Species

by Yvonne Navarro

  Mouth open, Dan watched Sil escaping. The parking lot and entrance of the ID were total bedlam: screaming people, some Hispanic guy practically in spasms over his mangled Impala, agents running everywhere while trying to decipher rapid-fire orders spewing from the red-faced, infuriated Dr. Fitch as he rushed around on the sidewalk. Somewhere a switch was flipped and the entire scene was thrown into eye-dazzling white-on-white by emergency high-illumination lights mounted in the usually dark corners of each of the ID’s second-floor windows. All those people, a dozen engines racing but hopelessly entangled in a traffic jam, doing nothing but filling the warm night air with racket and exhaust. So many soldiers to fight the war, but not a one going after Sil—

  Except Press.

  Dan saw him whirl in the midst of the massive confusion. Press’s expression was a perfect picture of frustration when he realized there was no way he could get a vehicle out of the mess in time to give chase. With Laura hurrying after him, Press opted for dodging the chaos entirely, both of them circumventing the cars to get to the main entrance to the parking lot. As they reached it someone was turning in and gaping toward the activity at the front of the club. The guy was older and balding, and totally terrorized when Press stepped bodily in front of the moving car and aimed his submachine gun at the windshield. The driver lurched to a stop with his mouth hanging open, white-knuckled hands griping the steering wheel.

  “Get out!” Press shouted. He waved his government card in the air in front of the driver. “I need your car now!”

  The man didn’t argue; in addition to the 9mm pointed at his head, there were too many blue-suited government types running toward his vehicle to bother. He clawed the door open and fell out, landing on his butt on the sidewalk and gawking at Press and Laura as they hastily climbed into the car. As the automobile roared off with Press behind the wheel, Dan saw that the guy on the sidewalk looked like he was going to cry.

  Staring after the car that Press had commandeered, Dan realized it was a silver-gray 1995 Jaguar XJS.

  35

  Sil didn’t know anything about automobiles other than the basics of operation and that they need fuel in order to run. The one she was driving had been damaged when she had forced her way out of the parking place in front of the nightclub but that was to be expected, and while the rear underside of the car was making a lot of noise, it still seemed to perform the same. She was, however, quite taken aback at the blatant difference in the power and maneuverability of the vehicle pursuing her and the one she was driving. Scowling as she whipped the car north onto Nichols Canyon Road and left Hollywood Boulevard behind, she could easily see that while she had to fight to keep the Cutlass stable around the curves of the roadway, the sleek, silvery car tracking her had no problem hugging the twisting ribbon of concrete. She swung far too wide around a curve at the intersection by Delzuro and obliterated the glass-and-metal telephone booth on the corner; the resulting damage to the left fender and the front end made her wonder anxiously if the car was too crippled to continue. The only thing that kept her pursuers from swinging around and cutting her off was the traffic on the opposite side of the roadway. But she had to hurry; soon they would barricade the entire area, close it to outside traffic, and then those small diversions would be gone.

  In spite of the scenery hurtling past the car and the spiderweb of cracks that marred the windshield, Sil recognized the roadmarks. Above the squealing of the tires, the heavy sound of search-and-destroy UH-60L Blackhawk helicopters buzzed the roadway not far above. It didn’t matter; she was close enough to the substation now to believe her plan was going to work. With her left hand holding the wheel and never taking her gaze off the road, Sil reached back with her right and unscrewed the filler cap on the plastic container of gasoline she’d filled up at a service station this morning. Tossing it aside, she tipped the can forward and let it wedge itself upside down in the space between the front and the backseat. Gas fumes immediately permeated the car’s interior.

  The Olds almost lost it on the last curve to the right before Sil’s destination; the two Blackhawks that rose above the ridge on the highway ahead of her startled her enough to nearly make her turn too soon. Fighting her own reflexes, she headed straight for the lead one and was practically blinded for her effort by the high-intensity spotlight that snapped on directly into the windshield of the Cutlass.

