Afterimage

by Roderick Geiger

  It seemed a little odd. Adel Deverson was a patient at a nearby mental hospital. She’d been blinded and driven insane by the lab accident, which had apparently claimed her husband. So what use would keeping the farm serve? Was it sentimental? Who’s sentimental?

  It was unseasonably warm and sunny when he arrived at the open gates of the Deverson farm shortly after 1 p.m. A light rain the night before had left the trees damp and clean, the ground muddy. The ranch-style farm house was in ill repair, overgrown, paint weathered away, walls covered with mosses and lichens of many and faded hues. In stark contrast, a new Mustang convertible, brilliant red, was parked beside the back door.

  Warren knocked on the front door. He thought he heard footsteps inside, muffled voices. He tried peeking in but heavy drapes blocked the bay window from the porch. “EPA,” he said, trying to sound official. But it sounded silly. “Open up.”

  It was a half-minute before he heard someone unlocking the door. Swollen in the jamb, it opened hard, a wet, scraping sound. A woman peered through the rusty screen door. “Who?” she asked.

  “Agent Warren Vardell, EPA.” That sounded better. He showed his ID.

  She unlatched the screen. “Mr. Vardell. What can I do for you?”

  He was caught off guard by how attractive she was, thirty-ish, an elegant beauty in jeans and plaid shirt with the cuffs rolled up to her elbows. Her pale blue eyes burned clear through him.

  “I’m Sara. What can I do for you,” she repeated.

  “We’re looking into the Manzanita accident,” he said. “I didn’t expect to find anyone here.”

  “Then why did you come?” she said quickly.

  He was holding the screen door open and he could see an elderly woman seated in the living room. The light was dim but it appeared she was wearing dark sunglasses. Blind! “Are you Adel Deverson?”

  “Yes,” the woman sing-songed. “Let the young man in.” Sara stepped aside with a grimace.

  Warren moved toward the blind woman, tripping slightly over the edge of a braided rug. He extended his hand and she reached for it. “To be honest, I wasn’t sure what I was looking for when I came out here. Maybe just a feel for the place where it all started.”

  “That’s a very intelligent approach,” Adel said. “Please sit down.”

  He sat on the sofa opposite her. Sara closed the door with a loud sigh and joined them.

  “Mark has been saying for years that the accident would happen again,” Adel began. “I wrote letters to many government agencies trying to warn them. What ever happened to all those letters?”

  “Can’t say, ma’am.” These apparently hadn’t made it into the filing system. “So you think there’s a connection between the Manzanita accident and your late husband’s work?”

  “Absolutely. Mark’s theories will be exonerated.” She smiled broadly, looking ceilingward. “They’re going to know what a great man you were.”

  Yep. Damaged merchandise. “Certainly Dr. Evans - Detective Evans – thinks he was a great man.”

  “You’ve seen Martin? How is the dear man.”

  “Yes. Actually I’m going to meet with him again today.”

  “Where is the dear man these days?” Sara asked sardonically. “And why did you call him Dr. Evans?”

  Warren laughed. “Doctor of Divinity, I believe.” He produced the Ruptura Society pamphlet. “It’s a spare. You can keep it.”

  Sara thumbed through the letter-sized, black-and-white booklet. On the back page, a picture of the distinguished Dr. Evans, founder.

  “I was wondering, Mrs. Deverson,” Warren was saying, “if you could tell me what your husband was working on.”

  “That’s a pretty big question,” Sara said, composing herself. “But, you know, we were just locking up to leave when you knocked. Suppose we get together later and we can…”

  Adel interrupted: “He was exploring the essence of life, the life force, the nature of the human soul.”

  Good, he thought. They’re all nuts.

  “Well, what do you know,” Sara declared, trying not to look or sound anxious about his being there, “you’re card says you’re from San Francisco. We’re going to be in San Francisco, um, this weekend. Let’s get together then. Adel would love to tell you about Mark’s work.” She got up nervously, thinking she’d heard a vehicle outside. She looked out the screen door. No vehicle. “C’mon Adel honey, we’ll be late for your appointment.”

