Kiss Page 11

  Shauna had never experienced what she would call an “out of body” event, so she was uncertain how this latest vision would stand up to the real thing. In her mind’s eye she was both herself and not herself; clearly, someone else was looking down over the bridge. Bowden, if she was not deceived.

  Even if she believed it, she didn’t understand it—not a dream. Not really a vision. A hallucination would explain the spinning lobby, and why she had collapsed, and why she couldn’t address the clarity of detail. The whole experience was more like a sharp memory of heightened perceptions.

  Like a drug effect.

  Was she seeing images of reality, or only imaginations? Bowden denied most of what she’d seen in that vision of the accident site. Could he simply have forgotten? Or had her near drowning affected her mind’s ability to reason, to make connections, so that it jumped around at random, trying to create something, anything, to fill the gaps?

  Consider them private entertainment, Dr. Harding had said.

  Well, watching herself nearly die wasn’t Shauna’s first choice of diversions.

  She heard a knock at the door.

  “Yes?”

  Khai poked her head into the room. “I’m on my way out for the afternoon. Volunteer work. I thought you might want to borrow my laptop while I’m gone, if you still need one.”

  “You’ve got one?” She stood, considering what she would do if she could get online. She followed Khai through the living room to the third bedroom, which was as spotless as the rest of the house. Khai’s inexpensive, off-brand computer sat on a secretary desk in front of the window next to a cheap ink-jet printer.

  “You have Internet access?” Shauna asked, taking a seat.

  “A satellite card.” Khai pointed to a device protruding from a slot in the side. “It’s not fast, but it works. May I ask what you’re looking for?”

  “Newspaper accounts of my accident.” Shauna launched the browser.

  “Well, I will leave you to search.”

  Shauna went to the home page for the Austin American-Statesman. She’d start locally, move outward as she needed to.

  Shauna twisted her torso to look at Khai. “You still think Wayne’s of questionable character?”

  “Does my opinion matter?” The woman was being candid rather than snippy, but her eyes remained guarded. She stood with half her body behind the open door as if to protect herself. From what?

  “I wonder if you would help me do something, Khai. I need to find Rudy’s car, and the keys. He used to drive an old MG from the sixties.”

  “The white one? I’ve seen it in the garage.”

  “The keys used to hang inside the door. Maybe they’re still there?”

  “I can look.”

  “And would you get the remote out of his car so I can open the garage door from outside? He keeps it in the glove box.”

  “You are planning an outing?”

  “An outing for one,” Shauna said.

  Khai didn’t ask what she meant. After Khai left, Shauna clicked on the Statesman’s archives’ link and pulled up the articles that ran from the day before the accident to five weeks after. Five hits.

  All written by staff writer Scott Norris. She knew the name. Wayne had said something about him calling every day.

  McAllister Children Gravely Injured

  MDMA Suspected in McAllister Tragedy

  Will McAllister Withdraw from Presidential Race?

  This third piece was a sensational, rumor-filled speculation on how the stoic senator was handling the devastation. The magnitude of his crisis within the critical months before the general election had made him something of a mythological god, a noble father figure who would risk advancing his career for the sake of his suffering children.

  A politician could never have too much tragedy in his life, Shauna mused. It was bad taste for critics to take on a man who’d been dealt such a bad hand. Indeed, his popularity was on the rise.

  Then,

  McAllister Son Gains Partial Recovery

  She skipped this article entirely at first. She didn’t want to know the details of Rudy’s suffering. But when she couldn’t focus on another printed word, she went back and printed the piece to read later. She owed it to Rudy to own what she had done.

  Bond v. McAllister Lawsuit Settled

  Shauna paused at this one. There was a lawsuit? She read. Yes, the driver of the delivery truck she had hit, Rick Bond, had sued the McAllister empire for property damages, physical injury, and emotional distress in the amount of $3.5 million. Her father’s lawyers settled the case out of court for $1.25 million just last week. The attorneys would not comment on the negotiations.

