Perfect killer

CHAPTER 42

Wasps the color of burnished cherrywood loitered among the Sonic's covered stalls. I pulled the pickup into the only empty space and let the engine idle in park while the wasps danced in quickening breezes that foretold evening thunder and rain. "Wicked little creatures," Jasmine said.

I recalled the pain again as a squadron traversed the narrow space between my closed window and the ordering speaker.

We scanned the menu beyond the speaker, listening to the air-conditioning whirr.

"Number two, Diet Coke," Jasmine said.

I waited for the wasps to clear but as soon as I rolled the window down, they seemed to gather. I swatted at them, hastily ordered two number twos with diet Cokes, then rolled the window up. A wasp darted for the last bit of opening. The glass crushed it into the window channel, leaving the long, dangling legs to spasm outside.

"They don't give up, do they?" Jasmine said.

"Evolutionary fitness."

"Word." She paused. "You acquitted yourself well back there." She nodded vaguely in the direction of the hospital.

I shrugged. "Just trying to help."

"No. Not just that." She chewed on a corner of her lower lip and gazed past me in thought. "You were so calm; you had a presence in the middle of the chaos, like you've done this before." When she looked at me, her eyes made me believe they saw into my heart, and I knew I would not, could not, lie to her.

"That's what I did before I became a neurosurgeon."

She looked expectantly at me.

Another time?" I asked. "It's a long story. I'd rather not talk about it right now."

"Sure."

Disappointment shadowed her voice and raised a guilty burn in my chest. I badly wanted to make her feel good.

"I'm tired," I tried to explain, but my words fell lamely even on my ears. "The whole story takes energy, and I'd like to spend what I have left to figure out what's happening to you."

"Us."

Us created a personal proximity filling me with a boiling emotional gumbo of guilt, fear, fatigue, and frustration.

"Uhm… so do you really think I was the real target today instead of Lashonna?"

"It has a certain amount of logic," I said slowly "But please realize she's a logical target because of the work she's doing for you."

Without preamble, Jasmine burst into tears and covered her face with her hands. "I killed her," she sobbed. "I should have done everything by myself like Mom."

"She could make it."

"Could, could… if it weren't for me- damn!"

Her tears felt so out of character for the rock-solid, nerves-of-steel woman I had seen to this point. Jasmine wedged herself into a knot, back against the door. I wanted to reach over and comfort her, but sat helplessly in my seat instead.

I tried to give her some privacy by pointedly looking out my side window, but I could not look away for long. I watched her so closely I could almost see her picking up the scattered bricks of her shattered composure and fixing them solidly back into place. In the compressed space of those few moments, she recomposed herself, wiping finally at her eyes with the floppy sleeve of the surgical scrubs. I looked quickly away before she caught me.

Then, from behind us, gangsta rap lyrics spilled out of a mid-1970s Chevy Monte Carlo loud enough to vibrate the pickup's seats and force the lyrics on us whether we wanted them or not. I just wanna fuck bad bitches…

"Charming," Jasmine said darkly as anger took away her tears.

Chicken-head, chicken-fed, with a dick in your mouth…

She shook her head. "Dr. Dre." She shook her head. "All women are bitches and whores, lower forms of life to be raped, beaten, and abused."

I had never paid any attention to rap lyrics before. The heat of Jasmine's reaction took me by surprise.

"All testosterone and no impulse control," Jasmine said after a while. "Hip-hop's about young men not stopping to think about consequences. When society says this music is okay with all the violence, the crime, sex as brutality, then that says, ‘This stuff about rape and murder is okay. Listen to it; sing it; act it out!'" She shook her head ruefully. "Then they wring their hands and wonder why violence is so rampant."

The volume faded as the Monte Carlo reached Park Street and turned right.

"So, what do we do next?" Jasmine asked.

"Hell if I know," I said. "Things are a lot more complicated than we thought twenty-four hours ago."

"Hard to believe."

A tapping on my window startled me. I turned to see the carhop with our food standing outside warding off wasps with a rolled-up newspaper. I rolled down the window, pulled in the food, and rolled up the window before the wasps zeroed in on us. The aroma made my mouth water.

"Vince Sloane said this morning that I'm the LAPD's main suspect," I said as I handed Jasmine her burger, drink, and fries.

"What? How could they even think that?" She placed her meal on the opened glove-compartment door. I used the center console and cup holder.

"Lack of imagination for one thing." Between bites, I told Jasmine everything.

"Well, judging from the reactions of JM and the cops from Greenwood PD, it doesn't look like they've gotten any word from L.A.," she said. "Not yet, but I think it gets a lot worse."

Jasmine frowned.

"I spoke with Rex on the drive up and he tells me the military's asking questions."

