Face Blind

by Lance Hawvermale

  Gabe returned the dress with a reverence that Ben found extraordinary. Then again, such respect was only appropriate. You never knew what you’d be wearing on the day when your life changed. When the girl’s mother had chosen her outfit in the morning, she’d had no idea …

  “Wait!” Ben stepped forward just before Gabe dropped the lid on the barrel.

  He fished out the cop’s gun. The service revolver had rested in its holster for well over twenty years. The leather was as stiff as wood, but the weapon itself appeared untouched by time. He glanced at Gabe. “What do you think?”

  “About keeping it?”

  “Yeah. Bad idea?”

  “You assume it still works?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben said. “Do bullets have a shelf life?” He cleared it from its holster. It was black, bulky, and not sexy at all like the sidearms in the movies. “Mira?”

  “Either keep the damn thing or put it back, I don’t care. We just need to get out of here and warn your friend while there’s still time.”

  Ben waited for Gabe to make the call.

  “We’re keeping it.” Gabe dropped the lid on the barrel and held out his hand.

  Ben handed him the gun, glad to be rid of it, but at the same time worried about letting it out of his sight. He’d feel safer if he could keep an eye on it. “Just don’t jam the thing down the waistband of your britches,” he suggested as he headed for the stairs. “Because if you shoot anything off down there, I’m damn sure not carrying it to the hospital in hopes they can sew it back on.”

  “Ow,” Luke said.

  “To say the least, my young friend. To say the very least.”

  * * *

  Mira braced herself half a second before Gabe drove his foot against the brake. The SUV’s rear end slid to the right, rocking up a dust wave that was quickly dispersed by a sudden Atacama wind.

  “Are we there yet?” Luke asked, just to annoy her.

  Gabe swung open his door. “Close enough.” He bounded out and ran, yelling his friend’s name.

  “We better follow him,” Mira decided. “He may need our help.” She slid from her seat and into the sun, shielding her eyes to get a look at the observatory.

  It failed to impress her. She’d been expecting something grand, a monumental stone edifice with a telescope jutting from its domed roof. What she saw instead was a collection of plain rectangular buildings with white metal siding beside an array of what looked like enormous satellite dishes.

  She hurried to catch up with Gabe, reaching him just as he collided with an elderly man in a doctor’s coat.

  “Where’s Vicente?” Gabe demanded, clutching the man by the elbows.

  “Gabriel? Why are you here? You have come back why? I believe I made it clear very perfectly on the phone that you—”

  “I don’t give a shit about this job, Rubat. It’s irrelevant. I need to find Vicente. Do you hear me? Where is he?”

  “You are meaning the maintenance man? Why?”

  Gabe shook him. “Where is he, goddammit?”

  “Not here! Not here! He was … called away or something last evening. I don’t know the details. Some sort of…”

  Mira guessed it. “Family emergency.”

  Rubat glared at her. “Yes, actually. Who are you?”

  Gabe released him. “We’re too late.”

  “Call him,” Mira suggested. “Do you have his number?” When Gabe didn’t immediately reply, she turned the question on the man called Rubat. “Do you know how we can get in touch with him?”

  “Of course. He’s an employee here.”

  “Then we need his number and we need your satellite phone. Please.” She tacked this last bit on only as an afterthought; if this wrinkled little man didn’t hop to posthaste, she was liable to karate-chop him.

  Perhaps Tilanna was wearing off on her.

  “This is serious,” she told him. “More than you know.”

  “Fine. Fine.” Rubat left to do her bidding.

  “This place is cool!” Luke announced. “What’s that? And that? Do you talk to space with that thing?”

  “Space talks to us,” Gabe said. “But we don’t always understand what it’s trying to say.” He turned to Mira. “We’re too late. If Vic’s already been called away—”

  “We’ll see.” Without thinking about it, she took his hand in hers. “Keep the faith, right?”

  “Does that ever really do any good?”

  “Sure beats standing around being scared. For now I’m choosing option A.”

