China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

  McCracken said, ‘‘The face will be identifiable. The flames didn’t reach it.’’

  Nodding, I went to the ambulance. McCracken told the paramedics, ‘‘Unzip the bag.’’

  The zipper hummed. The smell flooded my sinuses, the night became bright and flat, and a buzzing began in my ears. I saw the face, and then I was sitting on the sidewalk with my feet splayed out in front of me. Yeltow’s hand was around my shoulder, her face a throbbing yellow underneath the sodium streetlights.

  Her voice broke through the hum in my head. ‘‘Can you identify the decedent?’’

  Maybe I nodded; maybe I didn’t. ‘‘It’s Peter Wyoming.’’

  At one a.m., sitting in an interview room holding a cold cup of police station coffee, I was still answering questions for Detective McCracken.

  I had gone out about seven, I told him. Brian was home, but planning to take Luke to the movie, the seven-thirty show. I didn’t know if they actually saw it. I left the Lobo about ten thirty, after catching a different show, the live-animal act.

  McCracken said, ‘‘Being at the Lobo at ten thirty is no alibi.’’

  I clarified. I had been at the Lobo all evening. My companions were Abbie Hankins and her husband, Dr. Wally, plus Chet the engineer, two rocket geeks, and half of China Lake. And I didn’t know why Peter Wyoming was at the house. I couldn’t believe Brian would allow him on the property.

  Across from me, McCracken rested his thick arms on the table. His red hair shone under the fluorescent lights. ‘‘Do you have any idea who might have done this?’’

  I looked at him as if he had a head the size of a tick. I said, ‘‘The Remnant.’’

  ‘‘You think the church had something to do with the killing?’’

  ‘‘Of course.’’

  ‘‘Wyoming’s own flock. The folks who practically regarded him as God.’’

  ‘‘You saw the house. The walls were covered with citations from the Bible.’’

  He thumbed a piece of paper on the desk, creasing it with his nail. His breath trilled through his nose. ‘‘You’re very observant. I mean, noticing that while you were rushing to grab the fire extinguisher.’’

  Brian had been mistaken to consider this man dumb.

  McCracken folded the paper again and creased it. ‘‘You know, you keep telling me how this church group is out to get your family. But it wasn’t your brother dead at the house; it was their pastor.’’ Fold, crease. Fold, crease. Like origami. ‘‘The day you came into town. Is it true your brother threatened Reverend Wyoming?’’

  ‘‘What? No.’’

  ‘‘Right outside this station. He didn’t say Wyoming would regret crossing him? Something about putting him down permanently?’’

  I heard a ghostly echo in my mind. Smoking hole.

  I said, ‘‘No, it wasn’t like that. Brian told him to leave us alone, or else . . .’’

  ‘‘ ‘Or else’? Really.’’

  ‘‘No, that’s not what I—’’

  ‘‘Where is your brother, Ms. Delaney?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  ‘‘You have any idea where he might have gone?’’

  ‘‘Gone?’’ The import of the question hit me. ‘‘He hasn’t gone anywhere, unless the Remnant has taken him. There’s a difference.’’

  ‘‘I understand the difference. And either way, believe me, we’re looking for him. Don’t worry, if he goes home he’ll see the yellow tape and figure out that he should call us.’’

  The tape was strung up to keep crime scenes from being violated. But at Brian’s the scene had been violated when I ran through the house, when I sprayed the extinguisher around the patio, and especially when the firefighters trampled in, dragging hoses across the carpet and shooting a high-pressure spray at the fire, the body, and everything in a ten-foot radius around it.

  I said, ‘‘How much forensic evidence will anyone be able to recover from the house? The fire crew wasn’t looking to preserve the scene when they went in.’’

  ‘‘Are you a criminal lawyer?’’

  ‘‘No.’’

  ‘‘Then why are you preparing a defense?’’

  There was a knock, and a plainclothes officer leaned into the room, a man with prematurely white buzz-cut hair. McCracken excused himself to talk to him in the hallway. After a few minutes he came back in rubbing the red stubble on his chin.

  ‘‘Ms. Delaney, about your vehicle.’’

  ‘‘I can’t get it repainted tonight. There’s nothing I can do about it.’’

  ‘‘Will you step out to the parking lot with us?’’

