Through the Fog

by Michael C. Grumley

  Shannon would understand.

  25

  Sue brought the car to a skidding stop in front of the cabin and both women jumped out, running toward the steps.

  “Are you sure about this?” Mary yelled.

  “Trust me!”

  Sue reached the top of the stairs first and pounded on the front door. Seconds later, the door swung open and Rief stepped out.

  “Now what?”

  Sue said nothing. Instead, she pushed her way past him into the house, pulling Mary along with her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Rief growled, and slammed the door behind them. Both he and Mary turned to watch Sue, who was intently scanning the room. She finally spun back around to face him. “Well?”

  He looked back and forth between them. “Well, what?”

  Sue folded her arms in front of her. “Would you like to start, or shall I?”

  Rief, puzzled, scanned the room trying to figure out what she was referring to. He shook his head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Sue turned her glare away and looked at Mary. “Go ahead, Mary.”

  Mary was studying Rief’s face but couldn’t tell whether he was acting. She put her hands on her hips. “Prozac.”

  “What?”

  “Prozac,” she repeated.

  Rief shook his head again. “Prozac what?”

  “You said Prozac was an antipsychotic. It’s not. It’s an antidepressant.”

  He squinted at her, still confused. “So what? I made a mistake.”

  “Maybe, but that’s like a doctor saying aspirin is an anti-inflammatory.”

  “Who the hell cares! Christ, it was over twenty years ago.”

  “Exactly,” said Sue.

  Rief now focused on her.

  “It was over twenty years ago,” she continued. “About the time you last saw your fishing buddy. What was his name again?”

  Rief continued squinting, trying to understand where she was going.

  “His name was Baily, remember?”

  “I remember,” Rief answered.

  Sue smirked. “I’m not sure that you did. When Mary told you about him, you didn’t show the slightest reaction to his name.”

  Rief folded his own arms across his chest, but said nothing.

  Sue turned and looked around the room again. “For a man who likes to fish, I don’t see a single fishing item. No souvenirs, no fish mounted on the wall, no pictures. Nothing.”

  “You came back here because I don’t have a fish on the wall?”

  “No, we came back here because you don’t have any pictures of your fishing trips. Not you, not your friends, no one. In fact, you don’t have any pictures of anyone at all.”

  Rief shrugged, irritated. “I’m not sentimental.”

  “That, I believe. But we’re not talking about sentimentality, are we?” she smiled sarcastically and paused. “Weren’t you married?”

  Mary watched as Rief began to grow noticeably uncomfortable.

  “Yes, I was married. My wife died a long time ago.”

  “Before you met Daniel Taylor?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact.”

  Sue kept her gaze on Rief. “Mary, have you ever met a widower who didn’t keep pictures of his wife?”

  Mary shook her head. “Not without being remarried.”

  “And are you remarried, Mr. Rief?”

  Rief didn’t even make an effort to answer.

  “So I’m getting that either you’re heartless or you didn’t want anyone to see those pictures. And I’m leaning toward the latter.”

  Rief was beginning to look angry. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  “How about the truth?”

  He glared at both of them. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?” Sue leveled her gaze at him. “How old are you?”

  “How old am I? Why do—”

  “HOW OLD ARE YOU?” she yelled.

  Rief jumped, surprised, but didn’t answer.

  “Mary, how old would you guess Mr. Rief to be?”

  “Mmm . . . I would say mid-fifties.”

  Sue nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. But Dr. Rief had his own practice in the ’80s, and to have his own practice back then meant he was probably at least in his forties. Which means today he should be about seventy years old. I’d say he looks awfully good for seventy, wouldn’t you?”

  Mary grinned. “Smashing.”

  Sue stepped closer to Rief. “It was Mary that caught it; your Prozac mistake. After that, a lot of inconsistencies in your story began to appear.”

  “Oh my God!” Mary gasped, suddenly piecing it all together. “You’re not Dr. Rief at all. You’re Daniel Taylor!”

  Both women were back on the couch, staring intently at him.

  “Is anything you told us the truth?”

  Taylor sat slouched in his chair with a hand propped up, covering part of his mouth. After a long silence, he calmly dropped his hand and retrieved a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. “Yes.” He slid one out and put it between his lips, then pulled out a lighter.

  “Which part?” Mary asked.

  He looked at her with a slight roll of his eyes. “That your kid Evan is living on borrowed time.” He lit up and dropped the lighter back into his pocket.

  Both women looked at each other. “Well, if you’re alive, then it can’t be terminal.”

  “Don’t bet on it. It sounds like it’s progressing faster in him. I had weeks; he has days, maybe hours.” Taylor watched as what little optimism the women had left evaporated. “I’m sorry to tell you that. But if it’s any consolation, his life would be far worse if he lived.”

  “How on earth can you say that?”

  “Because they’ll find him,” Taylor replied dryly.

  The women were confused. “Who’s going to find him?”

  “Them.”

  “Who’s ‘them’?”

