“I can’t show you my facilities,” Larsen said. “But I can give you the next best thing.”
“Which is?”
“People you trust,” he said. “I did this for my mother two decades ago. There were complications, initially. I was trying to make new cells from old DNA—chromosomes that carried all the mutations and damage you’d expect after a long life well lived. Some of those imperfections carried through my vessels, even through the process of rebirth. Since then, technology has outpaced the problems. I can edit genes like a line of text. I can take your DNA and make it the way it was when you were born. I can—”
But I had heard enough. I knew what Larsen was doing, and I knew why he could never explain himself to Meredith Miles. He was talking in circles about rebirth and disposable vessels because he couldn’t tell her that he was inviting everyone to dinner and serving them human flesh.
I opened the study door and stepped quietly into the hallway. I could hear the presentation continuing in the front of the house, but I didn’t go that way. I went toward the back, the way Meredith had told me to go. I stopped on the terrace, next to the still-latched hot tub, and caught my breath. Then I went on. I wasn’t finished yet, but I was getting close.
34
I did a three-point turn in the driveway and drove back down the hill toward the gate. The last car in the lineup was a black Maybach. My now dead acquaintance Larry had described a car just like this. Long and powerful, a European make that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A chauffeur was outside it, buffing the exterior with a white cloth. It was at the end of the line of parked cars, and Larsen had been the last person to arrive. I looked the other way as I drove past the chauffeur, and then I waited for the gate to open.
I followed Deseo Lane down the canyon for three hundred yards until I came to the first cross street. It was just a short cul-de-sac. I took a right and parked at the end, facing out. I turned off my headlights but kept the engine running. I watched the intersection ahead of me, and I waited.
I passed the time by making a phone call to George Wong.
“What can I do for you?” he asked, once we’d gotten past the rote beginnings of most phone conversations.
“Is there bone marrow in a person’s spinal column?”
“You’re just all over the map, aren’t you, Crowe?” he said. “Yes. There’s bone marrow. Generally speaking, the bigger the bone, the more it’ll have.”
“How do you harvest it?”
“With a big needle.”
“Can you harvest bone marrow from a baby?”
“You could do a lot of terrible things to a baby—the question is, why would you want to?”
“But if you did it over and over again, it would leave scars, right?”
“Of course it would leave scars. What are you getting at?”
“Let me ask you something else,” I said. “Last time we talked, you were telling me about Dr. Park. He was doing cloning by nuclear transfer. Let’s say you can clone a human—”
“Judging from what I saw in the lab, that’s not just a hypothetical.”
“Okay, sure. So if Dr. Park started with the DNA of an old woman, when he transferred that into an egg, then what?”
“Assuming you had a surrogate mother to take care of the gestation, you’d get a baby.”
“Would she be eighty years old at birth?”
I imagined a baby born with white hair and wrinkles. Falling apart before she ever got started.
“No, that’s the miracle of cloning—when the egg divides the first time, one cell into two, it restarts the clocks.”
“What clocks?”
“Cells have all kinds of clocks, but here we’re basically talking about telomeres. The caps on the end of your DNA strands. When a cell divides, your DNA copies itself, and the telomeres help keep that process tidy. The older you get, the more worn out they are, and the more mutations creep in.”
“Things fall apart,” I said.
“The center cannot hold,” he answered. “But cloning sets the timer back to zero. Don’t ask me how. I’m way out on a limb here already.”
He paused, and I watched out the windshield. A car went past, but it was nobody I needed to worry about.
“Do you remember Dolly?” George asked.
“You’re talking about the sheep?”
“The sheep,” he said. “Dolly was cloned from a six-year-old ewe. That’s middle-aged, in sheep years. So people wondered if she’d fall apart faster than normal.”
“Did she?”
“She got arthritis at age four. She died of lung cancer at age six.”
“Is that a yes?”
“It’s a definite maybe. Because on the other hand, she lived indoors and ate a lot of treats.”
