Blood Echo

by Rice, Christopher

  That’s got to be it. It can’t be his appearance that’s upset her. At least, he hopes not.

  After his first hunt, he realized it’d be a lot easier to draw in prey if he lost the wolfman beard and the sideburns. He preps himself now with grooming products bought from the big redheaded woman who sells organic bath products a few stalls down from where he sells his vegetables at the Pike Place Market. They’re pretty sissified, but at least they smell like plants and not some old French lady.

  “Well, it’s amazing, whatever it is,” she says. “I’m not sure we have anything that good, but if you get tired of making your own stuff . . .”

  It’s perfunctory and lazy, this pitch. She’s sensed something about him she doesn’t like, and now she’s just punching the clock, doing her best to hurry him out of the store. This annoys him, but he doesn’t kill when he’s just irritated, so she’s safe. And therein, he thinks, lies the essence of why I’m such a good hunter. He doesn’t shoot at everything that moves.

  He smiles and nods and heads for the door, but in his mind, he’s saying, Goodbye, Stephanie. You have no idea how lucky you are. Or what a fan you are of human flesh.

  Count your blessings, he thinks. It’s time to hunt.

  2

  The charity luncheon his mother has dragged him to is being held inside what’s supposed to be an art museum, but Cole Graydon thinks the place looks more like a villain’s lair from an old episode of Miami Vice.

  He’s more annoyed at how many damn tables the organizers of this event have managed to cram inside the concrete column–lined main hall of the Claret Fine Arts Center.

  From the expressions around him, he can tell he’s not alone.

  Some anticapitalist social justice warrior would no doubt get a kick out of this, he thinks—the richest, best-dressed people in San Diego County trying not to reveal how uncomfortable they are now that they’re jammed cheek by jowl into a sea of flower-festooned tables that barely allow room for the harried waiters rushing to refill glasses of wine and champagne.

  But Cole’s trapped, too, and so he’s not getting a kick out of it at all.

  Maybe it’s a deliberate strategy on the part of the . . .

  What is this damn charity lunch for, anyway?

  He makes a bet with himself. If he can figure out the cause du jour before the first speaker takes the podium, he’ll give himself a little reward. That means ignoring the program tucked under one side of his bone china salad plate—a cheat sheet if there ever was one. Behind the podium, there’s a logo that’s supposed to represent something. It’s spotlit, even though fierce Pacific-reflected sunlight streams in through the nearby glass walls. The logo looks like a bunch of interlocking silhouettes. He’s not sure what they’re supposed to represent, but they seem vaguely familiar. His best guess? Two dolphins trying to fight their way free from some scrambled eggs.

  “You remember what this is for, right?” his mother asks.

  Shit, Cole thinks. She must have noticed him studying the stage.

  “Kids?” he says.

  She flattens her napkin across her lap and stares into space as if he hasn’t spoken.

  He’s tempted to lighten the mood by saying that if she wanted to exert effort to look like the wife of a dead president this afternoon, he would have preferred she pick Jackie O over Pat Nixon. But his mother’s willing to laugh at everyone except herself, so, in the end, the remark would only lighten the mood for him.

  “Cancer?”

  “Yes, Cole. It’s a benefit for cancer. We’re raising money for cancer so that it can, you know, do a better job of killing people.”

  “Now you’re being churlish.”

  She gives him a blank look, as if she’s deciding whether to be offended.

  Jesus Christ, he realizes, my mother doesn’t know what churlish means.

  “OK, what?” he asks. “Spoil the surprise.”

  “Your high school.”

  Cole nods, takes in a deep breath, both small gestures intended to hide how colossally pissed off he is by this revelation.

  My high school? I am busy running one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the entire world, which, by the way, has the added burden of funding your Saudi royal lifestyle, and you drag me here during my few precious hours of time off for a fund-raiser for my fucking high school? Which, by the way, already has enough money to put a gold toilet in the faculty lounge!