  One and a quarter million. Pocket change for McAllister MediVista.

  She would need to expand her search to find articles about her own awakening, though she hadn’t been approached by a single journalist since her arraignment. And yet she was sure the paper would have all kinds of authoritative “sources” with information about her remarkable recovery.

  Who knew what Patrice and Landon had already told them?

  No point in searching for those now. As soon as Khai returned with the keys to Rudy’s MG, Shauna would drive downtown and pay a visit to Scott Norris.

  She typed an address for the Daily Texan, the university paper, and instead of hitting the go tab, she accidentally struck the URL history menu. Khai apparently spent a lot of time online. Without consciously deciding to, Shauna scanned the list.

  www.ijm.org

  www.hrw.org

  www.incadat.com

  No idea what those were. Then,

  www.humantrafficking.com

  Human trafficking. Shauna briefly wondered at Khai’s interest in such a gruesome subject, then returned to her search.

  Nothing more on Shauna in the Daily Texan. Rudy received quite a bit of attention, as he was a recent alum. She came across several pieces about candle-light vigils on his behalf and rallies to send him well-wishes and that kind of thing. The people who knew him seemed genuinely broken up about what had happened.

  Shauna had never invested much time in getting to know his friends, and she regretted it now.

  Very little appeared elsewhere about the details of the accident, though there were plenty of allusions to it in the innumerable articles covering her father’s campaign. She would need more time to sort through all those.

  She Googled Scott Norris and within minutes found a MySpace page that identified him as a staff writer for the Statesman. She located a picture. He bore no resemblance at all to the blond and smoky Smith. Scott was about ten years younger, barely out of high school it appeared, with the stocky build of a linebacker, auburn dreads, rectangular-framed glasses, and an obsession with politics.

  He even had a link for alums of Arizona State University, from which he’d graduated two years ago.

  Arizona.

  She opened another tab in the browser and searched for college football teams in Arizona. The Wildcats. The Sun Devils.

  That was it—the Sun Devils. The team she’d played for in her dream. The coach who called her Spade.

  She located the contact information for the student-athlete center and went back to her room for her cell phone.

  She dialed the number. This was a crazy idea, but at the very least it would settle her mind.

  Shauna was transferred three times in her search for someone with access to old team rosters. She was one transfer away from giving up the idea when a woman answered the phone, breathless but lively. She sounded as if she’d been born a grandmother, and Shauna visualized a petite seventy-something go-getter wearing a team sweatshirt, polyester slacks, white Keds, and dangling devil-and-pitchfork earrings. She probably gave the players in-your-face pep talks and swats on their rears too.

  She might have worked for the team for decades.

  Shauna could only hope.

  “I’m calling from the Austin American-Statesman,” she said, wishing she had a better—and tr
uer—excuse. “I’m doing some fact-checking for an article about a former player. Wayne Spade. He played for you”—she did a quick mental calculation—“in the midnineties. Can you confirm that he was on the team?”

  “Well, dear, I’ve been with these kids here for thirty-seven years, and I daresay I still remember the names of every player, and some of their wives and kids too! But Wayne Spade . . . Wayne Spade. That one taxes the gray matter. Except—wait, there was a Wayne Marshall who played here around that time. Let me see what I can drag out here for you.”

  The clattering of an ancient phone receiver suggested the woman was riffling through a file cabinet, a sound not unlike the clattering going on in Shauna’s mind.

  Marshall. If Wayne had ever gone by another name, that memory could certainly have been his.

  After half a minute of bustle, Shauna said, “I don’t mean to put you to too much—”

  “There he is. Yes. Nineteen ninety-four. A couple Waynes before and after by a few years, but not in that time frame, dear.”

  “Do you have any rosters or team photos I could—”

  “That Wayne Marshall, now he had a sad story to tell, you know. Played one season as a junior, went down late in the season with a terrible injury, terrible.”

