by Rick Blechta
“I wish I didn’t have to go. You know that. It’s just how it is.”
“Then let me drive you to the airport,” he repeated reasonably.
She knew when she was beaten. “Okay, Michael. Maybe I’ll get this thing in California cleared up in record time. I could come back early and I wouldn’t necessarily have to tell the family. We could make a night of it.”
“This job isn’t dangerous, is it?”
“I don’t think so. As I said, I’m hoping I can get what we need and get back home before you leave town.”
After hanging up, she sat for several minutes, hoping she hadn’t brought the devil down on her head with that last comment.
“Welcome to Reno,” Jackie said in the falsely hearty delivery of a tour bus operator. “Our only goal is to make your visit as enjoyable as possible. Don’t forget to gamble as often as possible.”
Shannon just wanted to get the hell away from the airport, with its slot machines everywhere you turned. She pushed ahead through the revolving door, making no response to the wisecrack.
Once in the rental car and out on the highway, she relaxed, but only a little.
“Bad flight?” Jackie asked.
“Every flight is bad. Anything new to report?”
“Not a thing. I did just as you asked and kept my head down.”
“Good.” Shannon checked her cell phone’s signal strength for the fourth time since landing. She really needed whatever information Roy could dig up. Swivelling to face Jackie, she said, “Now tell me this plan for getting into Sunnyvale.”
Jackie shot her a sideways glance. “The only sure way to get in is to pose as a patient, right?”
“I suppose.”
“There’s no way we’re going to jump their fence, and the front gate is manned twenty-four/seven, so a bold frontal infiltration is out.”
“I’d like to scope out the place anyway.”
“Suit yourself.” A silent mile or two later, Jackie said, “I figure our best bet is for me to go in with a substance abuse problem.”
“Alcohol?”
“I’d have to admit to a long-term problem, and I don’t think the physical effects of that could be faked. They’d spot it.”
“Same goes for drugs, then.”
“Not crack.”
“Where are we going to get some of that?”
“I already have it.”
“What? You bought crack?”
“Relax. There’s drugs to be had in Reno with little trouble. I scored all I’ll need the other night.”
Shannon didn’t like it, and they argued about it over the miles to Portola, but she was fighting a losing battle. Jackie had obviously done her research.
“That’s certainly the admin building by the front gate,” Jackie said, pointing, “and the big building to its left seems to be a recreation centre.”
Shannon put the binocs to her eyes again and scanned the very large compound that made up Sunnyvale.
Barely stopping to change in Jackie’s motel room, Shannon had wanted to hit the ground running. Hidden by low scrub, they were lying on their stomachs underneath some pines near the top of a high hill..
The day before, and contrary to what she’d told her boss, Jackie had reconnoitered the area, finding a better route into Sunnyvale, although it meant a longer hike. Parking a car so near the entrance hadn’t seemed like a good idea.
“I’ve been studying some of those Internet map sites that include satellite coverage. There are nineteen buildings of varying sizes. The other day I counted eighty-three people doing exercises. If I’m correct about the colour coding, staff and patients both take part.”
“What about security?”
“I don’t think so. See anybody wearing brown? I believe that’s them.”
Shannon moved the binoculars to the right. “There are two at the front gate talking to someone who just drove up. They’re wearing brown.”
“I checked one of their vehicles in town. It had extra heavy duty suspension. My guess is they can manage pretty well in the backcountry. The woods around here are crisscrossed with fire roads and the like.”
Putting down the binocs, Shannon rolled onto her side, facing Jackie. “What are you getting at?”
“In case I have to clear out in a hurry.”
Before packing it in for the day, Shannon took a whole flash card of photos, from long range to extremely close. As they got ready to back away from the somewhat exposed hillside, the exercise period started, with people trooping out of nearly every building.
Shannon slowly scanned the assembly. Nothing could be heard from the loudspeakers, since the wind was at their backs.
“That’s her,” she said finally. Handing the binoculars to Jackie, she picked up the camera and clicked off a few shots. “She’s on the right side, near that bench. See her?”
“So that’s our problem child. She seems okay from what I can see.”
“No way to tell for sure from this distance. Let’s get going. I’m waiting for a phone call.”
Once they got back into cell phone range, Shannon got her call. It went on for quite some time, with a lot of head nodding and one or two word answers.
After hanging up, Shannon was quiet until they got back to the motel.
“So what’s up?” Jackie asked when she could bear it no longer.
“That was my friend Roy. He asked around and managed to speak to a few ‘graduates’ of the Sunnyvale program.”
“And?”
Shannon piled a few pillows on one of the beds and lay back against the headboard. “They all spoke pretty positively about the program. It was tough but effective.”
“Did this Roy guy ask them about Olivia?”
“Not in so many words. We don’t want anything to get back to anybody, do we? He did ask about people who were there for something other than substance abuse problems.”
Jackie sat down on the bed. “And what sort of answers did he get?”
“He was told those people are kept by themselves most of the time. Some of them are apparently pretty troubled. They have their own programs and their own activities.”
“Any idea how many there are?”
