Blood Test

23

I hadn’t found what I was looking for. But between Swope’s journals and the file I’d taken from Matthias’s room I had plenty for show and tell. No doubt my pilferage violated all the rules of evidence, but what I’d found would be enough to get things going.

It was just past two A.M. I got behind the wheel of the Seville, adrenalized and hyperalert. Starting up the engine, I organized my thoughts: I’d drive to Oceanside, find a phone and call Milo or, if he was still in Washington, Del Hardy. It shouldn’t take long to notify the proper authorities, and with luck the investigation could commence before dawn.

It was more important than ever to avoid La Vista. I turned the car around in the direction of the utility road and rolled into the dark. I passed the Swope place, Maimon’s nursery, the homesteads and the citrus groves, and had reached the plateau of the foothills when the other car materialized from the west.

I heard it before seeing it — its headlights, like mine, were off. There was just enough moonlight to identify the make as it sped past. A late model Corvette, dark, possibly black, its snout nosing the asphalt. The rumble of an oversized engine. A rear spoiler. Shiny mag wheels.

But it wasn’t until I saw the big fat tires that I changed my plans.

The Corvette turned left. I shot the intersection, turned right and followed, lagging far enough behind to stay out of earshot and struggling to keep the low dark chassis in view from that distance. Whoever was behind the wheel knew the road well and drove like a teenage joyrider, popping the clutch, downshifting around curves without breaking, accelerating with a roar that signaled impending redline.

The road turned to dirt. The Corvette chewed it up like a four-wheeler. The Seville’s suspension shimmied but I held on. The other car slowed at the sealed entrance to the oilfields, turned sharply and drove along the perimeter of the mesa. It accelerated and sped on, hugging the fence, casting an incision-thin shadow against the chain link.

The abandoned fields stretched for miles, as desolate as a moonscape. Moist craters pocked the terrain. The fossils of tractors and trucks rose from the sump. Row after row of dormant wells encased in grid-sided towers erupted from the tortured earth, creating the illusion of a skyline.

The Corvette was there one moment, gone the next. I braked quickly but quietly, and coasted forward. There was a car-sized gap in the fence. The chain link was ragged and curly-edged around the opening, as if it had unraveled under the force of giant shears. Tire tracks etched the dirt.

I drove through, parked behind a rusted derrick, got out, and inspected the ground.

The Corvette’s tires had created dual caterpillars that wove a corridor through convex metal walls: oil drums were stacked three-high, forming a hundred yards of barricade. The night air stank of tar and burnt rubber.

The corridor terminated in a clearing. In the open space sat an old mobile home on blocks. A smudge of light filtered through a single curtained window. The door was unadorned plywood. A few feet away was the sleek black car.

The driver’s door opened. I pressed back, flat against the oil drums. A man got out, arms full, keys dangling from his fingertips. He carried four shopping bags as if they were weightless. Walking to the door of the mobile home, he knocked once, three times, then once again, and let himself in.

He stayed in there for half an hour, emerged carrying an axe, laid it on the Corvette’s passenger seat, and got behind the wheel.

I waited ten minutes after he’d driven away before walking to the door and imitating his knock. When there was no response, I repeated it. The door opened. I looked into wide-set eyes the color of midnight.

“Back so soo—” The straight wide mouth froze in surprise. She tried to slam the door shut. I put my foot in and pressed. She pushed back. I got in and she edged away from me.

“You!” The girl was wild-eyed and beautiful. Her flaming hair had been tied up and pinned. A few fine strands had come loose, haloing the long supple neck. Two thin hoops pierced each ear. She wore cut-offs and a white midriff blouse. Her belly was tan and flat, her legs smooth and miles-long, tapering to bare feet. She’d painted her fingernails and toenails hunter green.

The trailer was partitioned into rooms. We were in a cramped yellow kitchen that smelled of mildew. One of the shopping bags had already been emptied. The other three sat on the counter. She fumbled in the dish drainer, came up with a plastic-handled bread knife.

“Get out of here or I’ll cut you. I swear it!”

“Put it down, Nona,” I said softly. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

“Bullshit! Just like the others.” She held the knife with both hands. The serrated blade made a wobbly arc. “Get out!”

“I know what was done to you. Hear me out.”

She went slack and looked puzzled. For a moment I thought I’d calmed her. I took a step closer. Her young face contorted with hurt and rage.

She took a deep breath and lunged at me, knife held high.

I stepped away from the thrust. She plunged the blade where my thorax had been, stabbed air, and pitched forward awkwardly. I caught her wrist, squeezed and shook.

