Virtue Falls

Yvonne did have dark circles under her eyes, her brown hair hung limply in a ponytail down her back, and when she was not animated, her jaw sagged as if keeping it tightly closed was too much effort. But no matter what, she looked kind, and remembering how thoroughly she had championed Charles Banner, Elizabeth couldn’t help but feel a warmth for the woman, reluctant perhaps, but real nonetheless.

  Elizabeth gazed around at the long, dim corridors that seemed to stretch forever, and said, “I suppose, in this lonely atmosphere where minds silently leave the body early, reality and fantasy are blended, and death picks off the living one by one … I suppose ghosts can slip unseen along the halls.” She stopped, startled to hear herself say such things.

  Yvonne gazed at her almost fondly. “I did not believe what they say in town, that you’re all science and smarts without a lick of emotion. I guess I was right.”

  “I suppose I, um, have the occasional lick.” Although Elizabeth didn’t want to, she glanced toward her father’s room. She didn’t want to have any emotion at all. Pleasant emotion—hope and love—always backfired and became pain. Always. “Do you know, is your family and your home okay?”

  “My husband’s a trucker, and on the road, so he’s fine. The kids are grown and out of state. We’ve been meaning to take out the cedar that sits close to the house because it leans, and it’s probably landed on the roof. But it will be what it will be.” Yet Yvonne sighed and glanced toward the windows as if to bely her untroubled attitude. Then she looked at Elizabeth, and her eyes sharpened. “What about you?”

  “My apartment’s gone. I don’t know where I’ll stay after tonight. A shelter, I suppose.”

  “Stay at the resort.”

  “The resort? Virtue Falls Resort?” Elizabeth blinked. “I can’t do that.”

  “Didn’t I hear you were married to old Mrs. Smith’s foster son?” At the shock on Elizabeth’s face, Yvonne laughed. “Your father told me.”

  “How did he know?”

  “Prisoners do have access to the Internet, and you are his daughter. He kept up with you. Knew all about how you graduated from high school a year early, and your studies and degrees. He knew when you took this job, and he was tickled about it.” Yvonne made it sound absolutely reasonable.

  Elizabeth found it unnerving. She had an Internet stalker, and it was her father.

  Yvonne apparently misunderstood Elizabeth’s discomfort, for she hastened to reassure her. “I don’t think he told anyone else who you had married, and I haven’t said a word.”

  “We’re divorced, and I … I have not been to see Mrs. Smith. I only met her the time she came down to visit, and it seems presumptuous of me to assume a family connection when I’m the one who severed it.” Elizabeth could not have been more uncomfortable.

  Yvonne waved away her objection. “I see Mrs. Smith at church, and she’s an old-time Catholic. If you were once married to Garik, then in the eyes of God, you’re still married to Garik. So you’re family, and she’ll take you in.”

  Elizabeth would have argued, but Sheila arrived from some far corner of some far wing, walking silently in rubber-soled work shoes, wearing yet another flowered smock and those green scrub pants.

  The two women held a whispered consultation, then with a wave, Yvonne disappeared back the way Sheila had come.

  Sheila thoroughly cleaned the cut on Elizabeth’s hand, and didn’t mock Elizabeth when the blood welled and Elizabeth found herself reclining on the linoleum, head spinning. Sheila used a butterfly bandage to close it, and gave her a shot that she sternly told Elizabeth was nothing, while showing her a bottle that identified the injection as an antibiotic.

  “I understand,” Elizabeth said. “As a nurse, you’re not allowed to prescribe such medication without a physician’s order, but you fear the infection from the cut will make me ill unless you take action now.”

  Sheila stared at her, shook her head, then leaned over and pressed her hand against Elizabeth’s shoulder. “I never gave you a shot.”

  “You never gave me a shot,” Elizabeth repeated obediently. “Thank you.”

  “Stay on the floor. I’ll send Yvonne back for you.” Sheila went down the hallway, as quiet as one of the ghosts Yvonne said haunted the Honor Mountain Memory Care Facility.

