China Lake

by Meg Gardiner

  I spun around, heart thundering. She was silhouetted in the bedroom doorway, and she was reaching for the light switch. I hurtled across the room, scrambling over the bed, and slapped her hand down. Her mouth opened in shock. She tried backing away but I grabbed her by the shirt and pushed her up against the wall.

  She said, ‘‘What is wrong with you?’’

  Her voice, always boisterous, rang loudly in the bedroom. I clapped my hand across her mouth so roughly that her head banged back against the wall.

  ‘‘Make a sound and I’ll knock you unconscious. I swear it, Tabitha.’’

  Her hands clawed at my arm.

  ‘‘Who is it outside?’’ I said. ‘‘Paxton?’’

  Sharp breath. Her eyes went round.

  ‘‘Did you lead him here? Did you sell us out?’’

  Her eyes jerked back and forth around the windows. She started shaking, and I heard the unmistakable sound of liquid running onto the hardwood floor. I looked down. The crotch and one leg of her cargo pants were darkening with urine.

  I took my hand off her mouth.

  ‘‘They’ll kill me,’’ she said.

  I didn’t have time to apologize. ‘‘We’re going out the bathroom window and heading for the neighbors’. Come on.’’

  She pressed herself against the wall. Fear jangled in her eyes.

  I grabbed her shoulders. ‘‘We have to protect Luke. We’re all he has.’’ She blinked. ‘‘You want to make up for the last eight months? This is it. Now come on.’’

  For a second longer she held there. Then, steps hesitant, she came with me into the bathroom. The window, high up on the wall, gaped open. Luke was crouched on the counter, shivering. His eyes went to Tabitha.

  ‘‘Your mom’s on our side,’’ I said. ‘‘Hop down for a sec.’’

  I climbed onto the counter in his place and slowly raised my head to look outside. I could see nothing but the dark waltz of the pines. Gingerly I worked the screen off the window and handed it to Tabitha.

  ‘‘I’ll go out first. Then Luke, then you.’’

  Standing up, I started winching myself outside, headfirst, holding on to the windowsill to keep from falling facedown on the ground. Then I heard a voice off toward the front of the house, talking low. I stopped.

  ‘‘Done it. Them cars ain’t going nowhere.’’

  I hung there, frozen. Someone had disabled both Tabitha’s car and mine. And worse than that, the someone was talking about it out loud. That meant there were two of them. At least.

  The voice, closer now, said, ‘‘There’s a bike in the garage. What’s a cripple need a bike for?’’

  ‘‘Shut up.’’ A hiss.

  I pulled myself back inside and squatted down. Footsteps passed by outside, crackling on pine needles. Slowly I raised my head again. Whoever it was had gone around the corner. And then we heard wood creaking as feet stepped onto the deck outside the bedroom plate-glass windows, fifteen feet away.

  Tabitha was shuddering so hard I thought she might fall over. She said, ‘‘We’ll never make it.’’

  I forced myself to think. Could we barricade ourselves in here until the police came? No. ‘‘We can’t stay. They’ll shoot in through the window or the door. We’d be fish in a barrel.’’

  She bit her lip and covered her mouth, stifling a cry. Luke watched her, his chin beginning to tremble.

  ‘‘We can make it; we just have to be fast.’’ I clasped Luke’s arm. ‘‘When you get outside, run as hard as you can and don’t stop no matter what. Run.’’

  Standing up, I took one last look outside and wriggled through the window. I dropped to the ground with a thud. I heard Luke clambering onto the counter. His fingers wrapped around the windowsill.

  From out of the night came a whistle. It was a signal. The bedroom window shattered. The front door banged open. In the bedroom a light flashed on. A man yelled, ‘‘This way!’’

  Tabitha started sobbing.

  I heard her slam the bathroom door closed. She cried, ‘‘Go, Luke!’’ I heard heavy pounding on the door, someone trying to break in. Luke started crying. Tabitha screamed.

  I shouted, ‘‘Luke, come on!’’

  His head appeared in the window, and his shoulders. The door broke open with a crash. Tabitha screamed again and again. Luke’s eyes were wild with fear. I reached up and grabbed him under the armpits.

  Somebody in the bathroom seized his legs and jerked him back.

  He cried out, and his small hands scrabbled to hold on to me. I felt my grip slipping. To my horror he was pulled from my grasp and disappeared back inside. Noise rioted in the bathroom—Tabitha howling, Luke sobbing and shrieking. Then a man roared, ‘‘Stop it, you stinking brat!’’

