Spin (Captain Chase)

by Patricia Cornwell

  “Are you doing okay?” and when she’s uneasy, so am I.

  “Don’t you worry about me. I want to talk to you on the porch for a minute,” she says, and obviously she doesn’t want Dad or Easton waking up and overhearing.

  As hard as my mother is to read, I always know when she’s down or angry. If she’s privy to as much as I think she is, I can only imagine what she feels about Neva Rong, who’s come close to taking out our entire family. Now things have become personal for Mom, although they were before, more personal than I know, I have a feeling.

  “Tell me how you’re holding up,” she asks as we head out to the porch.

  “I’m not sure anymore. That’s the honest answer, and who decided to change the locks?” I close the door behind us, but not all the way.

  “It was time,” she says, taking my hand, my right one.

  Absently rubbing my scarred index finger the way Dick sometimes does, she leads me to the glider, the same one she had when she was growing up, white-painted aluminum with weatherproof floral cushions. We sit down, and I can feel the cold vinyl upholstery through my clothes.

  “I guess you knew I’d get into the barn anyway even though my keys weren’t going to work anymore,” I decide. “Same with the alarm code and the safe. I assume you know my new Artificial Research Technician,” I’m not going to dance around what’s going on.

  “We’re acquainted,” she answers, her voice low pitched and softly modulated, reminding me of ART again. “How’s everything working for you, Calli?”

  “I’d give myself a B minus for today.”

  “I’d give you much better than that. At least an A, maybe even extra credit,” she smiles in the dark, her face indistinct in the glow of her miniblues all around us.

  “And how would you know about my performance today?” I goad her, seeing if she’ll tell me.

  “There’s not much I don’t know about you, dear.”

  “And it feels that way, all right,” I admit. “It probably doesn’t bother Carme a bit that she’s watched, studied and adjusted. One thing my sister’s never been is modest.”

  She thinks nothing of walking around with very little on, and maybe I would too if I had her body. Mom has no comment, and it’s occurring to me where ART learned his silent treatments.

  “I’m not sure how I feel about everything,” I add to the familiar creaky whisper of the glider sliding back and forth, a sound I’d recognize anywhere. “I wish I knew how Carme’s reacting. Is she really okay with all this, Mom?”

  “Each of you has always had a decided flight plan that’s the same and different. You’ve always known your purpose. But knowing what’s expected doesn’t mean you have to go along with it. It’s up to you to decide.”

  “What if Carme and I hadn’t gone along with it?” I ask as ART informs me in my SPIES that the government shutdown just ended, much earlier than expected.

  “You wouldn’t be happy,” Mom says as if she knows it for a fact. “That’s what people don’t understand about free will.”

  “There’s no such thing, that’s for sure.”

  “Of course there is, and you can do what you want,” she replies. “But if you reject your purpose, if you make it all about yourself, you’ll have no satisfaction regardless of the consequences. Whether you end up an inmate or a rock star, you won’t get the reward you really want. We’re programmed like this for a reason.”

  “I just wish all that programming wasn’t on a computer chip that’s missing,” I go ahead and say it. “Is Dad okay? How does my sister feel about it, realizing what could happen if the wrong person gets hold of it? Specifically, if Neva does, because we know she’s after it. Dick told me everything. Well, he never tells me everything. But I’ve got the broad strokes.”

  “What do you remember?” Mom asks the same thing he did when I woke up after being drugged for days.

  “Probably more than he thought I would,” and I can’t resist answering everything she asks like I always have.

  I give her the highlights, including my awareness that she was present inside room 1 with my sister and possibly others when my network was implanted. Sharing the events of the day, I’m mindful that whenever the subject returns to Neva, it’s as if the night gets emptier and colder. I can feel Mom get stony, and I come right out and ask her about it.

  “I know she doesn’t like any of us but I’m wondering if her real target is you,” I conclude. “She seems gratuitously scornful and cruel. It seems personal, as if there’s a history maybe I don’t know about.”

  Silence. Just like ART.

  “When she was a postdoc in one of Dad’s labs at Langley, did something happen between you and Neva?” I persist. “Now would be a really good time to shoot straight with me as I’m trying to figure out what the psycho might do next.”

  Mom is quiet as we push with our toes, sliding back and forth slowly and gently, surrounded by darkness and lights.

  “I recognized what she was when no one else did,” she finally answers. “Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I’d gotten to know her.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I may not be a scientist or an astronaut but I have my value as it turns out,” she says. “If you’re looking for someone who has an overview of everything that goes on at NASA and in the space world, I’m a pretty good place to start.”

  “Ask the person who teaches it to everybody else,” I reply. “Plus, you’re exposed to a lot of privileged information. Much of it classified and top secret even if it’s through osmosis,” thinking of projects Dad and I routinely work on.

  “She’d drop by my office regularly, insatiably curious about all my lesson plans. We spent a fair amount of time together,” Mom says. “George and I had her over for supper or on the weekends. We were friendly, saw each other daily until I began hearing rumors that clued me in on what she was really up to.”

