Vortex (9 page)

Gertie stared open-mouthed at Penny.

“How much do you know about this, Gertie?” Karen said.

The question seemed to startle Gertie. “I-I-I didn’t know about
any
of this. All I knew was that they were there, behind our house, doing...
something.
I knew it involved that... that thing that bit me, but... I didn’t know how. Then I saw them bringing Penny here to the shed.”

“Shed?” Karen said.

“I call it a shed, but—” She shrugged. “—it’s their lab. They built it behind our house. People come and go, especially at night. I saw them bringing Penny there. And then children. Little children. Penny came and went, but the children... I only saw them coming in, never going out. That bothered me a lot. The whole thing bothered me, but the kids...” A deep frown wrinkled her brow as she stared down at the table and seemed to see through it. She placed her hands flat on the tabletop and slowly closed them into loose fists again and again, dragging the tips of her nail-bitten fingers over the wood. “I couldn’t get that out of my head. The image of those little kids being led from the SUV that had brought them and into that ugly white building. I didn’t know what was going on in there but I knew... well, I felt that... it couldn’t be anything good. Kids that little... they shouldn’t be out that late by themselves.”

“Sometimes people from town are drawn to the lab,” Penny said. “That was part of the work Mr. Ryker’s been doing with Pyk.”

“Work?” Karen said. “How does their work involve people from town?”

“Well, they’re trying to understand how Pyk influences people, so they need him to do that while they’ve got him hooked up to their machines so they can... measure it, or record it, or whatever. Once the people get there, Pyk tries to get them to give him something. Something they value. Like... another person. Like a... a wife or husband. Or a son or daughter.”

Karen and Gavin gave each other a long look, then turned to Crystal. “Like your friends Rhonda and Wendy maybe?” To Penny, Karen said, “You mean, Pyk persuades these people to give him... other people?”

“Yes. But Mr. Ryker wasn’t very confident, so he also offered the people what he called incentives. Like a new car, or money.”

Gavin looked at Crystal again. This time, her eyes had widened. He turned back to Penny and said, “What did they do with the people who were given to them?”

A pained look crossed Penny’s face as she looked down at the tabletop and she began to squirm in the chair. “They... they...” Her voice was quieter, higher in pitch, and she sounded about to cry. She didn’t finish.

“What about the children, Penny?” Karen said. “What did Ryker want with children?”

Until that moment, Penny had been calm and relaxed. But Gavin’s question made her tense. She frowned and began to fidget. Her lips quivered and she looked, for a moment, as if she were about to cry.

“You okay, Penny?” Karen said.

Penny lowered her head and did not respond.

“If it’s upsetting, Penny,” Karen said, “you can—”

A cough-like sob escaped Penny and her shoulders shook once. Slowly, she lifted her head as tears rolled down her cheeks. She said something, but it was garbled.

“What was that?” Karen said.

Penny began to shake as she slumped in her chair and covered her face with her hands.

Karen and Crystal both left their seats and hurried to Penny’s side. They comforted her, reassured her, told her she didn’t have to talk if she didn’t want to. Penny shook her head back and forth for a moment, then lowered her hands, sobbing.

“No, I should talk, I
should
,” she said. “I
have
to.”

She coughed and sniffled as Crystal hurried away, then returned a moment later with a box of tissues. Penny wiped her eyes, blew her nose. Finally, she took a deep breath, then spoke.

“The children are being fed to Pyk,” she said. “I’ve seen it happen. They’ve made me watch. He eats them.”

Then she broke down again and slumped against Karen as she sobbed.

O
n Crystal’s computer screen via Skype, Burgess looked puffy-eyed and sleepy in his San Francisco hotel room, his hair spiked and tangled. He wore a black bathrobe and a pair of sweatpants and kept sipping from a cup of coffee. He claimed he hadn’t gotten three straight hours of sleep in 48 hours.

