Life Sentences (20 page)

Even if there was only a slight
chance that her sister was alive, Daisy had to find out. She had no choice.
She picked up the phone. "Mom?" she said. "I need you to do
me a favor. Go to Anna's computer and open it."

"What for?"

"You have to trust me. Just
turn on her computer and open her hard drive."

"All right. Hold on." It
took Lily several minutes of fumbling and mumbling to get the computer
started.

"Are there any saved e-mails?"
Daisy asked her.

"Six."

"Would you read off the addresses
to me?"

"Father-Finders-at-Yahoo-dot-com,
Orphan-Diseases-at-AOL-dot-com, three e-mails from
Maranda
…"

"Would you read those aloud?"

"I'm not comfortable doing
that, Daisy."

"Mom, please. We're trying to
find Anna, okay?"

She opened the e-mails one at a time
and read them out loud to her daughter. There was nothing important on
any of them, nothing about Roy Gaines or Roy
Hildreth
or a doctor named Hilt.

"Is that all?" Daisy asked.

"One more. It's to Tanya's
Friends."

"What?"

"Tanya's-Friends-at-Excite-dot-com."

"Open it."

Lily did.

"Read it to me."

"Just read it?"

"Mom. Please."

"Okay, it says, 'I'll be moving
to L.A. next month. Can't wait to meet you in person. I'll give you a call
when I get there. Your friend, Anna.'"

Daisy called Truett at the
neurogenetics
lab. "What's the number for Tanya's
Friends?" she asked as soon as he'd picked up.

"Who is this?" he said
playfully.

"I'm in a hurry, Truett. My
sister was in touch with a local chapter of Tanya's Friends and I need
the number…"

"Okay, hold on. Let me look it
up."

At the lab, they had a computer database
containing the names of every organization and support group for orphan
diseases in America. They used the database to notify family members
about current clinical studies or promising breakthroughs and other
pertinent information. They also used the database to find volunteers
for their clinical trials.

"Okay. Got it. Tanya's Friends."
He gave her the address and phone number, then said, "Listen. Two
cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other, 'Does this taste
funny to you?'"

She smiled.

"It's my one and only cannibal
joke."

"Talk to you later, Truett."

"I miss you, Daisy," he
said and hung up.

Daisy rented a car using her Visa
card, then drove to a residential neighborhood in the Valley where
the houses were built too close to a major freeway. She parked in front
of a stucco building with a manicured lawn and neatly trimmed hedges
and got out. Her hair was plastered to her face with sweat. She could hear
the steady sound of traffic on the freeway. It sounded just like the ocean.

She knocked on the door, and a woman
with sunken cheeks and large ears set far back on her head answered. She
wore turquoise shorts and an indigo tank top that showed off her sagging
breasts.

"Kathy Lansky?"

"Yes?" the woman said.

"My name's Daisy Hubbard. I
think you know my sister, Anna?"

The woman squinted. It took her
a moment. "Oh yes. C'mon in."

"Thanks."

Daisy sat in the living room while
Kathy fetched her a glass of iced tea from the kitchen. Daisy could see
the stove through the open doorway, a bean pot simmering on the back burner.

"Sugar and lemon?" Kathy
asked.

"Sounds good."

The wooden floorboards squeaked
as Kathy carried the tray of drinks back into the living room. She handed
Daisy an ice-cold glass of iced tea, then took a seat in the rocking chair
beside her. "Anna was a member of our group," she said,
"but I haven't seen her in months."

"When was the last time you
saw her?"

"November, I think." She
gave a rigid yawn. A tear rolled down her cheek, and she wiped it away
with her hand. "Why?" she said. "Did something happen?"

Daisy took a sip of tea, wondering
what to say. She set the glass on the coffee table next to a vase of wildflowers.
"How often does your group meet?"

"Once a week."

"And how often did Anna attend
before she stopped coming?"

Kathy rolled her eyes. "Um…
three months, maybe four. Never missed a session, except for that one time
when she went home."

"Went home?"

"You know. To Vermont. I think
it was last September."

"She went home last September?"

"For two weeks."

Daisy didn't bother correcting
her. Anna hadn't been back to Vermont since she'd moved out to the West Coast.

"Why? Is something
wrong?" Kathy said.

"My sister has disappeared."

"Oh no."

