J. Daniel Sawyer - Clarke Lantham 01 (8 page)

A second whistle blew. I heard a cop bullhorn commanding the crowd to disperse. Related to my call? Maybe. The crowd could have turned ugly all on its own.

I didn’t wait for the inevitable series of questions I wouldn’t be able to answer anyway. I wiped my prints off the phone, leaned out the door, wedged the thing under the front tire, and closed the door.

One little turn of the key, one move of the gearshift, a quick roll back over the phone, and both the connection and the GPS signal disappeared off any system that was looking.

Now I just had to figure out which way to go to get out of here, a decision made for me by the figure of Mr. Gravity bounding off the green and jumped in to an open-top, suped-up gray Mustang.

The Ford’s engine yawned through its glass-pack muffler like a kitten impersonating a cougar and skittered back, its tires skipping across the blacktop as he overslipped the clutch. This guy was bugging out fast.

He laid a path of rubber heading to the south exit and slid his back end out as he hung a right onto Roth. One moving violation within sight of the cops—ballsy, stupid, or desperate, it was hard to tell which yet.

He hooked left onto Campus—not a lot of places up that road he’d likely make a quick turn. He was heading up into the hills rather than down into the city.

I took the gamble.

I followed him onto Campus and up the hill, popping a baseball cap on my head in case he got a good look at me. Took me about a quarter mile to get him in my sights again, as he was gliding right onto Stock Farm heading toward Sand Hill.

He was romping on his gas and brake alternately—very impatient. Wherever he was going, he needed to be there yesterday. The flow patterns of city traffic are no respecter of personal agendas, and I kept up with him easily just doing a steady forty until we hit Sand Hill.

He was a block in front of me, I only saw his tail disappear around the berm when I rounded the last bend before the light.

The light caught me. That figured.

I tapped my foot while the damn thing waited to cycle—always a longer cycle for the cross traffic than for the main drag. When Sand Hill through traffic got its yellow, I popped into first and spurred on the super-powered gerbils in my engine to 2k on the tach.

When the light hit green, my gas pedal hit the firewall and the clutch slipped off easy. I took off from the line like a rice racer without leaving so much as a chirp’s worth of rubber on the pavement.

Passing Santa Cruz Avenue at fifty-six on the uphill stretch, I caught the flash of a gray Mustang pushing into the deep groove between the hills heading up to 280. Was he heading into Woodside, south to San Jose, or north into the City?

It didn’t take me long to find out. I feathered the gas back so I didn’t gain on him too hard—I didn’t want him knowing he’d picked up a tail.

He wasn’t slowing down, though. The low scrub oaks and unassuming late-70s venture capital buildings zipped by fast enough to make a cheetah motion sick. By the time he hit northbound 280’s long-flow on-ramp he was doing ninety, and I was the only car behind him.

Clear shot. If he was watching his rear-view he’d have me made.

But he didn’t seem to be paying attention. He flew out into 280 traffic like he was chasing a gazelle, dodging between three big rigs and out into the furthest left lane. Once established there, he held steady at about ninety five.

No way to stay hidden going this fast on a road this open—best I could do was stay a couple lanes to the right and hide behind whatever other cars I could find.

By playing the creep up/fade back game, using the long spaces between exits to catch up and then using the traffic coming on at entrances to hide myself, I managed to barely keep up with him while staying mostly out of his mirrors.

We kept this up for fifteen miles—I took the lead in the right lanes for a few miles at a time, then let him creep back up ahead of me as exits approached.

As a tactic for remaining inconspicuous it worked splendidly—the road was open and there wasn’t a highway patrolman in sight. It would have kept working if he hadn’t realized in the last hundred yards that he was in the far lane and about to zip by his exit.

One hundred yards—three hundred feet.

Ninety five miles per hour—one hundred thirty nine feet per second.

Gravity had to cross five lanes of traffic and get on to the exit—about eighty feet of open pavement and right through my car.

He checked right and caught my eye, then yanked his wheel hard and barreled straight at my front quarterpanel. I swerved, crossed the line onto the shoulder, and my front wheel caught the dirt.