  “How long had you been hanging out by the time you became suspicious?” I inquire, and it bothers me tremendously to think of Neva ever stepping foot on our farm.

  00:00:00:00:0

  “IT WENT ON a few months longer than it should have,” Mom doesn’t really answer the question. “Your father had several inventions he hadn’t patented yet, and she stole them right out from under him. Can’t prove it but there’s no doubt. Why do you think she has more money than God?”

  “Did you confront her with these rumors? Specifically, your suspicion that she stole Dad’s intellectual property?” I ask as we stare out at the night, rocking gently on the old settee glider, our breath fogging when we talk.

  “I knew better after some of what I was hearing. You don’t openly challenge someone like that. Instead I distanced myself while alerting key people that she’s trouble,” Mom explains, and I go ahead and tell her the truth about what happened in the tunnel on Christmas Eve three years ago.

  “Just weeks after I moved back home,” I remind her. “I’ll never forget when we got the phone call. You remember what that was like for all of us. A nightmare. Pure chaos that’s never really ended, as you well know.”

  “If she disrupts someone you care about, she disrupts you, and if something happens to you, it disrupts me. If I’m disrupted, that’s the end,” Mom continues to avoid saying Neva’s name.

  “Why is it the end?”

  “It just is.”

  “Explain what you mean,” but I think I know.

  It’s always been Mom holding everything and everyone together. Carme and me. Dick and Dad, possibly in that order, I have to wonder.

  “What did Dad think of Neva in the early days when she was visiting the farm?”

  “You know George, he’s nice to everyone. Only sees the good.”

  “Well, I hope he knows what s
he is now.”

  “He’s known for quite a while what she is, and I wish he wouldn’t take things so hard,” Mom says. “But he shouldn’t have told that kid a darn tooting thing, and I saw what was coming.”

  “Lex isn’t so bad. It’s easy to resent someone like him when Dad plays favorites the way he does.”

  “George feels terrible about it. But he should have known better,” she says what she always does when Dad’s too trusting, and I envision him shopping with Lex at the Hop-In, spending a small fortune.

  “Your theory about what went down at Fort Monroe?” I want to hear from her what transpired when Neva showed up unannounced at Vera’s apartment door. “I have a feeling you have it on good authority exactly what happened.”

  I want the whole truth, and I’m convinced Mom knows. She might not have been watching. But someone was, and what I’m really suggesting is that she and Carme are in communication.

  “Well, what makes sense to me is her hitman was driving her in the early afternoon of December 3rd,” Mom’s talking about Neva. “And it’s also possible her intention was to drop in unannounced as she claims.”

  But Neva didn’t show up to be friendly, to act like the caring sister who happened to be in the area. She intended to catch Vera off guard because she had something Neva wanted, Mom says. Things got out of hand, as I’ve suspected, ending violently, she suggests, and I think of what Vera was garroted with, a thin power cord.

  It’s probably the same one used after the fact to rig her up from the closet door. The computer charger likely belonged to the conveniently password-less laptop displaying Vera’s alleged suicide note. The weapon, the note were indigenous to the scene, suggesting the killer used what was available, and that feels more like an impulse than a plan.

  “I suspect she killed Vera in a rage,” Mom goes on. “And now, uh-oh, there’s a mess to clean up. So what do you do? You fake the scene to look like Vera hanged herself. Then you douse her body with chlorine bleach in hopes of destroying or at least damaging DNA and any other evidence that might point your way.”

  “It makes no sense to think Vera did that to herself,” I agree. “Imagine bleach all over your face and in your eyes? How was she going to string herself up from the door, elaborately I might add, once she was covered with a caustic chemical? Also, if she did that to herself, then what happened to the container or bottle? Why wasn’t it at the scene?”

  “That’s what ruins the staging,” Mom nods her head as we glide back and forth. “The glaring red flag.”

  A deliberate one, that and the missing ID badge that later turned up in Vera’s apartment, and the motion sensor alarm that went off in the airlock, all of it was my sister’s doing. I envision the dried blood drops on the asbestos-covered pipe inside the steam tunnel, and the likely source of it, the glass tube of blood that mysteriously showed up inside the evidence refrigerator at protective services headquarters.

  Probably it will turn out to be Vera’s postmortem blood, another gift from my sister. The ham sandwich with pico de gallo, the empty beer bottle found in Vera’s living room made me think of Carme as did any number of details that gave me the sense someone had spent time inside the apartment after Vera was dead. All of it was orchestrated by my other half, I now feel sure, based on what Mom says.

  My twin was sending me mirror flashes, messages, really no different from what she did at the Point Comfort Inn, planting and removing evidence creatively, ruthlessly. I wonder where she was when Neva appeared, and I imagine my sister waiting in the wings until the coast was clear, then helping herself to the faked suicide scene. Further staging and unstaging, leaving hints and manipulations, and maybe she was looking for the same thing Neva was.

  “A good example of the end justifying the means,” is all I can think to say about what Carme’s done. “Do we know if she’s okay?”

  “I assume so,” Mom turns vague, reminding me of Ranger ghosting.

