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Lassie, Come Home

Rebecca Crane did not own a private jet, nor did she want to own one, but she knew ninety-six people who did own one. Many were generous enough to lend the use of their aircraft to a famous actor or other person whom they might one day be able to use in a ruthless fashion to secure a lucrative business deal.

At any one time, fifty of those individuals had taken their aircraft to a far-away exotic location to attend a conference with the purpose of developing policies and influencing legislation that would prevent the common people from depleting the world’s precious resources. Of the remaining forty-six, some would be away on their third vacation of the year in Italy or Fiji. Others would be using their jets to get to and from more open-minded jurisdictions where certain practices illegal in the US weren’t merely tolerated but were encouraged and even formally recognized with fancy embossed commendations or engraved plaques presented by whatever tenderhearted king or wise cult leader or benevolent dictator maintained an iron grip on that nation.

Although these jet owners were engaged in far more demanding and important activities than most Earthlings, eight or ten of their magnificent flying machines stood unused at any one time. If you were a member of the right social strata or were at least “in the know,” there was a secret app that would tell you the location and status of aircraft belonging to any person whose name you queried.

After receiving the bad news about Ernie Hernishen from Bobby the Sham, Rebecca needed forty-one minutes to learn that one of two jets owned by a tech entrepreneur and budding film financier of her acquaintance, Holden von Smack, was hangared at a private facility associated with Los Angeles International. One vessel, though fully serviced, wasn’t scheduled to be flown for a week. Holden von Smack took her call ten minutes later. In three minutes, he graciously offered her the use of one of his jets. There wasn’t a man on the planet who would have refused to grant a reasonable request from Rebecca Crane, and if you ever saw her, you’d know why. Even at two pounds five ounces above her ideal weight, she was a knockout.

[This is an authorial aside. I must prevent you from reaching a mistaken and ungenerous conclusion about Rebecca. She is not a snob. She does not insist on always flying in private jets and in fact doesn’t indulge in any of the hoity-toity behaviors that many others of her wealth and fame seem unable to resist. She is a down-to-earth person, humble and kind and selfless. If you were to meet her in mundane circumstances where you spent an evening with her, and if for some reason you didn’t recognize her, you might imagine she was a dress-shop clerk or seamstress, though a remarkably good-looking one. I know a woman of unusually penetrating insight who thought Rebecca was the person in a bowling alley who rents shoes, which perhaps will help you understand how down-to-earth she is.]

[Bear with me for another paragraph. When Rebecca Crane does take commercial flights, she has no choice but to bring a security team. Said team consists of two large, muscular, highly trained agents who, were you to meet them in a dark alley or even on a well-lighted street, would likely cause you to soil yourself if they just looked at you askance. They are not thugs; they are nice guys from wholesome backgrounds. It’s merely the look they know how to give you, the aura that they project, which results in your convulsive bowel issues. Rebecca needs to employ these gentlemen because there are more deranged stalkers in our sadly dysfunctional society than you might think, odd men and even a few unbalanced women, who operate under the delusion that they have a romantic relationship with Rebecca. They believe such things as that she not only wants them but also has promised them a souvenir of their time with her, and they expect her to fulfill the promise by allowing them to cut off one of her ears to keep under their pillow in a sachet filled with rose petals. In some cases, they expect a vital organ, which is especially out of the question. On this occasion, if Rebecca took the time to get her security team together and find a flight that had a block of at least three seats available, she would never get to Maple Grove while Ernie was still alive. What would be the point in that? There would be none.]

So it was that, as humble as a bowling-shoe-rental person, she drove alone in her potentially explosive EV through two hours of savage Los Angeles traffic, all the way from her house in Malibu to the private-plane terminal. As promised, Holden von Smack’s jet was crewed and ready to take her to the heartland where Ernie was lying at Death’s doorstep and perhaps even just inside the front door.

The aircraft that von Smack provided wasn’t the jumbo jet he’d refitted with an elegant interior, transforming it into a sky yacht with two bedrooms and baths among other amenities. Instead, he provided his smaller Gulfstream V. Living up to her reputation as being the farthest thing from hoity-toity, Rebecca was grateful for the accommodations she’d been given. She didn’t require a crew of seven, which the larger jet would have provided. Three were enough—the essential pilot and copilot, plus a smartly uniformed steward who offered her a choice of three entrées for lunch.

Takeoff was delayed when six protestors raced onto a runway to threaten planes with spray paint. They intended to defile priceless art at the Getty Museum; however, security at the Getty outfoxed them. Lacking the flammable liquid needed to set something important on fire, and with the spray paint unused, they came to the airport under the mistaken belief that a mist of carnelian red or peacock blue could destroy a jet engine. Although airport security agents in slickers and face shields might have been cheered for putting such feebs out of their misery, they only rounded them up, escorted them off the property, and suggested they try the bus station.

