The Timer Game (33 page)

Benny Jingelston had been ready. He’d known she was coming, even before she did.

The Spikeman had set it up. Even this. He’d wanted her to come to Folsom, or at least he’d been prepared if she did. Knowing that if she was able to secretly investigate the paper-making, it would lead her here, to Benny. Was Benny’s story a lie? A false trail? Trying to get her off course. Wasting time. Somebody who could do video, Benny had said. Anybody could do video, with the ease of technology and the Internet.

She checked her watch. 7:35. She walked over to the wooden arm of the gate and looked through the underpass, as if by staring long enough, Associate Warden Thor Syzmanski would materialize. The guard opened the door and stuck his head out. “Help you?”

She shook her head. She leaned against the guard shack and pulled out her notepad. Dr. Mike Yura, DeeDee had said. He was the younger doctor—
(fake?)
she wrote next to his name—who’d talked them into coming back for the second sonogram. Maybe it was an anagram. The Spikeman liked to play games. Playing the Timer Game for the highest stakes she’d ever known was the clearest manifestation of that, but it was even there in his use of clown wrapping paper.

She played with the name in her mind, rewriting it on the pad: Mike U. Ray. Muray Kie. Maury Eik. Ike Mayru. May Rukie. She rubbed her eyes. None of those rang even slightly. Yura. Yura. Yura sucker, yes? She played with the first name again. Kiem. Kiem Yura.

Kiem. Yura. Say it fast ten times
. Her mind raced, repeating the name over and over like Yin scrabbling inside the exercise wheel.
Keemura keemura KEEMura
. She straightened. Change the accent and there it was. Chimera.

A mythical beast. Part goat and lion and dragon. The name of a multibillion-dollar enterprise. The Center for BioChimera. And another, less familiar definition: an intermingling of cells that normally don’t belong together. He was good.

Footsteps crunched aross the cement in the underpass. Syzmanski had a list in his hand.

“I can’t access until tomorrow the complete list of people cleared to see him, but here’s the ones who showed up last visiting day on Thursday.” Syzmanski pointed to the third name on the list. “Two attorneys and this one.”

A woman. Cecilia O. Perkins. The same woman Mac said had been fired as a researcher from Scripps for trying to steal biotech secrets after she’d planted an audio bug in a chart.

“It’s Benny’s sister, if that’s any help. You can take the list with you.”

“Thanks.” She tucked the list under her arm.

Syzmanski smiled briefly. “Whenever you’re ready to tell me the truth, I’ll listen.”

“Thanks for that, too.”

He turned and said over his shoulder, “Oh, and she goes by her middle name. Opal.”

Grace jerked her head around, stunned. “What did you say? Opal?”

“You know her?”

“The Opal I know’s a caretaker for mentally ill clients in a halfway house.”

“Have a last name?”

“Not yet.” She turned and started to run.

Chapter 36

All Hallows’ Eve, 7:44 p.m.

She let herself look at the timer again as she slid into the car. The smile was completely gone and it appeared that pixels were starting at the top of Katie’s forehead and working down so that the last thing to disappear would be her eyes. Locked on Grace.

She realized suddenly she wasn’t hearing the CD, and her heart skidded, and then she heard the murmur of voices, garage mechanics talking, and the clang of tools. She did the mental calculation. 7:44. The CD would run out at 8:36. It would take longer than that to get back. Once the CD ended, there was a chance her absence would be discovered. She had to move faster, and even then she feared it wouldn’t be fast enough to save Katie. At the rate Katie’s image was being erased, it would disappear before they reached San Diego.

She drove carefully until she hit the interstate and picked up speed, allowing herself finally to think about what she’d learned inside. It had to be the same Opal. That would explain Eddie Loud targeting Grace. Opal would have set it up. Eddie lived at the halfway house so Opal had easy access to him. It was all part of some elaborate puzzle carefully orchestrated before Katie’s birthday party, long before Eddie Loud warned her about the Spikeman.

But why? What had she ever done that had set this in motion?

A lady
, Katie had said, her voice small. Maybe the main player was female. Maybe if a synthesizer could alter voices, it could alter gender.