  As the helicopter pulled up, banked and headed back toward her, Sil stomped the brake and twisted the steering wheel to the right, intentionally leading the Olds into a turn that made it skid off the road and careen down the embankment, ripping its own path through the heavy brush. With the vehicle bouncing down the side of the canyon, she shoved the driver’s door open, then reached over and hauled Marlo Keegan out of the cramped passenger-side floorboard. Leaving her arms and legs tightly wrapped with the heavy duct tape, Sil snatched at the square of adhesive covering the woman’s mouth until it came off. Her captive immediately started screaming, but with the crunching of metal, the grazing of the heavy branches along the sides of the car, and the hammering of the helicopter blades, her long shriek was just one more little noise amid the pandemonium of the chase.

  “We’re about a mile up Nichols Canyon Road,” Laura hollered into the microphone of her small radio. “She just took out the telephone booth at Delzuro. You’ve got to try to cut her off on Mulholland. Don’t let her get to a more crowded street!”

  “Jesus!” Press swerved to avoid the shards of glass and twisted metal spraying the roadway, the remains of the telephone booth. Aptly named, the twelve-cylinder Jaguar clung to the road like it was digging claws into the street surface. “I don’t know how many times I could’ve gotten around her and forced her to the side if it wasn’t for oncoming traffic.”

  “Don’t give up,” Laura said stonily. “We’ll get her.”

  Press’s short laugh startled her as the XJS swung right, then left again. “Give up? I’m sorry—I don’t think I know what that means!”

  They shot around another curve and Laura pointed. “Look out—she’s losing it!”

  The car in front of them had been a cream-puff early-model Olds before Sil had slammed it into the Impala in back of her at the ID; now it was beat to hell, its trunk permanently smashed closed above a back bumper Press was sure would let go at any second. They couldn’t see the front where it had smacked into the telephone booth at Delzuro, but he was sure she’d hit it hard enough to cave in the right front fender and probably loosen that bumper, too. It was amazing that all four tires were still intact, but now she seemed to have lost the remains of whatever driving skills she had acquired during her short period of freedom. For no apparent reason, the brake lights flashed and the Cutlass went into a skid that sent its front end plunging at full speed through the heavy foliage on the right side of the road. Sliding, the car plummeted down the incline.

  “What the hell!” Press hit the brakes and downshifted to first, leaving a trail of rubber behind the car as it screeched to a stop a couple of yards beyond the hole in the underbrush. Yanking his seat belt free, he leaped from the car and ran to the edge of the street, then almost lost his balance on the edge of the sharp drop-off. He backed up a few steps and squinted down the slope; he could hear the metal grinding and trees breaking, but seeing anything was impossible.

  “Should we follow her?” A half-dozen other vehicles skidded to a halt around the Jaguar, and Laura had to shout to be heard over the noise of racing engines and the helicopters diving at the tops of the trees below. Press opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get the words out, they heard a crash and saw blue-white sparks erupt somewhere in the black tangle beneath them. There was a series of harsh sizzles and the sudden, acrid smell of burning transformer oil swirled up, followed immediately by the deafening sound of the car as it exploded. Every streetlight in sight went dark.

  “Shit,” Press said crudely. He craned his neck forward, trying to see something beyond the dancing orange-and-red shadows. “I think she
plowed into an electrical substation. This makes absolutely no sense—she didn’t stand a chance this way. Why would she run off the road?”

  Laura peered down the path the Olds had battered through the foliage. “Maybe she wasn’t as smart as we thought.”

  The words didn’t fit the look of doubt on Laura’s features, and Press snorted as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Right. She’s been ahead of us every step of the way so far, so now she’s going to run her car into a bunch of electrical poles so it’ll blow up. Sorry, I didn’t know she had a death wish. I thought the point of the game was that she was trying to live.”

  As Laura started to reply one of the helicopters swooped out of the air like a huge black bird; there was a whistling noise and a moment later something heavy and loud rocked the side of the hill five hundred feet below. Press and Laura stumbled and grabbed for the surrounding shrubbery. By the time they found their footing, a fireball mushroomed from the valley floor, dousing the area with red-and-orange light. A second helicopter followed and fired another incendiary rocket, the backwash from its rotor creating churning circles of burning brush just visible down the track left by the Cutlass.

