J. Daniel Sawyer - Clarke Lantham 01

by And Then She Was Gone

“Why were you worried that I worked for a lawyer?”

  “Oh, that.” Another sip. “I wrote a paper on it in April ‘03 JAMA, so I’m the world authority. Every once in a while someone files a wrongful birth lawsuit against a fertility clinic and they want an expert witness.”

  “Irritating.”

  “Mmm.” He took a larger swallow, then dropped his right hand to his hip and tapped it unconsciously with his forefinger. “So if you’re not working for a lawyer, what do you want with me?”

  “Just trying to figure out what this thing is.”

  “And not for a lawyer?”

  “Not at all.”

  “All right. I’m going to hold you to that. If I get subpoenaed you’re going to hear from my lawyer.”

  “Fair enough. So what else is it besides the face? How can you tell Antony’s Syndrome?”

  “Hmph. The face isn’t enough?”

  “Humor me. You didn’t publish in JAMA just because it looks weird.”

  “Fine.” He smiled. He’d had a good sense of humor in his lecture—what little of it I didn’t sleep through—and he hadn’t left it back on the dais. One more sip of the cappuccino, and a smile at a private joke. “There are a few behavioral markers—low latent inhibition, sexual precocity…”

  “Low latent inhibition…?

  “Oh. It’s a gating disorder where the brain pays attention to things it’s supposed to filter out. People that have it tend to be really creative or they tend to go crazy. Schizophrenics, conspiracy nuts, fiction writers, photographers…”

  “Okay, got it. What else?”

  He swirled the balance of the coffee around the bottom of the cup. “Let’s see. Arrested language development at puberty, attenuated verbal processing, high degrees of empathy, emotional outbursts…”

  “Problem kids.”

  “Right. Usually they don’t live past about fifteen.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “High risk tolerance.”

  “Drugs, sex, extreme sports…”

  “That kind of thing. This girl,” he nodded at the phone still in my hand, recording him, “She died?”

  “I hope not.”

  “Well, don’t hope too hard.” He grimaced, “I followed those cases for fifteen years, never found one to get out of young adulthood.”

  “Just the risky behavior?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “I guess. I just figured they might have weak hearts or something—like, don’t Down’s kids have heart problems?”

  “I never found anything like that, no. These kids just…I don’t know,” He looked out the window, “It’s more like they’re born in prison, but can’t stand it. You may know about how some species just won’t breed in captivity…”

  “Like pandas?”

  “Right. These kids seemed like they couldn’t live in captivity.”

  “Strange.”

  “Civilization isn’t for everyone.”

  “I guess not. So this disorder, what can you do about it?”

  He drained the last of his drink and crushed the cup in his hand. “Nothing, it’s a congenital neurological problem. Best you can do is behavioral therapy.” He started walking back toward the elevators—evidently, he’d said all he thought there was to say.

  I scrambled and caught up with as he was hitting the call button at the elevator. “Sorry, just a couple other questions. This disease—genetic?”

  “That’s what I argued in the paper. Abnormal disjunction of the chromosome 2 makes them theoretically infertile—at least,” The doors slid open and I stepped inside after him, “I’ve never seen evidence of any of them having any children.”

  “Anything else?”

  “No. If you want more detail, look at the article. I might be forgetting something.” The elevator hit the ground floor and opened again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to be late for the next panel. Good luck with your inquiries.” He gave my hand a friendly shake, and then jogged out the door and across the uterus.

  Breathing the still air of a Palo Alto’s mid-afternoon is something like trying to extract oxygen from a sock full of microwaved rice. It doesn’t really move, no matter how much you try to suck it in, and if you could, it would sear all your lung tissue out anyway. Maybe ninety-five degrees and dry enough to make your nose bleed.

  For a part of the world that peaked above ninety for maybe a week every year, this was a special, tailor-made version of hell.

  I swapped the fake eyeglasses for shades to save my eyes from the glare off the glass of the east wall and hung a left out toward the parking lot across the green.

