The Ninth Dominion (The Jared Kimberlain Novels) (17 page)

Of course there was one man, and Seckle couldn’t wait to see how long it took him to catch on to the true essence of what he was doing. By now the FBI would have called that man in and the race would be on. Perhaps in one of his upcoming visits the man would be waiting, and that would suit Seckle just fine.

Tiny Tim …

Seckle loved reading the news accounts of the utter randomness of his visits. Two in just over a week now, and the entire nation was cowering in fear. He had read that National Guardsmen were being stationed in small towns all over the country. Did they really think that would stop him? Even if they knew the locations of his remaining ten visits his fury could not be stemmed. It had simmered through the dead years when his life had been confined to an eight-foot square. He had known all along his time would come, and when it came he did not hesitate.

Seckle moved his pack about, trying to find a comfortable position for his head. The forced inactivity of this night was making him restless. He pulled his Gerber MKII killing knife from its sheath on his belt and held it up like a scepter drawing power from the night.

The hunger that drove him fluttered about the pit of his stomach. He wet his lips with the saliva bubbling from his mouth.

It was time to pay his next visit.

Chapter 17

THE PRINCE EDWARD SECTION
on the Canadian side of Lake Ontario looked like a desperate hand rising out of the water. Its curled fingers formed jagged peninsulas lined with docks and small-town life. Kimberlain was well into his second day of driving the thin roads that wrapped around the coastline in search of the place where the submarine carrying Andrew Harrison Leeds had docked.

“I figure Leeds got it down to the lake in one of them iron ore boats,” Captain Seven had explained back at The Locks. “Nice World War II job, and it wouldn’t be hard to camouflage either. Think about it, boss. Sub picks up Leeds and the others off the rafts and brings them to shore somewhere. Running a diesel engine in rough seas wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a Sunday sail. That thing goes down and you got shit to chomp on with your teeth instead of chewing gum. Wanna run it as little as possible, say in a straight line.”

“Prince Edward?”

“Yeah, the Canadian side of the lake. Short and sweet. Dock and be done with it. About a thousand possibilities, and in that storm not likely anyone would have known what they were looking at even if they saw it.”

“It’s worth a try,” Kimberlain had said, but now he was beginning to doubt that he would ever track it down after many unsuccessful searches. As he had feared, the storm that night stole away both visibility and witnesses. What would Leeds have been thinking? If the operation had been carried out to his specifications, there would be order, precision—not randomness.

Kimberlain tried Bloomfield Cove next, a lip of land shaped like a smiling bear with a mouth of dangerous shale. The dock was tucked into the lower jaw, land shield on three sides and open water on the other. Kimberlain pulled over and walked the last hundred yards to the dock. The breeze was chilly, more late fall than summer. He reached the cove and swept his eyes about. A dangerous trek but not an impossible one, especially for a submarine riding on the surface with no fear of being seen in the night. He reached the dock and saw a bulky shape seated there in plaid mackinaw jacket with a shotgun laid over its legs. Not wanting to startle the figure, he made sure to kick plenty of stones as he approached.

The figure turned lazily, not seeming to mind him. A chubby, emotionless face gazed at him beneath an old work cap that barely contained a limp mop of auburn hair.

“I’m waiting,” the figure told him, and turned back to its vigil.

The voice that emerged slowly and hoarsely was female. The eyes dropped, bored and uninterested, but they weren’t old. Kimberlain knew the woman suffered from some form of retardation. Thirty or so chronologically, but little more than a child. She wore denim overalls that were dirty at the knees. The shotgun she held was layered with dust. The breech was cracked open and Kimberlain could see no shells were chambered. He approached tentatively and waited for her to become aware of his presence again before speaking.

“Waiting for what?”

“I’m not supposed to tell.” She looked up at him for a brief instant and then hung her head back down. “They didn’t believe me.”

“You saw something.”

She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“What was it?”

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I’m not supposed to tell.”

Kimberlain sat down next to her. The woman-child shifted slightly away.

“What’s your name?”

“I’m not supposed to talk to strangers.”

“But you already have—” He smiled. “—haven’t you?”