Through all of this, Rebecca kept thinking of Lassie Come Home , the wonderful 1943 film based on Eric Knight’s timeless novel. All Lassie wanted was to get home to the boy who loved her, much like Rebecca—a lass—wanted to return to her hometown to be with Ernie, whom she loved like a brother. Lassie—and now Rebecca, too—kept being thwarted in her journey.

Life was often like a movie. That thought should have comforted her, considering the dog story had a happy ending. However, she knew that whatever movie she walked into in Maple Grove would be less like Lassie Come Home than like Shriek . She had been the sole survivor of all three movies, but she wasn’t a cat with nine lives.

The flight was smooth. The Gulfstream V touched down like a pinfeather floating to the ground on a windless day. The airfield, which lay six miles outside of town, provided a 2.2-mile runway and had been constructed primarily to serve the Keppelwhite Institute, a world-class facility engaged—as you might expect—in mysterious research projects. The Keppelwhite had inexplicably been established on the southern edge of bucolic Maple Grove when the four amigos had been in their first year of elementary school.

A rental car awaited Rebecca. It was a little thing and silly looking, as if a dozen clowns might suddenly burst out of it. She didn’t recognize the name of the maker. The interior smelled funny. She used one of the packets of sanitizing wet wipes that she carried in her purse to scrub significant portions of the interior. Then she drove the car into Maple Grove in spite of the smell.

The building that served as County Memorial Hospital was in conflict with the quaint character of the town: charmless in-your-face ultramodern; far larger than the population of this primarily agricultural county warranted; a sprawling, glittering, imposing, and somehow sinister structure.

Of course, this sixty-acre complex wasn’t merely a first-rate infirmary but also the aforementioned medical-research center. It rose behind County Memorial like a gigantic structure designed and erected by showboat extraterrestrials for the purpose of mocking the meager achievements of humanity. The Keppelwhite Institute had been built with nine hundred million dollars donated by James Alistair Keppelwhite and his wife, Wilamina “Willy” Keppelwhite, principal stockholders of Keppelwhite Pharmaceuticals, Keppelwhite Chemicals, Keppelwhite Essential Substances, and not least of all Keppelwhite Neotech. They had also built a thousand superb homes to house the institute’s scientific staff and their families in a stylish company neighborhood.

The ongoing research expenses were shared by the Keppelwhite Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the EPA, the CIA, a Department of Defense black-ops pool, Zippy’s Healthy Juice Bars, which might have been a front for an entity of questionable intent, and a major Hollywood talent agency that declined to be named. The variety of contributors suggested the Keppelwhite Institute must be a public-private enterprise encompassing the political, military, health-care, high-tech, and entertainment sectors of the economy, a combination of interests that should have alarmed a broad swath of the media, local politicians, and town residents. But of course no one cared about anything other than the tides of money that washed through the community because of this mysterious operation.

As Rebecca parked in front of the hospital and stared at the massive complex rising behind it, she realized how peculiar it was that neither she nor any of her dear amigos had heretofore stopped to wonder if their problems were somehow related to this place. Their certainty that someone had erased portions of their memory, the bad dreams they suffered, Spencer’s fugues, Rebecca’s own obsession with keeping surfaces clean, Bobby’s almost frantic need to travel, Ernie’s conviction that nature was frighteningly fragile and his interest in novels about brainwashing and amnesia—could all of it, every weird thread, lead to the Keppelwhite Institute? Was their failure to wonder about the place evidence that they had been manipulated psychologically to discourage them from considering that possibility? Yes, maybe, but wasn’t that a conspiracy theory? Wasn’t it too pat? Maybe. Probably. They still might want to discuss it when they were together. Later. Right now, all that mattered was Ernie in his coma. Once Ernie was better, they could look into the issue of the institute. Maybe get together over Christmas and really dig into the subject then. Or in the spring.

Before getting out of the car, she took precautions to ensure she was less likely to be recognized and repeatedly asked for her autograph to the amusement of her amigos. She also hoped to guard against being kidnapped and held in a cellar by a crazed fan who wanted to read aloud his screenplay for a fourth Shriek film. Makeup artists on her TV show had often told her that she looked different but also, strangely enough, prettier without makeup than with it. So she vigorously rubbed a series of wet wipes over her face. Because she was known for her shaggy midlength blond hair, she put on a shoulder-length brunette wig. She had perfect vision, but a pair of glasses with clear lenses and tortoiseshell frames completed her transformation.

Rebecca felt like an idiot when she was incognito, especially if she was recognized anyway. The keen-eyed fans usually recommended improvements to her disguise—a set of crooked teeth, warts glued on with spirit gum, fake radiation scars, and inevitably a Judy Garland mask. They were well-meaning, but she was as embarrassed as if she had been caught preparing to rob a bank.

At 4:42, she got out of the car and went into the hospital.