by J. D. Barker
The only other items in the glove box were the vehicle owner’s manual, registration, and a flathead screwdriver. I left the manual, shoved the registration into my pocket, and went to the back of the Jeep with the screwdriver to remove the tag. Then I walked back around to the driver’s side and used the screwdriver to pry off the VIN plate. I loosened it years ago, then fastened it back in place with just enough glue to hold it still. It came off easy enough and joined the registration in my pocket.
I was circling the Jeep one last time to be sure I didn’t miss anything, when Stella pulled up behind me in a late model four door Mercedes-Benz E-Class.
The car was white.
“Are you sure about this?” I asked, as Stella opened the driver-side door and stood beside the car.
“The owner clearly wished for someone to borrow it. Why else leave the keys?”
“I mean, are you sure you want a white car?”
“A wolf in sheep’s clothing, my dear Pip. There is no better way to hide than in plain sight.” Stella bent down and pressed a button. The trunk popped open with a slow, calculated hiss. “Chop, chop, before someone comes along.”
I rolled my eyes and carried our things to the back of the Mercedes. The trunk was extremely spacious and had either been meticulously vacuumed on a fairly regular basis or rarely used. It closed with a gentle click. I kept the book out. I figured she’d want that.
Stella tossed me the keys. “You’re driving.”
I took one last look at the Jeep and realized how much I would miss that car. I’d owned it for four years, longer than any other. Maybe I’d get the chance to come back for it, knowing in my heart I never would.
I climbed behind the wheel of the Mercedes and pulled the door shut behind me. The plush leather seats hugged me. “Whoa.”
Stella was beaming. “Right? I am so glad you suggested a luxury car. Also, fully insured. I checked the paperwork. No need to fret.” She snatched the book from me and set it in her lap.
My hands rolled over the leather steering wheel. I adjusted the mirrors.
Stella reached for the stereo and clicked it on. I expected static to blare out from the speakers, but instead came Steven Tyler and Aerosmith belting out I don’t want to miss a thing.
“Huh,” I said, looking down at the radio.
“What?”
“Nothing. The radio. It just reminded me of when we were kids, on that bench.”
“‘Jessie’s Girl’,” Stella said softly. “That’s the song that was playing the first time you came up the hill. The first day we met.”
“Rick Springfield was the shit.”
“The shit?” Stella said.
“You never heard that expression?”
She shook her head.
“The shit. The bomb, the man. Doctor Noah Drake from General Hospital? Jo used to watch that show whenever she wasn’t working.”
Her face was blank.
“You have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
She shook her head again. “We had no televisions in the house. Ms. Oliver wouldn’t stand for it. I was permitted music for one hour each day, providing I completed my studies. Of course, there were books, too, so many books. I lived in those books.”
I pulled out of the parking lot back onto 395, toward the interstate.
“How did you get out of the house?”
“Through the front door, of course.”
The Mercedes picked up speed effortlessly. After years with the Jeep, the quiet cockpit of the German car was jarring.
“Tell me about the day you got out.”
Stella opened Great Expectations at some random place and began to read again. “Please don’t ever ask me about that day. Never again, Pip.”
Sweat trickled down her cheek, down her neck. She ignored it.
I turned the air conditioner on full.
I reached over and took Stella’s gloved hand in mine.
We were five hours outside Carmel, California, with no other white cars in sight.
12
Former detective Terrance Stack, just Terry now, spent the better part of an hour tracking down a phone number for Charter Pharmaceuticals and a live person. The number listed with directory assistance was answered by an auto-attendant. That auto-attendant provided a series of options, none of which led to a real person. Instead, each time he selected something new from the menu, the call either rolled to another recording or disconnected altogether, and he had to start over. He was damn near ready to throw the phone against the wall when he got an idea.
The number directory assistance had given him ended with 371-1050.
He dialed the original area code, then: 371-1051. This, too, went to the auto-attendant.
371-1052. Auto-attendant.
371-1053. Auto-attendant.
371-1054. Auto-attendant.
371-1055. Auto-attendant.
When he got to 1063 through 1081, the auto-attendant no longer picked up. Instead, the lines rang until eventually timing out after a few minutes.
He considered giving up and trying something else as he dialed 371-1097.
“Sanders.” No hello or greeting of any kind, only the single name. Muttered more as an afterthought than the answer to a phone call. “Somebody there?”
Stack opened his mouth to speak and realized he hadn’t figured out what he planned to say if he actually got through to someone. He cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Calvin Gurney. I believe he’s a janitor there.”
Stack knew full well Gurney had died back in 1978 in the Nettleton house, but he figured if he wanted to rattle some chains, no reason to pussyfoot around.
The voice replied. “Who?”
“Calvin Gurney.”
“How’d you get this number?”
“Dunno. The auto-attendant transferred me.”
“Fucking auto-attendant. Hold on.”
There was the rustling of papers, then the voice came back. “I don’t see anyone by that name in the directory.”
