Rosemary Remembered (26 page)

Her sigh was long and. trembling. "I'm not afraid of Jeff," she said sadly.

And then she told me what she'd seen on Friday night when she was working late, and I understood what had happened. Not all of it, by any means. There were still a couple of big holes and quite a few little ones that had to be plugged, but I knew the basic outlines. The question was, where did I go from here?

I was still sitting at McQuaid's desk, trying to reconstruct the narrative sequence of events in my mind, when the phone rang in the kitchen. I jumped up, but before I took two steps, Sheila was yelling.

"China! China, it's Brian!"

I ran. In a few seconds, I was snatching the phone from her fingers. "Brian! Where
are
you? Are you okay?"

His voice was a whisper, as if he didn't want to be overheard. "I'm scared, China. Come and get me. I want to come home."

"I'm on my way, honey," I answered fiercely. "Where are you?"

"I'm at the — " There was a sudden scrambling noise and Brian gasped.

"No, don't!" he cried fearfully. "Oh, no, please, don't hurt — "

The connection was broken.

"Brian!" I cried helplessly. "Brian!"

Sheila was waving a scrap of paper. "I've got it! I've got the number, China!"

The prefix was 512, which meant that Brian was calling from somewhere within driving distance. I dialed it with shaking hands. The female voice that came on the line was crisply efficient. "Town Lake Hotel."

Town Lake? That was Austin. A
hotel?
I was momentarily blank. "Ub, do you have a guest by the name of Jacoby?"

"Transferring to Guest Registration," the voice chirped, and my ear was filled with Musak. I sat with my jaw clenched, clutching the receiver as if it were a lifeline keeping me from going over the falls. A young and less efficient male voice, noticeably Texan, drawled "Howmi help ya?"

"Jacoby," I said. What was his first name? "Jake. Jake Jacoby. Do you have a guest by that name?"

More Musak. "Sorree, there's no Jacoby registered here." The voice was blithe.

My stomach turned over. "Look," I gritted, "this is an emergency. My eleven-year-old son just phoned me from your hotel. He's wearing a maroon Star Trek jersey and Mr. Spock ears, so he shouldn't be too hard to spot. Have you seen him?"

The voice chuckled. "Have I
seen
him? Ya don't know what's happenin' here this afternoon, ma'am?"

"No," I snapped. "What's happening there?"

"A Star Trek convention, that's what. This place is jammed with kids in maroon jerseys and pointy ears."

Sheila called Blackie while I pulled on clean jeans, found my sandals, and ran a comb through my hair. I grabbed up my purse, and Sheila and I ran out to her yellow Mustang. When we got to the intersection of Limekiln Road and 1-35, Blackie roared up behind us with his light bar flashing and siren shrieking. The Jeep Cherokee passed us as we got onto the interstate, and Sheila pushed the Mustang hard to stay with it. I picked up Sheila's mobile phone and dialed the Cherokee.

"Thanks for responding so fast," I said.

"I've alerted the Austin PD," he replied tersely.

"They'll have two uniforms waiting for us at the hotel."

"Good. That means we can split up. Sheila and I will look for Brian, while you and the cops can go after Jacoby."

Blackie cleared his throat. "The Austin police agreed to treat this as a kidnapping, China, but I've got to tell you, I have my doubts. Brian called from the hotel where they're having the convention. It sounds to me like the kid just took off and caught a bus."

"But there was
blood,"
I objected. "A lot of it. We all saw it. If Brian wasn't hurt, where did it come from?"

A moment of silence. "The lab report came back this morning," Blackie said finally. "It wasn't real blood. It was fake."

My heart flopped. I was remembering how I'd been conned by Arnold's nail-through-the-finger trick. I'd almost had the kid in the emergency room before I realized it was a mail-order gag. But still, something inside me couldn't accept the idea that Brian had faked a kidnapping-

"Look," I said. "I can imagine Brian hitching a ride to the convention with one of his buddies, but I can't believe he'd stay away all night without letting me know where he was. And there's the phone call. He was scared. I could hear it in his voice.
That
wasn't faked."

"We'll see when we get there, I guess," Blackie said, and broke off.

"What was that about?" Sheila asked, her eyes intent on the road. The traffic was heavy on the six-lane highway, but Blackie's light and siren were clearing the fast lane ahead. The Mustang was doing eighty-five.

I told her about the fake blood.

"Shit," she said.

"Yeah," I said. "But I don't believe Brian faked it. He wouldn't
do
that." "Then who?" "Jacoby?"

"Maybe," she said doubtfully.

