Headcase, p.5
Headcase, page 5
‘Don’t worry, I’ll be quick. You’re a medical doctor, right?’
‘Yes …?’ Laurie replied warily, as though I might be about to ask her to examine a rash.
‘If someone ran out of oxygen, they’d go blue, wouldn’t they?’
‘Yes, at the lips and fingernails. Why?’
‘They wouldn’t go kind of purple all over? Like bruising?’
‘No,’ Laurie said.
‘What would happen to a person if their suit was punctured on a spacewalk?’
‘Oh. Well, depressurisation is much more serious than just a loss of oxygen. The astronaut would go into shock more or less immediately. The eardrums would probably burst. In a vacuum, the boiling point of water drops to almost nothing, so their saliva would boil, and their tears, too. Soon all their orifices would be completely dry. Their skin would be scorched by the cold, and the blood vessels close to the surface would rupture. So, in that case, there would be bruising everywhere.’
That was exactly what I’d seen on the body outside. ‘Would the cold stop the body from burning up on re-entry?’
Laurie raised an eyebrow. If my earlier question had been dumb, this one was apparently even dumber. ‘Have you ever seen a shooting star, Timothy?’
‘Sure.’
‘Any rock smaller than a stadium gets torn apart when it hits the atmosphere. What do you think those forces would do to a human body?’
So she agreed with Anders. ‘Fair enough. Thank you for your time. Say, do you know a woman with a shaved head? Asian or Latina, twenty-something?’
Laurie’s eyes narrowed. ‘That’s Rachel. She’s an intern.’
I wondered why an intern would flee from me. ‘I just missed her earlier. I’m supposed to interview anyone who was in the complex prior to eight this morning. Perhaps you could ask her to give me a call?’
I held out a business card, and Laurie took it.
Rachel was unlikely to call the number on the card. She’d made it clear she didn’t want to talk to me. But she might google ‘Timothy Blake, ClearHorizon’. If she did, the CIA would have her location within minutes. And then I could find out what she knew.
I paused with my hand on the doorhandle, looking back at the syringes. ‘Would your formula taste like blood?’
Laurie frowned. ‘I don’t really know. There’s iron in it, hence the red colour. The flavour might be similar, I suppose—why?’
‘Just curious.’
When I opened the door I came face to face with a tall man in a brown suit, rumpled after a long drive. He wore his thinning hair in a comb-over, and his eyes were magnified by frameless glasses. This would be the Yale professor.
He looked me up and down—mostly down, on account of his height. ‘Oh. Hello. Well. I’m here to speak with Dr Laurie.’ He saw her over my shoulder and gave her the same stare I gave pedestrians when I was a beggar. Hopeful, with a dash of suppressed contempt. He really wanted that formula, and he didn’t think she would give it to him.
‘I’ve warmed her up for you,’ I said, and slipped past.
CHAPTER 7
I ask you questions and steal your underwear. What am I?
I’d told Zara I would come straight back to the safe house for a debriefing. Instead I took the exit off the tollway towards Jacinto City, headed for a street I’d only seen pictures of. The dead spaceman was a good riddle, but not good enough. He could only keep my mind busy for so long.
I left the radio on—a real broadcast this time. Over the course of the hour-long drive, news of the Chinese astronaut was reported, exaggerated and then forgotten in favour of a story about the Texas Reaper’s latest victim: a middle-aged woman found strangled in her own home. The perfect story to scare listeners and hold their attention long enough to sell them air-conditioners and insurance. More on this story after the break. I briefly wondered if the serial killer was a CIA invention, designed to distract the public from a national security crisis. But the public probably didn’t need help getting distracted.
A couple of strangers waved at me as I turned onto a broad, leafy street. I didn’t wave back. They probably wouldn’t have noticed my prosthesis at that distance—but if they had, and if they’d told the occupant of the house at the end that they’d seen a one-armed man hanging around, she’d have known immediately who they meant.
I shouldn’t be here, I thought, but I didn’t turn back.
