There was no official name for the suspect, but there was a picture. A digital composite, they called it—purportedly a high-tech version of a police sketch, computer generated based on surveillance images that weren’t being released to the public.
The picture was no composite, though; Dryden recognized it at once. Gaul’s people had gotten it from the hard drive of his home computer in El Sedero. It was a picture that had originally contained his wife, Trisha; the two of them had taken a trip to San Francisco, a few months before Erin was born, and had asked a passerby to snap the shot of them standing together on the Embarcadero. Someone had now erased everything in the image except Dryden’s head, reshaped his mouth to turn his smile deadpan, and filtered the whole picture to make it look less like a photo and more like something compiled by software.
For all that, it was a dead-on image of him. It was no wonder Dena had recognized him so quickly.
Others had recognized him, too, it seemed. The salesman he’d bought the used car from in Bakersfield. A clerk at the sporting goods store. The image had gone into rotation on the news probably just a couple of hours after they’d left that city. The car dealership had contacted authorities early in the afternoon, and the vehicle’s description had gone into the news mix immediately. Once the hiker had found the car at the trailhead, it would’ve been an obvious move for police to check the few human-made structures in the surrounding miles.
As Dryden watched, the dead cop’s face appeared on-screen. He’d seen it there a few times now, accompanied by the man’s name and a slug for a bio: Glen Carlton, 47 years old, 23-year veteran of Kern County Sheriff’s Department.
“Is that part true?”
Dryden turned. Dena was standing at the near end of the hallway, watching him.
Dryden nodded. “That part’s true.” He looked at the screen again. Looked at the man’s face. A guy who’d done nothing worse than risk—and lose—his life for what he’d believed was a valid reason. “In the moment I couldn’t see what he was.”
He could think of nothing else to say about it. He stared until the image had left the screen again.
“She’s resting,” Dena said, nodding back down the hall. In her hands she held a spool of surgical thread and the needle she’d used for the stitching. “I want to know everything. You, her—everything.”
She crossed to the open kitchen, set the needle and thread down, and rinsed the blood from her hands.
Earlier, after Rachel had demonstrated her ability in the driveway, they’d told Dena a few of the basics. The fact that the manhunt was really for Rachel. The memory loss.
Dena dried her hands with a towel, came around the island that divided the kitchen from the living room, and leaned back against it, facing Dryden.
“Everything,” she said.
*
He told her. It took twenty minutes. He finished by taking the digital recorder from his pocket and playing back the audio from the cabin.
Until arriving at Dena’s house, Dryden hadn’t spent even a minute thinking of what Rachel had said in her sleep. There hadn’t been a minute he could spare. Once Dena had begun tending to Rachel’s injury, and Dryden had gone to the living room to watch the news, he’d revisited the girl’s words. He did it again now as the recording played. He watched Dena’s reactions to the key passages.
Rachel Grant. Molecular Biology Working Group, Fort Detrick, Maryland, RNA-Interference Cohort, Knockout One One.
I told you where it is.
Elias Dry Lake, in Utah.
Any time now they’re going to stop test driving that new toy and really give it the gas … and if I’m still alive when that happens … talk about a wrench in the gears …
When it was over, neither of them spoke for thirty seconds. Dryden could see Dena taking it all in, or trying to.
Finally she said, “What the hell could it be? I don’t assume it’s really a vehicle—that sounded like a figure of speech, but … Jesus.”
“If Gaul didn’t build it,” Dryden said, “then the government or some other company did. Maybe another defense contractor. It sounds like a weapon system of some kind, doesn’t it?”
Dena nodded. “Something related to what Rachel can do.”
“And they’re afraid to crank up the juice to it while she’s alive.”
As to the reason for that, Dryden couldn’t even guess. The gaps remaining in their knowledge were maddening.
“I don’t think you’ll get another shot at questioning her,” Dena said. “She’s resting now, but I wouldn’t expect her to sleep again for some time, after what she’s been through. And if this drug you described is making its way out of her system—”
“No, the cabin was the only chance,” Dryden said. “We were lucky to get that much.”
They were quiet another long while. Then Dryden said, “Do you have a computer?”