Crosscut

by Meg Gardiner

  He walked down the alley. He heard police sirens. The baseball cap went into a Dumpster. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his chinos to appear unhurried, he glanced back at the skyscraper. He had been close. So close he could smell it. It was like a taste on the wind, ephemeral. He lifted the lid off a trash can and stuffed the blond wig inside.

  He reached for the amulet, wanting to draw strength. His hand found empty air. He wasn’t wearing it. Mr. Hollywood Nebbish didn’t wear dog tags. A howl began rolling up his throat. He fought it and felt it continue to rise. He stared at Argent Tower.

  He had been denied. He put his left hand on the rim of the trash can and slammed down the metal lid. He felt only pressure, squeezing, a twisting of the skin. He slammed the lid again. Nothing. He had no pain threshold. The vaccine had permanently removed his ability to sense, to feel.

  Nobody could hurt him. He was impervious.

  Breathing hard, he raised his hand and studied it. It was battered and bruised. This was his strength and power. This sacrifice was the price of invincibility. The howl tumbled deep in his throat. He could not have his own pain. He could only observe it when he took other people’s. Again he gripped the trash can and slammed down the lid, enraged at this weakness, this longing for rude physical sensation.

  The sirens grew louder, keening, the sound warping between skyscrapers. He stopped and turned his face to the sun, looking east. Riverside. The child.

  He began to run.

  Dad came thundering back into the lobby from the plaza. “Nothing. No sign of him anywhere.”

  Near the front desk a uniformed LAPD officer was talking to Jesse. The notes he was taking were as thin as Jesse’s voice.

  “I know the guy walked past me. I turned to follow him and the paint can came swinging at my head. After that . . .”

  Dad crossed his arms. “After that, what? Think, Jesse. You’re good at that. Come on.”

  Jesse’s face was pale. Red paint striped his shirt, jeans, and the wheelchair. He looked like a Jackson Pollock canvas. He glanced from my father back to the cop and began unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Tag this as evidence.” He looked my way. “Where’d the guy grab me?”

  “Biceps. Both arms.” I held out my hands, showing the cop how the stranger had gripped him.

  He undid the last button and took the shirt off, careful not to touch the sleeves. He held it out by the collar.

  “Long shot, I know. But maybe your guys can lift a print.”

  The officer called for a crime scene tech to bring an evidence bag. Jesse turned to Dad.

  “Any chance I could borrow a shirt?”

  Dad nodded. Jesse gave him his car keys and Dad went to get one from his garment bag. The tech bagged the shirt and asked Jesse and me to give him our prints for comparison.

  Near the bottom of the curving staircase, Maureen Swayze stood chewing on her pencil. She looked shaken. I walked over.

  “You believe me now, don’t you?” I said. “It was Coyote.”

  “Yes. That’s not only the logical explanation, it’s”—she took off her glasses and cleaned them on the tail of her blouse—“deeply disturbing.”

  “Do you know who he is?” I said.

  Her eyes were distant. She shook her head. “No.”

  “What about those two men who stopped by your office?”

  “I have no idea.” She stuck the pencil back in her ponytail. “Excuse me, I need to alert Primacon’s security officer. Tell your dad I’ll speak to him soon.” She jogged up the stairs.

  The crime tech took my prints. When I finished, one of the painters walked up, holding out a rag. He nodded at Jesse, who was pressing his fingers onto the tech’s print pad.

  “He can clean up with this.”

  “You can give it to him. He has ears and a voice.”

  He looked stricken. I relented, taking it.

  I walked over to Jesse. He finished with the fingerprinting and I handed him the rag. He thanked me and wiped it against his jeans. It only smeared the paint spatters into longer streaks.

  I touched his shoulder. “You scared me. I thought, I don’t know, he—”

  “Ev, for Christ’s sake.” He scrubbed with the rag. “It wasn’t the guy. It was that sound.”

  “What sound?”

  He looked up, eyes hot. “The glass breaking when the paint can smashed into it.”

