False Memory

At this hour, especially on a cool January night, Skeet and the blushing man were most likely the only people visiting the beach. If Ahriman drove in immediately behind them, even this clueless pair would have to suspect a tail.

He would wait ten minutes. If they didn’t return in that time, he’d have to follow them into the parking lot.

A lonely stretch of beach might be a fine place to whack them.

70

By daylight, Santa Fe had been enchanting. On this snowy night, every street along which they drove seemed sinister.

Martie had a far stronger awareness of altitude than previously. The air was too insipid to nourish her. She hunched around a weakness in her chest, a shriveling sensation, as though her lungs were half collapsed and wouldn’t inflate in such thin atmosphere. A lightness in her body, an unpleasant buoyancy, gave her the queasy feeling that at these rarefied heights, gravity was diminished and her ties to the earth at risk.

All these sensations were subjective, and the truth was that she wanted out of Santa Fe neither because the air was really gruel-thin nor because she might slip the bonds of Earth. She wanted out because here she had discovered qualities within herself that she would have preferred never to recognize. The farther she traveled from Santa Fe, the more easily she might be able to make peace with these discoveries.

Besides, the risks of staying in the city even until they could catch the first flight out in the morning were too great. Perhaps Kevin and Zachary wouldn’t be missed for many hours yet. More likely, they were expected to report to someone at the institute when they had completed their assignment, which they ought to have done by now. Soon, people might be looking for them, for their car — and then for Martie and Dusty.

“Albuquerque,” Dusty suggested.

“How far?”

“About sixty miles.”

“Can we make it in this weather?”

At last a commanding wind had risen, lashing the snowfall with discipline until it had become a snowstorm. Rigorously marshaled ghost-white armies blitzed across the high plains.

“Might be less snow as we lose some altitude.”

“Albuquerque’s bigger than Santa Fe?”

“Six or seven times bigger. Easier to hide until morning.”

“They have an airport?” she asked.

“A big one.”

“Then let’s go.”

The wipers brushed snow off the windshield and gradually swept away Santa Fe, as well.

Even as Dr. Ahriman waited along the side of the Coast Highway, a sudden onshore wind blew through the tall shore grass and buffeted the El Camino harder than did the slipstreams of passing cars and trucks. A good wind would help to cover the crack of gunshots and would at least distort them so that getting an accurate directional fix on the source would be difficult for anyone who happened to hear the reports.

Yet the doctor had doubts about the beach, too. What were these two geeks doing there at this time of night, in this cool weather?

What if they were two of those kooks who tested their stamina by swimming in very cold water? Polar bears, they called themselves. And what if they were polar bears who liked to skinny-dip?

The prospect of encountering Skeet and his pal sans clothing was enough to alter the doctor’s relationship to the four cookies that he had eaten. One a walking skeleton, the other a Pillsbury Doughboy wanna-be.

He didn’t believe they were gay, though he couldn’t rule out the possibility, either. A little romantic assignation in a beach parking lot.

If he found them in their car, going at each other like two hairless monkeys, should he kill them as planned or give them a reprieve?

When the bodies were found, the police and media would assume that they had been killed because of their sexual orientation. That would be annoying. The doctor was not homophobic. He was not a bigot of any stripe. He chose his targets with a sense of fair play and a belief in equal opportunity.

Admittedly he had brought suffering to more women than men. He was, however, in the process of redressing that imbalance within the hour — and especially by the time he finished playing out the game in which these two killings were but one inning.

After ten minutes, when the pickup didn’t return, the doctor set aside his misgivings. In the interest of sport, he switched on the headlights and drove down to the parking lot.

The truck was indeed the only vehicle in sight.

Only moonlight brightened the lot, but Ahriman could see that no one was in the cab of the pickup.

If romance was in the picture, they might have adjourned to the camper shell. Then he remembered the dog. He grimaced with disgust. Surely not.