What She Saw

by Sheila Lowe

  Jessica had always handled her emotions differently, bulldozing stressful experiences aside and denying the existence of the problem. This time her denial had gone to a frightening extreme. When she had witnessed the attack on Jenna via web cam, the vulnerability spawned by the head injury she had suffered in the car accident had triggered Jessica’s fugue state.

  The three of them shared space on Zach’s couch, eating pizza and drinking Coors, making fun of Jerry Springer’s TV guests, avoiding any serious conversation. Marking time until they heard from Detective Jovanic. Every little while Jenna burst into fresh tears. Jessica hugged her and let her cry.

  Zach was flipping through channels, when Jenna told him to stop. Senator Christine Palmer was standing at a bank of news conference microphones, answering questions. She wore dark glasses with large frames that covered a large portion of her face.

  “I want to know what she’s saying,” Jenna declared when both Zach and Jessica objected. “Turn the sound up.”

  “...late husband would want me to go on with my candidacy. He believed in me, and he believed that...”

  “She’s so full of shit.” Jenna’s voice rose in anger. “Did you hear that speech she gave about Almighty God backing her? Simon laughed about it.”

  Zach turned off the TV and set the remote beside him on the end table. “No sense in torturing yourself, Jen.”

  “The whole reason she’s even running is because she’s got those billionaires behind her. Does she honestly believe they’ll let her do what she wants if she gets elected? Doesn’t she understand they have their own agenda?”

  “Once we get the information to Detective Jovanic, he’ll turn it over to the FBI,” Jessica assured her. “She won’t get elected to the town council, let alone president of the country.”

  The short outburst had left Jenna out of steam. Saying nothing more, she closed her eyes and curled into a corner of the couch. Zach said he needed a nap and ambled off to his bedroom. At the other end of the couch, Jessica, worn out, fell asleep.

  Sometime later she was startled awake by Zach’s cell phone, which he had left on the coffee table. He came rushing out and snatched up the phone, apologizing, and took it back into his room, closing the door behind him.

  “What time is it?” Jessica asked, hiding a big yawn behind her hand. “My mouth tastes like a sandbox.”

  Jenna got up off the couch and stretched out the kinks. She checked the time on her cell phone. “It’s nearly four o’clock. We slept over an hour.” Loading empty beer bottles into the carton, she carried them out to the small kitchen.

  “Detective Jovanic should be calling soon,” Jessica said. She crushed the pizza box and jammed it into the kitchen trash, then found a couple of glasses in a cupboard over the sink and filled them from the faucet.

  “Let’s tell him we’ll meet him in Venice. That way he won’t have to drive all the way up here. We can go on to Escondido from there, like we planned yesterday before you ended up in the hospital.”

  Jenna agreed. “Okay, let’s tell Zach and we’ll hit the road right now. You can call the detective from the car.”

  “That’s not gonna work,” Zach said, entering the living room.

  Jessica rinsed her glass, calling over her shoulder, “Why not?”

  “There’s someplace else you need to be.”

  “What are you talking about?” Jenna said. “Where do we need to be?”

  Jessica frowned, trying to decide what was different about Zach. He’d changed out of the surfer shorts and Hawaiian shirt he’d been wearing earlier and had donned dark khaki pants and a black T-shirt, which made him look like GI Joe. But it wasn’t just his clothing that changed him. His expression was serious, older-looking. He even seemed to stand taller.

  Suddenly, she remembered the time she had seen him from the doorway of the Batteries Plus store. It had been the night she tried unsuccessfully to retrieve the flash drive from BioNeutronics. She remembered the SUV pulling up next to him in the street and the woman who got out and gave him something, then drove away. Something tingled in Jessica’s head and it was not the familiar buzzing behind her scar.

  Looking at him now, she was seeing, not the easygoing neighbor who had befriended her and Jenna, but the other Zach; the one who had faced down the creepy guy from the train who came to ransom her backpack.

  In all their encounters, Jessica realized as if this were the first time she was looking at him; at how ropy with muscle his arms were, the way his T-shirt clung to his hard body.

