Hotwire (26 page)

Maggie didn’t follow. She stayed in the entrance and waited for Cynthia Griffin to notice. When she did, the woman’s welcoming smile twitched, but to her credit, the smile stayed as if also permanently hand-painted.

“I thought you and Amanda could chat down here. Much more comfortable than up in her room.”

Maggie didn’t budge. She was already relinquishing home-field advantage to Amanda. She hated to give her anything more.

“She hardly ever comes down from that room these days,” Mrs. Griffin said. She managed to keep the smile but there was a sadness that slipped into her tone. “All this has been so hard on her. She’s just had a lot to deal with since Griff and I got married.”

That’s when Maggie realized Amanda might feel less comfortable in the family’s formal living room than she did.

“Are any of those raspberry?” Maggie asked, pretending to be drawn in by the pastries and saving Mrs. Griffin from resorting to what Maggie dreaded might be her next step— begging.

“Oh yes. The ones with powdered sugar on top.” The woman brightened and fluttered her spandex-clad arms like excited wings. Pouring coffee before Maggie could refuse. “Cream or sugar?”

“No, thank you. Black’s fine,” Maggie answered, rather than explain that she didn’t drink coffee no matter what she put in it.

“Amanda loves this gourmet grind. Of course, she does. It’s expensive.” Mrs. Griffin laughed, a short burst of air that sounded like “hah.”

Maggie felt sorry for her, a woman surrounded by beautiful expensive things, all of them by authentic designers, genuine gold-trims, the best-quality fabrics and woods, rare collector accessories of porcelain and ceramic—nothing artificial except her personality.

Maggie strolled the room while Mrs. Griffin crimped linen napkins and teased pastries onto the plates without disturbing powdered sugar or icing. Maggie scanned the display on the fireplace mantel, almost a dozen framed photos of different sizes and shapes. Amanda as a baby. Mrs. Griffin with her extended family, all dressed up and smiling. A wedding photo of Cynthia and Mike Griffin. More of Amanda in various stages of childhood. And then one photo caught Maggie’s eye.

Three soldiers in military fatigues stood in front of a tank with a stark background that looked like miles and miles of sand. The one in the middle was a young Mike Griffin, his arms around the other two and smiling for the camera.

She almost glanced away, then realized the man on Griffin’s left was also familiar. She took a closer look but there was no mistake. The man was Frank Skylar.

FIFTY-TWO

Wesley Stotter couldn’t believe his eyes. He had already snapped more than fifty photos and was worried he’d run out of disc space on his digital camera.

He had brought along a pry bar but was surprised to find the back door unlocked. A keypad at the door implied security access. He suspected someone must be on the complex grounds and had stepped out for a minute; however, Stotter hadn’t seen any movement. If he ran into a worker he’d pretend to be lost. What was that old saying, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission”?

The outside of the building had been so plain. Inside, Stotter was surprised to find whitewashed walls and an impressive labyrinth of stainless-steel counters topped with strange equipment and utensils that looked like a surgical suite. The counters were intersected with cylindrical tanks, some small, some large. Several stretched from floor to ceiling. They were filled with liquid and each had objects floating inside. All of them emitted an eerie blue glow— probably a fluorescent light somewhere inside each tank.

A built-in wall cabinet with a padlocked glass front displayed an array of other equipment that Stotter had never seen before. At first glance the stuff reminded him of something out of a
Star Wars
movie. Or—and this was what excited Stotter—perhaps weapons taken from a downed and disabled alien spacecraft. One appeared to be a scoped rifle but made of a strange metal and with an odd attachment on the barrel. At the stock, an electrical cord—only thicker— connected the rifle to what looked like a canvas backpack.

Hanging beside the rifle were several different pairs of goggles. Stotter squatted to study them. One pair had bulbous dark-green lenses with pinpoint red dots in each. Night-vision goggles, he suspected, and he wondered if these were what he had seen on the creature running in the forest. Was it only a man, after all?

Before he moved on to the next room he wanted to get closer shots of the tanks. He adjusted his camera to twilight mode so he could capture the images despite the fluorescent blue glow. He hadn’t noticed until his fingers stumbled over the settings that his hands were shaking. His shirt had become glued to his back and his beard was damp with sweat as well.

He thought he heard a door open and he stopped.

Car stalled. Lost my way.
He tried to prepare his story while he drew closer to the tanks.
Just fascinated by everything you have here
—that’s what he would tell them. But he needed to stow the camera in his backpack or certainly they’d take it away from him.

He glanced around and didn’t see anyone. Maybe it was his imagination again. An electrical motor began to hum and a fan above him came on. Stotter let out a breath and wiped his forehead. Of course, it was just the equipment turning on and off. But still he needed to be quick. He shouldn’t press his luck.

In the first tank huge plant leaves floated, layers and layers of them. Gorgeous, unusual large leaves with blood-red veins running throughout. The liquid in the tank kept them perfectly preserved. He snapped a few photos and moved on to the next.

He stared for a few minutes at the next tank. Five very different objects, different sizes, shapes, and consistencies. They looked organic but almost translucent, the blue glow shining through in areas and highlighting what looked like a network of veins and blood vessels. Again he squatted to study them from below and that’s when he recognized the object right in front of him. The shock made him jerk backward. His knees gave out and sent him sprawling. He dropped his camera and it skidded just out of reach.

