The Shimmer

by David Morrell

  The Shimmer

  David Morrell

  When a high-speed chase goes terribly wrong, Santa Fe police officer Dan Page watches in horror as a car and gas tanker explode into flames. Torn with guilt that he may be responsible, Page returns home to discover that his wife, Tori, has disappeared.

  Frantic, Page follows her trail to Rostov, a remote town in Texas famous for a massive astronomical observatory, a long-abandoned military base, and unexplained nighttime phenomena that drew onlookers from every corner of the globe. Many of these gawkers – Tori among them – are compelled to visit this tiny community to witness the mysterious Rostov Lights.

  Without warning, a gunman begins firing on the lights, screaming 'Go back to hell where you came from,' the turns his rifle on the bystanders. A bloodbath ensues, and events quickly spiral out of control, setting the stage for even greater violence and death.

  Page must solve the mystery of the Rostov Lights to save his wife. In the process, he learns that the decaying military base may not be abandoned at all, and that the government may have known about the lights for decades. Could these phenomena be more dangerous than anyone could have possibly imagined?

  David Morrell

  The Shimmer

  ONE – THE BECKONING

  1

  From fifteen hundred feet off the ground, the blue pickup truck looked like a Matchbox toy. Normally it would have blended with traffic, but on this clear Tuesday afternoon in early June, the pilot watched the truck race past other vehicles and veer back and forth between lanes as the driver searched for any open space he could find.

  The aircraft, a Cessna 172, had high wings and a single propeller. Its pilot was a forty-year-old police officer named Dan Page. He knew that the driver of the pickup was male because he monitored a police radio through his headphones and was aware that ten minutes earlier the man had shot and killed another man in a feud between drug dealers at Fort Marcy Park. A police officer driving by saw the shooting. When he sped into the park, the assailant fired through the cruiser’s windshield and killed him. Park workers who saw the murders all identified the shooter as a thin, twentyish Anglo with a shaved head and a white T-shirt, the short sleeves of which revealed a large tattoo on his left arm.

  This was Page’s day off. A private pilot, he enjoyed flying his Cessna from Santa Fe ’s small airport and, as he phrased it, “getting above it all.” But when his police radio transmitted news of the chase, he headed over the four-mile-wide city to where the truck had last been seen, hoping to spot it among Santa Fe ’s low buildings and provide directions to his fellow officers in the pursuing police cars. Five minutes later, he had it in sight. The truck’s frantic, random route would have been difficult to follow on the ground but was obvious from the air.

  “He’s going east on Peralta,” Page said into the microphone on his headset. “Now he’s turning right onto Guadalupe, heading downtown.”

  “I’m five blocks in front of him,” another officer’s voice answered quickly. “I can cut him off.”

  “Wait. Now he’s veering onto Agua Fria.”

  Page stared down helplessly as an oncoming car swerved out of the truck’s way, lurched onto a sidewalk, and hit an adobe wall, earthen bricks cascading onto the hood. He imagined the sound of the crash, the violence somehow gaining in magnitude because of the distance.

  “He’s back on Saint Francis Drive,” Page warned.

  “If he’s headed toward the interstate, we’ve got the ramps blocked,” an urgent voice replied.

  Again the truck abruptly changed direction.

  “He’s turning right onto Cerrillos Road,” Page yelled.

  “I’ll intercept him at Cordova!” a different voice blurted.

  Peering down toward a crosswalk, Page noticed pedestrians scurrying to avoid the truck. A car was forced off the road.

  “Too late! He’s past Cordova!”

  “We’ll set up a roadblock at Saint Michael’s Drive.”

  “Better make it Rodeo Road! He’s driving so fast, you won’t have time at Saint Michael’s!”

  Indeed, the speed with which the truck covered distance was astounding. The other vehicles on Cerrillos Road seemed to be standing still.

  My God, he’s got to be doing over a hundred, Page thought.

  Other drivers must have seen the truck speeding toward them in their rearview mirrors, or maybe the fugitive kept blowing his horn. For whatever reason, traffic veered out of the way.

  “We’ve got the intersection at Cerrillos and Rodeo Road closed!” a voice shouted.

  Immediately the truck swerved onto another side street.

  Page finally understood the pattern. “I think he’s got a police radio!”

  “What?”

  “He changes directions whenever you tell me you’ve got a street blocked! He must be listening to us! Now he’s turning into the Lowe’s parking lot!”

  Customers leaving the huge hardware store darted to the side as the truck sped toward the movie theater at the end of the lot. It disappeared into a parking garage.

  Circling, Page watched for a man in a white T-shirt to leave the garage and try to get away on foot. But in June, a lot of men wore T-shirts, and from this altitude, it was almost impossible to distinguish colors on clothing. Moreover, the color might be irrelevant-the driver could force someone in the garage to give him a different-colored shirt so he could walk away without attracting attention.

  Page kept circling.

  A car left the garage.

  He watched the tiny figures of pedestrians proceeding toward the theater’s entrance. He looked for anyone whose pace was hurried.

  An SUV left the garage.