  “What kind of injury?”

  “Hang on here a second, dear,” the woman said, and Shauna heard her set the handset on the desk. A loud clap, as of books dropped on a nearby surface, caused Shauna to hold the phone away from her ear. She heard a riffling of pages for nearly a full minute, and then the phone rattled back into the woman’s hands.

  “You’d think they’d have all these old articles archived on the computer by now. It sure would make my life easier. But they’ve only gone back so far as 1998. I’ll be dead and gone by the time they’re all caught up.”

  Shauna tried to be patient and polite. “I hope not.”

  “There he is. Handsome young man. Let’s see. ‘Wide receiver Wayne “the Spade” Marshall’—now see there! I’d forgotten they called him that, the Ace of Spades. Coach used to say, ‘He’s a card you want in your deck.’ Isn’t that funny what gets lost over the years? Well, let’s see. ‘Marshall suffered paralysis of the legs due to a spinal cord concussion after a hit in last night’s game against USC.’”

  Shauna sank onto the floor, shaking, remembering the electric shock that had catapulted her out of that nightmare. Were Wayne Spade and Wayne Marshall the same person?

  “‘Physicians suspect the paralysis is temporary but don’t expect Marshall to return this season.’ That’s right. It was temporary, if memory serves, but he never did play for the Devils again. In fact, I think he left the university before he graduated. What’s that article you said you’re working on? You know what happened to him? Honey? You still there?”

  “I’m sorry, no, I don’t. Thank you so much for your help.” Shauna closed her phone before the sweet woman could ask another question.

  She leaned back against the chair and closed her eyes. How to explain this? She had experienced some connection with Wayne, some—what? Dependence? Intimacy? Maybe she’d been foolish to kiss him, put herself at emotional risk. Maybe her own vulnerability opened her mind up to suggestion or abnormal fantasy. Something that allowed her to tap or re-create some experience from his past.

  But how?

  With Bowden, she had merely held his hand. And flirted. A little.

  This was so far beyond her.

  Maybe it was all a fluke, a meaningless coincidence.

  Her eyes opened. She needed to know whether Wayne Marshall had ever served in the Marines, and if Wayne Spade was the same man. How could he have enlisted, with a back injury like that in his physical history? Maybe the temporary nature of it didn’t matter.

  She heard Khai’s step on the porch and the rattling of keys.

  First, though, Scott Norris.

  13

  Scott Norris, more giddy than she imagined a dreadlocked man would ever willingly be, returned Shauna’s phone call within the hour and agreed to meet her. Four o’clock, at the newspaper office on South Congress Avenue.

  For the next several minutes Shauna searched local white and yellow pages online for a Jeremy Ayers, the man she and Wayne had crossed paths with at the security gate, but came up empty even after trying several variations of the spelling. She finally gave up. Maybe the man was nothing more than Wayne had claimed: someone looking for a cheap ticket into public view.

  Wayne finished his call at three thirty and came out of his room. “Sorry about that. Some crisis at the office.”

  “Don’t worry about it. Say,” Shauna said, not sure he’d buy what she was about to sell, “I scheduled a spa appointment at four.” She glanced at her watch.

  “I can take you.”

  “I’ll take Rudy’s car. It’ll be good for me.”

  The lines in Wayne’s forehead deepened.

  “You sure you’re ready to drive again?”

  “I’ll be fine,” she insisted. “Let’s meet for dinner?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  “How about the Iguana Grill. It’s up on Lake Travis.”

  “I’ll find it.”

  He seemed appropriately reluctant and yet agreed more readily than Shauna expected. For a man who’d recently promised to shadow her more closely, he’d left her alone most of the day.

  He leaned in and dropped a kiss on her forehead. She stiffened and felt her defenses rise, exposed as she was to the transfer of foreign experiences, however it worked. She focused on the tiniest minutia that did not involve Wayne—the breeze from the open window lifting the fine hairs on her forearm. If she focused hard enough, perhaps she could shield herself from whatever made her susceptible to the visions.

