by Alex Kava
As soon as she left the field house she thought she heard him. Leaves crackled, a branch snapped. Griffin wouldn’t even need night-vision goggles to track her. But why let her leave with the rifle?
Because he doesn’t think you’ll be able to fire it.
She pushed the thought out of her mind.
For a rare moment the cicadas were quiet but Maggie couldn’t hear Griffin. Again, he was giving her a head start.
Cocky son of a bitch.
She thought she heard a car door slam but she could no longer see the field house or the clearing. He knew she wouldn’t get far. He’d stop and get what he needed.
Within minutes she made it past the yellow tape. She was back at the crime scene. Familiar territory. She could, at least, stay put, get set. But there were a few things she needed to do. She hoped she had enough time.
Without much effort she found what she was looking for. She tried to remember what Donny had told her, then she took a deep breath and got to work.
She saw Griffin without effort. He had put on a pair of the white coveralls, too. Which meant he was ready to do whatever it took. She imagined what the teenagers saw that night when he came for them. Dawson talked about a white wolf. Griffin had known the salvia would provide enough hallucinatory effects to enhance his disguise. This time he didn’t have the bug-eyed goggles. He wouldn’t need them. Maggie had counted on his confidence. That’s why she chose the darkest shadows she could find, though she knew her white coveralls would be easy to spot.
“It’s over,” he told her, stopping about twenty feet away.
She raised the rifle and flipped the switch which sounded similar to racking a round of a shotgun.
She waited.
His steps were slow but not hesitant.
Her finger stayed on the trigger. Just a few more feet. She wanted to make sure he was in range for the full impact. She remembered Platt saying fifteen to twenty feet. She’d make him come as close as possible. She had checked all the connections, made sure the cord from the backpack to the rifle butt hadn’t been disengaged. There were no other switches. She had checked.
Fifteen feet.
The darkness played to her disadvantage now. She couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t tell if he was afraid or smiling. She couldn’t even make out what he was holding.
It was way too dark.
“Won’t make a difference without the power pack,” he said and held up an object.
Maggie felt as if she had been kicked in the gut. That was the one thing that was different about the rifle. It required an energy source in place of bullets. That’s what the backpack was for. Was Griffin bluffing? Did the gun also need a power pack–like battery to hold its charge?
He stepped closer.
She ignored her sweaty palms and steeled herself. He had to be bluffing.
“Stop or I’ll shoot.”
He kept coming and Maggie pulled the trigger.
Nothing.
She tried again and the empty click made her heart stop. She heard him laugh as she threw down the rifle and clawed at the straps of the heavy backpack, trying to shrug it off as she turned to run.
He lunged at her. Didn’t even see the wire she had strung chest-high between the two trees in front of her. He flew backward, knocked off his feet.
She was on him in seconds, flipping his body over. His muscles were stiff and contracted from the electrical shock. He didn’t move when she slammed her knee into the small of his back. His arms jerked but he had no control over them as Maggie yanked them back and used zip ties she had found in the building.
He mumbled and jabbered, not unlike Dawson.
“Y-y-you b-i-i-i-i-tch.”
He was much bigger than Dawson. The effects of the shock wouldn’t last long. Maggie moved quickly to his feet, tying them together with the ropes they had used to secure the crime scene.
“Not get a-a-a-a-way.”
She ignored him. Sweat drenched the inside of her coveralls. Her fingers were steady now, and she quickly grabbed another rope to connect the zip tie on his wrists to the rope on his feet. Then she pulled tight until he was bent in half.
“Damnit, y-y-you.”
Hog-tied, he wasn’t going anywhere. He could yell all he wanted. She didn’t hesitate and wrapped what was left of the rope around a tree.
“Nice job.” A voice startled her from behind.
She spun around. Blinded by a flashlight, she still recognized the silhouette and the voice.
“No thanks to you,” she told Sheriff Frank Skylar.
“It-it-it’s about tim-m-m-me,” Griffin stuttered.
Maggie shot a look back at Skylar. Only now did she see the sheriff had his weapon pointed at her.
“You really should have gone back to Denver,” Skylar told her. “We would have handled this just fine. No one else would have had to be hurt.”
“Sho-sho-shoot her.”
Maggie stayed down on her haunches, unarmed. With the light blinding her, she couldn’t even find a branch or rock.
“Now we’re gonna have to make up some story about how that Stotter guy was stalking you. Shame the way things happen,” Skylar was saying. “Both of you come up missing at the same time.”
“He wasn’t stalking me,” Maggie said, wondering if it would make a difference if she tried to stall. Her muscles started screaming again, reminding her what they’d been through.
“Yeah, well, it’s funny how rumors get started.”
“Sho-sho-shoot her.”
“Shut up,” Skylar yelled. “I’m sick and tired of cleaning up after you. Why didn’t you just stay in Chicago? You and your lamebrain scams.”
He reached out and placed the gun barrel against her temple. The metal felt cold and solid.
She looked up, forcing him to look into her eyes, though she couldn’t see his face. All she saw was a huge swatch of black fur hurling through the air just as the gun went off.