  The fractured glass sagged in the window frame. Where the can had hit, red paint oozed from a crack the size of a human head.

  I lowered my voice. “You had a flashback?”

  He pressed his lips white, scrubbing with the rag. I exhaled.

  He hadn’t heard a paint can smashing a plate-glass window. He heard himself smashing into the windshield of the car that hit him. I knew what happened after that. The adrenaline rush ran out of control. He saw the car, the fall down the ravine, his friend Isaac lying dead. Eyes wide-open, he didn’t see Coyote.

  “I fucked up,” he said.

  “No, you didn’t. Jess, God—it’s PTSD, not ineptitude.”

  “I had hold of him. If I hadn’t freaked, I could have kept him here.”

  My stomach spun. “No. It was Coyote. Christ, look what he did to the security guard. If you’d held on to him, that could have been you.”

  “If I’d held on to him, maybe the guard would be okay.”

  “No.” I felt dizzy. “You can’t even think about taking those kinds of risks.”

  “Goddammit, Delaney. Stop mother-henning me. I’m not a child.” His voice echoed in the atrium. People glanced at him.

  “No, that’s not . . . You don’t understand,” I said. “Neither of us can take those kinds of risks.”

  He spread his arms. “What risks? What are you talking about? Tell me.”

  “It’s...”

  I looked up. Dad was walking toward us, carrying a black golf shirt. I ran my hands through my hair. Jesse glared at me.

  Dad approached, his face studiously neutral. “Here you go.”

  “Thanks.” Jesse pulled the shirt on. It stretched tight across his shoulders.

  Dad turned to me. “You need to tell me why you came down to the lobby in the first place. What was going on?”

  “I followed two men down from Primacon. They were government agents.”

  He gave me a sharp look. “You able to ID a federal agent from twenty paces?”

  “These guys, yes.” I described Salt ’n’ Pepa. “So what kind of federal agent doesn’t show his badge or push his power in other people’s noses? Intelligence.”

  He grunted. I took that as agreement.

  A voice echoed across the atrium. “Miss Delaney.”

  I glanced around. Special Agent Dan Heaney, the FBI profiler, was striding toward us.

  He worked at the nearby Federal Building, so it didn’t surprise me to see him. But his pitted church-pastor face looked drawn, and that did. His blue suit looked as though he had slept the wrinkles into it.

  “You heard,” I said.

  He nodded toward the plaza. “Let’s go outside.”

  We followed him out into the sunshine. He jammed his hands into his pockets and led us over to the fountain.

  “I’ve spoken to Detective Chang and he’s in total agreement,” he said. “We go proactive.”

  Dad put on his hat, adjusting the brim. “Buzzwords don’t mean a whole hell of a lot to me, Agent Heaney.”

  “We try to lure the killer into a trap.”

  “How?” I said.

  “Couple ways. The police could announce to the press that the killer has been sighted. That they have witnesses to the attack on the guard here today.”

  Jesse shook his head. “That means Evan. No.”

  “And you,” I said. “And Archie and the painters. And Ramos.”

  “It’s a ploy,” Heaney said. “But it can draw a killer into coming forward to explain why he was near the murder scene.”

  The breeze blew my hair across my face. I brushed it ba
ck. “Coyote’s an assassin personality. You really think he’d walk into the LAPD and try to make excuses? Or would he just track down the witnesses and eliminate them?”

  Jesse picked at the tacky paint on his jeans. “Evan’s already a potential target. Don’t give him an extra incentive to take aim at her.”

  Dad nodded at Heaney. “Other options?”

  “A sympathetic journalist could write a story about the victims. Try to bring it home to the killer, promote some guilt.” He turned to me. “Especially a journalist who could offer a personal remembrance.”

  “And you think this would induce him to surrender himself?” Dad said.

  “No. Lure him into the open. It might get him to visit the grave sites in China Lake. Or maybe—”

  His cell phone rang. Excusing himself, he stepped away and answered.

  Jesse continued picking at the paint. “I don’t like Heaney involving you, Ev.”

