The Last Blue Plate Special

by Abigail Padgett

  I had lived for two years within a day’s hike of the old line shack, but I had never seen it. Then I’d bought a grainy photograph of it taken in the past from an odd angle and brought the photograph home. There I had hung it where only my dog could see it without looking down.

  “Okay, Grid,” I whispered to nothing but a concept I’d made up, “what does this mean?”

  There was no answer but the howling of a wind which was beginning to annoy me. Apparently I would have to figure it out for myself.

  “All right,” I thought defiantly, “then I will.” Meanwhile, I would help complete the job Roxie and I had undertaken together. I’d do everything I could to determine who among the Rainer medical staff had killed patients with a timed-release antidepressant that exploded their brains when they ate liver pâté. I’d stay up for days and nights running statistical analyses until my computer crashed in curls of smoke and I’d narrowed the field to one. One person and only one who met the criteria, who had motive. One person who was waiting to be caught. And I’d do it for Roxie. I’d do it to close the path behind her and free her to leave.

  On the bump-and-bang trip back through Coyote Canyon I felt brave and strong. I would do the Right Thing for Roxie because I loved her. Someone less prone to solitary, dramatic scenes involving dubious moral decisions might have paused to consider the operative term, “love.” Someone other than I might have remembered how deadly Jerry Russell Jones’s love for Ruby Emerald had become in the hours before he shot her with a .22 handgun. Or the cruelty Pieter Van Der Elst’s love for his wife, Kate, had caused him to unleash at her weakest moment. The love between Wes and Annie Rathbone, too, might be drawn into the analysis before a decision was made. But I didn’t consider any of those things. In my mind was a picture of my sorrow, complete with music. I would make sure I earned it, paid the admission price to a movie of my own life. That was all.

  Roxie’s car was still there when I got home, as I’d known it would be. Roxie is rational and therefore does not do dumb things like drive over mountains at night in fits of pique. In the long run this quality might rub off on me, I thought as I killed the engine and let the truck coast quietly to a stop. Except there wasn’t going to be any long run.

  Brontë, of course, heard the truck and came sleepily to the door, licked my hand, and then trotted back into the bedroom. I took the old sign into the kitchen and propped it in the sink. Indoors, it looked phony. Like a ghost-town prop from a “Southwestern” catalogue also offering plastic steer skull snack-servers and Kokopelli toilet tissue. So I kicked off my boots, grabbed the sign, and padded outside to the pool. There I lay the sign on a chaise lounge and looked at the water, which seemed gray and forbidding without the underwater lights which would make it blue and sparkling again. Except the lights might wake Roxie, I thought.

  But then so would I if I tried to clean up in the bathroom.

  “Oh, hell,” I whispered, then pulled off my clothes and slipped into the warm water at the shallow end. No splashing. No sound at all. Just soft, thick water holding me in the dark. I was tired, I realized. Every muscle limp and aching from exhaustion. The motel pool was quiet and felt as big as a lake. I’d been drifting for a while when suddenly I wasn’t sure I was awake. Wasn’t sure I remembered where the edge was, or how to get out. So tired, I thought. So tired I can’t make myself move.

  And then an awareness of depth. I’d drifted to the deep end, floating on my back, more than half asleep. Gallons of gray water beneath me, fathoms of gray. I could see the splash gutter all around me, see the rectangular shape of the pool against the decking. But I couldn’t move. And then I was sinking. Or I thought I was, and I still couldn’t quite remember how to move, how to make the dead weight of my body cross a few feet of dark liquid to safety.

  A chill, then. Coldness drifting in my arms and legs like oil in a lava lamp. I felt the water close over my head and kicked a little out of instinct, but I wasn’t sure which way was up. And the feet kicking at the ends of my legs didn’t feel like mine. Feeling them was more like watching them. Like watching puppet feet on a screen inside my head. And then a kernel of panic burst somewhere and I was choking and thrashing as something crushed my chest. Something pulling me, hurting my lungs, the skin over my ribs. Something holding me so tight I couldn’t breath, and then something hard hitting my head.

