Blood Test (33 page)

“It started out as a series of experiments. Weird
stuff using inbreeding and complex grafts. And that’s all it was for a while—
weird. Nothing criminal happened until he noticed you’d grown up.”

She filled the cup again, threw her head back, and
tossed the liquor down her throat, a caricature of toughness.

Once upon a time she’d been anything but tough. A
pretty little red-haired girl, Maimon had recalled, smiling and friendly. The
problems hadn’t started until she was twelve years old or so. He hadn’t known
why.

But I did.

She’d completed puberty three months before her
twelfth birthday. Swope had recorded the day he’d discovered it: (“Eureka!
Annona has blossomed. She lacks intellectual depth, but what physical
perfection! First rate stock…”).

He’d been fascinated with the transformation of her
body, describing it in botanic terms. And as he observed her development, a
hideous plan had taken shape in the wreckage of his mind.

One part of him was still organized, disciplined. As
analytical as Mengele. The seduction was undertaken with the precision of a
scientific experiment.

The first step was dehumanization of the victim. In
order to justify the violation, he reclassified her: the girl was no longer his
daughter, or even a person. Merely a specimen of a new exotic species.
Annona
zingiber.
The ginger annona. A pistil to be pollinated.

Next came semantic distortion of the outrage itself:
the daily excursions into the forest behind the greenhouse weren’t incest,
simply a new, intriguing project. The ultimate investigation of inbreeding.

He’d wait eagerly each day for her return from school
to take her by the hand, and lead her into darkness. Then the spreading of the
blanket on ground softened by pine needles, casual dismissal of her protests.
There had been a full half year of rehearsal—an intensive seminar in fellatio—then
finally, entry into the young body, the spilling of seed on the ground.

Evenings were devoted to the recording of data:
climbing into the attic, he’d log each union in his notebook, sparing no
details. Just like any other research.

According to the journals, he’d kept his wife informed
about the progress of the experiments. Initially, she’d offered faint protest,
then stood by, passively acquiescent.
Following orders.

Impregnating the girl hadn’t been an accident. On the
contrary, it had been Swope’s ultimate goal, calibrated and calculated. He’d
been patient and methodical, waiting until she was a bit older— fourteen—to
fertilize her so that the health of the fetus would be optimized. Charting her
menstrual cycle to pinpoint ovulation. Refraining from intercourse for several
days to increase the sperm count.

It had taken on the first try. He’d rejoiced at the
cessation of her menses, the swelling of her belly. A
new cultivar
had
been created.

I told her what I knew, wording it gently and hoping
the empathy came through. She listened with a blank look on her face, drank
Southern Comfort until her eyelids drooped.

“He victimized you, Nona. Used you and discarded you
when it was over.”

Her head gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“You must have been so frightened, carrying a child at
that age. And being sent away to have it in secret.”

“Bunch of dykes,” she muttered, slurring her words.

“At Madronas?”

She took another drink.

“Fuck yeah. Las Fucking Madronas Home for Bad Little
Fucking Girls. In Mexi-fucking-O.” Her head lolled. She reached for the bottle.
“Big fat fucking beaner dykes running the place. Screaming in beaner. Pinching
and poking. Telling us we were trash. Sluts.”

Maimon had remembered vividly the morning she’d left
town. Had described her waiting with her suitcase in the middle of the road. A
scared little girl with all the mischief knocked out of her. About to be
banished for the sins of another.

She’d come back different, he’d noted. Quieter, more
subdued. Angry.

She was talking now, softly, drunkenly.

“It hurt so bad to push that baby boy out. I screamed
and they covered my mouth. I thought I was coming apart. When it was over, they
wouldn’t let me hold him. Took him away from me.
My
baby, and they took
him away! I forced myself to sit up to get a look at him. It near killed me. He
had red hair, just like me.”

She shook her head, baffled.

“I thought I could keep him after I got home. But
he
said no way. Told me I was nothing. Just a vessel. Just a fucking vessel. Fancy
word for cunt. Good for nothing but fucking. Told me I wasn’t really the momma.
She’d
already started being his momma. I was the cunt. All used up and
tossed in the trash. Time to let the grownups take over.”

She dropped her head on the table and whimpered.

I rubbed the back of her neck, said comforting things.
Even in that state she reacted reflexively to the touch of a male, lifting her
face and flashing me an intoxicated, come-hither smile, leaning forward to
expose the tops of her breasts.

I shook my head and she turned away shame-faced.

I had so much sympathy for her it ached. There were
therapeutic things I could have said. But now was the time to manipulate her.
The boy in the back room needed help. I was prepared to take him out of there
against her will but preferred to avoid another abduction. For both their sakes.

“It wasn’t you who took him out of the hospital, was
it? You loved him too much to endanger him like that.”

“It’s true,” she said, wet-eyed. “They did it. To stop
me from being his momma. All these years I’d let them treat me like garbage.
Stayed out of the way while
they
raised him. Not saying anything to him
about it cause I was afraid it would freak him out. Too much for a little kid
to handle. Dying inside all the time.” She raised one slender hand to her
heart, reached down with the other and drained her glass.

“But when he got sick something tugged on me. Like a
hook in my guts with someone reeling in the line. I had to reclaim my rights. I
stewed about it, sitting with him in that plastic room, watching him sleep. My
baby. Finally I decided to do it. Sat them down in the motel one night, told
them the lies had gone on too long. That my time had come. To take care of my
baby.

