The Vanishing (36 page)

They landed at the helipad back in San Francisco just after noon. They said good-bye to the pilot, who was planning to take an immediate shower and advised them to do the same, and walked out to the parking lot where Brian’s rental car waited. Carrie had brought a disposable camera with her on the trip, and she’d used up all the film, though it was impossible to tell how well any of them would turn out. She was planning to take it to an instant photo shop and see what she had.

‘‘I have to write an article,’’ Brian said. ‘‘I’ve been wasting the paper’s money gallivanting across California with nothing to show for it—not a good thing to do with all the budget cuts we’re facing—so I need to talk to someone from the forest service, maybe a botanist from a prestigious university or something, and then write a piece and file it. Are you sure your cop friend can’t get me an interview with Haskell?’’

Carrie nodded. ‘‘I’m sure.’’

‘‘Then do you think you can still arrange a meeting with those children and their mothers this afternoon?’’

‘‘Sure,’’ she said. ‘‘But I don’t know how much you’ll learn from it.’’

‘‘I don’t either, but we might turn something up.’’ He paused. ‘‘It also might not be such a bad idea if we both did take a shower. Just in case.’’

‘‘I was thinking the same thing.’’

‘‘Okay, then. Where and when do you want to meet?’’

‘‘I’ll call you. I’ll drop off the film, go home, shower, see what kind of meeting I can set up with Juan and Rosalia, and the other boy and his mom, then give you a call.’’

He nodded. ‘‘Sounds good.’’

‘‘You know,’’ Carrie said, ‘‘we’re not any closer to figuring out what Lew and his kind actually are than we were when we started.’’

‘‘I know,’’ he admitted. ‘‘That’s why I want to talk to those children and their mothers.’’

‘‘I do have another idea,’’ Carrie told him. ‘‘What are you doing tonight?’’

‘‘Whatever your idea is.’’

She laughed. ‘‘Okay,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s a long shot . . .’’

‘‘Long shots are my life,’’ he told her.

‘‘Write your article then. I’ll call you.’’

Rosalia did not want to talk to any reporters, and Carrie didn’t push her. As much as she wanted to help Brian and get to the bottom of everything that was going on, her first responsibility was to the Oliveras, and she understood completely Rosalia’s feelings and promised that she wouldn’t let anyone harass her.

Joy Sing was not her client, however, and since the woman had already signed a release allowing John Mees to photograph her son Austin and display the pictures publicly, Carrie had no qualms about trying to convince the woman to tell her story to Brian. She explained to Joy about her own involvement with Lew, and said that by coming forward they were making it easier for others who might be out there.

The big surprise was that Austin was a twin. Lew had fathered
two
boys by Joy, although the other child—and their sister—seemed perfectly normal. Only Austin had been born with . . . abnormalities.

Maybe that information could be helpful.

Following the directions Carrie had written down, Brian drove them in the rental car to Chinatown, where they paid to park in a lot and then walked to one of the newer apartment houses.

Like Rosalia, Joy was a single mother, but unlike Rosalia, she had a good job managing a boutique and lived in a loft in the trendy part of town. Her own widowed mother babysat the boys while she was at work during the day, and though it was clear that the old woman deeply disapproved of her daughter’s lifestyle, it was also obvious that a sense of obligation made her willing to watch the children. It was at her apartment that they were all to meet, and when Carrie and Brian arrived, the door to the apartment was open and the two women were arguing loudly in Cantonese.

Joy looked just as she had in the photographs: young, pierced and tattooed, with a look of sadness etched permanently onto her otherwise pretty features. Austin was even more hypnotically grotesque than he had appeared in the photos. His possum face had a tactile reality that could not be conveyed through two-dimensional media. Carrie had never really seen Juan in direct light, not like this, and the sight of the boy standing before them made her realize on a nuts-and-bolts level just how fundamentally alien these children really were.

She cursed Lew and all of the other men like him for what they had inflicted on their children.

A thought suddenly occurred to her: What had
their
fathers been like?

Or their mothers?

Her gaze shifted to the other boy.
The normal one.
Maybe she’d been right in her initial speculation with Brian. Maybe whatever caused this affliction was random, or the result of a recessive gene that popped up only once every couple of generations.

