China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

  She pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘‘I’ve got something better.’’

  She had found a yearbook from the subsequent school year. ‘‘Senior portrait of Miss Hopp,’’ she said. ‘‘And guess what? Casey wasn’t her real name. It was a nickname for her initials, K.C."

  I leaned over her shoulder, examining it.

  Hopp was named Kristal, and in the photo she looked incensed, perhaps because the photographer had posed her wearing a fake fur stole that was a million miles from her Detention Club clothes. She had prominent cheekbones, long straight hair, deep-set eyes under thick eyebrows. Something seemed familiar about her, perhaps the way she held herself, the way the loathing poured off the page. I felt suspicion trickling through my mind.

  ‘‘I’d like to take this to the police,’’ I said. ‘‘Maybe they have an artist who can do an age progression.’’

  ‘‘A police artist? In China Lake?’’

  Right. Probably the only person around who could draw an age progression was Tabitha. What I needed was the computer-imaging program from Neil Jorgensen’s medical practice. I mentioned this to Abbie and she said, ‘‘Stop. Miss Thing, you are in luck. Wally uses that program to show parents how their kids will look after orthodontia.’’

  Wally’s office was in a strip mall near the center of town. We walked into that dreadful dentist’s-office Muzak-and-crepe-sole hush, hearing the squeal of a drill in the back. A hygienist stood near the front desk with a green surgical mask hanging around her neck. ‘‘Emergency,’’ Abbie said, coming through, ‘‘need to use the computer.’’ The hygienist didn’t blink at seeing her, me, Luke, and the three Hankins kids, and I wondered how often she rolled in here like this.

  Abbie set Hayley on the counter and started scanning the yearbook photo into the computer. Over her shoulder she said, ‘‘By the way, our canine friend who tried to make a meal out of me?’’ She raised her arm, showing how well the bite was healing. ‘‘It wasn’t a coyote.’’

  ‘‘Say again?’’

  ‘‘It was a coydog. A coyote-mastiff cross. Some wild boy got in with Fifi and bred a litter of hybrids.’’ She stared at the computer screen. ‘‘And’’—she typed— ‘‘Animal Control says it was domesticated. Its last meal was Pedigree Chum. Somebody owned that thing, and they’re going to be in a world of trouble if Animal Control finds out who. And I can’t wait.’’

  Wally finished his drilling and joined us, his huggybear face unnaturally serious. When Abbie brought the photo up on-screen, he said, ‘‘Let me.’’

  A man who spent his days staring at people’s mouths, he was adept at visualizing the changes that time causes in a face. He drew down the mouth, added the start of jowls, thinned the eyebrows, lengthened the nose. ‘‘It’s not conjecture,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s based on the subject’s underlying anatomy—bone structure, muscle attachments—and on what we know about the aging process.’’ The image changed, and a hot prickle began inching up my spine.

  I said, ‘‘Give her a rough life and some weight.’’

  He added puffiness around the eyes. Sun damage. Alcohol damage. Widened the neck to accommodate rolls of flesh. Finally he said, ‘‘This?’’

  The simulacrum had an artificial quality, but was recognizable.

  I said, ‘‘It’s Chenille Wyoming.’’

  Chenille knew Brian. She had known him for almost twenty years. She’d had a thing for him. I drove toward the police station, puzzling over it. The meaning of it eluded me. Kristal C. Hopp, K.C., Casey, had progressed beyond the Detention Club into drug abuse and sexual licentiousness. She had landed in Santa Barbara, ever-popular destination for high school grads bailing out of China Lake, such as I. Along the line she had become Chenille Krystall. I remembered the showy name from her wedding announcement. Finally she had emerged as Chenille Wyoming, insurgent wannabe with designs to become history’s most famous reformed whore. She planned to outdo Mary Magdalene in the biblical byline—to be known not as disciple, but dominatrix.

  I stared at the road. Waves of heat hovered above the asphalt.

  Chenille Wyoming, would-be whip cracker of kingdom come, had once loitered up the street from my house, smoking and drinking and watching for Brian. All for nothing; all for his silent rejection. And then, this year, he had crept back into her life when Tabitha joined the Remnant. Tabitha, Brian’s chosen and Pastor Pete’s new darling, with her pure drawings and clean hand. How many flavors of envy could we cook up here?