“They—
he
laughed at me. Put me down, told me I
was unfit, a piece of shit. A fucking
vessel.
I should get the hell out
and make it better for everyone. But this time I didn’t take it. The pain in my
guts was too strong. I gave it all back to them, told them they were evil.
Sinners. That the ca—the sickness was God’s punishment for what they’d done.
They
were the ones who were unfit. And I was gonna tell everyone about it. The
doctors, the nurses. They’d kick them out and hand my baby over to his rightful
momma when they found out.”

Her hands trembled violently around her glass. I
walked behind her and steadied them with mine.

“It was my right!” she cried out, whipping her head
around and begging confirmation. I nodded and she slumped against my chest.

During Baron and Delilah’s hospital visit, Emma Swope
had complained the cancer treatment was dividing the family. The cultists had
construed it as anxiety about the physical separation imposed by the Laminar
Airflow room. But the woman had been worrying out loud about a far more serious
rupture, one that threatened to rend the family as irreparably as a guillotine
on neck-flesh.

Perhaps she’d known, then, that the wound was too deep
to heal. But she and her husband had attempted to patch it anyway. To prevent
the leakage of the ugly secret by taking the child and running…

“They snuck him out behind my back,” Nona was saying,
squeezing my hand, digging in with the green nails. The anger was percolating
within her once again. A thin film of sweat mustached the rich, wide mouth. “Like
fucking thieves.
She
dressed up as an x-ray technician. In a mask and
gown they swiped from the laundry bin. Took him down to the basement on a
service elevator and out a side exit.
Thieves.

“I came back to the motel and all three of them were
there. My baby was lying on the bed, so small and helpless.
They
were
packing and joking about getting away with it so easy. How nobody had
recognized her behind the mask because none of them had ever looked her in the
eye. Putting down the hospital. Him going on about smog and shit. Trying to
justify what they’d done.”

She’d given me an opening. It was time to renew my
pitch. To convince her to come with me peaceably as I carried her son out of
there.

But before I could say anything the door burst open.

DOUG C ARMICHAEL crouched in the doorway like a commando
in a martial arts movie. The arm that extended into the room held a rifle. The
other hefted a double-edged axe as if it were balsa. He wore a black mesh tank
top that exposed lots of hypertrophied muscle. His legs were thick and corded,
carpeted with curly blond hair and encased in tight white swim trunks. His
knees were misshapen and lumpy—surfer’s knots. Rubber beach sandals cushioned
large rough feet. The reddish-blond beard was neatly cropped, the thick layered
hair precisely blow-dried.

Only the eyes had changed from the day I’d met him.
That afternoon in Venice they’d been the color of a cloudless sky. Now I looked
into a pair of bottomless black holes: dilated pupils surrounded by thin rings
of ice. Mad eyes that scanned the trailer, shifting from the Southern Comfort
bottle to the drowsy girl to me.

“I ought to kill you right now for giving her that
poison.”

“I didn’t. She took it herself.”

“Shut up!”

Nona tried to straighten up. She swayed groggily.

Carmichael pointed the rifle at me.

“Sit down on the floor. Up against the wall, with your
hands under you. Good. Now stay put or I’ll have to hurt you.”

To Nona: “C’mere, Sis.”

She went to his side and leaned against his bulk. One
massive arm went around her protectively. The one with the axe.

“Did he hurt you, babe?”

She looked at me, knew she was my jury, considered her
answer, and shook her head woozily.

“Naw, he’s been okay. Just talking. Wants to take
Woody to the hospital.”

“I’ll bet he does,” sneered Carmichael. “That’s the
party line. Pour more poison in and rake in the bucks.”

She looked up at him.

“I dunno, Doug, the fever’s no better.”

“Did you give him the C?”

“Yeah, just like you said.”

“What about the apple?”

“He wouldn’t eat it. Been too sleepy.”

“Try again. If he doesn’t like the apple there are
pears and plums, too. And oranges.” He tilted his head at the shopping bags on
the counter. “That stuff is super fresh. Just picked, totally organic. Get some
fruit and fluid down him along with more C and he’ll cool off.”

“The boy’s in danger,” I said. “He needs more than
vitamins.”

“I said shut up! You want me to finish you off right
here?”

“I don’t think he means any harm,” said the girl,
meekly.

Carmichael smiled at her with genuine warmth and just
a touch of condescension.

“You go back in there with the little guy, Sis. Work
on nutrition.”

She started to say something but Carmichael silenced
her with a flash of white teeth and a reassuring nod. Obediently she
disappeared behind the shower curtain.

When we were alone he kicked the trailer door shut and
moved opposite me, his back to the counter. I stared up into the twin barrels
of the rifle—a deadly figure eight.

“I’m going to have to kill you,” he said calmly, then
shrugged apologetically. “Nothing personal, you know? But we’re a family and
you’re a threat.”

The last thing I’d wanted to display was skepticism
and I was sure I hadn’t. But his psychic radar was hot-wired to go off
unpredictably, the scrambled apparatus of the truly paranoiac. He squinted
angrily and lowered the rifle, aiming at the tender concavity between my eyes.
Hunching his massive shoulders he stared down menacingly.

“We
are
a family. And we don’t need a blood
test to prove it.”

“Of course not,” I agreed with a mouth full of cotton.
“It’s the emotional bond that’s important.”

He looked at me hard to make sure I wasn’t patronizing
him. I molded my face into a mask of sincerity. Froze it that way.

The axe swung loosely, whetted blade abrading the
floor.

“Exactly. It’s feelings that count. Our feelings have
been
forged in pain.
We’re three against the world. Our family is what
it should be—a sanctuary against all the craziness out there. A safe zone. It’s
beautiful and precious. And I’ve got to protect it.”

I had no plan for escape. For the time being there was
no hope but to buy time by keeping him talking.