Not the End of the World (18 page)

‘Shit,’ Larry muttered. He hit Y. The computer offered him a ‘Biscane, A’ and a ‘Biscane, Monica’. He hit the key to look up the former. The screen went blank then scrolled out its information. ‘Biscane, Alexandra.’ That’s my girl, Larry thought. ‘Homicide. San Bernadino. Reported: 7.7.98. Case file opened: 7:7:98. OPEN/PREVIOUS SCREEN.’

He typed O. ‘No access to file. File classified by Federal Bureau of Investigation. PREVIOUS SCREEN/MAIN MENU.’ He stared stubbornly at the screen as if it might be intimidated into changing its mind. Homicide. Classified. FBI. SOS. ‘What ain’t you tellin’ me, Dr Arazon?’

The restroom’s triptych of mirrors confirmed Maria’s suspicions: she looked like shit. She didn’t want to think about what impression her crash‐
victim appearance must have made on the cop, but at least she felt sure of the impact her words had had. She splashed water on her face, like that was going to make a difference, and sighed at the wasted image gazing back at her. Too bad junkie chic went out. The most constructive thing she could do right now, she figured, was shut down her terminal and go home. She hadn’t been sleeping too well since the disappearance, but last night she’d barely got under at all. She had prepared herself for what she might feel when she saw the boat again: the feelings, the memories, the torments of a fevered imagination. Her greatest fears had been about what a thudding impact the experience would have on her delicate grieving process. She thought she was only dealing with loss. The logbook told her otherwise. Walking around the Gazes Also hadn’t quite been the ordeal she’d imagined. The Coast Guard had removed the dirty plates and cups from the galley for purposes of hygiene, so the Mary Celeste effect everyone had been talking about failed to register. The very orderliness that contributed to other people’s bafflement meant there was nothing to jar Maria’s sense of familiarity. She felt no auras of lost companions, no ‘atmosphere’ of imprinted human emotion. There was far more of that to be found at CalORI, probably because that was where she was more used to spending time with the four of them. It was, basically, an empty boat. The log, however, changed everything. It wasn’t just the initials, or the fact that the place specified could not have been their intended destination. There was more than that, she was sure. If Mitch had reason to leave a coded SOS, he could have made up any name – Sands Of Somewhere, Slopes Of Someplace else – but he said Stronghyli, which was like underlining the message several times. Admittedly, if this meant what she thought it meant, he might not have had the time or presence to be thinking too much about wider connotations, but he’d still have been aware of what that name referred to. Stronghyli was the geological name for pre‐
eruption Thera. It was also CalORI slang for a situation that was about to go disastrously wrong. The nauseous feeling in her gut that the phrase unleashed was not a reflex, more the lowering of a barrier, allowing an in‐
rush of fear and anger that had been backed up since last summer when Sandra was murdered. Maria had grown used to not thinking about it, knowing that the lack of answers only tugged at her wounds, and that unsolved homicides were not exactly a rarity here in the Southland. The fact that the FBI were all over the thing had heightened the mystery, but she soon garnered the impression it was the murderer they had a special interest in, not the victim. Even amid the current climate of hysterical paranoia, it hadn’t occurred to her to draw any link between Sandra’s death and whatever had happened on the Gazes Also. Then she had read those three little words. She could tell Freeman understood what they entailed. He was bound to resist accepting it straight away, but he would accept it soon enough. Someone else had been on that boat.

Larry was fixing to clock off and head for home when his phone rang. He thought about ignoring it, as strictly speaking, he should have been out of there ten minutes ago, indeed would have been but for a long call from Conchita Nunez. She wasn’t requiring any form of assistance, just to unburden herself to someone of similar mind and thus avoid letting rip with a less‐
than‐
diplomatic outburst at the next act of stupidity she was faced with. There had been two more bomb calls since he left, but the trace hadn’t been up in time to get a location on them. Nunez had transferred the first guy to Tommy Andrews, who had been allocated bomb‐
hoaxer duty, but she recognised the second as the same loser from that morning, and took the call herself. The poor dumb shit thought he had been caught out by giving the wrong answer to Larry’s trigger question, and had confidently asserted straight off that he was using a bilateral transept detonator, which Larry had made up too. Further inconvenience had come in the form of a second paint‐
throwing incident, but this time hotel security had managed to catch the two culprits as they ran away. A brief interrogation revealed that they were both in the employ of ReelCo and that they had been under orders to splatter their executive superiors, who had been enviously observing the activity around CineCorp’s market office all morning. This little revelation led in turn to the forcible dispersal down on the beach of a group of demonstrators, who had for the previous hour been waving placards and chanting in denunciation of certain ‘sinful’ titles on the ProTel slate. Larry looked at the clock. Market business was closed for the day, and the unhappy‐
clappies would have packed up too. He figured it was safe to answer. ‘Hello, Sergeant Larry Freeman here.’

