The Shimmer (2 page)

Page didn't talk to Tori's mother often, but she recognized his voice.

"Of course it's me, Dan. Why do you sound so surprised?"

"I didn't think you'd be answering. I just assumed you were sick . . .

or something."

"Sick? What would give you that idea?"

"I came home and found a note from Tori saying she'd gone to visit you. It's so spur-of-the-moment--I mean, when I left this morning she didn't say a word about going--I assumed something serious had happened. That you'd been in an accident or something like that. Are you sure you're okay?"

"Well, I'm tired from working in the garden all afternoon. Otherwise I feel fine. When Tori called and said she was coming to see me, I was as surprised as you."

Page tightened his grip on the phone. "She called you? When?"

"This morning around ten."

As soon as I left to go to the airport, he thought. Tori was a real estate agent. She often spent the morning at home, writing offers or making phone calls.

Page did some quick calculations. There wasn't a direct flight between Albuquerque and San Antonio. Tori would have needed to catch a connecting flight in Dallas. Door to door, the whole trip usually took about seven hours. Depending on when her flight left, she should be in San Antonio by now, he thought.

"Is she there? I'd like to talk to her."

"No, I don't expect her for several more hours," the elderly voice replied. "Maybe not until tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" Confusion made Page's head start to ache. "She must be on a really late flight."

"She's not flying."

That didn't sound right. "Not flying? But then how . . . Are you telling me she's driving?"

"That's what she said. It didn't make any sense to me, either. Eight hundred miles--but that's what she told me she wanted to do. You really didn't know about this?"

"Nothing. Not a damned thing."

"I asked her why she was driving. She answered that she wanted to see the countryside and think. But she didn't say what was on her mind. Dan, I don't know another way to ask this. Is everything okay between Tori and you?"

His impulse was to blurt, Absolutely. We get along fine. Things couldn't be better.

But the words stuck in his throat.

He forced out a different answer. "All she needed to do was tell me she wanted to visit you. I might even have gone with her. She didn't have to keep it a secret. If she drives straight through and gets there tonight, tell her to call me as soon as she arrives. I don't care how late it is."

"Count on me. I'll ask her."

"Not just ask her, Margaret. Please, make sure she does it. Put the phone in her hand and make sure she calls me."

Chapter 4.

After he hung up, Page studied the kitchen. Tori had put the breakfast dishes away. The kitchen counters were bare, and everything was in its place, just as if the house were ready for a real estate showing.

He moved into the living room. Magazines that had been spread across the coffee table were neatly stacked. Cushions that had been in disarray from when he and Tori had watched television the previous night were back in their proper places. He remembered that she hadn't watched TV for long, that she'd gone to bed early, saying she wanted to read.

He walked down the hallway and peered into Tori's office. Her laptop computer was gone. Apart from a lamp, nothing was on her desk.

He entered their bedroom. The bed was made, everything perfectly arranged. Looking in the closet, he discovered that two suitcases were missing. He studied the empty hangers and concluded that Tori had taken most of her casual clothes but none of her business outfits. He checked her bureau drawers and discovered that all her socks and underwear were gone. He glanced toward her side of the bed. A compulsive reader, she normally kept a dozen books stacked there.

All of those were also gone.

Page didn't move for quite a while. When he became aware of the gathering darkness outside, he went into the living room and sat in shadows.

Chapter 5.

Waking with a start on Wednesday morning, Page turned toward the terrible emptiness on Tori's side of the bed. He stared at it for several troubled moments, then quickly got into some jeans, went outside, and grabbed the newspaper from the sidewalk, hurrying back so he wouldn't fail to hear the telephone. But it didn't ring.

The newspaper's headline announced, SHOOTING LEADS TO CHASE AND TANKER EXPLOSION. A photograph showed Bobby in his uniform. Another showed the truck driver. A third showed the twisted metal of the SUV and the gasoline tanker after the intense blaze had fused them together.

Page turned the newspaper over, hiding the photographs.

Unable to wait any longer, he picked up the phone and pressed numbers.

"Margaret, it's Dan."

She responded without any of the ordinary pleasantries: "Tori isn't here yet."

Page's throat felt terribly dry. After swallowing, he managed to speak. "She must have gotten tired and spent the night in a motel."

Even as he said it, he didn't believe it.

"Then why didn't she call to tell me not to worry? Which is exactly what I'm doing." The elderly voice quavered. "What if she had an accident?"

"I don't think that's likely, or I'd have heard something." Page tried to sound convincing. "But I'll see what I can find out."

Three hours later, en route to investigate a high school stabbing, he received a call from the duty officer at the police station.

"There's no record that Tori was in a traffic accident either in New Mexico or Texas, and nothing about her being admitted to any hospital along the route she was driving."

Page breathed out in relief, but he knew what the report meant and what he was forced to do next--he didn't see another option.

"Put out a missing-person report."

Chapter 6.

Early Thursday morning, the phone rang. Page set down his coffee cup and grabbed the receiver.

"Hello?"

"Dan Page?" a man's voice asked. It had a Southern accent and a raspy tone, as if it belonged to a smoker.

"Speaking." Page realized how tightly he held the phone.

"This is Police Chief Roger Costigan in Rostov, Texas."

"Where?" Page's mind swirled. He reached for a pen.

"Rostov, Texas. We're southeast of El Paso, about fifty miles from the Mexican border."

Page felt a knot in his stomach. "You found my wife?"

