by Peter Sexton
“Don’t worry about it.”
She was getting up to help Lawrence at the sink when her mother called to them from the other room.
They followed Gillian’s voice to the living room, where the television was tuned to a major network morning news program. Gillian shushed Lawrence and waved him off when he started to ask what the matter was; she simply pointed at the TV. It was then that Miranda noticed her high school yearbook photo at the top right corner of the screen. The anchor was announcing a Breaking News Update.
...on the scene in Little Rock, California, where the body of Edward August, a chemist for Earth’s Own Flavors, a national manufacturer and distributor of baby food, was discovered earlier this morning. Detectives say it appears August was the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
While authorities are refusing to comment as to the actual content at this time, they have confirmed that a suicide note was found with August’s body.
Miranda August—the young woman you’re now seeing on the screen, the daughter of Edward August—is believed to be missing. If you’ve seen Miranda August, you are being asked to contact authorities immediately. Do not attempt to approach her. Miss August may be armed and is considered dangerous.
An aerial view showed Miranda’s uncle’s house floating in a sea of police cars and other official vehi- cles. Countless officers and investigative personnel scurried about looking busy.
Our own Jessica Winters is on the scene. Jessica, can you tell us what’s happening there in Little Rock?
Once again the screen shifted and the aerial view was replaced by the female reporter standing in the front yard of the house. The scattered patches of grass showed little green. The unpaved driveway a mixture of gravel and dirt. Yellow crime scene tape restricted passage behind the woman. There was movement visible through the open front door of the house.
“Yes, Michael. Thank you. Right now authorities don’t have much to go on. As you mentioned, a suicide note was discovered with the body. While I myself have not seen the note, I have been told that it made reference to the recent mysterious deaths of eight Southern California children. However, author- ities are refusing to comment further at this time.”
“That’s bullshit!” Miranda snapped, revived by a sudden flash of fury. “Suicide? Yeah, right! Before shooting himself, Dad shot up his own car from the outside. Then, instead of putting the gun to his head or into his mouth, or however people do something like that, just for kicks he decided to shoot himself in the side of the chest...from more than twenty feet away. Pretty nifty trick.”
“What are you saying, Miranda?”
“Hello! Isn’t it obvious? They’re covering up what really happened. They made up all this bullshit about suicide. Dad didn’t kill himself!”
“Try and calm down, Miranda. You’re getting yourself all worked up.”
“I can’t calm down. I just—wait!”
“What?”
“Remember what I told you last night? I called the sheriff’s office to tell them where to find Dad’s body yesterday morning. They just said his body was discovered earlier this morning.”
No one spoke while this realization sunk in.
“That doesn’t make sense. Why would they lie about when they found Dad’s body? And there’s no way they could really think it was a suicide, not with Dad’s car shot up the way it was.”
The screen shifted back to the anchor in the studio.
Thank you, Jessica. And in other news: Could the U.S. military be facing unprecedented budget cuts?
Gillian hit the mute button and turned back to her daughter.
“I don’t know, Miranda. You’re talking about a pretty complicated cover-up. How could anyone orchestrate something like that? And, more impor- tantly, why?”
Six
“We’ve found her,” Puckett announced, as he barreled into Robert Anderson’s office.
Anderson put down his Mont Blanc fountain pen, removed his reading glasses, and leaned back in his chair. “Where?”
Puckett took the empty chair across the desk from his boss. “Santa Barbara, California.”
“How’d you track her down?”
“I talked to the mortuary that handled the burial of Miranda August’s baby.”
Anderson stared at Puckett, waiting for him to elaborate. “And?”
“They got a call from a woman who claimed to be a relative. When I identified myself as a police detective, they gave me the name and number of the woman they spoke to. It was a Santa Barbara num- ber for a place called The Livingston Art Gallery. The woman was a Gillian Blackwell.”
Anderson leaned forward. “Did you say Gillian Blackwell?”
“Yeah. I did some checking. Her last name used to be August, but she remarried. She’s the curator of the gallery. According to birth records, she’s Miranda August’s mother.”
“Remarried?” Anderson rubbed his chin with his right hand. He considered this new information for a moment. “And you’re certain Miranda is in Santa Barbara?”
“Yeah, man, she’s there. She doesn’t have no one else she can turn to for help. She has to be there.”
Anderson closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose with thumb and index finger.
“What’s wrong?” Puckett asked.
Anderson shook his head before opening his eyes. “I don’t know who Miranda went to see at this gallery or who she’s staying with, but I assure you, it isn’t Gillian August.”
“It has to be.” The room was silent for a long time before Puckett continued. “What makes you so sure it ain’t her?”
Anderson took his time answering the question. “Because Gillian August is dead.”
Seven
“Tell me about Maren,” Gillian said, her voice soft, almost tender. “I want to know everything about her.” She paused, as though weighing her next words carefully. “I want to know how she died.”
