The Nature of the Beast (9 page)

“
Thanks.
”

“
I understand the north rim of the Grand Canyon is nice this time of year.
”

He grabbed the handles on the shopping bag and got to his feet.

She lifted another French fry from the cardboard sleeve.
Finding the morsel cold and uninviting, she dropped it onto the tray and wiped her greasy fingers with a paper napkin.
When she looked up, he was gone.

16

Emelda eased the bedroom door closed. Gilbert looked up.

“You wore them out,” she said.

Rebecca and Michael seldom slept in the same room. Emelda had anticipated difficulty in settling them down, but, other than a short spate of snarkiness from Becky, everything had gone smoothly.

“Wore me out too,” he said.

“Maybe you shouldn’t go tonight,” she tried.

He averted his eyes, slapped the clip into the bottom of the little automatic and thumbed the safety into the ‘on’ position. He set the Beretta on the wooden countertop and covered it with a dish towel.

She lowered her voice, walked his way. “Maybe we should just go in on our own.” She gestured surrender with her hands. “You know…like ‘here we are; help us.’ “

“We both know what that means.”

They knew, because they’d been there before and there consisted of an endless succession of rented rooms and round the clock security. That was the protocol, protective custody until all involved agencies saw fit to work out who was responsible for what and what, if anything, they planned to do about it.

Five years earlier, with only one child to contend with, Gilbert and Emelda had lasted less than a month in protective custody. The situation proved toxic, as if the very air had become carcinogenic. They’d agreed they were never going back there. Ever. No matter what.

“You’re right,” she said grudgingly. “I couldn’t do that again.”

Gilbert put his hand on the dish towel. “Make sure…” he began.

Emelda shook him off, lest he go through the mechanics of the gun again.

“You showed me,” she said.

He grimaced and tried to calm himself.

She sensed his discomfort, stepped over and threw her arms around his neck. Gilbert hesitated, as if unwilling to remove his hand from the gun, and then reciprocated, resting his head on her shoulder as he squeezed her around the waist. They stood in the yellow lantern light for a time, wordlessly embracing, seeking comfort from the storm their lives had suddenly become.

Finally, Gilbert opened his eyes and separated from his wife. “It’s an hour and a half each way,” he said. “Figure a half an hour in St. George.” He checked his watch. “I should be back…one-thirty… two tops. We can sleep in.”

Despite a growing sense of apprehension, she smiled and nodded, watching her husband scoop up his keys and don his jacket before he stepped over and brushed her cheek with his lips, careful not to allow the gun in his waistband to touch her. She followed him out onto the front porch, watched as Gilbert started the car and motored slowly down the drive. She put both hands across her belly, as if to keep her innards in place, and watched the red lights disappear into the forest

__

He watched the SUV roll down the dirt track and disappear from view.
When the red glow of the vehicle
’
s tail lights no longer tinged the underside of the clouds, he held his breath and listened until the soft whine of the car
’
s engine faded to a whisper and finally to nothing at all, as yet another frenzied rush of wind sent the trees waving in every direction at once. The air was heavy with the odor of pine and the promise of rain.

He turned his attention back to the cabin.
The pair of square windows threw yellow shafts of light down across the porch. Mama cow stood, half in, half out of the darkness, pitifully reduced to massaging her barren belly with both hands while the handsome stranger rode off into the sunset.

He watched her stand on the porch and stare into the darkness. No need to wonder what she was thinking. The swirling wind carried her scent to him.
From forty yards, he could smell fear, rank and acrid.

Women wanted to live forever. That
’
s what nature gave them in lieu of courage. The instinctive desire to persist and pass on their genes regardless of the degree of difficulty involved, like salmon struggling upstream to order to spawn.

After several moments, she sidled to the front of the porch, stuck her hand out from under the roof and tested for rain. As if to answer, a sudden gust of wind swirled the dust in the yard.
She used her hands to swat at the thick airborne screen and then hurried to the front door.
A volley of raindrops slatted noisily on the ground as the leading edge of the storm finally arrived.
She disappeared inside.

