She spun on Mickey.
“You taught me to be like that, Daddy,” she told him in a tone of accusation.
“Huh?”
“You said, don’t sell yourself too cheaply. The successful person always has patience and waits, and sure enough the price goes up, so I did that.”
“I wasn’t talking about something as disgusting as this, for God’s sake!”
“Why did she call you?” Ryan pursued, his eyes not leaving Stocker.
“She said she was getting me what I wanted.”
“Which was?”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“Five hundred dollars!” Mickey cried.
“How was she getting it?” Ryan asked.
“She was meeting someone who was going to give it to her. I asked her what she was trading, and she said a secret this person didn’t want anyone else to know. She promised she would have it in a day or so. I didn’t say anything to anyone because…because I didn’t want anyone to know about that,” she said, nodding at the glasses. “I knew you were going to be mad, Daddy,” she wailed. “But everyone is doing it.”
“Everyone’s doing it? Everyone’s doing it!” Mickey screamed at her. He ripped the glasses from Esther’s hands and dropped them to the floor. Then he stamped on them, smashing the instrument to pieces. “Now you’re not doing it.”
“Nooooo!” Stocker cried. “I had other movies, Daddy!”
The dramatics and the violence gave her an opportunity, and she seized it. She turned and ran up the stairs, sobbing, and slammed her door shut.
No one spoke for a moment.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Esther told Henry McCalester.
Mickey, still fuming, stood staring down at the wreckage he had visited on the rather expensive equipment. It had been Stocker’s sweet sixteen present, and they had saved for almost a year to get it for her.
“It’s all right, Esther. Ryan?”
He was still looking up the stairway. After a moment, he turned to Esther and Mickey.
“Do you have a foot-long, ebony black Raydox flashlight?” he asked.
“Flashlight? Yeah, I think I do. Why?”
“I’d like to see it.”
“What the hell…”
“Please, Mickey,” McCalester said.
Mickey Robinson turned and went through the hallway to a closet near the rear door of the house. He turned and held up the flashlight.
Ryan joined him and looked at it.
“It’s what we use…highway department issue,” Mickey said. “I get called out sometimes and need stuff here,” he added to cover up any petty thievery.
Ryan set down his bag and opened it, plucking out a long-nosed instrument that looked like a small torpedo. He flipped a switch on the rear end, and the entire tip of the cone glowed.
“What’s that?” Mickey asked.
“We call it a bloodhound,” Ryan said, running it over the light. “It detects human tracings.”
“Human tracings? What’s that?”
“Blood, skin, saliva, semen, to name a few examples.”
The instrument glowed but remained silent. Ryan switched it off and handed it back to Mickey.
“Any more?”
“I don’t think so. In my truck, of course.”
“Where’s your truck?”
“In the garage,” he said, and they went through a side door. Mickey turned on the lights and reached into the rear of the truck to produce a tool chest. He snapped it open and looked inside. Ryan waited beside him. McCalester lingered in the doorway.
“Well?”
“I don’t seem to have one. Might have left it at the plant or at a job. I don’t know.”
“Let us know if you figure it out,” Ryan said dryly. He and Mickey returned to the hallway, where Esther waited, looking as if she had been holding her breath.
“Is everything all right?”
“No,” Mickey snapped. “Far from it.”
“I’ll be back to speak with your daughter again,” Ryan said. “In the meantime, I want her to search her memory about that last conversation she allegedly had with Lois Marlowe. Any detail, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem, is important to me.”
“I’ll make her remember,” Mickey promised.
“Make her remember only the truth,” Ryan instructed.
He and Henry started out. Just outside the door, he turned to McCalester.
“Notice anything on Stocker Robinson?” he asked the policeman.
“Like what?”
“Her footwear. ‘Rockers’ was printed along the sides, the company trademark.”
McCalester looked back at the closed door. “Let’s go back in.”
“No, not yet. I have some other things to do first,” Ryan said, and headed for their vehicle.
Inside the house, Esther immediately began to clean up the shattered electronics. When the door had closed, Mickey turned back to the living room.
“Damn!” he screamed. “They’ve already gotten three goals, and I haven’t seen one.”
Upstairs in her room, Stocker finally started to tremble. She had done well, but she sensed it was far from over. There was one more thing to do, and she knew just how she was going to get it done.
That knowledge and her success finally stopped the shakes. It was all quickly replaced with rage at her father for smashing the VRG.
Where the hell was she going to get another pair of virtual reality glasses now? And what was she going to do for the money to buy them?
She decided to soak in a warm bath and think and plot. She realized that what she had told them Lois was going to do wasn’t such a bad idea after all.
I bet I could get at least five hundred dollars from her, she thought. Maybe even a thousand dollars. She’s rich. She would pay it.
But could she do it? It was one thing to intimidate another teenager, but an adult?
She could do everything else, and she hadn’t done badly against adults up until now.
She closed her eyes, lay back, and tried to revive the images of that X-rated VRG movie as she ran her hands over her own breasts and erect nipples.
She could do it all.