  Outside, the plainclothes asked me if I minded letting them look inside the Explorer. I hesitated. They waited. I knew they would find a way to get in, with or without a warrant, and given the direction of McCracken’s questions I thought it wise to cooperate. I unlocked the doors. The plainclothes flipped up the tailgate. ‘‘There.’’

  He pointed at the can of red spray paint. I had forgotten about it, and now, I knew, that meant I was screwed.

  McCracken said, ‘‘Do you want to explain that?’’

  ‘‘I found it next to my car at the Lobo. I meant to give it to you. I just forgot.’’

  The two cops looked at each other. Plainclothes said, ‘‘Mind if we take it now?’’

  ‘‘Go ahead.’’

  ‘‘You don’t suppose we’ll find your fingerprints on it, do you?’’

  ‘‘Right thumb and index, near the top, where I picked it up.’’

  Plainclothes put on latex gloves and dropped the can in a clear plastic bag labeled EVIDENCE. He said, ‘‘Heard that the sheriff had to replace the window in one of his cruisers. Looks like you’re a quick study in car vandalism.’’

  McCracken sent him away. I stood there with my face burning.

  ‘‘I didn’t do this,’’ I said. ‘‘And I didn’t deface the walls at Brian’s house.’’

  He looked up at the night sky, thoughtful for a moment. ‘‘Tell me, does your brother possess a firearm?’’

  He knew the answer to that. I said, ‘‘His service automatic.’’

  ‘‘Do you know where the weapon is?’’

  ‘‘No. Why do you ask?’’

  ‘‘Peter Wyoming did not burn to death. A gunshot killed him.’’

  He looked down again. ‘‘We’ve spoken to Reverend Wyoming’s wife. She says her husband scheduled a meeting with your brother tonight to mediate the custody dispute.’’

  ‘‘That’s absurd.’’

  ‘‘He scheduled the meeting for ten o’clock at your brother’s residence.’’

  ‘‘She’s lying.’’

  He tilted his head and gave me a look both analytical and strangely concerned. ‘‘You have issues, don’t you? About trust.’’

  When I didn’t reply, he said, ‘‘Why would Mrs. Wyoming lie about this?’’

  ‘‘Because Wyoming didn’t want to solve the custody dispute; he wanted to kidnap Luke. Brian would not have let the man through the front door.’’

  ‘‘So how do you explain Wyoming’s presence at the house?’’

  ‘‘Maybe he was trying to break in. Brian wasn’t home.’’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘‘Well, see, here’s the thing. About ten o’clock, that red Mustang your brother drives was seen parked in the drive. A few minutes later it went tearing down the street with the tires squealing.’’

  My stomach dropped. ‘‘Seen by whom?’’

  He widened his stance, indicating he’d had enough of the verbal sparring. ‘‘You want forensic evidence? The bullet that killed Peter Wyoming is a nine-millimeter. ’’ He tilted his head to check that I was following.

  I felt queasy. Beretta nine-millimeter pistols were standard-issue sidearms for NATO troops, including U.S. naval officers.

  He said, ‘‘Even a bunch of hick China Lake cops can put this one together.’’

  ‘‘You’re wrong,’’ I said. ‘‘Something’s happened to my bro
ther. You have to find him.’’

  ‘‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’’ he said. ‘‘We will.’’

  I slammed the car into gear. My brain was stalled, obstinate with denial.

  It wasn’t true. McCracken had everything ass-backward. I screeched out of the police station and up China Lake Boulevard, fuming about McCracken’s arrogance, his gullibility and small-town shortsightedness, his weakness for the obvious solution and refusal to see the situation in its awful complexity, its clarity, its complete simplicity that I and apparently I alone perceived. I had to confront the Remnant. I had to find Chenille Wyoming and force her to recant her lies. Who knew how, but I had to try. She had to be nearby if McCracken had seen her within the past few hours.

  I had to find Brian and Luke.

  I drove back to the house. It looked desperate, dark and scary. I found a piece of scratch paper, wrote a note, and left it under a rock on the driveway. B— I’m OK. Call. E.

  I checked into a hotel, a place with worn maroon carpet and wall clocks showing the time in Rio and New Delhi. The doughy young desk clerk, distrusting a late-night guest who carried no luggage and stank of burned garbage, called the manager. He said without a hint of welcome, ‘‘May I help you?’’

