Life Sentences (6 page)

She wondered how there could possibly
be fifty different kinds of pie and tried adding them up in her head.
Apple, pumpkin, lemon meringue, Boston
cream
… She counted all the way up to fourteen and figured there couldn't
be any more than mat. Then she remembered. Pecan. Of course.
And peach
.

"Sixteen," she said out
loud, the unexpected smallness of her voice sending shivers cascading
across her scalp. Great. Instead of curing fatal diseases, she was counting
pies. How could Anna have been so careless with her life? Was she
trying to ruin everything?
Because
congratulations, Anna, you're succeeding.

Sweating profusely, Daisy got out
of bed and decided to take a shower. She peeled out of her damp clothes,
balled them up and tossed them on the bed. Her back was knotted. The bathroom
door didn't close all the way. She worked her hands over her tense neck muscles
as she stepped into the shower. She unwrapped a bar of complimentary
soap and let the cool spray hit her. The shower stall smelled of other people,
and the tiled floor was spotted here and there with mold. How well did
they clean these places, anyway? She avoided rubbing up against the
milky glass doors when a sharp tepid spray hit her in the face. She lathered
herself all over, hands circling her skin, and hoped that by the time she
was done, things would have magically righted themselves again.

With a gathering sense of optimism,
she stepped out of the shower and dried herself off with a terry-cloth
bath towel, then put on the extra-large T-shirt she used as a nightgown.
Constantly aware of Anna all along the edges of herself, Daisy collapsed
back in bed, her heart racing, and had a hopeful image of her sister taking
refuge in some local homeless shelter or halfway house. Once or twice
a year back in Edgewater, after she and Lily had had a particularly
nasty fight, Anna would freak out and disappear. But they always knew
where to look for her-at her best friend
Maranda's
house, or else the Edgewater Presbyterian Church or the local battered-women's
shelter. Anna always showed up eventually, like a cat.

Soon Daisy was sound asleep, dreaming
of the flight out to Los Angeles, of the dark earth below and the man seated
next to her
. Bram. Short for
Bramwell
. In her dream, he grew horns, and the peanuts
he offered her looked like miniature penises.

She woke up in a clammy sweat. It
was dark outside, still the middle of the night. She switched on her bedside
lamp and stretched, contrasting the paleness of her skin with the dark
blue of the motel wall. There was a pattern of miniature gold anchors
on the blue background. She'd always envied her sister's close relationship
with their mother. Lily and Anna had to have the biggest case of love-hate
Daisy'd
ever seen. She was always getting caught
in the middle of their feuds and taking frantic phone calls from first
one, then the other.
She's doing this,
she did that, she said blah, blah, blah.
Still, Daisy envied their
bond. Sometimes she felt as if her entire life had been swallowed up
by Anna's problems
. How's Anna?
What're we going to do about Anna? What's wrong with Anna?
From the time
she was eight or nine years old, ad nauseam, ad infinitum, Daisy and
Lily had rarely had a conversation that didn't somehow revolve around
her.

Suddenly thirsty, she remembered
the soda machine in the front office and got out of bed. Pulling on a pair
of jeans, Daisy left the security of her cabin for the vastness of the
hot, muggy night. She'd once heard that Los Angeles was seventy suburbs
in search of a city, and she was somewhere in the middle of that
lostness
now, surrounded by concrete and glass. Out
here, everything was called something-wood.
Brentwood, Hollywood,
Ingl
-wood
.
And where were these so-called woods? All she saw were two rows of palm
trees running along the spine of Santa Monica Boulevard, swaying in
the balmy breeze. The palm trees, stamped against the night sky, reminded
her of movie props. Back in Boston, it was probably snowing, the New England
sky dropping more and more inches, as if it wanted to obliterate
spring.