It seemed like a nice place, which both pleased and saddened me. Fences were only knee high, and the strip of lawn down the middle had been mown recently. The house itself was painted a cheery yellow to match the daisies planted in the front garden. A clothesline around one side. A tall oak was visible over the roof, which had pristine tiles, as though even the birds thought this was too respectable a place to take a shit.
I’d told myself it wasn’t really stalking if I didn’t stop the car, though I wouldn’t want to test that theory in court. Yet I found myself slowing down, pulling on the park brake and killing the engine. It was safe enough. She wouldn’t be here at two o’clock on a Wednesday. She’d be out hunting people like me.
When I lost my arm, the stump took ages to heal, because I couldn’t help poking it. I was doing the same thing now. Prolonging the pain by sitting across the street from this house, looking up at the second-floor windows that reflected the blue sky and trying to imagine what it would have been like to live inside. If only I was him, instead of me.
A figure emerged from behind the house. A woman, five foot eight, long hair, dark skin. The air in my lungs evaporated, as though I was an astronaut with a punctured suit. It was her.
Reese Thistle put down a basket of wet laundry under the clothesline. I’d hardly ever seen her in casual clothes. Today she wore mom jeans and a crew-neck sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders, brown eyes focused on the pegs in her hands. Maybe she’d taken a sick day, though she looked healthy. Maybe she’d quit.
Thistle hung up the clothes the same way she did everything. Efficiently, determinedly and optimistically—those clothes wouldn’t dry on a cold day like this. She had a faint frown, her lips slightly parted. It looked like she was thinking about something else. I hoped it wasn’t me. I hoped she’d forgotten I existed and was living a happy life in my absence.
Just leave, I told myself. But I couldn’t.
The clothes were all hers. Her FBI suit pants, a few blouses, some flannelette pyjamas. So she was living in her ex-husband’s house but wasn’t washing his clothes. The bras and panties were practical rather than sexy. I tried to snuff out the flicker of hope in my chest. Zak was probably a good man who did his own washing and loved her no matter what she wore.
Thistle hung up the last pair of socks and picked up the empty basket—
Then she spotted my car. She paused, looking right at me.
My heart pounding, I waved my good hand in what I hoped was a non-threatening way.
Thistle turned back to the house and went inside. I realised that the sun was reflecting off my windshield. She hadn’t seen me at all.
I told myself I’d had a lucky escape. But as I started the engine and drove off, it was hard not to feel like I’d swallowed a bone and it was lodged right next to my heart.
•
The safe house was a half-finished home in a half-finished suburb on the edge of Houston. From the outside it looked complete—a huge house squeezed onto a tiny block, with a facade of dark grey bricks shaded by an overhanging corrugated roof. But inside there were no doors. Halls became bedrooms became walk-in robes with no delineation. No carpet, and the rough pine floors hadn’t been lacquered. The whole place smelled of sawdust. No stairs led down to the tiny yard—if anyone walked out the back door, they would fall four feet onto bare dirt. Drills, hammers and crowbars were scattered throughout the house, and there was an abandoned ladder in the yard. It was as though the rapture had happened and the people building the house had simply evaporated. There was running water and electricity, but no heat. No furniture, except the self-inflating foam mattresses Zara had brought.
I’d wanted to take the house next door, which was complete, and furnished. But Zara had said the owners might drive past to check on their belongings, though they wouldn’t dare get out of the car. The insulation pumped into the walls of every house on this street had a manufacturing defect that meant it would degrade over time, potentially leading to lung and throat cancer for the occupants. It was scheduled to be removed and replaced by experts with specialised equipment and protective clothing.
That was the official story, anyway. In reality, the insulation was fine. As soon as Zara and I left, the developers would be notified that the faulty insulation had been removed and replaced, so the construction workers could return. The owners would keep the whole thing under wraps to avoid hurting the house prices. Two operatives—or, technically, one operative and one asset—would have had a few days of free accommodation.
