Return To Lan Darr (8 page)

“Shit on my shoe,” Rubic mumbled.

“That is an understatement,” the therapist said. She gave Rubic a pamphlet on schizophrenia, which had a photo of a couple holding hands and running in the park.

Rubic held it up. “This is total crap.”

“It might be. Time will tell. Until we know for sure, Allan needs to continue therapy and be closely watched.”

Rubic didn’t keep Allan in therapy. Allan seemed too normal.

Rubic drops the strange purple flower and runs to his office. He digs through the drawers, looking for the pamphlet, but can’t find it. He sits and fires up his web browser and reads through psychology web pages until his eyes feel like they’re bleeding. Afterward, he tries to eat, watch TV, go jogging, but nothing reverses the fear and anxiety that rages through him like a hurricane.

The night swoops out of the horizon and blankets the world. Lights flicker on and most of the world continues without pause. As midnight rolls around, Rubic finds his bed.

The wind outside rattles the window. It moans like a sad whale. Rubic calls the hotline number the blue-eyed female officer gave him, but there isn’t any new information. He sets his phone down then goes to the window. White moonlight shines between the dark slats. The moon is close to full tonight, bathing the yard in its cool, reflected sunlight. Rubic takes hold of the blind cordage, wanting to raise the blinds to let the light spill into his room. He’d often peer out into the yard during full moons.

He yanks the cord. The clacking of the blinds is loud in the quiet house. They gather and come to rest at the top of the window frame. The trees in the yard blow around in the breeze, and the overgrown grass flitters back and forth, waving like a crowd at a ball game. Rubic sits on the side of his bed, staring out the window. Finally, he lies back. His heavy eyes look at the light that spills into his room. The light creates a wide stripe on the carpet that runs up the far wall. Rubic is about to fall asleep, but fights to keep his eyes open, a fight he’s losing.

Suddenly, a shadow passes in front of the moonlight. Rubic sits up like a jack-in-the-box and turns to the window. A figure stands outside. It’s tall and thin and staring, staring and unmoving. Rubic freezes, unsure if the person can see him. The person slowly brings up an arm and taps on the glass with what could only be a long, sharp knife.

Chapter
9

Confessions at the End of a Gun

Laura stares at the pistol aimed at her chest. The person holding it wears a dirty, threadbare t-shirt and has a rather large bosom. It’s a woman! She has tangled brown hair cut to her chin, and dark, sunken eyes. The forest shadows fall across her face.

The unkempt crazy lady reaches out with her free hand. “Phone. Now.”

Laura realizes she’s holding her pink phone. Four button taps away from calling 9-1-1. Her thumb hovers. If she successfully dialed the number but then hung up, they would try and call back. When no one answered they’d come following her signal, wouldn’t they? She might not even have service.

“Don’t even think about it.” The woman pulls back the hammer on the revolver. Sunlight glints off the weapon.

Laura hands the phone over, too scared to dial anything. “Take it. Take anything you want. I’ve got sixty dollars in my wallet. You can have it.”

“What I want is of no value to anyone but me, and maybe your boyfriend.” The woman takes the cell phone, drops it, and stomps on it with her boot heel. “Where is lover boy, anyway?”

“How do you know us?” Laura asks.

“Oh, I’ve been following you for quite some time,” the woman says. “We’ve been all over this canyon: you, Allan, Rubic, and I. You three are quite predictable.” She points at the spilt drinks. “Brought two coffees up here, so I’m assuming he’s on his way.”

Laura shakes his head. “No, he’s not coming. He should have been here by now. I thought I’d surprise him. Why are you following us? What did we do to you?”

The woman steps closer to Laura and crams the barrel of the gun into her collarbone. Pain splinters through Laura’s chest. “Ahh!” Tears swell up in Laura’s eyes as she stumbles backward.

“Laura!” Mrs. Domley screams and runs up to Laura. “Are you okay?”

The woman turns and points the gun at Mrs. Domley, who hadn’t even noticed it.

Mrs. Domley screams again then throws her hands into the air.

“Scream one more time and I’ll pull this trigger, so help me God.” The woman waits for a reply or complaint, but Mrs. Domley bites her tongue.

“Good.” The woman turns to Laura. “You don’t get to ask any more questions! Now move to the side of the road. We’ll just wait for Allan, won’t we?” The woman forces Laura and her mother into the dense undergrowth where they sit and wait.

They wait and wait.

The woman grows impatient. “I guess he might not be coming after all. Did you two have a falling out?”

Laura can’t hold her composure any longer and bursts into sobs.