The world ground to a stop around me. The wheel jerked right in my hands—I yanked hard to the left, pulled my foot off the gas and feathered the brake.

My Civic lurched every which way, trying its level best not to plow me face first into the low concrete wall lining the embankment. The right wheels hit pavement again and the car bucked hard to the left, sending me back out into traffic as the exit lanes left the freeway for the 92 flyover.

I shifted my weight on the wheel, but not as far, pulling slightly right as I careened through the second lane toward the far wall.

The big rig behind me laid on his horn. I shut him out.

My speed dipped below sixty. I crossed to the far shoulder, only about six feet wide now that I was well out onto the flyover.

One more yank right, I dropped hard into third and the gerbils screamed at me as the tach hit 4k. My wheels caught and bit, then I started slowing down fast.

The rear view mirror insisted that a Range Rover was trying to sodomize me.

I swerved back into the right lane, the car not tilting so far this time, and I punched the accelerator. The Civic lurched forward, the tach hit 5k, I shifted up to fourth and the shimmy died away.

Gravity was about a mile in front of me, away down at the left turn to head over the mountains toward Half Moon Bay. Four cars between us. Easy peasy.

Round the reservoir, over the bridge, up and over the mountain. He played chicken with the oncoming traffic, taking every opportunity to pass. Trying to get me off his ass.

Keeping up with him around the twenty mile per hour hairpins, redwoods and pines a hundred feet tall in solid walls on either side. Traffic thicker than camel dung.

My wallet could feel the rates on my life insurance climbing by the mile.

He popped around a Coca-Cola truck and screeched back into our lane just in time to avoid a shave by a Suburban trundling down the other side.

The Suburban lead a tightly packed clump of traffic—I was stuck behind the rolling soda fountain for four miles. Every minute, I could feel Gravity slipping further and further down the other side of the mountain.

At the top, the road split and I ate the passing lane. The little Civic had an aftermarket 2.8 V6, and I used every last cubic centimeter.

I crested the mountain, then pushed along the far straightaway at seventy, barely holding onto the road through the switchbacks.

I didn’t see him. All the way to the bottom and through the canyon—maybe he was still ahead, the road down here was clear enough he could have made good time. Or maybe he’d turned off somewhere.

The traffic lights in Half Moon Bay were clear up to the Pacific Coast Highway. It wasn’t yet four, but I needed to get back to the East Bay—nothing out here was remotely related to the case. The closest thing was Kinksters Inc. in San Francisco. If I headed north along the coast I could hit that part of the City in maybe half an hour to forty minutes. They weren’t supposed to be open today, but it was all I had on this side of the water.

North on Highway 1 it was.

Two blocks out of town, motion in my rear view mirror caught my attention.

A gray Mustang slid from a cross street and swerved side to side less than twelve feet off my bumper. Gravity raised his arm and made a shooting motion with his fingers, then laid on the gas and tapped my bumper.

I floored it.

He’d ducked off the main drag. I got that—but why did he give a damn?

For two miles he rode my ass like I was a three-dollar rent boy from the bad side of town, and no way out. Zipping past the housing developments between Half Moon Bay and El Granada wasn’t getting me anywhere.

I waited for a break in opposing traffic.

Right past the farm truck…now!

Hand on the e-brake. Clutch in, shifter into third. Slip it soft. Yank the hand brake. Crank the wheel, floor the gas.

The little Civic turned left and slid right, almost floating across the opposing lane as its weight pivoted around the engine block. The back end swung past center. I dropped the brake handle.

I could smell the rubber smoke through the vents.

The tires moved from squealing to screaming to howling in agony. The gerbils weren’t happy either.

Ten seconds, maybe less, till the next clump of traffic was on top of me.

I’d pushed the turn too hard. The car was still sliding.

In the lane I’d just left, Gravity blew by in a honking tornado.

My right rear tire slid off the road. My front had no traction. The tach was down under 2k. I dropped to second and gave the gerbils one last hard whip. The tires hauled at the ground.