The longer I worked for the CIA, the more impressed I was by their ability to manipulate other people into keeping their secrets, and to get things done on a budget. Zara had hired me on nothing more than the promise of the occasional corpse.
When I walked in, she was sitting cross-legged in the corner of the room, between a nail gun and a saw.
‘What’s the situation?’ she asked, without looking up from the phone in her lap.
‘Garcia is scared,’ I said. ‘He’ll say whatever we need him to say. But journalists are onto the story.’
She waved that off. ‘No one trusts journalists anymore. Did anyone else seem to be taking an unusual interest in the body?’
When I’d first met Zara, she’d had hair as black and shiny as a grand piano, flawless skin, and had worn a cocktail dress and heels at all hours of the day. Now her hair was brown, she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose, and she wore leggings and a running jacket. Her accent had shifted, too—a little less Texas twang, a little more Valley girl. She had driver’s licences from Ohio, Michigan and Wyoming, with various birthdates that put her age between thirty-six and forty-two. Her names included Jasmine, Michaela, Sandra.
People talk about soldiers giving their lives for their country, but to me, that doesn’t seem quite right. Soldiers give their deaths for their country. Zara, whose original name, face and voice were long gone, had given her life.
‘There’s more.’ I told her about Rachel, the young Asian woman with the tattoos and the shaved head.
‘Interesting. Did you recognise her?’
‘Didn’t get a good look.’
‘How about a last name?’
I shook my head.
Zara turned back to her phone. ‘Okay. Can’t be many Rachels working at Space City who match that description. We’ll find her.’
‘I want the body,’ I said.
Zara sighed. ‘Let’s not have this conversation again.’
I threw up my hand. ‘Why am I here?’
‘Because I knew you’d scare the shit out of Garcia, and hopefully shake something loose.’
‘I mean before that,’ I said. ‘Why did you recruit me, if you didn’t need an investigator?’
‘I enjoy the company of like-minded individuals.’ She stood up and stretched. ‘I’m going to have a shower.’
My stomach growled. As Zara strolled away, I went to the kettle and switched it on. The less meat I got, the more I craved coffee—maybe caffeine stimulated the same part of the brain. The way some people only smoke when they drink, or vice versa.
I clamped the jar of instant between my knees so I could open it one-handed, then spooned it into a mug, along with sugar and some salt. I took the long-life cream out of the cooler Zara and I had been using, and added a generous splash. I wanted the coffee fatty, and not too hot. As close as I could get to the taste and texture of human blood.
I poured the water, stirred, and dipped a finger in to check the temperature. I was about to take a sip when I remembered the syringe I’d stolen from Laurie’s lab.
I took it out of my pocket and examined it. It was shrink-wrapped, like a drinking straw attached to a juice box. In this light the fluid inside was vivid red.
I’d forgotten the syringe as soon as Laurie told me it wasn’t real blood. But it probably tasted more convincing than salted coffee.
I tore the plastic with my teeth, uncapped the syringe and raised it to my mouth. Plungers were hard without a thumb. I had to use my pinkie, the other three fingers wrapped around the shaft.
Nothing happened. Maybe the auto-injector was like the nail gun on the floor—for safety, it would only fire if the tip was pressed against something.
I wanted to taste the contents, but I didn’t want to stab myself in the tongue. I pushed the tip against my teeth instead, my jaw slightly open, so the needle would go between them—
Zara touched my arm from behind.
I yelped and dropped the syringe. It bounced off my foot and skittered across the floor.
‘Sorry,’ Zara said. ‘Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.’
I was sure that was a lie. When Zara had been embedded with the dark web group, she’d had a playful, sadistic streak. It had helped her blend in with the other occupants of the house, but I didn’t think it was part of her cover. I thought it was what had drawn her to spying in the first place.
I swerved, mentally. It was painful to think about that house, where I’d lost so much. My love. My arm. My son.
Zara was looking at the syringe. ‘What’s that?’
‘EpiPen.’ It was the first thing that popped into my head.
