Deep as the Marrow

by F. Paul Wilson

  And it had been torture, unremitting agony hanging around that rest stop, scrutinizing every traveler hurrying to the bathrooms or buying a yogurt, hating everyone who used a phone in case the kidnappers might be trying to call on one of them.

  And with each passing hour, his hope fading, progressing from growing uncertainty to devastating conviction that Katie wasn’t coming back to him.

  And he’d been so sure. That woman who’d called had seemed genuinely concerned about Katie. Had she changed her mind? Or worse—one person connected with the plot was already dead… had something else gone wrong?

  And even if something hadn’t, even if Katie and this woman were sitting safe and sound in another house in another town, Katie had no Tegretol.

  The pill count from the bottle found in Falls Church showed only a few missing. John sighed. One more thing he’d kept from Nana, but it yawned before him like a bottomless pit: Right now, as they sat here in their desolate cocoons, Katie could be having a seizure.

  The phone rang and John leapt to get it. Good news? Bad news? No news? The phone had become a loaded weapon; answering it, placing it to his ear, a form of Russian roulette.

  “Good news, Doc. I think.” Bob Decker’s voice. John guessed he was supposed to ask who was talking if he didn’t recognize it. Decker tended to be deficient in the social amenities, but John appreciated his no-nonsense approach.

  “You ‘think’?”

  “Yeah. It’s about the toe.” Decker seemed a little unsure, and that couldn’t be good. John glanced at his mother who had straightened in her chair, listening. He waved off her questioning look and covered the receiver.

  “Just an update,” he told her. “Nothing new.” She still didn’t know about the toe. He wanted to keep it than way.

  As casually as he could, he stretched the phone cord and slipped around the corner into the hall. Then he leaned against the wall, bracing himself.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s not your daughter’s.”

  “What?” John didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “How… ? I don’t…”

  “Damnedest thing. I’ve already been on the phone twice to the Bureau crime lab. They say the toe you gave us is full of embalming fluid.”

  “Embalming?” He had to keep his voice low—a whisper. “But there was fresh blood. I saw it.”

  “That’s right. And the type matches your daughter’s, but—”

  “Wait. How do you know her blood type?”

  “Her hospital records—when she had that head injury.”

  “Oh. Right.” Of course they’d have done an in-depth background check on Katie, trying to find out everything about her.

  “Anyway, the lab is a hundred percent certain the blood on the toe didn’t come from the toe. That toe’s been dead for days.”

  John took a breath. Thank God he’d spoken to Katie yesterday. If he hadn’t, he’d be convinced right now that she was dead.

  “This makes no sense!”

  “Tell me about it. But it gets weirder. The toe belongs to a little boy.”

  “A boy? How on earth did they figure that out?”

  “Did some DNA thing. Found a Y chromosome.”

  John tried to slow his whirling thoughts, tried to snatch bits of coherency from the maelstrom.

  A Y chromosome; females didn’t have one, so the toe couldn’t be Katie’s.

  “There’s no mistake?” John said.

  “That’s what I’m told. The lab boys say they’ve checked and rechecked: double X on the blood, but the cells of the toe itself are XY.”

  John bit his lip. He wanted to pound the wall and shout. But confusion blunted his relief.

  Why send a dead boy’s toe? The kidnappers were obviously murderous thugs—the bloody corpse in the Falls Church house was testament to that—and yet they’d sent a bogus toe rather than cut off Katie’s…

  “Any of this make sense to you. Doc?”

  “No. I can’t imagine…”

  “Neither can I. Are you sure you can’t help us out on this?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Anything you haven’t told us?”

  John stiffened. Did they suspect that he’d been contacted? Had they followed him last night? He was tempted to tell Decker about speaking to Katie yesterday, but the woman had been worried about being caught. Suppose someone on Decker’s team had followed him and scared her off?

  Damn you if that’s true, he thought. I might not get another chance.

  “No. I told you everything I knew. And I haven’t heard a word from Snake.” That much at least was true.