  The splash gutter. The splash gutter had hit my head, and the thing crushing my chest was an arm, dark against my pale skin.

  “Roxie,” I choked.

  She was in the gray water, one arm around the kickboard, the other around me. I could feel her trembling, feel it in the big muscles of her arms and shoulders. Without a sound she pulled me along the edge to the shallow end and then pushed me up the pool’s steps. On the decking a black animal moved in worried circles, then pushed its face against my neck and licked frantically.

  “Roxie?” I said again when she returned with towels and began scouring me until my skin burned. I could feel the race of blood in a million vessels, the pulse of capillaries stretching in my fingertips.

  “I’m okay, Roxie,” I said. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t want to wake you. I think I fell asleep in the pool.”

  Her eyes looked strange in the dark and I could still feel the trembling inside her, beneath her wet skin.

  “You’re cold,” I said, standing shakily. “Let’s go inside, get into some dry clothes, have some coffee. I have to tell you what happened, what I found, Roxie. The shack. The one in the photograph I bought at the Aphid Gallery. I saw it, Rox. It’s at the end of Coyote Canyon where it comes out above Anza. It’s real. It’s really there.”

  I hung on her, wrapped in towels, as we moved inside. I could hear myself jabbering about an adobe shack, saying the same things over and over while deep inside I faced an awareness I didn’t want to face. That if I couldn’t tell Roxie Bouchie about my life, if she weren’t there to hear, then whatever might happen in my life would be less real than it really was. Years spun out ahead of me in which my own experience could never be as intense and clear, as defined as it was when I simply told it to Roxie Bouchie. The awareness felt like drowning.

  “Rox, say something,” I begged after we’d gotten into dry T-shirts and I’d reassured Brontë with a liver treat that I was okay and she could go back to sleep. But Roxie just clenched her fists and walked into the darkened bedroom alone.

  “Please,” I whispered, following and crawling into bed next to her. “I’m sorry I took off and left you here, but I had to. When you told me about Philadelphia—”

  “Blue, there’s something I didn’t tell you about the MAOIs,” she said, pulling me fiercely to her. “You left before I had time. And I don’t feel like telling you right now. Stop running, Blue. You’re always running. And I’m asking you, just this once, to stop.”

  It occurred to me that drowning in the night-gray water of my pool felt preferable to her request. Running is what I do, who I am. Running, always observing and thinking and assessing everything, watching my own life like a movie seen through a moving car window. As long as I’m running, I’m safe. Whatever it is I fear can’t catch me. But Roxie was asking for a kind of courage I’d never displayed. She deserved my best. And she would have it.

  “I’m not running,” I told her. “I’m right here.”

  After that we didn’t talk but made love all night as if it were the first time, or the last. And I was there. I didn’t run.

  Eventually I must have slept because I woke up suddenly, a knot of fear in my gut. It was almost nine o’clock in the morning, somebody was pounding on the door, Brontë was barking, and Roxie was beside me in bed but fully dressed and watching me anxiously.

  “Oh, Rox,” I mumbled, “what’s going on?”

  “A lot. Hard to know where to begin. But first I have to know if you’re still here, or if you’ve gone off in your head again like you do, running away.”

  “Rox, I’m not the one who’s going away,” I began. �
��And who in hell is that at the door? And why aren’t you at work? What’s going on, Roxie?”

  “I took the day off,” she said, not moving from my side. “Personal leave, and God knows, honey, this is personal, except now we don’t have time for it. At the door we have the FBI. There are a few things I need to tell you, Blue.”

  “FBI? What’s the FBI doing here?” I croaked, lurching toward the bathroom. I wanted to be alone with Roxie and have a hot shower and a huge breakfast with a lot of fresh coffee. In that order.

  “That’s one of the few things,” she answered. “I’ll just ask them to wait at their campsite for a few more minutes. But then we’ll have to talk to them, Blue. We have a lot of work to do today.”

