Deceived

26

At the caution light, where the Hess station was still a beacon for migrant teenagers, I turned right. No traffic either direction, but, suddenly, car lights appeared behind me. I was doing a comfortable sixty and the lights were gaining on me fast-a car, not a truck. No reason to be alarmed, but I did pay attention. I slowed a bit, expecting the car to pass. Instead, it rocketed to within a few car lengths, blinding me with its high beams, then dropped back to a safer distance.

There was oncoming traffic now: an eighteen-wheeler behind a vehicle with only one headlight-a motorcycle, I thought at first. No… it was a commercial van, the kind used to haul migrant workers, with a bad light on the passenger’s side. Maybe the driver behind me was fooled, too, because he chose that moment to pass. Bad decision, because the semi and the van were both flying. There was a foghorn blare; the van swerved, but the car was fast enough to make it with fifty yards to spare. I noticed that the van was towing farm machinery but didn’t get a good look at the car until it was in front of me, rocketing away. It appeared to be a Mercedes sports model, not an Audi A6, which put me at ease again.

For the next two miles, I had the road to myself, but soon slowed to forty because I didn’t want to miss the turn into what had once been a church. In the far, far distance, I could see the illuminated sign of the rehab clinic, so I knew it was close. Even so, I missed the turn. Too much foliage and moss-heavy trees to notice that small opening. Normally, I would have said Shit but didn’t because the clearing within appeared to be empty. My headlights would have surely sparked off the BMW’s red reflectors, so Birdy’s car wasn’t there.

Good!

To make certain, I pulled to the side of the road and checked my mirrors, ready to turn around. Half a mile down the road, from the direction of the Hess station, the van with the bad headlight was already returning. That puzzled me until it slowed and disappeared north up an unseen lane, so maybe the driver had missed his turn, too-a migrant worker, possibly, towing machinery for a local farmer. There were tomato fields and citrus north of the cypress strand, as I had seen on Google Earth.

Even so, when I swung my SUV around, I kept my eyes on where the van had vanished while also watching for the overgrown entrance to the church. I was going to pull in only long enough to confirm that Birdy’s car was gone but didn’t want anyone to see what I was doing.

That’s not the way things worked out.

I TURNED into the church, my headlights panning along the wooden wreckage… illuminating trees and then gravestones that protruded like vertebrae from a tangled hide of vines-all the dark elements I expected to see, plus something unexpected: Birdy Tupplemeyer’s car.

The BMW was parked in the same hidden spot, facing the cemetery, the foliage so thick, I hadn’t seen its reflectors from the road. The reflectors were glittering now as I tapped at my high beams-which were already on-and pulled closer, seeing the convertible from behind, the car’s top up, engine off. I continued to creep closer until I was only a car length away, and that was close enough.

My god, I thought. What have they done to you?

I should have called 911 before doing anything else, but I couldn’t. It was because Birdy was still in the car. Through the rear window, I could see the silhouette of her head. She appeared to be slumped forward, face against the steering wheel. I knew she wasn’t sleeping, but, absurdly, I rapped my horn a couple of times.

When my friend didn’t move, I jumped out yelling her name-“Birdy!”-and ran to her, my cell phone in hand… didn’t stop, in the glare of my SUV’s headlights, until I had reached the little car. I yanked at the door handle, expecting it to be locked, but the door flew open, banging hard on its hinges. When it did, I knelt inside and put my hands on her shoulder, saying “Birdy… Birdy, are you okay?”

The interior lighting of a BMW is muted, but the overhead console is a triad of bright LEDs. The LEDs flared when I opened the door, but it wasn’t until the woman lifted her face and leered that I realized my hands were not comforting my friend Liberty Tupplemeyer.

It was Dr. Alice Candor slumped low behind the wheel.

“I told you I’d have your head one day,” she said, a purring reminder that pierced like a blade.

Candor was a big woman, big enough to grab my wrist and stop me momentarily when I tried to jump back. Just long enough for a hypodermic needle to appear in her other hand, the syringe lucent with golden liquid when she jabbed the needle into my neck.