Miranda rose from the seat next to her mother and crossed the room to the large window that offered a view of the ocean beyond an expanse of multi-million-dollar homes. She stood with her back to Gillian.
“Maren was the best thing that ever happened to me,” Miranda admitted, as she continued to stare out the window.
“You haven’t told me about her father. Who is he?”
Miranda hung her head and shrugged, as if deflat- ed of will, of life. “It’s not important,” she said. Her hand went to the locket, and she caressed it with her fingertips. “He’s no longer a part of my life.”
“Does he at least know he had a daughter?”
When Miranda turned from the window her eyes were wet with tears. She wiped at them with the back of her hand, then nodded. “But he doesn’t know she’s dead.”
Silence hovered between them. Miranda sat down on the floor, her back to the wall. She noticed the absence of photographs in the home. In lieu of portraits or snapshots, the walls were covered with an assortment of paintings, no doubt acquired from the Livingston Art Gallery. Miranda had missed this detail the night before. It seemed odd. Not even a wedding photograph, or a picture of Lawrence, or the two of them together. No pictures of any relatives.
Gillian came over and sat next to Miranda. Miranda turned to find her mother staring directly at her.
“So how did Maren die?”
Miranda closed her eyes and took a slow, deep breath. “I should start by telling you about Dad’s research.”
“Let me see if I have this straight,” Gillian said, following Miranda’s lengthy explanation. “Earth’s Own Flavors was putting caffeine into their baby food?”
Miranda nodded. “Dad stumbled onto the truth of what they were doing after he was pulled from the original project.”
“But why? To what end?”
“I’m not completely sure yet. The best guess Dad and I were able to come up with is that they were trying to add an addictive quality to their product. Just enough to give them an edge over their compe- tition.”
Gillian shook her head. “But
how could that be possible? The government would never allow some- thing like that to happen.”
“You would think,” Miranda said. “But that’s where Dad’s research came in.”
“I’m still having trouble understanding any of this,” Gillian admitted.
“It’s really not that complicated. Dad developed a way essentially to disguise an ingredient so that it would look like anything but what it actually was, anything but caffeine, for example; it wouldn’t even be detectable if the FDA broke down the root compounds of the food.”
“Disguise it how?”
Miranda thought about it for a moment, re- membered an article she read in National Geographic a while back. “You know about a chameleon lizard, right? It’s kinda like that.”
Gillian waited, looking anxious and puzzled.
“Depending on its surroundings,” Miranda con- tinued, “a chameleon can assume any number of appearances. It can blend in to look like a rock if it wants to, or grass, moss, even dirt. Dad discovered a way to blend the root compounds of a single in- gredient in such a way that anyone testing the food wouldn’t see it. They would genuinely believe it was, I don’t know, red dye number forty, or maybe one form of sugar or another, something that might actually be found in the food. It just wouldn’t look like what it truly was.”
“But how is that even possible?”
“Believe me, it’s easier than you might think.”
“I can’t believe your father was doing this. This doesn’t sound like something he would allow himself to be involved in.”
“He wasn’t doing it!” Miranda shook her head vehemently. “Dad didn’t know anything about what they were doing with the caffeine until it was too late.” She paused. “Someone he knew at Earth’s Own approached him with a simple request. They had a problem they thought Dad could help them with.”
“What kind of problem?”
“I told you. Earth’s Own was struggling with the fact that they were promoting themselves as the ‘healthier’ choice in baby food, yet their sugar con- tent was off the charts, way higher than their competition. They were afraid the product line was going to fail, and that would have cost them millions. At least, that’s the story they gave Dad. So he suggested that they simply disguise some of the sugars. It was a process he’d been experimenting with for a while. Then sometime after he showed them how it could be done, they dropped him from the project. They stole his notes and put together a new team of chemists who started experimenting with the caffeine.”
Gillian shook her head, the movement nearly imperceptible. “So how does Maren’s death fit into all of this?”
In spite of her attempt to be strong and hold back her emotions, Miranda’s eyes flooded with tears as she reached into her back pocket, produced a newspaper clipping and handed it to her mother. Gillian unfolded the worn and tattered article. The title read: SEVENTH UNEXPLAINED CHILD DEATH.
“My God!” Gillian managed. The color drained from her face. “Are you saying Maren was one of these seven children?”
“Maren was number eight.”
The look on Gillian’s face morphed from confusion to an amalgam of shock, pain and disbelief. All she could issue was a deflated denial: “No.”
“Maren died after this article was published,” Miranda explained.
“But I thought you said you weren’t feeding Earth’s Own food to her.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Then how could she—”
“They weren’t just doing things to their own food,” Miranda said, cutting off her mother. “They were doing things to the Faber’s brand products, too. Worse things.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Dad only told me about the tests he was doing on the Earth’s Own brand food. He didn’t even think to test their leading competitors until after Maren died. That’s when he detected the higher levels of caffeine in Faber’s brand, along with large amounts of Theophylline. The combination of the two stimulants at the levels Dad detected would be fatal to a child much older than Maren. Fatal even to an adult.” Miranda gathered her thoughts. “Our best hypothesis was that by putting the higher levels of caffeine and the Theophylline into Faber’s products, they would cause a panic after a few children died. After Faber’s was subsequently recalled and pulled off the shelves, consumers would turn to Earth’s Own foods as the ‘safe’ alternative. And with just enough undetectable caffeine to make their product addictive they would eventually monopolize the market. Babies would start craving Earth’s Own food as if they were little junkies.”
