She opened her eyes a bit. “No, it wasn't shrapnel.”
J.D.'s big brother had fought in Vietnam. He'd seen shrapnel wounds. They were more jagged. And they came from one direction. These scars wrapped around her body.
“Well, I won't make you guess,” she said. ”You couldn't. It was late at night and I was working my second shift straight. The rains had just started and they hadn't cooled Saigon a bit. We opened every window in the ward, trying to keep the patients comfortable, but we just got a miserable breath of hot, wet air.”
She closed her eyes and J.D. wondered whether she was still with him, whether she had returned to the rainy season in Saigon. “The heat didn't matter,” she said. “’The ward was full of head and spinal wounds, one after the other, and most of those guys weren't going to care whether they were hot or wet or dead, not ever again. Of course, you live in New Orleans,” she said with a bitter chuckle. “You know about real humidity.”
His lips twisted into a smile, but it hurt. “Right.”
“I was hanging an IV for Lieutenant Doe, the only man in the room who I thought might, maybe, function again one day. He was lying next to an Asian man whose chart said he was a South Vietnamese soldier. I remember wondering whether I was lavishing care on a Viet Cong. How would I know? Then another patient, a real Viet Cong, I guess, jumped out of bed and slammed me up against the wall.”
She unconsciously rubbed her hand over the scars on her abdomen. “He must have stolen a scalpel from the surgeon's tray and waited for his chance. He was well on his way to killing me before I knew it.”
She paused, and he felt her breath catch. “If you could have seen the faces of my patients, the ones who were conscious. Their bodies had failed them and now they were failing me. Their eyes were terrible.”
She blinked the tears back and resumed the story in her matter-of-fact way. “It was sheer instinct. The IV bottle was still in my hand. I smashed it against the wall and sliced the man's throat. It was brutal and it was ugly, but I'm alive. He's not.”
J.D. pulled her closer, so that her head was cradled on his shoulder and she couldn't see his face. “And what happened then?”
“The few patients who could still talk or make noise raised a ruckus so loud that the MP in charge of security came running. They found me unconscious on the floor. I was all cut up and my pelvis was crushed from being slammed against a concrete wall and hitting a concrete floor, then having a full-grown man fall on it. It's a good thing they found me quickly. I wouldn't have lasted long, not at the rate I was losing blood.”
J.D. threw a protective arm over her scars. “I'm surprised they were able to save you at all.”
“Well, the state of the surgical art in 1972 was hardly up to today's standards, but I was lying one room away from an operating room that was built for victims of violent trauma.”
“You have a point there.”
“If I knew those surgeons as well as I think I did, I'm pretty sure the air in the O.R. was blue the whole time they were patching me up. I'll bet they cursed the Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese, the South Vietnamese, the Army, women who were stupid enough to volunteer to work in a war zone, and the government that was stupid enough to let them.”
“Were you there for a long time, recovering?”
“Oh, no. Even wounded soldiers didn't stay in that hospital for long. They either died or they stabilized enough to go to an Army hospital in Japan. I was only there a little while, but you'd better believe I was a novelty. A female patient, and one who had killed a Viet Cong, too. They gave a little party when I left. The other patients on the trauma ward made me a going-away bouquet out of some surgical sponges and sutures. One guy made me a card that said, ‘We'll miss you, but thanks for taking Charlie with you.” He had drawn a graphic picture of me, covered in blood, standing over a very dead Viet Cong. The bouquet fell apart years ago, but I still have the card.”
“Is it all behind you now, Larabeth? Nothing left but a soldier's going-away card and a bunch of scars?”
“There's the occasional dream, but they don't come very often any more. Sometimes the scars still hurt. Sometimes they hurt a lot. I can deal with those things.”
She was silent. He asked, “What is it that you can't deal with?”