I was in shock but too strong to give Candor time to empty the syringe-at least, I hoped that was true. I wrestled her arm away, which sent my cell phone flying. Then took a few steps backward while my fingers explored the burning sensation near my jugular and I felt blood.

Was this really happening?

Yes. Candor had just stabbed me with a needle… No!-not just stabbed, she had injected a drug.

I tried to yell What was in that? but coughed the words.

Now the woman was out of the car, walking toward me, the hypodermic in her hand and saying, “Calm down, I’m trying to help you,” her manner blending sarcasm with a lie she had probably spoken a thousand times.

My fingers were assessing my wound while I backed toward the cemetery. The needle had entered closer to my throat than my jugular vein. Blood was trickling down my neck, and I felt as if I couldn’t speak without coughing. I did cough while demanding, “Where’s Liberty Tupplemeyer? She’s a deputy sheriff-you’re in a lot of trouble, lady!”

In the lights of my SUV, Candor’s face was white as a mushroom, but it wasn’t because I had frightened her. She was enjoying herself, holding the syringe like a cigarette as she continued to stalk me. “You’re starting to feel dizzy, aren’t you, Hannah? Probably a little nauseated, too. But I can make that go away if you’d just let me help.”

The doctor was right. I did feel a queasy dizziness. Another effect, though, was a weird blooming sense of invulnerability, and what I saw in the syringe gave me hope. It was still half full of the drug she had tried to inject, the liquid now silver, not gold, in the harsh lighting.

I replied, “Go to hell!” then turned and tried to run, wanted to follow the bright corridor of headlights through the cemetery into the trees. Alice Candor was fit for her age, but it would be easy enough to lose her-I wasn’t invulnerable, despite what the drug was telling me, but I was fast. After that, I could double back to the safety of my SUV-use my cell phone, once I’d found it, or flag down a car.

Trouble was, I couldn’t run. I took two or three wobbly strides but had to stop.

“Tired already, dear?” Dr. Candor was only a few yards behind, mocking me, her shadow huge on the ground as projected by the headlights of my SUV.

No, I wasn’t tired. I felt fearless and euphoric, but my legs had lost contact with my brain. The sensation was like being drunk and trying to escape through a vat of syrup. I tried running again… stumbled, then had to grab at something to steady myself-a grave marker, I realized. When I felt the coldness of the stone, the memory of Birdy falling on a grave flickered through my mind. She had said something about not being superstitious, which I had ignored because I was more concerned about the pumpkin-sized mound of sand next to her.

Where was it?

My eyes began to search. There had been several of those mounds in the cemetery, and I didn’t want to make the mistake of stepping in one.

Behind me, Candor was experiencing a mood swing. “You’re as pathetic as that idiotic police bitch. Any idea how disgusting it was for me… me… to add a goddamn smiley face to a text? Like some airheaded mall twat. I graduated cum laude from Johns Hopkins!” The woman laughed, astounded by her own behavior but smart enough to appreciate the irony.

When she said that, I stood and faced her but had to shield my eyes because of the headlights. “Where’s Birdy?” I asked.

“Who?”

“The sheriff’s deputy,” I said. “Did you give her the same thing? What’s in that needle?”

Some warmth came into the woman’s voice. “You like it, don’t you?”

I had to cough to clear my throat. “I’ve never felt this way before. Where’s Birdy?”

“Miss your little friend, huh? I can take you to her. Would you like that? All you have to do is roll up your sleeve.”

“Is she hurt?”

“Of course not! She had some… Christ!… some episode about an Indian graveyard-a type of transference hysteria-so I had to sedate her. Perfectly legal, and it was for her own good.” The woman came a step closer. “You’ll feel much better in a second. I promise.”

In silhouette, the syringe Candor held stood erect at face level, in contrast to the curvature of her hair, which was pinned back and businesslike, suitable for a physician who was making rounds. I touched a hand to the gravestone to confirm my location, then took two slow steps back while replying, “Those headlights are blinding me. I’ll do it, but I want to know what you’re giving me first.”