Maggie felt the heat scorch her skin. Pain ripped across the side of her skull. She fell hard against the ground. Couldn’t hear anything except a high-pitched ring. The world swirled around her. From where she lay she could see Skylar’s body twisting and turning. His mouth was open but she couldn’t hear his screams, just the ringing inside her head. She saw Skylar cradling the bloody mess that used to be his arm.
She closed her eyes, expecting darkness, almost welcoming unconsciousness.
That’s when she felt the warm wetness on her cheek.
She opened her eyes to find a huge black German shepherd licking her face.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 12
SIXTY-NINE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Julia Racine juggled a tray with two coffees, two chocolate doughnuts, one glazed cruller, and one container of chocolate milk while pinning a copy of The Washington Post under one arm and a stuffed koala bear under the other. A nurse helped her push open the door.
“Thanks,” Julia said and bounded down the hall.
By now she was getting used to the smell of disinfectant and the ding of monitors inside dimly lit rooms. She kept herself from glancing into the rooms. She didn’t want to see any other patients except CariAnne.
She found the girl and her mother mesmerized by yet another cable news show blaring the current events of the day. The anchor was discussing an impending press conference about the contaminated food in schools.
“Yah! Doughnuts!” both daughter and mother squealed, raising their arms.
“And you brought my bear.”
CariAnne reached for the ragged stuffed animal but her left arm was still connected to a monitor. She stopped, readjusted, and tried again.
They were told all of the gizmos were only for precaution. So far the little girl was testing negative for all the salmonella strains they had been tracking. The antibiotic cocktail that Colonel Benjamin Platt had ordered seemed to be working, though CariAnne would need to take it for another ten days.
“Nice column today,” Julia said, se
tting aside the folded Washington Post and grabbing her cruller.
“Careful, you’re starting to sound like a fan.”
Julia stopped short of telling her that she intended to be a fan for a very long time.
A news alert came over the television screen and both mother and daughter shushed her even though Julia wasn’t talking. She smiled and simply took her seat.
Julia saw Mary Ellen Wychulis take the podium. She didn’t look the least bit uncomfortable replacing her boss. Her new title appeared in a graphic below: Undersecretary of the Food Safety and Inspection Service. If Julia didn’t know better she would have thought the woman had been in this position for years.
Wychulis explained what they believed had happened in last week’s outbreaks at two separate schools. A supplier for the National School Lunch Program had not reported an internal contamination before shipping out ground beef. She insisted that all the ground-beef products were being recalled and to be on the safe side, no ground beef would be used in school lunches for the next several weeks.
Julia was impressed, although she thought the tall, willowy woman who used to be Benjamin Platt’s wife sounded too much like an easily manipulated government employee. An opportunist who was ready to step up, maybe even step over whomever she needed to, all in the name of business as usual.
Remembering that late-night meeting with the USDA, Julia wondered if everything really would be taken care of. Had the real person responsible been caught or would Irene Baldwin be blamed for a contamination that had been in the making long before she even showed up. But that was politics. If Julia remembered correctly, the secretary of agriculture was a crony of the president. Just several days ago the man was more than happy to erroneously blame a poor kitchen worker for this entire mess.
Julia tried to concentrate on the press conference. Wychulis was saying that she wouldn’t take any questions.
Of course, they won’t take any questions.
But then Wychulis told the crowd of reporters that she would introduce the person who would. The administration’s newest cabinet member. The president had just made the appointment official this morning to replace his longtime friend, who was suddenly retiring.
“No,” Wychulis insisted, it had nothing to do with this latest recall effort. The timing was totally coincidental.
Then she waved to someone at her left and introduced the new secretary of agriculture: Irene Baldwin.
SEVENTY
ST. JOHN’S CATHOLIC CHURCH
HALSEY, NEBRASKA
Several hundred people had crowded into the small church and yet when Maggie entered she could swear all eyes were watching her. She tried to hide her surprise at seeing Johnny Bosh laid out in his casket right inside the entrance. He looked peaceful in a blue suit and red necktie. Then she saw the football tucked in beside him and the earbuds, the cord and iPod tucked into his pocket. Suddenly she felt tears threatening to well up.
Five teenagers were dead. It was too big a toll for any community. They’d be having funerals all week. She made herself go to this one, despite Lucy’s insistence that she stay in bed and get some rest. Griffin had grazed her scalp. It’d leave a scar under her hair—that is when her hair grew back. Today she was able to cover most of the stitches by parting her hair on the opposite side.
She had two broken ribs, some scrapes, and plenty of bruises, but she had been through worse in the past. The physical wounds would heal, adding a few more scars. The rest she would try and tuck into a new compartment in her mind. Later there would be plenty of time for rest. Kunze was giving her the week off. There had been no lecture, no punishment, no suspension—in fact, no explanation other than to tell her he didn’t want to see her until the following week. She didn’t want to think about how much Kunze may have known about the cattle mutilations when he sent her to the Sandhills. No one would probably ever know the whole story.