  Spooky thought. Spooky place. Didn’t matter. The hours of stress caught up with Elizabeth, and her eyes drooped and closed.

  When something touched her arm, she woke with a gasp.

  “It’s just me,” Yvonne said soothingly.

  Elizabeth sat up, then stood up and swayed. “Earthquake?” she said.

  “No, it’s you. You’re wiped out.” Yvonne opened a supply closet and handed her a clean gown and robe. “Here. You can sleep in this.”

  Wide-eyed, Elizabeth looked at it, and wondered who had worn it last.

  “It’s new,” Yvonne said. “We get donations.”

  “Okay. Thank you.” Although it was irrational, Elizabeth was uncomfortable wearing a gown in which one of the patients had died.

  “The staff bathroom is there. The cot is there.” Yvonne pointed at the two doors behind the nurses’ station.

  “Do you mind if I charge my phone and camera? You’ve got power and I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to—”

  “Of course. Give me the cables and equipment and I’ll plug them in.”

  “Thank you, and thank you for, um, taking care of…” Elizabeth jerked her head toward Charles.

  “Your father?”

  “Yes. Thank you for taking care of my father.”

  “That’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  Elizabeth stared, not sure if Yvonne was joking or not.

  “Oh, honey. You poor thing.” Yvonne embraced her as if she couldn’t stand not to. “Taking care of your father is what I’m here for.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Several hours later, Elizabeth came out of a sound sleep and into a state of frozen terror.

  Without even opening her eyes, she knew someone stood over the top of her.

  Her father. Holding the blood-drenched scissors.

  She couldn’t look. She didn’t dare. Didn’t not dare.

  She’d had this nightmare before, and it was never true.

  So she forced her eyes open.

  And there he was. He really was, her father, leaning over her, the night-light at the nurses’ station glowing around him, leaving his face in darkness.

  Elizabeth tried to scream. But as in every other nightmare she’d ever had, her throat was too tight. Although she opened her mouth and strained, no sound came out. She was mute in the face of death.

  “Shh.” Charles put his finger to his lips and drew back. “It’s coming.”

  “What?” she whispered. She didn’t want to startle him into action.

  “The aftershock.” As he spoke, the earth began to tremble, just slightly, enough to rock the cot.

  “Yeah.” Elizabeth glanced past him toward the nurses’ station.

  The shaking increased.

  Yvonne was sitting in the desk chair, her arms crossed over her chest, her chin resting on her chest.

  No one could sleep through this. She was dead.

  No. There was no blood. And she was snoring.

  An exhausted nurse can sleep through an aftershock. Yvonne was sleeping through an aftershock.

  The earth’s trembling faded.

  Yvonne’s head rolled as she rode the fading trembler. The trembler Charles had known about before it arrived.

  Coincidence. It had to be coincidence.

  “About a four-point-five, I think,” he said. “Although that’s difficult to judge without a seismograph.”

  “How did you know there would be one?”

  “Misty told me.”

  Elizabeth eyed him. Eyed the door. Tried to figure out if she could make it past him before he caught her.

  Charles collapsed onto the floor and crossed his legs. He pushed his black-rimmed glasses up on his nose, and v
iewed her with the bright-eyed excitement of an old gray squirrel. “That earthquake yesterday evening was the one we’ve been waiting for. The big one.”

  Elizabeth deliberately calmed herself. Hysteria wasn’t going to help. Screaming would only upset the patients. And Yvonne needed her sleep.

  Misty told him. Okay. Yvonne had said he was suffering from hallucinations. There was no reason to freak because he … he said Elizabeth’s long-dead mother was talking to him.

  No, the reason to freak was because Misty correctly predicted earthquakes.

  Slowly, making no sudden moves, Elizabeth lifted herself on her elbow and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Do you, um, see Mama often?”

  Charles tilted his head and stared at Elizabeth as if he was trying to place her. Then his smile blossomed. “Of course. You’re my daughter. You’re all grown up now.”

  “Yes.”

  “I should have known. You’re beautiful. You look like Misty when she was your age.”

