The underground garage. The white van. The giant, looming overhead. The security check. David emerged into the labyrinth of Site One. Though he knew his way well enough now, still a soldier accompanied him wherever he went, silent and focused.
Even when he asked where the cafeteria was, the soldier simply pivoted direction rather than answering.
He came into the large conference room in Building Seventeen carrying two coffees. He steeled himself, then knocked at the door that led to Sunny’s lab. She would be there. She had to be. Part of him expected Erickson to show up and yell at him, scold that he wasn’t allowed anywhere but his own little room. Just as he was about to walk away, the door opened.
Sunny had on a Ramones shirt beneath her lab coat. She seemed tired, but she smiled at seeing him.
“I figured I needed to repay you,” David said, holding up the coffee.
“I will gladly take you up on that,” she said. “I feel like a zombie in here without any windows to tell what time it is.”
He expected her to step out into the room with him, but instead she held the door and gestured for him to follow. He paused, his eyes questioning. She smiled wider, reassuring. He followed.
The lab was one room, about forty feet across and sixty deep. The walls were ringed with cabinets and counters, both piled with glass containers holding crystals, crystals of every color and shape and size. Some looked like blocks of glass, while others were eruptions of spikes. At one side was a tall metal cabinet with signage warning of hazardous chemicals. One row of desks held a variety of equipment—centrifuges, microscopes, and devices David had never seen before.
The center of the room was filled with a floor-to-ceiling glass chamber with a circular base, a sphere with a diameter of maybe ten feet. Along the glass were ports that reached into thick, rubber, arm-length gloves, he supposed to experiment on whatever was inside the glass. At the moment, the interior of the sphere was empty.
Beyond all of this, he noticed how messy it was. Papers everywhere. Test tubes and beakers scattered across surfaces. Books stacked in great piles, some tumbled over.
“Don’t judge,” Sunny said. “I get kind of laser focused on work. The other stuff . . .”
She waved her hands dismissively. There was a looseness and ease to the way she moved, her mannerisms and expressions. She seemed effortless. He supposed it could be the way Californians were.
She sat and kicked a rogue office chair his way. He handed over one coffee and started to sip at the other.
“You see the news?” he asked.
She shook her head. “We don’t have any access to the outside world in here. No internet or cable. There’s a TV with a DVD player in my room, though. They have a library that has pretty much everything. You can get music, too.”
She jerked a thumb toward a CD player on another table.
“What happened?”
David explained Charlotte’s report. Now the world knew about the killer and that he was carving up his victims. And they knew that David and the FBI were conspiring to hide all of this. His phone hadn’t stopped ringing since the broadcast. Andrea was flooded with reports, people claiming they knew who the killer was, or claiming they were the killer. A local had called in to say he’d had a cow carved up with those same patterns.
“It’s a shit show,” David said.
He sipped at the coffee, thinking through his next step. He needed to tell her what had happened inside the theater, but he couldn’t say it out loud. They were listening, he’d been warned. If Erickson and Priest learned what had happened, they’d raid the theater, and the video of David would be sent out, and that would be the end of his career as sheriff. But then, if they knew what he’d ingested, they’d probably lock him up in a lab somewhere, study him.
He reached over and pulled a notepad and a pen toward him. He started to sketch, as if he was just doodling. The pattern.
“I’ve been reading a little about the pattern on the giant,” he said as he drew. “Fractals. That they’re these perfect, replicating patterns. Except they’re also chaotic.”
He leaned over the paper, guiding the pen carefully.
“All these little pieces coming together to form a bigger piece.”
“Uh huh,” she said. “What are you thinking?”
“Just that I assumed the killer was organized, because of the patterns. That he had some compulsion to do this exact thing again and again. But maybe that isn’t it. Maybe there’s more chaos to it than I thought. Maybe he’s targeting people at random.”
David had finished the sketch. He passed the notepad to Sunny.
She glanced at it, then stared down, studying. Between the lines, he had written words.
Crystals from giant are on outside. Used as drugs. Tiger cult forced me to take them. Think I’m okay. Don’t tell, please.
Her breath turned slow, controlled, intentional. She seemed to survey him, unable to hide her worry. She fidgeted with the coffee.
Then she took the pen from him, as if to sketch.
“I think you’re right,” she said. “That it’s all chaos.”
