by CJ Petterson
Her stomach growled a warning. and she remembered she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The computer clock showed four thirty-nine P.M.
“Why aren’t you home in bed?”
Her heart jumped, her body stiffened with a jerk, and she spun around. “Evan! You scared me to death. How’d you know I was here?”
“Didn’t. I was on my way to the hospital and wanted to check the place out again. How’d you get in? I thought Ray had your key, and I had your spare.”
“I keep an extra at the house,” she said even though the one in her pocket was the one Ray had dropped at the lab.
“What’s going on?” His tone was casual, but she got the feeling he was more suspicious than curious.
“Just looking around. Thought I might have missed something.”
“What are these?” He reached for the pages on her printer. “I was going to hand them to you,” he said when she grabbed them out of his hand.
“Thanks. It’s just e-mails I missed while I was gone. Groaner jokes, a note from Ray about an astronomy sighting, etcetera, etcetera. I did a search for files on the study, but there aren’t any. Zero. Zip. Nada.”
“Why don’t you let me take a look at that note from Ray? Maybe it’ll give me a clue on his whereabouts.”
“Sure. Nothing I need to keep.” She peeled off Ray’s note, handed it to him, and rolled the rest of the pages into a tube.
He read the e-mail then folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket. “The time on it makes it evidence. What are you going to do about your missing binder?”
“I’m going to call the research office and get a copy of my report. You said you were going to the hospital. Did they find Dan?”
“They’re bringing him in now.”
Sadness dropped like a pall and encased her heart. “I need to be there, Evan.”
He nodded. “Figured you might. Come on, then.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
The slap of steel-belted radial tires on asphalt echoed into the interior of the patrol car while Evan talked on his cellphone in a low voice. Mirabel ignored the noise and examined the palm of her hand. She’d pressed that hand against the thick black vinyl that encased Dan’s body as medics wheeled the gurney through the sliding doors into the emergency room lobby. She could still feel the dusty coarseness of the body bag. She rubbed the curlicues and whorls of her fingertips against her thumbprint and then balled her hand into a tight fist and pressed it against her heart to protect the memory. Tears spilled onto her cheeks. Goodbye, dear heart. I am so sorry.
Evan twisted the steering wheel, and the car rocked, jostling her out of her thoughts.
“Where you going?”
“I want to show you something.”
“I’d rather go home and put my leg up.” While at the hospital, she’d traded the crutches and elastic wrap around her thigh for a fresh smear of antibiotic cream and a gauze bandage. The wound still throbbed from the commotion, but the doctor reassured her that would fade in an hour or so. She slouched in the seat, straightening out her leg under the instrument panel.
“Won’t take long,” Evan said. The car accelerated on.
At the eastern outskirts of Mendocito, where blacktop and remnants of civilization revert to dirt road and scrub brush, they passed a prefab, white, corrugated metal building sitting at the end of a quarter-mile-long access road. “I see I have a new chop shop to check out,” Evan said and pointed to the closed truck bay doors.
“How can you tell it’s a chop shop?” Mirabel asked.
“Those compressed gas tanks and the blacked-out windows.” He pointed to a row of green, torpedo-shaped canisters lined up next to the building. “Whoever’s working in there is using acetylene torches to cut up metal, but the yard is clean. That means stolen cars inside where nobody can see ’em.”
“You didn’t bring me way out here to give me a lesson in criminal behavior, Evan. Why am I here?”
“Had a call from Esther. She found your red binder.”
The news jolted her upright. “Where?”
“Over on the left there.” He nodded toward a rocky outcropping on a foothill of the mountains then swung the wheel and turned off-road. He toggled his window down, shifted into neutral, and rolled slowly to a halt behind a patrol car, the tires crunching across the sandy dirt. A woman in a chocolate and tan uniform that echoed his own got out of the car and walked toward them.
“Good grief, she’s no bigger than a minute,” Mirabel said as she took in Esther Lee’s appearance. She wasn’t much taller than an adolescent girl.