“What do you think?”
“I think if I were a clone, I’d be careful,” George said. Another pause. “I wouldn’t miss my annual physical. If prevailing wisdom said to get screened for something at age fifty, I’d get the screening at twenty-five. Or at least, if I’d been cloned when Dolly was, I would.”
“But today would be different?”
“About five or six years ago, a new system was developed that lets you rewrite genes letter by letter. It’s called CRISPR. If you made a clone today, and you knew what you were doing, then yeah, you could definitely write out any anomalies. You could make a perfect replica.”
“Thanks, George,” I said.
I hung up without taking my eyes from the road ahead. I tried to keep a leash on my thoughts so I could stay focused on the task at hand. My job for Olivia Gravesend was basically over. She’d asked me to find out what happened to her daughter, and I thought I could tell her. She might not believe the story, and it might destroy her to hear it, but there was no other tale to tell. I could drive back to Carmel, make my report, and submit my invoice. But if I did that, any chance Madeleine had would disappear.
I couldn’t quit yet.
An hour later, Larsen’s unmistakable car rolled past the mouth of the intersection. It was in my line of sight for three seconds, and then it was gone. I waited ten more seconds before shifting into gear and following him. I had to assume Larsen’s driver was checking for tails. His boss knew I was gunning for him. The only way to follow a quarry like Larsen is either to take the risk of getting burned or accept the possibility of losing your man. I chose the latter. If I lost him, I could find him again. But if he saw me now, he might never lead me where I wanted to go.
I looked at the car’s GPS. I was heading down Deseo Lane again. This street was about to take a sharp right curve and terminate on Angelo Drive. Larsen was going to have to turn—but I wouldn’t be there to see which way he went. If he went left, he’d head up into the hills for a quarter of a mile and hit a dead end. If he went right, there were a dozen possibilities. I could rule out all the dead ends. I was looking for exits. Escape routes. If he wanted to come down from the heights, there was really only one option—Benedict Canyon Drive. And if you took that road in the other direction, you’d get to higher ground. Up to the top of the ridge and then over, into Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, or North Hollywood.
From the intersection ahead, there were two ways to Benedict Canyon Drive. The short way and the long way. I assumed Larsen’s driver would take the fastest route. His boss was a busy man. So when I got to the intersection, I took the long way, which shot me out on Benedict Canyon one street north of Larsen. If I sped back down toward the city, and he was going that way too, I’d come up on him from behind. If he was heading to higher ground, he’d pass me going the other direction. I downshifted, and found out what the Jaguar could do on a one-lane road as crooked as a broken spine.
The neighborhood wasn’t built for drag racing, and probably wouldn’t tolerate it. Getting pulled over would be a disaster. I had no ID, had two stolen guns within reach, and was driving a car registered to Olivia Gravesend. One of those guns was likely linked to multiple homicides, including deaths at a bed-and-brea
kfast I had recently visited. Yet I didn’t slow down.
I skidded around a right-hand turn, bumping over the curb and nearly scraping some guy’s rock wall. Then I had a relatively straight stretch, heading downhill, where the land on the right was too steep to build anything. I could see a stop sign up ahead, and I sped toward it. There was another home on the right, and someone had left a gray trash bin halfway out into the street. I didn’t swerve in time and clipped it with the front bumper. It flew into a boxwood hedge, white trash bags exploding out its top.
I slowed for the stop sign, then took a nearly 270-degree right turn onto Cielo Drive. This street went down, pushing through the contour lines as it plunged out of the hills and toward Benedict Canyon. I passed a sign that warned me to watch my downhill speed. I was watching it, all right. I was doing about seventy on a road built for fifteen or twenty.
A car coming up the hill in the other direction dove to the side. I heard its horn as I passed, and then it was gone. I sped on through the dark. There were no streetlights here. Just the overhanging trees—willows and scrubby oaks, and silhouettes of century plants, in the Jaguar’s high beams. There was another stop sign up ahead, and I ignored it, blasting past the mouth of Beverly View Drive without even kissing the brakes.