  He can change vehicles as easily as he can put on another shirt, Page realized.

  A sports car left the garage.

  From above, Page kept track of all three vehicles and described them to the officers on the ground. The first one reached a lane that took it to the left toward Cerrillos Road. The SUV reached the same lane and turned in the opposite direction, toward a side street. The sports car headed back toward the parking lot in front of the hardware store.

  Three different directions.

  Meanwhile, the pursuing police cars converged on the area. Page saw their flashing roof lights and imagined the wail of their sirens.

  No other vehicles came from the garage. At the hardware store parking lot, a police cruiser stopped the sports car. Page switched his view toward the first vehicle that had left the garage. It was stopped at the entrance to Cerrillos Road, unable to find a break in traffic. In contrast, the SUV faced no obstacles as it drove leisurely in the opposite direction, along the lane toward the side street.

  Page had a hunch and followed it. He descended a hundred feet, doing nothing drastic, nothing the FAA would object to, but even so, the downward motion made his engine grow louder.

  The SUV seemed to drive a little faster.

  He descended another hundred feet, making his engine sound even more insistent.

  The SUV increased speed.

  “He’s below me, in the SUV!” Page yelled into the microphone, testing his theory by flying another hundred feet lower and trying to provoke a response.

  He got one. The vehicle surged forward and skidded onto the side street.

  “He’s heading toward Airport Road!”

  The SUV swung onto the multilane road and zigzagged through traffic, its speed so reckless that cars swerved to get out of the way. Two of them crashed against each other. Each time the vehicle abruptly changed lanes, it rocked a little-not as stable as the truck had been.

  Page glanced farther along Airport Road, gaping at a gasoline truck that emerged from a service station. Oh, my God…

  When the SUV changed lanes again, t
he abrupt motion caused it to lean. Instead of tipping, it managed to jolt back onto all four wheels. But as the driver tried to find an open space in another lane, he must have yanked the steering wheel. The vehicle tilted more severely, balanced on two wheels, fell all the way over, and crashed onto its side.

  Throwing up a shower of sparks, it slid along the road.

  No!

  The SUV hit the tanker, tore a gash underneath, and burst into flames as the sparks ignited the gasoline cascading from the fuel truck’s belly.

  A fireball swelled upward. Banking from it, Page felt the shock wave. It took several moments before he could make his voice work and radio for an emergency team. Dark smoke drifted past him.

  2

  The debriefing room consisted of metal chairs arranged in rows before a blackboard. Overhead, fluorescent lights hummed and made everyone look pale as the police chief listened to their reports. Page glanced through a window and saw several television broadcast trucks in the police station’s parking lot.

  “Okay, you told me what you did right. Now, how about what you did wrong?” the chief demanded. “That press conference is in fifteen minutes. I don’t want any surprises.”

  “We weren’t chasing him,” one of the officers, Angelo, insisted. “We never endangered any civilians. All we did was try to get ahead of him and cut him off.”

  “Right,” another man, Rafael, added. “Even though the bastard shot Bobby, we didn’t overreact.”

  “He was driving a hundred miles an hour,” an officer named Vera said. “It’s a miracle the only other driver he killed was the poor guy behind the wheel of that gasoline tanker.”

  The chief looked in Page’s direction.

  “How about you?”

  Page tried not to imagine the agony of the tanker’s driver.

  “With the state police helicopter in the hangar for maintenance, the only aircraft available for police use was mine. I warned the air- port traffic controller to advise other planes not to fly over the city. I stayed above the minimum required altitude. No FAA regulations were broken. Nobody was at risk.”

  The chief swept his gaze across the group. “Anybody have anything to add? Any screw-up I should know about?”

  The group was silent.

  “Then I’m ready to talk to the reporters.”

  The officers looked relieved.

  Page hung back as they all rose and began to leave the room.

  “Want to join us for a beer?” Angelo asked.

  “As soon as I tell my wife I’m okay,” Page answered. He didn’t need to ask where they’d meet. They always went to the same place-a sports bar on Carrillo’s Road.

  Once he was alone in the debriefing room, he used his cell phone to call home. It was the fourth time he’d done so since landing-and the fourth time he’d heard his own voice saying, “Please leave a message.”

  He tried Tori’s cell phone, and for the fourth time it was her voice saying, “Please leave a message.”

  Yet again he said into the phone, “Hey, it’s me. Call me when you get this.”

  He glanced at his watch, the digital display of which showed 7:23. Where is she? he wondered.

  3

  Turning into the driveway of his single-story home, Page pressed the garage-door opener that was attached to his SUV’s sun visor. As the door swung upward, he saw that Tori’s Saturn wasn’t there. He drove in, turned off the engine, got out of his Grand Cherokee, and closed the garage door.

  Entering the shadowy kitchen, he noticed how quiet the house felt.

  A note lay on the table.

  Gone to see my mother.

  This made Page frown because Tori’s mother lived in San Antonio, Texas, eight hundred miles away, and Tori hadn’t said a word about wanting to visit her mother. What on earth could have caused her to make such a spur-of-the-moment trip? he wondered.