“That may be, but I wouldn’t mess with her. She’s big on martial arts. Black belt karate and some other stuff.”
Mirabel made a quick appraisal. Not quite pretty, not quite plain. The deputy’s black hair was pulled into a knot at the nape of her neck. Her dark eyes, shaped like small almonds, appeared to lack eyelashes and sat fairly close together on either side of a broad nose. A hint of mauve lip color warmed her full lips. Mirabel couldn’t identify any other make-up on her smooth, olive skin. Except for the uniform and the gun on her hip, she wouldn’t draw attention in a crowd.
Esther leaned into the open driver’s side window.
“Esther, this is Dr. Mirabel Campbell. Mirabel, meet my new deputy, Esther Lee.”
“Nice to meet you, Deputy Lee. Please call me Mirabel.”
Esther pinned Mirabel in an intense look. Then she lowered her eyes and nodded slightly. “Dr. Campbell.”
“What do you have, Esther?” Evan asked.
“This.” She handed over a red binder.
“Yours?” Evan looked at Mirabel.
She saw her project number written in black marker on the spine and nodded. The binder was empty and dirty and stained with brownish-red spots. Dread washed over her, and she felt queasy. She pointed. “Is that blood?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “Have to send it to Sacramento to get it analyzed.” He nodded to his deputy. “Anything else?”
“Tire tracks.” Esther pointed to four small stacks of rocks that secured a strip of yellow crime scene tape around a square of ground. “Big car or pickup.”
“What made you think to come way out here, Deputy Lee?” Mirabel asked.
“Sheriff said you and the dentist liked to watch stars. Here is a good place to look at the sky. The ground is high and away from town lights.”
“She’s right, Evan. Ray and I come here for exactly those reasons.”
“I will make plaster casts of tracks, Sheriff. Anything else?”
“Just the usual,” Evan said. “Anything that looks like it doesn’t belong, bag it, tag it, and bring it back to the office. I’ll get it off to Sacramento.” He started the engine and turned the car around.
“That was interesting,” Mirabel said when they had driven back onto the road. “She doesn’t like me for some reason.”
“Don’t take it personal. She doesn’t waste a lot of air on small talk.”
Evan aimed the patrol car’s grille at the sunset. The sun hung over the horizon like a blood orange. Minutes later, the molten sphere seeped into the rim of the earth, hiding the silhouetted ridgeback hills in a purple blackness. Evan twisted on the car’s halogen headlights, sending out twin strobes of bluish light that merged into one and pierced the deepening dark.
Mirabel glanced at the dashboard clock bathed in an eerie green light. Not yet seven-thirty, and she verged on exhaustion. A vibration not unlike a low-level electrical current hummed through her body. Her ears rang, and she found she needed to concentrate to keep her eyelids open.
Evan glanced her way. “I’ll have you home in a few minutes. About that binder back there, I’ll give you a maybe that wherever Dr. Briggs is, he didn’t go willingly.”
If she hadn’t been so tired, she would
have raised both hands in victory. “At last, something we agree on.” She waited a beat. “I hear you talked to Sully.”
“I caught him at the airport when he was tying down his plane. I was looking for info on Dan, and Sully knows Dan better’n most around here.”
“You told him you didn’t believe the plane was sabotaged.”
“That’s my opinion, yes, but he knows there’ll be an investigation. The Feds will decide what happened out there.”
No point in arguing right now, she thought and stared at the white ribbon in the middle of the road. She got lost in the sound of the tires singing on the blacktop and wasn’t aware her eyes had closed until Evan’s voice startled her out of her reverie.
“What I told Sully was pretty much the same thing I’m telling you right now,” Evan said. “I think it’s a damned shame Dan survived twenty-plus years of military flying only to die on some pissant hop to take you to a conference in Vegas.”
She pinched her lips together. “If you’re accusing me of causing Dan’s death, get in line because I’ve already done that. Sully won’t say it, but he probably thinks the same thing.”