She handed the notepad back over. She’d adjusted the curve of one of the lines, drawing over the top of his. And beside it, tiny words were scrawled.
Need to talk outside of here
A sheepish grin appeared on his face then, despite it all. He hoped she’d think he was acting the part. The truth was, he hadn’t asked anyone out since Tabby in eighth grade, so many years ago it might as well never have happened. And in the moments when he could take his mind away from the insanity whirling around him, he found himself again and again thinking of Sunny, wondering what she was doing, trying to understand how she made him feel good, even if only for fleeting stretches.
“So, there’s going to be a party. For Jason. It’s on Saturday. Just a little thing at the bar in Old Town. I don’t know if you’d want to come.”
She smiled back, a smile that he told himself had to be genuine.
“I’d love that,” she said.
As had become routine, when David returned from Site One and got back into his truck and emerged into the familiar world, he radioed Andrea to make sure nothing major had happened. Every time, he worried the answer would come that the killer had found a new victim. But she reported that it had been quiet, or what passed for quiet anymore. Someone had spray-painted slurs onto the driveway and garage door of Imam Bey; Brooke had responded already.
When he checked his phone, David saw a text from Dale. His uncle had Jason’s bank statements ready. He headed toward the house.
Jason’s parents lived along the bluffs on the south side of the river, in an A-frame cabin that looked like a triangle jutting out of the hillside, with a large cement deck extending out in front of it. The view looked out over the river and the giant’s left foot.
Debbie met David at the door, and he bent over to hug her. Old age had started to bend her spine. She kissed the air next to his cheek, and he smelled gin.
Dale sat in the den, waiting with his back toward the door. Cigar smoke swirled around his head. The room had been decked out as a hunter’s lodge, with a fireplace built of rock and mounted animal heads lining the walls. Deer. Wild boar. An elk. A bear. Dale made no motion to embrace David, beyond waving his cigar at another chair, a plump leather recliner.
David sank into the chair.
“So, you had a chance to put the records together?”
“I did.”
Dale reached into the breast pocket of his shirt, a flannel in green and black stripes. He pulled out a small silvery piece of metal. David struggled against the chair, leaning forward to grab the thumb drive.
“Spreadsheets. I figured you’d want to be able to search them quickly. All of Jason’s personal bank accounts, as well as credit card statements and business records.”
“Thank you.”
“I can get you copies of receipts.”
“I don’t think we’ll need them.”
“Anything else?”
“This is plenty. Really. I know it was a lot of work.”
“It’s nothing.”
Dale inhaled deeply at the cigar, which glowed red, illuminating the deep wrinkles of his face. David had the sudden recognition that his uncle was an old man. His close-cropped hair had gone white. His shoulders had started to sag. Even the intensity that always burned in his eyes seemed to have cooled. Had Jason’s death done this? Or had time simply done its work while David didn’t notice?
Dale flicked the cigar, dropping ash into a triangular ceramic tray perched on the armrest. His eyes seemed to search the room for something.
“That thing on the news. The cuts across the body. Did that happen to Jason? Was he butchered like that?”
The memory of that night returned, as it so often did. The carved-apart body.
“I can’t say, Dale. You know I would if I could.”
Then Dale was leaning over the armrest, his face red, his hand thrusting the cigar as if stabbing some invisible enemy.
“He was my son. My son! I deserve to know! I deserve . . .”
And then he just sat there, turned awkwardly, cigar smoldering in the air, his face red and eyes wide and lip trembling.
“I’m trying,” David said.
Dale stood then, saying nothing, and led David to the door. In the doorway, Dale put a hand on David’s shoulder.
“You watch out, David. We can’t trust them.”
Who did he mean by them? The FBI? David had the sensation of being trapped in the midst of warring factions, except there was no way to discern one side from the other.
Driving back to town, as he reached the highway, he heard horns honking, one on top of another. The northbound lane of the highway had slowed to a crawl. A John Deere tractor pulling a tiller chugged along at twenty miles an hour, blocking the whole lane, dozens of vehicles choked up behind it.
Old Gentry Luwendyke. David flipped on his siren and guided his truck next to the tractor, waving at the old man to inch onto the side of the road, clearing room for traffic. Then David drove behind the Deere with his hazard lights on, waving vehicles past with his hand.
As the tractor peeled off of the highway, David continued on, starting his usual nightly patrol. He pulled an energy drink from the glove box, popped the tab, and swigged at it. His crowded thoughts jostled for preeminence. The case. The drugs. The cult.