“Oh stop it. You’re not the only one with boy problems. Males are only good for two things, changing your tire and signing checks.” The woman gets to her feet. “Get up,” she orders.

Laura and her mother slowly get to their feet. “Where are we going?” Laura asks.

“Shut up.” The woman pushes Laura and Mrs. Domley back to the road and toward the MINI Cooper. She pulls out a pair of handcuffs and clips Mrs. Domley’s left wrist to the steering wheel. She pushes Laura to the passenger side then hops in the back seat. “Drive.”

“Where?” Mrs. Domley asks, tears running down her face. Laura can see her mother trying to stay calm, and so she orders herself to do the same.

“Turn around. Then just go the speed limit and turn when I say turn.”

Mrs. Domley starts the Cooper. She puts the gear to drive and presses on the gas.

Laura lets herself cry some more. She’s so afraid she’s shaking inside.

“Get ahold of yourself. You’re more of a woman than a child. Act like it.”

“I’m… I’m not supposed to be scared of you?” Laura blubbers.

“It’s okay, don’t talk to her,” Mrs. Domley whispers.

“You both need to be scared of me. But stuff the tears, or else.”

The three drive up the mountain road a few miles. Laura composes herself, though the urge to burst into tears sits on her shoulder, taunting her, keeping her from breathing right.

“We can pay you to let us go. I’ve got lots of money,” Mrs. Domley says.

“We’ll explore that later. We need to get to my camp and then get ahold of Allan.”

“How do you know us? Please, tell me what you want, and I’ll help you get it.”

The woman sighs. “I’m looking for a flower.”

Laura’s pulse quickens. Synapses in her brain light up like Christmas lights. “Oh my God. The Hubbu flower? How do you know about that?” 

“Oh, I know more than you think.” The woman looks out the window and sighs. “A long time ago I brought my daughter up here, Kendra. She was two and a half. She wore a pretty green sundress with white frills and little white sandals.

“We wandered around picking flowers. It was a beautiful day. The sun was warm, but not too warm. Spring had come after a brutally cold winter. I’d never seen so many flowers up here. And so many types as well. There was one flower that I’d never seen before and couldn’t find in my book. It was huge. Bigger than a sunflower. Rich blue with pink edges and enough pollen to choke a horse.

“My little girl got tired, so I put her in her stroller. It was the cutest vintage stroller that my great-grandmother bought in 1910. White painted metal, with a green vine detailed along the side. Kendra fell asleep while holding one of those huge flowers. I collected more of them and tucked them next to her. It was going to be a cute picture. I left my camera a little ways back so I ran to get it. It was only a few yards away or so. I left her for less than a minute! When I returned, she was gone. Gone! I thought maybe someone had run off with her. I thought that for years. But I really had only been gone for maybe thirty seconds.

“One day, I remembered that flower. I knew that flower had done something with her. No one would listen to me. All my friends thought I was crazy. But I was right. That flower stole my little girl,” she concludes, with her teeth clenched.

Laura listens in amazement. This is what Allan had talked about. The Hubbu flower. It was his fantasy, his delusion, his dream. Why is this woman talking like this?

“Take a left up here beyond that big tree. There’s no road, but your little car will do fine, just get it up over the first hill.”

The MINI Cooper turns off the road, slams down a dip, and immediately heads up a steep incline.

“Hit the gas, sister!”

Mrs. Domley presses on the pedal. The small, but powerful, motor revs and the tires spin. The car hauls itself up the steep incline and over it.

“Good. Now, flip on your lights. You’ll see little reflectors on the trees. Follow them ’til you get to my camp.”

The reflectors guide Mrs. Domley through the forest where the trees are thick and large.

After a few turns Laura presses the woman to continue her story. “Go on. I believe you.”

The woman laughs. “Of course you do, you’re up here looking for the same damn flower.” She points out a sharp turn. “I’m a biologist, you know. Trained at the University of Virginia. I came up here with my late-husband’s money and stayed.” She raises a finger. “One summer, I found one of those flowers. Only one, and it had been trampled by an animal. It turns out the pollen is stranger than anything I’ve ever seen.”

Mrs. Domley pulls up to a camp and parks. There is a tan camouflage tent next to a pile of boxes, a cooler, a fire pit, a hammock, and a clothesline with pinned shirts, bras, and shorts.

The woman takes the key out of the ignition. “Go to the hammock and lie on it, both of you,” she says as she unlocks the handcuffs. Laura and her mother do what they’re told. Something about the woman eases Laura’s fear. The tension in her body loosens like undoing a button on a tight pair of jeans. Maybe it’s the woman’s story, so sad, so familiar. In fact, she tells herself that if she plays along, she and her mother will be released, eventually.

