The Timer Game
Jeb held the cup up to the light and checked for contaminants, discarding the thimble of fuel in a quick toss onto the tarmac that left a faint streak of shine. He half waved and mimed checking his watch. He held up five fingers. Mac nodded and turned away from the window.
He knew from experience Jeb still needed to check the control surfaces, making certain the safety wires were secure, tweak the wheel pants to see if they moved, eyeball the static port, a quarter-sized metal piece flush on each side of the sleek white body, to ensure that the pin-sized hole at the center wasn’t blocked. More checks than that, but that was enough to know he had five minutes at least.
He walked to the computer desk and found the mouse amid a stack of papers. He drank the rest of his coffee and sat down, fingers clicking over the keys, looking for breaking news stories, an occupational curse.
He found a Web stream of a local news station out of Tucson, anchored by a stocky man with darkly handsome features and a much younger woman wearing a crisp suit. The female anchor, hair stiff with gel, was introducing a piece out of San Diego. Mac had seen a flash the night before. Something about a California senator’s son being shot in a meth bust gone bad.
He turned up the sound. He knew that part of San Diego, Ocean Beach – a funky hippie holdout with bead shops and tattooed panhandlers usually accompanied by pit bulls. He saw her darting out of a squad car into a jostling thicket of reporters and felt his throat close.
Grace Descanso.
Grace. Her hair was shorter than he remembered. But her face still held a curious mix of intelligence and warmth and a kind of raw sexuality, the kind no woman could manufacture. It came from some molten liquid place deep inside.
It had been over five years since Guatemala, and yet he instantly felt the roiling emotions he’d experienced standing next to her in that makeshift shed assisting her as she doctored, felt the remembered cautious optimism, the laughing connection, and then the quiet certainty, born of hope and fostered in every act of kindness, every molecule of her hard, clean presence, that they belonged together then and always, that neither time nor space nor act of God could separate them.
That she was the woman he was willing to die for.
Die for, perhaps, but not give up the story for.
And so it is, and was, and always shall be, amen.
His career was not a cold thing. It was a sinuous presence, alive, a shape-shifter, luring him always with the next seductive thing just over the horizon, the eternal quest to get to the bottom of things, to get it right.
For a brief moment he’d been certain he could have it all.
She was the one who got away. She was his great What If.
They’d been in a dangerous spot and he’d left her there; he knew it was dangerous and he’d left her there, to meet whatever fate was hers while he went into the next country, and then the next, dogging a lead that melted into lies, that changed form, that became a breathless and sensational story that faded away into a yellow dawn, leaving him stunned and awake for the first time in months, with a bitter taste of fear and regret in his mouth. And afraid for her, for what he’d done. For what he had not.
He’d come back for her then and she was gone and there was nothing but scorched earth, and she’d stayed gone for the longest time and to be honest, It wasn’t all bad, his work murmured, She was a distraction, an inconvenience, a minor character in the play of your life.
And now there she was like some apparition, standing there with her head tucked, rushing away from the cameras into a waiting car.
He watched the piece straight through and turned it off.
Jeb poked his head inside the door. ‘Ready?’
Mac nodded.
Jeb zipped up his leather jacket. ‘We might get whapped around a little up there. Expect some turbulence.’
Mac already knew that.
FIVE
He’s coming for you. I came to save you, warn you.
It played through her mind all night, darting through her dreams, leaving her troubled and drenched in sweat.
He’s after you. The Spikeman.
A warning, specifically for her. How else would he have known her name?
You need to run, Grace.
And if it was a legitimate threat, it meant she’d killed the only person who could lead her to the truth. She was a sitting duck now, stalled in the crosshairs, easy pickings for whatever fresh lunatic came lurching out of the muck whispering her name.
She gave up trying to sleep as dawn washed the boats in the harbor a pale shade of gold. The water was a gunmetal gray and the sand looked cold. She took Helix outside and walked him quickly, sticking to side streets, eyes darting, looking for danger, wondering if when it came she’d even recognize it. Helix was no help; there wasn’t a person that his joyous broken body didn’t love. The street was quiet when she unlocked the door afterward and let him in, and she was relieved to be done, wondering if that’s the way it was going to be now, always looking behind her, scared.
