“Oh boy,” my voice carried on a sigh. “We’ve got to be super careful here.”
“Yep.” Joan has her hands on her hips, staring at what’s fast turning into her most difficult patient in recent memory.
“Not that there’s a playbook, protocol or documented procedure for how to handle something like this,” I add.
“Nope,” Joan says. “If there is and you want to look it up, it will be listed under Shit Show. One thing I’m clear on is we don’t want to cut through any knots. Not unless you want my chief shipping me off to Leavenworth.”
“Can’t afford to lose a perfectly good drinking buddy,” is my retort.
Neither of us looking at each other as we talk, and good thing I know my way around tools. The obvious solution is not to cut through the computer cable at all, and I recommend instead that we lift the body off the door and onto the floor, which we first cover with a disposable sheet. Instead of cutting the cable, I’ll remove the doorknobs, leaving the entire rigging intact.
That’s exactly what we do while one of Fran’s crime scene officers captures it on video since Scottie and Butch have left the scene. We double pouch the body, cool and rigid when we lift it up, Joan gripping it under the arms while I get the ankles. Strapping it onto the stretcher. Draping the morbid cocoon with a burgundy cot cover.
We roll out our grim cargo while the local NBC news crew surrounds us with cameras that dart and turn like orbs of blinding light in the frigid blustery night. We don’t answer shouted questions, pushing onward to the back of the black medical examiner’s van. Opening the tailgate. Collapsing the aluminum legs of the stretcher. Lifting it.
We slide Vera Young inside for the last ride she’ll take while her organs are still in place. And I hope like crazy we won’t have to remove her fingers.
00:00:00:00:0
“DON’T WORRY.” Dick keeps saying that at the sink, standing close behind me, tearing off tape with his teeth, bandaging my hand.
As I ponder the likelihood of my losing the pad of my right index finger. Should that happen, what about the fingernail? If I lose that, then what?
The first interphalangeal joint is next. Very bad when right-hand dominant.
“. . . You’re gonna be good as new . . .” His fingers stained dark orange from Betadine, not wanting to consider what may be inevitable, and he won’t say it.
Partial amputation. I could manage the cyclic, hold a pencil, a pipette, shoot a gun. Not ambidextrous, a competent southpaw. Not optimal. Could medically disqualify me from going to space. From wearing a 280-pound Extravehicular Mobility Unit, and cumbersome gloves that don’t fit so great. Using delicate instruments, tools. Riding the robotic arm like a rodeo star.
“You don’t know what you can’t do until you can’t do it anymore,” Dad’s always saying.
Viewed as unskilled. Reckless. Not to be trusted. Clipping more than a finger. Clipping my wings.
“. . . Captain Chase? How are we holding up . . . ?”
Impatient, distracted when I know better, the evidence there near our feet on the blood-spattered tile. The airman and his mop detouring around the wooden-handled carving knife as if it’s a murder weapon, apologizing every other minute. Cleaning up with his bucket of hot tap water and chlorine bleach.
“Sorry, sir. Excuse me, sir,” he says repeatedly but not to me, the sharp fumes like a nail in my head.
Woozy, fading in and out like a signal I can’t catch, jolted each time Dick repeats my name. Loudly. And often. Captain Chase this, and Captain Chase that, making me feel like a reprimanded child. Or somebody old and confused. As if he doesn’t know me anymore. Because of what I did.
“Oh shhhh . . . Oh shhhh . . . Oh shhhh . . . !” under my breath.
“. . . You’re doing great. You still with us, Captain Chase? You’re doing great. Let’s get you to the medical clinic.”
“Oh shhhh . . . !” Trying not to sob.
Dick turning off the water in the sink, my right hand wrapped in layers of gauze.
“Are you up for a ride in the car? Captain Chase? Do you think you could manage that?” Moving away from the countertop, his arm around me, holding me steady. “There we go. All’s good.”
Yes, better, much better, I can walk. The shock of the injury beginning to pass even as I fear being maimed. Fear it and my future with every cell of my being.
00:00:00:00:0
IT’S AFTER 10:00 p.m. I’m headed to the barn, and I don’t mean it figuratively.
These days I live in one, start with that. Wasn’t born in one but when Carme and I turned 12, our parents engaged in construction and woodworking wizardry, converting the old barn’s upstairs haylofts and grain bins into living and work areas. That’s where my sister and I hung our hats until college, and now I’m back and have been since Colorado.
Sleeping in the same bed, utilizing the same spaces, surrounded by the expected memorabilia one accumulates. Reminding me of the Faulkner quote about the past not being gone. It isn’t even past, and he had that right, just like Einstein did in his theory of special relativity. Certainly, there are days like this when it feels everything really might be happening at once, and maybe I’m just tired, but I’ve lost any concept of time.
It could be the actual hour on my phone or much later or earlier, maybe not this day or year. All I know is that it’s windy and dark with hardly anybody out, and it would take nothing for me not to know where I am. For everything to look unfamiliar in the stark frigid blackness as I head home after the day I’ve had, pretty sure it’s far from over as I fret about the EVA and rocket launch, as I fret even more about Dick and what to tell my parents about Carme.