“When they patched me up, the doctors said I'd be okay. Not great, but okay. My internal organs would repair the damage done by the scalpel and the bone fragments and the glass shards and they would learn how to do their jobs again. My pelvis would stay a little warped, but it would be able to do its job. I'd be almost back to normal. Except for one thing. A small thing in comparison to my life, but important to me.” She was silent again.
“Can you tell me what it was?” he asked.
“They told me I could never have children.”
J.D had to leave in half an hour. Shaving his head with a pair of office scissors and an electric razor was going to take some time, but it could wait a bit. Right now, he needed to be with Larabeth. He needed to hold her and he needed to kiss her wounds. Each one. It took him a long time, because there were so many.
Chapter 19
The hotel phone sang its shrill double-ring. Yancey thought it was his wake-up call, so he rolled over and picked up the phone without speaking. Agent-in-charge Chao's voice emanated from the receiver and, even in his sleep, Yancey tried to sit up straight, out of respect for Chao.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes, sir,” Yancey said. “Did you receive my message?”
“The transcripts of the tapes Dr. McLeod passed you this afternoon?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I've read them. Is Lefkoff fully aware of everything on those tapes?”
“Of course.” Yancey's cocksure voice trailed into uncertainty. “Shouldn't he be?”
“Listen carefully. Lefkoff is a traitor and Guillaume Langlois's blood is on his hands. Don't give him access to any more information, and keep him away from Dr. McLeod. Can you do that?”
“Certainly,” Yancey said, already trying to figure out a plausible reason to keep Lefkoff away from his Audubon Park rendezvous with Larabeth.
“Good. I'll be in touch.” The line went dead and Yancey was left alone. He was young and he still thought betrayal was rare. Resting his face in his hands, he wondered if he was angry at Lefkoff because he had lied to him or because he had made him feel like a fool.
* * *
Babykiller continued to enjoy the news broadcasts from Hanford, but they had become repetitive. The press was playing a monotonous riff on the notion that the emergency team had been slow to respond to the crisis. Television hates a vacuum, and people could only look for so long at a long-distance aerial view of the bombed-out K-basins and the flaming helicopter lying between them. The networks needed news.
Between newscasts, he amused himself with photographs and videotapes of Larabeth. His associates had made good use of those videocameras that were small enough to hide under a hat.
He had a few tapes of everyday Larabeth—walking down the hallway at BioHeal or driving that garish pink car. He could watch the woman of his dreams, clad in orange, deliver her Audubon Park speech all over again. He especially liked to watch her collapse with shock over Guillaume Langlois's fatal injuries. If he had thought someone would grieve so for him, he would have stayed on the straight and narrow path.
The second time Babykiller watched his videotapes, his eye rested on the man sitting next to Larabeth in the pink convertible. Babykiller knew him to be a private detective—Larabeth's bodyguard, as it were. His name was J.D. Hatten. Hatten never touched her and they spoke rarely, but there was something about him. It was barely perceptible but disturbing nonetheless.
He popped in another tape and watched Larabeth collapse again. Hatten scooped her up off the ground and hustled her away, fending off reporters. That's what she paid him to do. Still, there was something else. . .
Babykiller was good at intuiting the fuzzy aspects of human behavior. It was
just that skill that had kept him alive and helped him prosper. He watched his videotapes one more time and he knew. The man was in love with his Larabeth.
He had thought Larabeth was utterly alone. Her self-imposed isolation, so like his own, had been one of her most charming qualities. Then he'd found out about the daughter, but everything was still okay. He could use the daughter. He had used the daughter. But a lover, no, a lover was too risky. People did foolish things for love. People in love felt invincible and acted that way. Adding another person into the equation, one with selfless motivations, left him with too many variables.
It was time to bring the world down around Larabeth's ears.
He called Gerald and told him to dispose of J.D. Hatten. He also told Gerald to be prepared to pick up Larabeth and Cynthia at any time. And he was to make sure Cynthia's boyfriend—that Ricky character—never saw another sunrise. Babykiller couldn't abide a man who would rat on a woman he was sleeping with.
