She stared at her reflection in the doors.
✽ ✽ ✽
A while later, Randall strode into the police station. Her mood was dark enough to draw stares from a few of the officers she passed in the hallways. She would have welcomed an encounter with a monster right now, as it would provide an outlet for her rage. She considered reporting her presence to Lively but decided the little asshole could just come find her in her office if he was so concerned.
But a part of her—possibly the same part that propelled her so high up the ladder this early in her career—observed that her mood was out of all proportion to events. This did little to comfort her. Maybe it was just that the lead on Nick Schaefer had been giving her hope all this time, and now she knew she’d been chasing theories when she should’ve been chasing actual bigfoots.
At least the station looked more normal today, not as deserted. Her fellow cops appeared exhausted and dirty. One guy was limping. They look as bad as I feel, she thought, and realized that could be another explanation for her mood swing. Her allergies were kicking in with a fresh run of the nose dribbles, plus she had another headache.
Maybe I’m sick. Maybe I’ve been sick. . . . Nah. I just need to get off the damn night shift.
At her desk, she guzzled coffee and wiped her nose. She frowned at her phone’s failure to signal the presence of new voicemail. She wasn’t surprised although the fed at the hospital promised a call from somebody to discuss the case. Oh, well. She had wanted to report the Nick Schaefer lead.
Except now there was the matter of the produce display at the Asian grocery store. Maybe it was important, and maybe it wasn’t—but wasn’t it at least worth a closer look? For that matter, wasn’t Nick Schaefer still worth a closer look?
She sighed heavily, realizing she wasn’t thinking clearly. It was probably another effect of the allergies and graveyard shift-related sleep habits, not to mention being put through two lifetimes’ worth of stress in as many days.
Glancing at a phone list, she called Sergeant Tucker’s office at the county crime lab. He would help her make sense of this. She didn’t seriously expect him to be there, so she mentally composed a message as she listened to his line ring.
Tucker picked up.
“Holy hell,” Randall said. “What are you doing there today?”
“You seen the mobilization memo?”
“Haven’t checked my e-mail.”
“All investigations are temporarily on hold. We’re all supposed to be chasing ‘rogue primates’ full-time and guarding against looting.”
“You’re shitting me. Even detectives and sergeants?”
“Especially detectives and sergeants. Preferably over-the-hill ones. Fat bellies provide superior counterbalance during fights, you know.”
Even though she didn’t feel like it, Randall laughed politely.
“I’m just in here buttoning up a few things,” Tucker said. “Courts are closed tomorrow, too.”
“Oh, great. All the human criminals will be happy to hear that.”
“Never fear, dear heart. We have our vaunted federal government to carry us through.”
“The feds. I thought they were supposed to aid and enable us in disasters, not take over.”
“What can I say, kid. Shit rolls downhill—or in this case, off Capitol Hill.”
This time, she did laugh. She was glad for it; she sorely needed it. “Listen, I need your help to make sense of a few things, such as—” she struggled to collect her thoughts, “all the victims I’ve interviewed were ovulating at the time of their rapes. I’m sure the creatures are taste-testing for fertility by biting their prey.”
Tucker was silent for a moment. “As I said, Uncle Sam thinks he has it all figured out. Don’t worry.”
“What are you talking about?”
He sighed explosively, making the phone connection crackle with static. “It’s not your fault. They figured that out this morning. My pal at the FBI says their laboratory network is making an aerosolized hormone lure to bait traps for them.”
Randall was too shocked to speak.
Thankfully, Tucker kept talking. “They think the creatures are tasting for the presence of leutinizing hormone. It spikes real high in a woman’s blood just before her ovaries spit out an egg. . . . Excuse me, I hope I’m not offending you.”
“Oh, please. It’s me you’re talking to.”
Tucker chuckled. “Sorry. I’ve been dealing with too many tightasses today.”
When he fell silent again, Randall prompted, “And? Go on.”
“And that’s all I know. They’re going to make smoke grenades out of this hormone stuff. Don’t ask me how, ’cause I don’t know. We throw the grenades, wait for the bigfoots to show up, and then we shoot the fuck out of ’em.”
Randall was silent for a moment in concentration. Finally, she voiced what had ticked her off earlier: “So I guess then there’s no point following the Frederica Wolford lead you told me about, huh?”
“Why not?”
“Well, I just realized this girl was no different than any of the other women who’ve gone missing. We just paid attention to her because she was the first.”
“Yes, that, and she was on her way to a fertility clinic when she disappeared. You forget that bigfoots specialize in knocking women up?”
“No, it’s just—I dunno. That just seemed like a coincidence.”
Tucker laughed. “You’re still green in some ways. That’s why I like you.”
Randall felt a blush rising. “So you don’t think it’s a coincidence?”
“Course not. I’m a fatalist. Everything happens for a reason. Now tell me what you’re going to do about this lead.”
Randall sighed and glanced into her coffee mug. How had it gotten empty already? “I was going to question the scientist running the study that Frederica Wolford never showed up for.”
“Good, good. You could ask more pointed questions now that you’re familiar with the big picture. I wonder how many of these other MPs he has connections to.”
