Headcase, p.14
Headcase, page 14
‘Why would they move the body?’
‘Imagine you’re a Chinese fighter pilot.’ I talked quickly, urgently. ‘You’ve been sent on a recon mission over the southern United States. But something goes wrong with your stealth plane. You and your copilot are forced to bail out.’
Thistle’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Copilot?’
‘Right. You survive the landing in the woods. But when you check on your copilot, he’s dead. His flight suit is old, and it wasn’t airtight. He asphyxiated, because you both bailed out so high.’
Thistle opened her mouth to object. I talked faster, needing to get this all out.
‘Now what do you do?’ I continued. ‘You’re trapped in Space City, surrounded by a razor-wire fence patrolled by armed guards. Your plane is on its way to the Pacific Ocean. Your government doesn’t know where you landed, because it was a stealth plane—untraceable. And any beacon you set off, the Americans will see the signal before the Chinese do. They can’t send anyone to rescue you. Finally you have an idea.’
Thistle’s eyes widened as she realised where I was going with this. ‘You’re kidding.’
‘You drag your copilot’s body to an obvious place,’ I said. ‘Right in the middle of the Martian training area. His flight suit looks a lot like a space suit. When the Americans see it, they’ll have no idea what it means. They’ll scratch their heads, wondering how a Chinese astronaut landed there without burning up on re-entry. Word will get out, because Americans suck at keeping secrets. And when Beijing hears that just one body has been found, they’ll realise that you survived, and that you must be nearby. They’ll send someone to rescue you.’
‘You think the pilot is still hiding at Space City?’ Thistle asked.
I nodded. ‘And Chinese agents are coming for them.’
CHAPTER 17
I cut away the fat, tilting sideways. What am I doing?
Zara picked up straight away. ‘What’s the status of the FBI investigation?’
I cupped the phone to shelter it from the wind. I was leaning against the side of the FBI building, which provided the only shade for miles around. It was early spring, but my skin burned easily.
‘Thistle doesn’t think the dead guy was an astronaut, but without a body to examine, she’s hit a dead end,’ I said. ‘Neither Anders nor Garcia has given her anything beyond what they told us, and the case files Detective Jones sent over are worse than useless. We have nothing to worry about.’
The lie sounded natural, but without seeing Zara’s face, it was hard to guess if she’d bought it.
‘How did you go at the precinct?’ I added.
She didn’t let me change the subject. ‘Did you feed Thistle the cover?’
‘Yeah.’ I kept my voice neutral. ‘Diabetic coma. I think she believed me, but she’s likely to check the hospital admission records, just to be sure.’
‘Not a problem. On paper, there was a patient admitted and then discharged.’ Zara didn’t sound suspicious. But she knew how much I cared about Thistle, and that I would lie to protect her.
‘Okay. What’s going on with the Houston PD?’ I asked.
‘Apparently they’ve got a description of the Texas Reaper. White male, five foot nine, a hundred and seventy pounds. Short reddish-brown hair, freckles.’
I was five eight and one-sixty, but otherwise that sounded a lot like me. Just the same, I would have guessed there were thousands of people in Texas fitting that description. ‘Two arms?’
‘I assume.’
‘Is that an eyewitness description?’
Zara hesitated. Then she said, ‘No, it came from a photo.’
‘They have a photo of the guy? Why isn’t it all over the news?’
‘Maybe they don’t have enough evidence for an arrest, maybe they don’t want to bias the jury pool, I don’t know—this is your world, not mine. Either way, that cop thought you were behaving suspiciously after she pulled us over, so she and some colleagues tailed us. Then, when you ran, they assumed you were guilty and passed the information on to the FBI task force.’
She meant the task force working out of the building right behind me. My skin crawled. ‘What information?’
‘Not your name. Just the plates for the car that we’ve been driving, and the fact that you fled when confronted yesterday. I’ve ditched the Prius, but we still have to get you out of Texas, pronto. I’m ten minutes away.’
I didn’t want to leave Texas. If I did, I might never see Thistle again.
