Fatalis (22 page)

"
Behind
them," Hannah said. "That doesn't seem to make sense."

"Actually it makes a stronger case for the idea that whatever made these prints is the killer," Grand said.

"Why?"

"I'll tell you in a second," Grand said. "Let's have a look at the catamaran."

They walked over. One of the officers intercepted them, but Grand explained that he wanted to check for signs of predation on the wreckage-claw marks, bite marks, bloodstains. The officer said he could look as long as he promised not to touch. Grand agreed. He and Hannah hurried over.

"How many people does it take to work one of these things?" Grand asked as they jogged across the beach.

"A Hobie Cat? After it's in the water, one good sailor could handle it," she said.

They reached the wreckage and Grand shined his light across it. The sail was shredded and there were gashes in the trampoline and on the pontoons that resembled the sharp, clean marks they'd seen on the road engineer's backpack at the creek sinkhole.

"Are they teeth marks?" Hannah asked.

"I don't think so," Grand told her. "There are three and four in spots. They look more like claw marks. But check out the pontoons-the attacker was
under
the catamaran."

Hannah bent and examined the gashes. "Then I guess that rules out our strange little theory."

"This wouldn't necessarily rule it out," Grand said. "While big cats don't particularly like the water, they're excellent swimmers when they want to be."

"Selective habitual parallelism," Hannah said.

"It does occur," Grand said. "So let's try this on. The predator, whatever it is, is either walking along the shore or is in the sea. For all we know the tunnels have an outlet right off shore. Many cave systems do. The animal sees the boat and goes under. It attacks from beneath-using its claws because its mouth is closed. It chases the sailor ashore then kills him and turns back the way it came, its prey in its mouth. The victim bleeds on the sand as the killer retreats."

Just then they heard a distinctive, two-siren wail in the distance, one sound high and the other low.

"The herald angels of Malcolm Gearhart," Hannah said. "I say we tell him the killers are land sharks and see how he reacts."

"Pardon?"

"Land sharks," Hannah said. "Didn't you ever see them on
Saturday Night Live
!"

"The Travolta movie?"

Hannah looked at him and smiled. "It's okay," she said. "Never mind."

For a moment Grand felt the way he used to when Rebecca would make fun of what she called his "
not-getting-it-ness"
-like a big dumb rock. His wife used to follow it up with a peck on the forehead or a hug and an explanation, which more often than not he still didn't get.

Hannah started back toward where the Wall was and Grand followed. But he really missed Rebecca right then.

Dressed in new overalls, her sad freckled face framed in long, curly red hair, six-year-old Eugenie Budette sat eating microwaved macaroni and cheese and drinking iced tea at the small Formica table in their camper. Eugenie's stuffed, scruffy white rabbit, Blankie, was sitting on the bench beside her. There was a window to her right but the amber drapes had been drawn-by her. Eugenie didn't want to see where they were because she didn't want to be where they were. And though the drapes didn't make it all go away, at least they were familiar, more like home than this place whose name she didn't know because she hadn't really been paying attention when her father had said what it was.

All she knew was that they had parked here in these stupid hills just a few minutes ago after driving for nearly five hours. Her father had wanted to get an earlier start but the movers took longer to get the truck loaded. Because it was late, Eugenie's parents decided to stop at some stupid campgrounds instead of going to a stupid motel. Her father said he needed to stretch his legs and her mother needed to get fresh air, so they'd gone outside. Eugenie hadn't wanted to go with them so she made herself and Blankie food, pulled the drapes, and sat here quietly sharing bites of dinner and hard swallows of sadness.

"Frizzuh brassa mugga lugga?"

"Shoomy noomy, hahahahaha!"

That's what her parents sounded like, talking on the other side of the wall. They were happy. That made Eugenie feel even sadder, lonelier. They didn't understand how dumb this was.

There were more voices now. There had been five or six RVs up here when they arrived. These people were probably from another camper. Eugenie knew from other trips, more fun trips, that campers liked to get to know each other, even though they did it by always saying the same things, asking the same questions.

"We're from San Di-e-go," Eugenie said defiantly, possessively stressing each syllable. That's where she was born and that's where she was still from.

A moment later the young girl sighed.

"No we're not, Blankie," she said unhappily. There were tears behind her eyes. "We're not from there anymore."

Eugenie took a forkful of macaroni. She chewed it slowly, without pleasure. Whenever they went camping she usually didn't mind the talk. She and Blankie talked too. But this wasn't a trip the young girl wanted to make. The Budettes were leaving their home in San Diego and driving up to Seattle, where her father had taken a new job. Eugenie didn't know why her father needed a new job. She thought he liked working for the navy.

Eugenie put her plastic fork down. "I'm not really hungry, Blankie. Are you?"

"
No
,
I've totally lost my appetite
," the rabbit answered from the side of Eugenie's mouth.

Eugenie put her left fist under her left cheek. She looked across the table at the bathroom, the shower, and the little sleeping area of the camper. She didn't want to sleep here. She wanted to sleep in her own bed, in her own house, where she'd always slept. She didn't want to move. She didn't want to make new friends, she wanted to keep the old ones-not on E-mail but in real life. She wanted to be able to watch TV with her best friend Ana and videotape the plays that they put on and-

Something thumped hard against the side of the camper, just under the window. It rocked the RV back and forth and then it was quiet outside. There was no more
shoomy noomy
or laughing.

Eugenie listened carefully after the RV stopped moving.

"Mom?"

The young girl's mouth twisted. She picked up Blankie and slid off the bench.

"Mom?"

She walked toward the door at the front of the RV. There was no one talking at all now and she was scared. She'd seen a TV show about the world's most ordinary serial killers where people had gone to the store and parked next to killers, who seemed like friendly people until they followed them home and killed them. Serial killers probably went to campgrounds too.

