Jeffery Deaver - Ice Cold

“Larkin discovered what Dad does years ago,” she says. “Which is, he’s a doctor and he works for the military. He creates tactical drugs. Helps create them. It’s extremely top secret, but Larkin figured it out anyway. Larkin’s kind of talented like that, and Dad’s very absentminded and careless sometimes. Dad’s fundamental belief—I read this in a top secret paper he wrote—is that drugs are a better way to win a war than bullets. He wants to have wars without any killing. Or hardly any. He says that ‘targeted malfunctioning of the human organism’ is the goal of his drugs. On a battlefield, that will probably have to be a gas. But there are pills too. This one, the one I just took, was developed to make prisoners confess. Larkin gave me my first one of these when I was six. I spent the next four hours confessing exactly what kind of horses I had dreamed of having, and every detail about my ranch in the mountains, where the horses and I would live. I confessed things I didn’t even know I knew. And then I confessed the name and gave a full description of every boy I had ever had a crush on, and every person who had ever scared me, which turned out to be really only one—him, Larkin.”

I look hard at Adlyn then, harder than I’d ever looked before. Yes, she’s a pretty, lightly freckled, suntanned redhead with green pools for eyes, wearing a bikini and a white lacy top and a bright green scarf around her neck. But she also seems… compelled? Driven? What I mean is, when I look into those really bitchen green eyes they are really, really eager. Like she can’t wait to get there, can’t wait for the next thing. So I wonder where she thinks she’s going. And what the next thing might be.

Adlyn shudders then, as if a cold blast of air has come through the room. She twists the green scarf tighter and holds it over her eyes. “Would you please tie it?” She turns her back and wriggles closer to me. You know what that causes. I manage to tie the scarf in a loose knot. The green ends fall across her back. In the strong light I can see the fine golden hairs dusting her suntanned shoulders showing through the lacy openings. Because she can’t see me I lower my right elbow to my zipper area and grind down hard.

“It’s hitting me strong now,” she whispers. “The 62-13. One day Larkin found drug samples Dad had hidden in the garage. Later we found out it was because Dad thought there was a Soviet spy in his research lab. This was back in Bethesda. Larkin started sampling the pills. There was X59-11, X61-14, and X62-13—what I just took. The first one put Larkin in a coma for eleven days and he woke up feeling happy and relaxed. The second one gave him seizures and he broke out in red measles-like triangles. The third one made Larkin confess to me his very… scary fantasies about, well… me, and other girls my age. In the garage Larkin also found some things Dad had written. Larkin slipped some 62-13 into Dad’s vitamins then demanded to know what Dad did, and where, and when, and for whom. Everything. Of course Dad told him without a fight, because the drug can’t be defeated. Larkin tape-recorded it and said he’d play it to the Washington Post unless Dad brought home plenty more samples—he wanted everything Dad had because Larkin enjoyed trying them out. He also demanded a fifty-dollar per week allowance and a new car, even though he was only fourteen. It was a Roadrunner.”

“Why did Larkin take all the drugs?”

“He craves sensation. He’s sensational.”

“You’re shivering, Adlyn.”

“It’s one side-effect of 62-13.”

“I’m kind of mind-blown by this stuff about Larkin.”

“Oh, that’s nothing. It started getting really scary. It… Mike… it still is really scary. Can you get me a blanket from my bedroom closet, the pink one with the unicorns on it?”

“Be right back.” And I am.

“They found her in the woods near Bethesda.”

“Who?”

“Tammy. Our neighbor. Ten. Strangled. Two months later Dad got transferred to the Edgewood Arsenal up on the Chesapeake Bay and guess what? It happened again. In the woods, our neighbor, Kathleen. I knew her. Then Dad got a big promotion that took us way out to Missoula, Montana, and guess what?”

“Another neighbor girl strangled and left in the woods.”