  As I’d told Jesse, I believed that the Remnant had deliberately incited Tabitha to ruck up my life, Luke’s life, and Brian’s life. Could a decrepit high school jealousy lie behind it? If so, Brian had not given Chenille reason to relent. When he had seen her, he hadn’t even recognized her. He had treated her as nothing.

  Now she believed that he had killed her husband, and she wanted retribution. She wanted it against the whole world. My palms felt sweaty on the steering wheel.

  Detective McCracken, however, had a different reaction. Holding the age-progression picture in his cigar-stub fingers, with his breath whistling through his nose, he thought about it and said, ‘‘A high school crush. So what?’’

  ‘‘So . . .’’ What? ‘‘At the very least, it shows that she withheld information from you. That she knew Brian.’’

  ‘‘You’ve forgotten what it’s like in a town this size. Everybody knows everybody. I don’t expect them to tell me about each romance they had back in high school.’’

  ‘‘It wasn’t a romance,’’ I said.

  "Oh, an unrequited crush. An even stronger connection."

  I sagged. All I could think was to change the subject. ‘‘Have you found the murder weapon yet?’’

  He said, ‘‘Do I work for you?’’

  Driving back into Santa Barbara the next day, Luke and I heard the radio news report that a car had crashed into the HoneyBaked Ham store on State Street, apparently after running down a stray cat. ‘‘Let us remind you,’’ the reporter said, ‘‘that a Previa mini-van is not the appropriate tool for dealing with loose animals. If you suspect an animal is rabid, phone Animal Control.’’

  Back at Jesse’s I checked for phone messages, but had none. I tried again to reach Dr. Jorgensen’s inventory nurse, but got no answer. My intuition was poking me like a sharp fingernail, telling me that the stolen drugs had something to do with the Remnant and with Jorgensen’s death, so I called Kevin Eichner. I got him on his cell phone at a construction site, and told him my suspicions.

  His voice was quiet. ‘‘She couldn’t get me to steal for her, so she put the thumbscrews to Glory. Man, Glory’s gift of submission really did come in handy.’’

  I asked if Chenille had been specific about the drugs she wanted him to obtain.

  ‘‘Morphine—she said we’d need to lay in a supply for treating casualties during the Tribulation. And any therapeutic drugs the neurologist had, in case we had to counteract nerve gas or chemical attack. I’m telling you, she’s a few beers shy of a six-pack.’’

  A short while later I drove to the doctor’s office for my second vaccination. Dr. Abbott had ordered a supply of the vaccine. As she swabbed my arm I said, ‘‘What kinds of drugs would a neurologist keep in stock? Someone who treats cerebral palsy patients?’’

  She had been expecting a question about rabies. ‘‘Why do you ask?’’

  ‘‘It’s for a case I’m working on.’’

  ‘‘Well, antiseizure and anticonvulsant medications, mostly. Dilantin, Tegretol . . . as well as migraine meds, and drugs for Parkinson’s.’’

  ‘‘And how about a plastic surgeon?’’

  ‘‘Anesthetics, sedatives—Lidocaine, Vicodin . . .’’

  ‘‘Any that would overlap with therapeutic drugs used by a neurologist?’’

  Her forehead crenellated. ‘‘Maybe Botox.’’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘‘It’s not just a beauty treatment? ’’

  ‘‘You know how Botox works, don’t you?’’
>
  I knew. ‘‘It paralyzes muscles so a person can’t frown. That smoothes the skin, giving a younger appearance.’’

  Voluntary paralysis for the sake of vanity: It was death-mask chic.

  ‘‘Neurologists sometimes use Botox to treat CP,’’ she said. ‘‘It can control severe spasticity when other drugs fail.’’

  I thought about it. ‘‘This is the poison that causes botulism?’’

  ‘‘Botulinum toxin, yes. It’s an extraordinarily lethal substance. That’s why only physicians should administer it. Neurologists inject it in minute doses, intramuscularly. ’’

  I drove back to Jesse’s, distracted. I knew what he thought of the concept that paralysis perfected the body—that you had to be brain-dead to believe it.

  He phoned shortly afterward, and we talked about meeting when he finished work. I told him about the Botox. Then, starting to feel that I was closing in on something, I once again phoned the nurse from Neil Jorgensen’s office who handled the drug inventory. This time I got her.

  ‘‘The robbery?’’ she said. ‘‘They mostly took pain medications.’’