Another motor turned on somewhere in the building, and yet Stotter didn’t take his eyes off the object.

He hadn’t been able to identify it at first. But even from this angle—his butt on the cold tile floor—Stotter could tell that what he was looking at was an eyeball.

He crawled to his knees, still not taking his eyes off the tank and examining the other floating objects. Now he could make an educated guess as to what they were. He needed to focus as he tried to remember everything that was missing whenever a rancher found a mutilated cow. Because Stotter was pretty sure he had just found some of those missing pieces.

He continued staring as he reached out and searched for his camera. It had fallen close by. Still on his knees, he swiped his hand across the floor. That’s when a heavy boot came down on his knuckles and Stotter heard the cracking of his own fingers.

His yelp of pain was cut short by a second boot that caught him under the chin and snapped his head back.

FIFTY-THREE

“Sheriff Skylar didn’t mention that he served with your husband,” Maggie said, noticing a second photo of the same three men, only in this one they wore hunting gear, including camouflage clothing. They stood next to a deer that had been strung up from a tree. Skylar and the other man held rifles. Mike Griffin stood in the middle again, holding one of the biggest hunting knives Maggie had ever seen.

“Oh yes.” Mrs. Griffin came up beside Maggie and her index finger brushed the frame of the first photo. Her finger traveled down the length of the third man, a stranger Maggie didn’t recognize. The gesture of affection seemed odd, but Maggie saw true emotion for the first time in Cynthia Griffin’s face.

She glanced up at Maggie but didn’t appear embarrassed or apologetic.

“Mike, Frank, and my first husband, Evan, served in Desert Storm,” she explained. “This was taken right before they came back. Unfortunately Evan didn’t come home with them.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Evan and Griff were engineers. The National Guard was supposed to be just for playing weekend soldier. That’s what Evan told me when he joined.”

“Mom?”

Cynthia Griffin jumped and that was the last uncontrolled emotion Maggie would witness for the day.

“Oh, Mandy. Agent O’Dell wants to talk with you again.”

“If this is about Courtney and Nikki, I don’t know anything.”

“No, I’m not here to ask you about them.”

The girl couldn’t disguise her relief though she tried to, pushing at her hair that, although washed and combed today, still fell conveniently into her eyes. Her skin looked healthier and her eyes weren’t bloodshot, pupils not dilated.

Maggie waited for Mrs. Griffin to instruct her daughter where to sit and reminded her about the coffee being her favorite as she placed a cup on the matching saucer in front of Amanda.

“You haven’t eaten anything all day.” Mrs. Griffin fussed as she slid one of the beautiful pastries closer to her daughter.

“I don’t want to talk about Johnny, either,” Amanda said, but this time to her mother.

“Tell you what,” Maggie said, coming around the glass coffee table to sit across from Amanda, “I promise none of my questions will be about Johnny or Courtney or Nikki. I won’t even ask about Thursday night.”

Amanda peered out from under the strand of hair and this time she tucked it behind her ear.

“Okay,” she agreed. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell me about Taylor Cole,” Maggie said and watched Amanda’s mouth drop open. “She was a friend of yours, right?”

Maggie didn’t take her eyes off Amanda but she could see Mrs. Griffin half sit, half lean on the arm of a Queen Anne chair behind her.

“Yeah, I guess so.” The girl pretended to shake off her surprise.

“You were with her when she jumped off the bridge?”

“I wasn’t the only one.”

“She didn’t jump,” Mrs. Griffin was quick to add. “It was an accident.”

“I know about the salvia,” Maggie said, letting that sink in along with Mrs. Griffin who now sank into a chair.

“I bet Dawson squealed, right?” Amanda said with a disgusted smirk.

“Taylor was your best friend until she graduated last spring.” Maggie was careful not to say what she really believed, that Amanda felt like Taylor was leaving her behind, just like Johnny would do next year when he left to play football for a college possibly as far off as Florida or California.

Amanda shoved her plate away and Maggie knew her window of opportunity had just closed.

“Taylor didn’t slip and fall off the bridge, did she? You were all flying high on salvia and someone dared her to jump.”

“This is quite enough,” Mrs. Griffin said, standing again though a bit wobbly. She scrambled in front of her daughter as if somehow protecting her. “Amanda, you do not have to talk about this. Agent O’Dell, you must leave.”

Maggie didn’t argue. But as she got up she noticed Amanda’s forearm. The red marks had started to fade into a bluish-purple bruise.

“I’m not sure if your daughter knows who attacked them the other night,” Maggie told Mrs. Griffin while she kept her eyes on Amanda. “I do know she’s not telling you everything she does know. After I leave, you might want to ask her why she bit herself and pretended it was someone else.”

Amanda’s startled look confirmed Maggie’s guess.

Back on the road, Maggie realized it was all beginning to make sense. Amanda was the one who orchestrated the drug parties. It was her way of keeping control over the friends she invited into her group. But when they threatened to leave she found a way to get back at them.

Maggie couldn’t be sure that Amanda talked Johnny into committing suicide but the texts that she had read explained the pattern of their relationship. Had Amanda convinced him his future was over? That he would be stuck forever in the Nebraska Sandhills with her? Amanda probably didn’t think the idea would drive Johnny to kill himself. Or did she?