  Nothing happened.

  Nevertheless, Shauna’s anxiety about Wayne Spade Marshall hovered at the front of her mind.

  But half an hour later, sitting in a chair near the Statesman’s reception desk, she reconsidered whether she should ask Scott Norris anything at all. Perhaps she should instead see if she could re-create the circumstances that led to her visions in the first place. She needed to understand how this worked.

  Did she have to turn on the charm? Get a man to open up?

  Shauna laughed aloud and the receptionist looked up from her computer monitor. A door in the side of the room opened and the man with a mane of auburn dreadlocks, the man from MySpace, rushed in, hand extended. With his other hand, he pushed his glasses back to meet his eyes.

  “Ms. McAllister, sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. She stood and returned his firm shake, half expecting—half hoping for?—another jolting fall into a vivid scene. If she could avoid a dead faint.

  His palms were warm and dry. He pumped her arm vigorously.

  No connection.

  She would have to try a different approach.

  “I am so, so happy to meet you,” she gushed. “I’m a huge fan. I read every-thing you write. Everything I can find, that is.”

  He blinked.

  “Uh, thank you.” He seemed to recover from her forward personality. “You can’t believe how amazing it is to me that you contacted us. I mean, do you have any idea what kind of a fortress your father has up there in West Lake? It’s like they’ve got the phone lines rigged to electrocute anyone who calls. I haven’t been able to find out much about you or your brother since you made your break from Hill Country. I’m really sorry about him, by the way.”

  He led her back through the door and down a narrow hall, walking fast and tilted, as if he were rushing headlong into a strong wind.

  “So I take it our little family tragedy has become your beat?” she said with as much excitement as possible, taking long strides to keep up.

  “Not exactly. But your dad sorta consumes the headlines. I don’t have a lot of competition when it comes to the family stuff.”

  “Really? That might give you and me all kinds of unexpected opportunities.”

  He squ
inted enough to tell Shauna he was not at all following her implications, then plowed on. The hallway opened up on one side to a newsroom that was noticeably quieter than she would have imagined. Keyboards clicked and low voices murmured. A few heads turned to look at her.

  Scott reached a conference room on the left and opened the door.

  “Even the whole Ecstasy fiasco.” He switched on the lights. “You’d be surprised how few people are interested in that.”

  “Lucky for me.” Shauna selected a chair that faced the window and gave her a view of the newsroom.

  “They say, ‘Shouldn’t be surprised that kids of a pharmaceutical giant have free access to the stuff.’ It’s run-of-the-mill. State of the union. Pretty sorry state if you ask me.”

  “I guess it would be, if you think your presidential candidates are giving the stuff to their own kids.”

  “Are they?”

  Shauna tilted her neck and shook her head like a scolding mother. Or a teasing mistress. She couldn’t believe she was doing this. “Now, I’m pretty sure you’re smarter than that, Scott.”

  “Unfortunately, intelligence is not contagious.”

  Unfortunately, neither was her sweet-talk. He went to the corner of the room and lifted a half-full coffeepot off a warm burner. Shauna wondered how long it had been sitting there. He poured two cups black and carried them to the table.

  “So where’d it come from?” he said.

  “What?”

  “The Ecstasy.”

  “I’ve been wondering the same thing.” She wrapped her hands around the cup. “And if you’re the journalist I think you are, maybe you could help me find out.”

  His eyebrows peaked like box flaps over his thin rectangular lenses, and he pursed his lips. “Ooh. Classic garden-variety denial.” He took a big gulp of coffee. “But I won’t harp on you. You didn’t come here to be abused.”

  This was turning out to be a horrible waste of time. She would have to be more direct.

  Did she dare?

  “Who would willingly take abuse? I came here to ask a favor of you.”