For years Grace had balanced the pieces of her life with Katie like some exotic high-wire dancer, juggling car pools and play dates and whispered confidences late at night, knowing that the slightest misstep would send it crashing down. And now somebody named Opal had wormed into the middle of her world and plucked out the only thing that mattered: Katie.

She was driving too fast toward Lodi, a sick feeling in her gut. A high wind fence stitched across a brown dusty hill in the beam of her headlights, and a power plant winked by in a blur of gleaming metal. She dialed Warren’s numbers. Nobody picked up. She tried Mac next.

“Mac.” His voice was short.

“Benny Jingelston’s as creepy as they come, Mac. He was a surgeon. A heart guy, working on kids. He had a child porn ring.”

“Wait a minute, I know that name. Benny Jingelston. I ran across his name working on this series. He was the source at Folsom for that clown wrapping paper around the bloody doll?”

“I think so, yeah. He has a sister in San Diego, Mac. Opal Perkins.
Cecelia
Opal Perkins, the Scripps bioresearcher. Listen. I think she could be the same woman who’s the caretaker at the halfway house where Eddie Loud and Jazz Studio lived. I need you to check that out. She and Benny could be working together.”

“Which means this Opal could have Katie.”

“I don’t even know if she’s the right Opal. Call Warren Pendrell. Keep calling him. He’s not picking up right now. Sometimes he’s in the lab, but he always checks messages.”

She didn’t want to get her hopes up that they were getting close. She sorted through her purse and found the address and number to the halfway house, along with Warren’s numbers. She recited them into the phone.

“Warren can give you the caretaker’s last name. If it is her, don’t go in by yourself. Go in with the police.”

“If Katie’s there, I’m getting her out.”

“We don’t know what we’re up against, Mac. At least go in with Warren. He can send somebody in with you. He’s got good security.”

“If there’s a chance she’s in there,” Mac said, his voice thick, “I’m going in.”

She folded the cell closed. What she’d learned inside Folsom terrified her. Next to her on the seat, the CD ended. Panic flushed up her body in a wave and she drove faster.

It was after eight thirty when she took the exit leading to the café and curio shop. The gas station was lit up; a man in shorts was putting gas into a camper.

The red Acura wasn’t near the mechanics bay. She slowed the car and coasted the length of the garage, slowing further near the parking slots in front of the curio shop.

Her rental car. The red Acura. It wasn’t there. Jeanne was supposed to meet her inside the café, but the car should be there, unless Jeanne had driven it off somewhere.

She circled around the back of the building and found it parked next to a black sedan under a streetlight. The driver’s door hung open.

Fear squeezed through her as she ran over to look. The keys were gone. The charts were gone. The cell phone lay open on the seat next to the Walkman, its cover up.

The burned CD was gone.

Grace’s breath gusted. She slid into Jeanne’s Taurus and drove toward the café. In the window was a red-haired woman.

She was sitting between two men. They were big men. Men Grace had never seen before, and even from the angle of the window, driving by, Grace could see the gun bulging under vest of the man leaning into Jeanne, see Jeanne’s wide eyes, her face white.

See her fear.

Chapter 37

All Hallows’ Eve, 8:36 p.m.

Grace kept driving. She parked in the back next to the Acura. She put her crime lab ID into the pocket of her pants and stowed her shoulder bag under the seat. Light spilled out the door of the restaurant, open to the cool night air, and she got out and heard the sounds of a busy kitchen. She opened the screen door and went in, walking briskly through the kitchen and catching out of the corner of her eye a busy trio working the grill and another cook chopping vegetables.

The kitchen had a long steel counter with warming lights and a row of metal clothespins where the orders were stuck. A waitress wearing a white and pink apron was collecting a set of dinners, positioning them up her arm. Grace found the employee bathroom and on the hook next to it, an apron that matched one the waitress was wearing. She put it on and pushed open the door leading to the restaurant.

It was cooler and quieter on that side of the café. It was a busy Halloween night and most of the tables and booths were filled with people in costume. Grace spotted Jeanne’s red hair. They had moved her over toward the cashier and one of the men had gone ahead to pay the bill. Jeanne looked gray, leaning on her cane. Her purse bulged and Grace knew she must have the charts tucked inside.