  “What’s going on, Zach?” she asked pointedly.

  He dropped his phone into his pants pocket and ran a hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in little spikes on top. “That call I just got?” he said. “I’ve been instructed to take you for a ride.”

  Jenna, her wide blue eyes perplexed, searched his face. “I don’t understand. Why would you get a call about us?”

  “Instructed by whom?” Jessica wanted to know.

  He gave them both a wry smile and a shrug. “It’ll all be clear soon.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jessica said. “Just wait! We’re not going anywhere until you tell us what the hell you’re talking about.”

  “I’m afraid you are.” Zach made a small gesture with his right hand, which had been down at his side. It was then that she saw he held a gun.

  “What the hell, Zach—what—?”

  “Sorry, chicklet.”

  “What? You’re going to shoot us if we say no?”

  He hiked a mocking brow, looking for just a moment more like the neighbor they knew. “You’re not gonna make me do anything that drastic, are you?”

  Light dawned in Jenna’s face. “Oh my God. You’re on their side?”

  “I’m not on anybody’s side. I’m just an employee doing a job.”

  “What job?” said Jessica. “What the hell is going on?”

  “My assignment was to keep an eye on Dr. Lawrie for the past few months, and by extension, you. Now that he’s out of the picture, I apparently have a new assignment.”

  Jenna’s face drained of color. “Did you kill Simon?”

  “Of course not.” Zach sounded genuinely affronted. “I’m not a fucking hired killer.”

  “Forgive us if we have trouble believing that when you’re holding a gun on us,” Jessica gave a snort of disbelief. “You freaking traitor. We thought you were our friend!”

  “I am your friend. More than you can know.”

  “Are you working for Kevin Nguyen?” Jenna wanted to know.

  “We’ll take your car, Jen. Get your keys.”

  It was Jessica who dug the car keys out of her sister’s purse.

  Zach held out his hand. “I’ll take your cell phones.”

  “I left mine in the car,” Jessica said.

  “Turn out your pockets, please.”

  After assuring himself that she was not hiding a phone in her Levis, Zach took the one Jenna handed him and tossed it on the kitchen counter. Jessica made to pick up her backpack. He said, “You won’t need that. Leave it here.”

  “But why, Zach?” Jenna blurted. “Why did you take me to the lab this morning? The transmitter—”

  He waved his free hand at her, indicating that she should stop talking. “That’s information above my pay grade. I was told to take you where you wanted to go. You wanted to go to the lab, so we went to the lab.” He gestured with the gun toward the door. “Let’s go, ladies. The neighbors are all at work, so don’t bother making a fuss.”

  “We’re expecting a call from a police detective,” Jessica said. “If he can’t reach us he’ll come looking for us.”

  Zach shrugged and opened the entry door for them. “I guess you won’t be here for him to find, will you?”

  Tucking Jenna’s arm in hers, Jessica stalked past him, her mind zooming in a dozen directions. Trying to run was out of the question. He might do something to Jen, and from her twin’s ashen face, Jessica didn’t think she was up to handling any
thing physical.

  Besides, there was the gun.

  f o r t y

  At Zach’s direction, Jessica slid behind the wheel of Jenna’s Nissan. He took the front passenger side and Jenna squeezed into the small backseat. After shutting Jessica’s cell phone in the glove compartment Zach angled himself to keep an eye on both sisters. The gun lay across his lap, his hand loosely covering it.

  When he directed her to take the 101 North, Jessica knew without a single doubt where he was taking them. Glancing in the rearview mirror, she caught sight of her twin’s strained face and knew that Jenna had twigged to it, too. North was the direction of Montecito, where Simon Lawrie had lived with his wife, Christine Palmer.

  It all came back to Senator Christine Palmer, presidential candidate.

  To what lengths would Palmer go to wreak her personal vengeance on Jenna? And what part did Project 42 play in the whole sordid mess?