Joy’s mother had retreated to her bedroom and quietly closed the door. Joy bade them sit on the covered couch. She herself sat in a reclining chair, the two boys sitting on the chair’s arms.

‘‘How old are they?’’ Carrie asked.

‘‘Six,’’ she said.

Brian had not been able to take his eyes off Austin. ‘‘Can he talk?’’ Brian asked Joy. ‘‘I don’t mean to offend you,’’ he added quickly. ‘‘I just need to know, from a practical standpoint, whether . . .’’ He seemed to realize that he was only digging himself a deeper hole and let the thought trail off, unfinished.

‘‘He doesn’t have human vocal cords,’’ Joy said, and Carrie could tell from the look on the woman’s face how much it pained her to say those words.

‘‘I can talk,’’ the other boy said shyly.

Carrie smiled at him. ‘‘And what’s your name?’’

‘‘Wyatt. Wyatt Sing.’’

‘‘Nice to meet you, Wyatt,’’ she told him.

Brian didn’t seem to know where to begin. It was clear that he had a lot of questions he wanted to ask, but it was just as obvious that he didn’t feel comfortable doing so in front of the kids. Carrie glanced around the apartment, saw a small rabbit-eared television set on a little table at one end of the narrow kitchen. The grandmother probably watched it while she cooked.

‘‘Let’s watch cartoons,’’ Carrie suggested. She looked over at Joy. ‘‘Can we watch cartoons?’’

The young woman nodded tiredly. Wyatt hopped off the chair arm and led the way into the kitchen, turning on the TV. Austin remained next to his mother.

‘‘He doesn’t watch cartoons,’’ Wyatt explained. ‘‘He doesn’t understand them.’’

Her heart went out to the boy. To both boys, really, but to Wyatt the most. He was the one who understood what was going on, he was the one who would be hurt by the taunts of other children, and he was the one whose life would always be lived in the shadow of his brother’s because families inevitably organized themselves around major illnesses or handicaps.

The two of them leaned against opposite kitchen cupboards, watching
Yu-Gi-Oh!
while Brian spoke quietly and began asking questions.

After the interview, they walked downstairs and down the street, not speaking until they had almost reached the parking lot. Carrie looked over her shoulder to make sure Joy and her children weren’t anywhere behind them. ‘‘So did you learn anything?’’

‘‘Not really,’’ Brian admitted. ‘‘She wasn’t that forthcoming about her relationship with Haskell—understandably—and nothing she told me about her son was really new, but seeing those two brothers together did get me thinking about the reason all this is happening. If my dad is . . . one of them . . . how come I’m not? How come Wyatt’s not? How come my
sister
’s not? Is it genetic?’’

‘‘It seems to be,’’ Carrie said.

‘‘That’s the thing,’’ he said eagerly. ‘‘A lot of the incidents that have occurred, that we’re investigating, are, for want of a better term, supernatural. Is there a gene that controls that? Haskell and Stewart are both alive and locked up. They can be studied, tests run . . .’’ He shook his head. ‘‘I was sitting there talking to Joy Sing, and all of a sudden I was just kind of overwhelmed by the realization that this is something really big. We’ve stumbled onto history here.’’

Carrie smiled. ‘‘Yeah. I guess.’’ She didn’t understand his sudden enthusiasm, but it was nice to see, and it sure beat the frightened feeling of being completely at the mercy of malevolent fates that had been her constant companion since Lew had taken her into the barn to see his revolutionary milking process.

‘‘So what’s the plan for this evening?’’ he asked as they reached the car. ‘‘What’s the big idea?’’

‘‘We’re going to a book signing,’’ she said.

She’d read about it several days ago in one of the alterna-papers she’d picked up to read at lunch. A name in the weekly events calendar had jumped out at her, and she’d remembered back in college attending a signing at the bookstore on campus, a hippie-ish shop more City Lights than Little Professor’s. A suspense writer named Phillip Emmons had been there promoting his latest novel, and the guy she’d been dating at the time had dragged her to the signing, which to her surprise, had been more crowded than the John Sayles lecture she’d attended the week before.

Emmons was a weird guy. Between books, apparently, he traveled the country as some type of ghost hunter, folklorist and amateur parapsychologist, and it was these subjects more than his new novel that people had come to hear about. Question after question had to do with supernatural experiences the questioners claimed to have had, and Emmons was able to address each one authoritatively, even bringing in some of his own experiences to serve as examples when he made a point. Although at the time she’d been defiantly a nonbeliever, she’d still gotten a little spooked by some of his stories, and it was an evening she’d never forgotten.

