The Crooked Staircase, Page 37

  There was Cornell in his library. But poor Cornell, stressed by Gavin’s recent visit, had asked him to leave and would not have recovered enough to welcome the boy this soon.

  “You’ll be okay here for two hours,” she assured Travis, though it made her stomach turn to think of him here by himself.

  “I know,” the boy said. “I’ll be okay.”

  “Don’t answer the door if anyone knocks.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Stay away from the windows.”

  “I will, Aunt Jessie.”

  “Nobody’s going to break in, sweetie.”

  “Okay. I know.”

  “If someone does break in, which they won’t, let the dogs deal with them.”

  “All right. I will.”

  “If the dogs can’t deal with them—which they will, they’ll tear ’em up all right, but if they can’t—only then should you use the pepper spray.”

  “I know how.”

  “Once you’ve sprayed them in the face, run like hell, out of the house. Go to that barn door, sweetie. Cornell will know, and he’ll let you in.” She looked at Gavin. “Won’t he let Travis in?”

  “Of course he will.”

  She could tell from her husband’s expression that he wasn’t a hundred percent certain what Cornell would do.

  “You’ll hardly know we’re gone, honey. We’ll be back in no time.”

  Travis sighed. “I’m not a two-year-old, Aunt Jessie.”

  She knelt and hugged him and said, “I love you, Trav.”

  “I love you, too, Aunt Jessie.”

  She might have spent another ten minutes reassuring the boy if Gavin hadn’t said, “Jess, you might not know this, but Bigfoot has never been seen in this area, and Godzilla is in Japan.”

  Jessie got to her feet. “You’ll be fine, sweetie.”

  The boy said, “So will you.”

  Gavin saluted Travis. “Hold the fort, Lieutenant. We’ll be back with the beer at fourteen hundred.”

  “Holding the fort, sir,” Travis replied, returning the salute.

  When they stepped onto the back porch, Travis engaged the deadbolt and waved at them through the dust-filmed window in the door, a hazy figure beyond the dirty glass, as if he were already fading out of their lives.

  28

  This was surely the last storm of the season, and a late one at that, but Nature worked hard at it, as though she’d taken a dislike to spring and intended to double down on winter. In the absence of wind, the small flakes fell in skeins, layering veils across the face of the day. Ramparts of evergreens, black in the hours-long twilight of the storm, stepped steeply up from the highway, obscured to such an extent that they looked less like masses of trees than like the bastions and battlements of castles.

  Jane was aware of Hendrickson staring at her from time to time. When she turned her head to meet his eyes, he at once—and almost shyly—looked away.

  Regarding his potential for violence, her estimation of him had proved correct. Neither had he made an attempt to escape, nor given any indication that he might be contemplating one. He remained as obedient as a machine—just as she had made him.

  The effort to keep the highway open had been joined by road graders fitted with plows. They moved through the whitewashed day like raw-boned prehistoric creatures with phosphorescent stares. Trucks followed the plows, spreading salt across the pavement.

  In spite of tire chains or because it lacked them, a vehicle occasionally slid into a roadside ditch or into a snowbank, where it was either abandoned or attended to by a tow-truck driver trying to free it.

  Hendrickson whispered, “ ‘The more it snows, the more it goes, the more it goes on snowing,’ ” and though he smiled wistfully, tears tracked down his cheeks.

  Jane suspected he was quoting from another poem he had learned in childhood, but she didn’t ask. Beyond the fact of his being now one of the adjusted people, his condition was so grotesque and his demeanor so disturbing that she didn’t want to be drawn further into his orbit than was necessary.

  She yearned for the company of her child. Instead she found herself entangled with this strange man-child whose tortured history included being both the victim of abuse and the vicious abuser of others. And his demonic potential was still within him, still there to be called forth by anyone who discovered he’d been injected with a control mechanism and who knew how to command him.

  At 1:10 P.M., about an hour and a half later than she expected, she arrived at U.S. Highway 50, a couple miles south of Carson City, and turned west toward Lake Tahoe. Ahead at a highway department marshaling yard, road-clearing equipment lined up to be refueled. She pulled off the highway, stopped, and made another attempt to call the Washingtons.

  When she picked up the burner phone, Hendrickson turned his head away without being told to do so. He covered his eyes with his hands, like a small child seeking approval by doing more than was asked of him.

  This time she got service. Down there in Orange County, the phone rang. Showers of snow ticked against the windshield, and the midday dusk seemed to darken by the moment, and the phone rang, rang, rang.

  There could be a good reason why neither Gavin nor Jessie took the call. It didn’t necessarily mean trouble. There could be many good reasons.

  Nevertheless, when she terminated the call and returned the disposable phone to the cup holder, her palms were damp with sweat.

  29

  Travis wasn’t scared about being alone. He really wasn’t. His dad had been a Marine, and his mom was FBI. He was a Marine-FBI kid.

  The dogs were with him. They had teeth like sabres. They could rip up anyone. They wouldn’t rip up him, but they for sure would rip up anyone who ought to be ripped up.

  And he had the pepper spray. He could protect the dogs if it came to that.