“Don’t be putting words in my mouth. I’m not accusing you of anything. All I’m saying is that it’s a sorry state of affairs when a man like Dan Harbin gets blindsided by something he knew nothing about. Besides, what’s done is done.”
“No, it’s not done, and it won’t be until you find the person who did this.”
“Sheriff Thompson?” The voice of Tina Hall, Evan’s dispatcher, crackled over the radio.
Evan pulled the mic out of its holder. “Go ahead.”
“Mary Beth Hargroves called in about a barking dog.”
He laid the mic on his leg for a second. “One of the finer moments of law enforcement,” he muttered. “I’ll get back with you as soon as I drop off Doc Campbell at her house,” he said into the mic. “Be about five minutes.”
He reset the mic in its holder and turned into her driveway. “I’ll walk you to — ”
“It’s okay, Evan. You need to see a lady about a dog,” she said and stepped out of the car. Before she shut the door, she bent down until she could see his face. “I should have my report back from the research center maybe day after tomorrow. As soon as I find anything, I’ll let you know.”
“I expect you to.” He idled in the drive until she opened the side door of the garage and waved.
Mirabel hobbled into the kitchen, turned on the light, and hesitated. She smelled an odor she didn’t like. When the refrigerator compressor clicked on and broke the silence, she dropped her keys on the kitchen table and opened the door of the side-by-side. She lifted the lid of a cup of yogurt and wrinkled her nose at its fuzzy green top, before running it down the sink and spraying some air freshener. She found a frost-covered Snickers bar in the freezer, threw it on the counter to thaw, and headed for the living room, flipping up the light switch just inside the door.
A gaunt, dark complexioned man sat on the middle cushion of her couch. “Good evening, Dr. Campbell.”
Terror washed over her as she inhaled a gasp. Desperate to get away, she backpedaled and bumped into an unmoving body that had stepped in behind her. Strong fingers squeezed down on her shoulder and propelled her forward.
“Sit down, doctor.” The scarecrow on the couch pointed to the one overstuffed chair in the room. “Please. You’ve suffered a most awful experience, and we have so many things to discuss.”
She stumbled into the chair then looked over her shoulder at the broad-chested man who’d been behind her. Her years of scientific training kicked in, and she made a quick mental log of his features.
Not much taller than her own five-feet-five inches, he stood like a squat sentinel, his arms folded across his chest. His mouth was a stripe that slashed across a flat square face, pale under dark stubble.
She turned back to the intruder on the couch. “Who are you?” Her thudding heart made it impossible to speak without a tremor in her voice.
“Who I am is not important.” His voice was soft, his words unhurried. “However, if it’ll help our conversation move along, my associate is Mr. Karadzic. You may call him Tony. I … ” — he paused as if for effect — “am Saint John.”
Mirabel heard him say “SinJen,” in the accented, musical tones of a British Colonial educated at Oxford.
“Am I supposed to know who you are?”
“No, but I know you.”
“How did you — ”
“It’s a shame, really, the kind of locks they put on doors these days. You must hire a proper locksmith to put in more reliable ones.”
The first shock was wearing off, and Mirabel’s breathing started to level out. Knowing the sheriff would ask, she also studied Saint John. She’d never seen anyone who looked quite like him. Saint John’s pockmarked, nut-brown skin stretched taut over his face. His cheeks caved into hollows under prominent cheekbones. A black mustache, thin as a pencil line, curved down and merged into a neatly trimmed beard at the point of his chin. He had slicked back his glossy black hair to lay straight and close to his skull. His too-broad smile revealed his upper gums and uneven white teeth, but it was the large, slightly recessed canine tooth that sparkled with a diamond imbedded in a gold crown that held her attention.
Definitely not the usual street thug, she thought. I’ll remember this man.
His tailored, black, nubby raw silk suit and black shirt open at the throat were a funereal contrast to her couch covered in a yellow chintz print strewn with overblown English roses.