He leaned back against a small tree and slipped his backpack from his shoulders.
He unzipped the pack and removed the contents which he then laid out on the hill by his right side, making certain they were properly arranged, evenly spaced and oriented, then turned his attention to the Blackberry in his parka pocket. He pushed a series of buttons and watched the Google map appear on the screen.
Waited as the little red pin finally appeared and began to move up route eighty-nine, past Jacob Lake, toward the Utah border.
As he
’
d surmised, papa cow was on his way to St. George and the wonders of WiFi.
He pushed the power button, watched the screen go dark and leaned back against the hill.
His head was spinning.

No hurry. No hurry. No hurry. He said it in a low voice, over and over until the drone became part of the wind.

__

At first she thought it was lightning. The sudden white flash then slow fade to black. She counted, waiting for the thunder to tell her how far away the storm was. One, two, three…” When it didn’t come, she listened more intently. Four, five, six, seven.. Nothing but muffled roar of wind and rain reached her ears.

Or was it the other way around? First the thunder, then the lightning. She couldn’t remember. Her brain was mush. She felt as if a steel rod had been driven the length of her. Pounded right down through her skull, through her innards and then out…out into the ground, pinning her, wriggling like a captured moth, flapping the last of its life powder out into the air.

When the white flashed again, she rose and walked to the door. The sounds of the storm were louder now. The door rattled in its casing. She waited until the door stopped moving and then opened it a crack.

The rain came in volleys, one hissing silver squadron after another, exploding against the porch roof like kamikazes, crashing counterpoint to the whooshing howl of the wind and the gurgling sound of running water.

She reached to close the door when the light once again flashed. Like and old fashioned flash bulb. Bright and white leaving the eyes to blink away the red spot.

The cry. The cry of a child. The sound touched her, straightened her spine. She stepped into the doorway and listened harder. The wind blew her hair into her face. She brushed it away. The child cried again. Her insides contracted.

She looked around in disbelief. They were in the middle of nowhere. The only human beings within miles. A crying child wasn’t possible. She looked over her shoulder at the little battery powered radio they’d brought along, hoping the noise was coming from its speaker, but the plastic face was dark and blank.

Leaving the front door ajar, she hurried to the bedroom and peeked inside. The sight of both children sleeping pulled a deep sigh of relief from her chest. She closed the door and crossed the board floor to the gaping front door.

As if on cue, the sound again. Something different this time. Words rather than a simple cry. ‘Mama’ something before the wind blew the sound away. Emelda stepped out onto the porch, latching the door behind her. Another flash. Another cry. Words again. Not the same words as the last time.

‘Can we go. Can we?’ found its way to her ears. The windblown words pushed Emelda back into the cabin for her coat. She pulled Gilbert’s Red Sox baseball cap from the peg and jammed it down over her ears. No sense beating herself up about it. The why would have to wait. Truth was, she had to know. Had to satisfy herself that nothing out there needed her help…or else…or she couldn’t go on with any of the rest of this nightmare. What would be the point if doing the right thing wasn’t of paramount importance? She checked the kids again and then grabbed the flashlight from the mantel.

She crossed to the kitchen counter, pushed the dish towel aside and, without hesitation, picked up the gun. She flipped the safety to OFF and then put the gun gently in the pocket of her coat. The dish towel slid to the floor. She left it there.

She leaned back against the counter and inhaled deeply several times, before crossing to the door and letting herself out into the storm and the flash of white light.

17

Bobby buzzed them into his office. His face spoke for itself. The ruddy glow had ebbed, the smooth Southern charm reduced to little more than tight-lipped concern.

“We seem to have seriously underestimated our adversary,” he drawled.

Jackson Craig didn’t disagree. “If it weren’t for Special Agent Williams here, you’d be getting your best black suit dry-cleaned.”

Bobby exercised his gift for Southern understatement. “We do indeed seem to find ourselves a bit behind the curve here,” he drawled.

