The Timer Game (22 page)

“Going to the bathroom. Mind?”

He said something she couldn’t hear and his shoes scraped against the cement as he moved away. She looked around. There had to be something there she could use. Against a two-hundred-pound man who pumped iron? She only had another minute before it would be obvious to Robert what she was doing. Besides what she was doing. A small, cramped space with a toilet and sink. Prisons had better bathrooms. She could clang on the pipes. Maybe somebody downstairs. Over the noise? Not likely. Nothing. Where was picture wire when she needed it? A box cutter? Or glass for matting photos? She could break a piece, slip a shard into her pocket. He was an artist; he should have more stuff.

Only there was no wire, no razor, no glass, no nothing, except fear jangling her body and flooding her with primitive chemicals that all spelled death; she was going to die there, in a dirty space with a maniac artist who didn’t even have the decency to stock his bathroom for emergency hacking and Katie gone, so gone, with no one left to save her.

She’d dropped her bag on the floor when he grappled her. The keys. They were still in her pants pocket. She could rush the freight elevator—

Robert banged on the door and she jumped. “You expired in there?”

“Not yet.” She finished, washed her hands, dried them on her top. She opened the door.

He stood in the middle of the room, arms folded over washboard abs. She’d have to get around him to the elevator. She picked up her bag and her hand stole to her pocket and touched the keys. Distract him long enough to leap into the elevator, drag the gate locked. She’d bean him. She’d bean him with the keys and—

“What does the silicone queen want now?”

“Excuse me?”

Frieze scowled. “Don’t give me that.”

“Honestly, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Think I’m some rube off a turnip truck? You give her a message from me.” Frieze flexed his fingers and she backed away.

A lie came bubbling up, born of the hours she’d spent poring over medical charts. The Spikeman had left her the charts, placed them, like bodies arranged—
God, no, don’t think about bodies—
he wanted her to use the charts. “I’m pregnant. Something’s wrong with my baby’s heart. I researched, tried to learn everything. Five years ago, your wife was pregnant and you went to the Center for BioChimera. What happened there? Nobody tells me anything; I thought, maybe if I came here, I could save my child.”

Grace stopped.

Dumb surprise washed across his face. His mouth gaped. “This isn’t about alimony?”

Alimony. He thought Grace was a spy for his wife. Ex-wife.

“This isn’t about hiking up the already criminal amount I pay that shellacked leech every month to get her nails done?”

She swallowed laughter. No wonder Robert Harling Frieze bartended his own opening. Downplayed how well things sold. There was probably a Robert Harling Frieze sales rep working the crowd, discreetly closing deals far from attorneys and an ex wanting still meatier chunks of artist Bob, the industry.

“No. No. It’s about what happened to you and your wife at the Center for BioChimera in La Jolla. She was pregnant and had a sonogram and I need to know—”

“Let me get this straight. Terry didn’t send you.”

Grace shook her head. He studied her sharply and nodded finally, believing her.

“Now please repeat everything. I didn’t get any of it.”

She felt weak. She looked around for a place to sit and settled onto a packing crate.

“Remember that sonogram five years ago at the Center for BioChimera? Where you found out the baby your wife was carrying had heart problems?”

“You’re not a reporter?”

“No, no,” Grace said. “I—my child is at stake.” The air went out of her and she felt close to tears.

“You want to know what they did.” His voice was flat.

Something fluttered inside, some warning. She lifted her head, alert. “What they did,” she repeated.

“That’s why you came, right? To find out about the second sonogram.”

“I want to save my child,” she said, her voice low.

He looked at her. Grief convulsed his features. “Your baby will die horribly if you do this, no matter what they promise you. What have they told you so far?”

“Nothing.”

“They make you sign the form, says they’re not liable, it’s experimental? Injecting the mother with this unknown substance. What was I thinking?”

She grew still. Slowly, she straightened. “What are you talking about, injecting?”

“I’m talking about the second sonogram, lady. The one they don’t record, or if they do, it’s in some code only they can read.”

She stared, not comprehending.

“They take you back in there—late at night for us—rigged up the machine again so they could look at him, and injected something.”