  ‘‘What about Botox?’’

  ‘‘Huh.’’ She paused. ‘‘Funny you should ask.’’

  ‘‘Why?’’

  ‘‘Because we expected to read about dead addicts the next week. Anybody who injected that stuff would have turned up stone-cold within a few days. And you know what? It would have been poetic justice. But it never happened, so maybe the robbers actually read the label on the vial.’’

  Or maybe, I thought, they were saving it for another purpose.

  Disquieted, I turned to my usual angst supplier, the Internet. A search for Botox found hundreds of Web sites, 90 percent belonging to plastic surgeons and bearing good tidings of great joy. ‘‘Dramatic results! Just one injection can immobilize muscles for up to six months!’’ But farther down my list of search results, the tidings darkened.

  Potential use of botulinum toxin for biological warfare.

  This wasn’t Doctor Rex’s Beauty Page; it was the Department of Defense, and I didn’t have to read very far before my mouth went dry. The site couldn’t have been clearer: Next to anthrax, Botox tops every bioterrorist’s Christmas list. It’s not just a party favor for trophy wives. It’s so deadly that inhaling mere nanograms will kill the subjects who receive it. For subjects read airline passengers, the UN General Assembly, and your grandmother.

  Still staring at my computer screen, I phoned a weapons expert I knew, a graduate of the Naval War College: my father. He was just waking up at his Singapore hotel.

  ‘‘Biological terrorism? The poor man’s nuclear bomb,’’ he said, ‘‘and I don’t like hearing questions about this from my daughter. What’s going on?’’

  I gave him a thumbnail sketch of what I’d just learned.

  ‘‘Biological warfare agents are a weapon of mass destruction that can be gotten on the cheap,’’ he said. ‘‘You don’t need isotope separation plants, nuclear physicists, or even plain old gunpowder and cannons. Pathogens occur in nature, or you can mail-order them from pharmaceutical houses. You get a terrorist with a high school chemistry set and some stick-to-itiveness, he could brew enough germs to kill tens of thousands of people. Or,’’ he said, ‘‘a perpetrator could take the easy route and steal the prepared toxin.’’

  Sweat prickled on my forehead. Steal the toxin? Chenille Wyoming, come on down.

  My dad said, ‘‘Tell me why you want to know this, Sis.’’

  Chenille hadn’t wanted Kevin Eichner to filch drugs for treating chemical warfare casualties. Quite the opposite. She wanted to kick-start Armageddon by loosing the plagues of the Apocalypse.

  Holding the phone, trying to keep calm, I walked out onto the deck. I said, ‘‘It’s going to sound crazy.’’

  His voice crackled. ‘‘The people Tabitha’s mixed up with, you think they’re trying to obtain BW agents?’’

  The ocean was glassy blue, the tang of salt sharp in the air. Out beyond the surf line a pelican raced along above the sea’s surface. The Remnant, I knew, did not see this scene. They saw an entirely different version of the world, one hidden from light, similar to what physicists call dark matter—a universe where unseen forces clash, creating and destroying, controlling our destinies. And Chenille wanted to seed the clouds, unleash the storm. She thought that if she did she’d end up running the show: high priestess of the aftermath.

  I said, ‘‘Yes, that’s what I think.’’

  A long, transpacific quiet stretched across the phone line. Then he said, ‘‘Aum Shinrikyo carried out the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. And the Rajneeshis up in Oregon sprayed salmonella over salad bars in restaurants, sickened over seven hundred and fifty people. What you’re thinking isn’t crazy, Evan."

  "Thanks, Dad."

  He said, ‘‘Is there someone at the police department you can trust to believe you?’’

  I exhaled. ‘‘No. Not on such thin evidence. They’d think it’s speculation.’’

  ‘‘Listen,’’ he said. ‘‘From a perpetrator’s viewpoint, there are several advantages to engaging in chemical and biological warfare. One is ease of delivery— planting bug bombs, crop dusting on a cool night, there’s just a whole slew of do-it-yourself ways to wipe out a large population. Another is the potential for escape. Germs incubate for days, weeks, even months. Biowar’s effects aren’t as immediate as those of a bullet. A terrorist can be long gone before evidence of the attack starts appearing.

  ‘‘In fact,’’ he said, ‘‘biowar victims may not even know they’ve been attacked. One thing that makes this a nightmare scenario is that you can have a hell of a time determining whether you’re under assault, or are being struck by a natural epidemic.’’