Laura and Mrs. Domley sit side by side on the hammock. The woman handcuffs them together. She pulls a chain from a box, loops it around the tree truck, and connects it to the handcuffs with a padlock.

The woman moves to the fire. She stokes it with fresh twigs and sets a pot on the grill that covers the fire.

“What did you find out about the flower?” Laura asks, eager to keep her talking.

The woman looks at Laura carefully. “See, I knew you would listen to me. I just wish your boyfriend was here too.”

The woman drops a couple of tea bags into the water and sits on a rickety lawn chair next to the fire. She looks at the tree canopy as her mind meanders through her memory. “No one would believe me. Or help. My only choice was to forget about it or do something about it on my own.” Her eyes tear up. “I couldn’t forget my baby girl so I moved into that old dam and set up a lab. I spent thousands of dollars on equipment. For years I studied the little bit of pollen I had. All the while, I hunted for more flowers.

“Under a microscope, that pollen would disappear and reappear like magic.” She looks at Laura, her eyes intense like they held back a growing pressure. “It was beautiful. I replicated some of the proteins and tried to mass-produce the effect with a hundred thousand combinations. I knew that if I did something right, I’d make something disappear.”

The puzzle snaps together in Laura’s mind. “You’re Alice.” Alice is the crazy woman who kidnapped Allan a year ago. It was her secret lab in the dam. She did all those experiments on the animals. And when she was about to get caught, she blew the dam up with Rubic inside.

Alice turns from Laura, hiding her face. “Yes, I am. Everyone thought I was a creep, a psycho, but I’m not. Yes, I poisoned the river, but those fish populations came back next season stronger than they ever had. The whole canyon rebounded!”

“You took Allan and put him in a cage.”

Alice spun to face Laura, “I did not! I never touched the boy! I didn’t even know what he looked like until I saw his picture in the newspaper.”

Laura could see the truth in Alice’s face and in the tone of her voice. She realizes that Allan was telling the truth the entire time. Every word that came out of his mouth was real. A warmth wraps around her heart, and the hair on her neck and scalp stands up and tingles.
Oh, Allan!
She looks at her mother. Mrs. Domley’s face is tight, confused about what she is hearing.

Alice gets up and kneels next to Laura. Laura nods and begins to cry. It’s not a sob full of fear, but of love.

Alice clasps her hands in front of her mouth as if praying. “You really do believe me, don’t you?” Tears stream down her face.

Laura nods. “Yes, I do. We’ll help you. Just untie me and my mother.”

Alice stands. Her eyes quiver. “Maybe. Not yet. I… have to keep control of this now. I need to put pressure on Allan. I was so close before I destroyed my lab. So close to finding out where my daughter went. When I read the news article that said I’d taken Allan, and I knew I didn’t, I knew he went somewhere. I need to find out where he went and how he got back from wherever he went. I need to know, Laura! Because that is where my daughter is and that is how I’ll get her back!” Her face gets red and swollen. She stands, backs up, and then ducks into her tent.

Laura tests the strength of the handcuffs. They’re as tight as they can be, pinching a little, and the braided hammock rope is tough and thick. It won’t be easy, if not impossible, to get free. Mrs. Domley shakes her head. “Just listen. Do whatever she says. This will be over soon.”

Alice comes out of the tent with a large radio in her hand. “I see your boyfriend has gotten himself lost again. The police are looking for him. You too. She holds up a police scanner. “Dispatch is on fire. We’ve got to go. In an hour everyone and their cousin will be up here looking for you.”

Alice looks at the yellow MINI Cooper. “You’ve got an awfully obnoxious paint job,” Alice mumbles. She clips the radio to her belt, leaving the volume turned up, and opens a box next to the tent. She pulls out a large camouflage net with squares all over it and tosses it over the Cooper along with handfuls of leaves and sticks. When she’s done, the vehicle is almost invisible.

“You’re going to lead me to Allan, and we’re going to find out how and where he went. He’s found the flower, I can feel it, and he’ll know how to activate that pollen.”

“And if he doesn’t know any more than you do?” Laura asks.

Alice shrugs. “Then you’re no use to me after all. Neither of you are. All that will be left is to clean up my mess by eliminating witnesses.” She looks at Laura then Mrs. Domley. “Sorry, but I can’t continue my work while hiding like this. Only you two, Allan, and Rubic have seen me, and that’ll have to change.”

Laura’s breath catches in her chest. Alice is as dangerous as Laura initially thought. She is as dangerous as any killer.