  But he knows the deal.

  If he doesn’t make some effort to show up for his mother’s busy social calendar, she eventually turns her full attention to Graydon Pharmaceuticals, and his record there hasn’t exactly been spotless. Of course, hers would be far worse, if his father had left the running of the company to her.

  Which he most certainly didn’t.

  “I take it you don’t approve?” his mother asks.

  “Of my high school?”

  “No, of course not. I’m just saying you probably feel as if I dragged you here today, and so now I need to be punished with looks.”

  “We were driven, not dragged. Who doesn’t like being driven?”

  “Cole. Be serious. Every now and then you need to do something that isn’t about work. Especially if your idea of work means raiding our venture capital fund to buy some useless resort in the middle of Big Sur.”

  Our venture capital fund?

  He bristles at his mother’s sudden possessiveness of a company about which she knows almost nothing. Giving her a spot on the board was his late father’s strategy for making her feel included; that’s all. But since his father’s death, she’s managed to add a few too many of her beach club pals to the board’s recently vacated seats. For the most part, they’re just like her—insanely rich dilettantes in need of hobbies that make them feel important. The idea that they might start developing strong opinions about how he chooses to invest the company’s leftover cash sets his teeth on edge. The idea that they might find a way to work in concert, and against him, is too unnerving to contemplate.

  And if they had any idea who I really bought that resort for . . .

  Priority one, he reminds himself: make sure the only reason his mother, her lackeys, and the entire board should ever hear the name Charlotte Rowe—or Trina Pierce, or Burning Girl—is because they’ve been up late watching true crime shows on television.

  “Mother, come now. There’s no such thing as a useless resort,” Cole says. “You, of all world travelers, should know this. You practically have permanent rings around your eyes from all the cucumber slices you’ve worn.”

  “Not really?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Good. So there’s going to be a spa?”

  “We’re making room for it.”

  “There better be. It’s in the middle of nowhere, Cole.”

  “Big Sur is not nowhere.”

  “It’s hardly the South of France is what I’m saying. I mean, it’s all . . . trees and cliffs, isn’t it? Just the pictures make me carsick.”

  Cole needs the entire board, his mother included, to stay convinced his purchase of the Altamira Lodge five months ago truly was an impulse buy and not part of a top-secret project that could put their company on a path to glory no one could have predicted just a few years before. That path, however, is sure to be twisty, the stops along the way already involving a fair amount of law breaking and unexpected deaths. But as his father taught him long ago, you can’t have progress at a company like theirs without a fair helping of both.

  “I won’t be expected to go, will I?” She sips champagne, gives him a long, searching look. Her expression smacks of irritation, but there’s some veiled curiosity there as well. This is the longest conversation they’ve had about the Altamira Lodge since he assured the entire board he could improve the roadways leading to it, guaranteeing them some sort of reasonable return on their investment. “I’m afraid of heights, and the damn thing’s on a cliff.”

  “Mother, rest assured, I will never try to take you a
nywhere you’re not comfortable.”

  It’s not really a smile she gives him next. But it’s close. And Cole’s reminded once again that their relationship consists primarily of the two of them finding ever more eloquent ways of asking to be left alone.

  His cell phone vibrates in his pocket. The text is from Ed Baker, his security director.

  Richard Davies just left a leather store. Countdown clock activated.

  He types back,

  Bluebird?

  The response:

  In costuming.

  Cole feels like he’s breathing more deeply than he has in weeks.

  “I have to go,” he says, rising.

  “Cole.” His mother doesn’t sound all that disappointed or surprised.

  “Sorry, duty calls.”

  “Picking out new linens,” she says, “or approving a new drug trial?”

  “A bit of both.” He lifts his untouched champagne flute and sets it down next to hers.

  “Fine. But never say I don’t at least attempt to be part of your life.”

  “I never ever do.” He kisses her on the cheek, then hurries from the room just as the first speaker takes the podium.

