The Timer Game

SEVEN

Esguio tapped three pills into his hand and swallowed them dry. ‘Thyroid, heart. Cholesterol. Take my advice. Never get old.’

‘I’ll remember that.’

They sat in a vinyl booth at the back of Denny’s on Rosecrans, a couple of blocks from where Esguio said he lived. Grace ordered French toast; Esguio stuck with coffee. He had wide lips and took small sips of air as he talked, as if breathing was hard work.

‘Descanso. You one of Francisco Descanso’s grandkids?’

‘You knew my grandfather?’

‘Sure. Everybody knew him. Terrible thing, what happened to his son.’

Grace blinked and looked away.

She could feel his face change. She should have expected it. Esguio was Portuguese. Of course he’d know about her father. Back then everybody Portuguese lived in a tight community in Point Loma, fished on boats passed down to their sons.

‘Must have been, what? Thirty years ago?’

‘Twenty-one. I was eleven when he washed overboard.’

Eleven when Lottie dragged her and her kid brother, Andy, out of the warmth and safety of Point Loma, into a life on the road. Grace had spent the last of her childhood shuttling from one beer-soaked bar to another, living out of cardboard suitcases while Lottie warbled in bars, living out her fantasy of becoming a country-western singer.

If her father had lived, Grace wouldn’t feel so damaged today. By any standard but her own, Grace had done well, but every step along the way had been punctuated with failure and despair and terrible doubts. Goodness was a fragile thing, chipped daily out of the rocky soil of her spirit. Lottie, on the other hand, soared like a vast overwrought blimp, gliding over the wreckage of Grace’s childhood, never coming down to earth long enough to be tethered to anything as pesky as consequences.

‘Your father was a good man,’ Esguio said. ‘You know that.’

Grace shrugged. ‘Thanks. Always good to hear.’

Esguio sipped his coffee. She could feel him watching her, probing the pain, and in a courtly way stepping back. He frowned and shifted gears.

‘Wait. You’re the one we sent to Guatemala, right? From the parish. We were in Portugal that year. We heard she died over there. Sister Mary Clare.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, she did.’ The bad things crowded into her mind, fresh from their naps and grinning, wanting to play.

‘We heard there was a fire.’

A bad thing bared its blunt teeth and cocked its shaggy head, and Grace could feel the whiff of its breath on her face. Her heart was starting to hammer. She took a deep breath and let it out, trying to find her quiet place, quiet the demons.

‘We heard you were going to be a heart doctor. Work with kids. Then you quit.’

Grace studied her hands and looked up. ‘Mr. Esguio, I’m sorry about your van. They have to process it for prints and –’

‘That doesn’t take two years.’

The waitress put down the plates. Esguio gazed longingly at her French toast.

‘No, but when something’s been used in the commission of a felony, when somebody’s been murdered and that was the vehicle used to transport the suspect …’

Esguio watched as she poured syrup, a slow dawning growing across his face. He looked pained. ‘I’m never going to see that van again in my lifetime, am I?’

‘Probably not.’ Grace shoveled in a forkful of food and washed it down with orange juice. ‘Mr. Esguio, somebody bad is after me. Somebody Eddie knew.’

‘No kidding,’ Esguio marveled. ‘Do the police know?’

‘I am the police.’ Or close enough. ‘That’s why I’m asking these questions and why it’s important you tell me what you know. How did you come to hire Eddie Loud?’

‘This recruiter came to the Portuguese Hall. Trying to place these folks. I got a card here someplace.’ Esguio fished it out of his wallet and passed it over the table.

NEW LIFE

giving those ready a second chance

CURTIS CRUMWALD, DIRECTOR

an outreach of the Center for BioChimera

‘He told us how the Center sounds like a science place, but it’s got a big hospital there, too. Where they do research, helping people. Eddie had problems, but he’d been in a halfway house three years, no incidents. It was all monitored. He’d never even had a parking ticket, Grace. Nothing. He even liked to cook.’ A small lost laugh.

‘Can I keep the card?’

‘Sure. I’m not going to be needing it. Know how much money is tied up in that van? I can’t believe it. Gone, poof, just like that. Damn. Two in one day.’

Some antenna tweaked. ‘What happened to the other van?’

‘Wasn’t a van, just a food cart, thank the good Lord and all His Saints.’ Esguio crossed himself. ‘Still.’

‘Tell me about the other guy you hired for the food cart. What happened to him?’

‘Woman.’ Esguio made a face and drained his water glass. ‘Heartburn. Acid reflux.’ He eyed her untouched water glass and Grace passed it over.

‘Thanks.’ He took a deep drink and crunched ice. ‘Where was I?’

