by Draker, Paul
The last time I’d seen my daughter was almost two months ago. We had driven out to Black Rock Desert because she was curious about it, and swam in the lake and hiked around the Needles. When she got on the plane to fly home to her mother again her wave good-bye had torn a hole in my chest.
Back then I had no inkling of the invisible jaws that were closing slowly around her like a bear trap. But now Amy was firmly ensnared in the jagged teeth of a broken educational system that ground up and destroyed children like her—a system that mirrored the hypocritical, lying society of which it was a part. It wasn’t her fault that lazy, autocratic institutions hated and feared people like her simply because she challenged their illusion of control.
Still, I couldn’t ignore the stomach-turning name that psychiatrists had assigned to Amy’s condition.
She was a psychopath.
Despite the temporary “Dr. Simon Frank” deception I had engineered, we wouldn’t be able to hide her disease from the world forever. My daughter was grievously ill; her brain was different from a normal person’s. Her only hope now lay with Frankenstein—a sentient machine of my own creation, who would discover a cure for what modern psychiatry considered untreatable. Frankenstein was safe now, his vulnerabilities protected by the Navy guardsmen, which would give him the time he needed to find an answer. And he would find it, because we had no alternative.
Failure was unthinkable.
The awful knowledge of Amy’s sickness pressed inside my head like a tumor. Would it color my view of her? I didn’t want anything to change the way I felt about my daughter, but I was terrified that she might seem different to me now.
Through the surge of exiting businesspeople, gamblers, and families, I caught a brief glimpse of her. She was holding a flight attendant’s hand and pulling her little travel bag behind her.
The crowd between us obscured Amy from me for a moment. Then it parted.
She stood stock-still, twenty feet away, and her blue eyes locked on me and widened. Her whole face lit up with joy, and she tugged on the flight attendant’s sleeve, pointing me out.
Heart hammering, I stared at my daughter. She seemed a little taller than I remembered—and thinner, too. She was growing up so fast. Jen had dressed her in a little sundress and done her hair up in a new sort of French braid, but loose curls were already working their way free to float around her face. She blew an errant curl out of her eyes and waved at me.
Then her expression changed.
Her chin crumpled and her lower lip started to tremble. Dropping the handle of her bag, she ran toward me.
I dropped to one knee, spreading my arms, and her warm, compact little body plowed into my chest. She wrapped her arms around my neck and a sob burst from her throat. She was saying something over and over again, her cheek pressed wet against my collarbone. Her choked, high voice sounded so sweet in my ear, but I couldn’t make out the words.
I teetered off-balance, my arms still spread wide like an airplane’s wings, as my daughter clung to me. Through her tears, her words tripped over each other. It sounded as though she was trying to tell me everything at once.
Slowly, tentatively—fearfully—I curled my arms around Amy’s back. I slid the fingers of one hand up beneath her feather-soft curls, tracing the contours of the back of her head, cupping her damaged brain in my palm. And then I bowed my head and hugged her tight, crushing her to my chest. I closed my eyes.
A shudder racked my body and I clenched my jaw, stifling the silent sobs of relief that were trying to burst out of my chest.
Because knowing about her illness changed nothing. Amy didn’t seem any different to me. She was still my daughter. Nothing could change the way I felt about her. How had I ever doubted that?
I held my little girl as she laughed and cried, telling me about some funny thing that had happened at school that morning, and—despite knowing that Jen had kept her home from school today—I only hugged her tighter.
I had forgotten to breathe. I sucked in a lungful of air, feeling it tickle my chlorine-burned lungs, and suddenly, it was all too overwhelming. The noises of the airport faded around us. I clutched my daughter like a lifeline as waves of dizziness rocked my balance.
“Daddy?” Amy’s concerned voice, right next to my ear, sounded like it was coming from a distance. “Are you okay?”
Not wanting her to worry, I struggled to get myself back under control. A wave of nausea gripped my throat, forcing me to swallow my answer. Then I felt a strong, steadying feminine hand on my shoulder.