“Look,” he said, “if I had any idea—any idea
at all
—that this was so... well,
complicated
, I wouldn’t have—”

“This is more than complicated, Martin,” Gavin said. He was seated in front of the computer at the desk in Crystal’s office. Karen paced the floor behind him and Crystal was seated nearby in a chair. “If everything Penny says is true, these are incredibly dangerous people who have more power and resources in one pocket than all of us combined will ever have in our lives.”

“I understand, I understand. And I don’t want you to take another step. Let’s just call the whole thing off. As long as you’re sure that what this girl has told you is true.”

“You’re the one who told us these people are from Km Services,” Gavin said. “We don’t need Penny to tell us that’s a pretty shady organization with scary connections, right?”

“Right, yes, that’s true. But this other stuff—the creature she said they were testing, she said children were, um—” He frowned and squinted. “She really said they
were feeding
the children to this thing?”

“Yes.”

“And you believe it?”

“I believe
she
believes it.”

“And this other woman, the Mahler woman, she actually
saw
children being taken in there?”

“Yes.”

Burgess sighed. “Karen? Any thoughts?”

She said nothing for a moment and Gavin turned his chair around to see her standing in the middle of the room, hands on her hips, chewing her lower lip. Finally, she looked at Gavin and said, “How can we just walk away?”

“What else do you suggest?”

“I... I don’t know. I just can’t stand the thought of... well, if there are children being...” She pressed a hand to her forehead and groaned as she began pacing again.

“I know, I know,” Gavin said. “That’s bugging the hell out of me, too.”

“If it’s really happening,” Burgess said.

Gavin turned to the computer with wide-eyed surprise. “Don’t tell me you’re actually being
skeptical
, Martin. You?”

“As unlikely as that seems, yes. Sort of. I’m a little reluctant to believe that live children are being fed to... well, to anything. Did you ask Penny where the children are coming from? Where is Ryker getting them?”

“Penny was too upset to ask her anymore questions. She’s sleeping now.”

“What about Gertie? Where’s she?”

“Gertie went home. She was afraid to stay away very long. She doesn’t want to make anyone suspicious.”

“May I make a suggestion?” Burgess said.

Karen came over to the desk and stood just behind Gavin. “We’re listening,” she said.

“Crystal has introduced you to friends as a couple of mystery writers who are writing a novel set in Mt. Shasta. That’ll get the word around. In the morning, go out for breakfast, walk around town, talk to people. Ask who you might talk to about local history, the lore of the mountain. Make sure you ask a few people about this. Then in the afternoon, show up at the Mahler house.”

“Just
show up
?” Karen said.

“Yes. Show up and knock on the door. Introduce yourselves, say you’re writing a mystery novel set in town, and you’d been told that Mr. Mahler is a font of local history and lore and you’d like to chat with him.”

“And then?” Gavin said.

“Then you do that voodoo that you do so well. See what you can learn. See if you can get a look at the building out back. Better yet, see if you can meet this Ryker fellow. You guys are pros at this. You know how to suck up information. So, go there and... suck. For a while. See what you pick up. After that, if you want to walk away from this, then walk away. With my blessing. And full payment, by the way.” Karen hunkered down beside Gavin’s chair and looked at him. “Gertie gave us her cell phone number. We should warn her that we’re coming so she won’t be surprised and will play along.”

Gavin looked at her without speaking for a moment. She squatted beside his chair, arms hanging between her legs, hands clutching each other tightly. She was tense, uncomfortable. She had been deeply disturbed by what Penny had told them—as had he—and was eager to see, at the very least, if there was something they could do about the possibility that children actually were being endangered. Maybe even killed.

“Yeah, okay,” he said finally, after a long moment of silence. He turned to the screen. “We can do that, Martin.”

“Good. Check your email. My contact should’ve gotten to you by now with information on Ryker.”

“Thanks,” Gavin said.

“Can I go to bed now? I’m so tired that for all I know, I’ve hallucinated this entire conversation.”

