Species (30 page)

“Shit,” Press said crudely. He craned his neck forward, trying to see something beyond the dancing orange-and-red shadows. “I think she plowed into an electrical substation. This makes absolutely no sense—she didn’t stand a chance this way. Why would she run off the road?”

Laura peered down the path the Olds had battered through the foliage. “Maybe she wasn’t as smart as we thought.”

The words didn’t fit the look of doubt on Laura’s features, and Press snorted as he wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Right. She’s been ahead of us every step of the way so far, so now she’s going to run her car into a bunch of electrical poles so it’ll blow up. Sorry, I didn’t know she had a death wish. I thought the point of the game was that she was trying to live.”

As Laura started to reply one of the helicopters swooped out of the air like a huge black bird; there was a whistling noise and a moment later something heavy and loud rocked the side of the hill five hundred feet below. Press and Laura stumbled and grabbed for the surrounding shrubbery. By the time they found their footing, a fireball mushroomed from the valley floor, dousing the area with red-and-orange light. A second helicopter followed and fired another incendiary rocket, the backwash from its rotor creating churning circles of burning brush just visible down the track left by the Cutlass.

“Oh, good Christ,” Laura said in disgust as she and Press struggled to their feet. “Not only have they ensured we won’t find any remains, they’ll probably burn up Nichols Canyon while they’re at it.”

“I guess Fitch was listening when I bitched him out about the idea of taking her alive,” Press shouted. As if to punctuate their words, one of the Blackhawks circled over Mulholland and returned, firing a third incendiary rocket. This one overshot, and they glimpsed a line of fire ripping through the undergrowth, then speeding into a small backyard; a second later the fireball rammed into something solid. With a roar, someone’s home went up in flames. “What did I tell you?” Laura said bitterly. “How’d you like to come home from work and find that? Assuming, of course, you weren’t already there and
in
it.”

Press straightened up and rubbed his face with his hands. The fire sent a warm orange glow all the way up to the road, but the light didn’t reach his eyes, which were still dark and troubled. “I don’t know,” he said gravely. “It’d be hard, but . . . knowing what we do—or maybe what we
don’t
—isn’t it better this way than to have any part of her survive?”

F
orty-five minutes later the entire team was assembled above the crash site. The streetlights were still out but Fitch’s assistants had several generators feeding oversized spotlights, and a multitude of headlights and high-powered flashlights finished illuminating the area. Press couldn’t decide if the situation reminded him more of a beehive or a black comedy.

“All right,” Phil McRamsey told Dr. Fitch, “we’ve blocked the road in a big loop, including Woodrow Wilson and Laurel Canyon. The news crews are going completely ape-shit. We’re going to have to feed them something.”

“I don’t care what you tell them,” Fitch said. “Just don’t tell them the truth. Handle it.”

“Am I the only person here who thinks it’s awfully convenient that Sil turned up at the club like that and just by coincidence Dan saw her out by the Dumpsters?” Press looked at the rest of the group skeptically. “Or—imagine that!—an electrical substation just
happens
to be at the bottom of the hill that her car skids down? No one else has
any
doubts?”

“What’s to doubt?” Fitch retorted. “Trust your eyes—she was at the ID, and the car she was in was incinerated. Seeing is believing, and every one of us got an eyeful.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Fitch?” Fitch’s other aide, Robert, held up a sealed plastic bag. “We found what looks like a severed thumb.”

“How the hell did you manage that?” Press demanded. “There’s nothing left of the interior of that car except ashes and smoke!”

“It was jammed in the fireproofing of the driver’s door,” Robert said. “The door broke off during the crash.”

Press’s eyes narrowed. “So the car door was open
before
it hit the substation.” He looked hard at Dr. Fitch. “She may not have even
been
in that car, Doc.”

“We’ve already verified the presence of a body.” Minjha said. “And you saw her driving the car.”

“Let me see the thumb.” Laura held out her hand and Minjha dropped the bag onto it, then offered her a penlight from his coat pocket. “That’s strange,” she murmured. “It looks . . .
pinched
off rather than torn. No ragged edges.”

“If you saw the wreckage of the car down there, you’d understand how easily that could have happened,” Minjha said. “The miracle is that the thumb didn’t burn up with the rest of the body, not that it’s a clean cut. Maybe her hand got in the way when the door was torn off.”

“Perhaps,” Laura said, but she looked troubled as she snapped off the light and handed it and the bag back to Robert. “Have it checked against the computer records to make sure. If it’s Sil’s thumb, we’ll be able to prove it by genetic identification. And be sure to call my room at the hotel tonight to confirm the match,” she reminded him sternly. “If I don’t hear from you, I’m going to assume the worst.” The aide nodded and tucked the plastic pouch into his side pocket.

“Great.” Xavier Fitch rubbed his hands together briskly and glanced quickly at each of them. His gaze stopped on Press, then he dug in his pockets for the keys to the van. “Then that’ll be it. This job’s done, Lennox. Tomorrow you can all go back to your careers and normal lives. Congratulations on a job well done.” He turned his back and walked away without another word.

