-barrel torso. It was chartreuse and featured tiny pom-poms and glitter paint. The cover of the photo album was decorated to match. Jesse was next to me, playing hang-man with Travis Hankins. He didn’t look up, but he did smile. I took the pencil from him, drew lines for nine letters, and filled in
good sport
.

The Shore Patrol officers stopped a man in a
Go, Hounds
cap, who pointed them toward the playground. They crossed the patio and walked out into the sun. Wally and Abbie were chatting while their girls climbed on the jungle gym.

Becky turned a page. “Ryan’s big for his age. Don’t know if you can tell.”

“He’s beautiful. He looks like . . .”

“Winston Churchill. I know.” She laughed good-naturedly. “So do I.”

The patrolman spoke to Wally. Wally’s face fell, and Abbie grabbed his arm. He walked off the playground with the cop and Shore Patrol officers, head down, pale and grim.

Abbie watched him go, her blond hair swirling in the wind. She caught my eye. Her hand went to her mouth and her shoulders began to shake.

I stood, grabbing Jesse’s arm. He looked up, alarmed.

“Something bad’s going on,” I said.

 
Five miles out of China Lake I pulled the Mustang off the highway at a truck stop. I couldn’t wait to put two hundred miles between myself and this town, but if I kept driving I would run the tank dry, and there wasn’t another gas station for sixty miles.

Back at the hotel, the parking lot had looked like a scene from a disaster movie, with people throwing luggage in their cars and hightailing it for the hills ahead of an avalanche. People who lived in China Lake, I knew, were stocking up on ammunition or attack dogs.

The wind gusted against the car and the sun burned gold in a shattering blue sky. I filled the tank and grabbed my purse.

“I’ll get drinks.”

Jesse gave me a thumbs-up.

The truck stop was a weary place with a café attached. The screen door griped open for me. Inside, an air conditioner struggled in the window, tassels flopping up and down. Behind the counter, the cook was watching a wrestling match on the TV.

“Getcha something, hon?” she said.

“Two bottled waters and a couple of burgers to go.”

She tossed hamburgers on the grill, and I headed down a creaking hallway to the women’s room. The desolation on Abbie’s face lingered in my mind. Ceci had been murdered in Wally’s dental office; that was all I knew. I leaned over the sink and splashed cold water on my face. Straightening, I looked in the mirror.

A woman stood behind me, watching me over my shoulder.

I froze. I hadn’t seen the door open, hadn’t heard her boots on the groaning floor. She leaned back against the wall and blinked, slowly, like a Siamese cat.

“Go on, finish washing up. Don’t mind me,” she said.

Cold water ran down my face and dripped onto the counter. She grabbed a paper towel from the dispenser and handed it to me.

I dried my hands and face. “Hello, Jax.”

“Don’t look so surprised.”

“Then don’t be such a drama queen.”

“Honey, I’m forty-four years old. I’ve lived this long by knowing when to do dramatic things.”

I stared at her in the mirror. The sleeveless black T-SHIRT clung to her frame like high-gloss paint. The fatigue pants left more to the imagination, but there was no mistaking her ballerina’s posture. Diamonds gleamed on her ears and left hand, six carats at least, set off against almond brown skin.

Not many women would walk into a flyblown desert café wearing Caterpillar boots and $50,000 worth of jewelry, but Jax wasn’t like other women. She wasn’t wearing a holster, but I knew she was armed. Not that it mattered. Anybody who messed with her, I thought, she could kill barehanded.

No good could come out of seeing Jakarta Rivera here today.

She stared at me with the detachment of a runway model. Sidling over, she lifted my left hand and looked at my bare ring finger.

“You and your man ever going to tie the knot? The suspense is killing me.”

“Why are you here?”

“I brought a gift to your bridal shower. I expect performance. Heat those cold feet up, honey.”

“Please tell me Tim isn’t out in the car having this same heart-to-heart with Jesse.” I glanced at the door, wondering if she had locked it. “Is this about your dossiers?”

For nine months a fat envelope had lain in my safe-deposit box. It contained documents that convinced me Jax and her husband, Tim North, were who they claimed to be, and had done the things they said they’d done. CIA, British intelligence, and, as they put it, private work. Contract assassination.

“No, this is something else,” she said.

They told me they wanted me to write their memoirs. In fact, they wanted something very different, but, after everything was over, they delivered the envelope to me. I suspected they were using me as a dead drop—a place to park stolen and classified documents that they wanted for self-protection or blackmail. Possessing such documents, I knew, could put all of us in prison, but I couldn’t return them. Jax and Tim had gone into the wind.

But the envelope was also a bargaining chip, for them and for me. I could sell it to their enemies, get them killed, and probably earn myself a hell of a payday. And they could, if they wished, torture me for the key to the safe-deposit box, retrieve the dossiers, and murder me.

Nice little balancing act they’d subjected me to.

“Shall we go out to the counter?” I said. “Catch up on the family, watch wrestling on the TV?”

“You need to talk to your buddy in the China Lake Police Department. Have him contact the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit and get their profilers out here.”

The bathroom smelled of ammonia. My stomach was queasy.

“Shit,” I said. “You think a serial killer committed the murders.”

“Murder doesn’t describe these acts. Try butchery.”

I ran the back of my hand across my forehead. “Two killings in twenty-four hours. You know the police already suspect it’s a serial killer. Why are you here?”

“Because they don’t suspect that the killer is ex-government.”

“Are you telling me you know who this is?”

“Yes and no.”

“What does that mean?”

She stepped forward. “These murders aren’t the killer’s first. The locals will need federal muscle who can dig into government records and get the information they need.”

The heat was crippling. Sweat was running down my chest.

“What do you mean by government? Navy? Civil service? CIA?” I said.

“A clandestine service. That’s all I know.”

“Do you know his name?”

“Coyote.”

The wind hissed against the walls. “Is that a cover name?”

“Yes. I don’t know his legal name.”

“How do you know that this guy is the killer?”

She blinked, cat-cool. “In select circles, Coyote is a legendary operative. The killings this weekend bear hallmarks of his style.”

The word
style
had never sounded so hair-raising.

“He hasn’t been heard from in a long time. And if he’s back at work, he’s off the clock. No controllers, no restraints, just his own private blitzkrieg.”

“You’re telling me that a trained killer has gone off the leash and started running amok?”

“I believe so.”

She waited a moment, and when I didn’t mouth off again her voice cooled a few more degrees. “This character’s a chameleon. You know Native American mythology?”

“Vaguely.”

“In tribal folklore Coyote is a trickster. That’s who this guy is. He changes his appearance and behavior to suit the situation.”