The Timer Game (35 page)

Grace closed her eyes. “Opal? Was she there?” Her voice was toneless.

He took a breath to compose himself and when he spoke, his voice was civil. “One of the clients said they thought she’d pulled out earlier today. They’d seen her taking two suitcases with her. Nobody saw a little girl there. I want you to know that. Nobody saw her,” he stressed.

“I want you to remember that when I tell you the rest of it.”

She was digging her fingers into the phone so hard the nails turned pink. “Go ahead.”

“Grace, in the basement, there was a room.”

She went cold. She focused on details: the way the leather seat felt, the generous expanse of leg room, the dark, silent night, and the sliver of moon emerging from clouds, details so she wouldn’t have to hear the sound of his voice.

“It had big photo lights in it, Grace. The room. There was a bed in there, too. It looked like it had been used recently.”

She closed her eyes.
I haven’t killed her, no not yet.

But there were so many ways to kill the soul of a child.

She let out a breath. “I have a number for you. Maybe a lead on where Opal is now. She called her brother, Benny, in prison from this line. Get your contact at the phone company to track down the address.”

She recited the phone number that Thor had left on voicemail.

“Grace. Are you sure?” He sounded strained.

“What is it?”

“I know that number.”

At first she was certain she had misheard him. “Say again?”

“I know that number,” Mac repeated. “I used to call it all the time. It’s Lee Bentley’s private lab number. You asked me if I was serious about anybody lately? Yeah, it was Lee.”

Chapter 40

On some level she expected it. She’d never pictured Mac alone: he was too public a figure, the women he dated too high-profile. Still, knowing that he’d been involved with someone she despised stung. But that was a tiny matter compared with the rest.

“Let me understand this,” Grace said carefully. “Opal called her brother in prison, using the phone in Lee’s lab. Do you realize what this means? Lee’s involved. Has to be.”

“You don’t know her the way I do.”

“Clearly.”

“That was a cheap shot,” Mac said. “Grace, Lee’s a researcher who after tonight is going to be rich beyond her wildest imaginings. She’s probably going to win a Nobel prize.”

“What do you mean, after tonight?”

“Hekka’s losing ground. They’ve speeded things up. She gets her heartin-a-box tonight.”

“And let me guess. You’re right there, taping it.”

He hesitated. “Look, my crew’s put in a lot of—”

“You’re taping it?” Until that second, she hadn’t believed he would.

“Grace.” His voice was tired.

“I don’t even want to hear from you, unless you’re calling to say you’ve found Katie.”

She clicked off and tried Warren’s numbers but he wasn’t picking up. She left the plane’s callback number on his cell and at his house, but when his office voicemail kicked in, she spoke loudly, trying to offset the roar of the engine.

“Warren. This is critical. It’s Grace. Do you know of any connection between Lee Bentley and the caretaker at Eddie Loud’s halfway house? I know her first name is Opal. Her brother, Benny Jingelston, is at Folsom, and I think he could be our guy. I think he sent the postcard to you. Or he knows who did. Anyway, Lee’s involved in this mess.”

Grace thought of the retina scanner. How it protected him from everybody but Lee. And himself. It was Warren’s greed and ego that made him vulnerable. She wasn’t above using it.

“Lee let Opal call Benny from her lab phone. She’s been putting at risk everything you’ve worked so hard for. Protect yourself. And for God’s sake, keep looking for Katie.”

She hesitated, not knowing what else to say. “You’ve got this number. Call.”

Grace touched Jeb’s arm and mimed reconnecting the mike. He flicked a switch.

“What was that?” Jeanne said into the mike. “You looked like you were shouting.”

“I’m going to shut off my mike from your conversation,” Jeb said. “Give you girls some privacy again the rest of the way. Let me know again if you want me reconnected.”

He shut off his mike again. Grace didn’t want to talk to Jeanne about Mac; it was too complicated. Instead, she said, “I told you on the ride to Mather about Robert Harling Frieze and the tumors he thinks were caused when his son got a prenatal injection. And how DeeDee miscarried from what was probably the same kind of injection. So that leaves Benny.”

The child pornographer, heart surgeon. She told Jeanne everything that had transpired in the prison and Jeanne made a small sound of disgust into the mike.

