The Rising(52)

By the time Rathman had reached San Francisco, the computer had found six more instances of the Volkswagen being recorded by security cameras. The last one came at that diner just off the PCH, where the waitress had directed him to the motel. Now that motel’s smelly, comic book–reading clerk now lay dead behind the counter. Police would think he’d slipped on the floor and broken his neck because that’s the way Rathman had made it look after the clerk had provided this address. His death was of no consequence at all, though hopefully the investigation wouldn’t make too much about the damage done to the back of his hand and the broken KNOCK WOOD statue Marsh had dumped in the trash before leaving.

There was no canary-yellow Beetle in the FedEx Office’s parking lot, but his target and the car’s owner could easily have stashed it out of sight somewhere nearby.

“All right,” he told the driver, as the big SUV started back down the street again, “pull into the lot and park in the far corner, facing the FedEx Office.”





52

CONFESSION

ALEX WAITED FOR SAM to join him before clicking on the first icon contained in the pictures file. The screen seemed to darken briefly before a grainy photograph took shape.

It was a baby picture, an infant wrapped in a blanket atop a taupe-colored couch. Alex recognized the couch from other pictures he’d seen of his parents’ first apartment after they came to America to pursue their dream.

This must have been his first baby picture, snapped as soon as An got him home to the apartment. The other icons offered more of the same, charting his early growth. Stereotypical shots, the kind every family stockpiles.

Only Alex had never seen them before. His parents had always told him all his baby pictures had been lost in the move from the apartment to the Millbrae home where he had grown up.

And just hours before had watched his parents die.

Alex felt himself choking up again, his insides tightening, his throat clogging. He felt Sam stroking his back, trying to comfort him, realized he was sobbing. Then cleared his throat, made himself refocus.

“This is why,” he said out loud.

“Why what?” Sam posed tentatively.

“No baby pictures, nothing of me until I was, like, four or five.” He turned from the screen to look at her, words forming with his thoughts. “Because they were evidence of what my mother had done.”

“What’d she do?”

“She saved my life. Rescued me from a fire,” he said, leaving things there.

“So what’s the problem?”

“Let’s find out,” Alex said, and clicked on his mother’s frozen image to pick up the story An Chin had left for him inside Meng Po.

*

There is little more I can tell you about Laboratory Z.

The media, of course, was filled with news of the strange explosion at the lab. As is customary, people talked of nothing but it for days and weeks and then it, like all else, became old news. There were all kinds of stories and rumors, investigative reports about it being some secret installation probing travel between dimensions, wormholes, teleportation, and all kinds of things nobody really believed were real. Stuff for crackpots and conspiracy theorists.

But maybe not so crazy, after all.

Meanwhile, your father and I waited in fear. Waited for someone to come and take you away. Waited for a story about a missing baby. Someone’s tragedy that had become our joy. But no such thing was ever reported and no knock ever fell on our door.

Your father had a friend—an old Chinese man—who was shady in a good way. He’d spent most of his life arranging adoptions for Chinese babies by American parents. He managed to get us all the legal papers for you. As far as the world knew, we had adopted you legally. All the paperwork was in order, down to the day and time of your birth and signature of a fake birth mother relinquishing all claims to custody.

The documents made me wonder about your real mother. Why she never came back for you, what she could have possibly been doing in Laboratory Z. I considered many explanations and rejected them all. None made any sense, but I didn’t care because I had you. That was all that mattered. Sometimes fate must be accepted and not questioned.

But the passage of time brought more questions. Initial reports indicated three bodies had been recovered from Laboratory Z. Then it was reported that all personnel who worked for the company had gotten out safely. A major discrepancy until the newspaper and television corrected their original story, saying no bodies had been found inside Laboratory Z at all.

Your father and I were frightened by this, but also elated, since not one of the reports mentioned anything about a baby. You were ours and nobody was coming to take you away.

Still we worried, every day and night we worried. We feared every knock on the door or ring of the doorbell. We were scared every time the phone rang or when a stranger cast us too long a stare. That happened a lot and we had to remind ourselves that we were a Chinese couple with an American baby. Of course people stared. We learned to just smile at them like nothing was wrong.

Because it wasn’t.

Until we felt safe enough to take you to a doctor a few weeks later. A kindly Chinese pediatrician on the verge of retirement who’d made his life here just as we had. Even though all the paperwork pertaining to your “adoption” was in order, he seemed suspicious almost from the first moment we brought you into his office.