“Copper Pot’s still going strong. Still got the best pie in California. What else?”
Marty focuses on the blank white wall behind her. She figures he’s debating whether or not to share some other piece of hometown trivia, something she might find troubling.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing. So you want to tell me what got you to leave Arizona?”
Kayla appears in the doorway with a suddenness that suggests she’s been eavesdropping.
It’s not going to be easy, telling the story again now that she knows Kayla doesn’t believe a big chunk of it. But at least her lawyer isn’t trying to bias Marty one way or the other. Instead she rests one shoulder against the door frame and studies Charlotte intently.
Charlotte looks at the floor and starts to talk.
Occasionally she glances up at Marty to find he’s gone as still as a statue, his eyes saucer-wide, his mouth set in a grim line. He’s a smart man with no patience for the bullshit he believes defines most human interactions. But he can also spend a solid hour explaining how alien infiltration has taken place at the highest levels of the American government, and he can do it with the conviction of Kayla arguing a case before the Supreme Court of California. So maybe Marty’s having less trouble believing all this than another person might.
By the time she finishes, he’s gone pale.
“You believe me?” Charlotte asks. “Kayla doesn’t.”
Kayla walks toward her, holding her mobile phone out in one hand. It takes Charlotte a second to realize she wants her to look at what’s on the screen.
It’s from the website of the Phoenix-based NBC affiliate. The accompanying photograph is a helicopter shot of sheet-draped bodies lying in the middle of nowhere. The bus sheds have been obliterated, leaving her to wonder if they were the source of the explosion.
The headline: BLAST AT OUTLAW BIKER WEAPONS STOREHOUSE KILLS 11
It’s a rush TV news article, short on details, designed mostly to support the slide show of helicopter shots capturing the scene. Eleven killed, speculation it might be related to the takedown of a Vapados storehouse in California the week before, which had forced some members of the gang to relocate into rival territory. A possible battle between Hells Angels and Vapados suggested but not confirmed. No mention of a victim who seems to be out of place. A victim like Dylan Thorpe.
“He did it,” Charlotte says.
“This Dylan guy?” Marty asks.
“Or the guy who calls himself Dylan,” Kayla says. “Did you read all the way to the end?”
“No.”
“Read all the way to the end.”
She does. That’s where she finds the quote from an anonymous law enforcement source speculating that not all the bikers were killed by the blast; several were found with close-range gunshots to the head.
Marty gestures for the phone. She hands it to him, then gets to her feet.
It seems rude, but she turns her back on them anyway, closes her eyes, tries to imagine the man she talked to month after month going from biker to biker, putting bullets between their wide, terrified eyes. Using his powers of manipulation to lure Jason to her house, to convince her to take his crazy drug—those talents belong to one skill set, close-range executions to another. Was that the point of the explosion? Not to provide cover for his escape, but to incapacitate those bastards so he could execute them one by one?
And when it comes to executing outlaw bikers, is she in any position to judge? But she was defending herself. Defending herself with the power of a drug she’d been tricked into taking. A shot between the eyes—that’s a different story.
That takes a very special kind of person.
A person who’s been trained to kill.
“You believe her now?” Marty asks.
“Look, I never said I didn’t believe she’d been drugged or that this Dylan guy’s a class-A psychopath.”
“But you think she was hallucinating everything else?” Marty asks.
“Possibly, yes.”
“Fifteen years I’ve been in AA, I’ve seen folks detox from all kinds of shit. Guys so nuts they’ll meet you for lunch and apologize for the warlock who followed them into the restaurant. None of those folks had it as together as she does right now.”
“Charley,” Kayla says, “we’ve got a more pressing issue to discuss.”
“What in Christ’s name could that be?” Marty asks.
“Your car, Charley. The SUV you were driving when the bikers ran you off the road. If it’s close to this crime scene, then—”
“Maybe he got rid of it,” Charlotte answers.
“How?”
“I don’t know. He blew up their damn storehouse. Maybe he threw my car on the pile. I don’t even know who this guy really is, much less what he’s capable of.”
“You really think this guy was just carrying around the kind of explosives that could trigger a blast like that?”
“Or he used whatever he found on-site. Maybe he found something with all those weapons that he used as an explosive.”
“You think he has that kind of training?” Marty asks.
“He said he was going to take care of eight bikers. Take care of them. On his own. And he said it like it was nothing. And it looks like he did.”
“And the Briffel kid?” Marty asks, a catch in his voice.
They fall silent. She wonders if, like her, they’re both imagining Jason dying of thirst on the floor of her kitchen.
“There’s no way,” Charlotte says.
“No way what?” Kayla asks.
“There’s no way Dylan did that to those bikers and just left Jason there.”
“Maybe he threw Jason on the pile along with your car,” Marty offers.
“That’s a big maybe,” Kayla whispers.
“He said he’d take care of him. No maybe about it.”
Charley could be imagining it, but Kayla’s expression seems to have changed, softened a bit, become less skeptical. She wonders if that’s going to be the key; that with each passing minute she doesn’t change her story, or lose her grip on the details, or do any of the other things that suggest someone suffering from a delusion or advancing a lie, Kayla will come to believe her.
“I want you to see a doctor,” Kayla says. “If you won’t come into the city, I’ll find one in Modesto or Fresno. But you need to—”
“I’m not crazy.”
“I’m not talking about a psychiatrist, Charley. I’m talking about an internist. You were given a strange drug. You need to have blood work done. Get your vitals checked. Everything.”
“I don’t feel sick.”
“You don’t know what you are because you don’t know what’s in these pills! It might not be a good thing that your bruises from the car wreck are healing so fast. There could be something wrong with your blood. Maybe it’s not clotting properly. There’s just too much you don’t know about this drug right now, and the only way to learn is to put yourself at this psycho’s mercy again.”
“What’s some random doctor going to be able to tell me about the effects of a drug that shouldn’t exist? Unless I tell them about the drug. Which would be reckless.”
“So you’re not interested in finding out how this drug really works?” Kayla asks.
“Oh, I am,” she says.
Marty stiffens, studies her closely.
“In the field,” Charlotte says.
“I’m sorry.” Kayla’s voice is a strained whisper. “The field?”
“A test. Look at it this way. You’ll get to find out if I’m delusional or not.”
“And how exactly are you going to conduct this test?”
“Jason was a trigger. That’s how Dylan described him. Zypraxon is a drug that converts fear into strength, but it needs a trigger. A strong one.”
“It converts your fear into strength,” Kayla adds. “If we believe this story that you’re the only one to take it and live.”