61
Creighton Melice lay on the cot in his cell and let himself relax into the deep unknown. He dreamt of spiders, as he often did, but tonight, with the end so close at hand, the images seemed as real to him as moonlight and blood.
And so. Now, his dream.
A spider the size of a baby’s fist wriggles up his neck and across his face, brushing her feet against his lips, his cheeks, his eyelids, the soft indentation beneath his nose. In his dream he’s paralyzed, so he can see her dark body pause on his cheek, but he can’t move, can’t brush her away. It repels him and excites him at the same time, sending shivers of secret pleasure running all through his body.
The spider rears back and lands with a prick in the middle of his cheek. He wants to scream but can’t make a sound; can’t brush her away. He feels the pressure, the widening wound, the gentle ripping sensation as she burrows into his cheek and the skin kisses open to receive her eggs.
She deposits her skinned offspring, then, in one moist plop. And he can feel the small wet sacks soak onto his tongue.
In the cocooned heat of his mouth it won’t take the eggs long to hatch.
Time passes. How much? A moment. An eternity. Impossible to tell. Impossible to know.
And then they hatch.
It’s a dream. It’s all a dream. Their whisper-thin feet explore his tongue. Some of the babies roll down his throat, while others manage to squeeze up and out the narrow passages of his nostrils. A few of the tiny spiders crawl out his mouth, nimble legs stepping over his teeth, across his lips, and then spreading out to scurry around his face. Always examining, always probing.
Of course, it’s just a dream.
It’s only a dream.
The rest of the babies descend deeply into him. Moist bodies sliding, wriggling against the tight, confining space of his throat.
Down. Down.
A dream. A dream.
All the way down.
Deeply, deeply.
They land in his stomach. They’re still alive.
Then he feels them wriggling inside him, and senses the quivering sensation as they begin to work their tiny mandibles and chew.
Devouring him from the inside out.
And he imagines how all of this would feel, should feel, how much it should hurt; but he notices only textures, light and airy; only pressure, blunt and numb.
Then Creighton Melice awoke, pleased by his dream, and rolled to his side. And there, in the solitude of his cell, he began going over tomorrow’s plan as he scratched at the small wound on his left palm that none of the cops who arrested him had bothered to inspect. Wouldn’t they be surprised.
Wouldn’t they all.
62
Wednesday, February 18
7:10 a.m.
The next morning, after a quick workout at the hotel’s fitness room and a brisk shower, I walked to the Internet cafe Tessa had told me about to buy some of what she called “weird-sounding coffee.”
The place featured mostly South American blends, and I grabbed a cup of some gracefully nutty Peruvian coffee from the Chanchamayo Valley. The high regions of the Andes produce a light-bodied, aromatic, and slightly sweet coffee, perfect for the morning.
I could taste that the coffeehouse had roasted the beans just a bit too long, but I was feeling generous and didn’t even mention it to them. I added a little cream and honey, no sugar, just like always, and sipped my way to heaven.
Since I expected to have some company for breakfast, I picked up a couple extra cups to go.
On his way to the Project Rukh Oversight Committee meeting, Victor Drake stumbled upon a realization so simple, so obvious, he was amazed he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Who cares why Austin Hunter started the fire? It didn’t matter. He was dead. He couldn’t hurt Drake Enterprises anymore. And the fire had been effective.
That’s all that mattered.
Everything had been destroyed.
Everything. Yes, this would work out to his advantage, after all. He could get the remaining files from Dr. Osbourne and shred them as soon as the doctor got back into town. Yes, yes, yes. And because of the fire, he could get out of the contract gracefully and there would be no board of directors inquiry and no public backlash.
Victor couldn’t help but congratulate himself on how brilliant he was. He began to hum as he drove, as he thought about the look he would see on the general’s face in less than an hour when he regrettably explained the unfortunate situation to him.
After leaving text messages for both Ralph and Lien-hua, inviting them to join me for breakfast on the hotel restaurant’s veranda, I brought my computer to an empty table, and pulled up my notes about this case. A flock of questions flew through my mind.
It was time to get them to fly in formation.
First of all, before Austin Hunter died, he admitted to Lien-hua that he’d started the first fourteen fires but not the one on Monday night. OK, so that solved one mystery, but left us with another. The geographic distribution of the fires supported the premise that the same person had chosen all the fire locations, so I typed, “Why didn’t Austin start Monday’s fire? Who did?” I thought for a moment and then added, “Does John Doe’s death have anything to do with the previous fires?”
I gazed across the beach. A distant dog-walker. Two children looking for shells, trailing behind their mother. An older couple walking hand in hand. The ocean lay beyond them, gentle ripples on the surface, dark currents underneath. High above the world’s only ocean, a circle of patient clouds held up the sky, while on the eastern tip of Coronado Island, smoke from the remains of Building B-14 sloped southward, bent by the morning breeze.
Building B-14.
Cassandra’s abductors wanted that building burned down-why?
I added three more questions to my list: “What is their connection to Building B-14? What device were the kidnappers after? Where is it now?”
Nearby, a pair of anxious gulls greeted the morning with their screaking chatter, reminding me again of Tessa’s comment Monday night about squeals in slaughterhouses. Reminding me once again of Sylvia Padilla’s wet screams…
Of Cassandra Lillo’s silent ones…
Of Austin Hunter’s desperate struggle to save her life.
What else had Austin told Lien-hua last night?
Oh yes. That he hadn’t killed the people. But which people? Who killed them? Where were the bodies? When were they killed?
Too many questions. I sighed, but entered the growing list of mysteries into my document.
My mind sifted through the facts of the case, rotating them, holding the investigation’s complex prism up to the light. An enigma with many intersecting angles.
Cassandra Lillo, shark researcher…
Austin Hunter, arsonist…
John Doe, transient…
Victor Drake, billionaire…
Shade, unknown kidnapper who somehow knew my name…
What did they all have in common? What tied them together?
As I looked over the list, I realized there was at least one rabbit hole I hadn’t yet peered down.
I pulled up my Internet browser and cruised to the Drake Enterprises website, and a moment later found the person Terry had mentioned to me, Dr. Rigel Osbourne. I looked over his vita: BS in genetic engineering from UCLA, MS in microbiology from Biola, and two PhDs, one in neuropathology from Yale and the other in neuromorphic engineering from the University of Texas. Having jumped through graduate-level academic hoops myself-night classes, distance learning, independent studies, thesis, dissertation, all while still working in law enforcement-I knew how hard it can be to stick it out for an advanced degree, so I was impressed with Osbourne’s academic achievements. But since I’d never heard of neuromorphic engineering, I was also confused.
A couple clicks later I found an online scientific encyclopedia and discovered that neuromorphic engineers attempt to use computers to mimic biological processes. The last paragraph of the article read: Since its development in the 1980s, neuromorphic engineering has primarily been used in artificial intelligence research and in the development of advanced robotics systems. However, even though historically neuromorphic engineers have focused on ways to reverse engineer biological nervous systems to create artificial neural pathways, since 2003 the biotech world has been exploring many other uses for this quickly emerging field.