She reached the door and hesitated. She turned to Blankie, who was huddled in her left arm.

"What do you think?" she asked the rabbit.

Eugenie didn't bother answering. She thought that everything was all right, that maybe another RV had arrived and backed into theirs and her father was going to inspect the damage. But why hadn't her mother come in to see if she and Blankie were all right?

Eugenie reached for the knob. As she did the door suddenly swooshed open. Her mother was standing there, the top half of her body leaning across the door of the RV, her bottom half still outside. There was blood all over her forehead and cheeks, in her long red hair, and down her green sweater.

"Mom?"

"
Get back
!" her mother screamed at her.

Eugenie just stood there, scared and confused, as her mother put her right foot on the first of the two steps. The woman grabbed the sides of the doorway and tried to pull herself inside. But something stopped her. Cold. The woman's mouth pulled tight on both sides and her eyes shone white beneath the blood.

Eugenie started to cry.

"
Stay inside
!" her mother screamed. "
Close the
-"

Her mother vanished as she was speaking. She just disappeared to the side, like a balloon someone had popped. Here-then gone.

The door was still open. Eugenie heard gurgles and growls and things moving, but no voices. No talking.

Eugenie was squeezing Blankie so tightly that a finger went through his scraggly neck. But she wasn't even aware of it. She was only aware of the sounds and the cool air coming through the door-

The door
. Her mother had said to close it.

Eugenie sniffed back her tears as she took a tentative step toward the door, then another, and then another before she could finally reach it. She stretched out her small hand and when she did she saw outside, not because she couldn't help it but because she had to see what was there.

Eugenie nearly fell as her legs went wiggly. She had been to the San Diego Zoo many times but she'd never seen anything like the thing that was holding her mother facedown and sideways in its mouth. The woman was so limp and the animal was so large that it seemed almost like her mother was Blankie.

Eugenie screamed. And screamed. And then she turned and ran, not because her mother had told her to but because her legs got their strength back and were telling her to.

She heard a roar behind her, one that filled the RV and shook her ears, but she didn't look back. She just screamed and ran and didn't even stop when Blankie's head dropped and rolled under the Formica table…

Sheriff Malcolm Gearhart crossed the dark, deserted beach like Douglas MacArthur returning to the Philippines. At least, that's how it seemed to Grand. The sheriff was still all stride and command, despite what had to have been a long and frustrating day.

Gearhart walked directly to the ranking highway-patrol officer. Sergeant Bonnie Crellin. Hannah was also hurrying across the sands, pulling her tape recorder from her handbag as she did.

Grand walked after her, his longer steps making up for her hurried pace. He hadn't been on the beach since Rebecca's death and, now that he had a moment to think about it, he absolutely didn't want to. Feeling the sand under the rippled soles of his boots, hearing the ocean so close-it was almost as though he could reach out blindly and she'd find his hand. He held and savored the moment until it became unsettling. Until that which had been so deeply fulfilling was followed by an almost unbearable sense of loss.

Grand needed to let Rebecca go, not just for his sake but for the sake of the here and now. He needed to focus on whatever was killing people. He continued the process Rebecca had started before-

He corrected himself.
It was Hannah
, he thought. Hannah had started the process, not Rebecca.

Grand continued the process of assuming that saber-tooths were alive and worked backward. The size of rib cages suggested the giant cats had remarkable lung capacity, which could be used for extended running but also for holding their breath underwater. Carrying off two hundred pounds of dead weight was also possible for them. Scarring from muscle attachments on fossils indicated that the animals had very strong neck and jaw muscles. That was presumed to be for accommodating their powerful biting and gutting ability-killing prey with a single, penetrating attack of the two fangs, then ripping up chunks of flesh for consumption. But what if the neck muscles were also used for hauling the dead prey off to dens? Gutting it later?

Then there'd be no sign of a victim, except for blood.

This part of Southern California was the heart of where
Smilodon fatalis
had lived, from the shore to the mountains and all the way down past Los Angeles. In addition to the killing style, the geology would certainly explain everything that had happened, from the disappearance of engineers Greene and Roche to the attack on the catamaran. Not only had the rains opened new tunnels, but many of the existing caverns opened into underwater grottos, formed over the millennia by the rise and fall of the sea.

Yet while so many things made sense, the notion itself was highly improbable, if not impossible. How could saber-toothed cats have remained hidden for so many years?

But without a sighting?

His own words came back to him:
Probably because no one who ever saw one lived to paint its picture
.

Gearhart was talking to Sergeant Crellin. As Grand and Hannah neared, the reporter turned.

"I want to tell Gearhart what we've found out," she said as they walked. "Are you okay with that?"

"Sure."

"He may want answers more than he wants me to just disappear," Hannah said. "Maybe we can pool what we know."

Gearhart was turning away from Sergeant Crellin just as Hannah and Grand neared. The sergeant was instructing her men to break out the yellow tape and to admit only Gearhart's lab team. The sheriff glanced at Hannah and Grand, then started toward the wreckage of the catamaran.

Hannah caught up to him. "Sheriff, we need to talk."

"Ms. Hughes, this is now officially a crime scene."

"I know."

"You'll have to leave."

"I know the drill."

"But I would like copies of the pictures your photographer took," Gearhart went on. "He can drop them off at my office. You'll be reimbursed for his time and material."

"You can have copies on me. All I want to do is talk."

"There's nothing new about that."

"Sheriff, this is important," Grand said. "Give her a few minutes."

"I once asked you for something to help this town," Gearhart said. "You-the two of you-told me to piss off. You don't have the right to ask for a damn thing."