Another three curves and I was at Benedict Canyon Drive. I slowed and came to a stop at the white line. I put on my turn signal. Just a good citizen out for a drive. I turned right, and drove about a hundred yards before I saw a pair of headlights coming toward me. My skin prickled. It was the Maybach, passing me as it headed the other way. I waited until he was out of sight, and let one other car pass. Then I did a U-turn and went after him.
Mulholland Drive sits at the top of a ridge in the Santa Monica Mountains and goes east to west, winding between parks and some of the most expensive real estate in California, and ending as a dirt road at the edge of a wilderness area half the size of San Francisco.
I had a feeling that’s where Larsen was headed. When he got there, he’d either have to take a right or a left. If I could beat him there, I could use the same trick that had just worked for me a moment ago. I’d either come up innocently behind him, or I’d see him pass in the other direction.
I looked at the map and saw there was a way to do it, but I’d have to move if I wanted to get to the top in time. It was another race, this time going up instead of down. The streets were just as narrow, and just as winding, and I had to deal with oncoming traffic on five occasions. I was certain someone would pick up a phone and call the cops, but I reached the top of the ridge without being chased. I turned left onto Mulholland, toward Benedict Canyon Drive, and I took my time, driving fifteen miles an hour until I came to the intersection.
I reached it without seeing the Maybach. He must have turned left when he’d reached the top. So I sped up—forty, fifty miles an hour—and caught up to him after six curves. I saw the taillights first, then the Maybach’s distinctively sloped back end. I eased off the gas but kept him more or less in sight. The best time to spot a tail is in the first half mile of a drive. I hadn’t given him that opportunity. Now I could be anyone. I was just a guy driving west on Mulholland, headed toward Interstate 405. Maybe I wanted to see the city lights. Maybe I was headed to Malibu.
After that, things happened pretty quickly. We drove about two miles, which took around four minutes. Mulholland crossed the interstate on a high overpass. I saw a ribbon of red lights headed north, and another of white lights coming south. Then we came up a low rise. There was a church school on the left, and an empty parking lot on the right. The Maybach turned right, into the parking lot. I saw that there was a view of the city to the north. The edge of the parking lot fell away in a steep slope. Far down below, there were lights spread out to the horizon. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Van Nuys, or Northridge. I didn’t have time to look at the map, and it didn’t really matter. Because at the same moment the Maybach entered the lot, a helicopter appeared from the lower part of the slope. It must have been hugging the hillside as it came up toward the ridge.
It flared back, then settled onto the parking lot. The Maybach drove straight toward it. I broke every protocol of surreptitious surveillance and stopped the Jaguar in the middle of the road so that I could watch.
The pilot jumped out and opened the helicopter’s side door. Simultaneously, the chauffeur exited and opened the Maybach’s two rear doors. Larsen got out, and then his mother. They walked to the helicopter and stepped inside. The driver got back in the car, looped back onto Mulholland, and passed me without making eye contact. I wasn’t his problem, and he wasn’t mine. I was watching the pilot, who was shutting the door and climbing back into the cockpit. I was watching him strap in and adjust his headset, then flip switches. The dual engines’ whine became a roar. Ten seconds later they were airborne, and ten seconds after that, the helicopter was just a blinking red light. It gained altitude and disappeared above a low-hanging cloud.
And just like that, Larsen was gone. I punched the steering wheel, hard enough to feel my knuckles pop. I should have anticipated this.
Behind me, a car was honking. I was blocking the lane. I took my foot off the brake and did a U-turn. Larsen had gone off to the northwest, so I needed to get to the interstate. I wouldn’t be able to keep up, but I could try my best.
When I used Elijah’s phone to call Inspector Chang, he picked up on the fifth ring, slightly out of breath.
“Good evening, Inspector,” I said. “Are you back from Alaska?”