  ‘‘I need a room. There was a fire at my house.’’

  The clerk actually escorted me down the hall to my room. I said, ‘‘Do you have a laundry service?’’ She told me I could send my things out in the morning, and I decided not to dicker. I said, ‘‘I’ll pay you twenty bucks to throw my clothes in a washing machine right now.’’ When she had carried my clothing away I stood under a hot shower, scrubbing until my skin stung. Afterward I huddled naked under the bed-covers with the lights blazing and the television tuned to CNN.

  My mind pinballed. Peter Wyoming had been shot, then burned. What was the message in that? Did it relate to the messages spray-painted on the walls? The scripture citations, strangely, had stuck in my mind. In the nightstand I found a Gideon Bible.

  Matthew 4: 8-9. The temptation of Christ—‘‘The devil took him to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ ’’

  Revelation 13: 1, 4—‘‘And I saw a beast rising out of the sea . . . and men worshiped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’ ’’

  Revelation 13:18—‘‘Let him who has understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, its number is six hundred and sixty-six.’’

  The hairs on my arms stood up. Devil worship? What in hell? These passages had been chosen with care, by someone who had arrived at the house ready to spread the word, in cherry red spray paint, in blood, and in flame. I closed the book.

  Where were Brian and Luke? If they were okay, Brian would have phoned me. He had my cell phone number. I took the mobile from my purse, as though holding it would make it ring.

  The battery was dead.

  I tossed it on the nightstand and slid down onto the pillow. It made no sense, none of it. It was all contradiction, chaos. From deep within I heard a dead voice. The evil is out there, waiting. And it’s hungry.

  I sat up, frightened. Pulling the hotel room phone onto my lap, I called Jesse.

  His voice was thick with sleep. Without preamble I said, ‘‘Babe, things are bad. Pastor Pete’s dead.’’ I started telling him the rest. It didn’t take long before he was wide-awake and thinking more clearly than I was. He stopped me.

  ‘‘Brian’s going to need a criminal lawyer.’’

  I didn’t respond.

  ‘‘Someone who can swing a big bat,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s imperative. The cops are going to go for him like hyenas at a kill. He has to protect himself.’’

  I stared at the ceiling. ‘‘Right.’’

  He said, ‘‘Is Luke with you?’’

  ‘‘No.’’ I let him glimpse the maw of the chaos. ‘‘I don’t know where Luke is.’’

  Stunned silence on his end, for long seconds. He said, ‘‘I’m coming up there.’’

  The desk clerk returned my laundered clothes about four a.m. Despite everything I had dozed off, and I stumbled to the door wrapped in a sheet. I thanked her and tossed the clothes on a chair, falling immediately back into bed.

  A noise at the door woke me sometime later. It was the sound of a key being slipped into the lock, and I became immediately, fully alert.

  The key turned. A vertical strip of light slivered in the doorway. But I had put the chain on the door, and it caught with a crack. Someone emitted a soft sound of annoyance. I tossed off the covers and started pulling on my clothes as fast as I could.

  A voice stage-whispered, ‘‘Evan, let us in.’’

  I stopped. ‘‘Brian?’’

  ‘‘No, it’s Elmer Fudd. Open the door.’’

  I felt like punching him. But when I took the chain off the door, my animus ebbed as quickly as it had risen. He looked as if he’d aged ten years. Luke was asleep in his arms.

  ‘‘Where have you been?’’ I said.

  ‘‘Marc Dupree’s place.’’ He walked in. ‘‘I couldn’t get through to your cell phone. I called every hotel in China Lake until I found you.’’

  ‘‘How did you get the key?’’

  ‘‘You’re Delaney; I’m Delaney. The desk clerk didn’t question me.’’

  He laid Luke on the bed. His black hair was tangled and his white shirt was stained with chocolate ice cream. I covered him and turned out the light.

  Brian said, ‘‘What’s this about a fire at the house?’’

  I pulled him into the bathroom and shut the door. I could barely contain the volume of my voice. ‘‘Peter Wyoming is dead. Did you know that?’’

  But of course he did. It was all over his face. ‘‘The police are looking for you,’’ I said. ‘‘Did you know that?’’