The bigger guy stayed close to Jeanne, one hand clamping her elbow. Anybody casually looking at it would think he was helping, but Grace knew he was applying pressure to a point in her elbow that would incapacitate her with the slightest touch.

Jeanne saw her in that instant and Grace nodded toward the kitchen door. Jeanne blinked and kept her face blank.

The man holding Jeanne’s arm must have sensed her presence and he craned his massive neck to get a better look. Grace turned and pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, her heart pounding. She smiled at a sweaty-faced cook as he transferred three plates onto the warming counter. She picked up a plate with meatloaf and peas and a second one of chicken Parmesan.

“I’ll take these.”

“Wait,” he snapped. She kept moving. “You,” he said again more loudly.

The dishwasher looked up curiously from a soapy sink and put his head back down. It didn’t concern him, whatever it was. But the cook was attracting attention and Grace stopped walking, the plates burning hot indents into her arms. She turned and looked at him.

“Yes?”

He snapped down a ticket and handed it across the counter. “Don’t forget the check.”

“Right, right.” She smiled and took it and banged through the swinging door.

The man who had paid was going through the door, and the other guy was taking up the rear, pushing Jeanne along. It wouldn’t be long before they had her outside in their car.

Jeanne slowed down, protesting that she needed to use the bathroom before they went, but the man holding her arm wouldn’t hear of it.

“What are you trying to do, kidnap her?” Grace said in a loud voice, drawing stares from nearby diners. When he turned and frowned at her, Grace knocked into him with the hot plates of food. He turned instinctively to block the momentum of congealed mashed potatoes, lava gravy, peas as hot as steel pellets, and the loaf of burning hot meat flying dead-on into his flat, surprised face, and in that instant, Jeanne raised her cane and smashed him in the testicles with Willa. He went down like an ox.

Grace dropped the second plate of food with a crash, and the red marinara sauce and chicken slicked across the floor. Hearing the commotion inside, the first man ran through the door, slipped on the sauce, and bucked headfirst over his partner. Grace yanked the stick from Jeanne and cracked him in the head with Willa, and his eyes rolled back.

Grace cried, “Somebody call nine-one-one. These are very bad man. Very bad.”

She fumbled for her crime lab ID and pulled it out. “CSI San Diego. On a case in

Lodi. Hold these guys for the police. I repeat, do not let these men out of your sight.”

She turned to Jeanne and thrust out the stick. “This way. Now.”

Jeanne grabbed Willa and lurched after Grace through the swinging doors into the kitchen. A butcher knife lay on a cutting board and Grace grabbed it and went through the kitchen out into the damp night. Nobody had moved. Nobody said a word.

“Which car are they driving?”

Jeanne pointed to the sedan.

“Wait in the Taurus for me. I’ll do the driving. I’ll be right back.”

Grace trotted over and drove the butcher knife into a tire, yanking out the blade and moving to the next one. After she’d slashed all four, she ran to the Acura and did the same thing. She left the knife and the apron at the screen door and ran back to Jeanne.

“Fuck,” Jeanne said.

Grace’s hands shook. She couldn’t seem to get the key into the ignition.

“Damn.” Jeanne rolled her palms across her knees and wiped her mouth.

The key slid in and Grace cranked the gas, careened around the corner, and shot out into the intersection. She coasted through a four-way stop.

She pulled from a side pocket the directions she’d scribbled earlier and passed them to Jeanne. “Where am I going?”

“Left here. Toward Dead Cat Alley.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“That’s what you wrote. Then left on Main Street and merge onto I-5 south.”

They rode in silence through the middle of town on Main Street. A bar spilled Halloween revelers onto the sidewalk, the costumes strange and hard-edged, full of chainmail and studs. The car joined the traffic heading south on the freeway. Jeanne abruptly started shivering, her teeth chattering, and after a while, she rolled down the window and took giant gulps of air. “Pull over,” she cried. “I’m going to be sick.”

Grace swerved into the emergency lane and stopped the car. Jeanne rolled out her side and crouched down over the embankment, heaving. Grace remembered the brads and slid the charts out of Jeanne’s purse. She unfastened the brad on Katie’s chart, wondering if even then the Spikeman was sending someone after them.