  A pause before Decker responded. “All right. But let us know the instant you hear anything. Every little scrap is important.”

  “Of course. But what happens next?”

  “I meet with our little task force in about an hour. I’ll keep you informed.”

  As John hung up, he wondered: Was it just his imagination, or had Decker put extra emphasis on the “you?” Who gave a good goddamn? He was worried about Katie. Where was she? What were they doing to her?

  2

  “But I want to go home! I want to see my Daddy!” Poppy watched Katie’s lower lip push out. She looked like she was going to cry. Poppy couldn’t bear the thought that she’d caused that.

  “You will, honey,” she said, giving Katie a one-armed hug. “It’s like I told you: You fell asleep last night and I didn’t want to wake you. But you know what? We’ll call him again today and you can talk to him. Okay?” Katie nodded.

  “ ‘Kay.”

  “Great. How you feeling?”

  “Fine.”

  The poor little thing had had a bit of a Valium hangover this morning. Good thing Katie had been zonked out last night because after getting into bed beside her, Poppy had got to thinking about Paulie, and Katie would have had to listen to a ton of crying. Paulie was like the best thing that ever happened to her. And now he was dead. And it was her fault because she’d got him to break Mac’s rules. If she’d kept her damn mouth shut…

  But then what would have happened to Katie? Why couldn’t life be simple?

  Yeah, well, maybe it could have been simple if they hadn’t got involved with Mac.

  She’d clung to Katie all night. Poppy didn’t know how she’d have made it to the morning without her.

  Dawn had broken gray and cloudy, but they’d both perked up after a stack of waffles at the Denny’s across the highway. And now, back in the room, she wished she could find some cartoons to distract Katie, but the tube was like totally filled with talking heads, and if they weren’t blabbing about legalized drugs they were speculating about like why the President was in the hospital.

  As if anybody cared.

  “How come your hands are all red?” Katie said.

  Poppy looked down at her hands. Black fingernails and blood-red fingers.

  Very weird.

  She stood and stepped toward the window. “C’mere and I’ll show you.” She pulled back the curtain. “Check out the truck.”

  Katie pressed her face against the window. “It’s red!”

  “Sure is. Did it myself last night.”

  She’d pulled the truck around the back of the motel and parked near a storage shed. There, out of sight of pretty much the whole parking lot, she’d emptied like can after can of spray paint. Her fingers still ached from pressing those nozzles. Sure as hell wasn’t pretty, but anyone scanning the freeways for a white panel truck would probably skip right over this one. She hoped.

  Poppy dropped the curtain and turned back to the motel room. They couldn’t stay here. She’d charged it on Mac’s bogus plastic, thinking he was dead. But Mac wasn’t dead. And what if he had a way to trace her through the card?

  They had to get out of here.

  But first they had to make some changes.

  “Good,” Poppy said. “Let’s play a game, then. How about”—she made a show of trying to decide—“oh, I don’t know… how about a g
ame of let’s pretend?” Katie’s pout of a moment ago seemed to be history.

  “What are we going to pretend?”

  “Let’s see… why don’t we pretend we’re boys? Won’t that be fun?”

  “Boys?” Katie didn’t seem to be too sure about how much fun that would be. “How do we do that?”

  “It’s easy. We change our hair and change our clothes and we act dumb. You know…” Poppy made a face. “Duh.”

  Katie laughed. “Duh! That’s easy.”

  “But we gotta look like boys.”

  A wider grin. “You mean dress in boy clothes?”

  “Right! And cutting our hair.”

  The smile vanished as Katie’s hands darted to her hair. “Cut my hair? Oh, I don’t—”

  “Yeah, we’ll cut it, color it, comb it different. This’ll be the most fun we’ve ever had!”

  But Katie still wasn’t buying.

  She has to buy it. Poppy thought. I’ve changed the color of the truck, and I’m going to change license plates and change motels, but if we’re both going to get through this in one piece, I’ve got to change us.