  The only explanation he could think of was, Some kind of emergency. She got a phone call with terrible news from her mother-no, about her mother-so she bought a last-minute plane ticket and hurried down to Albuquerque.

  The state’s only big airport was in Albuquerque. The drive down from Santa Fe took an hour and fifteen minutes. Normally Page and Tori used his plane when they visited her mother. But because he’d been flying and couldn’t answer his cell phone, Tori hadn’t been able to tell him what had happened.

  Sure. That makes sense, Page thought.

  Nonetheless, he couldn’t help rubbing his forehead.

  Even if I wasn’t able to answer my phone, that wouldn’t have pre- vented her from leaving a message.

  The kitchen phone hung on a wall next to the fridge. Page went over to it, looked at a list taped to the side, found the number he wanted, and pressed the buttons. He expected to get the answering machine, but an elderly voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  “Margaret? Is that you?”

  Page didn’t talk to Tori’s mother often, but she recognized his voice.

  “Of course it’s me, Dan. Why do you sound so surprised?”

  “I didn’t think you’d be answering. I just assumed you were sick… or something.”

  “Sick? What would give you that idea?”

  “I came home and found a note from Tori saying she’d gone to visit you. It’s so spur-of-the-moment-I mean, when I left this morning she didn’t say a word about going-I assumed something serious had happened. That you’d been in an accident or something like that. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Well, I’m tired from working in the garden all afternoon. Other- wise I feel fine. When Tori called and said she was coming to see me, I was as surprised as you.”

  Page tightened his grip on the phone. “She called you? When?”

  “This morning around ten.”

  As soon as I left to go to the airport, he thought. Tori was a real estate agent. She often spent the morning at home, writing offers or making phone calls.

  Page did some quick calculations. There wasn’t a direct flight between Albuquerque and San Antonio. Tori would have needed to catch a connecting flight in Dallas. Door to door, the whole trip usually took about seven hours. Depending on when her flight left, she should be in San Antonio by now, he thought.

  “Is she there? I’d like to talk to her.”

  “No, I don’t expect her for several more hours,” the elderly voice replied. “Maybe not until tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Confusion made Page’s head start to ache. “She must be on a really late flight.”

  “She’s not flying.”

  That didn’t sound right. “Not flying? But then how… Are you telling me she’s driving?”

  “That’s what she said. It didn’t make any sense to me, either. Eight hundred miles-but that’s what she told me she wanted to do. You really didn’t know about this?”

  “Nothing. Not a damned thing.”

  “I asked her why she was driving. She answered that she wanted to see the countryside and think. But she didn’t say what was on her mind. Dan, I don’t know another way to ask this. Is everything okay between Tori and you?”

  His impulse was to blurt, Absolutely. We get along fine. Things couldn’t be better.

  But the words stuck in his throat.

  He forced out a different answer. “All she needed to do was tell me she wanted to visit you. I might even have gone with her. She didn’t have to keep it a secret. If she drives straight through and gets there tonight, tell her to call me as soon as she arrives. I don’t care how late it is.”

  “Count on me. I’ll ask her.”

  “Not just ask her, Margaret. Please, make sure she does it. Put the phone in her hand and make sure she calls me.”

  4

  After he hung up, Page studied the kitchen. Tori had put the breakfast dishes away. The kitchen counters were bare, and everything was in its place, just as if the house were ready for a real estate showing.

  He moved into the living room. Magazines that had been spread across the c
offee table were neatly stacked. Cushions that had been in disarray from when he and Tori had watched television the previous night were back in their proper places. He remembered that she hadn’t watched TV for long, that she’d gone to bed early, saying she wanted to read.

  He walked down the hallway and peered into Tori’s office. Her lap- top computer was gone. Apart from a lamp, nothing was on her desk.

  He entered their bedroom. The bed was made, everything perfectly arranged. Looking in the closet, he discovered that two suit- cases were missing. He studied the empty hangers and concluded that Tori had taken most of her casual clothes but none of her business outfits. He checked her bureau drawers and discovered that all her socks and underwear were gone. He glanced toward her side of the bed. A compulsive reader, she normally kept a dozen books stacked there.

  All of those were also gone.

  Page didn’t move for quite a while. When he became aware of the gathering darkness outside, he went into the living room and sat in shadows.

  5

  Waking with a start on Wednesday morning, Page turned toward the terrible emptiness on Tori’s side of the bed. He stared at it for several troubled moments, then quickly got into some jeans, went outside, and grabbed the newspaper from the sidewalk, hurrying back so he wouldn’t fail to hear the telephone. But it didn’t ring.

  The newspaper’s headline announced, SHOOTING LEADS TO CHASE AND TANKER EXPLOSION. A photograph showed Bobby in his uniform. Another showed the truck driver. A third showed the twisted metal of the SUV and the gasoline tanker after the intense blaze had fused them together.

  Page turned the newspaper over, hiding the photographs.

  Unable to wait any longer, he picked up the phone and pressed numbers.

  “Margaret, it’s Dan.”

  She responded without any of the ordinary pleasantries: “Tori isn’t here yet.”