It Lives Again Page 10

  “Should I?” Jody asked this man.

  “Yes,” said the driver abruptly, making it clear he’d be more than relieved to have Jody out of his car.

  Jody got out, and carrying her large handbag, walked quickly toward the office.

  A bell sounded as Jody entered the office. A man seated at an old wooden desk looked up from some paper work he’d been doing.

  “Can I help you?” He smiled, seeing it was a pretty, young woman.

  “Oh, I, er . . .” stammered Jody, not prepared for that question. She was sure someone would be here to tell her what to do instead of to ask her questions. “Oh,” she said, starting again, “I er, wanted to get some cigarettes.”

  “A pretty little lady like you smoking cigarettes,” admonished the man in a friendly voice.

  “Well, they’re not really for me,” Jody said, reaching into her handbag for some change.

  Then, to her right, through a door in the repair area of the garage, Jody heard the roar of a well-turned engine.

  Startled, she saw a sleek sports car in one of the service bays start up, the driver putting on the lights. Then the driver leaned across the front seat, calling out the passenger side, the side nearest Jody, “Mrs. Scott?”

  “Yes,” said Jody.

  “Get in, please,” he said.

  Jody looked toward the man at the desk. His head down, he was doing his paper work as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

  Jody got quickly into the car. As she did, the back door of the garage sprang mysteriously open; the car took off smoothly out the back door and into the night.

  That particular night, on every single road and highway leaving Tucson, an unmarked police car sat waiting. Some of them were Fords, some of them Plymouths, some of them Chevys, but they all had one thing in common—each of them, without exception, had a large antenna on the roof, poised and waiting. Waiting to pick up a signal from the transmitter Mrs. Jenkins had put in her daughter’s large leather handbag.

  In a 1974 Plymouth Fury parked on a small highway heading out of Tucson, a policeman heard something. He turned to his partner. “I think that’s it,” he said, listening carefully.

  “Sure is,” said his partner, grabbing the speaker of the police radio.

  “Car Twenty-two, this is Granger. Come in, please.”

  “Go ahead, Twenty-two.”

  “We got it,” said Granger. “West on Highway Thirty-two.” The signal was getting stronger.

  A sports car, sleek and low to the ground, roared by, the signal even louder. “There it is,” cried the other policeman. “That’s it, the sports car!”

  Mallory’s voice came over the police radio. “What is it, what’s going on out there?”

  Granger started the car and handed the microphone to his partner.

  The partner, over the noise of the car engine starting up, yelled into the speaker. “This is Car Twenty-two. We have a, looks like a Datsun Two-eight-oh Z that’s giving off the signal, heading west on Highway Thirty-two. Over and out.”

  At police headquarters Mallory, at the police radio, was yelling into the speaker.

  “Not over and out! You hear me, Car . . .” He stopped. Feverishly, he looked down at the woman who operated the police radio. “What car is that?” he asked.

  “Car Twenty-two,” she answered snappishly, not happy that Mallory had the speaker instead of her.

  “Car Twenty-two,” Mallory repeated, “not over and out. Come in, you hear me?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the scratchy voice of Granger’s partner, the roar of the car engine making the transmission more garbled.

  “Do not intercept. Do you hear? Do not intercept. Stay close enough to keep receiving the signal, but back far enough so that you are not detected, you understand?” Mallory said, very deliberately.

  “Yes, sir,” said the voice, the transmission even more indistinct now.

  Hours later, after frequent subsequent reports from the pursuing police car, Mallory stood at a huge map of the southwestern portion of the United States. A set of pins had been placed on the map to designate the route Jody had taken. Mallory, with a pointer and a big smile on his face, was going over the route with his staff.

  “They changed motor vehicles here,” he said, pointing to a section in downtown Tucson, “and here,” pointing to a section just west of the California-Arizona border, near Blythe. “It seems clear where they’re headed. I’m catching a flight to Los Angeles this afternoon. I think,” he said, with an even bigger smile, “we can close up shop here in Tucson.”