‘The woman you hired to work your food cart,’ Grace prompted. ‘Something went wrong with it.’

‘Jazz Studio, that was her name. Should have been my first tip-off, right? Somebody with a fake name isn’t going to think twice about trashing the cart. I blame Eddie, though.’

‘How’s that?’

‘They had a big fight right beforehand. I think whatever he said got her stirred up.’

‘How’d they know each other?’

‘Hired them from the same place.’

Grace studied the card.

‘So this Jazz Studio and Eddie Loud are both outpatients at the Center for BioChimera. What were they being treated for?’

‘They never said what exactly. “Patient confidentiality.” That’s where they get you over the barrel. I should have stuck to distributing turkeys to St. Vincent’s at Christmas.’

‘Did Eddie Loud ever talk about video, or TV recording, or hidden cameras?’

‘Never. Although when he was really tired, he’d start acting like he thought somebody was after him, out to get him.’

Grace mulled that over. ‘Where’d you have Jazz working?’

‘The Center. Nice easy job, no stress. Everybody loves the food cart, right? And I thought it would be familiar. They had Jazz working in Records for a while so she knew the building.’

‘What happened?’

‘Her first day on the cart’s yesterday, Sunday? Gave her that on purpose, because it’s a light day at the Center, only people there are those who have to be. So she takes the cart to Records, where she used to work? Hadn’t been there ten minutes when she causes this ruckus and her old boss has to call security.’ Esguio shook his head.

‘Ever find out what set her off?’

‘No. But something scared her. Bad.’

Grace pushed the plates out of the way. ‘Any idea where she lives?’

Esguio shook his head. ‘Or Eddie either. They keep that part quiet. Jazz could be living at the Center now in a nice padded room, for all I know.’

‘Could I have your home number, if I have any more questions?’

He scribbled it on the back of a napkin and passed it over. ‘Know where it is? That Center for BioChimera?’

She looked away. ‘Oh, yeah.’

EIGHT

The Center for BioChimera was part of a strip of high-end biotech research centers, hospitals, and the University of California, San Diego, in an area of La Jolla known as Biotech Mesa. Grace took 5 North to Genesee and Torrey Pines Road and made the familiar climb.

The view sweeping to the Pacific didn’t engage her; Grace was preoccupied with what she’d learned. Eddie Loud was mentally ill. How did a mentally ill outpatient at the Center for BioChimera driving a taco van get her name? What did Eddie Loud have to do with her?

The Center slanted in two wings facing the ocean, its back in a V toward the road. Three stories low to the ground, it resembled a Frank Lloyd Wright structure hewn out of the side of the ridge. Research labs and administrative offices fanned out in one wing; the other wing was a hospital specializing in transplants and immunological disorders.

The entrance to New Life was tucked behind Emergency in the hospital wing and faced out over a damp lawn, a tangle of trees, and the high Plexiglass fence closing off the steep drop leading to the waves smashing four hundred feet below. Grace wondered if they had jumpers.

She parked the car and entered the New Life waiting room, giving the receptionist her name. No, no appointment. Yes, she’d wait.

Pastel plaid chairs faced a coffee table covered with magazines. Grace read the bulletin board, a crammed assortment of admonishments to take meds, numbers to call if a client fell apart, a map of the hospital with an ‘X: You Are Here,’ and tips on ‘How to Put Your Best Foot Forward’ when going after that special minimum-wage job.

She sat. Five minutes later, a short man in his forties with glasses and a crew cut came through the door from the back rooms, face pink with exertion. ‘Grace Descanso?’

She stood up and extended her hand. ‘Yes, and you’re …’

‘Curtis Crumwald.’ A hard grip for a soft man. ‘Sorry for the wait. Had to drive my wife to a hair appointment. We’re down to one car.’

Crumwald made a face and motioned her through the door to the back. He wore neatly pressed Dockers and a shirt under a Stanford sweater pushed up his freckled arms. They passed a room set for a group – chairs in a circle, a second room with a copier, ratty sofa, and a Mr. Coffee. Tossed newspapers and Styrofoam cartons littered the laminated coffee table.

‘Harriet said you were interested in our program. Have job opportunities?’

‘No. Just questions.’

Crumwald stopped walking. ‘Are you a reporter?’ His voice was flat.

‘I was the forensic biologist Eddie Loud tried to kill.’ It hung there. So I killed him.

Crumwald took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt. ‘Come in. Close the door.’

Client photos covered a large bulletin board in his office: grinning McDonald’s workers, a city employee stabbing trash at Shelter Island, a singing telegram dressed as a hot dog.