  Luke was fighting back. It electrified me, filled me with terrifying inspiration. I ran toward the front of the house. Rounding the corner, I saw the front door splintered open.

  A weapon, I needed a weapon. I rushed into the garage, looking for anything sharp or heavy. Inside the house Tabitha wailed. Underneath her keening I heard the skittering, squealing syncopation of the ferrets panicking in their carrier. My eyes fell on some cans of paint sitting on a shelf. Grabbing one, I ran outside.

  Abruptly the air emptied with silence. Tabitha had stopped crying. My stomach cramping, I crept to the front door.

  On the living room floor knelt Curt Smollek, his zitty face red with exertion. He was binding Luke hand and foot with duct tape. Luke’s mouth was already covered, and his eyes were squeezed shut in terror. The tape made a wicked ripping sound as Smollek yanked it from the spool. On the floor near his foot lay a semiautomatic pistol.

  Beyond Smollek, pinned down on the sofa, lay Tabitha. Her mouth and hands were taped, and she was crying noiselessly. Ice Paxton stood above her, his knee on her spine, the butt of a shotgun pressed against the back of her neck.

  Smollek ripped off one last strip of tape and stood up, like a rodeo cowboy roping a calf. ‘‘Done.’’

  ‘‘Sit him up.’’ Paxton forced Tabitha’s head around to face Luke. ‘‘Take a look at your boy, ’cause I’m gonna ask you a question,’’ he said. ‘‘You betrayed the Remnant and fled from me like a wanton whore. By rights I should kill you.’’

  Her eyes bulged. She rocked with a sob, and snot spewed from her nose.

  ‘‘But I believe in second chances, so I’m giving you one. Your boy’s going with us. You can come too, and live as my woman, and be with him. Your choice.’’

  I had to move. But Paxton was facing the door, and would see me in an instant.

  Tabitha squirmed, her eyes pinned on Luke. Paxton said, ‘‘What was that? I can’t hear you.’’

  Against the pressure of the gun she worked her head.

  ‘‘Is that a yes?’’ He leaned on the shotgun, bending down close to her ear.

  He was staring at her, and Smollek had his back to me. Telling myself, Big windup, hard swing, I ran inside. With all my might I swung the paint can and slammed Smollek in the back of the head. He went down like a stunned dog, and his foot kicked the pistol, sending it skittering under the sofa.

  Paxton jerked up. He turned and came at me, leveling the shotgun on my midsection. Yelling wildly, I swung the paint can at his arm. Jesus, his finger was on the trigger; if I hit him wrong he could fire, but I couldn’t stop the arc of the can. It pounded down on his wrist and the shotgun clattered to the floor. I swung at him again, the can thudding into his chest, the lid popping off, a gallon of Navajo White slurping loose onto his torso and face. Momentarily blinded, he staggered back, raking at his eyes, spitting and roaring. I dropped the can and dove for the shotgun, picked it up with paint-slick hands and kept running, around the sofa. Paxton shook his head and paint went flying. He blinked and saw me.

  Pointing the shotgun at him with shaking hands. ‘‘Don’t move.’’

  He looked around at Tabitha, and Luke, and at Smollek, still down but moaning and starting to move. Back at me.

  ‘‘You,’�
�� he said, ‘‘are Satan’s bitch whelp.’’

  ‘‘The police are on the way.’’

  ‘‘You’ll die regretting this.’’ He backed up a step.

  ‘‘Don’t move.’’

  ‘‘You ain’t gonna shoot me.’’

  I pumped the slide on the shotgun. ‘‘I will.’’

  ‘‘No, you won’t.’’ He stepped back again. ‘‘Take a look. You can’t.’’

  And bam, I saw my mistake. He had stepped behind Luke, putting him in the line of fire.

  I edged around the sofa, trying to change the angle, and he swept Luke up into his arms. Holding him against his chest as a shield, he started backing toward the door. He pulled a palm-sized walkie-talkie from a pocket and spoke into it. ‘‘Bring the car.’’ He kept backing toward the door. ‘‘Curt. Get up.’’

  Smollek pulled himself to his knees. Outside, headlights rose and an engine droned up the driveway. Luke shot me a look over his shoulder, unalloyed terror.

  ‘‘Coward,’’ I said. ‘‘Hiding behind a child. You’re no soldier.’’