She took a shower and studied herself in the closet mirror. Her skin looked unnaturally pale, and smudges accented her dark eyes. She lifted her black hair off her neck and studied the damage. The bruise on the right side of her neck was as big as a fist, and her jawline, still strong – although at thirty-two, time was waging its inexorable battle – was faintly discolored. The bruise was turning an interesting shade of purple. She smiled bleakly into the mirror. At least he’d missed her teeth.
He’s the Spikeman. He transmits signals through the wires in my brain.
Yeah, right. Not anymore, sweetheart. She put on a turtleneck.
Jeanne was still sleeping on the foldout sofa in the family room as Grace carried Katie’s clothes into the kitchen and made coffee. She could hear the scratchy sound of Jeanne’s gerbils stirring in their cage. The gerbils were Jeanne’s pets, lab animals from her old life as a medical researcher. They’d never worked at the same place, but when Grace had been ready to get a sponsor, Jeanne’s connection to science had been one of the things that made Grace trust her. Science didn’t lie. Both women appreciated that.
Grace got out a pencil and tablet, her mind blank. Months ago, she’d taken a game from her own childhood and tweaked it, using it to make Katie’s transition into the school week easier. It had morphed into Katie’s favorite, the game they always played on Mondays to get dressed.
The Timer Game involved everything Katie loved: clues, a race against time, and at the end, if she beat the timer, a small treat to kick-start the day. It was helping Katie identify words and begin to grasp the passage of time, but now, October, all the easy combinations of rhymes and hiding places had been exhausted. Grace kept the old clues in a kitchen drawer. She riffled through them. It reminded her of sorting recipes, wondering if it was too soon again to try the meatloaf.
She found some clues she could modify and worked silently, concentrating. Jeanne appeared in the doorway arch, hair springy, a pink kimono cinched around her waist. She was in her midfifties and looked older. Alcohol and too much time in the sun had thickened her skin into a deep web of lines. She had dyed her hair a defiant shade of red that both moved and amused Grace. This was a woman who would not go quietly. Soberly and with a bad knee, but not quietly.
‘Coffee.’ Jeanne eased into a chair. Helix woofed a greeting and Jeanne absently scratched his head as he settled himself at her feet.
‘Bad night?’ Grace poured a cup and gave it to her.
‘When are you going to tell her?’ Jeanne stared at the clues. ‘Oh, God, Monday.’
‘Yeah, I have to hide all this stuff before she wakes up.’ Grace scooped up Katie’s clothes and bent to pick up Spot Goes to the Farm, splayed open on the kitchen floor. She folded Katie’s T-shirt into the book, putting them under the kitchen sink along with the correct clue.
‘Mommy?’ The voice was coming from the stairwell upstairs.
‘I’m coming,’ Grace called. ‘I’ll be right there.’
‘You don’t want her finding out at school.’ Jeanne stared at Grace across the cup rim.
‘I’ll tell her, okay?’ Grace said irritably. ‘But not right now.’ She ran into the living room and hid Katie’s underpants along with a clue. From upstairs came the sound of a toilet flushing.
‘I’m using your shower.’ Jeanne was making her way to the stairs, leaning on her cane.
‘Go for it.’
‘Mommy?’ Katie’s voice was imperious, the queen summoning her court.
‘Coming!’ Grace shouted as she trotted into the kitchen and grabbed the timer. She stuffed Katie’s shorts and a clue into the family room bookshelf behind a tub of clay, dropped Katie’s Air Walkers next to the cage holding Jeanne’s gerbils, and scanned the room, trying to find some small treat. She settled on a pack of balloons she’d bought for the party and slid one into the final note, putting it under a shoe and covering everything with the cage blanket.
‘Mommy!’ Katie bellowed from upstairs. Helix perked up, ears lopsided, and trotted off to join her. Grace took a slow breath and climbed the stairs.
Katie waited in bed, eyes closed, pouting, Helix next to her on the quilt. ‘If you played this game, you’d lose.’
Grace stood the first clue on the top bookshelf next to the Peace Beanie Baby. ‘Well, guess what? Keep your eyes closed, honey; Helix, down.’ She pulled him off the bed and he grunted and flopped on the floor. ‘I played this game with my dad and your Uncle Andy when I was a kid and I was really good at it.’
She slid the scalloped socks she was holding under the bed ruffle along with the last clue and stood at the side of the bed, her hand on the timer.
‘Okay, at the count of three, I start the timer and you open your eyes. One … two …’
Katie’s eyes popped open. She scanned the room and spotted the note. ‘Three!’ She scrambled out of bed and flew to the bookshelf.