  “The same ones who found me.” He took another drag from his cigarette.

  Neither woman was following. “Who are you talking about? Who found you?”

  He sighed. “Rief was a good man. He was trying to help me. But neither of us knew at the time that it was the worst thing he could have done.” Taylor leaned his head back against the top of his chair. “He didn’t know what to do. My symptoms weren’t fatal yet, but they were getting progressively worse, and nothing he tried was working. When he submitted his article to that journal, he was hoping that someone, somewhere, had seen my problem before. But they hadn’t.”

  “So, no one answered?” asked Mary.

  “Oh, someone answered all right. And it was the worst possible answer.” The women watched the tiny embers in the cigarette glow as he took another drag. “Someone read Rief’s article, and they came in force.”

  “Who?”

  “The CIA.”

  “What did the CIA want with you?” Mary asked.

  Taylor almost laughed. “You are naïve, aren’t you? I guess you really are nurses.” He stopped, as if trying to decide something. Finally, he asked, “How much do you know about the government?”

  Sue raised an eyebrow. “That’s . . . kind of a broad question, isn’t it?”

  This time, Taylor let out a chuckle. “I guess it is. Have you ever heard about the Stargate Project?”

  Both shook their heads.

  “I didn’t think so. Stargate was a secret project that began in the 1970s, primarily by the CIA.” He shrugged. “You can read about it these days on the Internet. It was run by a bastard named Hollister. What they wanted to find out was whether psychic phenomenon was real, and whether it had any military applications. One such skill they tried to harness was called remote viewing. Ever hear of that?”
<
br />   “No.”

  “Remote viewing is the practice, or should I say claim, of viewing unseen targets over some amount of distance. At least that’s the official description. The CIA spent years trying to determine if it was legit. Most of the subjects were people they paid to come in to test. But a few people they brought in by force. People like me.”

  Taylor finished his cigarette and snuffed it out in an ashtray. “It didn’t take long for the CIA to figure out that most of those people were frauds, looking to make some kind of name for themselves or just to make a few bucks. So imagine their surprise when they discovered some kid from Montana who could do it by accident. Better yet, who couldn’t stop doing it.”

  “They kidnapped you?” Sue asked.

  “Probably as good a word as any. It certainly wasn’t elective.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, they damn near pissed their pants the first time I did it. I told them about something one of their fellow agents was doing in the other room. Then, after a few more episodes, they got really damn excited.”

  He fished another cigarette out. “The problem was that my symptoms were getting worse. I was getting sicker and sicker. But those ‘spooks’ didn’t seem to care. They were so excited that they kept having me do it again and again. And I just got worse and worse.”

  “How long did they keep you?”

  “A few weeks. When they saw me coughing up blood, they finally acknowledged there was a problem. I was dying, and quickly. And yet that was when the spooks really showed their true colors. You see, once they realized that I couldn’t do it without dying on them, they did something that I never would have believed.”

  The women looked at Taylor expectantly.

  “They decided the best thing to do was to operate and study me while they still could.”

  “Operate?” Mary asked. “Operate on what?”

  “My brain. But, of course, they didn’t mean operate. What they really meant was dissect.”

  Mary gasped. “What did you do?”

  Taylor drew on his cigarette and exhaled slowly. “I found a way to escape and got the hell out of there.”

  Sue looked down at the table, listening intently. “So what happened to Dr. Rief?”

  “I made it back to Butte and he hid me. We both realized that if I was going to live, it would be on the run, forever. But what Rief hadn’t told me was that he had been diagnosed with cancer. I had no idea. Here he was trying to save me, while he was in the process of dying himself.” Taylor shrugged. “I guess he felt guilty. But he shouldn’t have.”

  “Maybe he just wanted to help one more person before dying,” offered Mary.

  Taylor looked at her through the rising stream of cigarette smoke, and gave a subtle nod. “Maybe.”

  Sue raised her head. “So you switched places!”

  “We switched places,” he acknowledged. “It took some effort, but we switched identities just before he died. And when Daniel Taylor was buried, it was in a closed casket.”

  “So you became Dr. Rief and left to hide away in the mountains?”

  “Correct.”

  “Wow.” Mary shook her head. “I mean, wow.”

  Sue slid forward on the couch. “Wait, if you’re still hiding, that means you think someone is still looking for you.”

  “Correct again. My photograph and physical description are still in the system. With today’s technology, it probably wouldn’t take much for me to be spotted.”

  “So, did you steal Dr. Rief’s information from Evelyn Sutton’s house, his old landlord?”

  “Yes. A long time ago.”

  “Tying up loose ends, I suppose?”

  Taylor nodded. “More like destroying another path to find me.”

  Sue thought of something else and glared suspiciously at him. “You know, it wasn’t long after ‘you’ supposedly died that the company who published that medical journal had their factory burn down. Was that a coincidence? After all, even with some journals already out there, it sure would be an effective way of keeping Dr. Rief’s article contained.”