  She’d stopped at a Giant Foods on the way back from Denny’s and picked up all the necessary materials. Now she had to sell Katie.

  “Look,” she said, grabbing a pair of scissors. “I’ll go first.” She grabbed a fistful of her own hair and began cutting.

  3

  Dan Keane sat stiffly in his chair in the cramped back office of W-16 and listened with growing horror as Gerry Canney updated the task force on the latest developments from the FBI Crime Lab.

  “And here’s the latest finding: two different types of blood on the carpet in the Falls Church house. Both fresh. One belongs to the dead man, Dicastro. The other is unidentified, but it is definitely not Katie Vanduyne’s.”

  Everything’s unraveling, he thought. He wanted to flee the room.

  Decker took over. “Okay. Now, in the U.K. Jim says he’s found the guy who runs the anonymous remailer Snake’s been using.” Jim Lewis cleared his throat. “His name’s Steve Fletcher but he refuses to tell us where he hides his computer. The easiest solution would be to follow him to it and steal it. Then we run through his hard drive to find Snake’s e-mail address. Snake’s got to have an account with an online service or a private server to get on the Internet, and we track him through that. But stealing the CPU would shut down the remailer service and cut off communication from Snake. So we’re working with British Intelligence to pressure Fletcher into giving up the information. If it looks like there’s going to be too much red tape, we have other options.”

  “Like what?” Decker said.

  “I’ll get into that when and if.”

  Dan steadied himself. If they can trace this Snake to Salinas, we’re screwed.

  Decker nodded. “Fair enough.” He turned to Dan. “And finally, what’s DEA got?” Dan licked his dry lips. Truth was, he’d gone through some motions but hadn’t done much of anything. But he couldn’t tell Decker that.

  “We’ve got all our ears open. I wasn’t specific about kidnapping or assassination plots, but I put the word through to check all our informants and inside people about any rumors as to how the traffickers and the cartel are reacting to the threat of decriminalization.”

  “And?”

  “And nothing yet.” Which was true. It was too early to hear much of substance, but the little that was filtering back was negative.

  Salinas had done a good job of keeping his operation under wraps, but it looked as if he’d hired a bunch of rank amateurs to pull it off.

  “All right,” Decker said. “That’s where we stand. We’ve got lots of leads, lots of new information, but also the damnedest set of new questions. If the toe Vanduyne received isn’t his daughter’s, then whose is it? Or rather, whose was it? Why send someone else’s toe?

  We know Katie was in the Falls Church house at one time, but where is she now? And why was she moved? Why was a small-time thug named Paul Dicastro murdered in that house? Was he part of the action from the outset or someone trying to horn in? Who does the other bloodstain on the carpet belong to? Another of the kidnappers or an outsider? And where is this wounded person? Is this a small-time or big-time operation? Did the kidnappers have a falling out? Is the conspiracy busted? Who was the woman that called Vanduyne and offered to return his daughter—for no ransom—and then never showed. What the hell is going on?“

  “Damn straight,” Canney said. “This one’s got to be the most bizarre goddamn kidnapping I’ve ever seen or heard of. One moment it appears to be a highly sophisticated operation; the next—strictly amateur hour.”

  You’ve got that right, Dan thought. But Carlos Salinas is a pro. Some of the people he hired may have fucked up, but even as we sit here, he’s tying up all those loose ends.

  Dan forced himself to relax.

  Everything will be all right. Salinas will have everything under control soon, if not already. He won’t leave a trace.

  4

  “Where is he?” Carlos pounded the desk with both fists.

  “He could be anywhere,” Gold said. “We have his house staked out, so we know he’s not there. We just have to wait until he calls in.” The MBA looked fidgety, and Carlos was glad of it. Let him be frightened of me. Let him fear not only for his future income, but for his physical well being. His life.

  Because Carlos was afraid for all those things himself.

  MacLaglen might be alive, but he might be hurt and hiding somewhere, or even dying. Carlos was not concerned about the cabron’s health so much as the fact that his very disappearance might trigger the release of that damned tape.