‘Three,’ Grace finished, giving the timer a brisk turn. Sixty seconds. Katie snatched up the first clue and opened it.
‘Today … is,’ Katie sang out.
‘You can read that?’ Grace settled onto the floor.
‘Mommy, that’s how all the clues start, so now I know those words.’ She stabbed her finger at the next word. ‘Mah … mah … Mommy?’
‘Today is Mommy? That’s silly.’
Katie grinned and threw her arms around Grace. ‘Today is Mommy, silly dilly Mommy.’ She beamed, her goodness radiating, at making this small joke.
From down the hall came the sound of a shower starting.
‘Who’s here?’
‘Jeanne. Remember? You have Show and Tell today with the gerbils.’
‘I just want to be with you.’ Katie crawled into her lap. ‘I need you to read these today. You pretend I’m little and I can’t read anything yet. Read the whole thing.’ She smiled sunnily.
‘Okay. Look at the words while I point.’
Katie repositioned herself and Grace smelled the ripe sleep smell of her young skin. Grace pointed and read aloud:
‘Today is MondayHere we goYour socks are close bySomeplace low.’
‘Someplace low, someplace low,’ Katie muttered, rolling to her knees and scanning the carpet. Grace saw a wink of hot pink under the bed ruffle. Katie scrambled to it. ‘Aha!’
The timer dinged. ‘You beat it. You beat the timer. I didn’t hide those very well, did I?’
‘Nope,’ Katie said cheerfully. She pulled on both socks and trotted back to Grace with the second clue. Grace reset the timer and read:
‘Far from hereIs underwearNear a windowDown the stair.’
‘Down the stair!’ Katie urged. ‘Come on!’
‘No running on the stairs!’
Katie shot ahead, running. Helix joined her, his leg banging on each step. The staircase opened into the living room and by the time Grace had made her way down, Katie was yanking on a pair of flowered underpants under her nightie, Helix prancing and yipping in tight circles around her.
‘Come on, hurry!’ Katie thrust a clue at Grace, and Grace reset the timer and read aloud:
‘Your T-shirt’s pinkAnd if you lookUnder a sinkIt’s in a book.’
‘This is too easy today,’ Katie protested, heading for the kitchen.
‘Maybe you’re just too good.’
Katie bent and opened the door under the kitchen sink and pulled out the Spot book and the T-shirt. She squirmed out of her nightie and pulled the T-shirt over her head. ‘Read,’ she commanded, her voice muffled.
Grace reset the timer and read the next clue as Katie’s face breathlessly emerged.
‘So take the bookPut it awayThen take a lookBehind the clay.’
‘I didn’t leave this book out.’
‘Helix likes to read at night when we go to bed.’
‘You’re funny.’ Katie carried the book through the archway into the family room, glancing at the rumpled foldout bed and covered cage. She stood for a moment staring at the shelves jammed with games, books, abandoned dolls. She found the clay bin and moved it aside, snatching up the shorts and a clue.
‘Put the book away!’ Grace reminded, as Katie pulled on her blue shorts. A thumping sound like a heavier Helix signaled the approach of Jeanne, making her way slowly with her cane down the stairs into the kitchen. Katie shoved the book onto the shelf as Grace reset the timer and read:
‘You’re almost done.To find your shoesLook by a cage.No time to snooze!’
‘Well,’ Katie sniffed confidently. She pulled the blanket off the cage and sat down next to the gerbils. Yin padded in a revolving wheel. At almost five, he was elderly, and his back was a slow-moving checkerboard blur of brown and white fur laid out in a neat grid of alternating squares. Helix nosed the cage and yipped.
‘Stop already, Helix,’ Grace said. ‘It’s not like you’ve never seen gerbils before.’
Through the archway in the small, sunny kitchen, Jeanne poured kibble into a porcelain bowl and the sound brought Helix clacking into the kitchen as Katie put on her first shoe and adjusted the Velcro straps. She found the note and the balloon under the second shoe and put it on before she handed the note to Grace to read out loud. Grace had written in block letters:
‘You have fun!At school, at playAnd know I love you!All the day!’
‘That was fast today,’ Katie said wistfully.
Grace was silent, thinking about how she still had to tell her daughter what had happened, how her instinct was to delay. ‘Come on, sweetie, maybe you can practice at breakfast.’