She smiled back. “Yeah, yeah. My name’s Alice.”

“I’m Jared, Alice.”

“
J-a-r-r-i-d
,” she spelled out.

“
J-a-r-e-d
,” he corrected softly.

“Only one
r
.”

“Right.”

“And an
e
, not an
i
.”

“Yes.”

“I like to spell things.”

“Alice, I want you to know something. I believe you.”

Her eyes glowed. “You do?”

He nodded. “I’m looking for the thing you saw.”

“The sea monster?”

“I don’t think it was a monster.”

“It was!” Alice flared, pushing herself away from him. “You said you believed me!”

“I believe you saw a boat, the kind of boat that travels underwater. It’s called a submarine.”

“I don’t know how to spell that.”

Kimberlain spelled it for her. Then they spelled it again together.

“I’d like you to tell me what you saw that night, Alice.”

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I promise. I believe you, remember?”

Her eyes gazed at him, wanting to trust. She moved back closer to him.

“I was sitting by my window. I live up there,” Alice said, and pointed up the hill toward the house closest to the water. “I like to watch storms. Storms are fun. Do you like storms?”

“Sometimes they scare me.”

“No. I’ll bet they don’t.”

“When I was younger, I mean. Was this a fun storm to watch?”

“Oh yeah. Lots of lightning in the sky, the kind that looks like thin fingers.”

“And how many nights ago would it have been?”

“I don’t know.”

“Five or six maybe?”

“Yeah. That’s right. I saw the monster first when the lightning came. It was black. I saw it swimming toward shore. I thought I’d better call for help but my mom wasn’t home. I tried to use the phone but it didn’t work.”

“What did the monster do?”

Alice regarded him suspiciously. “You said it was a sub-ma-rine.”

“Tell me what you saw and then we’ll know.”

“It came up to the dock and then the dock had people on it. Lots and lots of people getting wet in the rain. I saw them best when the lightning came. I guess they came because of the sub-ma-ronster,” she said, proud of herself for combining the words as well as the thoughts.

“Lots and lots,” Kimberlain repeated. “Did you count?”

She looked down. “No.”

“They left the dock.”

“And went toward the trucks. I saw them, too. Only they didn’t have their lights on, so it was tough.”

“And the sub-ma-ronster?”

“It was big and black. Long, too. But I think it might be coming back. I’m not gonna shoot it. I just want to talk to it. Do you think it’s coming back?”

“Maybe. But only if it comes by tomorrow.”

Alice seemed to remember something. “Somebody wrote on it. Somebody wrote on the sub-ma-ronster.”

“A word you mean?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“Can you spell it?”

“I can try.” Her face squeezed itself taut. “
M-a-r-l-i-n
.”

“Marlin?”

“Yeah, mar-lin. Is that how you say it?”

“That’s perfect, Alice.”

The woman-child beamed and rolled her head proudly. “Do all sub-mar-ronsters have names, Jared?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“So we can find them, Alice, when they get lost.”

Captain Seven said he needed an hour to research the
Marlin
, so Kimberlain called back from the same general store in Bloomfield Cove sixty minutes later. The Ferryman knew that Seven’s computer was tied into virtually every major data bank in the nation. The captain had the access codes and passwords for all of them. And what he didn’t have, he could get.

“Okay,” Captain Seven opened, “here’s what I came up with. The
Marlin
was sold to Spain off the military down list in 1962, where as far as I can tell it has remained ever since.”

“Until now.”

“Whoever got it back here knew how to cover their tracks.”

“And where might they have covered the
Marlin
?”

“Thought you’d never ask. Got a couple possibilities there. First they could moor it on the surface somewhere under some pretty heavy camouflage.”

“Too much risk when all they’d really have to do was sink it.”

“Bad idea, boss. Have to use explosives to do the job right, and that would have drawn the attention of the various search parties.”

“Okay, so what did they do with it?”

“How about hiding it in one of the five biggest scrap yards in the whole country, which just happens to be located in Oswego, New York?”

“Across the lake from where I’m standing now …”

“Almost. See, they dock it the same night after depositing the passengers. Spend the rest of the night with some underwater cutting tools, and by morning it’s in pieces hidden all over the yard.”