"There's something else," I said, and told her about Carol's call. That kept us busy until we swung off 1-35 onto Riverside and Sheila had to pay more attention to driving than to talking. In a couple of minutes, we were hanging a right onto Congress, crossing the bridge, and making two more quick rights under the hotel canopy, where an Austin police car was already parked, waiting. Two uniformed officers got out just as we drove up. Blackie, Sheila,
and
I consulted with them briefly, and then we separated. Sheila and I went into the main lobby, while Blackie and the police went through a service entrance.

The Town Lake is an older hotel, remodeled often over the years, the lobby resplendent now with imitation Persian carpet, dark paneling, overstuffed sofas, and crystal chandeliers. A sign directed us to the rear foyer, where I was brought up short by a six-foot-tall full-color cardboard stand-up of Lieutenant Worf with some sort of weapon aimed at my chest. Recovering, I was greeted by a scowling, flesh-and-blood Worf with walnut ridges on his brown forehead and lots of dark facial hair. He was wearing a gold and black jersey with a spiffy gold sash spangled with medals and ribbons. He was seated behind a table, taking money.

"Fifteen dollars," he said in a guttural voice, and growled "please," apparently out of respect for human niceties.

"I don't want an admission ticket," I said. "I'm looking for my son. He's been kidnapped." I pulled out Brian's photograph.

"No kidding." The Klingon grimace might or might not have been a smile. "Fifteen bucks."

Sheila's face hardened. "I'm a law officer," she snapped, pulling out her official ID. "This is a police emergency." Unfortunately, her identification showed that she was a campus cop. The Klingon smiled again, showing strong, malevolent teeth.

"And I'm the security officer of this starship, lady. Fifteen apiece, or we'll beam you back to your home planet."

I pulled out my wallet. "Let's stop wasting time," I said, and took out a ten and a twenty. The transaction resulted in two large lapel buttons, numbered, two boarding passes, and a forty-page convention guide. As these items were being assembled, the Klingon male was joined by a Klingon female, wearing a gold leather jerkin with a metal pentagram hanging around her neck, a short black skirt, black stockings, and black leather gauntlets studded with bits of silver.

I thumbed hastily through the guide. "If I were an eleven-year-old kid," I said to the Klingon, "where would I be?"

I was assuming that Brian wasn't bound and gagged and locked in a closet —in which case, we would have to do a room-by-room search to find him. That would mean a warrant, which would mean even more time. My breath caught as I remembered the fear in Brian's voice when he was pleading not to be hurt. Had we already run out of time?

The Klingon scratched his rippled forehead, amiable enough now that we had paid up. But it was the female who spoke up. "Is he a trader?"

I was blank. "A trader?"

"Like, you know, cards."

Cards! Of course! Only a few days ago — only a few? it seemed like a century — Brian had been in hot pursuit of a Mr. Data hologram card.

"If he is," the Klingon male said helpfully, "the dealers' room is that way." He jerked a heavy hand to the left. The back of his hand bore the tattoo of a coiled snake.

I stared at it, jolted by a new idea. Was Jacoby a Klingon? Was that why he had brought Brian here? It seemed to fit with what little I knew about his personality. It —

But Sheila was grabbing my arm. "Let's check out the dealer's room."

The first door down the hall to the left opened onto a ballroom-sized space filled with rows of tables that were spread with a chaos of intergalactic merchandise: sweatshirts, books, cassette tapes, weapons, toys, starship replicas, Trekker costumes, jewelry, and so on. It was peopled by a bewildering assortment of aliens, Druids, Starfleet personnel, and small children in Halloween costumes.

"God help us," Sheila breathed.

"Let's hope so," I said. "Otherwise, we may never find him."

Sheila and I stopped at the first card dealer's booth and I took out Brian's photograph.

"I'm looking for this boy," I said. "He's wearing a maroon jersey, Spock ears, and he's trying to find a Mr. Data holgram card."

The card dealer affected the Captain Picard look: a completely bald head. He was wearing skintight black pants and a black tee shirt that said, Beam me sideways, Scottie. No one here knows which way is up. He glanced at Brian's picture and shrugged.

"Maybe yes, maybe no," he said. "Half the kids in town are chasing that card." He moved his head to the left. "Try the corner booth. I heard they had one."

Three trading card booths later, we found a dealer who had sold Brian a card — not a Mr. Data holgram card, but a Lieutenant Yar 3-D image card.

"It was around ten, right after I got set up," the dealer said, handing my picture back. He grinned. "Kid's got smarts. Knew the book value on that card. Wouldn't pay a penny more." I wondered how many kids without smarts had paid the dealer's inflated price.