‘Okay, so the front page is the section you don’t want to read,’ Jeanne said. She turned to a new section. ‘Oh, and also Metro. You can skip right over that part today.’
Grace shot her a look.
‘Why?’ Katie asked. She looked up from her bowl, where she had been picking out all the letter M’s and putting them in a soggy row on the table.
Grace reached for a hairbrush on the counter and moved behind her. ‘Tip your head.’
‘Why doesn’t Mommy want to read the front page or Metro, either?’ Katie said more loudly. Grace brushed through a golden tangle, snapping a tie around Katie’s ponytail.
‘You want to practice now? Pretend you’re holding Yin up in front of the class?’
Jeanne glanced pointedly at the kitchen clock. She was wearing a blue muumuu that matched her vivid blue eyes. Her eyebrows rose in penciled wings that waggled, giving Grace the clear message that time was passing and she had a job to do. Katie was absorbed in the soggy cereal, oblivious.
‘I’ll tell everybody Jeanne did it. She’s a scientist and she did it.’
‘Was,’ Jeanne corrected. She reached across the table and snapped a dead leaf off an iris. She’d brought a bouquet the night before. Jeanne’s home overlooked a canyon and she cultivated flowers in her backyard.
Part of what Grace had learned from her sponsor during the three years they’d been paired in AA was the names of flowers. The other part was more subtle, and had to do with how to live life. Grace was working on not beating herself up so much. She’d never drunk when she was pregnant, no matter how bad the flashbacks; that was the big one. But she was still working on facing things head-on. She had no idea how she was going to tell Katie.
‘And it didn’t hurt them,’ Katie said.
‘No,’ Jeanne said.
‘Okay, pretend I’m holding Yin.’ Katie stroked a finger down an imaginary back. ‘See, we each carry these things inside – these fighter things …’ She looked to Jeanne for help.
‘T cells.’
‘Right. And they’re like commandos, like Rambo or something, and they fight with everything they think’s bad. So …’ She stopped, her knowledge exhausted.
‘So what happened was,’ Jeanne picked up the thread, ‘scientists figured out a way to make it be okay.’ She hesitated and cut a quick look at Grace. ‘Your mom actually did this kind of thing when she was a doctor.’
Grace froze over the paper, waiting, always waiting for Katie to ask why: why she’d quit doctoring. Jeanne shot her a look of apology, a shrug, a what was I thinking? look.
Katie beamed at her mother, oblivious, and crowed, ‘But now she does CSI, like on TV.’
Jeanne’s shoulders relaxed. ‘That’s right. So. This little guy started out brown. And Yang, the one in the cage –’
‘He bites, that’s why we left him there. He’s the all-white one,’ Katie said.
‘Usually you can’t take white fur and put it on a gerbil that’s brown.’
‘They’d fight,’ Katie said. ‘Not gerbils. Those fighter things. Those T things.’
Jeanne nodded. ‘So we figured out a way to fool the brown fur into thinking the white fur was okay. It’s called breaking the immunity barrier and it’s a pretty big deal.’
Katie grinned and Jeanne reached across the table and gave her a high-five.
‘Great, you did great,’ Grace said. She hesitated and took a sip of coffee. ‘Honey, you know how we had to leave Party Savers yesterday?’
Katie’s eyes warily shot up. ‘You want to put the treat in my shoe?’
Grace took the curled balloon off the table, lifted Katie’s feet easily onto her lap, and pried apart a tiny pocket on the shoe. There were two secret pockets on each shoe, flat and sealed with Velcro, where Katie liked to stash emergency treats. Grace reached in and pulled out a dime.
‘Something bad happened yesterday. At work.’
She felt a small tremor run through Katie’s foot. She sealed the dime back up and opened the next pocket. Bubble gum. She closed the pocket and opened one on the other shoe. It was empty. She rolled the small pink balloon and stuffed it carefully into the pocket, sealing the Velcro, taking her time.
‘That’s why I got the bruise. I’m fine. That’s the thing. I’m okay.’
Katie’s eyes dilated to almost black. Grace knew it was Katie’s oldest fear, losing the only parent she’d ever known.
‘A man hurt some people –’
‘No! I won’t hear!’ She clamped her hands against her ears.
‘– and Mommy ended up having to hurt him.’
‘NO!’ Katie scrambled out of her seat and flung herself into Grace’s lap, her small arms tight. Grace held her and could feel her heart beat.
‘Don’t talk. Don’t.’
