They each switched on their night vision and waited again for their senses to adjust before proceeding.
“Be mindful of sinkholes,” Juan said. “Stay close to formations you can grab if the ground beneath you gives way.”
Fiona released a small scream as a lone bat darted by squeaking.
“Just a male checking us out,” Juan said.
“Stay calm, everyone,” Sutsoff said.
Colin sensed the cave floor was actually soft like padded carpet.
“Kind of cushy,” he said.
“Bat droppings,” Sutsoff said.
“Eww,” Fiona said.
“Stop, everyone,” Sutsoff said. “Fiona, behave as a professional scientist or withdraw now.”
“Sorry, Doctor.”
As they progressed, about a dozen more male bats strafed them, brushing against their helmets and suits.
“The gear has been tested,” Sutsoff said. “Stay calm. It will protect you.”
Fiona muted her disgust.
“Careful, a steep step down,” Juan said.
After a few hundred feet, they came to a mammoth chamber that was dwarfed by a magnificent cathedral with groves of stalactites, stalagmites and dozens of pillars.
It took a moment to realize that the structures were trembling with life-clusters upon clusters of roosting bats.
My beauties. Sutsoff was awed. My glorious beauties.
“Let’s get started.” She set out her kit. “You know the procedure.”
Sutsoff demonstrated by plucking a roosting female from a cluster and turning its docile rat-faced head toward her. Using a dentist’s pick, she pried the tiny mouth open, inserted a small cotton tip past its fangs, swabbed the oral cavity, then put the specimen in a bottle of diluent.
“Like that,” she said. “We need as much as we can get.”
While male bats flitted about, nicking and bumping into the scientists, the team worked smoothly.
They had been at it for more than thirty minutes, collecting specimens, when they were distracted by an odd sound.
Click-tap.
“What’s that?” Colin asked.
They looked toward the mouth of the cave.
Nothing but darkness.
Click-tap. Click-tap.
Then a muffled cry.
That’s not human.
“What is that?” Fiona asked.
They followed a furious thrashing and kicking as if some violent force were charging toward them.
“I have to see!” Fiona switched on her white light.
“Fiona, no,” Juan called out too late.
A misshapen deer had staggered into the cave, rearing and swaying its neck. The group quickly realized it was not deformed but instead trapped within the writhing coils of a massive python. The snake’s jaws were extended over the deer’s muzzle in a hideous death hold.
Pauline screamed and switched on her white light. “I want out!”
A cloud of bats enveloped the deer, which dropped to its knees. Another cloud swarmed the scientists, pinging and nicking at their suits. The air filled with squeaks.
“Everyone keep calm,” Sutsoff said. “Get those lights off now! Use night vision and pack up. Juan, take us out. Let’s go!”
As the deer and snake thrashed, the team made its way to the mouth of the cave.
“Christ!” Colin shouted. “I’m getting hit harder.”
The plunk-plunk of bats strafing the team intensified.
“Keep moving!” Sutsoff said. “We’re almost out.”
Daylight painted the air as the group hurried from the cave.
There was a collective sigh of relief as they cleared the cave and retreated toward the field station.
“That was a nightmare,” Fiona said.
“Incredible!” Colin said. “Absolutely incredible!”
Juan started to take off his suit.
“Why don’t you wait until we get to the station?” Colin asked.
“I’m just so hot,” Juan said, tugging at his hood.
He had unzipped his foiled outer layer and was working on his lime-yellow layer by the time the group arrived at the field station.
Once Sutsoff placed all the samples in a protective case, the locals began helping her and the others out of their gear. Their faces were moist with sweat and the glow of accomplishing a deadly challenge.
“I need some DEET,” Juan said, “got a mosquito bite.”
Juan slapped the back of his neck but felt something larger than an insect.
It was furry.
On his fingertips was a bleeding bat.
“Juan!” Pauline’s voice filled with fear. “Oh, God!”
“Oh, Jesus, no! I’ve been bitten!”
One of the local men pointed at a small tear at the back of Juan’s suit.
Blood dripped down Juan’s neck.
He stared at the quivering bat in his hand.
“In here, Juan!” Sutsoff held out a plastic container. “Drop it in here!”
She snapped it shut, then observed Juan as he spasmed.
“Help him!” Fiona screamed at Sutsoff.
Juan collapsed, writhing in agony.
Colin held him. Sutsoff rushed to get something and Pauline scrambled for her medical bag.
Juan’s eyes widened and he screamed at the sky.
“Oh, God!” Fiona screamed. “Look at his eyes!”
His eyes liquefied, melted in their sockets, rivulets of blood oozing from his ears, his mouth as he spasmed. The air cracked with the sounds of breaking bones as Juan’s back curved into a humped spine as he died.
“Oh, no,” Fiona sobbed.
The others looked to Sutsoff and were stunned by what they saw.
She’d recorded the entire episode with her camcorder.
44
Santa Ana, California
Sparks sprayed from the orbital sander in the open garage of a decaying duplex on Third Street, near the old Civic Center Barrio.
Emma Lane stopped her rented Ford Escort out front.
She checked the address she’d extracted from Christine Eckhardt at the clinic. Polly Larenski lived here. Emma approached the man working in the cluttered garage. Music throbbed with the grinding whirr of the sander.
“Excuse me.”
The man’s T-shirt complemented the muscles stretching his tattoos. He didn’t hear her until she’d interrupted him a second time. The sanding stopped. He reached inside the car, killed the music, then let his eyes take a walk all over her.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Polly Larenski.”
“The new neighbor?”
“Polly Larenski,” Emma repeated.
The toothpick in his mouth shifted. “Next door, baby.”
“Thank you.”
“She’s a little psycho. If she scares you, you come see me.”
As Emma went around to the door of the adjoining house, the hip-hop music resumed hammering the air. She rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. Peeling paint ravaged the exterior walls. The picture window was cracked.
No one responded, so she rang and knocked again.
Emma peered into the house. She could see down a hall to a kitchen, right through sliding glass doors to the back. She noticed a shadow moving on the rear deck and started for the back, thinking that whoever was there could not hear her at the door.
The music thumped as she went around the side and opened a gate. Flies swarmed the garbage overflowing from plastic bags and boxes leaning against the house. Emma noticed unopened envelopes that looked like bills addressed to P. Larenski in Los Angeles and remembered that Christine told her Polly had recently moved and that when Polly had called Christine asking about her severance check Polly demanded she not reveal her new address because she feared collection agencies were stalking her.
Polly’s address change might explain why police saw no link to the clinic in L.A. and the call coming from a public phone here in Santa Ana.
Was this her only hope for finding Tyler?
The hip-hop music thudded away like a distant drum of dread.
As Emma went around the corner to the back of the house, she froze.
A woman sat alone in a deck chair wearing a bathrobe and shawl over her shoulders. Her face was tilted skyward as if she were showering in sunlight.