  “Yes, sir,” mumbled the assorted police personnel around him. All of them would be damned glad to be rid of him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Night. The high fence, the giant eucalyptus trees, silhouetted against the dark sky. A sign that read, “KEEP OUT—NO TRESPASSING.”

  In the background, a few lights burned in the distant turrets of the old Spanish mansion.

  Suddenly a creak and the fence began to open. A car drove in and started up the driveway. Just before reaching the house, it turned off and headed down into a grove of trees, parking almost out of sight.

  A figure got out, started up toward the house. The figure had been there before; it knew exactly where it was going.

  The figure climbed a stairway past a small porch light. It was Frank Davis!

  In the same woeful room Eugene had earlier, made even sadder at night by a dreary unshaded lamp, Eugene sat on his bed. Frank Davis sat across from him on a rickety chair.

  Frank was saying: “Your boy seems to be getting along quite well with the other two. Dr. Perry tells me they have a unique affinity for one another.”

  “I wonder what kind of affinity they’ll have for us,” Eugene said thoughtfully, “when they don’t need us any more.”

  “Should we expect them to be any more merciful than we are?” asked Frank.

  “I guess I’d better make myself very useful to my son. Indispensable, as a matter of fact,” Eugene said, getting to his feet with a small smile.

  There was a sharp rapping at the door and Frank, closer, went to open it.

  Dr. Forrest appeared, smiling. “Well, Eugene,” he said, “it seems you have a visitor.”

  He stepped aside and Jody stood there. She ran to Eugene—ran into his arms. He kissed her softly on the mouth. She buried her head in his shoulder.

  “Oh, Gene!” she cried.

  “How did you get here?” Eugene asked. “How did—”

  “Never mind,” she interrupted, “never mind, I’ll tell you all that later.”

  Frank backed toward the door.

  “I’ll see you both at breakfast,” he said.

  Jody turned, anxiously looking past Frank at Dr. Forrest standing by the door.

  “When do I get to . . .”

  Dr. Forrest stopped her, anticipating her question. “In the morning,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to wake him up now, would you?”

  “No,” she answered, feeling selfish. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

  “You’ll get to hold him, feed him, even teach him, both of you,” said Frank. “You’ll see, Eugene, you’ll change your mind.”

  And then Frank and Dr. Forrest were gone, leaving Jody and Eugene alone for the first time since the bizarre birth of their child in the mobile medical unit a week or so earlier.

  Eugene went to her, wrapped her again in his arms, burying his face in her beautiful dark hair. Jody looked straight ahead at the closed door.

  “What did he mean?” she said.

  “Huh?” said Eugene, working his way around to her delicious mouth.

  “About your changing your mind.”

  “Oh, nothing,” said Eugene.

  Jody stopped him. “No,” she said to her husband, who was getting ready to kiss her again. “How is he, really?”

  “Big. He’s very strong,” said Eugene vaguely. “There are two others here, you know.”

  “Yes,” said Jody. “They explained that to me on the way. I
think that’s good. I mean, to know that he’s not really different, that there are others.”

  “Sure,” said Eugene. Enough of this. He’d been through these philosophical discussions all week—whether it was better to have one, to have four, to have fifty. Who cared? His wife was there. He wanted his wife. “Come here,” he said.

  He took her into his arms; he kissed her. After a moment, she struggled, pulling away.

  “I wasn’t allowed to pack any clothes,” she said. “I don’t have anything to sleep in.”

  “Terrific,” said Eugene, smiling a lascivious smile.

  He unbuttoned her blouse, button by button. He buried his face in her breasts, still large from the birth of the child.

  “No, you’ll bring milk.”

  “Great,” he said, grinning up at her.

  She forced a smile, turning away quickly. Then she turned back, inspecting the room. “Where can I wash up,” she asked “and take my makeup off?”

  “What’s the matter, honey?”