  Probably in deference to the heat, the conference organizers had set out some cold treats vending tables in the shade of the trees in the vaginal park. Good thing too—on the large green across the way, between myself and the parking lot, the rally that I’d seen gathering on my way in was now in full swing.

  Just what I needed, a thousand-armpit-strong mist of patchouli and pot scented activism with all the navigation difficulties that created. They just doubled the distance between me and my car.

  I’d have to walk around. I knew I should have parked on the south side.

  I dropped three bucks for a sherbet cup and started the trek around the crowd, passing up signs comparing the attendees to the Nazis, accused them of playing god, poisoning the food, kowtowing to totalitarian corporate interests, and—though it didn’t seem immediately relevant to me—demanding the de-funding of the Pentagon.

  I’d at least gotten what I needed out of the trip. The recorder on my phone will have caught the complete symptoms list—several of them matched pretty well what I’d seen and heard about Nya so far. He said behavior problems and named a couple psychological disorders—that was probably why she had the shrink. Her psycho therapist mother would insist.

  Once I got around the edge of the crowd I leaned against one of the shade trees that edged the green and watched the protest for a couple minutes, out of habit more than anything.

  It was the usual mix of hippie-wanna-bes, well-dressed liberal arts students, and at least two professional agitators from some of the local revolutionary groups who I’d seen on watchlists and low-rent wanted posters.

  As I watched, a fresh crop of signs moved out through the crowd to the fore, blocking the bearer from my view. This set singled Doctor Sternwood out for special contempt—one declaring him the antichrist of the biosphere, another comparing him to Josef Mengele, and a third illustrating the good doctor in flagrante delicto with a chimpanzee and declaring “If Sternwood wins, the apes are fucked.”

  A whistle from my right snapped my head around. The cops had arrived. No riot gear yet, but they were setting up a perimeter. If the mood of the protest changed they’d lock the place down and I wouldn’t be able to get out.

  I took the last bite of the sherbet and tossed the container into a trash can at the road’s edge, but when I glanced back at the crowd to pick my way through I saw an unexpected familiar face.

  Gravity.

  I flashed back to the long-haired young man I saw ascending the stairs in the lecture hall—same guy, but in dockers and a sportcoat rather than the cutoffs and tank top he wore now. Playing both sides? Or was he in there gathering intelligence? Maybe planting a…

  Oh, hell. Maybe a long shot to think that a twentysomething DJ was a terrorist bomber. Maybe.

  But he hadn’t been carrying anything when he left the auditorium, and almost everyone but me in that place had a laptop or a satchel or something of the kind.

  And if he wasn’t, I was going to get thrown in the clink while my references tried to convince DHS that I wasn’t making a terrorist threat myself.

  I took off across the lawn at a run, away from the cops, toward the parking lot. Tearing open my Civic’s passenger door, I opened the glove compartment and grabbed one of the dozen prepaid cells I keep on hand. I slammed the door shut and dialed 911 as I walked around the car.

  “911, wh
at is your emergency.”

  I used the hoarsest, most hacking voice I could. “Listen to me very carefully. There’s a bomb in the main conference room at the James H. Clark Center at Stanford. Evacuate the building at once.”

  “How do you know this, sir?”

  “I saw them plant it.”

  “Thank you, and can I get your name?”

  “Rick Deckard.” For some reason, all the talk of future tech had Blade Runner flashing through into my mind.

  “Thank you mister Deckard, please hold while I connect you with the Stanford Police.” She put me on semi-transparent hold and brought the campus dispatcher on the line and brought him up to speed. I had maybe another twenty seconds before they pulled the GPS transponder from the phone, and another minute after that before a cop showed up from the perimeter line back at the green.

  A second whistle blew. I heard a cop bullhorn commanding the crowd to disperse. Related to my call? Maybe. The crowd could have turned ugly all on its own.

  I didn’t wait for the inevitable series of questions I wouldn’t be able to answer anyway. I wiped my prints off the phone, leaned out the door, wedged the thing under the front tire, and closed the door.