  He was not as little as he looked. He had an Exmoor pony that he rode, and one day not too long from now, he would ride a horse.

  Although he’d had a couple hours’ sleep in the backseat of the Rover the night before, he needed a nap. But he didn’t think it was a good idea to sleep.

  So he ate another PowerBar to help himself stay awake, and he gave each of the dogs a biscuit. That used up five minutes.

  Two hours was a long time. But not if he kept busy. There was a lot that needed to be done. The house was full of dust and cobwebs, and there were dead pill bugs in some corners.

  He took a roll of paper towels and a spray bottle of Windex to the bathroom. They had used the Windex in the kitchen.

  He climbed onto the counter beside the sink. He used the Windex and the paper towels to clean the mirror above the counter.

  If you wanted to do something right, which was the only way you should do anything, there was a trick to it. His mom had taught him the trick. The trick was to care about doing a good job and not do it fast just to be done with it.

  Queenie kept coming to the bathroom door to look at him. She wouldn’t come into the bathroom because the Windex made her sneeze.

  Duke was going room to room, on patrol. Sometimes he passed the bathroom door, grumbling to himself.

  Travis was working on the really dirty sink, trying not to think about who might have spit into it and what they might have spit, when a telephone rang somewhere else in the house.

  Aunt Jessie and Uncle Gavin had said not to answer the door and stay away from the windows. But they didn’t say what to do if the phone rang.

  He left the bathroom, Duke at his side, Queenie behind him. He followed the sound and found the phone in the kitchen. It was on the counter, next to the fridge.

  It looked like the special phone his mom called on. She didn’t call often, only to say she was coming for a visit. And she always called at night, when he was in bed. So he’d never heard the phone ring. But he was pret
ty sure this was the phone.

  He never talked on this phone with his mom. It wasn’t for long conversations. It was for quick messages and emergencies.

  If it was his mom, he wanted to talk to her.

  If it wasn’t his mom, if it was one of the bad people, then if he answered, maybe they would know where to find him.

  The dogs stood one to each side of Travis, and all three of them stared at the phone.

  The dogs’ ears were pricked forward, their bodies tense. They weren’t wagging their tails. The dogs didn’t seem to like the phone.

  Travis decided to answer it anyway, just take the call and not say anything unless he heard his mom’s voice.

  But as he reached for it, the phone stopped ringing.

  30

  The town of Borrego Springs is as far removed from Carter Jergen’s experience as any place on the moon. If he believed in Hell, he would call this a preview of that satanic kingdom.

  The temperature report in the VelociRaptor dashboard readout claims it is 88 degrees. But as he and Dubose walk the downtown, such as it is, the day feels hotter than that. In summer it probably hits 120 degrees most days. The air is so dry, he repeatedly licks his lips to keep them from cracking, and his sinuses seem to be shriveling inside his skull.

  In Borrego Springs, wherever there are not vast expanses of concrete and blacktop, there are even bigger expanses of bare, sandy earth. On three sides, mountains rise in the distance, and on the fourth side, they loom closer, barren crags of rock as forbidding as the cliffs where Zeus chained Prometheus and sent an eagle to tear out his liver every day, for the crime of giving fire to humanity. Desert surrounds the town and intrudes everywhere, spotted with withered scrub, no doubt abounding with rattlesnakes, poisonous lizards, and tarantulas the size of basketballs. The strip shopping centers and the standalone businesses are landscaped with pebbles, cactuses, and curious arrangements of rocks that seem intended to convey some mystical message.

  Clusters of dusty trees are planted close to the sides of houses to shade them. In the business district, however, there are little more than widely separated palms rising from small cutouts in blacktop and concrete, casting meager patches of shade. They look pathetic, desperate, as though they long to be dug up, root-boxed, and hauled on a truck to Florida.

  Sun glares off bare earth, pavement, buildings, and windows, which store the heat and radiate it back. The entire town is like one giant pizza oven.

  The only grass seems to be in the heart of Borrego Springs, in what is called Christmas Circle, a park with a comparative wealth of trees, mostly palms and evergreens, encompassed by a roundabout from which seven streets radius off like spokes from the hub of a wheel.

  Jergen feels displaced, foreign, shipwrecked on a strange shore. A pizza-and-beer restaurant. Taco shop. Mexican grill and bar. Coffee shop. Liquor store. He sees no evidence of a French or Northern Italian restaurant, or any place with refined Mediterranean cuisine. Not even sushi. He suspects that every eatery in town will accept a customer in T-shirt, shorts, and sandals. Looking through an art-gallery window, he does not see one item that fits any definition of art known to him. Everywhere are pickups, Jeeps, and SUVs. Although summer is months away, everyone has a tan, as if they’ve never heard of melanoma, and they’re weirdly sociable. Most people whom they pass on foot, total strangers, speak to them—“Beautiful day,” and “Good afternoon,” and “Have a nice day!”—which is the most alien thing about the place, though not to Dubose, who smiles and returns the greetings.

  “Why’re you talking to strangers like you know them?” Carter finally asks. “We shouldn’t be calling attention to ourselves.”

  “You’re calling attention to yourself by not speaking when spoken to.”