  Ben joined them as Luke roamed between the huge parabolic antennas like a visitor in a museum of dinosaurs.

  “He’s gone?” Ben asked.

  “He got a call,” Mira explained. “Something about his family. He left last night. We’re currently in don’t-panic mode, but it may not last.”

  “The rifleman got him,” Gabe said. “After he chased us, he went straight to Vicente’s house…”

  Mira hated to see him falling apart right in front of her. Wasn’t he practically a stranger? What business did he have affecting her like this? She wished she could distract him with some clever bit of banter, but Catherine Westbrook’s only daughter could think of nothing to give this man any peace. “Your friend lives in Calama and works all the way out here? That’s one serious commute.”

  “He’s only here two days a week. The place is pretty much self-sufficient. I hope we’re wrong about this, I hope his aunt died or his son got in a fight at school or something…”

  Rubat appeared with the phone and a look of undisguised contempt. “Place your call, please, and then be on your way.”

  Mira released Gabe’s hand, surprised by her own reluctance to let go.

  Gabe checked his wallet for Vicente’s number and tapped it into the phone with such haste that he botched it and had to start over. The man in the too-big coat was one step in front of them. Though the authorities now had his description and were broadcasting it throughout the country, he was determined to complete the cycle he’d set in motion, systematically destroying everyone connected to Micha Lepin. It was no wonder that Gabe’s fingers stumbled over the keys.

  “It’s ringing.”

  With that, there was nothing for Mira to do but wait. Not for the first time, she envied her brother, who could be aware of something without letting it disturb him. Though in many ways he was an adult, this childish insouciance armored him. Ben wasn’t the only one who was bulletproof.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  Gabe shook his head.

  Mira resisted the urge to pace. Her trip here to South America had been about getting answers, but all she’d produced so far was more open-ended questions. Why could Luke read Ben’s writing? Would she ever find out? And did it really matter if she didn’t? Her brother was composing a novel. If it was published, his name would appear on the cover. And if that didn’t make her want to say shit is holy, then nothing did.

  “Vic? Vic, it’s me, Gabe Traylin. Is everything all right? Are you okay?”

  Mira didn’t want to hear the man on the other end of the line. She didn’t have to. Gabe’s face melted into his hand as he listened.

  She looked at Ben. “He got him, didn’t he? He took that man’s son.”

  Ben said it all by saying nothing.

  Gabe sank down on a knee. “I know, Vic, I know. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but listen to me, just for a second. Are you hearing me, Vic? Are you listening?”

  Mira understood Vicente’s panic, at least in one fundamental way. It was the helpless feeling of being unable to protect the one person who mattered most. Luke had put her through that a couple of times. And now he was a novelist. Damn.

  “I’m going to find Sergio,” Gabe said into the phone. “Do you hear me? I’m going to find him and bring him back.”

  Mira knew what this implied. When Gabe said I these days, he meant we.

  “No, it doesn’t matter how,” Gabe said. “Vic, stop. Listen to me. I have to go now,
okay? No, I—no, did you not hear what I said? I’m going to get him back. That’s all I can say. I’m going to get him back, all right? I’ll call you.” He hung up and dropped the phone in the dirt.

  Rubat stood silently, chewing on his lip. Luke returned from his inspection of the property. Ben crossed his arms and waited.

  Mira was afraid to ask, but who else would speak up if she didn’t? “Now what?”

  Gabe got to his feet, dashing a hand over his eyes. “We find him. Like I said.”

  “Sure, but find him where? Oh, wait. I think I know.”

  “We’ll call Fontecilla and have him meet us there, but Calama is at least six hours away. And Sergio may not have that much time. Even if they bring a chopper, we’ll get there first.”

  Luke stepped between them. “Get where first?”

  Mira knew but didn’t want to say. El Lugar de Silencio.

  Ben put a hand on Luke’s shoulder. “I think they’re talking about Mars.”