  ‘‘Figures.’’

  I tried to breathe slowly. ‘‘What happened?’’

  ‘‘Wyoming called me after you left the house. He wanted to see me.’’

  ‘‘You’re sure it was Wyoming?’’

  ‘‘I . . .’’ Puzzled look. ‘‘Yeah. That dry, cornpone voice. He said he had to talk to me, that it was extremely urgent.’’

  ‘‘And you agreed?’’

  ‘‘I told him he could go to hell. So he said, ‘I know I’m the last person you want to talk to, but it’s an emergency.’ Then he said, ‘We’re in great danger.’ ’’

  ‘‘ ‘We’?’’

  ‘‘That’s the word he used. I don’t know if he meant him and me, or he and his church, or whether it was a royal ‘we.’ And he said he had found out what was going on. I asked him what he meant and he said he couldn’t tell me over the phone. Then he goes, ‘You’re the only one who can help now.’ ’’

  ‘‘You?’’ He nodded. ‘‘So you said yes?’’

  ‘‘You would have too, if you’d heard his voice, Ev. He sounded—’’

  ‘‘Psychotic?’’

  ‘‘No. The opposite. He . . .’’ He paused. ‘‘Have you ever heard a cockpit tape of a guy who knows he’s about to buy the farm? His engine’s flamed out or he’s in an unrecoverable spin, and the canopy won’t open or the seat won’t eject, and he’s talking in this level voice, maybe stressed from high Gs but not panicking, saying, ‘I’ve done this, I’ve tried that, now I’m trying X,’ looking for the way out of it. But sometimes he knows, this is it. His voice takes on this tone. Finality, maybe. Totally lucid, flat finality.’’ He looked at me. ‘‘That’s how Wyoming sounded.’’

  He started pacing the tiny confines of the bathroom. ‘‘He wanted to come to the house, but I said no way. So we agreed to meet out in front of the Nazarene church downtown. He told me he could be there by ten. I took Luke to the movie, and afterward dropped him off at Marc’s place. And I stopped back by the house on the way downtown, and—’’

  ‘‘Dammit.’�
�� I stared at him. ‘‘You went back to get the gun.’’

  ‘‘Yes. But that’s not the point. The house was destroyed. The furniture was trashed and stuff was spray-painted all over the walls.’’ He stopped pacing. ‘‘It was a setup. I tore out of there back to Marc’s, thinking they were going after Luke again.’’

  Under the bathroom’s bright makeup lights, his face looked bleached. His eyes had a glossy sheen. My stomach was cramping.

  ‘‘Everything, Brian. That’s not all that happened.’’

  He started to protest.

  Hurt and anger suddenly weighed on me like a rock. ‘‘Don’t lie to me. If that’s all that you saw, you would have called the police right then.’’

  Still he hesitated, breathing loudly.

  ‘‘I found the body, Brian.’’

  He drew up in shock. ‘‘Christ. Oh, Evan.’’

  ‘‘Tell me the rest.’’

  His shoulders slumped and he reached tentatively out to touch my arm. ‘‘God, I’m sorry. It never occurred to me . . .’’ He rubbed his forehead. ‘‘Yeah. When I went in the house I saw Wyoming lying there on the floor.’’

  ‘‘What?’’

  ‘‘Evan, I apologize. I didn’t figure on you coming home and finding that. But Jesus, when I saw him, when I saw what they’d done to him, in my house, and God, after he’d told me we were in danger—I had to protect Luke. I thought they were going to grab him; that’s all I could think about, so I—’’

  I held up my hands. ‘‘Wait. You saw Wyoming’s body in the house?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’ Baffled look.

  ‘‘Describe the scene.’’

  More confusion. ‘‘He was lying on the living room floor. He was knocked back against the couch, with his head propped up and a big red stain in the middle of his chest.’’

  ‘‘You’re positive he was dead.’’

  ‘‘Definitely mort.’’

  I breathed. ‘‘I found his body stuffed in a trash can on the patio, on fire.’’

  Our eyes met, both of us realizing that the killer had been in the house when Brian arrived, and had hidden, then finished his death scene after Brian left. Fear skittered down my spine. Brian’s face blanched.

  He said, ‘‘I put you in danger. You could have walked in on him after I left. . . .’’