But wasn’t that what I’d promised myself? To get out of her life, before I put her in any more danger?
An FBI agent emerged from the building with a pack of cigarettes in one hand. I recognised him—Ruciani.
‘Gotta go,’ I said, and ended the call.
Ruciani gave me one of those upside-down nods, chin jerked upward, as he sidled up to me and shook a cigarette free. I got the feeling I was in his usual spot.
‘Hey, Pope,’ I said.
Ruciani blinked, recognising me. ‘Blake? Shit. How are you?’
Ruciani had a leather jacket, crumpled ears from years of boxing and skin that always seemed stretched, like he’d gone through the tumble dryer and it had shrunk around his skeleton. He’d never liked me, but now that he was here in the only patch of shade, he seemed too lazy to move away.
‘Been worse,’ I said. ‘You?’
‘Been better.’ He craned his neck and cupped his hands around the fragile flame from his lighter. ‘Reaper case is killing me. Director’s breathing down my neck.’
My heart pounded. I tilted my head a bit away, hoping he wouldn’t notice any resemblance to the photo. ‘They’ll screw up sometime,’ I said. ‘Serial killers usually do.’
‘Usually is my problem. Usually serial killers have a small hunting ground, but this guy goes all over. Usually they leave prints or hair or saliva or semen at the scene, but this guy tasers and strangles each woman as soon as she opens the door, and leaves straight after. Usually we can tell how they choose their victims, but not here.’
This last part made me curious. ‘Could it be random?’
‘No. He’s clearly stalked them for a while. He knows they live alone, and that they’re frail. He knows they have—’ He broke off, glancing down at his cigarette. I couldn’t read his expression. ‘Anyway, they’re not all on Facebook, so that’s not how he’s finding them.’
The sooner the FBI caught the real Reaper, the sooner they’d stop chasing me. Maybe I could lend a hand. ‘Sounds like your killer works for the IRS,’ I said.
‘How’s that?’
‘If the victims are from all over, the killer is unlikely to be stalking them in person. But like you said, he or she knows they live alone. Tax records would show that.’
I wished I’d given this insight to Thistle rather than Ruciani, but it wasn’t her case. I wondered if he was one of the ‘superstars’ dumping extra work on her.
‘Or a health insurance company,’ Ruciani said thoughtfully.
That was an interesting guess. Clearly Ruciani knew something I didn’t. I was about to probe some more when a shiny blue pick-up—a Ford F-150—pulled into the lot with Zara behind the wheel. She’d changed out of her mayor’s liaison garb and was back in an enigmatic suit, her cheekbones high without the padding. The headlights flashed.
Ruciani squinted at her. ‘Who’s this fine piece of ass?’
The expression grated. It reminded me how hungry I was, and anyway, he couldn’t even see her ass while she was sitting in the car. ‘She’s nobody,’ I said.
He held up both hands, and chortled. ‘Whoa, okay. Just asking.’
‘So long, Pope.’ I jogged over to Zara’s car and climbed in.
‘Why is that guy staring?’ she asked, looking at Ruciani.
‘He thinks you’re hot.’
‘Oh?’
‘He used some very disrespectful language,’ I said. ‘Can I eat him?’
Zara leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, tenderly, one hand splayed on my chest.
Her breath was cool on my ear: ‘Does he look jealous?’
I glanced at Ruciani. ‘More like suspicious.’ He could probably tell the kiss had shocked me. Zara should know better than to get so close. I was dangerous. Didn’t she get that?
‘I didn’t defend your honour,’ I said.
Zara laughed. ‘I can take care of myself.’ She shifted the stick into drive, but kept her foot on the brake. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Back to Space City. I want to look for that ejector seat.’
•
The woods at the edge of the Johnson Space Center were denser than they had looked from a distance. Twigs scratched my face and neck. Dogwood trees cast tangled shadows, fungi growing around the roots. Vines crept along the forest floor. A rich, earthy smell filled the air. Birds shrieked above, more of them than I’d ever heard all at once. I guessed the fence kept out cats and other predators, so the birds bred like crazy in here.