  “Like Tilanna and Vanchette?”

  “Just like.”

  “But what about the Martian?”

  “I think we’re going to try and sneak up on him before he hurts somebody else.”

  Luke made a pistol of his fingers. “And then we’ll zap him with a ray gun.”

  “You bet we will, good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.”

  Luke laughed. “What does that mean?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Listening to the two of them, Mira wished they’d completed more of their story. She wanted to know how it turned out. She wanted to know if she survived.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  When you were an astronomer, in the end it always came down to a lens.

  Gabe was ten years old when he built his first refracting telescope, a lightweight affair made mostly of cardboard and tape. It sported a three-centimeter magnifying glass as an objective lens. Six years later he constructed a twenty-centimeter Dobsonian beauty that resembled a howitzer but revealed passions from which he never recovered. He fell in unrequited love with objects he would never be able to gaze upon with an unaided eye. Gabe had been staring through lenses his entire life, wishing that he had just one in which to see a human face.

  “Looks expensive,” Mira said.

  Gabe glanced down at the binoculars on the front console. She was right. The Zeiss Victory boasted 10x magnification and ran about two grand. “I sort of hope to see him before he sees us.”

  “By the looks of them fancy specs there,” Ben said from the backseat, “I’d say we’ll get the best of him on that account unless he’s using the Hubble.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  “I guess it pays to have connections.”

  “I didn’t exactly ask to borrow it. If Rubat knew, he’d probably have a—”

  “Shit fit?” Ben suggested.

  “And then some. I break it, I buy it. Same goes for the GPS unit.” As he drove, Mira in the passenger’s seat and Luke behind her, Gabe wrestled with the idea of the gun they’d found in the barrel at Aceda. He didn’t intend to use it. In fact, his most ardent desire was to find the rifleman going about some kind of neutral business, with Sergio perfectly unharmed. Then Gabe could simply spy on him from afar until Fontecilla’s rotor blades whisked the landscape into a fury. But if things were bad, if Sergio was being tortured …

  Ben interrupted his darkening thoughts. “It says here that Lepin was reprimanded by his superiors during something called Operation Whisper.” He turned the pages in the folder on his lap. “If I read between the lines, I’d say his conduct with a certain prisoner went a little too far.”

  Mira turned around in her seat. “You’re kidding, right? This is a man who injected people with poison and experimented on them until they died. What could he possibly do that would be worse than that?”

  “You sure you want to know?”

  Luke covered his ears. “This is gonna be gross.”

  “He raped her.”

  Gabe’s fingers tightened on the wheel.

  “How do you know?” Mira asked. “Does it say that in the file?”

  “Not in so many words. But it mentions ‘non-objective-specific physical conduct’ with a prisoner named Paulina Herboso. Looks like Lepin’s commanding officer didn’t mind what the hell happened to the victims so long as it was in the name of the objective, that being the safeguarding of the all-mighty state. Evidently they didn’t think that having sex with the captive in any way advanced their cause. Even tyrants draw the line somewhere.”

  “I know that name,” Gabe said. “Lepin told me that someone called Paulina stole his notes, and somehow those notes ended up with the rifleman. If Lepin recorded everything he did to those people, all the experiments, then his diary contains some stuff that I don’t ever want to read.”

  Luke lowered his hands. “Are we there yet?”

  “Just what I need,” Gabe said, trying to inject a little levity in his voice. “A backseat driver.”

  “Easy to drive out here,” Luke told him. “No roads! No white lines! Just … ground!”

  “You want to give it a try, then?”

  “I don’t have a license.”

  “Don’t need one. You see any highway patrolmen? All you need is a pair of eyes and a lead foot.” And the willingness to shoot a man who deserves it.

  Mira read his thoughts. “Is there no other way to do this?”

  “Sergio’s been missing for over twelve hours. I guess the rifleman probably took him shortly after we ran into him outside the hotel. Vic’s wife is flying back from Rio right now, if she hasn’t already landed. Sergio was supposed to be staying at a friend’s house while Vic made the rounds at the observatory. Nobody knows if he was kidnapped or if he just wandered off and got lost.”