Stack said, “Calvin told me if he wasn’t around, I should ask for Eura Kapp.”
Eura Kapp died in 1986—a forty-seven year-old female found burned but not burned.
“Nobody by that name, either.”
“What about Andy Olin Flack?”
Flack was the thirty-three year-old child molester left in the alley across from the kid’s apartment.
“Flack? Flack hasn’t worked here in at least a decade. Who is this?”
Stack thought about that for a second. “Richard Nettleton.”
The line went dead.
When he dialed again, nobody answered.
13
Stella slept.
Sporadic at first, she fought it, but soon when I looked over, I saw the book in her lap, and her head lolled to the side. Even in slumber, though, the quiver in her hands continued. Her breathing went from steady to labored and back again. At one point, her entire body shook so violently, she actually awoke. Her skin was pasty, she appeared feverish, but I dared not touch her forehead to find out.
At one point, she woke and simply said, “I worked there for the money.”
I told her she didn’t have to explain.
“I know,” she replied. Then she was out again.
We were on CA-88 just outside of Dogtown when things got really hairy.
Static burst from the Mercedes’ speakers.
Not the static that usually found its way into a song as a radio station began to fade out of range, but hostile, sharp static at more than twice the volume of Michael Stipe and REM, who were busy losing their religion a moment earlier. The Mercedes bucked, and all the electronics went dead for a second, the gauges on the dashboard came back far brighter than they should have been, then returned to normal as the static disappeared.
Beside me, Stella jerked awake in her seat. The copy of Great Expectations dropped to the floor, and her head shot quickly back and forth as she peered out the windows.
“Pull
over.”
“What?”
“Pull over!”
I jerked the wheel hard to the right while slamming my foot down on the brakes. Unlike my Jeep, the Mercedes slid slightly, but I maintained control as we left the pavement for the gravel shoulder and skidded to a stop. Horns blared as cars flew past. A rusted out Chevy pickup came within inches of sideswiping us, grunting as the driver swerved around the place we left the road.
Before we stopped moving, Stella had her seat belt off and the door open. She ran from the car, climbed over a wooden fence set back about ten feet from the highway, and raced across the open field.
“Wait!” I shouted after her.
If she heard me, she didn’t care. I bolted around the car and ran after her.
The field gave way to a hill, and when I crested that hill, I saw Stella, already down the other side and running toward a large body of water (I would later learn this was Lake Camanche). I had no idea why she ran toward it or how she had even known the lake was there from the highway. I didn’t remember seeing it as we came down the highway, but the lake was clearly her destination.
I came down the hill and caught up with her at the water’s edge where she frantically clawed off her gloves.
“Get back, Jack!”
When I didn’t move, she growled at me over her shoulder. “Baaack!”
Her gloves on the ground beside her, Stella dropped to her knees and plunged both her hands into the water.
The world went completely silent, and I realized I had stopped breathing, I had stopped moving, I froze.
“Baaaacck,” Stella said again, this time her voice barely a whisper. Her eyes were pressed shut and her head tilted slightly to the left, as if listening to some far-off sound.
I’m not sure what I expected to happen at that point, but at first, nothing did. Stella remained perfectly still, her back rigid, the muscles in her neck twitching, her eyes closed, her mouth still slightly open after allowing that last word to escape.
The air became crisp, not with cold, not cold by any means, but with a rigidness as if the very molecules in the air gripped one another, forming a thick blanket. What little breeze drifted across the open field and the lake fell still. Not a single animal, insect, or rubbing of twig against weed could be heard.
The hair on my arms stood, and I looked down on it in marvel, knowing the hairs on the back of my neck were standing, too, prickling against the collar of my shirt. Ozone crept past—faint at first, then growing stronger.
In what seemed much longer, only a second had passed.
Stella gasped.
The first fish to surface was a large-mouth bass, at least ten pounds, maybe larger. The fish floated to the surface a few feet from Stella’s arms—unmoving, clearly dead. Burned but not burned. A catfish appeared on the opposite side of her, then another fish I didn’t recognize, maybe a trout. Fish began to float up all around her, filling the surface of the water—five, ten, a dozen, two dozen. It began at her arms and spread from there, fanning out across the water, this blanket of death, until I could see nothing else, the dark waters lost beneath.
I don’t know how long it went on. Time was lost to me.
Fish were still floating up far off in the distance, when Stella pulled her arms from the water and collapsed at the shore.
I ran to her and dropped at her side.
“Can’t…touch me…especially now.” Her eyes were closed, and the words slipped out on a single broken breath.
I wanted desperately to scoop her up into my arms and pull her close, comfort her, anything to ease whatever was happening to her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t so much as stroke her cheek. I knew that, and it tore at me.
I brushed the hair from her face, carefully avoiding her skin. “What should I do?”
“I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Can you move?”
Her body went limp.
She passed out.
Out on the lake, a small boat trolled through the blanket of fish with a boy of about fourteen or fifteen on board. Although a good distance away, he was heading in our direction. His small motor churning as he peered over the side, shifting from right to left.