The front office behind the Moorish-style
fence and plastic-webbed lawn chairs was brightly lit. "Hello?"
Daisy said, but the place was empty. She found the soda machine, inserted
a few quarters, and out clunked a can of ginger ale. On her way back to her
cabin, the asphalt's warmth surprised her. She padded along in her bare
feet while a Buick Regal drove past, casting a large shadow over the motel's
facade. Her own shadow grew like a cornstalk, then slid sideways in
the headlights' glare as the car sped up the boulevard. These shadows were
reborn again as another car drove past, detritus stirring and skittering
in its wake.

Back inside the false security
of her cabin, Daisy took a seat in a moldy-feeling armchair and drank
her soda, gripped by an undefined panic. There was nothing to do now
but wait. She rubbed her shivering arms. It was too early to call Lily. She
had to fix her eyes on something. Anything. Fear was a slippery incline.
She turned on the TV and wrapped her arms around her knees. She had brought
the smell of outside in, her molecules mingling with the heavy metals
of this polluted city.

Ihe
next
morning, Daisy woke up in a strange place and stared at the nautical
wallpaper a full minute before finally remembering where she was.
She was in the cheesiest motel in America. She assessed the ugly plaid
furniture, the novelty clamshell smoking a cigar on the dresser, the
plastic sign on the wall that insisted: enjoy our BEA-
oo
-TJHJL
pool! She struggled to sit up, all the muscles of her abdomen tightening
as if to ward off a blow.
Anna's gone.
Anna's missing
.

She checked her watch. Almost nine
o'clock. Time to go.

She hopped out of bed, got dressed
and called a cab.

Outside, she could feel a sweat
breaking out on her skin while the sun shone in all the sleepy crevices
of her face. A green and white taxi pulled up to the curb, and she gave
the driver the address of the police station, then took out her cell phone
and speed-dialed her mother's number. "Hi, Mom, it's me," she said.

"Daisy? Do the police know anything
yet?"

"I'm on my way there right
now." Fragments of light hit her eyes, the sun's reflection bouncing
off the sleek hoods and tinted windows of too many BMWs, Mercedes and Porsches.

"What's the weather like?"
Lily asked.

"Hot."

"Really? It snowed again last
night."

"I figured," Daisy said.

"How was your flight?"

"Bumpy. We fought the jet stream
the whole way. L.A.'s huge, Mom. So huge and impersonal. I don't know how
she lasted a month, let alone ten."

"You know Anna…"

"I've
gotta
go." She squinted into the bright sunshine. "Call you later,
okay?"

"Daisy?"

"Yes?"

"I want you to know how much I
appreciate this."

"It's okay, Mom. Love
you."

"Love you, too."

She put her cell phone away.

The closer they got to the beach,
the cooler it became, and Daisy started to see an abundance of T-shirt
shops, tattoo parlors and sidewalk cafes. There were people out jogging
and sightseeing. As they turned left onto Ocean Avenue, the glimmering
Pacific came into view, its rough surf kicking up sea spray beyond a
strip of sand. She was tempted to press her nose against the dirty glass as
they drove past bikini-clad
Rollerbladers
and
shirtless boys showing off their abs. She enjoyed the circuslike atmosphere
of the street musicians and fire-eaters competing with acrobats and
jugglers for tourist dollars. There was entertainment on every corner,
bold murals air-brushed onto the sides of buildings, boardwalk booths
selling everything from caricatures to knockoff designer sunglasses.
A pink-haired woman with a large snake draped over her shoulders rode
her bike dangerously close to the cab, smiled at Daisy and veered away.

After another mile of on-again,
off-again traffic, they drove further inland, away from the beach, then
pulled into an ugly
minimall
. "Here you
go," the cabdriver said, stopping the meter.

Daisy looked around. There was a
Thai take-out place, a funky shoe repair shop and a used car lot festooned
with lime-green plastic flags. Only the swaying palm trees broke the monotony
of the gritty, prefab landscape. "Where's the police station?"
she asked.

"That gray building over there."