Why not?
Both Bob and Judy Norman were in such a festive mood right from the beginning of the evening that neither noticed how tense and nervous Preston and Natalie were at dinner. The Rosses thought all of the gaiety resulted from Preston’s impressive promotion, but right after they had their cocktails served and Bob proposed a toast to Preston, he paused, smiled at Judy, and turned back to them to say, “We have something else to toast tonight.”
“Oh,” Preston said cautiously. “And what might that be?” He held his smile.
For some reason, Natalie felt her heart begin to pound with anxiety.
Bob reached for Judy’s hand first and then turned back. “We’ve decided to apply for a child, counselor, so you can expect a new application on your desk this week.”
“You stinker,” Natalie told Judy. “We were together all day, and you never said a word, not a hint.”
“Bob wanted to make the announcement tonight when we were all together,” she explained.
“We appreciate that,” Preston said quickly. Then he smiled again. “I look forward to reviewing your qualifications for parenthood.”
“Have you decided whether you’ll have a boy or a girl?” Natalie asked.
“We’ve decided on a boy for our first child,” Bob said. “Right?”
“Yes,” Judy said. “I can tell you, as long as you don’t hold it against us, Preston, that I’m absolutely terrified of the whole thing. One day, there’s us, and the next, there’s us plus one. Motherhood,” she added with a sigh. “To suddenly care for another as much as you care for yourself.”
“Even more,” Natalie said.
“Yes, even more. Sometimes,” she added in almost a whisper, “I wonder if the old way wasn’t better…carrying a child inside you for nine months. You can
bond faster when the child is born. At least, that’s what I’ve heard.”
“Ridiculous,” Bob said quickly. “What anyone who has had any experience with that tells me is it’s such an ordeal many of the Abnormals actually resent their children. That’s why underground abortions still rage at the numbers they rage.”
“None of that is confirmed,” Preston said. “I’m sure the numbers you hear are exaggerated.”
“Well, I suppose you would know better than I would,” Bob said with a shrug. “Still, I wouldn’t trade our system for anything in the past, would you, Natalie?”
Natalie smiled. “I wouldn’t change anything in regard to myself,” she said.
Preston shifted his eyes to catch the glint in hers and then looked at the menu. “Actually,” he said while reading it, “there is one more thing to announce tonight.”
“Oh? Don’t tell me you guys have decided to become parents, too.”
“No, not yet,” Preston said. “Natalie has had a new book offer, to do a series, in fact.”
“Wow!”
“Talk about keeping secrets,” Judy countered. “You didn’t mention anything or give any hints, either, today.”
“I didn’t know until I went home,” Natalie said. “The message from my publisher was waiting for me. They liked an outline I had created. I’m setting the whole series in Cape Cod.”
“Congratulations,” Bob said.
“Thank you.”
“What Natalie is trying to tell you, however,” Preston continued, “is she is leaving for some prolonged research.”
“Leaving?” Judy asked.
“Yes. You know how I like to feel the places I write about, taste them? I want a real sense of authenticity about this series.”
“What does that mean? Leaving?”
“I’m just going to do a little traveling on the Cape, Judy, stay at a few bed-and-breakfast places. My publishers are putting it all together for me. They’re even paying for it!”
“Wow again,” Bob said. “But what about you, counselor?”
“We’ll join up in a few weeks or so,” Preston said. “I don’t want to distract her from her work. I’ll spend a weekend or so on the Cape and then return, and she’ll be back when she’s got what she needs done.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do?” Judy cried. “I’m getting a child, and I won’t have my best friend at my side. Who’s going to listen to my complaints?”
“I’ll call you on a daily basis,” Natalie promised. “Or as much as I can,” she added. Judy didn’t smile. “Please, be happy for me, Judy. I’m happy for you.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Of course, I’m happy for you, Nat. You’re going to be a real bestselling author. And I’ll be able to say you’re my best friend, right?”
“Always,” Natalie promised. “As long as you want.”
“Well, I want it forever,” Judy declared, as if it was the most obvious thing of all.
Everyone laughed.
The waiter approached.
“Let’s order. All this excitement has made me hungry,” Bob said.
Preston nodded. He looked at Natalie.
She smiled at him. He could do it all, after all. Just as she had thought. He was smart enough, and he loved her enough, and they would be fine. They would all be fine, she, he, and their child.
What would she have?
Was it more or less exciting not to know?
Whatever it is, boy or girl, she thought, the baby will be more of us than Judy and Bob’s will be of them.
And that has to be more exciting.
She hoped.
Despite the commotion in her home earlier, it was easier for Stocker Robinson to sneak out of her house than it had been for Lois Marlowe to sneak out of hers. Stocker’s mother, emotionally exhausted, went to bed early, and her father, angry, frustrated, drank too many beers and fell asleep in the living room with the television still droning, its dull white light flashing shadows on the wall behind him. She could hear him snoring when she reached the foot of the stairway and turned to go out the rear door, pausing at the pantry to get a pair of plastic gloves. Nothing she did attracted the slightest attention. Stocker couldn’t recall how many times had she successfully snuck out of this house. She had done it too often, most of the time to go up to the Lakehouse and spy on the lovers, of course.