  “It’s too soon,” she said, going to the window, looking out. “It’s too soon to do anything, you know that.”

  “I don’t want to do anything,” he said, following her to the window. “I just want to hold you, honey.”

  “I can’t,” she said. She turned away again, recoiling from his touch.

  Eugene saw her revulsion. “Does it make you sick,” he asked bitterly, “when I touch you? Does it?”

  “No,” said Jody, protesting, “no.”

  “Because together”—he pointed downward, toward the floor, toward the cellar below—“we created that?”

  “No, Gene, no.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “I don’t know what the truth is,” she said, leaning forlornly against the thick wall, hoping for some coolness. Oh, it’s so hot, she thought. “I just . . . I just don’t want to be held. I thought I would, all the way coming here, I couldn’t wait, and then . . . I don’t know how to say it. I just don’t want to . . .” Almost silently, she added, “That’s all.”

  “Okay,” said Eugene, dismissing her. He turned away. “We’re lucky there are two beds.”

  “I want it to be the same,” Jody pleaded, “believe me, Gene. But it isn’t.”

  “How could it be?” said Eugene, sitting faced away from her on one of the pathetic little beds. “After what happened . . . we’ll never be the same people again.”

  Jody looked around again. For the first time she saw the other door. She went to it, opened it. The bathroom. Oh, why didn’t I see this earlier? she thought unreasonably. Then maybe I wouldn’t have said the things I said.

  She went inside, closed the door. She turned on the water, and taking a tiny sliver of dirt-encrusted soap, left there since God knows when, she rubbed it over and over from hand to hand, trying to work up a lather.

  Suddenly the water, dingy before, turned a dark, lumpy, rust-colored brown, as if some obstruction deep within the plumbing of the building had worked itself loose through the antiquated pipes and was now spewing itself out into Jody’s cupped hands and into the sink below.

  She started to cry. Quietly at first, then deep, stomach-wrenching sobs as she sank slowly to her knees.

  At the door behind her, she heard, “Jody?”

  “I’m all right,” she sobbed. “I’m all right.”

  In the room, Eugene moved over to the window. He looked out, watching the outline of the eucalyptus trees against the night sky, bending gracefully in the heavy winds. These strange winds. Eugene had never felt winds like these before. Winds, especially summer winds, were always appreciated, hoped for, where Eugene came from; like the cooling winds off Lake Michigan on a hot night in Chicago.

  These were different. Strange, hot winds. Even the contradictory term Santa Ana winds, as Dr. Forrest called them.

  Strange, very strange. There they were bending those giant eucalyptus trees, sending their wax-like leaves floating down to the swimming pool below.

  Eugene turned. He moved soundlessly to the bathroom door. More sobs, but softer; Jody was now getting control of herself.

  “There’s an old bathrobe on the hook behind the door there,” Eugene said.

  “I see it, thanks,” answered Jody, trying her best to hide her sobs.

  He moved back to the window. He looked out again. The swimming pool. Sitting there, always sitting there, waiting for something to happen, as if it had a part to play in Eugene and Jody’s lives.

  And down below, in the bowels of the building, in the basement where the three newborn babies were being kept in protective captivity, Dr. Perry was making his nearsighted way down the clanging steel steps.

  Halfway down he heard a growl, louder, he thought, than usual.

  Passing through the open steel door, he nodded to the male nurse, Steven King, as he looked over at them. “They’re restless tonight,” he said.

  “Sure are,” said Steven. “Look at them, look how they’re moving around.”

  Dr. Perry watched the three of them as they moved back and forth in their enclosures, agitated, more like caged beasts than children.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, moving closer. “What has happened to upset you so?”

  “The mother arrived a while ago. They’ve been hysterical ever since,” said Steven.

  “That explains one of them,” said Dr. Perry, moving even closer, peering into the cage, “but three of them . . . I don’t know . . . Oh, well,” he said, turning to Steven, “you get some rest. I’ll baby-sit now.”