  “They’re strangers. What do I care if they think it’s a nice day or want me to have one? What’s wrong with them, anyway? Why’re they so concerned I shouldn’t have a crappy day?”

  “Just relax, Carter Northrup Jergen the third, and look for something out of the ordinary.”

  “Everything here is out of the ordinary. And I’m the fourth, not the third.”

  “That explains a lot.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The quality of any gene pool,” Dubose said, “is adversely affected by the number of generations in which unfortunately few new bloodlines have been introduced.”

  Jergen considers commenting to the effect that the Northrup and Jergen families do not, unlike some, have numerous pairs of married cousins in the family tree. But he’s too hot and too afflicted with desert-inspired ennui to get into a tit for tat.

  31

  The stress of leaving their comfortable life behind, the chase in the desert, and a night without sleep left Gavin with bloodshot eyes, a stiff neck, various sore muscles, and a general fatigue against which he had to struggle to remain alert. For breakfast, they’d eaten PowerBars, nothing for lunch; now every edible item that Jessie added to the shopping cart made his stomach growl.

  A month’s supplies for three people and two dogs would require two grocery carts piled high with goods, which meant both Gavin and Jessie would be too preoccupied to be constantly, adequately on guard. The solution was to split the task between the town’s two main markets, buying only canned and packaged goods in the first, more canned goods and all the perishables in the second, a single piled-high cart per store.

  In the first market, Jessie pushed the cart, and Gavin tagged along, commenting on the prices and pretending to quibble about brand choices, trying not to be obvious when he scoped out the other shoppers to make sure nobody seemed to be taking an unusual interest in them.

  He didn’t think their photographs were on TV. The Arcadians wouldn’t want the media to know that those sheltering Jane Hawk’s son had been identified. The bastards never intended to rescue the boy; they meant to capture him. If the authorities made an official announcement, they would thereafter have to operate by the book and place Travis with Child Welfare Services, whereupon Jane’s in-laws—Clare and Ancel Hawk, in Texas—would seek custody. Considering that he was a cute five-year-old who’d recently lost his father and whose mother was the most-wanted fugitive in America, the human-interest factor would ensure a media frenzy. Any judge who ruled against the grandparents would be a villain in the public’s eye, create sympathy for Jane, and raise the suspicion that there might be more to her story than the carefully crafted image of a “beautiful monster” who had sold her country’s most important, if unspecified, secrets to an enemy power, killing numerous people along the way. So the grandparents would be given custody. And sooner rather than later, to regain control of the boy, corrupt authorities would inject Clare and Ancel with brain implants, the worst of all possible outcomes for Jane. No, the bad guys would not risk losing control of the media narrative; they would keep the hunt for Gavin and Jessie out of the news.

  Everything went smoothly in the first market. In the parking lot, they transferred their purchases from the cart to the trunk of the Honda. They drove a short distance to the second establishment.

  32

  As they are strolling around a little shopping complex, Jergen suddenly feels revitalized when he does indeed see something out of the ordinary. About fifty feet ahead of them, a black couple in their thirties crosses the parking lot and approaches the entrance to a market. Jergen can’t clearly see the man’s face, but his height and body type are right for Gavin Washington; the guy is bald, but maybe he shaved his head. The woman appears to be black, which Jessica Washington isn’t; she could be wearing a wig. What’s out of the ordinary about them is the same thing that makes Jergen and Dubose different from everyone else they’ve seen in Borrego Springs: On this hot afternoon, both the man and woman are wearing sport coats, and the coats are cut roomy enough to conceal weapons.

  As the two disappear into the market, Dubose says, “But she h
as her own legs.”

  “She’s wearing full-length khakis. How do you know what’s under them?”

  “She’s walking like people with real legs walk.”

  “Because she’s got Ottobocks.”

  “She’s got what?”

  “She uses blade-runner legs when she’s in races. Other times she uses Ottobock X-Threes.” Jergen spells O-t-t-o-b-o-c-k. “Evidently you didn’t read everything in the background report on the bitch.”

  Dubose is unrepentant. “Background reports are written by deskbound pussies who believe they’re gonna write a novel one day and win a Pulitzer. I skim their flowery shit.”

  “Avoiding the flowery shit,” Jergen says, “here’s the essence: Each prosthetic knee has multiple sensors, a gyroscope, terrific hydraulics, a microprocessor, software, a resistance system, and a battery. She can run reasonably well, walk backward, climb steps, and look natural doing it.”

  “So you think that’s them?”

  “What do you think?” Jergen asks.

  Dubose frowns. “I think we should have a closer look.”

  33

  Jessie kept checking her wristwatch, thinking about Travis at the house with just the dogs and the pepper spray. She didn’t worry that the people hunting for him would find him. But there was always the possibility of a fire. Or an earthquake. Or he might cut himself somehow, on something, and be bleeding badly.

  Her fears arose less from likely threats to the boy than from weariness and from distress at how abruptly their lives had been turned upside down. She’d had no sleep the previous night; and the responsibility she felt for the boy stropped her nerves, until her anxiety was sharper than it had been since the war.