“Who did this?”

He barked a laugh. “You actually think they’d use their right names? Ter and I tried to find them later—spent thousands—it was all hush-hush.”

“What did they look like?”

“People, okay? The woman was middle-aged, sort of faded. Didn’t look like much. The guy—I only met him when he set things up and that was all. This is weird, but being an artist, I remember he had great cheekbones but kind of wild eyes.”

“Did you meet them through the doctor?”

He shook his head. “We’d made it back as far as the lobby and Ter needed a minute, that’s what she said, to catch her breath. We’d had the sonogram and the doctor had told us the news about our baby’s heart. We collapsed on a sofa and I was doing my best to comfort her, when suddenly, on either side of us, there they were. At first, we thought, Jeez, give us some room, and then we realized they were there because of us. To this day, I don’t know where they came from. They were lurking, waiting for us. That’s how it felt later, when I thought about it.”

“What did they inject? Do you know?”

Robert sighed, scraped a meaty hand through his hair. “We knew Trey—that’s what we named him—would need a transplant early. That’s why Ter was so upset.”

Voices on the stairwell and laughter, silenced by the guard, calling them away.

“They cover themselves, say it could kill the baby, have you sign a release—but who believes that part, when you know if you don’t do something, your kid is as good as dead? They told us, we did this, there’d be a heart for sure for him, when the time came.”

“For sure.”

Robert nodded. “And that it would be a perfect match. That’s impossible, you know? But we were desperate, willing to try anything.”

“So you came back late at night.”

“They’d told us to where to go. It wasn’t the hospital side. It was the research side. There was another couple down there first. Like they were running us through an assembly line.”

“What did they look like?”

“The other couple? Scared, I remember. That should have been our first clue to run like hell, but I didn’t put it together until later that they were probably there for the same thing. They came out of the examining room. She was young. Maybe still in her teens. I just remember she looked like she was in shock. Like she’d been hurt. Her husband was a little older, maybe early twenties. We were willing to do anything to save our son. Even did the vitamin booster.”

“Booster. Who did that?”

He shrugged. “Same lady. Just after he’d been born. She came to our house instead of us going there and then I never saw her again. God, we were stupid.”

“What happened?”

His scowl deepened. Fists shot up and for a terrible moment, Grace was certain he was going to hit her. “Want it? Fine, lady, whoever you really are. Here it is, be my guest.”

Robert Harling Frieze ripped a loose bedsheet off a large Plexiglas frame and held it up.

The blue period. Los Angeles.

A boy. A baby.

Half baby.

Half monster.

Robert Harling Frieze had perfected hybrid art, taking found photos and attaching—
attacking,
Grace thought, was more like it—bits that assaulted the senses.

Whatever anxiety the twenty-first century held, he’d stuck his thumb into the current of dread that defined the age. It was brilliant. It was hideous.

He’d taken photos of Trey from different angles and merged them together. A beautiful toddler stared back, maybe two years old, soft smile, dimples, eyes.

Eyes. Too many eyes. Pained. Beseeching. Baby fingers spread. Knobbed.

Gray slime molds sucked at the canvas face, the neck, the back.

Living mold encased in Plexiglas.

Tumors eating the photo. The baby.

“We were willing to try anything,” Robert said again. “This is what started the end for us, right here. They stuck him with something. Stuck her
.
My wife.”

“What happened?”

He shook the painting. “This is what happened. No, Trey didn’t get a transplant. He got tumors. Hundreds of them, shunting his optic nerve, crowding his cortex, lumping his skin, twisting his spine. Making this.”

He smiled savagely. His eyes filled with tears.

Chapter 24

Saturday, 10:55 p.m.

She stopped at a late-night Target and bought toiletries and a change of clothes. As an afterthought, she cruised the Halloween aisle. Everything was picked over, but she found a Cleopatra wig wiry with electricity, and added it to her purchases.

Ever since Katie had vanished, Grace felt as if she’d abandoned her old life, perhaps for good. All she had was what she could carry with her, and the burning need to find her daughter. That meant playing the game. His game. Wherever it led.