Alice Candor followed, my tone triggering another mood swing. “Shut up, goddamn it, or I’ll stick you in the throat again!”

Because I had expected to spend the evening at Dinkin’s Bay, I was wearing jeans and a favorite blouse-a cross-dyed long-sleeve with Navaho patterns, copper and desert primrose. I braced my thigh against another gravestone and unbuttoned my left cuff. “You’ll have to come to me,” I said. “I feel like I might pass out.”

It wasn’t true.

I WAS EVEN MORE unsteady now, but the weird euphoria I’d felt had been transformed-transformed into fear because I knew the doctor was lying and I had to do something. Birdy Tupplemeyer wasn’t okay. She wouldn’t have allowed someone to use her phone to trick me and she certainly wouldn’t have given Candor the keys to her new BMW.

Alice Candor, who had graduated cum laude, believed me, however. She waited until my sleeve was rolled high to come a few steps closer, the hypodermic in her right hand while she used her left to reach for my wrist. I remained passive until her fingers made contact, then everything changed. I jumped away from the arc of the hypodermic and, at the same instant, grabbed the doctor by the left arm and pulled her off balance. There was a slingshot effect that allowed me to swing the woman in a circle while my fingers anchored themselves in her wrist. Candor gave a whoop of surprise; she screamed, but I held tight and continued to spin, using my weight as a fulcrum-a children’s game of crack the whip. My dizziness wasn’t a handicap in such a game and I wasn’t playing.

Two full circles was all it took before the woman’s legs went out and she was launched face-first toward the ground. As Candor fell, I tried to yank her toward a mound of sand I had seen earlier. It wasn’t a direct hit, and maybe not close enough, even though the mound was huge-pumpkin-sized.

Now dizziness was a handicap. If I had been able, I would have run to my SUV. I couldn’t, but I also couldn’t risk the possibility that Candor had held on to the hypodermic. So I dropped my knees onto her back, which knocked the wind out of her-what wind was left anyway. Candor rasped out profanities and battled to get to her feet while I battled to get control of her arms.

Did she still have that damn hypodermic? The woman had landed in shadows behind the gravestone and I couldn’t see.

Yes-she had it. But the doctor was shrewd enough to wait until she had wormed to her side before swinging it like a dagger. The first blow hit me in the abdomen. The sensation of a needle piercing muscle was more frightening than the pain and I knocked her hand away before she had time to press the plunger. She swung again, but I caught her wrist this time and held tight.

I wasn’t going to give her another chance. The only weapon I had was a few feet away, so I used my free hand to grab Dr. Alice Candor by the hair and dragged her to the sand mound. Still holding her wrist, I forced the woman’s face deep into the sand and she instantly dropped the hypodermic. Even so, I wasn’t foolish enough to reach for the needle and I held her there for only a few seconds… then I crawled away in a rush.

A fire ant nest was not a place to linger.

I was staggering toward the lights of my SUV when the screaming started. I glanced over my shoulder and didn’t want to look again. As I had told Birdy Tupplemeyer, fire ants attack in mass, their bites like burning coals. Dr. Candor was covered with them, her face a crawling mask of black. She was running in crazy circles while she clawed at her eyes and shrieked for help.

The woman tried to abduct you, even kill you, I reminded myself. Maybe she killed Birdy.

I couldn’t convince myself to leave her, though. It wasn’t in me. I couldn’t abandon a person who was terrified and in pain-even someone like Alice Candor. People died from fire ant bites.

When I felt a series of stings on my left ankle, it was a reminder. I slapped the ants off my shoe, then went staggering toward the doctor, calling, “I’ll help-stop running!” But I was thinking, You’re a fool, Hannah Smith… a fool.

No doubt about it, because, moments later, a van roared into the clearing-a commercial van with only one headlight and pulling machinery.

The driver was Harris Spooner, his ZZ Top beard angelic silver when he leered at me through an open window. Walkin’ Levi Thurloe was beside him, riding shotgun while staring straight ahead.

The machinery they were towing was the tire shredder.