What will I say to Fran? Most of all, where is my sister, and is she safe? That will be the first thing asked, and I have no good answer or feeling about it. I haven’t heard from her. I’m afraid I won’t and more afraid I will. Feeling sick with a volatile mix of pain and outrage, stunned fury, grief and high-voltage fear.
What have you done!
I’ve got to keep it contained. Keep my mess to myself, concentrating hard while driving carefully in the overcast dark, the angry cloud ceiling lower and the humidity up. The weather is changing more rapidly than predicted, and I’ve not checked on the storm’s progress in hours.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
Twenty minutes out from home, driving on not much more than a country lane, I’m constantly on the alert for deer, watching my mirrors, unable to shake the sensation that what’s being watched most of all is me. I’ve been feeling it ever since I got that alert on my phone, and Fran and I checked the Yellow Submarine tunnel. I’m feeling it out here in the middle of nowhere, not another car in sight.
Streetlights are few and bleary in the fog, and intermittently I’m driving past clusters of lighted homes dressed up for the holidays, then woods and fields as dark as a black hole. Shapes and reflections play their tricks on my eyes, and I can’t wait to get out of this gear and my disgusting wet clothes. A shower and food are first on the list, and by midnight I’ll be back at Langley, ready to assist Rush Delgato in Mission Control.
Still no word from him, and I’m feeling overexposed and all alone, low on fuel and in need of a hard restart that will reset my processors and line up my pistons. There will be no sleep tonight, with plenty to follow up on. I may have to dash to the morgue at the crack of dawn, depending on how it goes when they check Vera Young’s body for sensors or other implanted devices.
That has to be done before everything else, scanning with computed tomography, CT, and possibly magnetic resonance imaging, MRI, if Tidewater’s 1.5-Tesla magnet is up and running. I also told Joan to try a handheld scanner, the kind the TSA uses in airports to help zero in on the location of any chip-type transmitting devices detected. Every last one of them will have to be
recovered, hopefully with a biopsy needle to keep the mutilation to a minimum.
But I’m contemplating all sorts of scenarios about how to manage such unfortunate but necessary extractions from the body. Trust me when I say they’ll be problematic for about every reason imaginable, and that gruesome thought ricochets me back to next of kin. Who’s supposed to be taking care of that? I could kick myself for not thinking about it prior to clearing the scene, and I try Fran again.
“Where are you?” I ask over my truck’s engine, a beast of a V-8 that rumbles and snarls.
“At home and about to get cleaned up,” she says, the background quiet because unlike me, she got a head start and is no longer driving in wet stinking clothing that makes me think of jungle rot.
“Don’t rush,” I say with just the faintest jab. “As you can tell, I’m still in my truck.” Sticking her harder.
“What’s up?”
“Next of kin. Any thoughts about contacting someone? Or how we might go about it?” What I’m really asking is if Fran intends to do it herself because darn it, she should.
24
“GOT NO IDEA, but Vera Young should have an emergency contact on her personnel form,” Fran doesn’t really answer what I really asked, and I already know where this is going.
She’s not going to make the call. She’s going to make me do it.
Crap!
“Scottie’s back at HQ dealing with evidence, and I can get her to pull the file, send you an electronic copy ASAP,” Fran goes on to suggest what I didn’t have in mind. “I suspect the sister she alluded to is who we’re talking about, someone who also works at Pandora but maybe at a higher level.”
“Neva.”
“Huh?”
“That’s her name, apparently. N-E-V-A. As in Nevada except it’s pronounced with a long e like Eva,” I reply. “Why is the default that I’m the one reaching out? Why can’t you pick up the phone and tell this poor woman her poor sister is dead, and not in a natural way? And we’re sorry for her loss but could use a little information and so on?”
“Because you’re so much better with people than I am,” Fran’s voice fills my truck, and when she’s suddenly sincere, reasonable and oh so earnest, I see right through it. “You’re the cyber person, the NASA scientist who understands psychology and what goes on in 1110,” she says.
“Uh-huh, keep talking. But you’re not selling it.” Making me do her dirty work as usual, Major Chicken shirking anything requiring a bedside manner.
“More to the point, you’re the special agent who interviewed her yesterday,” Fran tells me how qualified I am only when she doesn’t want the job. “Therefore, hands down you should talk to the sister, Neva, Nevada or whatever. I assume her last name isn’t the same as the dead lady’s.”
“I don’t know,” but I doubt it. “Vera said she was divorced with grown kids, so presumably Young may not be her family name.”
“Well, I’m sure there aren’t too many people at Pandora with the first name of Neva, and I’d start with upper management to narrow down the search,” Fran’s know-it-all voice inside my truck. “In fact, I’m googling it as we speak. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist, and bingo! Her last name is Rong without the w. As in R-O-N-G. Recently hired as the CEO of Pandora Space Systems. Nothing like going straight to the top, and I have no doubt you’ll know more once the two of you talk.”
“Maybe text me a phone number,” willing myself not to drive too fast. “But I’m not calling right now.”