  “What campsite?” I yelled as she went to the door. There was a businesslike drone of conversation between Rox and two male voices, and Brontë stopped barking.

  “The one fifty yards outside your door,” Rox yelled into the bathroom as I wasted a lot of water in a full-blast shower. “They’ve been out there since seven, even have a chemical toilet.”

  Minutes later I looked out the little bathroom window that faces the back of my property. In a hollow partway up a wash I saw a tidy campsite outfitted with everything you’d need to scale Everest except the oxygen tanks. Seated on folding camp chairs were two men in khaki shorts and T-shirts. One was watching the desert through binoculars the size of a good dictionary. The other was talking on a cell phone. Both wore sidearms in holsters. Across the lap of the one with the binoculars lay a high-powered rifle equipped with a day scope. It seemed clear they weren’t there to meditate.

  “Roxie,” I singsonged, hopping around my bedroom pulling on underwear, “it’s time to tell me now. There are heavily armed Eagle Scouts in my yard. What did I miss last night?”

  She sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Remember when I was talking to Wes about Bettina Ashe and all the foods you can’t eat if you’re taking MAOIs?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  I’d grabbed a beige knit skirt from the closet and was trying to pull it over my hips. Already I knew it was going to be a skirt day. Already I knew I was going to be working. Hard.

  “Remember when I told you everybody started yelling around him and he had to hang up?”

  “Yeah, Rox, get to the point.”

  I found a bra, then a blousy white knit top with a cowl collar. Gold earrings. Professional look, I thought. Or at least it would be when I put on some shoes.

  “Listen,” she said, and I did. “Now, what happened at police headquarters last night was a phone call from the Secret Service advising the San Diego Police Department that the FBI would now be involved in the Sword of Heaven case. Wes called back right after you left. Sword is the FBI’s prey now. Our tax dollars at work. He’s briefed the agents already. They know about the connection between you and Sword, about the plates. They think he’ll visit you again. They’re waiting.”

  “But Roxie,” I said, wanting to talk about nothing but last night and how was I supposed to let her go live in Philadelphia when she was inside my mind now, permanently, “why? The Rainer Clinic is virtually closed. Sword can’t kill again, at least not immediately. The local police didn’t request FBI backup before. Why now?”

  “Because,” she said, knitting her brow, “our woman vice presidential candidate is making an unscheduled campaign stop here tomorrow morning. It’s in today’s paper, but the news was on the Internet last night. Sword saw it. Go look at your e-mail.”

  Rox had already booted up my computer, so I clicked on the server’s icon and waited. In seconds the list of mail was visible. One from dad, as usual. Two from book companies tracing out-of-print books for me. Five or six from discussion groups. One from “Godsword@bluebay.com.” It had been copied to me from an original sent to the San Diego Union-Tribune, with copies to eighteen network and cable TV stations and the SDPD. I brought it up on the screen and noticed its buttons. Three little blue willow plates now, not two.

  The third time’s the charm.

  “Vice President is a man not a women,” it said. “This women tyring to be a man is an abomination must dye. The Sword of Heaven is swift and will kill with guns this time.”

  The predictable typed signature was, “The Sword of Heaven.”

  20

  Pirates, Diners, and Desert Rats

  At least ‘abomination’ is spelled right,” I told Roxie.

  The word made me think about Old Testament vengeance and Lilith and wild places and the photograph of an adobe shack on my wall. I thought about a grid of universal intention whose purposes were apparently served at the moment by a woman running for the second highest office in the United States. And the killer who threatened to stop that. The killer who kept leaving me blue willow plates. No coincidence, none of it. And my only choice, I realized, was to hang on for the ride or … well, there was no other choice.

  “Probably copied it out of the Bible,” Rox answered, pouring coffee. “I have to leave soon, Blue. I’m meeting Jennings Rainer and Kate Van Der Elst at the Rainer Clinic at noon.”

  I’d been deep in thought, planning what to do. The plan felt right even though nobody else would see it that way.

  “You’re what?” I said. “What for? And it won’t take you three hours to get down there, anyway.”

