'I've got your number now,' Hood said, and punched off.
He got out of the car and trotted up the steps to the porch. He smiled and approached Seliah and hoped she didn't just run up and bite him. Instead she smiled weakly, her face very pale and mostly hidden behind big Jackie O sunglasses.
'Woof,' she said.
'Seliah. Lemme take those.'
She let him take the book bags and they walked toward the car.
'I tried, Charlie.'
'I know you did.'
'He wouldn't come. I couldn't make him do it.'
'Let's get you fixed up, Seliah. We'll work on Sean next.'
'I will not betray him to you.'
'I'm not asking you to. How are you feeling?'
'I didn't think I could feel this bad.' She stopped. 'Holy crap. I gotta ride in the back of that?'
'Now you know how the bad guys feel.'
'That ought to be funny. The fact that I have to ride back there isn't funny at all.'
'Maybe it's best for both of us.' He opened a rear door for her but left it for her to close. Then he went around to the other side and slung in the canvas bags.
'I wouldn't try to seduce you in a… Never mind. Never mind. I'm sorry for all that. The virus causes it. Dr. Brennan said he's waiting for me. I like him. And drive fast, Charlie. Because when I left Ensenada I took some pills to keep me calm but you know something? I can feel them wearing off. I feel like Lucy Westenra, changing into a killer vampire slut one cell at a time. You ever read Dracula?'
'Never.'
'It's all told in letters and diaries. It hypnotizes you. None of the movies are as good. Francis Coppola got closest. When this first started happening I wondered if I was turning into a vampire. Then I wondered if all the vampire movies and TV and books were turning me into one. Then, well, it just turned out to be a drunk priest with a fucking bat. What did Sean and I do to deserve all this special treatment?'
Hood got in and turned to see Seliah through the screen. She looked like a captured mutineer. She reached out and grabbed the strap on the handleless door and Hood knew she knew she could not open it again.
'You and Sean didn't do anything to deserve it.'
'Now's the time if I'm going to run for it,' she said. 'Every time I run I get faster. I bet I can outrun you, Hood. I could give you the slip.'
'Close the door, Seliah. We've got places to go and people to see.'
She sighed and pulled the door closed.
Hood took I-5 North for UCI Medical Center in Orange. He adjusted the rearview so he could see her. She looked out the window at the tan hills of Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
'What they do is pump me full of knockout drugs,' she said. 'Out I go. It's called a therapeutic coma and they keep the ketamine coming so I stay down deep. Then they give me antiviral drugs and antibiotics and immune system boosters. They pump me full of food and fluids. My unconsciousness allows respiration instead of paralysis. They monitor my blood and saliva to see if the protocol is working. They knock out some people just for a few days, and some they've left KO'd for almost two months. If it looks like I'm going to survive the rabies, they wake me up. Or at least they try.'
She checked her watch, then turned her gaze to the bright silver Pacific. Hood tried to imagine what was going through her mind.
'Of course, if I wake up, I'll have some brain damage. They can't predict how much. Jeanna Giese had some, and she spent two months in the ICU. But she worked hard at physical therapy and learned to do most of what she could do before. She still has some difficulty enunciating words and her left foot is weak so she runs funny. She can't play sports anymore. But she can go to school and drive a car. A bright future, that girl…'
Hood watched Seliah as her voice trailed off. The sunlight stenciled her face through the security screen. She took off the black bandana and wiped her forehead and cheeks with it. She hugged herself and pressed up closer to the door to get away from the sun. For a long while she hung her head, her swaying platinum hair walling off her face from the light and the world. Hood's heart sank and burst with the clear presence of her peril.
'So, Itixa the maid found a live bat,' she said.
'In the trash in Father Joe's room.'
'She should have said something.'
'She told the owner and he told his son to stay away from the priest. But neither of them told you or Sean.'
'But you know, if she had told me personally that morning that she'd found a bat in Father Joe's room, I might not have connected it with the blood on Sean's toe. Down there you could wake up with a howler monkey in your room. Or a boa constrictor in your shower.'
'It was your description that made me connect the bat to Father Joe and Sean. Something small and heavy wrapped in something loose, like a golf ball wrapped in a washcloth.'
'I like the way you put it together, Charlie. You and Sean have minds like that. You're naturally suspicious of just about everything. Me? I was always a face-value kind of person. Whatever it said on the label, I believed. I loved that way of looking at things. If it said 'new and improved' I believed it truly was new and improved.'
Hood caught the past tense.
'So have you found Father Joe?' she asked.
'I'm working on him. Nobody I talked to in Costa Rica had any idea where he'd gone. Back home, I went online and found mentions of two Father Joe Leftwiches but only one is Irish Catholic. And neither of them were in Costa Rica in July. I've talked to the Irish Embassy, their West Coast consulate, the Catholic Church in Dublin, the Catholic Diocese in L.A. and the Vatican. They don't just give out information on priests like you think they would. Too many scandals. I've checked all the law enforcement databases just in case he's got a warrant or a record. Nada. I suspect he's a complete fraud, not a priest at all. Don't you?'
She turned her gaze to him. 'He looked realistic in the getup, Charlie, in that little black shirt with the round white collar. But there I go again, believing the surface of things. He never mentioned what his plans were.'
Hood looked back at her reflection in the mirror. 'Before I left the Volcano View I got one last look at the registration book. I wrote down the names and addresses of ten of the guests who were there when you were. I've written letters to two and e-mails to eight of them, asking if they remember him, and if he said anything about where he was going. I asked them to e-mail any picture that might have him in it. When I was there, everybody had at least two cameras.'
'I took a picture of him. Joe said, 'No, don't do that, I don't need my fat little face on film,' but I shot it anyway. He really didn't seem to mind very much.'
'I'd like to see it, Sel.'
'When we got home it wasn't on the camera.'
'Did you ever see it?'
'Oh, yeah, I know it was there. It was the night we partied. I took Sean's camera and shot them with their arms around each other and their glasses raised. Father Joe didn't quite come to Sean's shoulders. I clearly remember looking at the image to see if I should take another but it was a good enough shot. So I gave the camera back to Sean and he put it in the case on his belt. I shot more pictures the next day. No more of Leftwich. Then we came home. And when I was picking out ones to put on disc, I noticed that the Joe picture was gone. I suppose I could have deleted it by accident.'
Hood pictured Father Joe's room at the Volcano View, the screens for windows, the cool tile floor, the bed. And he pictured his own digital camera and the three time-consuming steps it took to delete a picture. 'Or, Father Joe could have deleted that picture while Sean was asleep.'
'Yes, easily. What's the charge against him if he actually gave us rabies and we die from it?'
'Neither of you is going to die from it.'
'Now you sound like Father Joe, telling us how special we are and how we're headed for great things. How come everyone seems to know my future except for me?'
'Murder one,' said Hood.