  “Oh, good Christ,” Laura said in disgust as she and Press struggled to their feet. “Not only have they ensured we won’t find any remains, they’ll probably burn up Nichols Canyon while they’re at it.”

  “I guess Fitch was listening when I bitched him out about the idea of taking her alive,” Press shouted. As if to punctuate their words, one of the Blackhawks circled over Mulholland and returned, firing a third incendiary rocket. This one overshot, and they glimpsed a line of fire ripping through the undergrowth, then speeding into a small backyard; a second later the fireball rammed into something solid. With a roar, someone’s home went up in flames. “What did I tell you?” Laura said bitterly. “How’d you like to come home from work and find that? Assuming, of course, you weren’t already there and in it.”

  Press straightened up and rubbed his face with his hands. The fire sent a warm orange glow all the way up to the road, but the light didn’t reach his eyes, which were still dark and troubled. “I don’t know,” he said gravely. “It’d be hard, but . . . knowing what we do—or maybe what we don’t—isn’t it better this way than to have any part of her survive?”

  Forty-five minutes later the entire team was assembled above the crash site. The streetlights were still out but Fitch’s assistants had several generators feeding oversized spotlights, and a multitude of headlights and high-powered flashlights finished illuminating the area. Press couldn’t decide if the situation reminded him more of a beehive or a black comedy.

  “All right,” Phil McRamsey told Dr. Fitch, “we’ve blocked the road in a big loop, including Woodrow Wilson and Laurel Canyon. The news crews are going completely ape-shit. We’re going to have to feed them something.”

  “I don’t care what you tell them,” Fitch said. “Just don’t tell them the truth. Handle it.”

  “Am I the only person here who thinks it’s awfully convenient that Sil turned up at the club like that and just by coincidence Dan saw her out by the Dumpsters?” Press looked at the rest of the group skeptically. “Or—imagine that!—an electrical substation just happens to be at the bottom of the hill that her car skids down? No one else has any doubts?”

  “What’s to doubt?” Fitch retorted. “Trust your eyes—she was at the ID, and the car she was in was incinerated. Seeing is believing, and every one of us got an eyeful.”

  “Excuse me, Dr. Fitch?” Fitch’s other aide, Robert, held up a sealed plastic bag. “We found what looks like a severed thumb.”

  “How the hell did you manage that?” Press demanded. “There’s nothing left of the interior of that car except ashes and smoke!”

  “It was jammed in the fireproofing of the driver’s door,” Robert said. “The door broke off during the crash.”

  Press’s eyes narrowed. “So the car door was open before it hit the substation.” He looked hard at Dr. Fitch. “She may not have even been in that car, Doc.”

  “We’ve already verified the presence of a body.” Minjha said. “And you saw her driving the car.”

  “Let me see the thumb.” Laura held out her hand and Minjha dropped the bag onto it, then offered her a penlight from his coat pocket. “That’s strange,” she murmured. “It looks . . . pinched off rather than torn. No ragged edges.”

  “If you saw the wreckage of the car down there, you’d understand how easily that could have happened,” Minjha said. “The miracle is that the thumb didn’t burn up with the rest of the body, not that it’s a clean cut. Maybe her hand got in the way when the door was torn off.”

  “Perhaps,” Laura said, but she looked troubled as she snapped off the light and handed it and the bag back to Robert. “Have it checked against the computer records to make sure. If it’s Sil’s thumb, we’ll be able to prove it by genetic identification. And be sure to call my room at the hotel tonight to confirm the match,” she reminded him sternly. “If I don’t hear from you, I’m going to assume the worst.” The aide nodded and tucked the plastic pouch into his side pocket.

  “Great.” Xavier Fitch rubbed his hands together briskly and glanced quickly at each of them. His gaze stopped on Press, then he dug in his pockets for the keys to the van. “Then that’ll be it. This job’s done, Lennox. Tomorrow you can all go back to your careers and normal lives. Congratulations on a job well done.” He turned his back and walked away without another word.

  They stood for a few moments without speaking, then Stephen cleared his throat and addressed Laura and Press. “That was a damned harrowing car chase. Are you two all right?”