  As for Jenna’s affair with Simon Lawrie, Jessica could hardly fault her sister. Raw honesty made her admit that her own relationship had been every bit as damaging in its way. Her husband had caused the death of their precious little boy and come close to killing her, too.

  Both twins had already paid the highest price for the choices they had made.

  There was silence in the car as they followed the coastline north. Overhead the sky was an expanse of pure cloudless blue. On their left, the ocean shimmered like silver silk.

  Under other conditions it would have been a perfect day for a drive. They left the city limits of Ventura and were soon passing the tiny community of La Conchita, where a few years earlier, the mountainside had given way under torrential rains and destroyed homes below. They passed Carpinteria and Tar Pits park. Were they seeing it all for the last time?

  “So, what are you,” Jenna asked. “Some kind of private muscle?”

  Zach twisted to look at her over the seat. “You might call it private security, but my job description is flexible.”

  “I just can’t believe you’ve been spying on me—on us....since I moved in?”

  Zach didn’t bother to respond.

  “I saw you at Batteries Plus,” Jessica said.

  That jerked his head around. “What?”

  “A few days ago, I was inside the Batteries Plus store. I saw you meeting some woman. She got out of an SUV and gave you something. I should have been suspicious then. She didn’t look like your type.”

  “What’s my type?” Zach asked, sounding curious. Jessica shot him a sour look. “Go to hell, Zach.”

  “Don’t believe everything you think you see,” he responded mildly. As the beachside village of Summerland exit appeared he told her to exit at Sheffield Lane.

  They made a sharp turn at the end of the off ramp and started up a narrow tree-lined road. Rising and curving as they climbed the bluff, they were offered occasional glimpses of luxury homes behind iron gates and high hedges.

  Soon they were driving through white mist in the increasing elevation.

  Her foot hovering close to the brake, Jessica strained toward the windshield as if angling her body closer would improve visibility.

  “Santa Ynez mountains, chicklet,” Zach said, in answer to her complaint that she the fog swirling across the road made it hard for her to see ahead. “Daytime fog most days of the year. Just drive slow.”

  “Maybe you should drive if you know the area so well.”

  “You’re doing fine. Hey, did you know Oprah lives around here? Rob Lowe, too. They say there’s more millionaires in one square mile here than anywhere else in the U.S.”

  “Thank you so much for that vital piece of information,” Jessica said with contempt. “What are you, the frigging Chamber of Commerce?” She canted her body forward again, peering through the spectral patches of mist that kept appearing and disappearing around them.

  “Tsk tsk,” Zach said. “Sarcasm doesn’t become you.”

  “Well that gun doesn’t become you.”

  He pointed to a narrow break in the road. “Turn there.”

  Jessica mashed her foot on the brake and made Zach’s body jerk as she made the turn. Her hope that he might drop the gun was a pipe dream. He warned her to slow down.

  Now they were above cloud level, entering a less-developed area. The steel stilts of a new mansion under construction jutted out from the barren red dirt hillside on their right. The wooden skeleton of the house stretched over thousands of square feet. The place was deserted for the day, no workmen hanging drywall or installing cabinetry.

  As if she needed reminding of the accident that had resulted in her son’s death, on their left, a sheer drop into the canyon brought a lump into Jessica’s throat. Greg’s drunken driving and unfettered rage had plunged them over just such a drop.

  She slowed, fighting the memories that snaked in and battered her already raw emotions. A birthday cake, two candles and a little red plastic car on top. Jessica, Jenna and some other young mothers who had brought Justin’s little playmates to his party. Everyone happy and singing Happy Birthday. Except Greg, who, as usual, was passed out in the bedroom.

  Zach’s voice interrupted her thoughts. He had directed her to park at the top of the bluff. Jessica eyed the desolate terrain. Across the next ridge she could see an immense compound sprawled on the crest of a hill—maybe Oprah’s place. There were no other structures in sight of where they sat; just eucalyptus and citrus trees. Nobody to hear them scream.

  From the backseat, fear tightened Jenna’s voice. “What are you going to do with us?”

