China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

  Glory. It’s not my original name, you know. . . . And Kelly Peters wasn’t her name either, I’d bet money. Dammit. Had she broken into the office that July evening? Did Mel Kalajian find her with drug bottles in her hands? Did she grab the cannula and . . . No. Kalajian had been strongly built, and had engaged in a hellacious fight with his attacker. Glory was a lightweight young woman. Those dots didn’t connect.

  The more I thought about it, the less sense that scenario made. Why would Glory go to the trouble having a tattoo removed if she simply planned to break into the office after hours? Then it hit me.

  Olson came back inside, alone.

  I said, ‘‘How did the thief get into the office?’’

  She stopped. Her face rouged. ‘‘Why do you ask?’’

  Bingo. I swiveled on the chair to face her. ‘‘It wasn’t a break-in, was it.’’

  ‘‘The drug cabinet was broken into.’’

  ‘‘But the office wasn’t.’’

  She fussed with her loden green jacket, smoothing it. I stared at her.

  ‘‘No,’’ she admitted. ‘‘They used a key. Dr. Kalajian thought he had lost it, which is why we never rekeyed. It would have cost money to rekey.’’

  Her voice had gone up about half an octave. I saw: She, the efficient office manager, had saved that money, a fatal thriftiness.

  I didn’t want to spook her. I said, ‘‘I think I’ve found your mystery patient.’’

  Briskly she strode around to look at the computer screen. ‘‘This is her?’’ She crossed her arms and tut-ted. ‘‘She looks dishonest, doesn’t she? You think she’s the one who . . .’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  A new thought was nettling me. Chenille had asked Kevin Eichner to obtain drugs for her from a doctor’s office. What did she want from an MD that she couldn’t get on the street?

  I said, ‘‘Esther, what drugs were stolen?’’

  She stared at the screen. ‘‘I couldn’t say.’’

  ‘‘Didn’t you have an inventory?’’

  ‘‘Of course. They were controlled substances, and had to be strictly accounted for. The nurses gave an inventory to the police.’’

  ‘‘Do you have a copy of it?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know, and I don’t see why you need to know.’’ There was an edge to her voice—annoyance, or regret that she had revealed too much.

  ‘‘Esther, this might help explain Dr. Kalajian’s murder.’’

  ‘‘I don’t see how. You’ve found this’’—she gestured to Glory’s photo—‘‘this creature. You should call the police. She looks like a drug addict.’’

  ‘‘I’m going to call the police. But I don’t think this was an instance of an addict killing someone who got in the way of a fix. I think the Remnant sent this woman here to steal particular drugs, and I think that Dr. Jorgensen realized it, too.’’

  She pressed her lips tight. ‘‘Fine. All right.’’ She grabbed a Post-it note and wrote down a name. ‘‘This is the nurse who handled the inventory. I hope I’m not making a mistake.’’

  I stood to leave. ‘‘You aren’t.’’

  Three blocks down the street my cell phone rang. It was Jesse.

  ‘‘What did the doctor say?’’

  ‘‘I’ve been a bad dog. I need shots.’’

  Dead quiet on his end. ‘‘Evan, that’s not funny.’’

  ‘‘It’s laugh or scream, babe.’’

  ‘‘Jesus Christ, you really were exposed to rabies?’’ The vaccine was just a precaution, I told him, and he said, ‘‘I’ll take the day off if you want. Trial’s in recess. Are you okay?’’

  ‘‘I’m laughing, aren’t I?’’ I told him to stay at work. His concern was heartening enough for me. ‘‘But there’s something else. About Glory.’’

  He listened, and whistled. ‘‘Call SBPD. Talk to Chris Ramseur, the detective I know there. I spoke to him half an hour ago about the Remnant stockpiling weapons. This will really get him hopping.’’

  ‘‘Right,’’ I said. ‘‘Seeing Glory’s photo on that computer was immensely depressing.’’

  ‘‘Ev, snap out of it. Glory can’t be your personal reclamation project.’’

  ‘‘She isn’t.’’

  ‘‘Yes, she is. Tabitha has put up a wall, so you’re trying to save Glory instead. Forget that she’s your biggest fan, and a weeper; she’s a class-A bigot and possibly a murderer.’’

  Evan’s pound puppy . . .