  “Mind If I take a look around?” Warren asked.

  “Ten years later there’s not much left to see,” Sara said flatly.

  “Show him the lab,” Adel said. “I have to say goodbye to Mark.”

  Sara winced. She had no idea how much of a lead she and Adel had on whomever might be chasing them. Renegades. On the run. At least this would get the nosey EPA guy out of the house.

  “You look familiar to me,” Warren said as they slogged across the farmyard toward the lone steel building.

  “I get that a lot,” she said, unlocking the lab.

  “I’m sorry if that sounds like a line,” he stammered, “but I’m serious. I think I’ve seen you before. Maybe a photo?”

  Sara ignored the inquiry. Arms folded, she stepped aside so that Warren could enter. He paused to let his eyes adjust. “Sorry, no electricity out here,” she said. The floor was strewn with rubble and the rubble was covered with years of moist, pasty dust. Leaks in the roof had swamped the floor in a dozen places, spawning piles of white, furry fungi and strange, translucent slime. He poked at it with his pencil.

  “Yuck,” Sara said. “I’ll be outside.”

  Warren stepped gingerly around the yuck, headed toward the center of the building where a single wall stood upright. It was a large, clear-spanned building, easily 60 feet square, packed with twisted metal and large, partially melted plastic panels. In one corner, the remains of several animal cages, some quite large, not just for lab rats. He switched-on a penlight to help him step through the rubble. “Hmmm,” he mumbled nervously, “What were you up to in here, doctor.”

  He found three other walls adjacent to the standing one, all pushed over. It had once been a free-standing room, 20 feet on a side, surrounded by rows of stacked sandbags. The debris patterns indicated an explosion had emanated from within this room. At the center, a large, lump, mostly melted slag, aluminum and plastic, but definitely cylindrical. “Jesus Christ,” Warren said, extracting his camera. “If that’s not what’s left of an MRI, then I’ll be…” Feeling self-conscious, he fell silent. He snapped a couple dozen shots as he made his way back to the entrance. Sara was by the door, arms still folded, frowning, waiting impatiently.

  “This is where it all began,” He said wistfully, as if it were some kind of historical landmark.

  Sara did not respond. Warren wrote his home phone on his business card and left. “Call me when you’re in the City,” he said as he climbed into the Buick.

  Warren had done his homework on the Ruptura Society. Like religion in general, most of the Society’s literature had struck him as intentionally vague, either by design or ignorance, more confusing than enlightening. But the Society did have one uniqueness: upon the death of a member, it was necessary to cremate the body immediately, within 15 minutes of the person’s final heart beat. By doing so, a direct conduit to the Oneness of Being was opened to the Soul in Passing. Not just any cremation would do. The procedure had to be performed in a special crematorium, and there was only one such facility on earth, and Warren was headed straight toward it.

  The blue sky had given way to fast-moving, dark clouds and it was raining by the time Warren reached the Society’s property, passing under the splendid Monterrey pines which flanked the driveway. He was 20 minutes early. A different woman was behind the counter today, younger, mid-forties, a pleasant face with a large nose and laughing eyes. Her name was Barbara, he learned, and she was working off some of the payment for her mother’s cremation.

  “It’s very expensive,” she said sombe
rly.

  “I’m sorry,” Warren said. “When did she pass away?”

  “Oh, she’s still alive. The Society only takes payment in advance. You know there’s quite a waiting list.”

  “Hmmm,” Warren pondered. “Do you know why she…your mother wanted this?”

  Barbara looked at him trustingly. “It’s the Afterimage thing Dr. Evans talks about. Mom had a friend who was cremated here and she swears her friend’s spirit can still be felt in her house.” Barbara leaned forward over the counter and continued softly: “If you want my opinion, I think they’re just seeing what they want to see. I guess I understand, you know, the fear of…passing away and all, but…” Just then a man wearing hospital whites entered and whispered something in Barbara’s ear. The two disappeared into the hallway.