As Tucker continued to think out loud, Randall thumbed through the notes about Nick Schaefer she copied from Frederica’s missing person file. The only contact information for him was his office address and phone number. Frowning, she turned to her computer and popped his name into a couple online phone directories, one proprietary and one public. She wasn’t surprised not to find him.
“Have you looked up his home address?” Tucker said.
“I just did. Let me try his DMV record. . . . Okay, here we go. I got ’em.”
“Great. Read it off to me.”
Randall blinked at her phone receiver. “What? Why?”
“You don’t think I’m gonna sit here all day playing with my moustache, do ya? Let’s you and me go question him. It’ll be like the old days.”
Randall grinned. “But I thought all investigations are on hold.”
“Oh, please,” he said. “It’s me you’re talking to.”
✽ ✽ ✽
As there were no cruisers—marked or unmarked—free for her to use, Randall drove her Hyundai. This time, she avoided the traffic jams by threading down back roads. Even so, the congestion by now had spread everywhere, and again she resorted to her rotating emergency light to bypass it. Angry honks followed her, as if drivers blamed her for the gridlock and monsters. Tucker’s office was at least fifteen minutes closer to the scientist’s home address in Fairfax, and she imagined him impatiently waiting for her outside the man’s door.
She turned off Lee Highway onto Monument Drive and started scanning for the address—and immediately saw a police cruiser at the mouth of a vacant lot. Sergeant Tucker leaned against the vehicle’s side. He was reading a freestanding metal sign.
Randall pulled alongside and lowered her window. Although the sun was going down, the inrushing heat and humidity smacked her face like a hot towel.
“Lost?” she said.
Tucker didn’t seem to notice her. He cont
inued reading the sign. Randall glanced at it and saw the words “Historic Marker” in raised lettering.
Tucker finally spoke: “I went up and down the road three times before I realized this is the address.”
Randall frowned at the scattered clumps of trees and grass. She reached for her CAD terminal before she remembered she was in her civvie car. “You call up his record again? Maybe there’s an error, or—”
“Nope, it’s no error. The wily pencilneck was just being clever.” Tucker sounded angry. It was the first time she’d heard him like this in a long time. Randall glanced at his oversized arms and figured Nick Schaefer should be glad he was someplace else.
“How can you be so sure?”
In answer, Tucker pointed at the sign. Randall leaned out her window to read it.
World War II POW Camp
Near this spot, 150 German prisoners of war spent June-Nov. 1945 in an internment camp approx. 400' x 200'. To offset labor shortages, they worked at 196 farms throughout Fairfax Co., logging 111,000 man hours harvesting 3,500 ears of corn.
“I don’t get your meaning,” she said.
Tucker cracked a smile. “Put it all together. Schaefer’s a scientist. You don’t think the bigfoots were caused by rabies or contaminated water, do ya?”
“No, but we’ve guessed that much already. That’s why we need to talk to him.”
“So put that together with this sign and the fact that he listed this place as a bogus home address. What do you get?”
“Are you saying he listed this as his address because there were once Nazis imprisoned here?”
“I think so.”
Randall smiled to hide her rising frustration. “You know, I have great respect for your deductive abilities. You taught me my job. But this time you might be making a leap.”
Tucker shrugged his massive shoulders. “Maybe. But this sign is the only thing on this lot. I think our little science boy is making a subtle statement.”
“That he’s a neo-Nazi?”
“Use your mind, Christina. It’ll come to you.”
That’s the trouble, she thought. My mind isn’t exactly a radar dish these days.
She was about to ask another question when a white-haired bigfoot vaulted over the sign. It landed on Tucker.
✽ ✽ ✽
“Sarge!”
The creature pulled him down on the other side of his car, where Randall couldn’t see. She was out of her own car in a second—already drawing from her shoulder holster—but it was too late.
A clawed hand raised into sight for an instant and slashed downward, cutting off Sergeant Tucker’s scream.
Randall aimed over the hood of the car just in time for a furry face to raise up and regard her. She shot it through the eye.
“Sarge! Oh, shit!”
She rushed around his car, aiming at the fallen creature. But it was no longer moving. Tucker lay face-down beside the front wheel. Randall reached to roll him over.
Multiple puma-like shrieks came from everywhere.
She looked up. Half a dozen bigfoots were converging on her. The ones walking upright held their erect, baseball-bat penises in one hand.
She shot at one but missed. They kept coming.
There was no way she’d be able to drag Tucker’s linebacker-sized body to safety in time. The driver door to his cruiser was within reach, but she realized she might not even have time to save herself.
She tore it open and dove in. She shut the door on her ankle, causing a spike of pain, just as the nearest bigfoot attacked. It landed on the roof, rocking the vehicle on its shock absorbers.
Randall pulled her foot in and slammed the door—this time on the monster’s fingers as it reached for her. Howling, it withdrew its hand. She tried again to close it and was successful.
Tucker had left the engine running, his last gift to her. She yanked the gearshift into drive and floored it. Dust and gravel sprayed as the car lurched ahead. She hit a bigfoot on her way out of the lot and yelled in savage triumph.
