He waved a cracking, yellowed carton under Storch's nose. A small girl's portrait sandwiched between coupons for Knott's Berry Farm and a headline—HAVE YOU SEEN ME?
Sidra Marie Sperling DOB: 04-01-82 Last Seen: 12-23-90 at Inyokern rest stop along Hwy 395 If you have any information about Sidra's whereabouts, please call
(408) 555-6797. $2000 REWARD OFFERED.
Storch shivered, his muscles snapping taut like sails in a chill wind. The rest stop. How was that for closure? "Why do you keep these, Hiram?"
"Now, don't look at me that way. I never harmed a little child in my whole life. When they started putting these pictures on milk cartons, it just wrung my heart to look at them. And I thought to myself, what if one of those little children were to cross my path months after I'd finished my milk or it went rancid, and me not able to remember their face? So, I just started keeping 'em. Never spotted one, though. Now all you can get are the clear plastic jugs, so—"
"So this girl was kidnapped nine years ago, and she's been alive ever since?"
"Why don't you go into the waiting room while I look over the rest of it. And don't touch anything!"
Storch sat in Hansen's waiting room, idling away three hours with Popular Mechanics back issues promising technological wonders both ridiculous and banal ("Commuter Ultralites: Antidote To Gas Crunch?", "Build Your Own Microwave Oven," "'Star Wars' Space Platforms Put Heat Back In Cold War"); weird old pornography where the models' pudenda were airbrushed out, as sexy as your sister's Barbie dolls; a portfolio of "Tijuana Bibles", bootleg porno funny pages from the thirties, featuring Little Orphan Annie repaying Daddy Warbucks's generosity with a blowjob, Popeye's spinach-trick enlarging his organ so it split Olive Oyl in half. A yellowed sketchbook with page after page of the same fever-dream sketch, an elephantine humanoid with an octopus for a head, all dated between February and March, 1925, all splattered with the same childish nonsense word: "Dali."
Bored, he tried not to think about what Hansen was doing to the body of the girl. Only what a doctor would do. What wouldn't a doctor do, if he enjoyed it? He knew far too little about how Hansen took his pleasures to want to speculate. He had to believe Hansen was a doctor, after a fashion, and bound by an oath, if only one administered to himself.
He got up during the second round of "Quiet Village", when Hansen's tinkering behind the curtain was drowned out by the nasal whine of a radial saw. He skulked around the far curtain and fumbled for its edge in the dim, volcanic lantern-light. The saw ripped on. Storch had to find something to take him away from the sound of the saw, and the things he saw when he heard it. He stepped through the gap in the curtain and drew it shut behind him. The thick rubber muffled the sound adequately for him to look around him.
Rocks of various lusterless shades and textures lay in piles or propped against wooden sawhorses, some pebble-sized, others larger than Hansen himself. Not rocks, he saw as his eyes adjusted to the dimness: fossils. The light glinted on sheens of iridescent color and ribbed contours of petrified flesh inscribed in the rocks. The largest, Storch saw, looked like nothing so much as a gigantic sea cucumber.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" Hansen's rubber-sheathed nails bit into his shoulder, dragged him back through the curtain and into the waiting room. "Don't you ever touch anything I tell you not to!"
"I'm gonna go somewhere. How much longer you gonna be?"
"A few hours, I think. I lose track of time when I get into a good one. She's full of mysteries."
"This isn't a fucking game, Hiram. This is a fucking war. At some point, we may have to turn her over for evidence. You can't carve your initials into her, or—whatever you're thinking of doing. Just find out what happened to her, okay? I'll be back."
Hansen smiled. "If you pick up a tail, don't come back. We won't be here."