She spotted the square gray stucco
building anchoring the northeastern corner of the
minimall
.
"If you say so."

"Nothing is what it seems in
L.A.," he told her.

"Thanks." She paid the fare
and got out, then entered the nondescript building through a gray metal
door and gave her name at the front desk.

Inside the police station, the
HVAC system was antiquated and Rorschach water marks dotted the sagging
box-beam ceiling. The desk sergeant told her to take a seat in the cramped
waiting area, and she realized how jet-lagged she was as she sank into a
maroon sofa and instantly closed her eyes, her eyelids scraping together
like sandpaper.

After a few minutes, footsteps
echoed down the hallway's black-and-white-checkered linoleum, and a
man wearing brown slacks, a brown sports coat and a sea-blue tie extended
his hand. "Jack Makowski," he said. He had a confident grip and
looked like an aging surfer with his graying, collar-length hair and
sun-weathered skin. Daisy decided he was the kind of man who, once he
threw that switch, could be radiant. "Let's go into my office where
we can talk," he said.

She followed him down the hallway
toward a cluttered office with an old-fashioned clock on the wall and a
metal desk buried under a New York City skyline of paperwork. Tacked to
the bulletin board were dozens of Wanted posters-brutal, heartless
faces gazing down at her. Detective Makowski cleared a space for her
on one of the cluttered chairs, then settled in behind his desk.
"So," he said, "tell me about your sister."

"We think she went off her
meds," Daisy said, her hands collapsed in her lap. "She might've
run away and-"

His old-fashioned phone jangled.
"Excuse me," he said, picking up. "Yeah? Okay. No, I'm with
her now. Yup. Bye." He hung up, then stared at her absently. "Where
was I?"

"My sister," she said,
heart pounding in her ears. "I was telling you about my sister."

He gave a curt nod. "We have
three unsolved missing-persons cases in De Campo Beach, Ms. Hubbard.
The first victim disappeared over a year ago. The second was reported
missing just last week, and your sister makes it number three."

She reacted with confusion.
"You think they're related?"

"We found bloodstains in
her apartment. Now, please don't jump to any conclusions just yet. We
don't know whose ABO it is. Could be menstrual blood, could be somebody
cut their hand, could be from a previous tenant. These are minor bloodstains
I'm talking about."

She heard a whooshing sound inside
her ears as the far corners of the room grew fuzzy.

"What's your sister's blood
type?" he asked.

"O positive."

He glanced down at the file folder
that lay open on his desk. "Same blood type we found inside her apartment.
So you think she stopped taking her medication?"

"I don't know. She quit therapy
six months ago. There was nobody monitoring her."

He nodded. "We found drug paraphernalia
in her apartment, along with some pot and cocaine residue."

"Schizophrenics have a tendency
to self-medicate," she explained. "Sometimes they'll stop taking
their prescription drugs and compensate by doing illegal
drugs."

He eyed her curiously.
"You're a scientist?"

She nodded. She'd given him a brief
autobiographical sketch over the phone. "I specialize in
neurogenetics
. I'm trying to cure inherited fatal
brain disorders."

His eyes widened. "That's
pretty admirable."

"Yeah, well… I've been told I
have no life."

He nodded knowingly. "I lost
three marriages to the job."

"We're a pathetic pair."

He gave her what she considered
to be his first genuine smile.

She smiled back.

"Does your sister own a cell
phone?" he asked.

Daisy shook her head. "She
worries about the 'radiation' affecting her brain."

"Okay. No pager, then?"

"No."

"And you say she's run away before?"

"It happens once or twice a
year."

"Uh-huh. What usually provokes
it?"

"She and Lily… my mother… will
have a fight, then she'll run away and hole up in some homeless shelter
or church or something. Anna's very into the drama of it all."

"So you think she might've run
away this time?"

She frowned. "The thing is, my
mother says they were getting along just fine. No arguments. No triggering
episode. Have you looked in any of those places yet? Local homeless
shelters or halfway houses?"