“Not more than a dozen, Roy said.”
“This could complicate matters.”
“Just what I was thinking.” She turned her head and looked at Jackie. “The people at Sunnyvale can be very tough when they have to be. They don’t fool around. It’s all part of this ‘tough love/you have to face up to your faults’ thing that’s the basis of their program.”
“I’m ready,” Jackie said confidently.
“Are you?”
Chapter 17
Shannon was uneasy. She never liked investigations that kept posing new questions at a faster pace than she could discover answers. A week into this one, the answers she had would barely fill a postcard; the questions would – and did – fill a notebook.
“And you’re sure your friend Kit knows what to say if Sunnyvale calls her?” she asked.
Jackie was lounging on her bed, looking completely unstressed as she watched TV.
“Yup. She’s going to say that I’m her best friend – which I am, incidentally – and she’s just looking out for me. My crack addiction is completely out of control. Relax. Kit’s got a good head on her shoulders.”
Shannon hoped the coolness was all an act. Being too certain in any situation could be highly dangerous, especially when you didn’t have much experience.
It was late morning on her second day in California. Roy had told them he’d be making an early start, and she tried to keep herself from glancing yet again at the bedside clock or her watch in an effort to make time go by more quickly.
“And you’re clear on what I need you to accomplish at Sunnyvale?”
Jackie muted the tiny TV and looked over at her boss. “I am very clear on what you need, most important of which is not to put myself or Olivia in any danger. If I have any concerns about that, I will
get in touch with you immediately. You can count on me, Shannon. I won’t do anything stupid.”
Roy Moody had one bed half-covered with equipment he’d brought.
“You’re lucky I’m not using this stuff so much lately. You got some pretty specialized equipment here, and hard to get.”
Shannon laughed. “You always were a gadget junkie, Roy. Admit it.”
Actually, she was really glad he’d brought all that he had. Having to cross a border, she’d been able to carry next to nothing. Too many questions would have been asked, and she didn’t have a license to operate in California. She’d never skated so close to the edge before.
Jackie, too, had confirmed herself a gadget junkie as she dove right in, asking questions and trying things out.
“The big problem,” Roy said, as he pulled up a chair, sitting backwards on it with his head resting on his arms, “is to get this stuff into Sunnyvale. The two sources I spoke to told me they take everything away from you, and the body search extends to cavities. These guys don’t fool around. Too many people have tried to smuggle in their junk.”
“I’m sure they’re even more careful since they lost our girl and her friend a few months ago,” Shannon said. “We’re going to have to watch our step.”
“That’s why I brought this,” he said, indicating a shallow box on the bed. Roy tossed it over with a grin. “This is the latest thing.”
“It looks like a clear plastic box.”
His smile was expansive. “Until you put something in it.”
He took a pen out of his pocket, opened the box, put it in, shut the lid and handed it back to Shannon.
The box still appeared to be empty.
“It’s a riff on an old magic trick. Got it from a friend of mine. He’s one of those spooks, but I can’t say for who. With a little bit of adhesive, this baby can sit on the inside of a toilet bowl or underneath a sink, and you’d have to be looking awful hard to spot it. This’ll be your girl’s care package. Everything a good little spy needs: radio communicator, GPS transmitter, digital camera that you can hide, um, wherever you might want to hide it, laser light for signalling and a small knife – just in case, you understand.”
As he enumerated each item, Jackie tossed it over and into his magic box it went.
Shannon sighed. “All that remains is to hope nothing goes wrong. If somebody finds this stuff, we’re screwed.”
“Nobody’s gonna find it. I’ll excuse myself to use the washroom and hide it when I’m in there. If we don’t hear from your girl—”
Jackie made a face. “I do have a name, you know.”
Roy laughed. “You got an attitude on you, Jackie Goode. I like that.”
I don’t, Shannon thought.
“Anyway, if we don’t hear from Jackie by the next night, we know something’s wrong, and we pull her out.”
“And for opening doors?”
Here Roy reached into the inside pocket of his sport jacket. “I got these little babies.” Handing them across to Shannon, he said, “I know the company that put in the security systems at Sunnyvale. Believe me, one of those five cards will work on any door lock in the place.”
“Cool,” Jackie said. “How did you get your hands on these?”
“Let’s just say I don’t know and leave it at that.” Roy picked up a few last things. “Some surgical tape to put our goodies on your body when you leave the washroom, a bit of bubble wrap to keep everything from rattling around, and extra adhesive to reattach the empty box and you should be good to go, girl...Jackie.” He reached forward, grabbing a black box half the size of a cigarette pack, which he handed to Shannon.“You have to put this within one thousand feet of wherever they have Jackie. Inside is a digital recorder that her transmitter will activate.”
“And that’s how I get her reports.”
“Exactly. All you have to do is open this little rubber door, and you can stick in this flash stick to download the info. You can also listen on site through headphones plugged in here. It’s totally weatherproof. Jackie will also be able to receive short messages from you.”
Shannon shook her head in wonder as she went over to the window and pulled back the curtain to look out for about the tenth time, a totally futile gesture.