  3

  The motel where his mother destroyed their family once and for all isn’t there anymore. It’s been replaced by a storage facility that promises the cheapest rates in town. But Richard Davies can still feel a churning in his gut as he drives past it, a feeling that starts out as nausea but turns into a kind of caffeinated excitement that has him tapping his fingers against the steering wheel.

  If he hadn’t started hunting, it would be all sickness and nothing else.

  In the beginning, he was careful not to cruise Aurora Avenue North before dark. But he’s grown more confident over the years, and now he’s comfortable driving through the dreary warehouse-filled streets when they’re barely dusted by twilight.

  He’s reclaiming a piece of himself every time he visits. A piece of his father, too. Reclaiming the essence of what was pure and good about his family before it was destroyed by the rot in his mother’s soul.

  That’s why, even though the Pacific Motel is long gone, he still needs to feel the magnetic tug of the land on which it stood. He doesn’t slow down much, just enough to suck in a few breaths of the tainted air so his lungs can cleanse it with his new wisdom.

  Before his first and second hunts, he made it a point to remove his license plates. Back then, he was more worried about his truck being captured on a security camera than he was about a traffic citation. But he’s got enough experience now to know the real worst-case scenario—getting pulled over for driving without plates while he’s transporting prey.

  He could give two shits about being busted for solicitation.

  Who’s going to judge him? The deer who visit his farm? The other vendors at Pike Place Market, who can’t remember his name? (Which, by the way, is exactly how he likes it.) At worst, an arrest for something that petty would mean he’d have to find another hunting ground. That would hurt, given his historical connection to this grim avenue of broken-down whores, but he’d make do.

  He’s pulled five prey from this place in three years. He’s well past the point of restoring his father’s honor and into . . . something next level. He’s not sure what, but he’s a little afraid of it, because it comes with urges that are harder to control.

  The manifesto, he reminds himself. Put your focus back on the manifesto.

  He’s only outlined a few pages of it, but more passages come to him every time he visits here.

  The beginning of the end of a man is when they come for his land.

  His destruction is hastened when his woman seizes this opportunity to blame him for her weakness.

  Once it’s written, he’ll upload it to some blogging site but won’t actually post it. If law enforcement ever comes for him, he’ll tap a button to make the post live. Not a bad end—sharing his father’s real story right as he goes down in a hail of bullets just like a character out of the paperback Westerns his dad used to love. Before he lost everything.

  But right now, the manifesto serves a more important purpose.

  It’s a place to channel his energy when the urge to hunt comes on too soon and too strong. Or when he gets crazy ideas about taking a girl like Stephanie.

  Before his first hunt, he researched dozens of the mavericks and outlaws the world has called serial killers, and he could trace their downfall to two things: their impatience and their need for attention. And he vowed he wouldn’t fall victim to either.

  But he couldn’t predict then how he’d feel once he advanced.

  Once he became good.

  In the beginning, the thought of following a hunt through from start to finish seemed so momentous, he could envision no greater goal. But after a year of handling his exquisite work in the solitude of his cabin, a childish desire for recognition began to set in.

  That’s when he started visiting the stores. And now, it looks like those visits have inspired a craving for younger, prettier victims. Women in whom the flaws and weaknesses of his mother have yet to fully blossom.

  But the most dangerous urge has been harder to control.

  He’s tired of waiting six months.

  He doesn’t doubt this delay has been key to his success, though. Six months between hunts keeps him from becoming a regular on Aurora Avenue North, which keeps the cops and whores from chalking up the disappearances of his victims to anything other than an overdose or a woman who somehow left the life.

  Having the cops looking out for his type of truck would be bad. But a bunch of whores spreading the word to their diseased sisters that his truck could mean the end of a girl? That could seriously jam him up, here or anywhere else he chooses to hunt.