  Then Tabitha struggled to her feet. Though her hands were taped, she clenched her fists and charged at Paxton. She tried to catch him with an uppercut, but he sidestepped the blow and backhanded her across the face, sending her to her knees.

  He said, ‘‘This ain’t the time to be stupid. The boy’s with me. You coming?’’

  The shotgun was heavy. Maybe I could batter him with it, I thought, without him wrestling it away, without Smollek getting in on the act.

  Like he’d read my thoughts, Paxton said, ‘‘Curt, get Delaney.’’

  Smollek lurched to his feet. I knew that the second I took the gun off Paxton, he’d be out the door with Luke. I held my aim, but shouted at Smollek, ‘‘You’ll die. Don’t do it!’’

  Headlights blared through the splintered front door. Smollek was staring at the sloppy white floor in confusion. Searching, I realized, for his pistol.

  Paxton said, ‘‘Take her, Curt!’’

  Not in nightmares could I have pictured myself helpless with a twelve-gauge in my hands. But as I stood there Paxton melted out the door into the headlight glare. Tabitha got to her feet. For an instant she looked at me. The light painted her starkly. Star-hot eyes, ghostly white skin. Then she followed Paxton out the door.

  Smollek charged me. My heart hammering, I spun on him. Thinking, God forgive me; I’m going to do it, I pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  Smollek flew at me. Again I pulled the trigger and again nothing happened. He crashed against me, knocking me to the floor, and fell on me, all tangy BO and bony elbows and pained frenzy. The headlights arced away and the light in the room dimmed. And I heard, faint but insistent, a police siren.

  We fought on the floor, grunting and sliding toward the kitchen. I was kicking, struggling under Smollek’s weight, hearing the siren grow louder. We banged into the ferret carrier. Pip and Oliver jumped inside it, squealing and hissing. Smollek got a hand around my throat, and suddenly I couldn’t get any air. His face was hideously intent. Though I clawed at his arm I couldn’t shake him off. Desperate, I reached out and fumbled for the latch to the ferret carrier.

  The little door sprang open. A gray blur zoomed past me, and Smollek shouted in distress.

  He leaped off of me, screaming. Gasping for air, I scrambled to my feet and staggered toward the knife rack. But Smollek was spinning in circles, grabbing at the ferret. It was clawing at his head, its dark furry tail whipping wildly as they circled.

  Shrieking, wearing the ferret like a hat, Smollek ran out the front door. I followed, stopping halfway up the drive, staring through tears into an empty night.

  21

  Detective Chris Ramseur came in through the French doors at my house and sat next to me on the sofa in my living room. His English teacher’s face looked drawn, but he’d been up all night. Nikki Vincent paced back and forth in front of my fireplace, arms crossed on her enormous belly. The FBI agents had stepped outside to confer. I could see them, two men in blue suits standing on the lawn in the morning sunlight, earnest, sober, one now speaking on a cell phone. The press was at Jesse’s house, standing outside the police tape, doubtless shooting photos of the smashed front door.

  Ramseur said, ‘‘We’ve put together a lot of information in the last few hours.’’ He had a small notebook in his hand. ‘‘The shotgun that Paxton was carrying. It didn’t fire because there was sand in the action. These guys are sloppy.’’

  I told him how I’d seen Smollek drop a gun in the sand out at Angels’ Landing.

  He nodded. ‘‘There’s more. The pistol Smollek was carrying was military-issue. We checked the serial number, and it was stolen from China Lake.’’

  I stared at him. ‘‘Is it the gun that killed Peter Wyoming?’’

  ‘‘No, but it’s still valuable evidence. We’ve recovered fingerprints from it, and they match those on the liposuction cannula that killed Mel Kalajian.’’

  Nikki stopped pacing. ‘‘Jesus, Ev, Smollek would have killed you. Thank God for that ferret. Light a candle for the little beast.’’

  Ramseur said, ‘‘Disarming your attackers the way you did was amazing, Evan.’’

  I didn’t respond.

  He flipped through his notebook. ‘‘Couple of hours ago we executed a search warrant on Smollek’s place. It’s a hovel out in Winchester Canyon.’’ He ran a hand over his beard. He hadn’t had time to shave, had a dark five-o’clock shadow. ‘‘He was keeping a menagerie, these stinking cages out back of the house. We found bats, sick ones, and a hutch full of dead rabbits. Also some dogs that had to be destroyed.’’ A strange look entered his eyes. ‘‘Big things, like nothing I’ve seen.’’