After Robert Harling Frieze showed her the canvas, he collapsed in huge, barking sobs that brought the second-floor guard running up the stairs two at a time. In his hands, he carried a manila envelope with her name on it.

It was getting familiar now, the low-level minion delivering her marching orders, what she was supposed to do next.

“Who gave this to you?” She was scanning the thinning crowd from the second-story balcony that looked over the viewing room.

The guard shrugged. “Some guy with a scythe and pancake makeup.”

She remembered him from earlier and realized wearily she didn’t see him on the floor now. “And he’s long gone.”

“Looks that way.”

She walked back to the car before opening the envelope. In it was a registration form for the Century Plaza Hotel. She drove in silence. Katie was usually in bed by eight o’clock, and she’d gotten up early, excited about the party. Grace blinked back tears.

The desk clerk wore a badge with
AMELIA
in black letters, and red devil horns that sparkled in a nest of white-blond hair. She asked if Grace was going to use the same credit card, and Grace checked the registration form in her hands. It was her Visa. Somehow he’d accessed her Visa.

“Let’s put it on this one.” She dug an American Express out of her purse, a small act of resistance. Amelia’s fingers clicked across the keys, entering the new data.

“How long will you be staying with us?”

All Hallows’ Eve you’ll play a part. Ere midnight tolls, I cut your heart.

“Overnight.”

“We have a king-sized bed, non-smoking, with valet parking, the way you asked.”

Grace thought of something. “Did my request for a specific room make it into the computer?”

The clerk scanned the information and shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t see that here. Which room did you have in mind?”

Grace let her shoulders relax. At least her room wasn’t bugged. “Something high that can’t be accessed by an adjoining room.”

From somewhere in the hotel came the grinding beat of a live band. She remembered passing a sign advertising an accountants’ convention. Next to the lobby an escalator rose, bearing a doughy woman dressed as Bo Beep talking with a man in a sheepskin jacket. A Halloween minimalist, that one. The Spikeman could be there, watching. He could be the sheepskin guy, glancing her way as the escalator carried him out of view.

The clerk slid the key card across the counter and pointed with a lacquered fingertip at a tower. “You’re on floor twenty-three. Need help with your bags?”

Grace shook her head. “Traveling light. Business office. What time does that open?”

“Not until eight.” Grace had already started walking away when the clerk called, “Oh, yeah, I forgot. There’s this.”

Amelia put on the counter a wooden pyramid made of mahogany and inlaid with cherry.

“This is for me?” Grace didn’t want to touch it.

“You know what it is, right?”

Grace shook her head.

Amelia smiled. “It’s really cool. It’s a meditation timer.” She picked it up and studied the bottom and frowned. “Huh. Looks like it’s already been set.”

“Any idea for how long?”

“Looks like six. I’d be happy to reset it.” She reached for a knob on the bottom.

Grace snapped out her hand and stopped her. “No, no. I’ll take it the way it is.”

She yanked it out of the clerk’s hands. She could feel the wood faintly thrumming as she walked to the elevator.

She’d be up well before six. Exhaustion seeped through every pore, but she feared sleep even more, and the dreams that would come.

Her room looked out over Avenue of the Stars. Traffic droned in a constant stream. There was a movie complex across the street and a busy night crowd of people in costume lined the sidewalk. She wondered if
The
Rocky Horror Picture Show
was about to start. She’d gone with friends once at midnight to see it the night before Halloween. They were all in med school and what she remembered most was how cold the sidewalk was in Baltimore that time of year. She needed a drink. She needed to calm down and figure this out.

She took a shower and curled into a ball. She willed herself to slow down, empty her mind. The Spikeman had led her directly to Robert Harling Frieze and his revelation about experiments done on his son in utero, experiments Robert was sure had later cost his son his life.

The Spikeman was orchestrating what she found.

Parceling out facts, tantalizing bits, horrifying truths. The reality was that incrementally, fact by fact, hour by hour, the Spikeman was forging a relationship with Grace, an intimacy of horrifying intensity. He expected her to discover the truth.