Zara trudged along behind me. ‘It would take weeks to search these woods thoroughly,’ she whispered. We’d already been walking for an hour.
‘We don’t have to search everywhere,’ I replied. ‘Just this little bit.’
‘How’s that?’
I hadn’t wanted to tell her my theory yet. It had felt too fragile to share with anyone except Thistle. But Zara was the expert at spotting foreign spies. If MSS agents really were on their way, looking for their stranded pilot, then I’d need her help identifying them.
‘Dogwoods aren’t hard to climb,’ I said. ‘I’ve done it before. If you crashed here, the first thing you’d do is try to get the lay of the land.’
‘Maybe not if you’re injured,’ Zara pointed out.
‘If you’re too wounded to climb a tree, you’re too wounded to carry a corpse,’ I said. ‘No, they climbed up, looked around and then decided to dump the body in the nearest obvious place. So we only have to search the area near the rock yard.’
‘Wouldn’t they have wanted to leave it a long way away from themselves?’
‘They might have wanted to, but it wouldn’t have been possible. Dead people are heavier than you’d think.’
‘Have you forgotten who you’re talking to again?’
I ignored this, scanning the area around me. I didn’t see any sign of an ejector seat, or a parachute. And there had been no footprints anywhere around.
We kept walking, spiralling outwards from our starting point, seeing nothing.
‘Sorry. I think your theory’s a bust,’ Zara said finally.
‘Just wait.’ I’d seen something. A patch of white on one of the trees.
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t know.’ I trudged closer. It was a rectangular sticker, like a label, slapped against a tree trunk. Nothing written on it. Meaningless to me, but not random.
I turned to Zara. ‘Spies sometimes do that, right? Put stickers on things to send a message to their colleagues?’
‘So do teenagers.’ Zara thumbed the corner of the sticker. ‘School groups come here all the time.’
I kept my voice low. ‘What if the MSS is already here?’
A bird fluttered over our heads and landed somewhere unseen. The undergrowth rustled.
‘Now even I think you’re paranoid,’ Zara said. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the whole time I’d been at Space City, someone was watching. Matching me, move for move.
I grabbed the bough of a tall tree and tried to heave myself up onto it.
‘Blake, don’t.’ Zara sounded genuinely concerned. She needn’t have worried—I barely got a foot off the ground before I fell back down.
‘Can you climb that tree?’ I asked, puffing.
‘I can,’ Zara said, ‘but I’d rather not. Why?’
‘I want to know what the pilot might have seen from the top.’
Zara sighed, hiked up her skirt and started clambering towards the canopy. She made it look easy—having two hands probably helped. Soon she was perched on a branch high above my head, scanning the horizon.
‘Well?’
‘I can see the whole complex, basically,’ she said. ‘Are you looking for something in particular?’
‘Can you see Mars?’
‘Yep. Front and centre.’
I tried to visualise what it might look like up there. I imagined myself as the pilot, examining the hostile landscape. Alone. Desperate. Scared, maybe—or maybe not, as a soldier in the Chinese air force. But smart, and ruthless. Ruthless enough to use their dead comrade as a message. Like a single dot of Morse code.
And hungry.
‘Do fighter pilots have emergency rations?’ I called up to Zara.
‘In China? No idea. You’re thinking he might have snuck into one of the buildings looking for supplies?’
I was looking at the nearest building. It was the Atmospheric Research Unit, where I’d seen the young Asian woman with the shaved head. The woman who fled when she saw me outside Garcia’s office.
‘He or she, yeah,’ I said. ‘Did you ever get around to checking all the Rachels at the Space Center?’
•
By the time we’d hiked back to the building, Zara had files for every Rachel on staff. It was alarming how quickly she could access information like that without having to get a warrant or explain herself to anyone.
I suspected the woman with the shaved head was the pilot of the crashed plane, who had snuck into the building for food or water, and fled when I spotted her. Laurie, the blood scientist, had said the woman was an intern named Rachel—but I hadn’t given her much of a description. My theory was that Laurie had been talking about someone different. Zara was trying to get a picture of Rachel the intern, so I could confirm it wasn’t the woman I’d seen.