‘Good evening, Sergeant, this is Agent Peter Steel of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.’ They always said that. Like you might be unfamiliar with the abbreviation, or like FBI could stand for more than one thing. ‘Good evening yourself. What can I do for you, Agent Steel?’

‘Sergeant Freeman, I understand you were attempting to access the computerised case files on Alexandra Biscane this afternoon. Is that correct?’

‘Shit, what you guys got, a hidden camera in this station?’

‘No sir, there’s a crossover trace on that file. If anyone looks it up, I get a message on my computer telling me who and where, so that I can do what I’m doing now, which is asking you why you’re interested in Professor Biscane.’

‘Oh, it’s Professor Biscane,’ Larry said. ‘Well at least I’m finding out something. Tell you what, why don’t you tell me why it’s classified and then I’ll tell you why I’m interested?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t do that, Sergeant.’

‘Well in that case—’

‘Not that way around, anyway,’ Steel interrupted. ‘I’m sorry about sounding like an asshole G-man, but I need to know why you’re interested first, and depending on your reason, I might be able to open up a little.’ Larry sighed. A self‐
aware asshole G-man was a major step in the species’ evolution. It was therefore in his interest to assist the new breed’s survival. ‘I’m investigating the disappearances – probably safe to say deaths but we got no bodies and probably won’t never have, neither – of four scientists from a research vessel in the Pacific.’

‘Who were they? What did they do?’ Larry reached for a folder on the desk in front of him, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his chin as he flipped through the leaves inside. ‘Let’s see,’ he said, ‘Mitchell Kramer, seismologist, Cody Williams, geologist, Grady Cooper, also a geologist, and Taylor Svenson, also a seismologist. All from the Californian Oceanographic Research Institute, or CalORI for short. Boat was called the Gazes Also, and they vanished off it last week along with a miniature submarine.’

‘They vanished off it? You mean the ship didn’t go down or anything?’

‘No. The ship was a genuine latter‐
day Mary Celeste. Found drifting, dinner plates in the sink, coffee cups and postprandial brandies still on the table. Only thing out of place was a conspicuous lack of personnel and the absence of their submersible vehicle, the Stella Maris. So far I’ve been working on the explanation that all the missing components fit together. Crew get in submarine, submarine takes its remit too far. However.’

‘What were they working on out there?’

‘Research, whatever that means. Taking samples, charting stuff. I don’t know. But they weren’t looking for oil, if that’s what you’re wondering about.’

‘And why were you looking up Biscane?’

‘Someone from CalORI mentioned her name. Someone who wasn’t convinced of my theory that these guys had an accident. I don’t know the connection, because right now I know nothing about Sandra Biscane. So you gonna throw something back my way, or do I just run along now?’ Steel breathed in slowly on the other end of the line. ‘Alexandra – Sandra – Biscane was a professor at UCLA, specialising in ocean seismology. She was murdered in her home last summer, apparently having disturbed a burglar.’

‘But you didn’t buy that.’

‘No, we didn’t. We took over the investigation from Homicide in San Bernadino pretty much from the start.’

‘Why?’

‘This is classified information, Sergeant, so it goes no further than either end of this phone line, okay?’

‘You got it.’

‘Does the name Southland Militia mean anything to you?’ Larry swallowed. He hadn’t heard of this particular pustule but he was familiar with the disease. Groups of extreme‐
right, paranoid, white‐
supremacist, Christian fundamentalist brain‐
donors with a gun obsession and the arsenal to feed it. Yet another cauldron of unstable hatred that had been simmering away throughout the Nineties and threatening to boil over the nearer we got to year zero. ‘That’s like the Michigan Militia, right?’ he said, trying not to enunciate the concern and revulsion he was feeling. ‘They go running around the woods with assault weapons at the weekend, training for when they have to fend off an invasion by the UN. That it?’

