and Pauline scrambled for her medical bag.
Juan’s eyes widened and he screamed at the sky.
“Oh, God!” Fiona screamed. “Look at his eyes!”
His eyes liquefied, melted in their sockets, rivulets of blood oozing from his ears, his mouth as he spasmed. The air cracked with the sounds of breaking bones as Juan’s back curved into a humped spine as he died.
“Oh, no,” Fiona sobbed.
The others looked to Sutsoff and were stunned by what they saw.
She’d recorded the entire episode with her camcorder.
44
Santa Ana, California
Sparks sprayed from the orbital sander in the open garage of a decaying duplex on Third Street, near the old Civic Center Barrio.
Emma Lane stopped her rented Ford Escort out front.
She checked the address she’d extracted from Christine Eckhardt at the clinic. Polly Larenski lived here. Emma approached the man working in the cluttered garage. Music throbbed with the grinding whirr of the sander.
“Excuse me.”
The man’s T-shirt complemented the muscles stretching his tattoos. He didn’t hear her until she’d interrupted him a second time. The sanding stopped. He reached inside the car, killed the music, then let his eyes take a walk all over her.
“Excuse me, I’m looking for Polly Larenski.”
“The new neighbor?”
“Polly Larenski,” Emma repeated.
The toothpick in his mouth shifted. “Next door, baby.”
“Thank you.”
“She’s a little psycho. If she scares you, you come see me.”
As Emma went around to the door of the adjoining house, the hip-hop music resumed hammering the air. She rang the doorbell and knocked on the door. Peeling paint ravaged the exterior walls. The picture window was cracked.
No one responded, so she rang and knocked again.
Emma peered into the house. She could see down a hall to a kitchen, right through sliding glass doors to the back. She noticed a shadow moving on the rear deck and started for the back, thinking that whoever was there could not hear her at the door.
The music thumped as she went around the side and opened a gate. Flies swarmed the garbage overflowing from plastic bags and boxes leaning against the house. Emma noticed unopened envelopes that looked like bills addressed to P. Larenski in Los Angeles and remembered that Christine told her Polly had recently moved and that when Polly had called Christine asking about her severance check Polly demanded she not reveal her new address because she feared collection agencies were stalking her.
Polly’s address change might explain why police saw no link to the clinic in L.A. and the call coming from a public phone here in Santa Ana.
Was this her only hope for finding Tyler?
The hip-hop music thudded away like a distant drum of dread.
As Emma went around the corner to the back of the house, she froze.
A woman sat alone in a deck chair wearing a bathrobe and shawl over her shoulders. Her face was tilted skyward as if she were showering in sunlight.
Emma didn’t make a sound, yet without warning, the woman turned sharply and her wide-eyed attention shot toward Emma. Sudden breezes lifted the woman’s hair in medusan strands. Her eyes fixed on Emma, the woman stood and calmly went into the house, leaving the sliding glass door open. Breezes made the curtains sway, as if inviting Emma to follow her.
Was this the mystery woman who’d called her?
As Emma entered the house, she heard music playing inside—the old hymn, “Shall We Gather at the River?” The place reeked of cigarettes. It had an open kitchen–living room layout. The living room was littered with cardboard moving boxes erupting with clothes, pictures, boxes and files.
The small table in the eating area was buried under newspapers, more files and shoe boxes containing bills and invoices. An assortment of pill bottles stood next to several liquor bottles, empty glasses and overflowing ashtrays.
“I have no money, if that’s what you’re here for.”
Emma caught her breath.
She recognized that raw voice.
Your baby is not dead. Your baby is alive.
It belonged to the woman who’d called her in the middle of the night, the woman who was now standing at the kitchen sink and had popped two pills in her mouth. The woman snapped her head back, chasing the pills with whatever was in the glass she was holding.
“Are you Polly Larenski?”
“Unfortunately.” Hair covered Polly’s face as she dropped her head to stare down into the sink filled with un-washed dishes, cups, pots and so much sadness. “Who are you, and why are you standing in my house?”
“My name is Emma Lane. I’ve come from Big Cloud, Wyoming.”
Polly stared at her in glassy-eyed confusion.
“You’re not from a collection