The knife fell, clicking against grubby linoleum. She went for my eyes with long green nails, but I got hold of both of her arms. She was delicately built, the bones fragile under smooth soft skin, but strengthened by anger. She kicked and coiled and spat, managed to gouge my cheek. On my bad side. I felt a warm trail flow ticklishly down the side of my face, then a sharp sting. Burgundy splotches dotted the floor.

I pinioned her arms to her sides. She went stiff, staring at me with the terror of a wounded animal. Suddenly she darted her face forward. I jerked back to avoid being bitten. Her tongue snaked out and caught a droplet of blood on its tip. She ran it over her lips, rouging them wetly. Forced a smile.

“I’ll drink you,” she said huskily. “Do anything you want. If you leave afterwards.”

“That’s not what I’m after.”

“It would be if you knew. I can make you feel things you’ve never imagined.” It was a line from a low-budget skinflick, but she took it seriously, grinding her pelvis against mine. She licked me once more and made a show of swallowing the blood.

“Stop it,” I said, arching away.

“Aw, c’mon.” She wriggled. “You’re a hunk. Those nice blue eyes and all of those thick dark curls. I bet your cock is just as pretty, huh?”

“Enough, Nona.”

She pouted and kept rubbing against me. Her skin was saturated with musky dimestore cologne.

“Don’t be angry, Blue Eyes. There’s nothing wrong with being a big healthy guy with a big gnarly cock. I can feel it now. Right there. Oh yeah, it’s big. I’d love to play with it. Put it in my mouth. Swallow you. Drink you.” She batted her lashes. “I’ll take off my clothes and let you play with me while I do you.”

She tried to lick me again. I freed one hand and slapped her hard across the face.

She reeled backward, stunned, and looked at me with little-girl surprise.

“You’re a human being,” I said. “Not a piece of meat.”

“I’m a cunt!” She screamed and tore at her hair, ripping loose the long ginger tendrils.

“Nona—”

She shuddered with self-loathing, sculpted her hands into quivering hooks. But this time they were aimed at her own flesh, inches from ripping open that exquisite face.

I grabbed her and held her tight. She fought me, cursing, then exploded into sobs. She seemed to curl up and diminish in size, crying on my shoulder. When the tears wouldn’t come anymore, she collapsed against my chest, mute and limp.

I carried her to a chair, sat her down, wiped her face with a tissue and pressed another against my cheek. Most of the bleeding had stopped. I retrieved the knife and tossed it in the sink.

She was staring at the table. I cupped her chin in my hand. The inky eyes were glazed and unfocused.

“Where’s Woody?”

“Back there,” she said dully. “Sleeping.”

“Show me.”

She rose unsteadily. A shredded plastic shower curtain divided the trailer. I guided her through it.

The back room was stuffy and dim and furnished with thrift shop remnants. The walls were paneled with fake birch, scarred white. A filling station calendar hung lopsided from a roofing nail. Digital time beamed forth from a plastic clock radio atop a plastic Parsons table. On the floor was a pile of teen magazines. A blue velveteen sleeper sofa had been opened to a queen-size bed.

Woody slept under faded paisley covers, coppery curls spreading on the pillow. On the adjacent nightstand were comic books, a toy truck, an uneaten apple, a bottle of pills. Vitamins.

His breathing was regular but labored, his lips swollen and dry. I touched his cheek.

“He’s very hot,” I told her.

“It’ll break,” she said defensively. “I’ve been giving him vitamin C for it.”

“Has it helped yet?”

She looked away and shook her head.

“He needs to be in a hospital, Nona.”

“No!” She bent down, took his small head in her arms. Pressed her cheek to his and kissed his eyelids. He smiled in his sleep.

“I’m going to call an ambulance.”

“There’s no phone,” she proclaimed with childish triumph. “Go leave to find one. We’ll be gone when you get back.”

“He’s very sick,” I said patiently. “Every hour we delay puts him in greater danger. We’ll go together, in my car. Get your things ready.”

“They’ll hurt him!” she screamed. “Just like before. Sticking needles in his bones! Putting him in that plastic jail!”

“Listen to me, Nona. He has cancer. He could die from it.” She turned away.

“I don’t believe it.”

I held her shoulders.

“You’d better. It’s true.”

“Why? Cause that beaner doctor said so? He’s just like all the others. Can’t be trusted.” She cocked her hip the way she’d done in the hospital corridor. “Why should it be cancer? He never smoked or polluted himself! He’s just a little kid.”