‘Right. But these guys are from southern California – LA, Orange County, San Diego – and they go running around the desert rather than the woods. And yeah, they’re training for something, but we’re concerned it might be something a little more soon and a little less imaginary than an invasion by the UN. The FBI’s been monitoring all the militias pretty closely since Waco, obviously not closely enough, given Oklahoma City. Our intelligence suggests the Southland Militia are gearing up for a major outing. They’re stockpiling weapons, recruiting new bodies. Trouble is, we have no idea what’s on the agenda.

‘To cut to the chase, we’ve had several members of the Militia’s high‐
rank inner circle under surveillance, and last July our agents witnessed one of them enter Biscane’s condo the evening of the murder.’

‘So you figure he did it. And this is the part where you tell me you didn’t bust him, right?’ Steel paused. ‘That is correct. Our agents didn’t know why the guy was there, so they just watched him leave and followed him as per instructions. Physical evidence was negligible. He left no prints – we guessed surgical gloves. He killed Professor Biscane with a single stab‐
wound to the chest using one of her own kitchen knives. Left it sticking in her – plausible interrupted‐
burglary spur‐
of‐
the‐
moment scenario. To complete the effect he opened a few drawers, emptied her pocketbook of cash and even unplugged the VCR and left it on the kitchen floor like he was making off with it when she woke up and found him.’

‘But you had witnesses – Federal officers, in fact. So why didn’t you bust him?’

‘We still intend to, don’t worry. But we held back because we didn’t know what he – and by extension the Southland Militia – wanted with Biscane, far less why they wanted her dead. It was the first real lead we had on what they might be up to.’

‘And if you pulled him straight in you figured they’d circle the wagons.’

‘Exactly. We wanted them to think they’d gotten away with it.’

‘So why did they kill her?’ There was a long pause. ‘We still don’t know,’ Steel admitted. ‘That’s why there’s a crossover trace on the file – to alert me to anything new connected to her death or to her personally. Which brings us back to you and your missing scientists. You said you wer given Biscane’s name by someone who didn’t think had an accident. Who was that?’

‘Dr Maria Arazon.’

‘I remember the name. Another seismologist. Friend of Biscane. Guess it’s understandable she thinks foul play. What do you think, Sergeant?’

‘I’m thinking nothing I’d like to be quoted on yet, Agent Steel. Not until I’ve seen the forensics report. I’ve seen the boat, though. There’s plenty weird about it but nothing suspicious. Except that the – I’d guess you’d call him the captain – wrote what Arazon believes to be a coded SOS message in the log’s final entry. It said they were all taking their submarine to a place called the Slopes Of Stronghyli, which doesn’t exist any more, apparently.’

‘Slopes Of Stronghyli. SOS. Why would he write that?’

‘Beats the shit out of me. Arazon thinks it was the only way to signal something was wrong, presumably under duress, but I figure there’s gotta be a few explanations further up the plausibility table than that.’

‘Sure,’ Steel agreed. ‘Sure. But do you think it’s possible, I don’t know, maybe they saw something they weren’t supposed to? They’re way out in the Pacific – a drug exchange, gun‐
running?’

‘All of these things are possible, Agent Steel. But a man could go crazy counting up all the things that are possible. Here’s as much as I know for sure. I’ve got four scientists missing presumed dead, and an understandably emotional colleague of theirs gives me the name of a fifth scientist, who it turns out is dead too. But as right now the only connection is that your victim and two of my MPDs were seismologists – and as the emotional colleague who connected them is a seismologist too – I’ll wait till I know more before I go reading too much into it.’

He got CalORI through Information and convinced the lab technician still on duty to surrender Arazon’s home number. ‘Sergeant Freeman, what can I do for you?’ she asked, trying too hard to sound surprised that he was calling. ‘Well, you can start by telling me whether you knew I’d end up with the FBI on my tail when I looked up that name you gave me, Doctor.’

‘Was it Agent Steel?’

‘How did you know that?’

‘He came to interview me after Sandra’s murder. It didn’t take much intuition to work out she wasn’t just a random victim if the FBI were involved.’