His guts ached. Maybe tomorrow he would succumb to the easy pleasures of painkillers. Maybe he would relax and accept the end. But he didn't want drugs and he didn't want death, not yet. He wanted Larabeth. Her pale slender hands could soothe his pain. They had done it before. And her sweet voice, with its exaggerated courtesy and silly drawl, could drive dark death away. He decided to call her. He had nothing to say, but it didn't matter.
* * *
The telephone roused Larabeth. She hadn't slept, not since J.D. left. She had just reclined her fancy executive's desk chair, cranked up the footrest, and waited in the dark. She should go home, shower, and pack a few things to take with her when (if?) the FBI took her into protective custody, or to prison, or whatever they chose to call it. She didn't feel like going home alone, so she didn't go at all.
When the phone rang, she knew it wasn't J.D., calling to calm her nerves. It was Babykiller, calling to frighten her out of this malaise, and she answered the phone with an odd sense of welcome.
“Tell me you love me, Doc, and all the insanity will be over.”
“I don't believe you.” Larabeth rubbed her hands together, trying to achieve some warmth, somewhere.
“You're right. You shouldn't believe me. My insanity will end when I do, and not before.”
“I would kill you if I could.” She wondered when her fear of the man on the other end of the phone had mutated into the need for murder. It was a rare thing, she thought, in civilized modern humans, this falling away of manners and conventions and civil behavior. The clich called it a ‘thin veneer of civilization’, but it was more than that. It was a protective shell, an armor. She heard it clatter as it struck the floor.
“I'm absolutely petrified,” he hissed. “But perhaps I should take your threats seriously. You've killed at least one man in your life.”
“That was an instinctive act of self-defense. This is different. You've killed people. I don't know how many. You've killed my good friend and endangered God knows how many others. You're making a mistake, Babykiller. I'm not the kind of person you can safely box into a corner. You're liable to get hurt.” Larabeth had never heard such coldness in her own voice.
“You don't scare me. I'm older and wiser than you are.”
“Were you this ‘wise’ as you call it—I would call it twisted—before you went to Vietnam?”
“I was just like anyone else, except smarter, before they doused me with Agent Orange. And then the bastards refused to acknowledge what that did to me.”
Larabeth had heard enough self-pity from too many people to be suckered by their whining. “Grow up and get on with your life. I did.”
“Yes, you did, and I hate you for it. Vietnam destroyed my life and it should have destroyed yours. And everybody else's.”
“Vietnam and its aftermath didn't stop you from accumulating more money than anyone could acquire legally. Isn't the score even yet?”
“You can't even the score on an insult, Doc. And they slapped me in the face. They asked me to participate in a study on how Agent Orange affected Air Force veterans. ‘At last,’ I thought. ‘Some recognition of what I went through. Some admission of responsibility for making me the monster I've become.’ I'd nearly quit using my real name by then but, real name or not, I jumped at the chance to participate in this study.”
Larabeth held her breath so no sound could betray her excitement. Babykiller mustn't realize how important this information was.
“I filled out a long questionnaire and waited, for years I waited, for the next stage of the study,” he continued. “When the lab tech called me in for a physical exam, she let a critical piece of information slip. I, and all the men I served with, were the control group. I walked out of the hospital. I wasn't about to be part of their bogus study.”
His voice lost its customary control. Larabeth closed her eyes. This was it. It had to be. “They said we'd never been exposed to Agent Orange, but the other guys—the ranch hands, we called them—had been. It was a blanket denial of everything we suffered.”
He went on talking, but Larabeth was half-listening. She'd twisted around to face her computer and asked it for the database program. It took too long to get running. She was ready. She had what she needed. Babykiller's name was within her grasp. Also his age and rank. Probably his blood type.
“If you have suffered, Babykiller, then I'm sure it's because you deserved it.” She worked with mouse and keyboard, hoping he'd shut up so she could work.
“Does that mean you have deserved your suffering?”