“Get some sleep, Martin,” Karen said. She stood and put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Ira going to go check on Penny.”

Karen pushed the door open slowly. Penny had asked that the bedside lamp be left on at the low setting. It cast a small pool of soft yellow light. She leaned into the room slightly and listened to see if Penny was breathing with the rhythm of sleep.

Penny sat up and looked at her sleepily.

“Sorry,” Karen whispered. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

“I was awake. Come in.”

Karen closed the door behind her and sat down on the edge of the bed. They spoke in whispers. “Can’t sleep?”

“I can’t stop worrying about Pyk. He’s so... vulnerable.”

“If he’s eating children, I’m not so sure ‘vulnerable’ is a word I’d use to describe him.”

Penny released a frustrated sigh. “He’s not cruel or evil. He’s just... what he is.
They’re
the bad ones—Ryker and the others. Pyk was supposed to escape
with
me. I’m not sure what happened, but he didn’t get out.”

“Well, it sounds like Pyk is pretty valuable to them, so they probably won’t hurt him.”

“They won’t
kill
him, but they’ll do whatever they have to if they think they can figure him out. They’re just using him. They don’t care about him. They don’t know how frightened he is. And he doesn’t like them, not at all. He knows now what he didn’t know before. He can
... feel
how bad they are. I heard screams after I ran out of there. I think he hurt someone trying to escape. And if they push him too far, he’ll hurt them a lot worse. That wouldn’t be so bad, really. I wouldn’t mind at all. But I’m worried about him. If they drug him, he won’t be able to defend himself. And even if they don’t kill him, they’ll hurt him. They just don’t care. About anyone or anything. They’ll do whatever they think they have to do to get what they want. I was the only one who could communicate with him. I feel... responsible.”

“You did what you could, Penny. You tried. Don’t beat yourself up. Tell you what. It looks like Gavin and I will be going out there tomorrow. We’re going to talk to the Mahlers, try to get a look at that lab and maybe even talk to Ryker. We’ll see what we can find out. But the important thing right now is that
you
got out of there.”

“I’m scared of what’s going to happen next.”

“What do you
want
to happen?”

Thinking about that made her frown. “I don’t know. I never thought about that before.”

“Surely there must be something you
want
to happen. Where would you like to be instead of back there?”

“Anywhere. Id rather be nowhere than go back to Mr. Ryker. Or back to Aquino Academy. Nowhere.”

“Don’t you have friends there?”

“No one trusts anyone there. Everyone’s afraid. Everyone is a possible danger. Even people you like.”

Karen could not imagine what life would be like in a school you couldn’t leave, surrounded by people whose minds you couldn’t escape.

“Tell me something, Penny. Why does Mr. Ryker feed children to Pyk? Isn’t there something else he could eat?”

“Pyk likes eating living things. He told me
I
looked... delicious. He doesn’t mean anything by it. It’s not that he’s vicious, or anything. It’s just the way he is. It’s one of the things that make him an outcast among his people. When I told Mr. Ryker that, he wanted to make Pyk happy. He thought if Pyk were given everything he wanted, he would be more cooperative. So he had a little kid brought in, a little boy, and offered him to Pyk. And Pyk loved it. So that’s what he’s been feeding Pyk ever since.”

“Where do the children come from?”

“I’m not sure. All I know is that he gets them from what he thinks of as ‘the pool.’”

“Pool? You mean, a... swimming pool, maybe?”

“No. From... a
group
, I think. Like a pool of kids available to him. Does that makes sense?”

“Yes, it makes sense.”
Its maybe the most horrifying thing I’ve ever heard
, she thought,
but it makes sense. How does an ex-CIA worker for Km Services have access to a pool of children who are as disposable as live bait?

“I could find out exactly where they come from if I wanted to,” Penny said. “All I have to do is open up a little more, go a little deeper into Mr. Ryker’s head. It would be easy. In fact, it’s harder
not
to do it than it is to do it. It comes naturally. But I have to protect myself.”