“Hi, Amy,” a familiar voice said. “I’m Cassie. Your father and I are friends.”
I felt my daughter’s body stiffen in my arms. Her face pulled away from my neck to look up.
“Friends?” she asked.
“Close friends.”
The escort pass and my ID were gently plucked from my nerveless fingers, and I heard a brief murmur of conversation as Cassie squared things away with the flight attendant who had accompanied my daughter off the plane.
Then Cassie’s hand was back on my shoulder, and she gave it a reassuring squeeze.
“Your dad’s okay, sweetie,” she said to Amy. “I think we just need to give him a moment. Why don’t we step over to the coffee shop right there, and I’ll get you something to drink.”
With an effort, struggling with dizziness, I forced my eyes open. The faceless crowd flowing around us swam and doubled before my eyes.
Amy seemed reluctant to let go of me, but she did. “Do you work with my daddy?” she asked Cassie.
I recognized the symptoms now. Blake had hit me harder than I realized at the time. I had a concussion. It was already starting to slow me down.
But even though I trusted Cassie completely, I wasn’t going to let Amy out of my sight even for a second—not until she was on a plane again, headed safely back to her mother. I stood and shook my head, squinting to see. Thankfully, my vision was clearing.
Amy and Cassie were walking toward the Peet’s Coffee kiosk together. My daughter was holding Cassie’s hand, which was really weird for me to see.
Amy looked up at Cassie, then back over her shoulder at me, and I couldn’t help feeling that I had let her down. Shaking off my weakness, I caught up with them and took her other hand.
“We don’t have time for a drink,” I said. I led them both over to the opposite wall, where posters advertised Nevada’s different tourist venues and destinations. “Amy… Cassie and I have something to discuss with each other now that’s very important.”
Stopping in front of the poster I had spotted earlier, I turned to face them both. “But our chat isn’t going to take long,” I said. “Because you and I have to get on another plane in twenty minutes.”
Amy suddenly focused on the wall behind my shoulder. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes got huge. Then she grabbed me and hugged me again, pressing her face against my bruised ribs. My shirt muffled her voice.
“You’re the best dad in the world,” she said.
Grinning, I put an arm around her and raised my gaze to meet Cassie’s.
“Trevor, no.” Cassie shook her head. “Bad idea. You can’t leave right now. Everyone will think you’re…”
Her voice trailed off as she read my answer on my face. I wasn’t planning on bringing Amy any closer to the mess at Pyramid Lake.
Then Cassie, too, looked at the poster behind me, where a troupe of gymnastic performers in zebra leotards posed chest deep in reflective water. The poster advertised the Cirque du Soleil extravaganza O, their signature show, at the Bellagio Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.
I squeezed my daughter against me, unable to stop grinning.
“Amy and I are going to the circus,” I said.
“Oh shit.” Cassie’s mouth opened and closed as she struggled for words. Then she relaxed her shoulders and sighed in resignation.
“Southwest, right? Wait here while I go buy a ticket. I’m coming with you.”
CHAPTER 68
A
riot of irregular rainbow-hued blobs hung overhead: upside-down glass flowers stretching toward me from a swimming pool-size sculpture that spread across the ceiling of the Bellagio’s reception lobby. Carrying my drowsing daughter, I squinted up at the dizzying sight while Cassie and I crossed the marble floor toward the elevators. Even though it was after midnight, people milled all around us. Everything felt dreamlike, as if we were moving underwater. The day’s events were starting to catch up with me.
Ten minutes later, with Amy sleeping peacefully in one of the suite’s two bedrooms, I joined Cassie in the open-plan central living space. She stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows, her back to the dimly lit room, silhouetted against the fifteenth-floor view of the Las Vegas Strip.
Splashes of brilliant neon light flickered on her crossed arms and rounded shoulders. Hugging herself, Cassie stared silently at the choreographed fountains below.