  Three minutes later the man returned. He was a large man in his late 30s, short black hair, physically fit. “Dr. Evans has taken ill and is not available,” he said as he opened the front door for Warren.

  “That’s it? Shouldn’t we reschedule?”

  “You’ll have to call back,” the man said, still holding the door. “I don’t do the scheduling.”

  “And while we’re on the subject, shouldn’t you have called me to cancel? I’ve come a long way.”

  When the man said nothing, Warren commanded: “Let me speak to your boss.”

  “Dr. Evans is my boss,” the man said. “Please step out of the building.”

  Warren obeyed the man who followed him out to his car. He’d wanted to get a look around the outside, especially at a large building behind the old house. But it was obvious this man had been instructed to insure Warren’s expedient deportment from the premises.

  Instead of driving through the two monster palm trees out by the highway, Warren impulsively turned the wrong way and hooked around toward the back of the property. He could see the man in his rear-view mirror, giving chase on foot. Warren was quickly corralled by a chain link fence and the man caught up.

  “Sorry,” Warren said, “I got lost.”

  Out on the highway, Warren studied the property from a distance. He took a dirt side road, which instantly turned to mud. Skidding and hurling muck in arcs high over the white car, Warren just managed to full-throttle the Buick back onto the pavement. Here he took pictures through a break in the trees while simultaneously calling his boss on the cellphone.

  “I can see two out-buildings back there, Al,” Warren said, fumbling with his binoculars, his notebook and the phone, scattered across the wet, slippery car hood. “One’s a concrete tilt-up with a large chimney. The other is steel and looks a lot like the building I saw out at the Deverson place this morning.

  “I think the surveillance thing is a bit much,” Al said cryptically. “You’re not the FBI, you know.”

  “But Al, I believe these people are running the same kind of experiments out here. This could be very dangerous.”

  There was a static-filled pause “Okay. I can’t get a bench warrant on the spot, Warren. Find yourself a motel and we’ll see what we can do by tomorrow morning.”

  Warren had breakfast at a small café near the Ione Inn where he’d spent the night. Al Hamilton, two armed CID agents and two federal Marshals were enroute from San Francisco with a search warrant for the Ruptura Society’s sprawling estate. This was what he’d been waiting for. The juice. But instead he found himself preoccupied by the terse message Louise had left on his phone machine. “Why is it I can never reach you when I need to,” she’d asked. “You’ve never been interested in our son’s life before so why should I be surprised now?” That was it. The bitch!

  He tried to occupy his nerves by spreading out a copy of the Friday Sacramento Bee on his booth table, leafing through it inattentively. How could she say that? Warren had taken his half of Tyler’s custody very seriously, much more so than she. Insinuating otherwise had made him too angry to return Louise’s call.

  Thus distracted, Warren almost missed the small headline buried deep in a section-one collection of briefs called “Around our Valley:”

  Blind Woman Missing from Sanitarium

  Authorities believe a 70-year-old blind patient who disappeared yesterday from a mental hospital near Sommers may have been the victim of a kidnapping.

  Yolo County Sheriff’s Deputies are looking for a woman in her early thirties who identified herself as the daughter of a patient now missing from Westend Sanitarium.

  “We have reason to believe this woman gave false information to hospital security personnel in order to gain access to the victim,” a Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.

  Sheriff’s deputies searched a nearby farm, which belongs to the missing woman’s family, and found it ransacked, the spokesman said.

  The victim’s name was not released pending notification of immediate family members, he said.

  Authorities said the alleged kidnapper was last seen driving a late-model, red convertible. Anyone with information about the kidnapping has been asked to contact the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department office in Woodland.

  Warren could hardly believe his eyes. As he re-read the story he visualized Sara, her fetching eyes, slender physique. A kidnapper? No way! Adel wasn’t a kidnap victim! Why was this Sara so familiar-looking?