She got a whiff of his cologne. It wasn’t just the yogurt I smelled. It was eau de skunk. “You picked the wrong place to burgle. Look around you. I have nothing worth stealing.”
“I see that. I’m not a burglar.” His face turned sour, and a veil seem to slide over his pupils like the thin membrane that moves across the unblinking eyes of a shark just before it comes in for the kill.
Bile rose into the back of her throat, her stomach churned, and she shivered as an icy hand squeezed her heart. They’re going to kill me, her mind screamed. “Then what — ” Fear choked off her words.
“I’m here to prevent your disclosure of a special project before its objective can be realized. An accidental find on your part, I’m sure.”
Her mind raced. It has to be my research, but nothing sticks out. Nothing. A stream of anxious sweat trickled into the small of her back and another ran past her temple. Her breath shortened into panting. On the verge of a panic attack, she gritted her teeth and forced herself to take a calming breath. Not now. Not now. “What is it I’m supposed to have found, Mr. SinJen?”
“Come now, Dr. Campbell. Don’t play dumb. It’s unbecoming for a woman of your intelligence.”
“I’m not playing dumb. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Possibilities roiled through her head. The genome project. What did I miss? What is he after?
A benign, amused look crossed his face. “I’m almost inclined to believe you. Almost. Tell me, Dr. Campbell, what is your greatest discovery in the past two years?”
“I haven’t discovered anything. Ever.”
“Of course you have. That’s what scientists do.”
“All I’ve done for two years is validate the work of other scientists. I was to confirm that the project results weren’t a fluke, that I could reproduce them. I wasn’t on a quest of discovery.”
He tucked his pointed chin and checked the expensive-looking gold watch on his left wrist. When he lifted his eyes to peer at her from under the hood of dark brows, he said, “That’s not the answer I wanted to hear. Perhaps I should ask it another way.”
“Ask it any way you like. I don’t know what you want me to say. I haven’t discovered a thing.”
“That’s not what Dr. Briggs told us.”
He’s got Ray. “Ray knows diddly-squat about my work. Where is he?”
“You presume I know where he is.” He almost purred, but his tone had an edge.
She swallowed hard, trying to find wetness in her mouth, afraid Ray had become another of Saint John’s victims. “Is he still alive?”
“Not to worry. He’s only slightly damaged.”
“Let him go. You took my report, erased my computer files. There isn’t anything else.”
He watched her with the unblinking stare of a snake fixated on a doomed field mouse. “Oh, but there is.”
CHAPTER NINE
Sully headed for a nearby café where he had a nodding acquaintance with the usual customers and strangers were easy to spot. He spent the next hour perched on a bar stool at the counter of Mario’s Coney Island nursing a cup of coffee. He stared into the darkness beyond the windows, his thoughts drifting to Dan and Mirabel while a half-eaten slice of pie with an ooze of cherries dried on the saucer in front of him.
“Is that all you’re having?”
The girlish voice jolted him out of his thoughts. “Not very hungry.”
“Poor baby. Seems like you need a little cheering up,” Angela Kleinfeld drawled, dropping her voice into a husky invitation. Mario had adoringly nicknamed his baby daughter Angel, but the appellation had become more a misnomer once the girl exited puberty.
Seventeen-year-old Angel sported a head of platinum-bleached hair with dark roots and neon-pink tips that stuck out like straw. Hoops and studs of varying sizes were stabbed through the cartilage rim of her left ear. Sully winced whenever he saw her. Her eyebrows, nose, and the belly button centered in the pooch over her low-slung jeans remained pristine. He had a loser-buys-dinner bet with her father that one of those areas would be pierced before the end of the summer. Angel folded her arms under her bust and leaned against the counter in front of him.
Sully chuckled, then drained the contents of the coffee cup. “On that note little girl, I think I’m outta here.” He dug a hand into the pocket of his jeans then peeled off four singles from his money clip. He dropped the bills on the counter and waved at Mario on his way out.