"Did you see who was with him?" Sheila asked. "A big, heavy man with a snake tattoo on his neck, maybe?"

He grinned. "There are a lot of guys around here with snake tattoos, but I didn't see anybody with the boy." He glanced from one to the other of us. "What's the matter, d'ya lose him?"

"Yes," I said soberly. "We think he's been kidnapped. He disappeared last night."

The man shrugged. "Not to make light of your problem," he said, "but kids play a lot of scams to get to the convention. Last year, one boy stowed away in the back of a delivery van up in Lubbock. Parents like to killed the little rat when they finally caught up with him down here." He grinned comfortingly. "Chances are your boy just climbed out the window and lifted his thumb. You tried the video rooms?"

The sign outside the third-floor video room announced that it operated twenty-four hours a day. Inside, my eyes took a minute to adjust to the flickering dark. The room contained a dozen mostly empty chairs, a large-screen television and VCR, and three semi
-
recumbent bodies in various stages of wakefulness. "She was aroused by your power," intoned one odd-looking galactic freak on the screen to a furry humanoid topped by a helmet that might have come from the Third. Reich. "You took her to the edge. What is this ability that you have to attract and hold women? Tell me, so I can have it, too."

That was enough. There was no Brian in the room, and definitely no reason to hang around. "The Trouble with Tribbles" was showing in the next room, to a much larger audience, but Brian wasn't there, either. Back in the hall, I thumbed frantically through the guide. Where else could he be?

"How about the game rooms?" Sheila asked. "I saw a sign that said they're on the fifth floor."

The first game room was filled with intense Storm-troopers, exotic galactic maidens, and a couple of bearded dwarves, gathered by threes and fours around tables filled with cards. A smudgy blackboard on the wall announced that the players were advancing to the third round of Krentl, apparently the name of the game they were playing.

A man with a badge that said Games Master came up to us. I showed him Brian's picture, and he nodded.

"Yeah, he was here until a little while ago, as a matter of fact. Did okay in the first round, but got blipped in the second. Second round's the hardest. Krentl's set up that way." He drew his finger down a page of names until he came to Brian's, penciled in Brian's childish hand. I stared at it and swallowed hard. "He clocked in at ten and out at ten-thirty," the games master added.

"Was he alone?" I asked. "Was there a big, ugly guy with him?"

The games master shrugged. "Who's to say? There are always spectators. Most of them are big and ugly." His eyes went to a young woman in green body paint, a harem skirt, and a low-cut bodice. "Not all, though."

"Where else should we look?" Sheila asked.

"You might try Gurps," the games master said. "Some of the younger players prefer it because it's — "

"Gurps!" I exclaimed. Sheila's mouth had fallen open. "Yeah. Next door."

Out in the hall.again, I stared at the sign. There it was, in big red letters crayoned on white cardboard. GURPS. The skin prickled at the back of my neck.

"That
is
what the Ouija board said, isn't it? Gurps?"

Sheila's eyes were slitted, her lips pressed together. She didn't say anything. She just nodded.

The door to the Gurps game room was open. It, too, was full of round tables, and the tables were full of players, many of them youngsters in the costumes of various galactic cultures. I scanned them quickly, searching for —

"China!"

And then I was kneeling with my arms open and he was bounding out of his chair, scattering cards, rushing to me, throwing his arms around my neck and burying his face against my shoulder, sobbing.

"Oh, China, I thought you'd
never
come! I didn't want to stay. I tried, but I couldn't get away. Please believe me.

"It's okay, Brian," I whispered, and held him tight. "It's okay, son."

Sheila's hand was in her purse, her feet wide apart, her shoulders braced for action. She was scanning the room. "Where's Jacoby?" she asked sharply.

Brian looked up. "Who?"

"The man who brought you here," I said. I stood up and pulled Brian quickly behind me. "Where is he, Brian?"

"It wasn't him," he said, "it was
—"
He suddenly screamed and ran out from behind me. "No! Oh, don't, please!"

And then I saw the woman and my heart turned over. She had raised the window and was straddling the sill.

"Stop that woman!" I yelled. "She's jumping!"

A Romulan commander with patent-leather hair and winged black brows reached out and grabbed the woman's arm. "Stay where you are, lady," he growled. "That's gravity out there."

Sheila was shaking her head in bewilderment. "Where's Jacoby?" she asked again. "And who the hell is
she?
"

"She's my mom," Brian said, and began to cry.