  Suddenly he lunged for his notebook computer. He’d copied the Austin Herald article onto his hard drive, the one with the picture of the Gyttings-Lindstrom executives and Dr. Gilbert Vrynos. And, standing next to Vrynos, the hair was right, the little curl at the end of her lip…

  “Sara,” he bellowed, slamming his fist down on the table, startling the waitress who jumped back, hurling his breakfast cleanly over her left shoulder.

  Day 10

  Thursday

  Davis, California

  Ishue made good time up the I-5, cruise control set at 80, scribbling notes on her aluminum clipboard, steering with her knees. Luckily, the clipboard fit the inside circumference of the Fusion’ concave steering wheel and stayed put without her having to hold it there. Jesus, what would happen if the airbag went off?

  It was 3:30 when she got to the UC Davis Neurology Department office. The door was open but the reception area was unmanned. “Hello,” she called. “Anybody?”

  A short Oriental man poked his head out one of the inner offices. “Yes?”

  The man was easily 70 years old, bald, wearing coke-bottle spectacles that distorted the size of his eyes. Dr. Yeoh, I presume?

  She marched right up to him. “Dr. Yeoh, I’m Ilene Ishue. Please hear me out.”

  “My, you are persistent,” he said, looking her up and down. “Japanese?”

  “Half. Don’t hold it against me.”

  “Hmmmm” Dr. Yeoh removed his glasses, his eyes returning to normal size. “How do you spell it?”

  “My name? I-S-H-U-E.”

  “Why do you mis-pronounce? Shouldn’t it be EE-SHOE-EE?”

  She laughed, her eyes squinting. “Yes. Everyone says ISH-YOU. I guess I got tired of correcting people when I was about, oh, like four. Can we talk a moment?”

  “I have to leave here shortly but if you don’t mind my grading tests …” He gestured for her to follow inside. “Only a few minutes,” he added, “have a seat.”

  She sat in the only chair that wasn’t occupied by tall, precarious piles of books and papers. Yeoh returned to his work, ignoring his guest.

  She slid her press pass in front of him and he pushed it back. “I believe you,” he said without looking up. “What can I do for you?”

  He opened a wide-rimmed plastic jar of black licorice on his desk and offered her one, which she accepted. “Tell me about Deverson and the connection to the MRI mishap in Manzanita.”

  “Indeed,” he said, the sound suffering past the chewed licorice. He did disappear under circumstances very similar to yours.”

  “An MRI?”

  “Never confirmed, but likely. Deverson’s lab was filled with equipment. It was a real mess after the explosion and fire. No
one knows for sure what he was doing on that last day out there.”

  “Out where?”

  “On his farm. The lab was on his farm.”

  Farm? Like with tractors and plows? “Where is this farm?”

  Yeoh grimaced. “Not is, was. Last I heard developers were turning it into tract homes and strip malls.”

  “Okay, where was the farm?”

  Out on county road 28, east of the old Willow Bridge. If any of that’s still there.” He checked his watch and gave her a contrived smile. “I’ve got a class.”

  “Can I come back later? Can we talk again?”

  He was stuffing papers into a worn, top-loader briefcase. “It was a long time ago. I can’t really tell you anything more.”

  “But what happened to him? What did the police say?”

  Yeoh sighed. “Right after Deverson’s disappearance…death…whatever… this old detective started coming ‘round, hounding us about Deverson’s work, his personal life, his students, his finances, ad infinitum, blah blah blah. Even after the detective retired he continued to come ‘round here, going through our files, reading department literature, borrowing books.” He shook his head, smiling at the recollection. “Damnedest thing! He even audited one of my classes!” Yeoh was up, ushering the reporter to leave with him. “But he never figured it out,” Yeoh continued. “Deverson just disappeared off the face of the earth, without a trace, without leaving behind so much as a single strand of DNA.” He locked his little office door.

  “Do you recall the detective’s name?”

  “Hard to forget that. What a character. Evans. Detective Martin Evans, Yolo County Sheriff’s Department. If he’s still alive tell him I said hello. I’m afraid that’s all I can do for you, young lady.” He made a chopping gesture with his hand, a very final gesture, then disappeared into the hall.