  He glanced at his cigarette and put it out half finished. “I’m sure I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about.” He glared back at the women. “So, now you know the truth. Now what?”

  Mary sighed. “We still have to find a way to save Evan.”

  Taylor frowned. “It may be too late.”

  26

  Shannon swerved frantically in and out of heavy traffic. Commuting hours on the Golden State Freeway were particularly bad, with miles of glowing red taillights.

  Where the hell is the highway patrol when you need them? She held her phone up in front of her face to better see the redial button, and pressed it.

  Tania answered after one ring.

  “Anything?” Shannon pleaded, changing lanes.

  “Not yet. I’ve left messages for your husband and your sister but haven’t heard anything back.”

  “Dammit!” This was killing her. “Okay, call the Santa Clarita Sheriff’s Department! Tell them we think a man named Samuel Roa kidnapped Ellie!” She flipped open the folder on the seat next to her and held up the paper with his photo on it. “His address is 301 Canyon Ridge Road. We need help right away!”

  “Okay, I’m calling right now.” Tania hung up.

  Suddenly Shannon braked hard and swerved again, this time to avoid hitting a car in front of her.

  “Who is Samuel Roa?”

  Shannon glanced in the rearview mirror. Evan, who was leaning against his mother in the back seat, had put the question to her. “He was a patient of mine who had some posttraumatic problems after being discharged from the military.” She changed back to the other lane. “But I had to stop seeing him. He started having issues with me as his doctor.”

  Captain Burnam turned off his computer, stood up, and grabbed his jacket. He glanced at his watch as he snaked one arm through the sleeve. He was going to be late. The door opened, and he turned around to see one of his female deputies lean in.

  “Hey Cap’n, got a sec?”

  “Sure, what’s up?” He answered her while pulling the sides of his jacket together and zipping it up.

  “We just got a call a few minutes ago from a young woman who says she has a lead on a kidnap case out of Glendale.”

  “Okay,” said Burnam. “Is there a reason she’s calling us?”

  The deputy nodded. “Yeah. She says the woman she works for evidently thinks the person who kidnapped her kid lives here, out on Canyon Ridge.”

  “The woman she works for?”

  “Right. The woman is a doctor, and this gal is apparently her receptionist.”

  Burnam looked at his deputy curiously. “If the doctor is the one with a missing kid, why is her receptionist calling?”

  “She says the doctor is already in her car and on her way up here.”

  “Huh.” Captain Burnam ran his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Do we know who these people are?”

  The deputy stepped inside and held up a piece of paper. “The doctor is Shannon Mayer, a psychiatrist from Glendale. The address she’s headed to belongs to a man named Sam Roa.”

  Burnam looked at his watch again. “So the mother is driving to this guy Roa’s house, thinking he has her kid?”

  “That’s what it sounds like.”

  “Why don’t you run Roa’s name through the system and see if anything turns up.”

  “I already did,” the deputy answered, looking back down at her paper. “Roa moved here a little over four years ago after being dishonorably discharged from the Marines.”

  Burnam raised an eyebrow. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah, but there’s something else. He’s got a restraining order out against him. And it’s from that woman doctor.”

  “
Christ.” Burnam shook his head. “Okay, have someone run out there. Donaldson should be close. Hopefully he can get there before the woman does. In the meantime, find someone to send as backup.”

  “Right, okay.”

  The deputy turned and began to leave when Burnam stopped her. “And Becky, keep me up to date on my cell phone.”

  27

  Sam Roa knelt down in front of the fireplace; feeding it a few pictures at a time and watching them quickly curl as they caught fire. Getting rid of the snapshots was harder for him than he had expected, but there could be no evidence.

  Shannon Mayer was his whole life. She was the reason for all of it. Being discharged from the Marine Corps was bad enough, but losing his wife had shattered him. All he ever wanted to do was serve his country, to protect everything he held dear, but they sent him home instead. They sent him home in disgrace, claiming he had “psychological issues related to combat.” Whatever the hell that meant.

  Thank God for Shannon. Just when he was at the end of his rope, she volunteered to work with him, and for free. To help him out of his funk. But Roa could never have imagined what an angel the woman would turn out to be. For the first time, someone listened. For hours and hours, she listened to the horrors he’d had to endure, and she never judged. But most of all, she cared.

  Having someone like Shannon showed Roa what life could be like, what it was supposed to be like, when a woman really cared and supported you.

  Then one day, it happened. A moment he would never forget. The first time she touched him. Not the touch of a formal handshake, but the real thing. It was a Thursday, as their time had ended, when she opened the door to say goodbye and gave him that gentle touch on his arm. It was only for an instant, but it was the most important moment of his life.

  She had reawakened something inside him. Something he had pushed deep down in his heart. But on that day, she brought it back out.

  Of course, she acted like it never happened. She had to, obviously. She was married. But the signs were there if you looked hard enough. Her smile, how she faced him when he sat in her chair. The outfits she would wear for him. Roa had known other psychiatrists, but this was different, for both of them.