As it turned out, Mike Griffin wasn’t just an engineer. After Desert Storm he signed on with the U.S. Department of Defense and became a bioengineer. But several years ago he left to work for a Chicago-based research firm. His new employer had contracted with the federal government to use the field house for growing, testing, and developing hybrid strains. The project seemed harmless, so why did Griffin and Frank Skylar go so far to keep Griffin’s stepdaughter and her friends away?
“I just wanted to scare them” was what Griffin had told Maggie. But he didn’t explain why. Nor would he explain the huge tanks inside the field house that were filled with floating bovine parts, how those parts had gotten there, or what they were being used for. Despite the tanks, Maggie realized that there would probably never be enough evidence to connect Griffin and his employer to the cattle mutilations, but she suspected Wesley Stotter’s fantastic story about black ops helicopters and secret government testing may not have been so crazy after all.
Griffin’s boots matched the prints left at the scene and in the hospital. He was being charged with attempted murder of Dawson and Maggie. Both he and Skylar were being questioned in the deaths of Kyle and Trevor as well as Wesley Stotter.
Dawson Hayes had told Maggie that the teens had wanted to film their drug-induced experience for YouTube, however no camera had been found by investigators. Late Sunday evening the video had shown up on YouTube. State and federal investigators were still trying to find who posted it. The grainy quality made it impossible to identify anyone but it caught the laser rifle in action and explained the light show the teenagers had experienced.
The smell of burning incense filled Maggie’s nostrils, bringing her back to the present. Inside the huge double doorway she caught a glimpse of old women, a group of about a dozen with their heads bent, fingers holding rosary beads, lips barely moving as they led the congregation in prayer. Maggie remembered little of the service, which included processions, lighting of candles, and hymns sung by a choir of Johnny’s classmates.
Sitting between Donny Fergussen and Lucy Coy, she tried to close her mind off as she gazed at the stained-glass windows. The morning sunlight burned through the orange and red and purple stained glass, transferring rainbows of color onto the walls. She couldn’t help thinking about the irony of how this tragedy had started with a light show and would now end with one.
As for Courtney and Nikki and Johnny—Maggie believed they were victims of Amanda’s bullying. She was the one— not Johnny—who had staged the drug parties. It was her way of controlling anyone she wanted to keep in her life and getting rid of those she did not. Donny Fergussen had also found text messages between Courtney, Nikki, and Amanda just seconds before the car crash.
Maggie glanced across the aisle at Dawson and his father. He still looked pale and weak. She wished she could pack up Dawson and send him somewhere safe.
Lucy had asked her to stay for a few days and Maggie had agreed. Last night when she talked to Platt he sounded worried about her injuries, the doctor trying to take care of his patient. He’d even asked to talk to Lucy to make sure Maggie was being taken care of. But Maggie didn’t want to be his patient. She didn’t know how to tell him that all she really wanted was for him to be with her. Just the thought of it seemed too needy, too vulnerable, and she ended up telling Platt that she was fine, that she’d see him when she got back to D.C. at the end of the week. She explained that it’d take her a couple of days to drive back. She had already decided that Jake would be going with her and they would not be flying.
As the crowd filed out of the church Maggie was grateful for the fresh air. The incense had made her head swim a bit. She felt Lucy holding on to her elbow and instead of telling her she was fine, Maggie allowed the woman to pamper her. They moved aside and stayed on the portico letting the others go down the steps first, waiting for the crowd to thin. From above they could watch.
It wasn’t until Lucy nudged her that Maggie saw him standing across the street. Benjamin Platt waved and made his way through the people getting into cars that were lined up on both sides.
“He’s more handsome than I imagined,” Lucy told her.
He bounded up the stairs, carefully weaving against the last of the crowd. As he introduced himself to Lucy his eyes flickered over Maggie’s battered face. She wanted to tell him she didn’t need him coming all this way just to take care of her. That she was fine. Before she could say anything he kissed her, carefully and gently, but leaving Maggie breathless and with little doubt as to whether he thought of her as a patient.
“I thought you and Jake might like some company on the drive home.” Platt smiled and added, “But I have to warn you, I love show tunes.”
SEVENTY-ONE
CHICAGO
Roger Bix arrived before noon at the processing center on the north side of Chicago. It was only forty-eight hours since he and Platt had visited the site. This time, however, he brought a fleet of federal marshals in three black SUVs.
They drove single file to the far end of the processing plant’s parking lot and pulled up to the chain-link fence.
Immediately Bix knew something was wrong.
The security hut was dark. There was no one to stop their entry.
At first glance, the building appeared abandoned. The enclosed walkway that connected the facility to the processing plant was empty of military personnel, workers, and armored vehicles.
Bix’s team waited for the marshals to get out of the SUVs. Then Bix led them into the building. There was no one to greet them in the lobby. The halls were dark and deserted, as were the rooms and laboratories. There were no men and women in white lab coats, no digital microscopes, no computers or rows of monitors. No Philip Tegan. No one. The entire facility had been stripped and was now completely empty.