  One little turn of the key, one move of the gearshift, a quick roll back over the phone, and both the connection and the GPS signal disappeared off any system that was looking.

  Now I just had to figure out which way to go to get out of here, a decision made for me by the figure of Mr. Gravity bounding off the green and jumped in to an open-top, suped-up gray Mustang.

  The Ford’s engine yawned through its glass-pack muffler like a kitten impersonating a cougar and skittered back, its tires skipping across the blacktop as he overslipped the clutch. This guy was bugging out fast.

  He laid a path of rubber heading to the south exit and slid his back end out as he hung a right onto Roth. One moving violation within sight of the cops—ballsy, stupid, or desperate, it was hard to tell which yet.

  He hooked left onto Campus—not a lot of places up that road he’d likely make a quick turn. He was heading up into the hills rather than down into the city.

  I took the gamble.

  I followed him onto Campus and up the hill, popping a baseball cap on my head in case he got a good look at me. Took me about a quarter mile to get him in my sights again, as he was gliding right onto Stock Farm heading toward Sand Hill.

  He was romping on his gas and brake alternately—very impatient. Wherever he was going, he needed to be there yesterday. The flow patterns of city traffic are no respecter of personal agendas, and I kept up with him easily just doing a steady forty until we hit Sand Hill.

  He was a block in front of me, I only saw his tail disappear around the berm when I rounded the last bend before the light.

  The light caught me. That figured.

  I tapped my foot while the damn thing waited to cycle—always a longer cycle for the cross traffic than for the main drag. When Sand Hill through traffic got its yellow, I popped into first and spurred on the super-powered gerbils in my engine to 2k on the tach.

  When the light hit green, my gas pedal hit the firewall and the clutch slipped off easy. I took off from the line like a rice racer without leaving so much as a chirp’s worth of rubber on the pavement.

  Passing Santa Cruz Avenue at fifty-six on the uphill stretch, I caught the flash of a gray Mustang pushing into the deep groove between the hills heading up to 280. Was he heading into Woodside, south to San Jose, or north into the City?

  It didn’t take me long to find out. I feathered the gas back so I didn’t gain on him too hard—I didn’t want him knowing he’d picked up a tail.

  He wasn’t slowing down, though. The low scrub oaks and unassuming late-70s venture capital buildings zipped by fast enough to make a cheetah motion sick. By the time he hit northbound 280’s long-flow on-ramp he was doing ninety, and I was the only car behind him.

  Clear shot. If he was watching his rear-view he’d have me made.

  But he didn’t seem to be paying attention. He flew out into 280 traffic like he was chasing a gazelle, dodging between three big rigs and out into the furthest left lane. Once established there, he held steady at about ninety five.

  No way to stay hidden going this fast on a road this open—best I could do was stay a couple lanes to the right and hide behind whatever other cars I could find.

  By playing the creep up/fade back game, using the long spaces between exits to catch up and then using the traffic coming on at entrances to hide myself, I managed to barely keep up with him while staying mostly out of his mirrors.

  We kept this up for fifteen miles—I took the lead in the right lanes for a few miles at a time, then let him creep back up ahead of me as exits approached.

  As a tactic for remaining inconspicuous it worked splendidly—the road was open and there wasn’t a highway patrolman in sight. It would have kept working if he hadn’t realized in the last hundred yards that he was in the far lane and about to zip by his exit.

  One hundred yards—three hundred feet.

  Ninety five miles per hour—one hundred thirty nine feet per second.

  Gravity had to cross five lanes of traffic and get on to the exit—about eighty feet of open pavement and right through my car.

  He checked right and caught my eye, then yanked his wheel hard and barreled straight at my front quarterpanel. I swerved, crossed the line onto the shoulder, and my front wheel caught the dirt.

  The world ground to a stop around me. The wheel jerked right in my hands—I yanked hard to the left, pulled my foot off the gas and feathered the brake.