"We don't know where she
is."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I'm trying to track her whereabouts
these past ten months. Retrace her steps and find out what she's been up
to."

"I see." She nodded.
"Well, she came to almost every meeting, from August through November,
I think. Except for those two weeks in September. We originally met
through NORD, you know."

"NORD?"

"It's a networking program
for families of patients with rare diseases. She was looking to join
a local group. This was back when she lived in Vermont. She said her brother…
your brother… died of
Stier-Zellar's
disease?"

Daisy nodded.

"Well, that's why we're Tanya's
Friends. Tanya had S-Z." She stood up and handed Daisy a glossy brochure,
then sat back down and started rocking. "We give people an opportunity
to share their experiences and exchange information. A chance to
chat, vent and unload. We're one of the biggest S-Z groups in the country.
Some of our members have even testified in Washington."

"Did she ever bring anybody
to me meetings with her?"

"Just once. Some guy with pitted
skin. He was a real gorilla, that guy."

"Roy Gaines?"

"I don't remember his name.
She only brought him once."

Daisy sat forward. "Who else
is in your group?"

"Sorry. That's confidential."
Melancholy had settled into the woman's square, flat face, as if she'd
seen too much suffering. "I can't give out names."

"Was Colby
Ostrow
in your group?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Did you know that he was murdered
last week?''

Her face grew pale.
"What?"

"Was Irma
Petropoulous
in your group?"

"No," she said, "but
her daughter is."

Daisy couldn't reach Jack on his
cell phone and left a message for him to call her as soon as possible.
Then she ran the scenario through her head: Anna had brought Gaines to
one of her meetings, where he'd used the opportunity to target a couple
more victims. That certainly blew Jack's theory mat Colby
Ostrow
and Irma
Petropoulous
had been victims of opportunity, chosen at random. But why kill these
people? And what if Jack was wrong about Gaines? What if Anna had killed
them? What if she actually believed she was Death now?

Anna was schizophrenic, not a sociopath.
The two disorders were leagues apart. Daisy's sister was no killer, but
she could be delusional. Anna believed in angels and miracles, and
there was no reason to think that, having gone off her meds, she might not
delude herself into thinking she was Death, or that she had a death gene
on chromosome 24. Daisy knew one thing for sure-she would not stop until
she found her sister. She owed Anna that much.

A wave of heat hit her as she crossed
the sun-scorched asphalt toward the pier. She'd spent the better part of
the afternoon walking up and down the strand, dogging complete strangers
and showing them Anna's picture. "Have you seen this woman? Her name
is Anna Hubbard, she's twenty-eight years old…"

It was five o'clock by the time
she arrived at the arcade again, where a dramatic orange sunset splashed
across the white pine floor. She approached a group of teenagers playing
pinball and said, "Have you seen Christie? I'm looking for Christie."

One of the girls turned her head,
her earrings catching the light. Her golden eyes were placid, and she was
smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The dangly earrings, silver feathers
inlaid with turquoise, were just like the ones Daisy had given Anna
for her Sweet Sixteen.

Daisy stared at the girl. "Those
look like my sister's earrings," she said. "Anna Hubbard. Do
you know her?"

The girl couldn't have been more
than sixteen and had bronzed, flawless skin and long unkempt hair. Her heavily
lined eyes were sunk in her face like submerged gems, and her clothes were
dirty, as if she'd spent the night under a traffic overpass.

"Hey," Daisy said, walking
swiftly toward her. "Where'd you get those?"

The girl flicked her cigarette
on the floor and scowled.

"Do you know Anna Hubbard?"

The girl turned and ran.

"Hey!" Daisy chased her
out the door. "Stop!"

She followed the girl down the pier
toward the strand, then across the street into a quiet residential neighborhood,
where the cottages were wrapped in shawls of purple bougainvillea.

"Wait!" Daisy grabbed
the girl by her tie-dyed T-shirt and spun her around.

"What?" the girl shrieked.
"What do you want?"

"Those are my sister's earrings,"
Daisy told her.

"They are not!"

"Where is she?"

"I don't know what the fuck
you're talking about!"

"Do you want me to call the police?"
Daisy clutched the girl's arm with one hand and took out her cell phone
with the other.

"No." She quickly removed
the contested earrings and handed them over. "Here," she said.
'Take them."