  ‘‘Besides, she’s already saved, right? She’s fresh out of redemption coupons.’’

  Luke was at Nikki’s, and on the way to pick him up I swung over to Milpas Street and bought us all takeout from La Super-Rica. Standing under the orange roof of the taco stand watching the old lady hand-make the tortillas, smelling the cilantro and the luxuriant aroma of grease, boosted my mood. So did Nikki’s overt concern when I walked into her kitchen, and her relief at hearing that my risk-averse doctor had sent me to get vaccinated. She smiled when I handed her the Super-Rica sacks, and said, ‘‘Oh, baby. Come to Mama.’’

  We ate in the kitchen, with Luke sitting on my lap. Afterward I told Nikki to put her feet up and give me a list of chores. I was in the garage loading the washer when Carl’s car pulled into the driveway. He often came home for lunch from the small software firm where he was an executive. He strolled up with his measured stride, exchanging his prescription sunglasses for his regular owlish specs. He had on a flawless charcoal suit and a royal blue silk tie, as much flair as his conservative tastes permitted.

  I said, ‘‘There’s La Super-Rica, but you’ll have to wrestle Nikki for it.’’

  ‘‘Never take on a pregnant woman when food is on the line.’’

  I started the washing machine. ‘‘I’m not going to ask her to babysit Luke anymore.’’

  ‘‘No, she wants to,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s a good distraction. He’s a nice kid.’’

  Faintly we could hear sounds from the school playground up the street. It reminded us both that Luke should have been there.

  ‘‘No,’’ I said. ‘‘I had been thinking of sending him back to school. But I’ve gotten information that the Remnant is stockpiling weapons, and were involved in a murder last summer.’’

  I didn’t have to say the rest: If something happened to Luke, or to any other child at that school, I would have to kill myself. And if something happened to Nikki . . .

  Carl said, ‘‘The police?’’

  ‘‘They know.’’

  He turned toward the house. Stopped. Raised a finger, to point or shake at me, then came over and hugged me hard. ‘‘Watch your back, girl.’’

  18

  With the brushfire extinguished, the sky freshened and the air sang clear. Hang gliders lazed above La Cumbre peak, and sailboats flecked the coastline. At lunchtime the next day Jesse headed to Los Baños pool, by the harbor. Two thousand meters freestyle soothed his aches, let him feel like a physical animal again. Swimming meant simplicity. There was no cross-examination, no screeching eschatology, no emotional subtext. There was only the rhythm of pull and recovery, and the water slipstreaming over him. After the freestyle, he felt pumped, knew his heart rate hadn’t even hit one twenty, and decided to throw in a set of intervals. Ten times a hundred meters ’fly, on the three minutes. It was work, but not radical. His cadence wasn’t what it used to be without the big dolphin kick anymore, but that was an FFL. He finished head down, lunging for the wall, and hung on the lane line, blowing hard. Nothing beat real exertion for improving your outlook on the world.

  He was driving back to work when a woman ran into the street ahead of him. He yanked back on the brake, saying, ‘‘Shit,’’ feeling the ABS judder as the car slowed. The woman was shouting, but not at him. She didn’t even see him. She was barefoot, with hot rollers in her hair, and was toting a .22 BB rifle. She was aiming the gun at a skunk.

  Traffic was approaching and cars were parked along the curb. He had nowhere to go to avoid he
r, and with one hand steering and the other pulling back on the brake, he couldn’t pound on the horn.

  The woman ran awkwardly. She had cotton wads stuffed between her toes, protecting the gleaming pink toenail polish she must have applied moments before grabbing her weapon. Still, she gained on the black-and -white animal waddling down the street. She sighted along the rifle barrel, as if she were Daniel Boone ’bout to kill herself a bear.

  Jesse’s car groaned to a stop. She fired. Missed. The skunk stopped and raised its tail. Just as it sprayed she fired again, and this time the skunk jerked, staggered, and fell over.

  Jesse rolled down the window and stuck his head out. The skunk odor was appalling, but the woman seemed to notice neither the stench nor the fact that she had almost been hit by a two-thousand-pound vehicle.

  He said, ‘‘Lady, what the hell are you doing?’’

  Warily approaching the little corpse, she nudged it in the belly with the barrel of the BB gun. It didn’t move. She grabbed it by the tail, hoisted it up in the air, and stared it in the face.