  “Maybe his disappearance is a coincidence.”

  “Yeah, sure. Lepin told me that he had one grandson left alive, now that Nicky’s dead. But the rifleman got to him before we figured it out.”

  “Maybe he’s holding him somewhere in Calama. Maybe they never left the city.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Think about it.” She twisted in her seat so that she was facing him. She hadn’t bothered with a seat belt. Barring a sudden blown tire, a wreck out here was impossible. “We really have no way of knowing anything about this guy, so what makes you think he’s anywhere out here? What if we’re headed in totally the wrong direction?”

  “This is his place. I’m sure of it. This is where he goes so no one can find him. The Atacama is like outer space, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “I have noticed, thank you very much, but I’m still not convinced we’re doing the right thing.”

  “The right thing? Micha Lepin hid everything, all the clothes and mementoes, everything those people had. Before he got arrested, he hid them in a place where no one would’ve found them, ever, if he hadn’t tipped us off. He thought he’d done the same with the bodies at Silencio, except the rifleman learned about it in the journal he got from the rape victim, Paulina Herboso. We never would have known about Aceda if Lepin hadn’t told me about it. The wrong thing would be to do nothing. The right thing is calling the cops and then getting the hell out there before he amputates one of Sergio’s arms. And I’m not letting that happen.”

  “Because you’re his guardian angel.”

  “Yes, goddammit, I am, for lack of anyone more qualified. I didn’t ask for any of this, by the way.”

  “You sure asked for the gun.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t want to kill anyone, Gabe. I don’t want anyone to get hurt. And when you came into the motel room to tell us that they couldn’t identify the woman’s body, you said—”

  “I know what I said.”

  “And?”

  “What? You don’t think he deserves to die?”

  �
�I’m not sure if that’s for me to decide.”

  In the backseat, Luke said quietly, “Why are they fighting?”

  Ben replied, “Lovers’ quarrel.”

  Gabe pretended not to hear them. He checked the GPS. Having programmed the unit with the coordinates found in Lepin’s notes, he knew precisely how far he was from completing the circle the Midnight Messenger had begun. Eight-point-three kilometers. The distance seemed insignificant and momentous at the same time.

  “Check out the hills!” Luke exclaimed.

  Over the last few minutes, the landscape had changed. Sharp-edged mounds rose from a ground that had been relatively featureless since Calama. These hills were sudden and angular, like fists pushing themselves up through a film of orange earth. Swirls of dust crawled along the slopes, ghostly observers of the SUV’s passing.

  “We should stop,” Mira suggested. “He might hear the engine.”

  “Another kilometer or so.”

  “The closer we get,” she said, “the more chance we have of being seen.”

  “We’ll be okay. Just a little farther.”

  “This isn’t just your own life you’re putting at risk. It’s all of us, Gabe. All of us. Yes, I may be acting like the sissy girl of the group, but this is more than just a Lipstick Smear, and I’m not going to put any of us in any more danger than we’re already in. Now stop the car.”

  “What do you mean by a lipstick smear?”

  She stared from her window. “Skip it.”

  “Mom used to say that,” Luke said.

  Gabe eased off the accelerator. He had to keep Mira on his side, and if that meant hiking a bit farther than he’d intended, so be it. He supposed that he’d be willing to do a lot more than walk a few extra kilometers for her. Maybe if things were different, if she understood what it was like to see her through his eyes …

  They rolled to a stop in the shadow beside a hill shaped like a boxcar.

  “Do we get out now?” Luke asked.

  Gabe shut off the engine. It ticked hotly in the silence.

  Luke looked at each of them. “Hello?”

  When it became apparent that no one else was going to go first, Gabe reluctantly threw open his door, binoculars and GPS in hand. While the others filed out, he spent a moment getting his bearings, summing up the land.