‘Where’s Eddie? I want to see his face.’

Crumwald pointed him out. Eddie Loud stood stiffly in front of the sparkling taco van, hair combed, pride and anxiety blazing across his face. He was wearing a pair of blue pants and a pressed shirt. He was gripping a bag of tacos, but gently, it appeared, so they wouldn’t crush.

‘Believe it or not, he was a kind man. Not violent. His poor parents.’

Grace shot him a measured look. ‘He killed a DEA chemist, a detective sergeant, and a uniformed police officer yesterday. Good men. And he did this to me.’ She raked down her turtleneck so he could see the purple mark left when Eddie had grabbed her.

Crumwald blinked. ‘I’m sorry. Please. Have a seat.’

She took one across from the desk, and he sat heavily in his chair and placed his hands flat on the desk as if to compose himself.

‘I was hired on faith, understand? To cobble together a program assisting those the world has no interest in helping. And now –’

‘He was in a halfway house. And this program for work. Was he in rehab?’

‘I can’t answer that. That’s confidential.’

‘He’d dead, Mr. Crumwald. It’s going to come out.’

‘When you … saw him. Did it look like Eddie was on some kind of drug?’

‘He was amped like a light show. Cranked so high his brain was frying. I’d bet money.’

The air went out of him and Crumwald slumped in his chair. He had a squishball stress reliever next to a photo of a placidly smiling woman. He picked up the ball and squeezed. He looked defeated.

‘That’s so unbelievable. He knew if he tried that he’d be gone. He really wanted to stay.’

‘Did Eddie ever bring up anybody called the Spikeman?’

Crumwald shook his head. ‘But I’m not the one he talked to. When he did talk. He didn’t do too much talking when he was medded properly.’ Crumwald looked up, still back on what she’d said about drugs. ‘He could have just stopped taking his meds.’

‘I don’t know what was wrong with him, Mr. Crumwald, but if not taking meds is enough to get him to hack up three men with a butcher knife and start on me, then sure, stick with that.’

‘They feed off each other energywise. Yesterday he was agitated in group and later, another client fell apart. Not as spectacularly but … big mess we’re still cleaning up.’

Jazz Studio.

‘Did Eddie Loud say anything in group that would have alerted you?’

‘You mean, so I could have stopped it?’ Crumwald sounded defensive and aggrieved and he squished the ball harder. It made a squelching sound like a trapped mouse.

‘No, just –’

‘Just what, Ms. Descanso? I run this place on a shoestring and a prayer, and if I stopped every client from going out that door who thought sometimes he was God or the next Bill Gates – or Bill Gates himself – I’d never have confidence to send any of them out. They’re trying. Beset by demons, but trying. They haven’t given up. Where are you going with this?’

‘Is there any reason Eddie should have known who I was?’

‘None that I know of.’

‘Because he did. Right before he tried to kill me, he said my name and warned me about somebody he called the Spikeman.’ She couldn’t keep the tremor out of her voice.

Crumwald looked genuinely shocked. ‘He said your name? I don’t understand.’

‘That makes two of us. If you have anything, anything at all, I need to know it now.’

Crumwald stood heavily and looked out the window. ‘Anything else needs to come from higher up the food chain, if you know what I mean. Warren Pendrell is the head of this place.’

He said the name as if that should scare her.

‘Warren Pendrell,’ he repeated.

NINE

Talking to Warren Pendrell was the last thing she wanted. It’s what she’d been trying to avoid by going to Crumwald first, and already she could feel the familiar constriction in her throat.

She walked out of the outpatient facility and got in her car, driving across the parking lots that connected the research and hospital sides and reparking so she could make a speedy getaway afterward. The dignity of her exit would be lost if she had to tramp across the gravel and succulent beds back the way she’d come. Not that he’d be watching.

But maybe someone was, out of the blank-faced windows in the high granite building, and that was troubling. A faint wire mesh covered a set of windows on the second floor, and Grace snatched another glance, disquieted. The wire was new, she was certain, and she wondered if that’s where she’d find Jazz. The building rose like a granite monolith under a vivid blue sky with a faint tracing of clouds. A perfect San Diego day, covering what?

He’s coming for you … He’s the Spikeman.

She locked up and entered the building under an imposing sign etched in granite: CENTER FOR BIOCHIMERA.

Next to the sliding glass doors was a smaller sign in black letters: WARNING! THIS IS A LATEX-FREE SITE. ALL LATEX PRODUCTS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN!

Grace scanned the lobby. A young woman sat reading at the information kiosk in the middle of the room. A small coffee and pastry area lay to the left, most of the tables occupied by interns and nurses, none she recognized. On the walls hung pictures of the groundbreaking, Nobel laureates who did research at the Center, and an unseemly number of photos featuring Warren as the beaming centerpiece, his shock of white hair glowing along with his teeth.