"Why would the military… " She paused for a moment as her mind assembled the pieces. "Okay, first we have Darryl Talmadge held in a military hospital-the VA-in Jackson. Then we have the supposedly mistaken attack on your boat." She searched my face and found confirmation. "Finally, I suppose we should factor in your military service"

She looked at me expectantly. "I miss anything?"

"Nope. Which is not to say I haven't missed some important connection myself." I sipped at the diet Coke. "But in the place we're living, no what you don't know can kill you."

"That's encouraging," she said darkly, and turned to her half-eaten burger.

I attacked my own food as well. We sat there silently, chewing on food and on the facts as we had them.

"It makes me very, very uncomfortable to point fingers at the military," I said finally. "I owe my life and my career to the military, and this country owes its very survival and success to people who risk their lives for us."

"Like you did."

I shrugged. "I did my job."

"You did and so do lots of other good soldiers. But you know as well as I do there are a few power-hungry people in the military who will do anything for their own personal agendas. They'll destroy you-or Darryl Talmadge-if it gets them what they want."

"You're too right," I said. "But the military's got too many powerful enemies who think we can love our enemies into submission."

"Well"-Jasmine's face subtly reflected the parade of thoughts behind her eyes- "solving that won't help us much."

I pulled the straw out of my soft-drink cup and drained the last of the cola.

Absolutely right," I said finally "That's not our mission. Not right now."

"So what is the mission?"

"Staying alive's number one." I finished off my fries and thought about repeating the entire order.

"Here. Have mine." Jasmine handed me her mostly untouched fries.

"Thanks."

"Keeping you out of jail's a top priority too," she said. "We'll never get to the bottom of this without you." Jasmine shook her head. "I can't believe they'd suspect you."

"Look, given the circumstances, I'd suspect me if I was in charge of the investigation." I tried to laugh, but the attempt fell flat on my ears.

"It's all about Talmadge," Jasmine said. "On the flight back I had more time to study the information on the memory chip Mom got to you."

"And?"

"In addition to the stuff about Braxton, Talmadge's attorney says Talmadge acted on Army orders, and the man he killed had escaped from the same secret military medicalexperiment program that treated Braxton."

"Sounds like the tactics of a desperate defense attorney," I said.

"Without the events of the past few days, I might agree. But Shanker's an honest man. I do believe he has a trove of documents to trade us."

"What's he asking in return?"

"You."

"Me?"

"If Mom got you on Talmadge's defense team for the appeal, Shanker promised to turn over the microfilm."

"Why me?"

"You've got a certain reputation." Jasmine smiled broadly. 'You've gotten a lot of headlines as a guy at the top of neuroscience."

"But there are a lot-"

"And as a guy with gold-standard military service, you have the credibility to take on the defense establishment."

"Hmph," I grunted. "I may have had my problems with the bureaucracy, but I'm hardly an antimilitary tool of the flaky left."

"No kidding." She paused for effect. "Which means what you say carries water."

"Meaning we have to connect with Shanker, stat."

"Lashonna-" Jasmine's voice cracked. "Lashonna met with him yesterday."

"She write anything down?"

"I don't know. I hadn't really talked with her since getting back from L.A. We planned to do that after her smoke break. In fact, I had promised to go outside with her, but the wind was swirling from every direction and I couldn't find any place to stand without breathing in the smoke. I'd gone inside a few seconds before the shooting."

"Which means you were a target too."

"Yeah."

"Okay," I said. "Where do we go? There's obviously Shanker. And John Myers. Two solid places to start." I turned my head to follow the source of a siren and watched an ambulance wail by out on Park Avenue. Distant lightning flashes illuminated vast cliffs of approaching thunderheads.

"Do the court records have anything helpful?" I said as the siren faded. "You know, autopsy report, interviews, etc.?"

"Sealed," Jasmine said. "Homeland defense. National security."

My cell phone filled the cab with Robert Johnson.

" Crossroad Blues," Jasmine smiled. "Sweet."

I checked the incoming number and recognized Flowers's cell.

"Hey, Jeff," I said.

"Brad, it's bad. Horrible," Flowers said. "All of Camilla's scans and the other exams are fully consistent with locked-in syndrome; there's absolutely no doubt about it. Her fPETs indicate a virtual typhoon of metabolic activity in the areas we associate with consciousness."

An fPET-functional positron-emission tomography-a new method I had helped pioneer-was a method for real-time observation of the brain's metabolic activity.

Jasmine gave me a concerned look of curiosity as I spoke with Flowers. "You're sure there's a total disconnect? Not a finger or an eyelid, no connection to the outside world."

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing," Flowers replied. "I've sent the latest scans up for you, but I think it's pretty clear that Camilla's regained consciousness but she's totally locked in… her mind is in hell, Brad. She's in hell."