  Thoughtlessly, Elizabeth said, “She didn’t live to be as old as I am now.”

  His eyes, magnified by his glasses, grew wide. “I don’t understand.”

  Did he not remember? Or was he lying? After all, the man who had murdered her mother would think nothing of lying about it. He had always denied his guilt.

  Elizabeth had a weapon. A knife. In her backpack. A long, sturdy pocket knife she used to cut rope, twigs, dig in the dirt if she had to. And she knew how to use it to defend herself. Garik had taught her that. Garik had insisted on teaching her that.

  Charles seemed oblivious to Elizabeth’s alarm. He placed his elbow on his knee, cupped his chin in his hand, and looked disarmingly like a skinny, elderly elf. “I met Misty when she was twenty,” he said. “Did you know that?”

  Elizabeth shook her head. When and where her parents had met and why they had married was a mystery to her. She couldn’t ask her aunt Sandy. Aunt Sandy always acted stricken and upset when Elizabeth talked about her mother, as if Elizabeth didn’t understand her sorrow … no, as if Elizabeth had no reason for sorrow. As if Misty’s death had had no effect on Elizabeth’s life.

  Aunt Sandy guarded her memories like a hostile pit bull over a meaty bone. She did not share.

  Now someone was offering Elizabeth the memories; a man who inspired such mixed feelings that she now, with the greatest of caution, opened her backpack and searched with her hand for the hilt of her knife. “How did you meet my mother?” She kept her voice polite, interested, enthusiastic.

  “I was a guest professor at Berkeley for a year.”

  She brushed her hand over the fake leather of her photo album. If forced, she could use that as a shield if he went for her throat. “Did you like to teach?”

  “Not at all! But my funding had run out on the project I had developed in Mexico, and the new project in Washington wasn’t yet funded, so I took the job.” Charles chuckled a little. “My poor students. I know my subject inside and out, but teaching it…” He shuddered. “I tend to get carried away. I’m easily distracted by the cool stuff that the earth does, and I’m not so good at hammering at the basics, which they were supposed to learn.”

  She found the pocket knife and grad-u-ally pulled it out of the backpack. Surreptitiously, she opened one of the blades, then slipped it under the covers with her. “So you met Mama at Berkeley?”

  “I did. Remember, Misty?” He looked off to the side, seeing someone who sat beside him … and wasn’t there. “Remember? I was thirty-seven, and you were twenty, and you took the class because you needed a science credit. Remember?”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Charles stood at the classroom podium and shouted at the departing students, “Before next week, read chapters five and six in your textbook!”

  None of the 237 students even waved a hand in acknowledgment.

  “There’ll … there’ll be a test!” he yelled.

  A few groans. Proof that he hadn’t been shouting into a vacuum.

  But why had he said that? Now he would have to make up a test. He sighed, went to the desk, and sat in the chair. Which was broken, and tilted off-balance. Just in time, he righted himself.

  The nontenured instructors always got the crummy equipment.

  “Professor?” A female voice spoke from the podium. “Professor Banner?”

  “Yes?” He looked up—and saw her.

  The girl who sat in the middle of the third row.

  Even in California, the land of the groomed and gorgeous, she was outstanding. White-blond hair as fine as spun sugar, eyes as deep and blue as lapis, fair, translucent skin tinted by the faintest blush and with the texture of polished quartz. And she had a very nice body, not like the usual skinny California girls. More like a World War II pinup girl, all curvy and—

  —and he was too old to be ogling her like this, especially when she was biting her lip and looking nervous. “May I help you?” he asked.

  “I’m Misty Winston. I’m one of your students. I hope you can help me. I, um, need a science credit and this isn’t what I expected when I signed up for the course.”

  “You’d like to drop it.” Figured. Anyone that beautiful had to be skating along on her looks.

  “No.”

  Next logical assumption. “You want me to dumb it down.”

  “No! I like it. I like the way you explain things, how you obviously love your work. I just, um, don’t have the scientific background and I was wondering”—she stopped biting her lip and smiled at him—“would you consider some after-hours tutoring?”

