It Lives Again (12 page)

They headed for the theater ticket window. Her mother insisted on paying.

“Mother, please.”

“No,” said Mrs. Jenkins. “My treat.”

“All right,” said Jody. She smiled to herself. She actually felt a little lightheaded, so excited at what she was about to do.

Watching as her mother bought the tickets, she felt for the roll of bills she had hidden in her handbag.

Let her pay. I’ll probably need all the money I can get, she thought.

Crossing the lobby, Mrs. Jenkins stopped to ask Jody, “Do you want some candy?”

“No, Mom.”

“I think I’ll get a little something.”

Jody smiled again, remembering as a child sharing candy with her mother at the movies.

“Ready,” said Mrs. Jenkins, the package of Crystal Mint Life Savers already open, the first one, round and clear, with the famous hole, disappearing into her mother’s pursed mouth.

Mrs. Jenkins sat enthralled, watching the screen. It was the sequence featuring Fred Astaire, Jack Buchanan, and Nanette Fabray singing a number called “Triplets.”

Jody was watching a small, lighted clock just to the left of the screen, with the name “Bogle Brothers Jewelers of Tucson” engraved around the edges. Ten minutes after eight, it read. Jody wasn’t listening to the music coming from the screen. She heard only the voice she had heard on the phone earlier today, over and over again.

“At eight-fifteen, slip out the fire exit on the south side; at eight-fifteen, slip out . . .”

Suddenly panic seized Jody. Could the theater clock be wrong? Squinting in the darkness, she checked her own watch.

Eight-ten. Oh, thank heavens, she thought.

“What’s the matter?” whispered her mother.

“Nothing,” said Jody. She started to get up.

“Aren’t you feeling well?”

“I’m fine,” whispered Jody. “I’m just going to the ladies’ room.”

“I’ll come with you,” Mrs. Jenkins offered.

“I won’t forget to wash my hands,” Jody said, smiling. “Please, Mom, watch the movie.”

She started up the aisle. There were only a few other people in the theater, their faces lit by the light coming from the screen.

Two rows from the back, Jody saw him, sinking low in his seat as he saw her coming up the aisle. There he is, she thought, squashing a smile. It was Gentry. She didn’t know his name, but she knew who he was. She’d seen him almost constantly the last few days, wherever she went. Today in the supermarket, tonight when her mother was buying the candy, standing by the water fountain, making believe he was having a drink of water.

As Jody passed him, Gentry turned and watched her. Then he got up and moved to the end of the row. From this point he watched her enter the ladies’ room. Satisfied, he sat down in the end seat and turned back toward the screen.

Inside the ladies’-room door, Jody paused. Then, quietly, she reopened the bathroom door and looked out. There he was! She could see the back of Gentry’s head sitting in the end seat, watching the movie.

Quickly, noiselessly, she was out the door, heading for the fire exit to her left. There she eased up on the handle and the door sprang open with what seemed a deafening clang. She turned, holding the partially opened door. Gentry was still there, looking straight ahead, watching the movie.

“Thank God,” Jody sighed. She eased the door just enough to let herself out and closed it quietly behind her. Then she stepped carefully into the dark alleyway.

Suddenly a shriek! A terrible shriek! She looked up, terrified. It was a car! As a shiny black sedan pulled up directly beside her, the door was thrust open.

“Get in,” a voice instructed evenly.

Jody paused only an instant, momentarily losing her nerve.

“Come on,” the voice demanded urgently.

The fire door behind her burst open. Jody, terrified, jumped into the car.

Out of the door came Gentry, yelling, “Stop!”

The car, lights out, pulled out into the night. The frantic Gentry ran down the alley in pursuit, trying to get the plate number, the make of the car, anything.

Too late! The car was gone; turning left at the corner, it disappeared into the night.

Gentry ran back toward the theater. At the exit door he ran headlong into a young usher who had come over to see who had left the fire-exit door open.

“Where’s a phone?” shouted Gentry.

“Hey,” said the usher, “you can’t come in here.”

“Outta the way, kid,” said Gentry, pushing the youth aside. “Where’s the phone?”

“Over there,” said the usher, moving aside and pointing to the pay phone on the far wall. This guy means business, he said to himself.

Minutes later, Mrs. Jenkins appeared in the lobby. Calmly she looked around, found what she was looking for, and started across the carpeted floor.