  “I want him found!” He turned to Llosa. “Get some men together. We have a picture of MacLaglen; have copies made. We know he likes to call from hotels. Make the rounds. Go from hotel to hotel and look for him.” It was a long shot, but he couldn’t simply sit here and wait for something to happen.

  Llosa nodded and pulled out a pistol. “And when I find him, should I… ”

  “Madre, no!” He didn’t want Gold or Llosa or anyone to know about the tape. “Bring him here, to me. He has much explaining to do, and a dead man cannot explain.”

  5

  Poppy checked out her hair in the bathroom mirror.

  “It’ll grow back,” she told herself for the hundredth time since she’d started hacking it off.

  Her China doll bob was gone. So was the Deadly Nightshade rinse. Instead she now sported jet-black hair, close on the sides, spiked on top. Kind of retro and like eighties-ish, and normally she wouldn’t be caught dead looking like this, but the whole idea of the makeover was staying alive.

  She checked out the rest of her get-up: baggy jeans, oversized denim shirt, sneakers. She’d removed her ear rings, eyebrow ring, and nostril stud. No makeup, no nail polish, and still no way she’d pass for a guy.

  But Mac would have to be looking pretty damn close to recognize the Poppy Mulliner he’d known.

  Katie, however, was like a totally different story. Poppy stepped back into the sleeping area and admired her handiwork.

  Katie sat on the bed, remote in hand, channel surfing. She’d been a little difficult during her makeover, but seemed to have forgotten it now. But it had been worth all the trouble. Katie really looked like a little boy.

  A red-haired little boy. Poppy had tried to make her a blonde, but the bleaching solution had turned her dark hair red instead. Which was okay, she guessed. Blond would have been cooler, but with the short bowl cut Poppy had given her, her Jets T-shirt, and jeans and sneakers to match Poppy’s, she looked ready for peewee football practice.

  I hope this works, she thought. Just long enough for you to get to safety and me to disappear.

  She put on a smile and clapped her hands. “Hey, bro. Let’s go. How’s a call to your daddy sound?” Katie dropped the remote and ran to the phone.

  “Can I dial?”

  “You sure can. But let’s find another phone, o
kay?”

  Before leaving, Poppy scoured the room of every trace that they’d been here. Even if someone tracked them to this room, they’d have no notion that hair had been cut or dyed.

  She stopped their newly red truck at a gas station, got a fistful of change ready, let Katie punch in her dad’s cell phone number, then held the handset between them as her father answered.

  “Hi, Daddy. It’s me.”

  “Katie!” said a masculine voice. “Oh, Katie, thank God it’s you! What happened? I thought I was going to see you last night. I waited and waited.”

  Poppy heard the voice crack and almost break with emotion. Damn me, she thought. I should’ve let him know I wasn’t coming.

  “I fell asleep,” Katie said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure. We’re playing let’s pretend and you know what we did?” Poppy pulled the handset away. “Let me talk now, okay?”

  No telling who might be listening. Maybe even Mac. Paulie said he was a genius. He might have tapped Katie’s home line, but how could you tap a cellular phone? No wires.

  “Sorry about last night,” she said. “I had to like change plans.”

  “As long as Katie’s all right. But she needs her medicine. She—”

  “All taken care of,” Poppy said.

  A pause on the other end, then, “But the pills were left—”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’m taking good care of her. I ain’t about to let her start having fits.”

  “Can I ask how you got them? I mean, is it the right dose?”

  “Exactly the same as the ones in the bottle. I had to like knock over a drugstore to get them.”

  After another pause, longer this time. “You did that for Katie? You…you really do care about her, don’t you.”

  “Sure. You got a great kid here.” A totally great kid. “But how come she’s got like this dent in her head?”

  “An… accident. A fractured skull. It left her with the seizure disorder.” He cleared his throat. “Listen… can I ask you… is she all there? I mean, her toes… ?”