“I just walked in.”
“You have something to write with?”
“Yes.”
“Take this down,” I said.
I read him Larsen’s cell phone number, which I’d written on a page from one of Meredith’s scripts.
“What is that?”
“The cell phone of the man who killed Claire Gravesend.”
“Are you serious?” he asked. “Where are you?”
“L.A.,” I said. “So, listen—our window is going to close fast. Unless you’ve got some way of locating that cell phone and telling me where he is.”
“I couldn’t do that without a warrant,” Chang said. “And I can’t get a warrant without an investigation. And I don’t have an investigation because the case is closed.”
I nearly ran into the car in front of me. When I hit the brakes, it was hard enough that I dropped the phone. I had to fish it up from the floor.
“That’s it?” I said. “You can’t do it?”
“I can’t do it.”
“All right,” I said. “Then wish me luck. Or don’t—you should probably forget we had this call.”
I hung up and went with the flow of traffic. It was a mile before I realized that I wasn’t out of options. With one eye on the road and one eye on the phone, I started searching the internet for a phone number. It took a minute to find it, and then I dialed and listened to it ring.
A woman answered.
“NorCal TRACON,” she said, and waited. So calm and professional that for a moment I thought she was a recording. I was waiting for an options menu, but she spoke up again. “Yes?”
“I need to speak with Director Reese right away.”
“He left at six.”
“Then you need to call him at home, and transfer me.”
“Who is this?”
“Lee Crowe,” I said. “I met with him yesterday.”
The pause went long enough that I thought she might write me off as a crank and hang up. Every UFO nut in Northern California had probably called her desk at one time or another. But after a long moment, she came back on the line.
“Hold, please, Mr. Crowe,” she said. “Transferring now.”
The line went silent. I put the phone on speaker so that I could drive with both hands on the wheel.
“Hello?” Reese said. “Crowe?”
“I need one more favor,” I said. “It should be quick.”
“Go ahead.”
“You remem
ber the N-number on that helicopter we were looking at yesterday?”
“I can pull it up.”
“Good—because the thing just took off from a parking lot at Mulholland and Interstate 405, and it’s headed to the northwest. I need to know where it lands.”
“Mulholland and 405? You’re talking about Los Angeles.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s not on our watch.”
“You mean you can’t do it?”
“That’s not what I said. I just need to call SCT—our sister facility in San Diego. Can I call you back on this number?”
“Please,” I said.
He hung up and I drove for ten minutes in silence. The freeway was raised above the surface streets, and the traffic was moving fast now. I saw signs for U.S. 101. I could take it north, toward Ventura, which would put me closer to the coast. Or I could stay where I was and catch Interstate 5, back through the Central Valley. I chose the coastal route, and as I was lining up for the exit, the phone rang.
“Yes?” I said.
“He’s still in the air,” Reese said. “He’s going a hundred and fifty-four knots west-northwest. Altitude is six thousand feet.”
“What’s west-northwest of L.A.?”
“Santa Barbara, I guess. Then a bunch of little towns as you head up the coast.”
“Can you call me when he lands?”
“If I can.”
“What’s it depend on?”
“He’s in a helicopter, so he can land anywhere,” Reese said. “California isn’t exactly flat, and topography and radar don’t get along.”
“You’ll lose him if he goes below the mountaintops, is what you’re saying.”
“But he’s nice and high now. And his transponder is on.”
“So call me if he changes course or goes off your screens,” I said.
35
Larsen was flying toward Santa Barbara at a hundred and fifty knots, and I was following on the ground at a fraction of his speed. He’d reach his destination well ahead of me, assuming I ever ended up in the right place at all. Near midnight, I stopped for gas in Ventura, fifty miles outside of L.A. I didn’t want to slow down, but the Jaguar’s tank was so close to empty that the engine was shuddering. Reese hadn’t called me back, which meant that Larsen was still in the air. Every minute I spent pumping gas, Larsen gained another three miles on me.
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