“Meaning someone at this or some other scrap yard would have had to be involved with Leeds.”

“Abso-fucking-lutely.”

“You’ve outdone yourself again.”

“Just getting started. Got something else you might be interested in.” Captain Seven paused long enough to call up a new screen on his computer. “Fact that Donald Dwares who tried to waste you in Providence was supposed to be dead got me thinking. I ran a check on maximum-security prisons going back five years to his supposed execution. Lots of inmates conveniently got sick and died. Seemed to afflict only the most violent; lifers, a few on death row.”

“You got a list?”

“Growing by the minute. Damn unsavory bunch, specialists in brutal violence, lots of it random like with Dwares. Plenty of the names will be familiar to you.”

“How many?”

“Sixty-five already. Whoops, make that sixty-four; I forgot to cross off Dwares.”

“Sounds like an army.”

“Not far from it.”

“I go after Leeds, Dwares comes after me,” Kimberlain said, thinking it out for himself. “Meanwhile, Leeds springs eighty-three more to add to the list.”

“An army, Ferryman, just like you said.”

“The question is, what is Leeds planning to do with it?”

“Don’t know,” Captain Seven said. “Maybe the
Marlin
can help us find out.”

Chapter 18

KIMBERLAIN WAITED UNTIL WELL
after dark before approaching the Gerabaldi Scrap Yard in Oswego, New York. He figured a more clandestine approach was called for on the chance that someone at Gerabaldi was connected to Leeds. The scrap yard turned out to be a massive place located on the outskirts of the small city, off Route 104 four miles from Lake Ontario. The acres and acres of junk stretched farther than the eye could see. Finding no sign of guard dogs, he sliced through the chain link with his razor knife and entered the yard.

Directly before him, the corpses of home appliances rose in columns between twenty and thirty feet high. Many of the machines sat with their innards exposed, disemboweled for parts and left to rot. There were washers and dryers, rusting and brown, cursed by curled and warped metal. There were refrigerators with doors either missing or chained, seeming to make them prisoners of their own demise. There were stoves, the oldest of which might have dated back a generation.

Watching over the scene stood a trio of man-operated loaders Kimberlain knew were called two-tonners after their maximum payload. All of nine feet tall, the machines had the look of massive steel skeletons. All three possessed the arm and leg extremities of a man, with slots for an operator to wedge his hands and feet into to control them in maneuvering the ancient appliances about. The arms were especially impressive, fitted with pincer apparatuses for hands. The orange-colored things stood naked and ominous, like guards over a treasure of rusted brown steel. Kimberlain noticed they were named after the Three Stooges.

Passing out of the appliance graveyard, Kimberlain found himself swallowed by mountains of brown steel drums. He smelled oil and figured that was what they had once contained. Now they were bleeding it from their bottoms, and the ground was soaking it up. They rose silent and defiant, stacked to fifteen feet tall, rows and rows of drum towers stretching for the sky.

The Ferryman continued on. The next section, containing the yard’s huge cache of junked cars and trucks, was much larger than the previous two sections. Cars flattened in the crusher had been piled atop each other like playing cards. Those still reasonably whole lay squeezed together as if in some bizarre parking lot. Worn out tires were stacked in a mountain. Hubcaps were piled in a bulging, square heap.

Squeezed amid the clutter were the machines of the trade. Kimberlain noted a pair of massive black steel front loaders. He passed by the man-sized tires of one and noted the lighter rusted color of its six-foot prongs. The rust, Kimberlain thought, might have been blood collected from its snared victims.

His stomach rumbled slightly, and he pressed on past a loader with oscillating arms for agile manipulations of its payloads. It was smaller than its cousins and was colored a deep, shiny red. Kimberlain saw that scrawled in black letters across the loader’s side was the word SCARLETT.

Squeezed ominously against the fence further back, detached and indifferent, was the portable crushing apparatus. The loaders would deliver the wrecks into the open slot and back off while the crusher flattened the heap for easier storage. Kimberlain imagined the sound of popping glass and tearing steel.