6
When the light of dawn fell on Highway 395, Stella Orozco was on it, her mustard yellow '78 Honda Civic hatchback whining like a mad hornet stinging itself to death as she floored it down southbound blacktop. She knew her beeper was going off on her dresser at home, summoning her to help with the cuts and bruises from the minor tremor this morning. She knew she'd be reprimanded, maybe suspended, unless she had a damned good reason for lighting out of town while she was on call. She knew she wouldn't tell them anything. She didn't know just what she was looking for out here, or what she'd do if and when she found it. Any more than she knew why she was wearing her best suit, the one she'd worn only twice since she interviewed for her current job. Or why she'd brought a binder with a recently updated resume and her biopsy results.
For as long as she could remember, a sizable part of Stella's consciousness had thrown off all other duties to doggedly, ruthlessly fend off all harm, real or suspected. Whether you'd choose to see it as a freak of nature or nurture, or a guardian angel with a stalker's persistence and the key to her neurochemical medicine chest, Stella had survived her life so far because she listened whenever that inscrutable inner voice whispered danger, and told her what to do. She knew her survival organ, her paranoid angel, had told her to go to the hospice village now, to wear her best tweed skirt and blazer in the middle of the summer, and to be ready to fight for her life. She knew it would tell her what to do when she got there.
Where were you when I was inhaling DDT, guardian angel?
Her survival voice had been keeping radio silence in the week since she'd found out her liver and lymph glands were inoperably malignant, and she'd begun to wonder if it hadn't deserted her, as if keeping Stella Orozco alive wasn't a lost cause, now. She'd been unable to bring herself to review the treatment regimen brochures Dr. Tranh had given her in Fresno, where she'd gone to get the tests done. Stella had always thought of the survival voice as the part of herself that was always watching out for her because no one else would or could. When the voice went dead, Stella was cast adrift in a way she hadn't experienced since her mother died and her father abandoned her.
Last night, she lay in bed unable to sleep for seeing the rampaging tumors in Stephen's severed limbs, pulsating among his blood vessels, staunching the bleeding that should've killed him; the benevolent divinity in his eyes as he said, "the moon-ladder," over and over like a prayer; the evangelical glint in the eyes of Dr. Keogh as he touched her cancer in a way that made her wonder if it wasn't already healed.
Her voice stirred then. It told her to come, and she slept in peace. And in the morning, she'd come.
Less than twenty miles south of Bishop, the dense coniferous curtain of the Inyo National Forest abruptly fell away, succumbing to the sere plains of the high desert. This part of the state was like a jigsaw puzzle of clashing terrains, rudely hammered into place by a petulant, capricious god. As this morning's earth tremor demonstrated, the pieces didn't always rest easy alongside each other. Seismologists predicted that nearby Mammoth Mountain was long overdue to blow its top a la St. Helens and cover the whole state in ash.
From the day she arrived here to interview for the ER position, Stella had found it irresistible. The contrasts shocked her senses out of the utterly tamed flatness of the central valley that'd dominated her childhood. To the northwest stood Mt. Whitney, the tallest mountain in the lower forty-eight states. Only one hundred miles south by southeast lay the Death Valley Basin, the lowest point in North America. Bishop lay within a few hours' drive of Yosemite, arguably the most beautiful natural vista in the country, and Manzanar, an abandoned WWII internment camp, reminder of one of the ugliest pages in recent American history.
As the highway slipped into the Owens Valley, the sandscape became a tossing sea of brown waves and dust devils—the arid summer winds swept the topsoil into towering chimerical forms that warred on the plain. With the lion's share of the Owens River diverted to water lawns and feed flashy fountains in Los Angeles, the valley was being stripped to the bone. It was a damned strange place to locate a hospice, so remote from loved ones and so stark a scene to contemplate in the last months of a cruelly abbrevi
ated life.
She urgently needed to use a restroom and freshen up before she got there, but the only rest stop between Bishop and the hospice village seemed to have collapsed in the tremor. She blew past the brickpile and the CalTrans and sheriff's trucks parked around it, clamped her legs together and prayed she'd be able to pee into her travel mug without wetting her skirt.