  He doesn’t have money for another vehicle; he’s spent way too much on the other implements of his hunt. And he doesn’t need hesitant bitches slowing down his extractions with a lot of bullshit negotiation through the open car window.

  In and out quick. That’s how it has to work.

  Six months.

  In and out.

  That’s how it’ll be tonight, he’s sure of it.

  And he needs to remember what got him here. The patience, the deliberation, the control. Even if he does think Stephanie’s firm young skin would make an amazing belt.

  4

  “Is there time to get me to Seattle?” Cole asks as soon as the door to the control center hisses shut behind him.

  “No!” his security director barks. “You shouldn’t even be here.”

  Ed Baker’s standing a few feet away, arms crossed, looking at Cole as if he’s an annoying distraction and not his boss. Cole shoots the man who was his late father’s security chief a withering look, then turns his attention to the two sunken rows of surveillance stations lighting up the otherwise dim room. There was a time, a few months earlier, when it felt to Cole like Ed was his only real loyalist. All that changed with the sudden reawakening of Project Bluebird, and they’re long overdue for a conversation about it. Right now, they’ve got work to do.

  Their backs to him, the techs continue to ignore his arrival.

  As instructed by Ed, Cole thinks. If I let Ed have his way, we’d all be wearing stocking masks so we couldn’t testify against each other later.

  A few days before, this place had been home to just two people watching a constant feed from several tree-mounted cameras angled at Richard Davies’s farm and its long, rutted driveway. With their target on the move again, there are now twice as many techs monitoring three times as many screens.

  It’s not the first time one of Davies’s road trips has sent them scrambling to add resources. It’s the third.

  Cole’s hoping for a different outcome this time. Whether he’s sipping Balvenie in his home office or pacing the back of this chilly windowless room, he’s not interested in spending another few days watching Davies sell vegetables at the Pike Place Market while making as little conversation with his cu
stomers as possible.

  But the visit to the leather store is new.

  It’s the escalation they’ve been waiting for.

  It’s the escalation I’ve been waiting for, anyway, Cole thinks. Ed wants to shut this whole thing down.

  The surveillance center sits in the basement of one of Graydon’s never-used satellite office buildings. His father only bought it to give prying eyes the illusion that Graydon hadn’t moved all of its laboratory research offshore. Even if his dad were still around, it probably would have stayed as empty as it is now. Their neighbors are cold storage facilities and small office parks for companies that prefer the relative anonymity of Otay Mesa, an arid stretch of San Diego right next to the Mexican border.

  Save for the yards of steel fencing and a guardhouse at the parking lot’s one entry point—a guardhouse that wasn’t manned up until a few months ago—the exterior of the building is nondescript. From the air, the place looks like a U made of bone. The outer walls are mostly long, uninterrupted stretches of heavily tinted windows and bands of concrete painted so white they’re blinding on a sunny day. Which in this part of the country is pretty much every day. Nothing about the exterior gives a hint of the labyrinth of never-occupied laboratory spaces and office suites constructed inside.

  It’s in this hyper-air-conditioned, lightless bunker, with its thick layer of carpet underfoot and its walls reinforced to withstand both electronic surveillance and a bomb blast, that Cole feels less like a spoiled, privileged fraud and more like a daring innovator pursuing a grand vision that would have made his father proud.

  He turns his attention to four of the newly installed LCD screens now showing live feeds.

  The leftmost screen, which is slightly larger than the others and hung vertically, displays Richard Davies’s pickup truck as a green dot moving through a black grid of streets that represents Seattle.

  To the right of it, two screens broadcast alternating aerial feeds of Davies’s truck captured by the small cloud of microdrones trailing him from an altitude of about three hundred feet. The expensive little buggers will monitor Davies’s every move, but only when there’s enough open sky for them to make quick course changes without smacking into a building and convincing the people inside that Earth’s been invaded by alien nanobots. The weather forecast must have improved; there’s no operating them in high winds or a consistent downpour.