Gentry was on the phone, frantically explaining to his boss when he felt a soft tap on his shoulder. He turned, startled.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m Mrs. Jenkins, Jody Scott’s mother.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he answered, “I know.”

“Who are you talking to?” came Mallory’s irate voice from the receiver.

“Mrs. Scott’s mother,” Gentry said into the phone.

“Put her on,” roared the voice from the receiver.

Mrs. Jenkins, smiling, took the phone offered to her by Gentry. “Yes,” she said, “Mr. Mallory?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said the voice, suddenly very polite. “Mrs. Jenkins?”

“Yes, it is,” she answered. “It’s all right, Mr. Mallory. I put it in her handbag before we went out tonight . . . There’s one thing about Jody, Mr. Mallory,” said Mrs. Jenkins with a smile, “she never could fool her mother.”

At the edge of town, the shiny black sedan pulled up to a pump at a busy Phillips 66 station. A long-haired young attendant approached the car on the driver’s side. “Fill it up?” he said.

“I got her. This is her,” said the driver of the shiny black sedan.

The attendant looked closely at Jody Scott, as if someone had showed him her picture and he was now making sure she was indeed the same Jody Scott.

Satisfied, he said to her simply, “Go into the office. Pretend you’re buying some cigarettes or something.” Then he moved to the back of the car and began filling it with gas.

Jody, confused, looked over at the driver of the car. He stared straight ahead, as if he hadn’t heard a word the gas-station attendant had said.

“Should I?” Jody asked this man.

“Yes,” said the driver abruptly, making it clear he’d be more than relieved to have Jody out of his car.

Jody got out, and carrying her large handbag, walked quickly toward the office.

A bell sounded as Jody entered the office. A man seated at an old wooden desk looked up from some paper work he’d been doing.

“Can I help you?” He smiled, seeing it was a pretty, young woman.

“Oh, I, er . . .” stammered Jody, not prepared for that question. She was sure someone would be here to tell her what to do instead of to ask her questions. “Oh,” she said, starting again, “I er, wanted to get some cigarettes.”

“A pretty little lady like you smoking cigarettes,” admonished the man in a friendly voice.

“Well, they’re not really for me,” Jody said, reaching into her handbag for some change.

Then, to her right, through a door in the repair area of the garage, Jody heard the roar of a well-turned engine.

Startled, she saw a sleek sports car in one of the service bays start up, the driver putting on the lights. Then the driver leaned across the front seat, calling out the passenger side, the side nearest Jody, “Mrs. Scott?”

“Yes,” said Jody.

“Get in, please,” he said.

Jody looked toward the man at the desk. His head down, he was doing his paper work as if he hadn’t heard a thing.

Jody got quickly into the car. As she did, the back door of the garage sprang mysteriously open; the car took off smoothly out the back door and into the night.

That particular night, on every single road and highway leaving Tucson, an unmarked police car sat waiting. Some of them were Fords, some of them Plymouths, some of them Chevys, but they all had one thing in common—each of them, without exception, had a large antenna on the roof, poised and waiting. Waiting to pick up a signal from the transmitter Mrs. Jenkins had put in her daughter’s large leather handbag.

In a 1974 Plymouth Fury parked on a small highway heading out of Tucson, a policeman heard something. He turned to his partner. “I think that’s it,” he said, listening carefully.

“Sure is,” said his partner, grabbing the speaker of the police radio.

“Car Twenty-two, this is Granger. Come in, please.”

“Go ahead, Twenty-two.”

“We got it,” said Granger. “West on Highway Thirty-two.” The signal was getting stronger.

A sports car, sleek and low to the ground, roared by, the signal even louder. “There it is,” cried the other policeman. “That’s it, the sports car!”

Mallory’s voice came over the police radio. “What is it, what’s going on out there?”

Granger started the car and handed the microphone to his partner.

The partner, over the noise of the car engine starting up, yelled into the speaker. “This is Car Twenty-two. We have a, looks like a Datsun Two-eight-oh Z that’s giving off the signal, heading west on Highway Thirty-two. Over and out.”

At police headquarters Mallory, at the police radio, was yelling into the speaker.

“Not over and out! You hear me, Car . . .” He stopped. Feverishly, he looked down at the woman who operated the police radio. “What car is that?” he asked.