  “Sure,” Laura said. “Besides, what could have happened? Jaguar or not, Press and I never came within ten feet of the creature.”

  Press grinned. “That pretty much sums it up, I think. A hard chase and a few bumps—hell, nothing a good meal and a drink or two won’t cure.”

  “Now there’s an idea,” Stephen agreed. “We could meet back at the Biltmore, whoop it up a final time.” He looked over at Dan. “What do you say, Dan?”

  “Me?” Dan had crossed his arms and was still staring oddly after Dr. Fitch. “I’m pretty sure Dr. Fitch thinks we’re all assholes and is glad to be rid of us.”

  While Stephen and Laura gaped at Dan, all Press did was burst into laughter.

  36

  Returning to Marlo Keegan’s house had been much easier than Sil envisioned. The people who hunted her had dropped two firebombs on the stolen Cutlass after it plowed into the substation and exploded, then carelessly destroyed another house with a third one. Between their arrogance at assuming she was still in the car and the resulting chaos from the burning home, Sil had slipped through the surrounding yards and woven her way down the neighboring streets until she was back on Doña Nenita. The Mazda was parked where she’d left it and had cleared of the gasoline fumes since she’d transferred the gas can to the Olds. The drive back to Marlo’s home was uneventful.

  Remembering one of the commercials she’d seen on television, Sil stopped only once, at a large-chain drugstore. She was in and out of the store in less than ten minutes, resisting the urge to dally in the aisles and examine the strange and colorful merchandise. She paid for her single item with cash from Marlo’s wallet.

  Now Sil stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at her reflection. She hadn’t been very skilled with the scissors but she had used the photograph on the box as a guideline and was nevertheless mildly pleased with the outcome. The shoulder-length blond locks were no more, and the woman in the mirror sported a short, shaggy-ended head of black hair. Tilting her face from side to side, Sil decided she liked it. The image was totally different and worked surprisingly well; the inky color made her skin look shockingly pale and her blue eyes seem overly large and luminescent, like some kind of moon child forever secreted from the sun.

  She picked up a comb from the vanity and pulled it
through the new, shorter style, then almost dropped it when something in the other room started ringing. Pulse pounding, Sil hurried out of the bathroom and searched until she found the source of the racket, feeling foolish to discover it was only a telephone. She started to return to the bathroom, then stopped when the ringing cut off in midnote and a recording of the dead woman’s voice came out of the Phone-Mate, a cream-colored box hooked to the telephone by a couple of wires.

  “Hi, this is Marlo. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message, I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can. Thanks for calling.”

  A second later a man’s voice floated out of the speaker.

  “Hey, sis, how you doing? I’m back in town and thought I’d catch you at home, but I guess I’m too early. Don’t forget, we’re supposed to go to Century City tomorrow to look for an anniversary present for Mom and Dad. Call me when you get in and let me know what time is good for you, okay? I’ll pick you up. Talk to you later.”

  The last word was followed by a click, then the machine on the dresser made an internal metallic sound and cut off. Silence once again filled Marlo’s small bedroom. Who was this person who expected the dead Marlo Keegan to return his call? The voice had said the two had made plans for tomorrow—when Marlo didn’t call, would he come here looking for her?

  Sil went to the closet and began rummaging through the clothes. No matter; within an hour she’d be gone from this house forever.

  The entertainment in the back corner of the Biltmore’s Grand Avenue Bar consisted of a three-member band, all very talented and in their early forties. One man played the piano, another had a double-cutaway Gibson ES-335 guitar, and the third member—a middle-aged woman who looked as if she took better care of herself than most females half her age—had a strong, lovely voice that reminded Press vaguely of Barbra Streisand. A nice overall effect, he thought somewhat testily, if you were into soft jazz and hadn’t grown up in the 1960s with an ear for good old rock and roll. These days his tastes tended toward the alternative bands with a hard, fast beat. Whatever Press’s personal preference, the couples gliding across the parquet dance floor seemed to find the excellently rendered tunes soothing, if not exciting. From the corner of his eye, Press saw Xavier Fitch come into the bar; the doctor noticed the group and hesitated, then chose an empty table on the other side of the room.