"I don't want the stupid earrings,
I want my sister!" Daisy tightened her grip around the girl's arm.
"If you don't tell me where Anna is right now, I'm calling the police.
Do you understand? They'll arrest you for stealing."

The girl twisted violently out of
Daisy's grasp, and they traded jabs.

"Just tell me where you got
them!" Daisy screamed.

The girl turned and ran down the sidewalk,
her shoes making staccato sounds.

"Hey!" Daisy tore after
her. "Come back!"

Quickly gaining speed, the girl rounded
the corner and disappeared.

Daisy tripped on a buckled part
of the sidewalk and went sprawling. She scrambled to her feet and limped
down to the corner, but the girl was nowhere in sight.

It was six o'clock by the time Jack
got a copy of Anna Hubbard's credit card transactions faxed over to him.
In the past year, she'd used her credit cards to purchase things like
clothes, gasoline, dinners and automobile repairs. Last August she'd
bought two round-trip tickets to Boise, Idaho, for the first two weeks in
September. During this trip, she and an unknown traveling companion
had rented a car and stayed at two different hotels-one in Boise, the other
in Pocatello. Okay, Jack wondered, what was so fucking alluring about
Idaho? The credit card bills showed that Anna had purchased a pair of
binoculars, along with some bed linens and a few gifts from the Spud Shop,
and there were charges for meals I in restaurants from Boise to American
Falls.

Next he phoned his contact over at
the Department of Motor Vehicles. It was late, but Harold
Bregman
owed him a favor. Harold liked to party, and
last year Jack had caught him with a pound of marijuana in his possession.
Much to Harold's relief, Jack had given him a pass, but now Jack owned his
ass. That was the way it worked.

"I need a driver's license
for a Roy
Hildrett
or a Dr. E. H. Hilt," he said,
spelling them out. "He's thirty-four, six foot three, brown eyes,
black hair."

"Do you realize that I'm just
pulling into my driveway?" Harold whined.

"So turn your fucking car around."
"Jesus… do you know what time it is?" "It's you-owe-me time,
asshole." "Shit. Okay.
Lemme
see what I
can do," he grumbled. "
Gimme
an hour."

Jack hung up and stared at his
hands. His palms looked yellow in this light. He was acting on mere suspicion
alone, since he had nothing concrete to go on, but the what-ifs were beginning
to pile up. Looking back, it made sense. Roy Gaines's driver's license
was out of state. Louisiana didn't require fingerprints the way California,
Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii and Texas did. They'd found cash and money
orders stashed away in his funky De Campo Beach apartment. His car was in
excellent condition-no expired stickers, no broken taillights. He
hadn't gotten so much as a traffic ticket. And he'd moved around a lot-six
different locations in the past four years. Which seemed harmless enough,
but when you added it all together, it pointed to a false-identity scam.
People with false identities were constantly relocating. They drove
with extreme caution in order to avoid getting ticketed. They kept a
lot of cash around and carried out-of-state licenses.

It was approaching seven o'clock
by the time Harold called him back. "There is no E. H. Hilt," he
said. "But there's a Roy Orion
Hildreth
.
I'm sending it to you now."

"Thanks." Jack waited for
the e-mail to arrive, then opened the attachment. Roy Orion
Hildreth
was Roy Gaines, only with shorter hair and
without me horn-rims. He'd somehow managed to retain his own history
while resurfacing as an entirely new person.

Unfortunately, even nowadays, creating
a false identity was no big deal. All you needed was a cemetery. Find a
child who had died prematurely who'd be approximately the same age as
yourself, then apply for a birth certificate using the information
from the death announcement in the local paper. Once you had a birth
certificate, you could pretty much get a driver's license and a passport.
From that point on, you could avoid detection by keeping a low profile
and a clean driving record, moving around a lot, always paying for
things in cash and never applying for life insurance or credit cards or
anything else that could be skip-traced. Jack bet a thousand bucks that
Roy Gaines had more than one alias, more than one residence and multiple
sets of IDs for every contingency. Why Los Angeles? Because the best place
to hide a leaf was in the forest.

Feeling a surge of adrenaline,
he picked up the phone and called his contact over at the Criminal Records
Unit, interrupting her in the middle of her dinner. Harold
Bregman
wasn't the only one who owed Jack a favor.