  “Not everybody drives twenty miles over the speed limit,” she mentioned. “And the reason is that we’re going to run a blood test on Kate, see if she’s got an MAOI in her system. If she does, there’s a pretty good chance my theory’s correct even though we’ll never really know unless Sword tells us. Rainer has the equipment to run the test at his clinic. I’ll draw the blood, Rainer will run the analysis, and then I’ll have the test replicated at another lab in case it’s needed later as evidence. And there’s something else—”

  “How did Jennings Rainer get involved in this?” I interrupted over a bowl of cereal I was trying to eat before the bran flakes got soggy. “And where did Kate stay last night? Did she stay home or go to the hotel where Pieter is?”

  “She went to a different hotel,” Rox said approvingly. “It was good for her to take control that way, meet her need for security on her own. You gave her good advice, Blue. Same with Rainer. He called me yesterday afternoon, said you’d referred him to me. I can’t see him because there’d be conflict over my working for the police on a case in which he’s technically a suspect. He understood that. I referred him to another psychiatrist, someone I know, and then checked to be sure he’d made an appointment, which he had. I asked him to do the blood test on Kate today, Blue. I wanted him to feel that he’d done his part to help the police find the killer.”

  “But Rox, what if he is the killer? You’re sending Kate right into his hands!”

  “I don’t think he is, and he won’t be touching Kate in any event,” she said. “The other thing I didn’t tell you is about the list of medications BB saw in Isadora Grecchi’s medicine cabinet.”

  “Yeah?”

  “They’re all antidepressants, Blue. And two of them, Parnate and Nardil, are MAOIs. Looks like Grecchi’s got a serious problem with clinical depression and her physician’s trying everything in the book. Nobody prescribes MAOIs now unless the client is unresponsive to everything else. But there it is. Grecchi’s got the stuff. It doesn’t look good for her.”

  “Oh, no, “ I muttered. “Did you tell Rathbone?”

  “I told him, but I also told him depressed people are usually only a danger to themselves. They commit suicide to escape the indescribable despair of depression, but generally they don’t commit murder. I don’t think he really understood, but he did understand that Grecchi’s possession of MAOIs doesn’t mean she’s the perp. It only moves her up a slot in the list of suspects. Anyway, you and I are supposed to be in Rathbone’s office by one o’clock for a briefing with the FBI guy who’s in charge now, and—”

  “Roxie, could you handle that alone?” I interrupted. “You’ll have the
results from Kate’s test. If she’s got this MAOI stuff in her blood, then you’re the one to explain it to the FBI. I don’t know anything about antidepressants and blood pressure. Neither do I know anything about psychiatric profiles of serial killers. There’s something else I need to do, okay?”

  The look I got was the same one my mother gave me when I was eight and told her I would be digging for buried pirate treasure in the backyard all day and therefore could not go to school. To her credit, my mother took the time to explain that as far as anyone knew, no pirates had sailed the sea of corn surrounding Waterloo, Illinois, ten miles from the Mississippi River, and so could not have buried treasure in our yard. Roxie merely fumed.

  “Blue, Sword has killed three people already and now threatens to kill a vice presidential candidate within less than twenty-four hours! What can you possibly have to do that can’t wait?”

  I let Brontë lap the rest of the milk from my cereal and eyed Roxie sitting next to me at my kitchen counter on a barstool. In her black turtleneck she looked like an undercover agent. She also looked puzzled and harried. She glanced at her watch, cocked her head at me. Irritated. I’d expected this, but if Rox and I wanted to have anything resembling the serious relationship that kept shaping up between us, then I had to make something about myself crystal clear.

  “I need to talk about last night,” I began, facing her squarely. “Something hap—”

  She grabbed both my hands in hers and looked even more harried. “Girl, I know,” she whispered. “But not now. There’s no time. We’ve got these bozos outside who want you to tell them about every damn snake trail in the desert, and then we’ve got to help Rathbone. We’ve got a job here, Blue. It’s important.”