“Forest, actually. Our next door neighbor. That was when Dad finally put two and two together. So did the police. The detectives interviewed Larkin for hours. Several times. Of course he wouldn’t tell them anything because before the questioning he’d taken X62-15, which Dad designed to prevent captured Americans from confessing. It was intended as an antidote to X62-13. It raises your pain threshold to almost nothing and gives you a gigantic but completely logical imagination. You can make up convincing lies and follow them up with irrefutable details. Even a lie detector can’t tell. You get real calm. Larkin told me one night, in tears, after taking 62-13, that he had taken 58-37 before he killed the girls. That drug was supposed to be a waking-hours sedative but instead it causes dissociation and violent behavior, and Dad and his partners considered it a total failure. Larkin told me he cased the girls’ houses by daylight but always went out and took them on new moons, so he’d be harder to see at night. Afterward, he felt so bad about what he’d done, when he took 62-13, that is. So bad.

“Well, then the Pentagon generals came in and met with Dad and Larkin and the local police and the next thing you know we’re living in Albuquerque, where they’ve got another government pharmaceutical research facility. But not Larkin. He gets sent away to a prestigious private liberal arts school in the Midwest and only comes home on holidays and some weekends. Mom and Dad put bars on Larkin’s door and windows, and alarms on all the other doors and windows, for when he visited. So he couldn’t get out. Mom would be his jailer-nurse-cook. They never let him outside the house unless they were both with him. Never. But? He still gets another girl in New Mexico, from her own house around the corner, Christmas break. Left her in the desert. So we packed up and headed out to California. Everything was fine until the Fourth of July, when Ronnie Feurtag disappeared. And until tonight, because it’s a new moon and Larkin took the 58-37 about a hour before he left for your house.”

“Marie!”

“I genuinely like you, Mike. Can I say one thing before you go?”

“No!” I’m already to the door. I hesitate at the keypad on the wall, lights blipping red, red, red.

“Mike, I took a lot of those pills with Larkin. I helped him but only a little. That’s why Mom and Dad lock me in, too. I’m more prone to shoplifting, burglary, and self-destructive behavior. But I have residual goodness. I hate what those drugs did to us. They broke down our souls then built them back shapeless and black. Sometimes I can smell them. Our souls. I can’t wait to die.”

I throw open the door and the alarms shriek. Adlyn yells out that she’s sorry. She’s confessing her sorrow in very emotional detail, raising her voice higher and higher. But it only gets fainter as I run across the lawn toward Heritage Acres, faster than I’ve ever run before.

The chapter meeting is just breaking up. People stand out in the yard by the flagpole and the police motorcycles. Some of them are the cops who ride them. A station wagon sweeps away from the curb. Mom stands on the porch, saying goodnight and handing out the red-white-and-blue John Birch Society ballpoint pens that litter our entire house. No sign of Dad. “Where’s Marie?”

“What’s wrong, Mike?”

But I’m already past her and into the still-darkened living room where through the smoke I see Dad in close conversation with Mrs. Lamm, and Ken Crockett pounding out “Battle Hymn of the Republic” on the piano while Mrs. Crockett slow-dances alone, and my brother Max using the beam of projector light to cast shadow figures on the wall with his hands: rabbit head, flying bird, devil with horns. But no Marie and no Larkin Lamm. The sliding glass doors are open to the back patio and the curtains sway. I fly through the house, room-to-room. In the master bedroom Mrs. Frantini and Mr. Dale are kissing. Back in the living room I throw open the slider and spill onto the back patio by the snacks-and-drinks table, where a few last guests are smoking and loading up paper plates. I can see the whole backyard: no Marie. And the side yard: no Marie. But I see the lights on in the gun room and the door slightly ajar. Suddenly, Dr. Lamm bursts out, looking left and right, searching everywhere, fast as his eyes can focus—just as I am. He sees me and throws his arms wide and cocks his head like I’m supposed to know where Marie and his homicidal pervert of a son are.