  Dad crossed his arms. “If you could give the cops a description of the killer we could short-circuit this whole process.”

  Jesse looked away.

  Heaney, talking on the phone, sounded terse. He drooped, his suit wrinkling further. I saw his face.

  “It’s bad news,” I said. “Something’s wrong.”

  Tommy was standing in the break room at the China Lake police station, stirring a third lump of sugar into his coffee. The TV was tuned to a news channel. A red banner appeared behind the anchorwoman’s hair: BREAKING NEWS. The visual switched to a news copter hovering over a freeway.

  He set down his coffee and leaned into the hallway. “Captain. You’d better see this.”

  Across town, Abbie Hankins sat on her bed tying her Reeboks. Her hair was wet, but she didn’t have time to dry it. She had fifteen minutes to get to work at the museum. Hayley was bouncing up and down on the bed, waving two My Little Ponys overhead, singing.

  “Fly, ponies, fly, fly.”

  The red banner flashed on the television screen. Abbie stopped tying her shoes.

  “Hayley, shush.”

  The sound from the news helicopter was poor. She grabbed the remote and turned up the volume.

  “... a break in the search for two-year-old Ryan O’Keefe. We can see flares burning on the freeway and the Highway Patrol directing traffic.”

  Hayley bounced. “Over the sky, ponies fly.”

  “Girl, be quiet.”

  Hayley stopped bouncing. She blinked, her bottom lip quivering.

  Exhaling, Abbie pulled her into her arms. “Sorry, baby.”

  Hayley snuffled and started crying. Abbie held her.

  The reporter shouted over the noise of the rotors. “There’s a copse of trees about a hundred yards off the freeway, and there are a lot of law enforcement personnel over that way.”

  Abbie watched, holding Hayley tight. Near the trees, sheriff’s deputies loitered in an anxious circle. Abbie glimpsed a green Volvo wagon with its doors open. Photographers were snapping photos, crouching down for fresh angles. An ambulance was bumping slowly across the field toward it.

  Hayley squirmed. “Mommy, you’re squeezing me.”

  The ambulance stopped behind the deputies. Two EMTs pulled a stretcher from the back and rolled it toward the Volvo. They were walking slowly and didn’t have any medical equipment in their hands. Something else was rolled up on the stretcher, something black and shiny, and then they stopped and unrolled it and unzipped it, and Abbie knew what it was and what they were preparing to remove from the car and place inside it. She jumped to her feet, clutching Hayley, screaming at the screen.

  I saw Heaney’s face, and knew. “No.”

  “They’ve found Mrs. O’Keefe’s Volvo.”

  I took a step back, putting a hand against my stomach. “No. Stop.”

  “The little boy—” He cleared his throat. “He was in his car seat. He’s been dead for some time.”

  A wrench tightened around my temples. I heard ringing in my ears.

  Dad’s voice was almost inaudible. “Did he suffer?”

  Heaney looked at him and instantly away. Things went starburst yellow. I broke into tears.

  “Kit, sweetheart.”

  Putting up a hand to keep him back, I walked away. Past the fountain and the flower beds, to the edge of the sidewalk by the street. I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  I heard Jesse wheel up and felt his hand on my back. He didn’t say anything.

  After a minute I looked at him. Wiping the back of my hand roughly across my eyes, I turned to Heaney.

  “We get this son of a bitch and we get him now. I’ll do anything you want.”

  15

  In the hotel room, Coyote threw the suitcase on the bed. Into it he heaved clothes, toiletries, the computer, the yearbook. The child had been discovered. The news whores were hawking it on the TV downstairs in the hotel bar. He saw the footage, overhead shots from the news copters. They were like jackals in a feeding frenzy. And yet they had the audacity to hold him in contempt, these scavengers feeding off of his kill. He was their meat maker, their bread and butter. Not one of them had the skill or courage to see the mission through to completion.

  Taking the child had not been a capricious act. It had been necessary. The child presented a danger to the world. He was a contaminant, with the potential to cause incalculable damage. Ryan was only the end link in a chain of events that had gone horribly awry. His fate had been ordained before his birth.