“The handmade paper came from him, I think that’s clear. It went to his sister, Opal. She sent the postcard to Warren. And wrapped up the bloody doll with the note for me. It would have been easy yesterday to stick it on the table. She could have jogged by or waded in from a dinghy and dropped it off,” Grace said. “Be gone in seconds. Remember how everybody was inside for a minute, starting the Timer Game? It could have happened then.”

Jeanne was thinking. “Opal directs Eddie Loud, and he warns you about the Spikeman.”

“Right,” Grace said. “That puts the game in play. But things started a long time ago.”

“Exactly,” Jeanne said. “DeeDee Winger said she met up with Jasmine five years ago in the lobby, as a go-between for couples needing that second injection. Maybe that’s why Opal’s trying to derail the sale. Maybe she’s still doing dangerous research at the Center, and if it changes hands, she wouldn’t have as much freedom to keep doing it.”

“Warren is pretty distracted,” Grace admitted. “I’ve never thought he had a handle on what everybody was doing there. He’s preoccupied with empire building.”

“Do you think Opal was the one experimenting on those pregnant women?”

“Could be.” Grace checked her notes. “Middle-aged, faded, hair kind of limp. Doesn’t match Lee Bentley’s description, I’ll say that.”

“Let me have a crack at the charts again.”

Grace passed them over the seat. “Oh,” she said suddenly. “I just figured out why those thugs showed up. You carried the charts into the café with you, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. I thought maybe I could find something while you were at Folsom.”

“The charts were bugged. Remember?”

Jeanne looked up. “God, I forgot. So they knew right away you’d gotten away. Sorry.”

“I’m just glad we got you out of there.”

“Me, too. They lapsed into silence, Jeanne studying the charts, Grace studying the clue.

“Son of a bitch was experimenting,” Jeanne said from the backseat. “I found a notation in the charts that could be that second sonogram. Dated September third. Oh. Wow. On all three of these charts, there’s the same notation on the side, Grace. September third.”

She passed DeeDee’s chart over the seat.

Grace saw the scribbled notation:
Sept 3 Cm complt, chk pre tpcht
. “That backs up what Robert Harling Frieze said about seeing another couple coming out of the examining room right before they went in. Second sonograms done on DeeDee Winger, Terry Frieze, and Adrian Bettles. Performed the same night five years ago at the Center.”

In the headphones, Jeanne’s voice popped. “Middle-of-the-night injections. Back-to-back on scared, pregnant women. Whatever Opal was injecting, it killed the Wingers’ baby before it was born. Gave the Frieze toddler tumors. But Eric Bettles later gets the first heartin-a-box
.
We need to figure out what was injected. And why. It’s just that. . .”

Her voice trailed and Grace sat up. “What are you thinking?”

“Building that checkerboard fur coat on the back of a gerbil was tough enough to keep an entire section of scientists working around the clock for about ten years. Grace, building a heart in a lab just doesn’t sound credible. Sorry, but there it is.”

In Grace’s mind, Yin skittered in his exercise wheel, his checkerboard back a blur of brown and white. Through the window, an outpost of homes appeared in darkness and receded.

“Okay. Let’s say, for our purposes, there aren’t any hearts-in-a-box.” Grace adjusted her microphone. “Let’s assume that Eric Bettles last year got a regular transplant, and in a couple of hours, Hekka gets a regular transplant, not a second heartin-a-box
.”

“Devil’s advocate,” Jeanne said. “Eric would have to be on immune-suppressant drugs the rest of his life, and you told me that Mac rechecked that. Eric’s not on any antirejection drugs, Grace. So it has to mean he has a heartin-a-box. There’s no other explanation.”

“Unless his donor heart was engineered in some way to be a perfect match. Engineered so he’d never need antirejection meds.”

Jeanne made a small sound. “You can’t engineer something after it’s dead, Grace. Donor hearts are dead. Kaput. End of story. Until they’re hot-wired inside a new body. You’re talking about changing something at the cellular level, making it not just compatible, but the same. And that kind of cellular reorientation means life. You can’t inject engineered cells into a dead donor heart like India ink and change the cells. You’d be adding something in addition. Not comingling. There’s no way a donor heart could be engineered after it’s harvested. It doesn’t make sense.”

The lights of Bakersfield stretched beneath them. Grace stared out blankly, trying to calm her thoughts down long enough to find whatever thread was tantalizingly just out of reach.