  She said, ‘‘Gotcha, fucker.’’

  She held up the skunk like a trophy. Her hot rollers shone in the sun. ‘‘I seen it sitting in my bushes, looking at me funny. It was rabid, but I got it.’’

  The panic had begun.

  An investigator from the Public Health Department phoned me that afternoon, wanting details of my exposure to Neil Jorgensen. After answering his queries for fifteen minutes, I asked whether he knew how Jorgensen had contracted rabies.

  ‘‘We aren’t going to theorize for the general public, ma’am.’’

  ‘‘I’m not the general public. He spit in my face.’’

  He considered that, and gave me a crumb. ‘‘Well, in California, the significant reservoirs of the disease are in skunks and bats.’’

  ‘‘How about coyotes?’’

  ‘‘That’s possible, too.’’

  After hanging up I phoned Sally Shimada. ‘‘Any more news on how Jorgensen became infected?’’

  I heard a pencil drumming against her desktop. ‘‘You know, I keep giving you the early edition. It would be nice to get something in return.’’

  Uh-oh. I asked what.

  ‘‘An interview with your brother.’’

  ‘‘No, Sally.’’

  ‘‘Come on, this is a big story. Especially with him being stationed at China Lake.’’

  ‘‘What’s that mean?’’

  ‘‘I hear how secretive that base is. They conduct top-secret research into who knows what. There’s talk that they develop strange weaponry for the CIA. Stuff the public never learns about.’’

  The Big Ssssh . . . here was the flip side of Marc Dupree’s sworn-to-secrecy act. In an X-Files age, the American public believed the notion that the government was boiling up secret mayhem.

  I said, ‘‘How does this connect to your story about Peter Wyoming’s death?’’

  ‘‘It’s a hook.’’

  ‘‘It’s preposterous, Sally. Trust me.’’

  ‘‘Trust you? You grew up out there. You have to know the truth.’’

  The truth? I pinched the bridge of my nose. The truth, from what I had experienced growing up out there, was that midrank naval officers could be ambitious, geeky, bureaucratic, and patriotic all at once. That, isolated in a hothouse desert laboratory with their families and neuroses, they knew how to keep their mouths shut, and they cared about beating back the reds, and really cared about keeping young men alive up in the sky, and that they did so by inventing things that killed people. But, remembering barbecues where officers got weepy or combative from cheap, excessive bourbon or cheap, excessive adultery; remembering men with fine minds who went bankrupt or attempted suicide or, if lucky, made it to AA, I thought the truth was this: Left to their own devices, these guys couldn’t organize a secret carpool.

  But Sally didn’t want to hear that. She wanted intrigue, government-within-government, strange lights in the night sky. And I felt a scratch in my belly, telling me that I should pay attention to what she was saying. Because it didn’t matter if it was true; it mattered that people would act on the belief that it was.

  I hedged. ‘‘I’ll speak to Brian’s lawyer. You find out about the rabies.’’

  For the rest of the day I made phone calls and ran errands. I spoke to the SBPD detective, Chris Ramseur, about Glory, and kept trying to reach the nurse from Neil Jorgensen’s office who had inventoried the stolen drugs. I ordered more flowers to be sent to my mom in the Singapore hospital. I picked up my Explorer from the paint shop, and went grocery shopping to stock Jesse’s fridge. Then, checking with my amateur’s eye to make sure that the Remnant wasn’t following me, I stopped by my house. I picked up my mail and clean clothes and, on impulse, the necklace my grandmother had given me for my first Holy Communion, a small gold crucifix. It felt comforting around my neck, reminding me of Grandma’s touch.

  In the morning I drove Luke to China Lake to see Brian. The autumn sun was already low over the mountains when we arrived, and under the blue arch of the sky the town looked stark and bright. The drive had bored Luke beyond words, but when we parked in front of the jail he sat up straight, eager, scared, and totally in the dark about what it would be like to see his father here.

  ‘‘Okay, tiger, a few things first,’’ I said. ‘‘When we see your dad the room will have a big window in the middle. We’ll be on one side and he’ll be on the other, so you can’t hug him.’’

  He listened, breathing in and out, looking at me with large, dark eyes.

  ‘‘And he has to wear jail clothes.’’

  He said, ‘‘Can I talk to him?’’