“FedEx will get here when they get here,” Jackie laughed. “Relax.”
The previous evening, they’d burned up the phone lines pulling the money end of this together. The fact that Roy’s business had moved heavily into concert and tour security had suggested to Jackie that her friend Kit Mason, blues guitarist extraordinaire, be seen to have sent her to rehab. That way Roy would also be a logical person to show up with her at Sunnyvale.
“My photo’s even in two spots on Kit’s website,” Jackie had said, in her effort to convince her boss. “It’ll work.”
Shannon kept getting the feeling she was being railroaded.“And your friend Kit is cool with fronting you this kind of cash? Curran says he can’t come up with it for another twenty-four hours at least.”
“Relax. Kit has more money than God these days. She’s done really well for herself. The cheque is no big deal for her.”
“Shannon?” Roy said, “do what your girl says: relax. We got everything worked out here.”
If someone told her to relax one more time, she was going to scream. Forcing herself to sit down, she said nonetheless, “I can’t help thinking we haven’t taken something into account.”
***
Jackie breathed a huge sigh of relief as the nurse? orderly? security guard? shut the door to her room.
She was in.
It had been a huge strain keeping her nerves under control for the past two days around her boss. She guessed that if she’d shown the slightest hesitation, the tiniest flutter of apprehension, the whole thing would have been called off.
Now she was inside Sunnyvale, and her real work could begin. First order of business was to check for any surveillance in the room. She’d done a fair bit of studying over the past few months on that sort of thing, and Roy and Shannon had coached her with additional tips and tricks, but she knew darn well that nothing was foolproof. In the digital age, it was easier than ever to spy. Their best hope was that Sunnyvale had no real reason to spend a lot of money spying on their clientele.
The intake session had gone well, with the interviewer seeming to suspect nothing. Roy had aced his part, playing to perfection the bored security heavy fed up with a useless babysitting job.
He’d tipped her the wink as he’d left the washroom and she was being led into the examination room.
Never a big user of drugs, she’d done the occasional line of coke and smoked crack a couple of times when she’d bombed out of university after her aunt died. Shannon appeared taken aback by Jackie’s knowledge but later actually admitted to smoking weed, “two or three times” while in college. “And if you ever tell my daughter or son, I’ll cut out your liver with a dull spoon!”
The effect of the crack she’d smoked the evening before had blasted into her skull with the force of a freight train; it was high-grade stuff and Jackie had spent a very interesting evening getting totally wiped. That morning she’d done the same, to make sure the level of the drug in her bloodstream would be alarming. The whole ordeal had left her nerves frayed and ragged, her brain lethargic but curiously on edge. She kept that information to herself. For the necessary time, she’d be able to play her part without much effort.
Shannon had decided it would be best for Jackie to seem to be there under duress.
“Make out like your friend Kit strong-armed you into rehab,” she had said just before Roy drove Jackie up to Sunnyvale that morning, “and that your thinking is to play the game so you can stay in her good books. We also need you to appear pretty far gone. Quite often crackheads suffer from hallucinations and paranoia. I suggest you use that.”
Jackie grinned. “Since when did you become such an expert on the long term effects of crack?”
“Since last nigh
t on the Internet while you were so out of it. You had me worried.”
“That’s why I stay away from the stuff. It’s really addictive, and its effects are highly seductive.”
Shannon gave her a hug as she was leaving. “Just be careful, Jackie. Play it smart; play it safe.”
The intake session at Sunnyvale had been quite an experience with Jackie switching back and forth between sullen and snarling. Once in the examination room she had thrown a few things around for extra effect. A doctor had hustled in soon after.
“I’m Dr. Smith, and I’m the director here at Sunnyvale,” he said, as he surveyed the damage.
Jackie studied his face carefully. The smile did not extend to his eyes.
“Now, Ms Goode, Nurse Simpson here will help you off with your clothes and do the first part of your examination. I’ll see you at the other end. Please refrain from any more histrionics.”
Simpson held out a gown. “Take off your clothes, and put this on.” She wasn’t smiling.
“No.”
“Look, dear, either you do as I ask, or I’ll get two strapping assistants to help me. You wouldn’t want that, would you? If you’re going to be successful here, you have to learn to do as you’re asked.”
“I don’t want to be here.”
“That’s not what your friend said when she called us.”
“She’s full of it. I don’t have any problems.”
“That’s what a lot of our Seekers say. When you prove to us you don’t have a problem, you’ll be free to leave, okay?”
While Jackie took off her clothes, Simpson went over some papers Dr. Smith had handed her, all the while keeping a careful eye on her charge.
Simpson did the usual things: height, weight, blood pressure, and she also took several blood samples. Then then came the cavity search, something Roy had warned her about, not that it made it any less unpleasant.
“You’d be surprised what some people will try to do, dear. We want to give you the best chance of beating your problems.”
When she was handed over to Dr. Smith, he not only went over the results of the physical, but wanted a detailed history. Jackie, Shannon and Roy had decided that this could be dangerous, since details could easily be forgotten, so she resorted to being uncooperative.