Now Emmons was speaking in San Francisco as part of a Writer’s Block series. She’d registered that fact and forgotten it, but something had jogged her memory when they’d been on the helicopter and although it was a long shot, she figured Emmons might have some idea of what was going on or, at the very least, might be able to point them in the right direction in their research.

‘‘Who is it?’’ Brian asked. ‘‘And, if I may be so presumptuous, why?’’

‘‘His name’s Phillip Emmons, and he writes sort of mystery/suspense novels. Although that’s not why we’re going to see him. He’s also an expert on the occult, the supernatural, Bigfoot, UFOs, all the stuff that’s right up our alley.’’

‘‘Lay it on me, Scully.’’

‘‘If there’s anyone who might have background information on all this, it’s him.’’

‘‘Where and when?’’

‘‘The Hartford Theater, seven o’clock. We should probably be there early to make sure we can get tickets.’’ She looked at her watch. ‘‘There’s a Subway across the street from the theater. I suggest we get our tickets first, then grab something to eat and line up.’’

‘‘Okay.’’

As she’d expected, the place was crowded, but they got there early enough that they were able to score seats in the center of the auditorium. Although Emmons was ostensibly there to talk about writing, the interviewer, a professor from UCSF, soon got off topic and onto the paranormal, and there the rest of the conversation stayed. Most of the audience questions concerned the supernatural as well, although a few wannabe writers asked about specific books, then casually followed up by asking if Emmons had any advice on how
they
could break into publishing.

One person actually brought up the overnight reforestation of the clear-cut land—how could someone not? It was all over the news—and what Carrie found interesting was the way he glossed over the question. Every other query put to him was met with thoughtful, detailed discussion, but he seemed to have nothing to say about the regenerated trees. She looked to her left and caught Brian’s eye. He’d noticed, too.

After the talk, there was a signing in the lobby, and the two of them hung back, waiting for everyone else to ask their questions, say their piece or get their books autographed. When the last fan finished—a disheveled, overweight man who’d brought along a shopping bag filled with both hardcovers and paperbacks—Carrie and Brian stepped up to the author’s table.

She let Brian do the talking. ‘‘Excuse me, Mr. Emmons?’’ he said. ‘‘My name’s Brian Howells and I’m a reporter for the
Los Angeles Times.
I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions.’’

The writer seemed singularly uninterested. He nodded distractedly as he slipped his coat off the back of the chair.

‘‘This is Carrie Daniels. She—’’

The change in his demeanor was instantaneous. ‘‘Carrie Daniels? The one who discovered Lew Haskell’s double life?’’

‘‘Y-yes,’’ she said, surprised.

He stood, hand extended. ‘‘I’m very glad to meet you.’’

‘‘That’s one of the things we want to talk to you about,’’ Brian said. ‘‘There’s been an epidemic of murders,suicides and just generally strange behavior among a lot of very rich families lately. And it’s not the first time. This has happened before.’’

Emmons had stopped fiddling with his jacket. ‘‘Go on. I’m listening.’’

This was not the time to hold back, so Brian told him everything. His father’s letters. The phone messages on Wilson’s answering machine. The resurrected bird. The growth of plants. The killing of his mother’s pastor, apparently by his father. His encounter with Stephen Stewart. Details of the killings. Wilson’s disappearance. Everything.

Carrie had heard it before, but laid out like this, logically, chronologically, made the connections between everything seem less tenuous, more real, and brought home to her just how epic the situation was.

She told him about her experience with Lew.

Emmons, it turned out, kept an apartment in San Francisco, though his primary residence was in Arizona, and after saying his good-byes to the Writer’s Block officials and the volunteers who’d staffed the event, he led the two of them back to his place.

It looked like the apartment of a writer. The walls of the sitting room were lined with bookcases, the occasional open space filled with exotic artwork. There was an old-school stereo system set up before a single overstuffed chair, and dowdy furniture that seemed to be an afterthought was arranged indifferently around these essentials. Upon close inspection, Carrie noted that nearly all of the volumes on the shelves were reference books, many of them extremely old.