  A tickle started again, deep in my brain, the one that I’d been feeling off and on for the past few days.

  ‘‘Here’s the thing,’’ he said. ‘‘You tell me this church is planning some sort of attack to occur around Halloween. That’s a week from now. If they intend to release biological agents, they may do it before then. They may already have done it.’’

  I stood up straight, feeling as if I had been jabbed with an ice pick. It was right in front of me. Incubation periods. Disease vectors. Emerging outbreaks and epidemics.

  I said aloud, ‘‘Rabies.’’

  19

  Could rabies have been inflicted on Neil Jorgensen intentionally? If so, it meant that the coydog attack in China Lake had also been deliberate—and that the animal had been meant to assault me, not Abbie. The fact that the coydog had been domesticated now seemed sinister. It had eaten commercial dog food not long before its death, implying that it had been under human control in a rabid state. Was it possible? Thinking back to that night outside the Lobo, I recalled walking to my car, finding the vandalism, and looking around, seeing another car race away. The vandal, I had thought. But perhaps the vandal had dropped off more than spray paint.

  My dad was skeptical. The military worried about many CBW—chemical and biological warfare—agents, he said, ranging from bubonic plague and smallpox to wheat rust and foot-and-mouth disease. Rabies was not high on that list. It acted slowly and was not easily transmissible. ‘‘Also, to weaponize a biological warfare agent you need an effective delivery system, one that can efficiently aerosolize the agent.’’ Drily, he added, ‘‘Coyotes don’t fit that bill.’’

  But rabies was one of those pathogens that were plentiful in nature, I said. The disease was endemic in California’s wild animal population, which was why parents taught their kids not to touch raccoons or possums. Trapping a rabid animal would require only patience, not sophistication. Likewise creating a kennel of infected wildlife. ‘‘We’re not talking about rogue states tipping missiles with the stuff. We’re talking about people obsessed with germs, itchy to get rid of folks they consider unclean.’’ People who hankered after SPAM, Cheetos, and Doomsday.

  He wasn’t convinced. ‘‘Okay,�
�’ I said, ‘‘don’t call it bioterrorism. Call it biohomicide.’’ Rabies wasn’t an efficient germ warfare agent. Just lethal.

  He said, ‘‘You need more evidence.’’

  After I hung up, I told Luke to get in the car. We had enough time before we were supposed to meet Jesse. We drove downtown to the News-Press building. The willows in the plaza outside undulated in the breeze. The sun spread warmly across the building’s red tile roof and lay chalk white on its adobe walls. Sally Shimada came to the lobby looking polished in a coral twinset that accented her glossy black hair.

  ‘‘You must be here to pay off the favor you owe me.’’ She smiled down at Luke. ‘‘Hello, young man.’’

  He leaned against me. ‘‘Hi.’’

  She said, ‘‘Your brother has agreed to the interview? ’’

  ‘‘No. But I have news that’ll stand your hair on end. Depending on what you’ve found out about Neil Jorgensen’s death.’’

  She tried to look peeved, but couldn’t hold back. ‘‘It’s going to be page one.’’ She looked at the receptionist, and took my arm. ‘‘Let’s go outside.’’

  We sat on a park bench while Luke kicked a soccer ball across the lawn of the plaza, the sun shining on his dark hair.

  ‘‘Jorgensen contracted rabies from a bat,’’ she said. ‘‘Analysis of his virus samples showed a strain that bats carry. And it gets more interesting. The spooky thing about bats is that they can bite you and you won’t even know it. Honestly. They’re quiet, and their bite barely leaves a mark. They can nip you while you’re sleeping and you won’t even wake up.’’

  ‘‘That’s—’’

  ‘‘Creepy. What typically happens is that Joe Blow comes into the ER hallucinating and unable to swallow. The doctors suspect rabies but his family says he hasn’t been bitten by an animal. Then, finally, they remember seeing a bat flying around his bedroom a couple of months back. But it’s too late. Joe’s dead.’’

  ‘‘I know we have bats around here, but—’’

  ‘‘Wait. Public Health found evidence of bats in the attic at Jorgensen’s house. You know, guano. Spattered on the floor.’’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘‘The bats had gotten in through a hole between the chimney and the roof. But the hole was sealed up with Brillo pads.’’