For the first time in weeks, the volume of all that faded, and something new took prominence. Sunny. She would be coming. To see him. On a date. Was it a date? What if she didn’t feel anything about him? What if this really was just a secret meeting? But the way they connected . . .
He glanced into the rearview mirror, and a glare of lights fell over his eyes. Then he checked it again. Headlights behind him. Bright halogen glare. A truck, or maybe a jeep. The same one he’d seen before. The lights he had thought were following him.
No. There were hundreds of vehicles in the county now. Thousands. It was just a coincidence.
Yet, as he guided the truck through the memorized path of his patrol, those headlights remained behind him. One turn. Another. Another. Always hanging back, letting other vehicles come between them. Then reappearing.
His breath held in his lungs. His pulse thrummed.
He sped up, just slightly. Took another turn, this one not part of the routine, whipping to the right. Nothing. Nothing. Then . . .
The headlights, coming easily around the corner, following.
“Hell with this,” David said.
He flipped on the lights and siren and pulled over to the side of the road. Let them come, then. He stared at the mirror, unblinking.
The vehicle came closer. Closer. Then it turned off onto a side street, nothing rushed in the movement. He squinted. A jeep, dark in color. Then it was gone, but still David’s heart pounded.
Charlotte had come to the house before, parking across the street and watching. Willing herself to go, to be done with it. Rip off the Band-Aid. What a shit metaphor that was. Those were her parents in there. The people who had read the note she left for them and did nothing. Didn’t try to find her. Didn’t tell her to come home. Didn’t tell her they loved her no matter what. They just let her go.
And then, years later, when she had called them at one of the lowest points of her life, in the vain hope that they could make peace, that she could come home to a safe space, that her parents could offer some comfort, they told her she was evil and that she should never contact them again.
All those years went by, and she didn’t even know the worst of it. That they had told the rest of the family that she was dead.
So no, Charlotte had not gotten out of her car. She hadn’t walked up to the house and knocked on the door. She hadn’t ripped off the Band-Aid. But now that was exactly what she was doing.
Because her parents had recognized her on the TV. Somehow, they knew. And they found her contact information and sent her a message telling her she needed to come and see them. Here she was.
Bonnie opened the door. She held it like a shield, crouched behind it. Ben Senior shuffled into view behind her. Charlotte had seen them at a distance at the funeral. Up close, they were all but unrecognizable. Bonnie had nearly doubled in size, her skin pale and waxy, her hair gray. Ben was almost totally bald, except with a few strands combed over and slicked in place. The features of his face seemed inflated; he looked like a Dick Tracy villain.
Charlotte clenched her arms to her side to stop them from shaking.
“Hi,” she said.
Bonnie sniffed sharply. She looked to Ben, indicating it was his job to speak. The oversize features of his face twisted, as if he held too many emotions and couldn’t land on one.
“You asked me to come. I’m here,” Charlotte said.
Ben cleared his throat.
“We told you that you aren’t welcome here. We didn’t want you here then. We don’t want you here now. Not after . . .”
He didn’t need to complete the thought.
“This town is my home.”
“No,” Bonnie almost hissed. “You aren’t our son. This is not your home.”
“I have to be here. For my job,” Charlotte pushed back.
Ben took a half step forward, and Charlotte instinctively stepped back. She’d been hit before. It had been years since the last time, but still she knew how to sense it coming. Ben stopped, though, unwilling or unable to follow through on the violence in his eyes.
“You have to leave,” he said. “Now.”
And then, in that moment, the tension ran out of Charlotte. All the anger and frustration and anguish she’d clenched in the pit of her for two decades just up and turned to vapor. These were not monsters. They were old people. Scared and confused and blind to the world. Blind to themselves. They weren’t to be feared. They were to be pitied.
“You were right,” Charlotte said. “I’m not your child. But that also means that you aren’t my parents. So do not ever think for one goddamned second that you get to tell me what I can and can’t do.”
She didn’t bother to stay and watch their expressions. Instead, she wheeled away and went back to her car, and during the drive back to her hotel she turned the radio to a pop station and cranked the volume and sang along to some inane song with the windows down, despite the chill in the air.
It was only once she was in the hotel lobby that the compulsion to check her phone struck her, and she saw the encrypted message, opened it, and looked at the photo. And then she screamed.