‘I won’t. But somebody might at school. That’s why I brought it up.’
‘What happened?’
Here it was. In a perfect world, no terrified kids ran screaming out of schools, no splintered car bombs mangled babies, no planes crashed into buildings crumpling into a blue sky.
‘Some people died yesterday.’
‘Oh.’ It was a wail, low and heartrending.
‘Mommy’s fine.’
‘Daddy died.’
‘It wasn’t like that, honey.’
‘No, no,’ Katie moaned. ‘Daddy died. You can’t die, you can’t.’
Grace murmured over and over like a song, a prayer, ‘It’s okay, Katie, it’s okay, everything’s fine, Mommy’s fine, nothing bad’s going to happen.’
Another lie.
SIX
Grace stopped at the post office on Cañon and mailed Katie’s letter, feeling a sharp stab of anxiety. Katie should have nothing more important to worry about than holding Yin by his neck so he didn’t nip her during Show and Tell, not thinking about whether something terrible would happen to her mother.
He’s coming for you.
Not if Grace could find him first.
The vehicle-processing storage facility was across from Lindbergh Field on Aerodrive. Grace parked, identified herself to the guard on duty, and told him what she needed.
‘Can’t miss it. It’s outside around back.’
The taco van was wrapped in a tent of visqueen supported by a wooden frame. It was a mideighties modified Volkswagen, originally dark blue, layered with grime and paint. She caught the reek of stove grease and Super Glue.
‘Grace.’ Paul stepped around the van, gripping a bologna sandwich. ‘You okay?’
‘Little shaky. Nice.’ She surveyed the tent. ‘Christo should be worried.’
‘He is,’ Paul said mildly. ‘Looks just like the Reichstag after he wrapped it in silver fabric, only smaller and cheesier.’
He took a bite of sandwich and his eyes went to the bruise on her jaw.
‘It’s taking what? Twenty pouches to print it?’ The police Super Glue came in foil pouches, simple to use, but costly on something this big.
‘Nah, the bean counters wouldn’t approve that, even on this one. I got creative. Used aluminum pie pans at each corner with a couple of vaporizers and squeezed out Super Glue I bought at Long’s Drug. Everybody wins.’
‘Yeah, right, except Eddie Loud.’
‘Hey, he’s the whacked-out bad guy, Grace. Not you.’
Looking at the tent made her realize what Paul wasn’t saying. How much the department was putting into processing this one. And the reason why.
‘Not many senators’ sons drive taco vans and wind up dead.’
‘You can play this one through any way you want, Grace, but it’s still going to stink. We should have good prints by late afternoon.’
‘What do you expect to find?’
‘At this point? I’m not sure.’ His jowls sagged and his eyes drooped, his usual look after a good night’s sleep. ‘I heard the first toxes from the ME said Loud was cranked.’
‘Makes sense.’ Grace had a flash of Eddie’s jangly energy. ‘Mind if I take a look?’
‘Have at it. There is something you might find interesting.’ Paul put down his sandwich and positioned his face against the cloudy plastic, looking through the window into the dim interior. Grace squinted next to him. She made out vague shapes, open chip bags, the stove. Soft white particles dusted the grill and cabinets.
‘What am I looking at?’
Paul pointed at something through the filmy visqueen and Grace took another look.
‘The kitchen timer? Is that it?’ It was a small white timer with big black numbers, sitting on the counter next to an open bag of taco shells. Grace had used an almost identical one that morning playing the Timer Game.
Paul shook his head. ‘No, that.’
She still didn’t see it.
‘Loud was wired.’ Paul pulled a Dr Pepper out of his jacket and drank.
‘Wired. What are you talking about?’
‘Right out of the Spy Shop Catalog. A tiny video cam attached to his shirt button. We think from the setup, there was a mixer right there on the counter, and I don’t mean the Martha Stewart kind.’ He pointed. ‘Whoever was in here left behind a connector cable.’
‘You think somebody was in here? Recording this?’
Paul shrugged. ‘Too soon to say. Eddie Loud’s minicam button in his shirt could turn out to be a prop, not real, not with a signal transmitting what was recorded.’
He took another swig of his drink.
‘Or it’s out there, in cyberspace, the killings.’ She stared at Paul, her gaze troubled.
‘You okay?’ he asked again.
‘He said my name, Paul, right before he tried to kill me. He warned me about somebody called the Spikeman who was coming to get me.’