Listening to herself explain the theory made Miranda sick to her stomach. She hoped that she and her father were wrong, but no other possible ex- planation made as much sense.
“I can’t believe what I’m hearing, Miranda.” The features of Gillian’s face tightened and her lips fluttered. “So what exactly happened to Maren?”
It was a long moment before Miranda could continue. Until now, she had hardly been able to think about that night, let alone talk about it. It was still so unreal, as if it hadn’t actually happened. As if, when all this madness was behind her, Maren would be there, alive and smiling, waiting to be picked up and held. Waiting to be loved.
But now she had to talk about it. She could no longer avoid the horrible truth.
“One night, while I was feeding her, she went into convulsions. My poor little baby was struggling to breathe.” Miranda’s voice choked; the words stuck in her throat. She tried to concentrate on her breathing. “She died in my arms.”
Miranda could say nothing more for a long time. She rubbed burning tears from her eyes. Gillian moved to hug her and Miranda accepted it, bur- rowing her face into her mother’s shoulder and allowing the flood of emotions to finally wash over her.
Eight
“This has the potential of going all to hell,” Robert Anderson said. “If Miranda August finds someone willing to listen to her story, and turns over the videotape she has in her possession, she could derail this whole operation, bring us all down.” He didn’t want to entertain this possibility for even an instant. “That is simply not an option.”
“How can we be sure she has the tape?” Puckett asked.
“If it was still at the house, it would have been found.” Anderson paused for a moment. “No. It makes sense that they would have taken it with them. And Miranda would have known to take it with her when she left her father in Little Rock.”
Anderson and Puckett were standing together beside the fountain in front of the Earth’s Own Flavors headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. It was a dry one hundred seven degrees, and neither man showed any sign of perspiration.
Puckett lit up a Blonde and took a long drag as he appeared to consider Anderson’s words. “I hear what you’re saying.”
The men watched the water circulate through the fountain for a while, neither saying a word. Puckett finished his cigarette, dropped the butt to the ground and smashed it out under his ebony Fratelli Rossetti shoe.
“So why don’t you tell me your plan,” Anderson said. He glanced around to see if they might be overheard by anyone else. But no one was within earshot.
“I’ve assembled a new recovery team,” Puckett began, as he checked the time on his imitation gold Rolex. “We’re flying out in five hours so we can intercept the girl at Gillian Blackwell’s home first thing in the morning. She probably thinks she’s safe for the time being, so her guard will be down. We’ll sweep her up before she even has a clue what’s happening.”
“Who are you taking with you?”
“Trammel and Lee. And Johnson’s meeting us at LAX.”
Anderson had been staring absently at the foun- tain as he listened to Puckett’s plan, watching the water falling onto itself, but his head snapped away from the water at the mention of Lee.
“What?” Puckett asked calmly.
“When did you call her?”
“I called her after the incident at August’s house.”
“
Was she with you at the uncle’s place in Little Rock?”
Puckett nodded. “She handled the cover-up, all the stuff about suicide. She handled the local police.”
Anderson didn’t want to think about how Lee had persuaded local law enforcement to cooperate with her...efforts. “This is beginning to make me feel more than a little uncomfortable.”
“You said you didn’t want me to fuck up this time. I’m just making sure that doesn’t happen.”
“By bringing in Lee?”
“You’ve said she’s the best at what she does.”
“I know what I’ve said. And I also know that she’s trouble,” Anderson snapped. “A fucking loose cannon. I don’t trust her.”
Puckett didn’t respond. He drew another Blonde from his pack.
“I can’t believe Trammel’s on board with this,” Anderson continued.
“He took some convincing. Gave me a lot of shit for calling her in. That’s why he’s coming along. Said he wants to make sure nothing goes wrong.”
“So do I.” Anderson locked eyes with Puckett. He held the stare for a long, silent moment. “And so do you.”
Nine
“Where’s Miranda?” Gillian asked. She had stepped just inside the door to the living room.
Lawrence looked up from the manuscript he was editing. He leaned back in the chair, placed the cap back on his red pen. “Upstairs in my office.”
“Upstairs in your office? Doing what?”
“Using my computer.”
“Using your computer?”
Lawrence heard the agitation in Gillian’s voice. She always turned the last words spoken to her into a question when she was heading toward anger. Gillian was holding Miranda’s backpack by the leather loop at the top. The anger was starting to show on her face. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Without a word, Gillian unzipped the backpack and removed a small black pistol, holding it gingerly by the grip.