‘You said she had tattoos.’ Zara didn’t look up from her phone as the automatic doors slid open for us. ‘That’s uncommon in China, especially in the military.’
‘How long since you’ve been there? She was young. Maybe it’s a trend.’
‘How young?’
‘Twenties was my guess,’ I said.
We walked past the reception desk. The guy with all the piercings ignored us, perhaps because we’d signed in yesterday. It was hard to imagine he’d ignore a Chinese fighter pilot, though. She’d obviously found a change of clothes somewhere—she hadn’t been in a flight suit when I saw her—but it seemed unlikely that she’d been able to talk her way past him. Maybe there was another way into the building.
‘She could be Rachel Cochran,’ Zara said. ‘Born in 2002, according to DMV records.’
‘You got a picture?’
‘Not yet.’ Zara frowned as she scrolled. ‘There’s something weird about her file.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. On paper, she doesn’t exist until about two years ago.’
My spine tingled. ‘Go on.’
‘Her bank accounts, her social media profiles and her IRS file are all new. And there’s no birth certificate for Rachel Cochran.’
‘What does that mean?’ I wondered aloud. This wasn’t what I’d expected Zara to find.
‘Not sure yet. SIGINT will keep digging.’
We made our way through the corridors towards Laurie’s lab. I was hoping she could describe her intern in more detail and confirm my suspicions—and I wanted to see all that blood again, even knowing it was fake. I felt like a mosquito, drawn inwards.
Finally we reached the door and knocked.
Laurie, the leprechaun blood scientist, opened up. She raised an eyebrow when she saw me—surprised, annoyed and a bit impressed. An I-thought-I-got-rid-of-you look. ‘Mr Blake! And …’
‘Sandra,’ Zara said. ‘I work at ClearHorizon with Timothy. Can we come in?’
Laurie hesitated. I could hear a machine keening somewhere behind her. ‘We’re about to get the results of a test,’ she said. ‘What’s this about?’
‘We had some questions about Rachel,’ I said.
Laurie sighed and turned her head. ‘Rach? Someone’s here for you.’
The woman with the shaved head and the tattooed arms stepped out from behind a 3D-printer. I was shocked to see that she was the woman who had fled from me outside Garcia’s office, which blew up my whole theory. The fighter pilot wouldn’t have an internship here.
She was even more shocked to see me. Her eyes widened behind her safety goggles, and she dropped the test tube she was holding, but she recovered quickly, catching it before it hit the ground. She glanced around for an escape route. But there was only one way out of the lab, and Zara and I were blocking it.
The printer whined like a trapped animal.
‘Rachel Cochran?’ Zara asked.
The woman hesitated, then gave a tight nod.
But she was lying. Because I recognised her now. The shaved head and the tattoos had thrown me, but those were the same sad eyes I’d seen in among the tents in that park, seven years ago.
‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘You’re Lilah Parget.’
CHAPTER 18
I tell you what to write, then put you to death. What am I?
We all stared at each other for a long moment.
Laurie looked baffled, and a bit annoyed. She probably wasn’t used to being the least well-informed person in the room. ‘This is Rachel,’ she said, as though she could restart the whole conversation. ‘She works for me.’
‘We’ve met,’ I said.
Zara’s posture had shifted. I imagined she had no idea why the girl Sam Garcia had kidnapped was now working as an intern one floor beneath his office, and the uncertainty had manifested itself physically. It wasn’t quite an attack stance, but if Lilah ran, Zara was ready to grab her.
‘What is this?’ Laurie gave Parget a suspicious look.
‘Mr Blake works for the FBI.’ Parget’s voice was soft, but there was more steel in it than I remembered. She was no longer a scared little girl.
‘The FBI …?’ Laurie looked at all of us, perplexed.
‘That was a long time ago,’ I said, and turned to Lilah. ‘We need to talk to you. In private.’