  My Civic lurched every which way, trying its level best not to plow me face first into the low concrete wall lining the embankment. The right wheels hit pavement again and the car bucked hard to the left, sending me back out into traffic as the exit lanes left the freeway for the 92 flyover.

  I shifted my weight on the wheel, but not as far, pulling slightly right as I careened through the second lane toward the far wall.

  The big rig behind me laid on his horn. I shut him out.

  My speed dipped below sixty. I crossed to the far shoulder, only about six feet wide now that I was well out onto the flyover.

  One more yank right, I dropped hard into third and the gerbils screamed at me as the tach hit 4k. My wheels caught and bit, then I started slowing down fast.

  The rear view mirror insisted that a Range Rover was trying to sodomize me.

  I swerved back into the right lane, the car not tilting so far this time, and I punched the accelerator. The Civic lurched forward, the tach hit 5k, I shifted up to fourth and the shimmy died away.

  Gravity was about a mile in front of me, away down at the left turn to head over the mountains toward Half Moon Bay. Four cars between us. Easy peasy.

  Round the reservoir, over the bridge, up and over the mountain. He played chicken with the oncoming traffic, taking every opportunity to pass. Trying to get me off his ass.

  Keeping up with him around the twenty mile per hour hairpins, redwoods and pines a hundred feet tall in solid walls on either side. Traffic thicker than camel dung.

  My wallet could feel the rates on my life insurance climbing by the mile.

  He popped around a Coca-Cola truck and screeched back into our lane just in time to avoid a shave by a Suburban trundling down the other side.

  The Suburban lead a tightly packed clump of traffic—I was stuck behind the rolling soda fountain for four miles. Every minute, I could feel Gravity slipping further and further down the other side of the mountain.

  At the top, the road split and I ate the passing lane. The little Civic had an aftermarket 2.8 V6, and I used every last cubic centimeter.

  I crested the mountain, then pushed along the far straightaway at seventy, barely holding onto the road through the switchbacks.

  I didn’t see him. All the way to the bottom and through the canyon—maybe he was still ahead, the road down here was clear enough he could ha
ve made good time. Or maybe he’d turned off somewhere.

  The traffic lights in Half Moon Bay were clear up to the Pacific Coast Highway. It wasn’t yet four, but I needed to get back to the East Bay—nothing out here was remotely related to the case. The closest thing was Kinksters Inc. in San Francisco. If I headed north along the coast I could hit that part of the City in maybe half an hour to forty minutes. They weren’t supposed to be open today, but it was all I had on this side of the water.

  North on Highway 1 it was.

  Two blocks out of town, motion in my rear view mirror caught my attention.

  A gray Mustang slid from a cross street and swerved side to side less than twelve feet off my bumper. Gravity raised his arm and made a shooting motion with his fingers, then laid on the gas and tapped my bumper.

  I floored it.

  He’d ducked off the main drag. I got that—but why did he give a damn?

  For two miles he rode my ass like I was a three-dollar rent boy from the bad side of town, and no way out. Zipping past the housing developments between Half Moon Bay and El Granada wasn’t getting me anywhere.

  I waited for a break in opposing traffic.

  Right past the farm truck…now!

  Hand on the e-brake. Clutch in, shifter into third. Slip it soft. Yank the hand brake. Crank the wheel, floor the gas.

  The little Civic turned left and slid right, almost floating across the opposing lane as its weight pivoted around the engine block. The back end swung past center. I dropped the brake handle.

  I could smell the rubber smoke through the vents.

  The tires moved from squealing to screaming to howling in agony. The gerbils weren’t happy either.

  Ten seconds, maybe less, till the next clump of traffic was on top of me.

  I’d pushed the turn too hard. The car was still sliding.

  In the lane I’d just left, Gravity blew by in a honking tornado.

  My right rear tire slid off the road. My front had no traction. The tach was down under 2k. I dropped to second and gave the gerbils one last hard whip. The tires hauled at the ground.

  The back end slid more than halfway into the open air over the drainage ditch.