  “Is that your way of saying ‘unauthorized’?” I ask, and she doesn’t answer. “You and Dick must have been planning your Gemini project for years,” and hearing the words come out of my mouth makes me feel heavy inside.

  “For as long as we’ve known each other, really,” she finally says, quietly, softly, in rhythm to our rocking. “Before George and I were married, actually,” and this I didn’t imagine. “Your father didn’t leave the Air Force Academy simply because of family issues or because he was pining away for me. He was conscripted by NASA and the Department of Defense to do the very things he’s done.”

  “I can see why they would have grabbed him,” I reply. “I’m not the genius he is, but it’s not so different from what happened to me. I leave the Air Force and return to the farm so I can serve a purpose I wasn’t quite planning on,” I don’t say it bitterly.

  “I’m sorry if in any way this is against what you might have wished for your life, Calli.”

  “I didn’t have to go to the Point Comfort Inn,” I don’t hesitate to answer. “And I didn’t have to say yes. Carme gave me every chance to go home as you no doubt are well aware.”

  “You must be hungry,” Mom plants her feet to stop the glider.

  “I might die, that’s how hungry I am,” I reply as we get up, returning to the house.

  32

  HANGING UP our coats, we walk through the living room, the lighted Christmas tree decorated with ornaments collected over the years, a lot of them space themed like Mom’s topiary. Stockings are hung from the fireplace mantel, our names embroidered on them, and soon enough they’ll be filled with thoughtful foods and small gifts.

  “What are Dad and Easton watching?” I ask, the noise of gunshots on TV coming from the den. “Or better stated, what’s playing while they’re sleeping on the couch as usual?”

  “Gunsmoke,” she says to hoofbeats, horses neighing, rifles cracking as we pass the rustic dish cabinet and table in the dining room.

  “I’m just not sure it’s appropriate for a 6-year-old,” and it’s not the first time I’ve said it.

  “Goodness. I guess you don’t watch cartoons anymore. Not to mention what’s all over the news,” Mom replies as we walk into the kitchen where I’ve spent so much of my life.

  It’s also her office, and her desk to the right of the countertop gives her quite the view out the windows. Whatever Carme and I were up to, Mom was always watching as she cooked our meals and worked on her lesson plans. Back when we were growing up, she had a big computer, now it’s just a laptop connected to an oversize display.

  “I guess you heard about what they found in the debris at Wallops,” she says to my surprise as I slide out my usual chair from the butcher block table.

  “I’ve not heard or seen any updates,” and I wonder why ART didn’t inform me of whatever it is.

  Then I remember he wouldn’t if Mom, Dick or someone in charge doesn’t authorize it.

  “The answer is nothing,” Mom says from the stove. “Nothing was in the payload that was unexpected, suggesting that contrary to rumor, there was no spy satellite, no top secret government project that accidentally was destroyed.”

  “So, we were putting on the big act of trying to recover something quickly from the blast site,” I reply, remembering the video feed I was watching in my truck after leaving Mission Control. “All of it was for Neva’s benefit, to give her the false impression that something important blew up.”

  “Dick will explain,” Mom lifts the lid from the shiny steel stockpot, stirring chili that looks divine.

  “I’ve heard nothing from him all day,” I watch her put on an oven mitt, opening the oven door, sliding out sourdough bread she’s been keeping warm.

  “He’ll be picking you up in the morning very early, I’m afraid,” ladling chili into a bowl. “Both of you will be dropp
ed off at the hangar . . .”

  “Which hangar?” I interrupt in alarm as I feel another unplanned drama coming on.

  “Ours,” she means the huge aviation hangar at NASA. “From there you’ll be flying to DC for a briefing, and beyond that I can’t tell you much.”

  We’re probably meeting with the Secret Service, I think. Or it could be the CIA.

  “Make sure to bring toiletries and other essentials, enough for several days,” Mom adds, sawing off a hunk of bread, generous with the butter.

  “What’s wrong with me that I’m hungry all the time? Hungrier than I used to be, and it was bad enough before,” I complain, watching her every move with my food. “You would think that would be better, not worse.”

  “Why might it be better?”

  “Because I thought the point was to improve functioning. Did you goof up, and my hypothalamus thinks I need rewarding all the time? Or is there something with my pituitary that makes me think I’m pregnant? Because I have real cravings.”

  “Your technical assists regulate many things and ultimately will enable you to perform in ways not possible before,” Mom says, and it sounds like ART talking.

  She carries over my very late dinner or it could be an early breakfast, and I don’t care about manners. I dip in my spoon, tearing off a piece of hot buttered bread.

  “Having a SIN doesn’t mean you won’t struggle with the same temptations and desires, quite the contrary,” Mom finds a glass in the cupboard, opens the freezer for ice cubes. “You wouldn’t want to stop wanting, now would you?”

  I don’t admit that I learned to stop wanting a lot of things long ago when I knew I would be disappointed. Most of all, I gave up on thinking I’d get to make the same kinds of choices my sister’s been given. It wasn’t Carme who was expected to quit the military when the going got tough. She’s not who Dick called with bad news about Mom while I was assigned to his Cheyenne Mountain military installation near Colorado Springs.