They stood for a few moments without speaking, then Stephen cleared his throat and addressed Laura and Press. “That was a damned harrowing car chase. Are you two all right?”

“Sure,” Laura said. “Besides, what could have happened? Jaguar or not, Press and I never came within ten feet of the creature.”

Press grinned. “That pretty much sums it up, I think. A hard chase and a few bumps—hell, nothing a good meal and a drink or two won’t cure.”

“Now there’s an idea,” Stephen agreed. “We could meet back at the Biltmore, whoop it up a final time.” He looked over at Dan. “What do you say, Dan?”

“Me?” Dan had crossed his arms and was still staring oddly after Dr. Fitch. “I’m pretty sure Dr. Fitch thinks we’re all assholes and is glad to be rid of us.”

While Stephen and Laura gaped at Dan, all Press did was burst into laughter.

36

R
eturning to Marlo Keegan’s house had been much easier than Sil envisioned. The people who hunted her had dropped two firebombs on the stolen Cutlass after it plowed into the substation and exploded, then carelessly destroyed another house with a third one. Between their arrogance at assuming she was still in the car and the resulting chaos from the burning home, Sil had slipped through the surrounding yards and woven her way down the neighboring streets until she was back on Doña Nenita. The Mazda was parked where she’d left it and had cleared of the gasoline fumes since she’d transferred the gas can to the Olds. The drive back to Marlo’s home was uneventful.

Remembering one of the commercials she’d seen on television, Sil stopped only once, at a large-chain drugstore. She was in and out of the store in less than ten minutes, resisting the urge to dally in the aisles and examine the strange and colorful merchandise. She paid for her single item with cash from Marlo’s wallet.

Now Sil stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and stared at her reflection. She hadn’t been very skilled with the scissors but she had used the photograph on the box as a guideline and was nevertheless mildly pleased with the outcome. The shoulder-length blond locks were no more, and the woman in the mirror sported a short, shaggy-ended head of black hair. Tilting her face from side to side, Sil decided she liked it. The image was totally different and worked surprisingly well; the inky color made her skin look shockingly pale and her blue eyes seem overly large and luminescent, like some kind of moon child forever secreted from the sun.

She picked up a comb from the vanity and pulled it through the new, shorter style, then almost dropped it when something in the other room started ringing. Pulse pounding, Sil hurried out of the bathroom and searched until she found the source of the racket, feeling foolish to discover it was only a telephone. She started to return to the bathroom, then stopped when the ringing cut off in midnote and a recording of the dead woman’s voice came out of the Phone-Mate, a cream-colored box hooked to the telephone by a couple of wires.

“Hi, this is Marlo. I can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message, I’ll get back to you just as soon as I can. Thanks for calling.”

A second later a man’s voice floated out of the speaker.

“Hey, sis, how you doing? I’m back in town and thought I’d catch you at home, but I guess I’m too early. Don’t forget, we’re supposed to go to Century City tomorrow to look for an anniversary present for Mom and Dad. Call me when you get in and let me know what time is good for you, okay? I’ll pick you up. Talk to you later.”

The last word was followed by a click, then the machine on the dresser made an internal metallic sound and cut off. Silence once again filled Marlo’s small bedroom. Who was this person who expected the dead Marlo Keegan to return his call? The voice had said the two had made plans for tomorrow—when Marlo didn’t call, would he come here looking for her?

Sil went to the closet and began rummaging through the clothes. No matter; within an hour she’d be gone from this house forever.

T
he entertainment in the back corner of the Biltmore’s Grand Avenue Bar consisted of a three-member band, all very talented and in their early forties. One man played the piano, another had a double-cutaway Gibson ES-335 guitar, and the third member—a middle-aged woman who looked as if she took better care of herself than most females half her age—had a strong, lovely voice that reminded Press vaguely of Barbra Streisand. A nice overall effect, he thought somewhat testily, if you were into soft jazz and hadn’t grown up in the 1960s with an ear for good old rock and roll. These days his tastes tended toward the alternative bands with a hard, fast beat. Whatever Press’s personal preference, the couples gliding across the parquet dance floor seemed to find the excellently rendered tunes soothing, if not exciting. From the corner of his eye, Press saw Xavier Fitch come into the bar; the doctor noticed the group and hesitated, then chose an empty table on the other side of the room.

“Well,” Dan said cheerfully, “I guess we won.” He sounded proud, as if they had all orchestrated and seen to flawless completion some massive and complicated military maneuver.

Stephen gave the younger man a tolerant smile and glanced at Laura. She looked very winsome in a snug black dress with a sloping, lace-trimmed neckline. “We won. Science lost.” She gave a small, one-shouldered shrug that made her seem more feminine than her answer.

“I didn’t think we’d get her this way. Not this easily,” Press said. He looked dashing but vaguely stiff in tailored black slacks and a gray suede jacket. Even to his own ears, his voice sounded curt.