The back end slid more than halfway into the open air over the drainage ditch.

And suddenly I was going forward again.

No more risks, Lantham. He could still be back there.

I set course for home, back over the mountain, moving as fast as I could. If I got nabbed by a cop, it would at least keep me off the radar for a while.

Now, how the hell had he spotted me? How did he know I was a threat?

Where had he been going before he tied to shake me?

Most importantly, who was Mr. Gravity?

And why had he been at the Symposium, dressed as a student?

5:30 PM, Sunday

“Thank you for calling the office of Serena Tam, MFT. Office hours are ten AM to six PM, Monday through Friday. Your call is important to me, and if you leave a message I will return your call as soon as I’m able. Thank you.”

Beep.

“Doctor Tam, my name is Clarke Lantham. There is an emergency regarding your patient Nya Thales. If you can call me back as soon as possible, I’ll explain. You can reach me any time, day or night, at 5-1-0 3-2-6-3-8-2-7.”

I hung up the phone. Between that message and Mrs. Thales’s promise that she’d also call Nya’s therapist—secured from her as I waded through traffic on the San Mateo Bridge—I’d hopefully get a return call.

With that promise secured, I cranked some Zeppelin and took a break while I drove back to the office.

Now it was time to get back to work. I typed up the notes, dropped the conversation to the server with a note to Rachael to transcribe them when she came in tomorrow.

More important, though, I had an evening free. Nothing to do for the next few hours. Besides, running around all creation talking to everyone wasn’t getting me anywhere.

What I really needed was time to think. Get to know the missing girl, not the screwy fruitcakes that populated her crazy corner of the world. If I was going to find her, I needed to understand her. A heroin kit and some pot, a box of trophies and a description of her disability only took me so far.

Rawles and Dora both said she was special. I needed to know why.

I still had those flash cards and the thumb drive from her room. The vids on them might even be something other than porn. Maybe a video diary? Memories? At this stage, anything personal other than pictures might help.

Propped up on the couch with the laptop balanced on my knees and a well-earned bourbon, it was time for the evening’s entertainment.

I queued up everything on the first card in date order, oldest to youngest.

Most of ‘em were small, not more than five minutes each. When the first one started, with her sitting in her room like a refugee from YouTube, I was glad I’d grabbed the bourbon.

But Nya wasn’t your run-of-the-mill video blogger. I wasn’t halfway through the first glass before I almost forgot I was holding it.

She talked about her archery. About her friends. About the club they all got fake IDs to get into—some place called Bondage-a-Go-Go. She even talked about the heroin—called it a “rush.”

“I don’t know. I don’t really like it. J says it’s top-flight shit, but you know…Makes me stupid. G says that after a while it’ll grow on me, but I think he’s crazy. I mean, yeah, sure, it makes me all hummy down…” A cat jumped onto her lap. She tittered. “But I’d rather pet my pussy, like this!” She held the cat face first into the camera lens and patted its head.

The rest of it was like that. Disconnected whimsy, organized thoughts that flittered all over the place.

There was something unreal about her. Have you ever watched a pack of puppies at play? Or two cats chasing each other around a house until even they can’t tell who was chasing who anymore? And their movement is almost perfect, like the dances in a Broadway play, but better?

Her mind was like that.

This wasn’t a depressed girl.

I actually don’t think I’ve ever seen a better definition of the word “alive” than watching those videos. Yes, she was a risk junkie. Yes, she was chomping at the bit, chafing under her mother’s control. Yes, she seemed like a textbook example of the disorder Doctor Sternwood had described.

But she was
alive
.

And against my better judgment, I think I fell in love with her, just a little, watching her flittering every which way.

I was
going
to find her. I had to.

The phone jarred me around. I’d drifted off to sleep watching the videos.

“Clarke Lantham, how can I help you.”

“This is Serena Tam. You called me earlier about Nya Thales, you said it was an emergency.” I could hear a couple rambunctious kids in the background, chasing each other and shrieking at just the right frequency to make my ear bleed.

“It is. Do you have an hour free? I need to ask you a few questions.”