Larabeth was silent. Even hunting dogs tire of toying with possums who play dead.
It worked. “Keep suffering, Doc,” he said. “It becomes you.” She was relieved to hear a click and a dial tone.
For the first time in more than a week, Larabeth was in charge. She was used to being in control. Hundreds of employees depended on her for their livelihood and she delivered. She liked being the boss.
Babykiller had been so very careful, tantalizing her with hints that couldn't be traced. But once, just once, he had forgotten who he was dealing with.
She had wasted hours and precious energy toying with her database all week, knowing that she hadn't a prayer of ferreting Babykiller's one name out of a cast of millions. And, all along, the answer could be summed in three words that narrowed the field a thousandfold: Operation Ranch Hand.
He was talking about the infamous Ranch Hand study. He had to be. It was government-funded. It was a long-term study. The dates were right. The branch of the military was right; the Ranch Hand subjects were Air Force veterans. Everything fit. And she had all the Ranch Hand records.
It had been a carefully thought-out study. Operation Ranch Hand had been the code name for the aerial spraying of herbicides between 1961 and 1972. Ranch Hand veterans who had handled herbicides for at least one year were chosen for the study group.
The control group, Babykiller's group, was made up of C-130 air and ground crew personnel. They were selected because they were Air Force veterans, they served in Southeast Asia, they were not exposed to herbicides in Vietnam, and their training was similar to that of the Ranch Hands.
Larabeth shivered. This was the first piece of hard evidence on Babykiller she'd gotten from the database: He had served on a C-130 air or ground crew. His name might be only a few swipes of a mouse away.
She instructed the computer to call up only those veterans included in the Ranch Hand study. And there they were, all 2,494 of them. She put her hand to her mouth. This was going to work.
She got rid of the test group, the ones who had been exposed to Agent Orange. That left 1,299 men. She looked for men who, like Babykiller, had completed the questionnaire but dropped out of the study before the physical exam. That narrowed her list to 448 men.
What else had Babykiller ever said? Once, he'd said that he hadn't used his given name since 1982. She pulled up the full VA files on each remaining Ranch Hand veteran and eliminated anyone who had been treated at a VA hospital or applied for benefits or
even answered a goddamn survey since then. She got rid of 124 men that way. Then she dove back into the Ranch Hand data, looking for ways to shorten the list still further.
Babykiller had said that he was older than she was. She sorted the group by age. It didn't help, but that made sense. She had gone into the military right out of high school, in the last stages of the war. There could hardly be many Vietnam veterans younger than she was.
“Try again, Larabeth,” she whispered.
She eliminated the veterans whose survivors had notified the VA of their deaths. Only 94 names of living veterans were left.
She had one last ace in the hole. Her final assumption was based on her own opinion, but she believed in it. Strongly. The man she was coming to know was brilliant. Deranged, but brilliant. She cross-referenced her final candidates with their full military records and sorted for intelligence test results. She was looking for a genius. The testing people said that an IQ of 140 was the cutoff for a genius. All right, she thought, one-forty it is.
She held her breath as the computer searched. This should do it. She only had a hundred men left. What were the odds against more than one genius in a group that small? Larabeth was no gambler, but she would have bet on victory, And she would have won.
A single name popped up on her screen. Dickinson Byron Trigg, an enlisted flight engineer. She slapped her desk in excitement and the mouse skidded off into her lap. She called up every record she had on him and started to read.
It wasn't much, but it was a start. She had his parents' names and their home address—in 1965. He had been decorated, including a Purple Heart. He had sought psychiatric help at a VA hospital in 1977 and, for the next five years, he had filed one complaint after another, claiming that Agent Orange had given him panic disorder and Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. He claimed his Air Force service had rendered him both impotent and sterile.
When she was done, the name on the computer screen stared back at her as if to say, “What now?” She had worked so hard for this, for Babykiller's name, but it was only a piece of data. What could anyone do with it?
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