  He was so dazzled that for a full minute he forgot to answer.

  She waited patiently, still smiling into his eyes.

  Finally he woke up from his lust-inspired daze. “I could … I could give you a list of video tapes that explain the basics of geology. They’re in the library, and they have video players if you don’t have one. To check out, I mean.”

  “I’ve got a video player. I’m a theater major—”

  “An actress?”

  “Yes, and being an actress, it’s imperative that I be able to see what I look like on camera.”

  “Oh.” He wondered if he could get one of her video tapes to watch at night when he was alone.

  No, damn it. No! She was a student. His student. And he was … well, he was a geologist. A boring old scientist, emphasis on old.

  He said, “Those tapes I’m recommending would give you a good start. On understanding geology, I mean.”

  “Then I can come to you and ask questions?”

  He couldn’t stop staring at her pink, full lips as they shaped the words. “Yes. Of course. If they don’t answer all your needs.”

  Why had he said it like that? He was going to get investigated for sexual harassment. Or she was going to slap his face.

  He didn’t dare look at her, so he talked faster. “Your questions. If the tapes don’t answer all of your questions.” He dug in his notebook for his list of recommended videos. “Let’s go make a copy of the list.”

  She followed him to the door.

  He stood aside to let her pass, and did not stare at her butt nicely encased in leggings and a miniskirt.

  She waited for him. She asked, “Which way?,” and tucked her hand into his arm.

  He had never been so terrified in his life. Terrified, and thrilled, and … oh, God, he was horny. He was at least fifteen years older than her. That made him a dirty old man. A disgusting, dirty old man who needed to get this one simple task completed—making a copy of the list—so she would be on her way. All he had to do was walk. “I made this up in case someone like you wanted further instruction. In geology.” He had been walking since he was one. He could do it. One … step … at … a … time.

  “That was very farsighted of you.” She gurgled with laughter. “Or is that nearsighted? I never can remember.”

  He risked a glance at her.

  She was smiling at him again. Smiling with that frank and open delight, which should have made h
im suspicious and instead made him want to melt into Silly Putty.

  He was very proud of himself. He returned her smile in what he thought was an appropriately avuncular style. He led her into the copy room. Used the Xerox machine, which jammed only once. And he firmly sent her on her way.

  When she was gone, safely out the door, he sagged against the wall and tried to regain his composure, and make himself decent so he didn’t get arrested for horny, disgusting dirty-old-manism while walking down the corridor.

  “Professor?” Misty’s soft voice spoke right behind him.

  He turned so fast he slammed his knee into the copier. It hurt like a son-of-a-bitch, and thank God, because it provided him with a reason to lean down and rub the bruise, and conceal his inappropriate arousal. “Yes?”

  “I heard that the San Andreas Fault ran under the Berkeley campus and there’s a high probability of a big earthquake here soon.”

  “No. No. It’s the Hayward Fault that runs under the Berkeley campus. The San Andreas Fault is to the east.” He managed to straighten up. “But yes, the probability is about thirty percent within the next thirty years that the Hayward Fault will rupture in a six-point-seven or greater quake. Why?”

  “I find all of this geology so fascinating. It’s not like most science, where it’s protons whizzing past me that I’ll never see, or DNA I can’t do anything about. It could happen, right now, to all of us!”

  He found himself smiling at her enthusiasm. “Yes, that’s why it’s always appealed to me.”

  She took his arm again.

  Why did she keep taking his arm?

  “I was wondering if you’d like to go for some coffee? There’s so much I don’t know … about geology … and you’re so knowledgeable.” She started walking toward the door.

  He followed. In fact, it never occurred to him to resist.

  * * *

  Elizabeth wanted to laugh. Her father seemed so amazed. “She seduced you?”

  Charles smiled with a kind of bewildered, nerdlike delight. “Yes! I never understood what she saw in me. I mean, I lifted a lot of rocks, so I was wiry. But I’m not tall, and I’m not handsome. Never was. And my hair was already thinning. I wasn’t a virgin or anything, I don’t want you to think that.”