"Victoria Page," the voice said, as if reading from a list. "Caucasian.

Five foot six. One hundred and twenty pounds. Red hair. Green eyes.

Driving a dark-blue 2008 Saturn Outlook." The voice gave the license number.

"That's her." Page's brow felt cold.

"One of my officers spotted her car at the side of a road early this morning. He found her nearby."

Page had the sensation of holding his breath. "Is she . . . ?"

"She's fine. You don't need to worry on that score. She hasn't been hurt. She wasn't in any danger."

"No accident?"

"No, sir."

"She hasn't been injured?"

"That's correct, Mr. Page. She's just fine."

Thank God, Page thought. But troubling questions immediately flooded through him.

"If she wasn't injured, then why was her car at the side of the road?"

"That's difficult to explain."

"I don't understand. Is she there? Can you put her on the phone?"

"No, sir. She isn't with me."

"Then how can I talk to her?"

"I guess that's up to her," the voice replied. "We told her you're looking for her, but she didn't react."

"You're not making sense. Is she alone?"

"As much as I can tell."

"Then what in God's name is she doing in . . ." Page looked at the note he'd made. "Rostov, Texas?"

"It's a little complicated. You'll understand better if I tell you in person. The main thing is, no law's been broken. She's here of her own free will."

"You say it's better if you tell me in person?"

"Maybe 'show you' would be more accurate."

"Why are you being so damned cryptic, Chief?"

"I'm not trying to be. Believe me, this is an unusual situation. I'm afraid I can't explain it over the phone. You'll just have to see for yourself."

"Whatever the hell is going on, you can expect to show me this afternoon."

"Mr. Page, I'm afraid you'll need a lot longer than that to get here.

You're in Santa Fe, right?"

"That's correct."

"Well, our nearest major airport is in El Paso, and we're a couple of hundred miles from there. There's no way you can get here by this afternoon."

"Do you have any airport at all?"

"There's a little one that the ranchers use, but . . ."

"Then I'll see you at five o'clock."

Chapter 7.

Page phoned the police station and told the duty officer that he couldn't come to work that day and probably wouldn't be in until Monday. He packed a suitcase, grabbed his flight bag, and drove to Santa Fe's small airport. After carrying his luggage into a reception area, he said hello to a young woman behind a counter. She had the newspaper sitting on the counter in front of her, but before she could mention the front-page article, he turned left into a computer lounge, where he studied reports of the weather in New Mexico and Texas.

The forecasts indicated a chance for thunderstorms in a couple of days but no immediate problems.

The last thing he always did was look for announcements about prohibited areas. These warned pilots about airspace they weren't allowed to enter, often because of security issues. A pilot who trespassed into a forbidden area was liable to find his or her plane flanked by fighter jets giving angry orders to land at the nearest airfield.

There weren't any flight restrictions in New Mexico, but Page was surprised to discover that the Rostov area of Texas did have one. Puzzled, he clicked a button to get more information and learned that the prohibition involved an array of radio astronomy dishes twenty miles northwest of the town. The concern wasn't related to national security. Rather, the observatory was off-limits because planes flying over the dishes were liable to cause electrical interference that blocked attempts to collect radio signals from astronomical phenomena such as solar flares and spiral galaxies.

Fine--I'll just stay away from it, Page thought.

He pulled charts from his flight bag and quickly plotted a course to Rostov. As Chief Costigan had told him, the town was a couple of hundred miles southeast of El Paso. Nowhere near San Antonio.

His emotions in turmoil, Page stepped through a door onto the airport's tie-down area. There, in warm sunlight, numerous small aircraft were secured to the concrete by ropes attached to their wings and tails. One of them was Page's Cessna. Feeling the pressure of time, he warned himself to slow down as he inspected the plane's exterior. After each flight, he always had the fuel tanks filled. Now he drained a small amount of fuel into a cup to assure himself that there weren't any water bubbles or other contaminants.

Stay focused, he told himself.

After untying the plane, he got inside, attached his maps and flight plan to a clipboard strapped to his thigh, and took a deep breath.

Pay attention, he thought. No matter how much I want to reach Tori, what matters now is the plane. Pay attention to flying the plane.

He took another deep breath and went through his preflight checklist.

What in God's name is Tori doing in Rostov, Texas?

He used his radio to ask the ground controller for permission to taxi to the takeoff area. Five minutes later--less than two hours after he'd received the phone call from Chief Costigan--he was in the air, flying to Texas.

Chapter 8.

The man with the M4 carbine stood in the shade of the small concrete-block building and savored the last of his cigarette. The temperature was a pleasant, dry 85 degrees, but habits from his two tours of duty in Iraq stayed with him, and he avoided direct sunlight as much as possible.

Because it was midmorning and the sun was on the opposite side of the tiny building, Earl Halloway wasn't able to enjoy the rugged majesty of the Davis Mountains to the north. Instead his view consisted of seemingly endless clumps of sparse brown grass.

Tumbleweeds stuck to a chain-link fence fifty yards from him. The fence was twelve feet high and topped by barbed wire. Signs along it declared:

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AREA

NO ADMITTANCE

To Halloway's left, nine huge radio observatory dishes were pointed in various directions toward the sky, and another was tilted so that it pointed horizontally. It had a truck next to it, along with scaffolding and a small crane, as if it were undergoing repairs. The dishes could be seen from quite a distance, a conspicuous intrusion on the landscape.