A heavy, overcast sky thickened the darkness. It was so difficult to see, in fact, that she moved like a blind girl, depending more on her memory than on her vision as she crossed the yard to the unattached garage. She heard Kasey-Lady stir, but it took only one sharp, guttural command to send her cowering back into her doghouse before she started to bark.
When she was inside the garage, she paused to acclimate herself in the dark. She didn’t want to put on the light. Her father might wake and see it. Instead, she moved as carefully as she could to her Compubike and unlocked it. Then she struggled a bit to get it out through the side door. Lifting the garage door would have been far easier, but that was out of the question. That much noise would surely alert dear old Dad.
Once the bike was out, she put on the plastic gloves and returned to the garage. Like a rat, she burrowed under old rags and a discarded blanket her father threw on the floor if he ever had to get down on his knees to do anything under their vehicles. She felt around until she found the heavy flashlight and brought it out carefully. Then she took one of the rags and meticulously wiped the handle of the flashlight.
It wasn’t until she had pedaled and motored with the assistance of the computer generator a good half mile from her house that she stopped and bathed the flashlight in the bike light to inspect it. The bloodstains were dark and dry around the lens, but there certainly was enough there for the CID man to describe the flashlight as a murder weapon.
Buoyed by her own cleverness, she sped up. As she rode, she reconstructed the scene with Lois Marlowe. In her new version, she saw herself come upon Lois after Lois had been struck. She knelt beside her body and realized she was dead, and the sight of that death, the impact on her, was so traumatic that it sent her fleeing into the night. She then had put it out of her mind for fear of nightmares.
This was not a story she was developing for any police authority. Rather, it was what she would come to believe herself, referring back to her good techniques for falsification: first you convince yourself, and then you can convince others. Reality was pliable. Details could be refitted, events reconstructed and then put back in their new form, as firmly and as authentically as they had been.
In the event she would be questioned again, she would be convincing because she had convinced herself.
The Rosses’ house was dark except for two lighted windows upstairs she knew to be their bedroom. Because her mother was so trusted a housekeeper and domestic assistant, Natalie and Preston Ross told her where they kept their emergency key. It was in a fake rock at the rear of the house. Stocker knew that the Rosses’ electronic field security system would not go on until all the main lights had gone off. Everything was tied in through the house computer.
Nevertheless, she stopped a good hundred yards from the perimeter of the house and gently laid her bike down. She moved through the shadows as quickly as she could, found the fake rock, extracted the key, and went around to the side door of the attached garage. Once inside, she turned on the flashlight and studied for a potentially good hiding place. Then, she thought, that made no sense. Someone who was afraid of the flashlight being discovered would have gotten rid of it, not taken it home. No, this was an impulsive act of rage, not a premeditated, well-planned murder. Natalie Ross was no professional killer. She returned home, terrified by what she had done, and just put the flashlight back in one of those drawers. Then she went upstairs and took a mood balancer.
Or maybe not. She was, after all, pregnant. Her underground doctor might have forbidden any drugs or significant alcohol.
What does any of that matter? she asked herself. Get this over with.
&nb
sp; She chose a deep drawer and put the flashlight in the back of it quickly. Satisfied with how innocent it looked there, she closed the drawer and retreated. She returned the spare key to the fake rock and hurried through the shadows to her bike. On the way home, she felt the breeze lift her hair and caress her cheeks. She felt as if she were actually flying. She was ecstatic and felt larger than life. She could sail above events and time and change fate. She was godlike and could give people life or death, years of sadness or years of happiness.
How dare Daddy smash her VRG? Didn’t he understand? She would get another one easier than she had gotten the first. Punishing her was a futile activity. He should just accept her, be grateful that she didn’t turn her fury and her power on him. If he continued to behave this way, she just might do that.
When she entered the house, she discovered he had finally gone up to bed. She tiptoed through the downstairs hallway to the stairs and went up to her room. It wasn’t until she went to the bathroom that she realized she was still wearing the plastic gloves.
That was a mistake, she thought unhappily. She could have been caught with them on and would have had to come up with some amazing fabrication to explain them. It put a little doubt and fear into her wall of arrogance. She shouldn’t have taken such pleasure in the ride home. She should have stayed with the program, reviewed every moment to be sure she made no mistakes.
Let this be the one and only, she chanted.
It wasn’t a prayer. She didn’t pray.
She never prayed.
The night was always too dark and too empty for her to believe in anything greater than herself out there or above her.
Besides, wasn’t it mankind that made life and took life, cured diseases, repaired the environment, managed nature, and created destiny?
God was out of work, unemployed, like some parent caught by surprise and faced with the incontestable fact that he was no longer necessary.
That damn old Tree of Knowledge, she thought recalling the religious mythology she was once taught. That was surely dumb on his part. Why in hell did he ever plant it in the first place?
The Baby Squad Page 11