I ran back to the Mercedes, opened the trunk, and rooted around in my backpack. I had spent my share of nights sleeping outside and learned long ago not to travel without a good blanket. The one I carried wasn’t very thick but was made of wool and extremely warm. I took the blanket back down to Stella and carefully wrapped it around her body, covering her exposed arms and neck, creating a makeshift barrier between us before I scooped her up and carried her back to the car. I settled her gently in her seat before remembering her gloves.
I ran back down.
The kid in the small boat drew close to shore now, and he perked up when he saw me come back. “All the fish are dead!”
The grass and weeds around the shore where Stella had knelt were black, too, a patch at least eight feet in diameter—all dead, already stinking of rot and decay. I grabbed Stella’s gloves.
The boy shouted, “The water’s poisoned or something!”
“Looks that way!” I yelled back, taking one last look before shoving the gloves in my pocket and racing back up and over the hill to the Mercedes. I jumped into the driver’s seat, twisted the key, and hit the gas, kicking up dirt and gravel behind us. Back on CA-88, I saw the boy from the boat crest the hill and hoped to God he didn’t get a good look at me, Stella, or our car.
Traffic on US-395 was light—mainly long-haul truckers, RVs, and a handful of cars. Using the cruise control, I kept our speed five miles per hour over the limit—not fast enough to risk getting pulled over, but enough to keep up with everyone else.
Stella woke for the first time near Stockton, California. Prior, she had mumbled several times in her sleep but nothing really coherent. The color had returned to her cheeks, and gratefully, the sweating stopped. If she was feverish before, she didn’t appear to be any longer, but I had no way to know for certain. I considered waking her, particularly when her condition appeared to be improving, but thought better of it. Whatever this was—this condition, this illness, this curse, this hunger—the lake had helped, but she needed to rest, and as comforting as hearing her voice might have been for me, I needed to think about her and let her rest.
As signs for Stockton began appearing, Stella stirred beneath the blanket, her head rolled from left to right and back again, and her eyes fluttered open.
“Thirsty,” she managed to say.
I handed her a bottle of water.
“I stopped for gas about an hour ago and got us some supplies. We’ve got water, Kit Kats, a bag of Oreos, and some Cheetos.”
“Not much for nutrition, are you, Pip?”
“Auntie Jo used to say it’s better to eat junk food. It keeps your immune system from getting lazy.”
“I’d like to believe you were kidding, but I’m fairly certain you are not.” Stella twisted off the cap and drank nearly half the bottle before setting it down in the center console. “How long was I asleep?”
“About two hours.”
“How bad?”
“The lake?”
She nodded.
“I think you killed all the fish.”
She leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes again, drawing in a defeated breath. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Someone saw us. There was a kid in a boat. He didn’t get close enough to see our license plate. At least, I don’t think he did.”
At this, Stella eyes popped open. “He was on the water?”
I nodded. “About halfway out. Pretty far off when it started, then he saw us and started toward shore.”
She turned toward me, the belt across her lap and chest holding her back. “But he was okay? He didn’t die?”
I realized then what was going through her head. If the fish were all dead, why not the boy? If he was on the water, too. “He wasn’t in the water. The boat must have protected him somehow.�
�
Stella dropped back into her seat and sighed.
A slow-moving semi in the single westbound lane forced me to tap the brake and release the cruise control. Our speed dropped to sixty. “It helped, though, didn’t it? The fish?”
Stella raised one of her hands and held her palm out between us—no longer trembling.
“How long do you think…how long did it get you?”
She lowered her hand to her lap. “Perhaps a day, maybe two, but no more.”
“So we just do that again,” I told her. “When you have to, we find another lake or a cornfield or—”
But she was already shaking her head. “You learned of the cornfield in the press, right? If reporters aren’t already at that lake, they’ll be there soon. The story will make the local papers, maybe television. If we escape national news, the reprieve will only last until the next time. Dead lakes, dead fields, dead trees…somebody will connect everything and soon the press will create maps, each occurrence marked. Some scars can be hidden, Pip. Others are simply too large. If the press doesn’t find us, Oliver and the others surely will. I imagine they are watching for these exact moments. Ms. Oliver called it my ‘kiss of death.’ I imagine her map would have such a phrase printed in big, bold letters at the very top—Stella’s Kiss of Death—heading west. There would be no hiding then.”
They don’t always find the bodies, Pip.
“Then we find another bad person. Someone who deserves to die.”
“Nobody deserves to die.”
“A killer, a rapist, someone who hurts others…” I couldn’t believe how effortlessly my mind went there, but when I weighed the thought against possibly losing Stella, there really was no choice, not for me. “Maybe in LA. We’ll go to a park, like you’ve done in the past, and—”
“I won’t,” she said emphatically. “I will not kill again.”
“You do it just this one more time. That will buy us a year, right? A whole year to come up with something else, another way. Some kind of solution.”
“I won’t.”
“If the people in white find us—one of them—any one of them…”