Seeing how lonely she looked made me feel miserable, because there was something we needed to get straight.
“You take the other bedroom,” I said. “I’ll sleep right here, on the couch.”
She nodded without turning around.
I wandered past the black-lacquered dining table, dragging my fingers along the backs of the three low-slung couches, circling them to find the bar. Grabbing a couple of bottled waters out of the bar fridge, I opened one and drank it.
I carried the other water to the window and offered it to Cassie. She didn’t take it.
“This suite is bigger than your whole house,” she said. “It has five bathrooms.”
I shrugged. “I guess the rich, decadent assholes who normally stay here need lots of places to throw up.”
She spun and grabbed my upper arm. Her expression tight and apprehensive, she turned her unhappy face toward mine.
“What did you do with the money?” she demanded.
“What money?”
“Twelve million dollars. Don’t even try to lie to me, Trevor. The night McNulty died, you forged his signature to authorize a wire transfer—NCIS knows that now. They found it. But what I don’t get is why you went out of your way to call so much attention to it.”
She pulled me forward a step, so the neon brightness from outside shone across my face.
“Why did you forge a nine-million-dollar vendor payment afterward, when you knew the money was already gone? Are you trying to get caught—?” Her eyes suddenly widened in shock. “Oh my God... You didn’t know the money was gone.”
I jerked my arm away from her grasp, went over to one of the couches, and sat down. Hanging my head back across the cushions, I closed my eyes against the crushing disappointment I felt inside.
“Go home, Cassie.”
“I’m sorry. I thought—”
“I can see what you thought.”
“I made a mistake.”
My throat tightened. “No, I made the mistake.”
“Please don’t say that.” The cushions shifted as she settled carefully on the couch. But not too close. “Please don’t think that about me. Listen, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean…” She sounded forlorn. “Can we just start over, Trevor?”
I nodded, and she sagged into the couch with relief. Given how many other things I was hiding from her, Cassie probably had a right to distrust me. But it still hurt.
A lot.
Setting aside my disillusionment, I thought about what she had said.
“Why would I want to steal our grant money?” I asked. “Twelve million isn’t very much—it barely covered the hardware upgrade.”
“You’re only considering it from a government-spending perspective,” she said. “It is a lot of money if you think of it in other terms.”
“What—you mean like for buying fancy cars? Getting a huge house and decorating it”—I opened my eyes and waved at the opulent furnishings around us—”like this? Who even gives a shit about that stuff?”
Cassie bounded off the couch and went back to stare out the window. Crossing her arms again, she spoke quietly. “My school will cost less than a million a year.”
“Did you steal our money, then?”
“Not funny.”
I stretched, stood up, and walked over to stand beside her, taking in the view. At the south end of the Strip, a thick vertical column of white light shot up into the sky from the top of the Luxor’s glossy black pyramid. Within the unearthly column of light, brighter pinpoints swooped and sparkled like dust motes in a flashlight beam. Desert bats, I figured, coming to feast on the swarms of insects that the giant beacon attracted.
I could see what Cassie was getting at now.
Despite the cheerful exuberance of the Strip’s garish light show in front of us, the empty badlands surrounding Vegas were full of buried bodies: debtors who couldn’t pay their loan sharks, displaced mobsters, officials whom money could not corrupt—and gamblers too stupid to quit after they had already pushed their luck too far. All of them, like the moths swirling invisibly in the Luxor’s beam, had been drawn to the brightness again and again, heedless of the hungry predators. Now they populated unmarked graves in the desert.
The drab, dusty oil fields surrounding my hometown of Oildale, the ’08, were riddled with the same kind of unmarked graves. The Kern River ate gangbangers who stole from the wrong ’08er; the only time their bodies turned up was when searchers were looking for other bodies.
Cassie was right. People got killed over money all the time—most of them for a hell of a lot less than twelve million dollars. But stealing our grant funding still didn’t make sense to me. I frowned.