  ‘‘Yes. You bet. Come on, let’s go in.’’

  We waited in the visitors’ room side by side, staring through the Plexiglas barrier. Luke’s face was world-weary, almost middle-aged with anxiety. When the guard unlocked the door on the far side and Brian stepped in, Luke stilled. So did Brian, his face flash-freezing somewhere between joy and horror.

  ‘‘Hi, Daddy.’’

  ‘‘Hey, champ.’’

  There is no such thing as a good jailhouse conversation. Brian strained at ludicrous small talk, sitting hunched forward, his shoulders rounded like a bulldog’s. Luke looked as if he had been launched into space, a place where there was no air, no up or down, nothing to hold him to the ground. I upset Brian with the news that our mom had dengue fever, and annoyed him with Sally Shimada’s request for an interview. Absolutely not, he said. I asked what his lawyer was telling him.

  ‘‘He thinks the cops have two competing theories about the . . .’’ His eyes flicked toward Luke. ‘‘About Peter Wyoming. It was either homicidal jealousy or a weapons sale gone bad.’’

  I sat forward. ‘‘They think you were selling weapons to the Remnant?’’

  ‘‘Stuff must be missing from the base. The navy has inventory problems, I’m in the navy, ergo it has to be my fault. Two plus two equals seventeen.’’

  But I wondered if the Remnant could be stocking its weapons cache with arms stolen from China Lake. They thought the base was the Super Death Weapons Emporium—they’d probably love to get some of its hardware for themselves. I kept the thought to myself, not wanting Luke to hear it. I said, ‘‘What’s your lawyer doing?’’

  ‘‘He’s planning strategies. I told him the only strategy that counts is to catch the fu— catch whoever did it.’’

  ‘‘I’m working on it,’’ I said. ‘‘Does the name Mildred Hopp Antley ring a bell with you? She owns the Remnant’s retreat, and we went to high school with—’’

  ‘‘Casey Hopp.’’ He started. ‘‘Christ.’’

  ‘‘You know this person?’’

  ‘‘She was a hard case, a loser with a big red L on her forehead. She had a thing for me. Don’t you remember?’’

  ‘‘I didn’t even know that Casey was female.’’

  ‘‘She and this gang of girls used to park up the street from our house, h
oping for me to come out. Next morning we’d find beer cans and cigarette butts piled along the curb.’’

  The vaguest recollection stirred in me. ‘‘That was Casey?’’

  ‘‘Oh, yeah. Is she involved with the Remnant?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know.’’

  He was sitting up taller. ‘‘You’ll find out, right?’’

  ‘‘That’s my plan.’’

  The door behind him opened. A guard stepped in and said visiting hours were over. Brian didn’t even turn around. ‘‘Fine.’’

  I told him good-bye and stood to go, but Luke didn’t move.

  He said, ‘‘When are you coming home?’’

  Brian looked at me. I felt like barfing, wanted to shrivel up and die.

  He said, ‘‘I don’t know, bud. Soon, I hope.’’

  For a six-year-old, hearing that from his father was like tumbling beyond the rim of the solar system into a vast empty nighttime where not even the sun could reach him. The silence stretched.

  Brian said, ‘‘You be good for your aunt Evan.’’

  Luke’s shoulders rose and fell. I thought he was going to start bawling. But instead he anchored himself, found his own gravity. He stood on the chair, pressed his hands to the Plexiglas, and planted a kiss there for Brian.

  ‘‘I love you, Daddy.’’

  ‘‘I love you too.’’

  I thought Brian couldn’t say any more, and I took Luke’s hand to go. But near the door my brother called to me. His eyes were narrow, fighting tears. I asked Luke to wait there, and walked back to the barrier.

  Brian said, ‘‘Don’t bring him back here.’’ Then he turned and walked away.

  Casey Hopp. The name couldn’t be coincidence. This town was too small, this nightmare too heated, too tightly coiled around my family. Where was Casey Hopp today? Who was Casey Hopp today?

  I headed for Abbie Hankins’s house. Her toddler, Hayley, was riding a trike on the driveway, blond hair haloing around her head in the breeze. Abbie pushed open the screen door, giving a big wave, saying, ‘‘Hey, woman.’’

  I said, ‘‘Remember the yearbook photo of Casey Hopp? Can I see it again?’’