  I said, ‘‘Coydogs. A dog-coyote cross.’’

  He nodded again, slowly. He was being almost ceremonious in acknowledging that everything I had alleged was proving true, but his contrition was belated and irrelevant.

  Smollek was gone, along with Paxton, Tabitha, and Luke. Worse, the Remnant had gone to ground. Their church was abandoned, their homes empty. Angels’ Landing was deserted. The only person the police could find was the woman who owned the retreat, Mildred Hopp Antley. She was Chenille Wyoming’s mother, and she was in a nursing home with Alzheimer’s. I sat staring into my cold fireplace, feeling as though a void had yawned open and I was falling into it.

  ‘‘And one other thing.’’ Ramseur was scratching his head. ‘‘Public Health can’t find Peter Wyoming’s body."

  "What?"

  ‘‘There’s no record of its being interred anywhere in the Tri-Counties.’’

  Nikki and I both gaped at him.

  ‘‘Ms. Delaney.’’

  The FBI agents had come back inside. The older of the two was addressing me, a man with thinning hair and brown button eyes named DeKalb.

  ‘‘You say that last night your sister-in-law followed Paxton out the door. But by your account, at that point he was unarmed. She could have remained behind. ’’ He tilted his head. ‘‘Are you positive that she was acting under duress?’’

  ‘‘She went with him to protect Luke.’’

  DeKalb looked briefly at his partner.

  I said, ‘‘This isn’t a domestic dispute. Tabitha didn’t set it up.’’

  ‘‘Why else would the Remnant take the boy?’’

  ‘‘I don’t know. Tabitha said that Chenille Wyoming has . . .’’ The skin on my neck was creeping. ‘‘She has some kind of fascination with him.’’

  DeKalb remained expressionless. I balled my fists and pressed them against my eyes to keep from crying. A moment later Nikki sat down next to me and slipped her arm around my shoulder.

  She said, ‘‘It might have to do with Halloween.’’

  ‘‘What about it?’’ said DeKalb.

  Ramseur said, ‘‘Miss Delaney’s been told that’s when the Remnant plans to launch some kind of attack.’’

  DeKalb shifted his weight and s
aid, ‘‘You know a tremendous amount about this group’s activities, ma’am.’’ His tone set off my inner alarms. ‘‘In fact, your family is seriously entwined with the Remnant, and has been involved in a number of violent acts, up to and including murder. Do you want to tell us what’s really going on?’’

  I stood up. ‘‘What’s going on is that the Remnant is dangerous, and if just once any of you had stopped laughing at me or blaming me when I warned the authorities about them, Luke would be home safe right now.’’

  His button eyes didn’t even blink. ‘‘The Bureau is involved now. Your best chance of getting him home safely is letting us handle it.’’

  Ramseur nodded gravely. ‘‘We’ll find him, Miss Delaney.’’

  Nikki said, ‘‘Damn straight you will.’’

  I said, ‘‘You’d better get it in gear. Halloween’s five days away.’’

  DeKalb buttoned his suit jacket, as though getting ready to leave. ‘‘There’s something else.’’

  His partner gave me a heavy look. ‘‘It’s about your lawyer.’’

  I felt my vision contracting around the edges.

  Jesse had not come home the night before. He hadn’t stayed late at the office, or stopped to see friends after work. His family hadn’t heard from him. He wasn’t answering his cell phone. When I called, it just kept ringing.

  DeKalb said, ‘‘That call I got was from the Highway Patrol. They found Mr. Blackburn’s car wrecked in a gully two miles from his house.’’

  My vision started to tunnel, and lights danced in front of DeKalb’s face. I asked a big, dumb question. ‘‘Is Jesse okay?’’

  ‘‘There was no sign of him at the crash site.’’

  ‘‘He didn’t just walk away. He uses a wheelchair—’’

  ‘‘It was in the backseat,’’ the partner said.

  DeKalb said, ‘‘There’s evidence that his car had been in a collision. It was forced off the road.’’

  I felt Nikki’s hand taking hold of my arm. I said, ‘‘The Remnant took him.’’

  ‘‘We have to presume so.’’

  I barely heard the knock at the door. But I sensed the agents’ abrupt alertness, DeKalb going to the door, escorting the messenger inside, taking an envelope from him. DeKalb examined the envelope, held it up, asked me if I recognized the sender. My eyes were swimming. It was from Jesse’s law firm. They all circled around me, waiting for me to open it, to see if it was a ransom note.