The V of the building opened into floor-to-ceiling windows, revealing the view. Here the ocean was a churning presence, a gray and blue highway carrying Navy traffic and fishing trawlers out to sea. The skyline of La Jolla glinted in the bright sun, and far to the south, Mexico’s Coronado Islands rose like the purple humps of a prehistoric sea monster.

On scattered sofas people waited. They waited in the halls, milling around. On chairs by the entrance. They waited in pairs and family groupings and alone. It seemed to Grace as if that waiting defined the essence of the Center. It was saturated with a pain born of that waiting, and a longing so intense it seemed distilled, the longer she was away from it.

She headed past the information kiosk to the elevators. A family marshaled a boy of about ten out into the hall, his wheelchair sticking as it bumped over the elevator groove. His younger sister hopped next to him in excitement. The mother had a trembly half-smile on her face, as if smiling even that much was too costly.

Grace rode the elevator alone to three. The joke was, the Center was built on a bluff and run on one, and Grace had heard it repeated more times than she could count by jealous colleagues of Warren’s who didn’t realize they knew each other personally. She never repeated it; it was petty, but it spoke clearly to the empire he had built and the enemies he’d made.

Damaged adults and children wounded by disorders and limping from attacks leveled against them by their own immune systems flocked to the Center for specialized treatment, hoping for the miracle cure that would stop their bodies from viciously destroying themselves. Warren Pendrell promised nothing, but something in his manner must have communicated hope. People lined up for clinical trials.

She’d spent part of her residency on loan from Johns Hopkins working in the Center’s sophisticated pediatric heart transplant unit, and Warren had taken her immediately under his wing. Those were the giddy days when she was a rising star and everything was working, but that was a long time ago and when she’d left medicine, part of what she’d jettisoned was the safety of his mentor-ship, the easy way doors opened and the belief that anything professionally was still possible. Now she approached his offices with the caution and respect they deserved.

The elevator opened and she faced smoked-glass doors with Warren’s name engraved in brass: DR. WARREN PENDRELL, DIRECTOR.

Another name was inscribed in smaller script underneath: LABS OF DR. LEE ANN BENTLEY.

Grace felt the beginning of a headache, seeing the name. Lee had been a coldly amoral researcher hungry for grants and recognition when Grace had known her five years before. Now she’d moved up to the major leagues, sharing lab space with Warren himself. Grace had managed to avoid seeing Lee in earlier visits. But today she didn’t feel lucky.

Grace opened the heavy door leading to the reception area. This smaller lobby glowed in a soft shade of gold, the center of the room dominated by a carved marble statue of an angel and child. A drug salesman looked up incuriously from a trade magazine and went back to reading, his briefcase of samples bulging at his feet.

Grace went to the counter and waited as the receptionist finished a call. The receptionist was middle-aged, efficient, with a helmet of dyed black hair and a chest that jutted forward like the prow of an immense ship. She put down the telephone and turned to Grace.

‘Yes?’ Her face was neutral. She’d missed a spot with her eyebrow pencil, and one of her brows had a small, disconcerting patch of white in the middle of what otherwise was a perfect walnut brown arched wing.

‘Cynthia. Could you please alert Warren I’m here.’

‘And you are?’

Cynthia knew exactly who she was. This was a petty humiliation she put Grace through every time. ‘Grace. Descanso.’

‘Identification?’

Grace pulled out her crime lab ID instead of her driver’s license and was heartened to see a quiver of surprise in Cynthia’s eyes before she recovered. Good. Let her think I’m here on official business. Serves her right.

‘Do you have an appointment?’ She touched her pearls. The necklace was so long she could hang herself.

‘No.’ Grace stared her down and felt a sharp surge of victory when Cynthia turned away first. She really needed to play more board games.

‘He’s very busy.’

‘He wants to see me.’

‘I’ll let him be the judge of that. Sit and wait.’ It was an order.

Grace smiled thinly and went to the window, looking out. Far away, hang gliders floated over a blue expanse of sea, and clouds threaded the soft sky. Behind her, she heard Cynthia whispering into a phone. The steel door behind the counter slid open.

‘Grace!’

Warren had a forceful way of dominating a room, his energy thrusting itself into the place moments before he spoke, which gave her the unsettled feeling of being constantly in the presence of a sonic boom. He was in his late sixties but tall and fit-looking. His silver-white hair was precision cut, and he wore dark linen trousers and a blue cashmere sweater that matched his eyes.