She looked at me for a long moment with her big, dark eyes.
‘What?’ I said.
‘I trust you, Blake,’ Zara said. ‘You can trust me, too. You know that, right?’
I didn’t think either of those statements were true.
Zara had sold me on this partnership because she knew what I was. Wouldn’t I rather work alongside someone I didn’t have to hide from? Someone who wasn’t disgusted, or afraid? But it hadn’t worked out that way. I didn’t trust anyone who would want me for a partner.
‘Of course,’ I said, but I’d hesitated too long.
Anger flashed across her face. Her stance changed, too—the elongated neck becoming hunched, her pushed-out chest caving in, the raised hip levelling out. A more masculine stance. For a second, the seductress was replaced by a real person, full of messy frustrations. I had time to think: Zara uses her femininity to hide her humanity.
But then she transformed back, so fast that I wondered if I’d imagined the change. Her gaze softened, and she was back to standing like a catwalk model.
‘That girl you’re carrying a torch for,’ she said.
‘Woman,’ I said.
‘She’s never coming back. You know that, right?’
Her phone vibrated on the laminate benchtop.
Zara gave me a meaningful look before she sashayed over and picked it up. ‘You’re speaking with Cassandra, hello?’
It had to be those words, in that sequence. If she’d said, ‘Hello, you’re speaking with Sandra,’ that would mean I’ve been compromised. Any other phrase, and the CIA would assume they were talking to an impostor.
Zara listened for a long time. She had the volume turned down too low for me to hear the person at the other end. Eventually she said ‘Got it’ and hung up.
‘What’s up?’ I said.
‘My asset in Shanghai has reported back. The Ministry of State Security has hi-res aerial photographs of Space City. Best guess, they have a secret spy satellite watching it. Come on.’ She picked up her keys. ‘Wilcox wants to see us.’
CHAPTER 8
I’m an untidy period of time, delivered to your phone. What am I?
I lounged in the passenger seat of Zara’s Prius, watching Houston zip by. Dark clouds were gathering behind the skyscrapers downtown, and everyone seemed to be trying to beat the rain. Zara drove at terrifying speeds, always riding either the brake or the gas. She kept the stereo way up, some commentator shouting over the top of us, confusing anyone who might have planted a listening device in the car.
Her phone beeped. She took her eyes off the road and swiped down to read a message. ‘We have a location for the meeting,’ she said. ‘And OPIR analysis is back. No suspicious infrared disturbances in China for at least three months.’
‘Meaning no rocket launches?’
‘Right. Whatever’s up there, it’s been up there a while.’ She looked troubled, probably mentally cataloguing all the things the MSS might have seen during three months of covert surveillance.
This also eliminated Garcia’s theory that the astronaut had crashed after failing to reach orbit. ‘Tell me about your asset in Shanghai,’ I said.
‘No.’
‘Okay, fine,’ I said. ‘But don’t you think it’s convenient that your contact didn’t tell you about the satellite until after we found the body? A body that should have burned up on re-entry, according to the experts at NASA?’
‘You mean like there was no point hiding it anymore?’
‘I mean like the satellite isn’t there at all.’ I could still taste that earlobe. Soft and fresh. Neither frozen nor burned.
‘Where’d you get the EpiPen?’ she asked, changing the subject.
‘Found it in Garcia’s office. Prison records didn’t list any allergies—thought I’d run the serial numbers, see if I can work out whose it is.’
‘Uh-huh. You know, they used to chop your hand off for stealing.’ Zara glanced at my arm. I’ve never told her how scared I am of losing my other hand and becoming completely helpless, but she seems to sense it.
‘I wonder who got all the hands afterwards,’ I said. Did some lucky cannibal work at the jail? Maybe there’d always been someone like me, begging for scraps from the justice system. In the hospital, after I lost my thumb, I’d seen part of a documentary about weird medical practices throughout history. Apparently people used to think that drinking blood was good for you. At beheadings, there would be beggars with cups, lined up to catch some nectar from the condemned.