“Kids get cancer, too. Thousands of them each year. No one knows why but they do. Almost all of them can be treated and some can be cured. Woody’s one of them. Give him a chance.”

She frowned stubbornly.

“They were poisoning him in that place.”

“You need strong drugs to kill the disease. I’m not saying it’ll be painless but medical treatment’s the only thing that can save his life.”

“S’that what the beaner told you to tell me?”

“No. It’s what I’m telling you myself. You don’t have to go back to Dr. Melendez-Lynch. We’ll find another specialist. In San Diego.”

The boy cried out in his sleep. She ran to him, sang a low, wordless lullaby, and stroked his hair. He quieted.

She rocked him in her arms. A child cradling a child. The flawless features trembled on the brink of collapse. The tears started again, in a torrent that streamed down her face.

“If we go to a hospital they’ll take him away from me. I can take care of him best right here.”

“Nona,” I said, summoning all my compassion, “there are things even a mother can’t do.”

The rocking ceased for a moment, then resumed.

“I was at your parents’ house tonight. I saw the greenhouse and read your father’s notebooks.” She gave a start. It was the first she’d heard of the journals. But she suppressed the surprise and pretended to ignore me.

I continued to talk softly. “I know what you’ve been through. It started after the death of the cherimoyas. He was probably unbalanced all along, but failure and helplessness drove him over the edge. He tried to get back in control by playing God. By creating his own world.”

She stiffened, withdrew from the boy, put his head down on the pillow tenderly, and walked out of the room. I followed her into the kitchen, keeping an eye on the knife in the sink. Stretching, she took a bottle of Southern Comfort from a high cupboard shelf, poured a coffee cup half full, and, leaning rangily against the counter, swallowed. Unaccustomed to hard drinking, she grimaced and went into a paroxysm of coughing as it hit bottom.

I patted her back and eased her to a chair. She took the bottle with her. I sat opposite her, waited until she’d stopped hacking to continue.

“It started out as a series of experiments. Weird stuff using inbreeding and complex grafts. And that’s all it was for a while— weird. Nothing criminal happened until he noticed you’d grown up.”

She filled the cup again, threw her head back, and tossed the liquor down her throat, a caricature of toughness.

Once upon a time she’d been anything but tough. A pretty little red-haired girl, Maimon had recalled, smiling and friendly. The problems hadn’t started until she was twelve years old or so. He hadn’t known why.

But I did.

She’d completed puberty three months before her twelfth birthday. Swope had recorded the day he’d discovered it: (“Eureka! Annona has blossomed. She lacks intellectual depth, but what physical perfection! First rate stock…”).

He’d been fascinated with the transformation of her body, describing it in botanic terms. And as he observed her development, a hideous plan had taken shape in the wreckage of his mind.

One part of him was still organized, disciplined. As analytical as Mengele. The seduction was undertaken with the precision of a scientific experiment.

The first step was dehumanization of the victim. In order to justify the violation, he reclassified her: the girl was no longer his daughter, or even a person. Merely a specimen of a new exotic species. Annona zingiber. The ginger annona. A pistil to be pollinated.

Next came semantic distortion of the outrage itself: the daily excursions into the forest behind the greenhouse weren’t incest, simply a new, intriguing project. The ultimate investigation of inbreeding.

He’d wait eagerly each day for her return from school to take her by the hand, and lead her into darkness. Then the spreading of the blanket on ground softened by pine needles, casual dismissal of her protests. There had been a full half year of rehearsal — an intensive seminar in fellatio — then finally, entry into the young body, the spilling of seed on the ground.

Evenings were devoted to the recording of data: climbing into the attic, he’d log each union in his notebook, sparing no details. Just like any other research.

According to the journals, he’d kept his wife informed about the progress of the experiments. Initially, she’d offered faint protest, then stood by, passively acquiescent. Following orders.

Impregnating the girl hadn’t been an accident. On the contrary, it had been Swope’s ultimate goal, calibrated and calculated. He’d been patient and methodical, waiting until she was a bit older— fourteen — to fertilize her so that the health of the fetus would be optimized. Charting her menstrual cycle to pinpoint ovulation. Refraining from intercourse for several days to increase the sperm count.

It had taken on the first try. He’d rejoiced at the cessation of her menses, the swelling of her belly. A new cultivar had been created.

I told her what I knew, wording it gently and hoping the empathy came through. She listened with a blank look on her face, drank Southern Comfort until her eyelids drooped.

“He victimized you, Nona. Used you and discarded you when it was over.”

Her head gave an almost imperceptible nod.