  Coyote looked at the back of his hand. The bruising was severe. A hematoma was rising where he had slammed the lid of the trash can on it. He squeezed and opened his fist. His fingers were swollen and his hand was stiff. Damaging the hand had been ill-advised. It was an invaluable tool, and he should care for it as meticulously as he cared for the weapons in their case. The hematoma was stretching the skin and tissue beneath. He took an X-Acto knife from his medical kit. Holding his hand above the bathroom sink, he cut a slit in his skin an inch long. He felt the pressure of the knife, and a tugging sensation as he sliced through his skin, but no pain.

  Becky O’Keefe had felt no pain either. Because of that, she had sealed the fate of her child.

  He set down the knife and squeezed out the bloody, half-clotted bruise, working his fingers across the injury like a baker kneading dough. It glopped out and slid down the side of the sink into the drain. He cleaned the cut with antiseptic and closed it with two butterfly bandages.

  He examined his hand, flexing and opening it. Range of motion was greatly improved.

  Back in the bedroom he continued packing. He paused to flip through the journal, checking the notes he had recently added and the important elements he had highlighted in yellow marker.

  Evan Delaney had clawed her hands into the knowledge stream and discovered Argent Tower. How?

  Where had things gone wrong? It was imperative to walk back the cat and untangle that.

  Not overall, of course—the origin of the problem was evident. Things had gone wrong twenty years ago, in the dry desert air under a ringing blue sky, when South Star went nova in the explosion. And since then they had been invisibly aggregating, until recently everything had begun to unravel. He took the amulet from the desk and put it around his neck. It would bring clarity of thought.

  Walk back the cat. Walk it back, walk it—

  A flaw existed. Agents should not have been at Argent Tower. The unclean unworthy should not have been there either, dipping her hands in the knowledge stream and trying to pull Swayze out. Sway was his, and the presence of these others would warn her that he was near. That was intolerable.

  How did they get there? Somebody had talked.

  Somebody who wanted to thwart the mission. Or somebody who was sloppy. Or greedy.

  He had to think this through. And when he followed the ball of string back to the source of the error he would have to reconfigure the mission.

  But first he needed a new lair. He grabbed his things and left the room.

  The breeze lifted m
y hair from the collar of my shirt.

  “I’ll talk to Tommy and draft an article. Tell me what you particularly want me to include.”

  “Emphasize the loss of your friends, the tragedy, what they meant to their families,” Heaney said.

  “Twist the knife.”

  “Right. Find out where the funerals are going to be held, and when. Make sure Coyote knows where his victims are being buried. The police will set up surveillance at the graves.”

  “I have some media contacts who may run it,” I said. “If we’re aggressive about it we could possibly even get syndication, the Los Angeles market, widespread coverage. And if we can get it into an online edition, so much the better. You said Coyote’s probably obsessing about media coverage. You want to bet he’s searching for the story online?”

  “Right.”

  “Mainstream media is still probably the best bet to catch Coyote’s attention, but I can also try to get it linked to by some influential blogs, really up the search hits.”

  “Good.”

  “Okay. I’ll write it up and get you and Tommy a draft asap.”

  Dad said, “Something else. That phone call I got, while we were driving over here? It was a fellow I knew at China Lake. I’d asked him to try to track down any flight crews and paramedics who might have been on duty the day of the explosion.” He was grave. “He found the helicopter crew. The pilot was killed last year, up near Whidbey Island.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Carla Dearing. Tommy told me about her murder.”

  “Coyote’s not just after the high school kids. He’s going after other people who were connected to the explosion.”

  He glanced up at Argent Tower.

  “Swayze,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking.”

  Heaney said, “You want to give me some names and phone numbers?”

  “I’ve got a whole slew of stuff for you in my briefcase,” Dad said.

  Heaney ran his hand over his pitted face and looked at the building. “I need to speak with Dr. Swayze.”

  Jesse wheeled closer. “Phil. You said the surgical fire that killed Dana West was arson.”