When the exit came it was suddenly, simply there, and she had to slam on her balding brakes and heel the sketchy little Honda to the right in what almost amounted to a u-turn. She slammed on the brakes again as the road gave way to loose gravel. The tiny car fishtailed to and fro down the turnoff and skidded to a stop just short of a formidable steel gate. A steel fence ran out from it for about a quarter mile in either direction, enclosing the desert up to the boulder-crowned hills a half-mile to the east. They enclosed the desert up to the boulder-crowned hills beyond, a half-mile to the west. Stella saw no sign of any village, or any other kind of manmade edifice, for that matter. Was it in the hills? Was it underground?
"Please state your business," said a voice from a box mounted on a post alongside her window.
Yes, there was an earthquake—and I have cancer—can I use your restroom?
"Um," she said. She'd thrown herself into this situation on faith that the next thing to come out of her mouth would get her in something besides trouble, would maybe save her life. She opened it, blanked her mind, and it came to her.
"I'm from the Inyo County Hospital, I'm here for the follow-up outpatient consult on Mr. Stephen…s—"
A moment passed. The wind whipped handfuls of powdery fine dust into her car; she wiped dust-caked lipstick from her mouth, taking her hand off the stick shift, which popped out of neutral and the car stalled with an ugly ratcheting noise that didn't exactly bode well for a quick getaway. Why was she thinking like this?
"Please, come in," a familiar voice sounded in her ear. The gate swung wide, soundless on oiled hinges. Stella struggled with the clutch to get her car started. On the fifth try it caught, and she drove inside, inches before the gate that closed her in.
The dusty, pitted road that approached the hospice community confirmed her fears even as it made her angry enough to keep going. Clearly, this was some kind of fly-by-night operation designed to part the dying from their wealth and dignity, and the only capital outlay she could see went into keeping them in and the curious out. Why else locate in such a desolate, remote spot as the high desert? Why else have security fences and medical conservatorships and men on motorcycles dogging visitors?
She watched the cape of gray dust running parallel to hers, about a hundred yards on her right. There was nothing else to see here, only the road and the fields of sun-baked alluvial silt and the occasional rock. While it was next to impossible to track a car in a place like this without being seen, she doubted subterfuge was their intention. Keep moving, the message of the motorcycle said, and know we see you. She wondered how many motorcycles might be cruising around out here when she tried to leave.
Tried to leave? Chica, you're losing your mind.
Rage filled her, that people could and would do this, would sink to this souped-up holistic grave robbery. That they'd lured her out here to ask them to take everything she had, too. She almost forgot about what she'd seen, and why she had to learn more. Her life seemed to have an understanding with her, that it threw her something to get worked into a fury over whenever she started to feel low and desperate. Almost.
Stella's car nosed over a ridge and stalled. Rather than try to start it again, she got out and looked at the view.
A bowl-shaped valley enfolded the fifty-odd buildings of the Radiant Dawn Hospice. Two broad, concentric circular avenues encircled a boxy three-story central building that must be the medical center. The houses were attractive tract spilt-levels built according to one of three styles out of adobe brick and redwood timbers. A long second glance was required to recognize that they were prefabs, probably brought out here on trucks. Each was fronted by a hurtfully green lawn and lovingly tended flowerbed. A recreation center beside the medical compound featured an Olympic swimming pool and a field, presumably for some intramural sports. She saw a few people in black uniform track suits—like Stephen's—wandering here and there, and others tooling about in golf carts. She saw no cars, and no garages. A few broken windows were the only visible damage from the tremor. She looked around her, but saw no sign of the motorcyclist.
She'd seen plenty of private residential developments before. Like any other fancy place in California, they needed landscaping done, and like rich folks everywhere, they were cheap. But for the hospice, the desert simply did not exist. It stopped at the rim of the valley, and was denied entry, yet there was no sign of laborers, or even a sprinkler system. There was something about the sight of the Radiant Dawn community that gave off an effortless aura of hope, of health…of home.