  “Not much chance of sleeping in this heat,” Steven said. “Maybe I’ll grab me a cold shower.”

  Steven left. The door clanged shut after him and Dr. Perry was left with the three creatures. He looked again at them, adjusting his precious glasses as he did so. Without those glasses he was almost blind.

  “Yes,” he said, watching them knowledgeably, appraisingly, picking out the Scott baby, “you know your mother’s here. You know she’s just upstairs. But what about you others?” he asked, turning to the other male and the female. “What are you up to? What are you trying to tell me? . . .”

  Outside the gate, where Eugene Scott had first seen the house, a small army of parked cars stood waiting.

  A number of local officials, policemen, and plainclothes detectives were standing around in small groups, talking quietly.

  Off to one side was Mallory. A set of binoculars up to his face, he had them trained on the grounds ahead.

  A tall, redheaded man in a brown suit stepped forward. He moved easily, like a former athlete who had grown too fond of beer.

  He was Detective Lieutenant Daniel Perkins. He had been the leader of the manhunt and what had turned out to be the execution of the first baby, the Davis baby, two years ago. The natural choice of the chief of police to lead this mission.

  Impatient and clearly annoyed, he moved over to Mallory, who was still looking through the binoculars. “Listen,” he said, “the time to move is now, before they realize we followed her.”

  “No, no,” said Mallory, “we can’t be absolutely sure the baby’s here yet. It may still be on its way from another location.”

  “Look, Mallory,” said Perkins, looking at those damned binoculars still glued to Mallory’s face—what the hell could he see this late at night?—“I’m going to have to overrule you.”

  “What?” said Mallory. That brought the binoculars down. Perkins smiled.

  “This is my jurisdiction here. I’m going to . . .”

  Mallory interrupted. “Overrule me,” he ranted. “You can’t overrule me!”

  “Listen, Mallory, I don’t know what kind of clowns you’ve been dealing with. I heard what happened to you in Tucson, how you let that ‘thing’ get away.”

  “That was an accident,” said Mallory testily.

  “Yeah, you call it what you want,” said Perkins, just as testily, “but I’m responsible for the safety of this city, not you. We go tonight.”

  Jody had f
inally come out of the bathroom. She stood looking at her husband, lying on the small, narrow bed like a little boy, his face to the wall.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Never mind,” he answered softly, his voice muffled.

  “Trouble is, I don’t know what I’m sorry for,” she said casually, trying to lighten the situation.

  Nothing from Eugene; he just lay there.

  Jody shrugged. “Well,” she said, looking for her handbag, “now where is that . . . oh, there it is! At least I had the good sense to sneak a toothbrush for my travels.”

  She emptied the handbag, sending a clatter of this and that and everything else spilling out over the small wooden dressing table.

  “Now where is that darn thing?” she said peevishly, searching through keys, a wallet, Kleenex, boxes of eye shadow, tubes of lipstick.

  Behind one particular tube of lipstick was a small toothbrush, the fold-up kind, like those sold in machines at airports.

  “Oh, there it is,” said Jody. She picked it up and, about to head back toward the bathroom, noticed another tube of lipstick. She looked at it strangely, as if it didn’t belong there. She picked it up curiously.

  “I wonder whose this is?” she said aloud. Then she shrugged, put it down, not bothering to open it, and started back toward the bathroom again. “Must belong to Mother,” she said, answering herself.

  Eugene, still lying on his bed, heard Jody in the bathroom brushing her teeth. He rolled over. He saw his wife, part of her, that is, through the partially opened door. She was wearing the bathrobe, that was all, nothing else. It was quite short, revealing a good part of her breathtaking legs.

  Eugene sighed. He heard the winds flapping against the old wind-up-type shade and looked again at the window. Those winds, he could not get over those hot winds, blowing as they were, incessantly. He felt himself breaking into a cold sweat, a clamminess that only accentuated the feeling of nausea he had now that his wife had rejected him.

  He heard her; she was coming back into the room. He rolled over, facing the wall again.