“Car Twenty-two,” she answered snappishly, not happy that Mallory had the speaker instead of her.

“Car Twenty-two,” Mallory repeated, “not over and out. Come in, you hear me?”

“Yes, sir,” came the scratchy voice of Granger’s partner, the roar of the car engine making the transmission more garbled.

“Do not intercept. Do you hear? Do not intercept. Stay close enough to keep receiving the signal, but back far enough so that you are not detected, you understand?” Mallory said, very deliberately.

“Yes, sir,” said the voice, the transmission even more indistinct now.

Hours later, after frequent subsequent reports from the pursuing police car, Mallory stood at a huge map of the southwestern portion of the United States. A set of pins had been placed on the map to designate the route Jody had taken. Mallory, with a pointer and a big smile on his face, was going over the route with his staff.

“They changed motor vehicles here,” he said, pointing to a section in downtown Tucson, “and here,” pointing to a section just west of the California-Arizona border, near Blythe. “It seems clear where they’re headed. I’m catching a flight to Los Angeles this afternoon. I think,” he said, with an even bigger smile, “we can close up shop here in Tucson.”

“Yes, sir,” mumbled the assorted police personnel around him. All of them would be damned glad to be rid of him.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Night. The high fence, the giant eucalyptus trees, silhouetted against the dark sky. A sign that read, “KEEP OUT—NO TRESPASSING.”

In the background, a few lights burned in the distant turrets of the old Spanish mansion.

Suddenly a creak and the fence began to open. A car drove in and started up the driveway. Just before reaching the house, it turned off and headed down into a grove of trees, parking almost out of sight.

A figure got out, started up toward the house. The figure had been there before; it knew exactly where it was going.

The figure climbed a stairway past a small porch light. It was Frank Davis!

In the same woeful room Eugene had earlier, made even sadder at night by a dreary unshaded lamp, Eugene sat on his bed. Frank Davis sat across from him on a rickety chair.

Frank was saying: “Your boy seems to be getting along quite well with the other two. Dr. Perry tells me they have a unique affinity for one another.”

“I wonder what kind of affinity they’ll have for us,” Eugene said thoughtfully, “when they don’t need us any more.”

“Should we expect them to be any more merciful than we are?” asked Frank.

“I guess I’d better make myself very useful to my son. Indispensable, as a matter of fact,” Eugene said, getting to his feet with a small smile.

There was a sharp rapping at the door and Frank, closer, went to open it.

Dr. Forrest appeared, smiling. “Well, Eugene,” he said, “it seems you have a visitor.”

He stepped aside and Jody stood there. She ran to Eugene—ran into his arms. He kissed her softly on the mouth. She buried her head in his shoulder.

“Oh, Gene!” she cried.

“How did you get here?” Eugene asked. “How did—”

“Never mind,” she interrupted, “never mind, I’ll tell you all that later.”

Frank backed toward the door.

“I’ll see you both at breakfast,” he said.

Jody turned, anxiously looking past Frank at Dr. Forrest standing by the door.

“When do I get to . . .”

Dr. Forrest stopped her, anticipating her question. “In the morning,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to wake him up now, would you?”

“No,” she answered, feeling selfish. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

“You’ll get to hold him, feed him, even teach him, both of you,” said Frank. “You’ll see, Eugene, you’ll change your mind.”

And then Frank and Dr. Forrest were gone, leaving Jody and Eugene alone for the first time since the bizarre birth of their child in the mobile medical unit a week or so earlier.

Eugene went to her, wrapped her again in his arms, burying his face in her beautiful dark hair. Jody looked straight ahead at the closed door.

“What did he mean?” she said.

“Huh?” said Eugene, working his way around to her delicious mouth.

“About your changing your mind.”

“Oh, nothing,” said Eugene.

Jody stopped him. “No,” she said to her husband, who was getting ready to kiss her again. “How is he, really?”

“Big. He’s very strong,” said Eugene vaguely. “There are two others here, you know.”

“Yes,” said Jody. “They explained that to me on the way. I think that’s good. I mean, to know that he’s not really different, that there are others.”

“Sure,” said Eugene. Enough of this. He’d been through these philosophical discussions all week—whether it was better to have one, to have four, to have fifty. Who cared? His wife was there. He wanted his wife. “Come here,” he said.