A golf cart struggled up the hill toward her, its overtaxed electric motor whining loudly in the still desert morning air. Stella fought the perverse impulse to jump back in the car, was surprised to feel her legs buckling under her, halfway starting to do it. She gathered herself and waved in an exaggerated fashion, put on a big fake smile. Two men rode in the cart, a driver in a track suit, and an older man in a charcoal suit and white labcoat, with silver hair fluttering like cold fire round his skull, and black wraparound sunglasses of the kind vampires might favor, because they covered almost half his face.
As the cart approached and coasted to a stop, she recognized him as none other than Dr. Keogh from the night before. Either he'd been more impressed with her than he let on last night or he was charged with all the hospice's unpleasant tasks: retrieving strays, driving off pests…Still, he'd known, he'd reached out and touched the very spot where she had begun to die inside, and he'd as much as promised her—what?
He climbed out and shook her hand, smiling broadly. Although it was clearly meant to ingratiate, his grin had her half-scared and thinking about the car again, now it was too late.
"Ms. Orozco, I didn't expect to see you so soon. I hope everything is as it should be?"
"No, no, sir, everything's fine—I mean, if Stephen's—"
"Passed away in the night as a result of his injuries, I'm sorry to say. It's moving that you should come all this way for a patient. Your kind of sympathy is a rare commodity in the current climate of the medical community."
"Thank you." God, was she blushing?
"But you didn't come all the way out here just to inquire about Stephen, did you?"
Stella was forced to look away from the sudden sharpness in Dr. Keogh's voice. Watching the horizon didn't take away the chilling penetration, the feeling of being opened up. When she opened her mouth to speak a moment later, she hesitated, certain he'd already seen through her. "No, Doctor, actually, to tell you the truth, I was surprised and intrigued to hear there was a hospice community up here. As a nurse in a small town, one rarely gets to make a difference. And I thought that, in such a remote area, you must have some difficulty keeping trained medical professionals on-call. I wanted to—"
"You'd like a tour of our community, Ms. Orozco?" He cut her off quite politely, but without quite leaving enough inflection for the statement to qualify as a question.
"Yes. Yes, I'd like that very much."
He stepped back toward the golf cart, then stopped her from returning to her car.
"Leave that here. It'll be safe. Leave the keys with us." She must've stared, because he added, "We try to expose our residents to as little pollution as possible."
"Of course," she said, feeling stupid. "But I have to get something out of my car. Would you—"
"Not at all," he said, and her keys weren't in her hand anymore, and he opened the car door and removed her purse and binder and presented them to her. Leaving the car unlocked, he took her arm and seated her on the cart. With no more speed but considerably less noise, they returned to Radiant Dawn.
"Why haven't I heard of this
place before, Dr. Keogh?" Stella asked, instantly regretting it. Curb your suspicion, chica, at least for now.
Keogh's expression, however, showed no ire. His eyes, hidden behind those black glass cages, might've been twinkling with pride as he said, "I'm surprised you haven't, really. After all, we've been covered in all the major papers, though we've tried to keep the media and the general public at arm's length from our work here. It would be a grave injustice to our residents to place a higher priority on publicity than on our work with them."
"And how are the pa—residents selected? Not everybody could afford something like this…" What's wrong with you today?
Again, she failed to get a rise out of him, wondered why she couldn't stop trying. "At first, I admit, money was a factor, but we've become self-sufficient, and now operate, as much as possible, on a need-blind basis. We have a crisis intervention hotline which handles all manner of personal traumas, providing referrals to counselors, doctors, and so on. But we take a special interest in those with cancer, because no one else can tell them how to live with it, let alone why it happened to them. Those who need us most, who have nowhere else to turn, will eventually find their way here."
They cruised down the main avenue, and Stella heard nothing but the breeze and the dragonfly hum of the electric cart. Residents standing outside their houses or waiting at the intersections smiled and waved, and Dr. Keogh waved back. The residents were of all ages and races, dressed in identical light cotton tracksuits. Stella saw workers now, but they wore the same outfit, and were clearly residents themselves.
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