“Almost forgot,” Jeanne said from the backseat. “Dusty’s dad called again. He left a phone number this time. Science is the only god I worship, Grace, but it definitely has its limits, and taking somebody’s dead heart and making it a spot-on match for somebody else just isn’t—”

Grace sat up. “Say that again,” she interrupted.

“Science is the only god—”

“The part about Dusty. Dusty’s dad. He called again. I need the number.”

Jeanne rummaged through her bag and handed it over the seat. “What is it? What did you find?”

Dusty. A dusty prize is pointing you.
. .

“Oh, my God.”

Chapter 41

Dusty. Dusty prize
. A dusty prize is pointing you…Inside the past.

A foggy male voice picked up on the third ring. “H’lo?”

“Oscar, it’s Grace. You called and left a message on my machine.”

She pictured Annie’s husband, a broad-faced farmer, sunburned and steady. In Iowa, snow would be falling, blinking out the flat expanse of brown fields, the wind-bare trees.

“Katie sent that pen pal assignment she wanted Dusty to answer.”

…inside a cell, the answer lies, a living hell.

“I’m sorry. Who is this again?”

“Grace.” She tightened her grip on the satellite phone. “Annie’s friend. Katie’s mother.”

Below them was an inky black expanse. She glanced at a screen on the control panel and saw the outline of mountains. Jeb pulled back on the throttle slightly and the plane adjusted course.

“Grace Descanso. My daughter Katie sent that pen pal letter to Dusty and you called me back. I was wondering—well, is everything okay?”

There was a sound on the phone; a small choked sound of a man crying.

“I should have called and told you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the sound to stop, his voice to become normal, instead of the ragged gulps of air and tears.

“Anne fell apart, she’s been in and out of hospitals, it’s been bad, Grace. I’ve had my hands full, trying to keep the girls going. I meant to call, or write at least, but how can you put something like that in a note?”

She was filled with dread. “Something like what, Oscar? What aren’t you telling me?” “When Katie sent that drawing, wanting Dusty to be a pen pal—ahhh. Just a minute.” She heard the sound of him blowing his nose. “I’m back.”

“What happened?”

“A year ago last Sunday. I can’t believe— I didn’t think we’d ever get through this year. Dusty was riding his bike, throwing these flyers for a food drive—going for a Cub Scout patch in service. It was early in the morning. Cold. Anne was waiting for him at the end of the road. With a cup of hot cocoa in a thermos. Only he never made it.”

They were flying over the L.A. basin now, a sparkling mantle of twinkle lights against the black wash of ocean, glinting with silver.

“They found him later that next night. They looked into cults, especially after Columbine—” He broke down. “They’d taken his heart, Grace. Cut it right out of his chest. Look, I’m sorry, I can’t—” He was gone.

She hung up and put her head in her hands. In the seat next to her, Jeb adjusted a switch. “You okay?”

“I need a car. Can you have a car waiting for me at the airport? It’s important.”

His voice in the mike popped. “Forgot to tell you. Mac has a ride waiting for you.”

She nodded her thanks. She wanted to lean her seat back and do nothing, stare at the ceiling of the Cirrus and close her eyes. She wanted to go to sleep and when she woke up, Katie would be flying in the door to their house, sweaty and talkative and covered with grass stains and dirt. Her back hurt. Her legs. Her heart. Dusty dead. She remembered the day Anne had called to say she was pregnant and now Dusty was dead. Through the seats, Jeanne touched her arm. Grace hugged herself and rocked.

Dusty, killed. She remembered a small active boy clambering over the rocks at the Children’s Pool in La Jolla, sliding, falling, trying to get a better look at the seals that had taken over the beach. His heart cut out.

All Hallows’ Eve you’ll play a part.

Ere midnight tolls, I cut your heart.

She’d been so certain about that part; that it was a metaphor for the bond she and Katie shared, but now a darker meaning emerged.

He meant it.

He was going to cut Katie’s heart. Cut
out
Katie’s heart. Panic surged, coupled with a cold fury at what he’d done and what he meant to do.

“What did he say?”

Grace told her.

“I can’t…” Jeanne faltered.

“We’re cracking this thing.” Grace forced herself to come back from the edge. “It’s terrible but we’re cracking it. Stay with me, honey, okay?”