  Zach glanced at her over his shoulder. “We’re just gonna walk down the hill to the house. You can’t see it from up here.” Climbing out of the car, he gave Jenna a hand out of the backseat. When Jessica came around from the driver’s side to join them, he held out his palm for the keys, putting an end to her fantasy that he would forget to ask.

  It seemed inconceivable that Zach was the enemy. He was several years older than her and Jenna, but she had looked at him like an overgrown kid. Which was how he had conned both of them and wormed his way into their confidence.

  He pointed them to a dirt path in a small clearing in the trees. Linking arms, the twins, virtual clones of each other in their matching black tee-shirts and jeans, started down the steep hill ahead of him. A shower of pebbles and loose dirt cascaded down the slope as they descended and they clung to each other as much for balance as for comfort.

  Zach, knowing how acutely aware they were of its presence behind them, didn’t bother to threaten them with his weapon.

  Neither twin needed to verbalize her thoughts for one to know what the other was thinking. When the blue slate roof of an elegant French country house became visible below, Jessica divined what was in her twin’s head: Simon built and lived in this house, but he’ll never return here. Her painful grip on Jessica’s hand said more than if her twin had shouted it out loud.

  They reached the gate, seamlessly inserted into a wall formed of river rock at the bottom of the path. Zach punched a code on the keypad and led them, silent and businesslike, into the garden.

  They filed past a swimming pool lined with chaise lounges dappled with late afternoon sunshine, past manicured flower beds, past a late model silver Bentley Continental on the circular driveway, and around to the back door of the house.

  Zach, who led them through a sizable utility room into the spacious kitchen, seemed to know his way around. He took them through an empty family room that was larger than both twins’ apartments combined. The voice of a local news anchor blathered from a big screen television mounted on a wall; a replay of Christine Palmer’s press conference that followed them through the house, which sprawled as large as a private hotel.

  They followed a glass-walled outer corridor that gave onto views of the heavily wooded canyon and ended at a private study. Rich ox-blood walls, big leather armchairs and sofa. Rough-hewn beams across the ceiling. Studding the wall behind the fireplace mantel were framed photographs of Simon Lawrie and Chri
stine Palmer, a handsome couple, hobnobbing with celebrities and dignitaries. French doors led out to a cobblestone terrace.

  “You can wait in here,” Zach said. It was the first time he had said anything since they entered the grounds and Jessica thought he seemed tense. “The patio doors are locked and this one will be too, so plan on sticking around.” As he closed the door behind him, the muted click of a bolt sliding into place confirmed his words.

  Jenna went to the French doors and shook the handle anyway. “D’you think they’re watching us?”

  A visual sweep of the room found nothing Jessica could identify as a camera, but it had to be assumed that surveillance equipment in a house like this one would be sophisticated enough to require an electronic sniffer to locate. She cupped her hands around her mouth and pressed her lips to Jenna’s ear. “Wouldn’t be surprised. Be careful what you say.”

  Jenna following suit, leaned close to Jessica and dropped her voice to a barely audible whisper. “There’s a spare key in the front driver’s side wheel well. If you get a chance, go. Promise.”

  “You, too.”

  “Promise.”

  They linked arms and stood side by side as if banding together that way as a unit made them stronger. Jessica had a feeling that they needed all the strength they could rally.

  f o r t y – o n e

  The woman who entered the study a few minutes later was a pale imitation of the powerful senator in the photographs. Her eyes were as puffy and red-rimmed, her face as pasty and strained as might be expected of any grief-stricken widow. Dressed in a smart black designer suit and spike-heeled shoes that seemed to indicate her recent arrival at the house, no doubt in the Bentley.

  Senator Christine Palmer closed the study door behind her and regarded the twins from across the room. Her eyes rested first on one, then the other in silent appraisal. “Well, well,” she said at length. “If it isn’t the Doublemint Twins. Which one is the slut that was screwing my husband? Or did you take turns? A threesome perhaps? Simon would enjoy that.”