“You must have been so frightened, carrying a child at that age. And being sent away to have it in secret.”

“Bunch of dykes,” she muttered, slurring her words.

“At Madronas?”

She took another drink.

“Fuck yeah. Las Fucking Madronas Home for Bad Little Fucking Girls. In Mexi-fucking-O.” Her head lolled. She reached for the bottle. “Big fat fucking beaner dykes running the place. Screaming in beaner. Pinching and poking. Telling us we were trash. Sluts.”

Maimon had remembered vividly the morning she’d left town. Had described her waiting with her suitcase in the middle of the road. A scared little girl with all the mischief knocked out of her. About to be banished for the sins of another.

She’d come back different, he’d noted. Quieter, more subdued. Angry.

She was talking now, softly, drunkenly.

“It hurt so bad to push that baby boy out. I screamed and they covered my mouth. I thought I was coming apart. When it was over, they wouldn’t let me hold him. Took him away from me. My baby, and they took him away! I forced myself to sit up to get a look at him. It near killed me. He had red hair, just like me.”

She shook her head, baffled.

“I thought I could keep him after I got home. But he said no way. Told me I was nothing. Just a vessel. Just a fucking vessel. Fancy word for cunt. Good for nothing but fucking. Told me I wasn’t really the momma. She’d already started being his momma. I was the cunt. All used up and tossed in the trash. Time to let the grownups take over.”

She dropped her head on the table and whimpered.

I rubbed the back of her neck, said comforting things. Even in that state she reacted reflexively to the touch of a male, lifting her face and flashing me an intoxicated, come-hither smile, leaning forward to expose the tops of her breasts.

I shook my head and she turned away shame-faced.

I had so much sympathy for her it ached. There were therapeutic things I could have said. But now was the time to manipulate her. The boy in the back room needed help. I was prepared to take him out of there against her will but preferred to avoid another abduction. For both their sakes.

“It wasn’t you who took him out of the hospital, was it? You loved him too much to endanger him like that.”

“It’s true,” she said, wet-eyed. “They did it. To stop me from being his momma. All these years I’d let them treat me like garbage. Stayed out of the way while they raised him. Not saying anything to him about it cause I was afraid it would freak him out. Too much for a little kid to handle. Dying inside all the time.” She raised one slender hand to her heart, reached down with the other and drained her glass.

“But when he got sick something tugged on me. Like a hook in my guts with someone reeling in the line. I had to reclaim my rights. I stewed about it, sitting with him in that plastic room, watching him sleep. My baby. Finally I decided to do it. Sat them down in the motel one night, told them the lies had gone on too long. That my time had come. To take care of my baby.

“They— he laughed at me. Put me down, told me I was unfit, a piece of shit. A fucking vessel. I should get the hell out and make it better for everyone. But this time I didn’t take it. The pain in my guts was too strong. I gave it all back to them, told them they were evil. Sinners. That the ca — the sickness was God’s punishment for what they’d done. They were the ones who were unfit. And I was gonna tell everyone about it. The doctors, the nurses. They’d kick them out and hand my baby over to his rightful momma when they found out.”

Her hands trembled violently around her glass. I walked behind her and steadied them with mine.

“It was my right!” she cried out, whipping her head around and begging confirmation. I nodded and she slumped against my chest.

During Baron and Delilah’s hospital visit, Emma Swope had complained the cancer treatment was dividing the family. The cultists had construed it as anxiety about the physical separation imposed by the Laminar Airflow room. But the woman had been worrying out loud about a far more serious rupture, one that threatened to rend the family as irreparably as a guillotine on neck-flesh.

Perhaps she’d known, then, that the wound was too deep to heal. But she and her husband had attempted to patch it anyway. To prevent the leakage of the ugly secret by taking the child and running…

“They snuck him out behind my back,” Nona was saying, squeezing my hand, digging in with the green nails. The anger was percolating within her once again. A thin film of sweat mustached the rich, wide mouth. “Like fucking thieves. She dressed up as an x-ray technician. In a mask and gown they swiped from the laundry bin. Took him down to the basement on a service elevator and out a side exit. Thieves.

“I came back to the motel and all three of them were there. My baby was lying on the bed, so small and helpless. They were packing and joking about getting away with it so easy. How nobody had recognized her behind the mask because none of them had ever looked her in the eye. Putting down the hospital. Him going on about smog and shit. Trying to justify what they’d done.”

She’d given me an opening. It was time to renew my pitch. To convince her to come with me peaceably as I carried her son out of there.

But before I could say anything the door burst open.