Then she cried for her lost friend.
Chapter 13
In Margaret’s bedroom, the TV murmured on and on like a keening mourner. It wasn’t on loud, but she could hear it just fine. She might have heard its words even on the mute setting, so intently was she listening.
But never did it say they’d found Daniella.
“Now we go live to the Department of Homeland Security in Washington, where Rachel Daws has the latest on the government’s response to the attacks. Rachel, what’s the situation there?”
“Thank you, Mike. The officials I’ve spoken with today at DHS headquarters have expressed quiet confidence in its crisis control efforts so far. Still labeling this as a series of attacks by rabid black bears, the DHS is coordinating approximately two hundred ‘mobile strike units,’ comprised of teams of local and federal law enforcement, to track down and capture—or kill—the rampaging animals. The department has given no figures so far as to success rates, but it continues to urge all residents to stay indoors and remain calm.”
“Rachel, earlier this hour, we ran footage showing these so-called bears running in excess of thirty miles per hour and jumping at least twenty feet into the air. By now, hundreds of eyewitnesses have described them as having man-like faces and cat-like bodies with grossly enlarged genitals. Wildlife experts have stated that these resemble no bears they’ve ever heard of. What does the DHS have to say about that?”
Margaret wheeled from her bathroom sink, to which she clung in pain-induced delirium. “What the fuck do they have to say about the missing girls? Where’s my daughter?”
As she waited for an answer that never came, the house vibrated with the overhead passage of yet another helicopter. The sound of helicopters, sirened vehicles, and the television had been her only companions since she sneaked out of the hospital twenty-four hours ago. Occasionally, she heard the chatter of gunfire.
After driving out of the hospital parking lot, she had made two quick right turns back into the housing developments—in the direction where she believed the monsters had taken Daniella. She quickly became lost, circling on streets with names like Monarch and Whipple. She squinted in the day’s failing light as she peered between houses for any sign of her daughter. Most likely she would see a bigfoot instead.
Then what will I do? Get out for some fisticuffs? Run back to the police and have that insolent Detective Baker arrest me?
She rolled down her window and tried calling Daniella’s name—and wound up coughing as her swollen and abused throat refused to cooperate.
In the end, her body decided for her. Her neck and back felt like a Lego tower that a child had punched in the side: misaligned, broken, and unable to support any weight. Her head throbbed from the collision with the wall behind the hospital’s reception desk, making her eyes watery and hard to focus, which wasn’t helped by the crack that bisected one lens of her glasses. Her right thigh burned where a creature had clawed her. Plus, a hot flash was coming on. She wanted to throw up.
Sobbing, Margaret found her way back out of the subdivision and reluctantly drove home. She’d never felt so powerless or desolate in her life, even when Henry died. Police cars passed her going the other way. She tried to tell herself they would find her daughter—they were professionals—but deep down, her gut said otherwise. She stayed up until well after midnight.
Today had been worse.
No word from the police, no surprise phone call from Daniella, no indication whatsoever that she or her daughter meant a damn to anyone. She would have paced the house—pacing always helped her think—except she was in such pain that she’d stayed in bed all day. Her spasming back and neck muscles wouldn’t allow her to move, although she did so anyway—just once, this morning—to drag herself literally on her hands and knees, sobbing, to the toilet and to retrieve ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. She knew she needed medical attention, especially for her neck. A life-threatening hematoma could develop. Swelling could b
lock her airway in her sleep. But what kind of treatment could she expect from a hospital system so devastated?
You’re not thinking straight. You’re a doctor. You know better than to do this to yourself. No . . . no, too many unknowns. The monsters could come back. I could be arrested for fleeing an officer during questioning. I could be taken someplace where Daniella can’t reach me. That’s the most important part—I could be the only person who cares enough to make her a priority. They’re overwhelmed with everything else, and I can’t afford to be shut away receiving treatment. I might not need it anyway. Even if I do, I could probably give it to myself.
And so she passed the first day without her daughter. The frenetic news coverage set a manic tempo for her thoughts.
A short while ago, the combination of her gurgling stomach—no one was going to come feed her, after all—and the day’s diminishing light had forced her out of bed once more. She screamed when the motion caused something in her neck to pop, squirting pain like molten lava throughout her neck and shoulders. Gemini the cat, which had been curled up by her feet, jumped off the bed and raced to the kitchen, obviously believing she was on her way to feed it.
“. . . And that was Rachel Daws, live at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Washington. Meanwhile, across the nation, pharmacists report an unusually high demand for birth control pills and IUDs. . . .”
Background noise, that’s all it was. Background noise to her worry.
Pushing up her glasses, Margaret grimaced at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. A necklace of fresh bruises hung around her throat, and it hurt to swallow. She reached for the ibuprofen. On her last visit to get medicine, she had accidentally knocked her cup off the sink, but she hadn’t picked it back up because her back and neck hurt so much, so this time she washed down the pills with water scooped by hand. Since she couldn’t bend over, half the liquid splattered down the front of the blouse she’d been wearing for two days. The sight of this mess made her cry like a little girl.
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