“Let her think you’re just trying to be helpful, let her know what’s happened but within reason,” Fran says as if she’s not hearing me, and I don’t know how to act. “And also, see what else we can learn about Vera’s mental health and the people she was working with, okay?”
“The question is when such a call should be made,” I reply. “I don’t want to release any information until we confirm identity. In fact, I won’t.”
“Seriously, Aggie? Can there be any doubt who the frick she is? I mean, you sat down and talked to her yesterday!”
“I know this is hard to believe, but she looks a little different right now. Or at least she did when we were unhanging her from the closet door, her skin slipping, coming off in places where she’s burned. Her face reminiscent of a frog with its tongue out. As decomposition sets in with a vengeance.”
I see Vera as I say all this, looking exponentially worse the longer we were with her. I wouldn’t call her recognizable, and even if she were, it’s astonishing the mistakes in identity that are made.
“We can confirm who she is when she’s fingerprinted in the morgue,” I lay out a plan to Fran. “We’re just talking about waiting until morning, not even 12 hours from now. In the meantime, let’s make sure Joan has the copy of Vera’s prints that we have on file. After that and the autopsy, then we reach out to next of kin. That would be the safest thing to do.”
“You’re right. But it’s hard to imagine Vera Young’s team members haven’t already notified people at Pandora including the CEO sister,” Fran makes a good point. “Which will make things somewhat easier, I guess. You know, if the bad news has been broken to them already.”
We agree to hold off calling next of kin until morning, and Fran says she’ll see me back at Langley. Will look for me at Mission Control.
“So much for that beer you owe me because it’s all but certain the government’s shutting down,” she adds. “I’ll be heading back to work shortly.”
“I’ll see you there, but not for a few hours. Unlike some people I’m still in wet, stinky everything,” rubbing that in again, and I end the call.
On Beach Road now, and up ahead is the Welcome to Fox Hill sign with a seaside theme, including a lighthouse, mounted on what looks like fishing pier pilings on the roadside. If it’s possible to relax, I do. Relieved as fatigue sets in unmercifully now that I’m not gushing adrenaline with home in sight. Not literally in sight, but I feel its magnetic pull, our east Hampton neighborhood tracing back to the early 1800s, quaint and unspoiled, some things not changing much.
I always feel a sense of reassuring calm as I drive the narrow tree-lined streets past the modest homes of people who don’t have a lot except self-respect and a strong work ethic. It seems nothing can be that bad if I’m on my way to the cove where I grew up and still live with the in- and outlaws, as Mom likes to say.
Except everything is that bad, and the quote from the alleged suicide note sticks in my mind like a ghost image burned into a TV screen:
“Please tell my sister that I won’t miss her, and she’s been right about me all along . . .”
I don’t want to think about it but have no choice, knowing why I’m so bothered by those words. Desperate to banish them from my mind, hating the reminder of what Dick said about my own powerful twin. Truth is I’m rattled. Rattled in a way I’ve not been in years, and I’ve got to stand my professional ground.
Focus. Focus. Focus.
No matter what comes my way, even if it’s about my sister, and I can’t get it out of my head that Dick didn’t seem to know where she is. He went so far as to wonder if she might be here in Hampton, and what’s to say she isn’t? If he doesn’t know and I don’t? Then I can’t imagine who might, and the fact is, my special ops fighter-pilot twin could be anywhere she likes.
A bigger question is what my parents might know, especially Dad, and I recheck the time as I unlock my phone, curious if either of them have a heads-up that I’m about to blow through the door. I’ve not had a chance to fill them in on anything. Maybe Fran has.
“It’s me,” I say when my mother answers the landline at home, our number the same as when I was growing up.
“Hi, hon. How funny you called,” she says.
“Why’s that?” Talking to her hands-
free as I drive through our neighborhood.
“Because I was just about to call you, literally was reaching for the phone,” and this happens a lot, both of us simultaneously thinking the other one’s thought.
“I’m on my way,” I let her know. “Almost at the Methodist church,” and it’s dark, not a car in the parking lot.
But the Nativity scene is up and illuminated when it wasn’t this morning. The three kings have been blown over, a shepherd has lost his crook, and one of the lambs has been upended, its plastic legs sticking straight up in the blustery air. Fortunately, Mary and Joseph are no worse for the wear, baby Jesus resting peacefully, no straw left in the manger.
“Is it just me, or are the decorations up earlier?” I wonder out loud.
“You say the same thing every year at this exact time. And total transparency, the volunteer firefighters were out there before it got dark making apple cider doughnuts. Before everything closed because of the weather. I confess to making a quick stop.”
“Please tell me you didn’t.”
“They were plucking them out of the deep fryer,” she says, and true to stereotype, the firefighters I know are fantastic in the kitchen. “These may be the best ever. Not that there was any room for improvement.” She’s eating doughnuts over speakerphone openly and without apology. “They literally melt in your mouth.”
“And you’re literally making mine water,” I complain because empty calories have to be burned off if you’re me, and I’ve not eaten since the Bojangle’s steak-and-egg biscuits I wolfed down early this morning after the gym.
“I’ve put aside half a dozen doughnuts with your name on them.”
Quantum Page 20