"Our resources are stretched
pretty thin." He folded his arms across his chest. "Listen, we have
your sister's computer. Who's Louis?"

Daisy's scalp jumped. "That's
my little brother. Why?"

"Some of the files contained
detailed information about her search for Louis's biological father.
We were able to trace her Internet activity as well. She's been looking
at lots of genealogy Web sites, 'fathering' Web sites, ancestry message
boards and the like. Louis died of a childhood illness?"

"
Stier-Zellar's
disease."

"A fatal brain disorder?"

She nodded.

"We found a bunch of articles
downloaded onto her computer. Articles you had written for
Genetics
and
Journal of Gene Medicine
."

"I didn't know she was even aware
of them."

His eyes were steady on her. He waited
for her to continue.

"They're very technical,"
Daisy said. "I doubt she's read them all the way through."

"Why would she be interested
in them?"

"I don't know. Anna's very competitive.
When we were growing up, she had to have the same things I did. If I got
the latest Cyndi
Lauper
album, then she had to have
it, too. My mother bought us everything in duplicate, practically."

"Do you think she's competing
with you now?"

"Maybe."

"Do you work with rats?"

"Mice. Why?"

"We found three dead rats laid
out on the kitchen table, each one dissected."

Daisy shook her head, trying to make
sense of it all. "I have no idea why she'd be doing that, but… once
she goes off her meds, all bets are off."

"Why would she be looking for
your brother's father? Don't you all have the same father?"

"No. Anna and I share the same
biological father. His name was Gregory Hubbard. He died a couple
months before Anna was born. I was three, and I barely remember
him."

"But your brother had a different
father? And you don't know his name?"

She nodded. "It's a big secret
in our house."

"Your mother never told
you?"

"No."

He squinted. "Why not?"

"I don't know. You'd have to
ask her."

"Do you suppose Anna moved
out to L.A. in order to search for Louis's biological father?"

"I don't know." Daisy groaned,
her head beginning to hurt. It was a massive struggle just to think straight.
"Look, can I be honest with you? All I want to do is go back to Boston
and continue my research. I want to get back to work… I can't believe
this is happening…" The air filled with insects, neon-winged insects
flurrying into her face, and then everything went black.

Daisy woke up moments later on
the detective's oversize pearl-gray sofa. On the wall above her head
was a detailed map of De Campo Beach, with multicolored pushpins identifying
various crime hot spots. "What happened?" she said.

"
Shh
.
Just relax. You passed out."

She tried to sit up, but he stopped
her.

"Here. Have some water."
He handed her a glass, and she took a sip, her head banging like a gong.
"I know this must be quite a shock…"

"I don't faint," she said
angrily. "I'm not a fainter. Not even in medical school when we had
to dissect corpses."

His eyes were kind.
"Drink," he said. "You're probably dehydrated from the
flight."

She sipped some water, then said,
"How long have you been a detective?"

"Fourteen years of service.
Five in uniform, two in vice, seven in homicide. I got my bachelor of
science degree in law enforcement from USC and graduated from the FBI
National Academy. Those are my diplomas."

She glanced at the framed diplomas
on the wall. "FBI, huh?" 'Take a deep breath," he said.
"Try and relax." She did as she was told. She closed her eyes and
took a deep breath, but it didn't make her feel any better. Her body remained
on high alert. She opened her eyes and said, "You think she's dead,
don't you? Her and those other missing people?"

"I haven't come to any conclusions
yet." She knew he was lying. Her fingers twitched. "Look, I need
your help, Ms. Hubbard." "Please call me Daisy," she said.
"'Ms. Hubbard' sounds like a kindergarten teacher."

"Okay, Daisy. I need you to
come down to the apartment with me and identify some of your sister's belongings.
Do you think you can handle it?" "No," she said. "But
I'll go anyway."