“It won’t happen again,” Craig quickly assured him. “The hunted are about to become the hunters.”

“We’ve got two full teams on your family,” Bobby said. He shuffled some paperwork and peered over the half-glasses resting on the end of his nose. “LAPD found the shooter’s weapon three blocks south of the crime scene. Pasadena PD is talking to a Metro driver who thinks he may have picked the guy up on the same block where they found the gun. They’re working up a composite.”

“How’s the security officer?” Audrey asked.

Bobbypointed to his own upper chest. “She had a through and through that quite luckily only nicked her clavicle. Her vest stopped the second round. They say she’s going to be alright. Should have a complete recovery.”

They went over it all. How Cyber Crimes had discovered that Gil subscribed to half a dozen commercial internet services that purport to monitor the safety of your identity, to give you advance warning in the event someone is mucking about in your paperwork all of which went red on the day Steve Wald was killed. How NSA was still working on the stolen USMS identities, but had nothing substantial to report as of yet. Everything to date.

Bobby flipped a page. “This is where it gets curiouser and curiouser.”

“How’s that?” Craig asked.

“That newspaper article the sniper left at the Wyoming scene yielded several skin cells. The bureau worked up a partial DNA profile.” He flipped the page. “We received a match from, of all sources, The National Center for Missing and Abused Children.” He briefly paused and then began to read aloud. “Colin Satterwaite. No middle name. Five years, three months, four days at the time of his kidnapping. Taken from New Paltz, New York on December 29, 1990. Playing in his own front yard one minute, gone the next.” The Ops Director peered at the report over the top of his glasses. “Soon as they eliminated the parents, local law enforcement called in the FBI who, according to my source in the bureau, spent two weeks beating the bushes and came up with nothing. He read silently for a time, then continued. “No ransom demands, no contact of any kind from the kidnapper. Case went officially closed in late ninety one.”

Audrey Williams pulled her Blackberry from her pocket and began touching buttons. Bobby was old school. He frowned his disapproval. When she continued to peer at the screen and push buttons, he returned to the printed pages. “Father was a shift supervisor at a factory that manufactured woven labels. Died in a car accident about a year and a half after his son’s disappearance.” His eyes moved downward. “You read between the lines here and it sounds like the father didn’t take it very well. Maybe was in the process of drinking himself to death when he wrapped his truck around a bridge abutment at four in the morning.”

“And the mother?”

“Mother… Maryelizabeth Murrey and sister, Arlene. Both still alive and still living together in New Paltz, New York. Mother is fifty-nine, living on disability and her late husband’s pension. The sister was thirteen years older than the boy. She’ll be thirty- seven next month, lives with her mother, teaches kindergarten at Arrowhead Elementary School in New Paltz.”

“That’s crazy,” Craig said.

“The chances of the sample being from anyone other than Colin Satterwaite are one in a hundred seventy-three million.” Bobby paused for effect and then held up a restraining hand. “Hang in there. This thing gets even further round the bend. So…about the time I’m sittin’ here with my mouth open, trying to digest this most unusual development, I get another call. It’s NSA. They’re responding to my request for information on the guy who rented the Wyoming snowmobile.”

“Arnold Jay Abrams,” Craig said.

“The very same,” Bobby said. “NSA tells me there’s flag on the file and that if I want info on Mr. Abrams I’ll need to contact the U.S. Marshals.”

“Did they say why?”

“Nope. Just see the U.S.M.S. and a reference number.”

“So you called.”

“You won’t believe this,” Bobby said.

“Try me.”

“Arnold Jay Abrams is a Witness Protection Identity. Or at least it was at one time. The fictitious Mr. Abrams passed away in 2006.”

“You’re right, I don’t believe it.”

“Seems somebody hacked their way into a vendor file. The janitorial company they hire to clean safe houses. The file contained the names and pertinent information on a number defunct Witness Protection identities. People who’d either passed away or simply disappeared from view.”