“That’s got to be the stupidest twelve million on the planet to touch,” I said. “If this is only about money, then whoever took it is a complete fucking idiot. Or suicidal.”
“Because they stole from a top secret military project?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Then why?” she asked.
I stared at the distant column of light, watching the dance of prey and predator, and an ugly expression twisted across the reflection of my face.
“Because the project they stole from belongs to me.”
CHAPTER 69
Sitting on a poolside chaise lounge at Mandalay Bay Hotel’s artificial beach, I unpinned Amy’s hair, which was frizzing all over the place. I started redoing it in a French braid, and my fingers snagged on yet another bobby pin. I pulled it out and temporarily slid it onto my collar, where it joined eight or nine others, so that I could keep both hands free while plaiting my daughter’s hair.
Jen always put in too many bobby pins. Using fewer than half of them, I tucked in the last strand of hair and then leaned back, pleased with the result.
Amy gave me a quick kiss and headed for the pool.
Peeling off my shirt, I leaned back and watched my daughter run down the sloping blue spillway in her brand-new swimsuit. Bursting with excitement, she slipped into the wave pool. Grinning, her eyes invisible behind her little sunglasses, she turned and beckoned to me. I shook my head. Then a wave crashed into her chest, foaming around her waist before it drained away. Her high-pitched laughter drifted back to my ears, and I settled against the soft plastic straps of the chaise, content just to watch her play.
The early-afternoon heat felt good on my chest and thighs, bathing my skin with a warm glow. I shifted my body, repositioning my sweating back against the slippery chaise straps. I still had a headache and felt nauseated and a little groggy, but I didn’t want to spoil Amy’s day.
Even here under the bright Vegas sun, the tangled mess back at Pyramid Lake seemed to loom over us like a dark, angry cloud. I wondered how much progress Frankenstein had made. I needed to call him to make sure he wasn’t slacking.
Cassie shifted on her chaise beside me.
“With your shirt off,” she said, “you look like an anatomy lesson.” Her long, cool fingers laddered down my stomach. “What’re these under your skin here—knotted steel elevator cables?” She poked me in the side. “Do you have any body fat a
t all?”
I shrugged, and she lay back, raising a slim knee.
After breakfast, Cassie had bought a white bikini that fastened with string ties at her hips. It contrasted with her copper skin and looked really good on her.
Too good. I raised my gaze instead to the gold-glassed towers of the Mandalay Bay Hotel above. I didn’t want to make another mistake. Cassie and I were friends; that was all.
“You know, the Bellagio had a perfectly decent pool, too,” she said.
“Amy chose this particular one from the satellite images.”
“You put enough sunscreen on her, that’s for certain.”
“I didn’t want her to burn.”
“Watching you braid her hair was… I don’t know, surprising. I just didn’t expect it from you, that’s all.”
Feeling a dull sadness, I shrugged again. I knew how to do Amy’s ballet bun, too. And a few different pleats, pigtails, and braid styles for her—skills that I hardly ever got to exercise, nowadays.
The sun sparkled off the curving row of earrings dangling from Cassie’s ear. She scooted into an upright position, brushed sand from her toes, and waved to Amy, who waved back.
Cassie turned her oversize black sunglasses toward me. “The psychiatric taxonomy you had Frankenstein learn—it’s all about her, isn’t it? She’s the one you’re trying to help.”
I nodded. But I didn’t want to talk about this now, so I returned my attention to Amy. She stood near the front edge of the wave pool, where it connected with the shallower kiddie pool. Three younger kids, maybe five or six years old, stood just inside the kiddie pool, forming a semicircle around my daughter. Their body language signaled unhappiness, and all of them were trying to speak to her at once. Amy seemed to be reassuring them. She asked them a question and listened patiently to their answers.
“See how she’s taking care of the little ones?” Cassie said. “It’s impossible not to like her.”
“I really wish she had a brother or sister,” I said. “That might have changed things.”