Watchers (24 page)
But he was also the county sheriff, and it was his duty to keep probing even though he knew Lem would reveal nothing. He said, “Marines tell us it’s just a training exercise.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“We’re always notified of training exercises ten days ahead.”
Lem did not reply. He thought he saw something in the forest, a flicker of shadows, a darkish presence moving through piny gloom.
“So the Marines spend all day Wednesday and half of Thursday out there in the hills. But when reporters hear about this ‘exercise’ and come snooping around, the leathernecks suddenly call it off, pack up, go home. It was almost as if . . . whatever they were looking for was so worrisome, so damn top-secret that they’d rather not find it at all if finding it meant letting the press know about it.”
Squinting into the forest, Lem strained to see through steadily deepening shadows, trying to catch another glimpse of the movement that had drawn his attention a moment ago.
Walt said, “Then yesterday afternoon the NSA asks to be kept informed about any ‘peculiar reports, unusual assaults, or exceedingly violent murders.’ We ask for clarification, don’t get any.”
There
. A ripple in the murkiness beneath the evergreen boughs. About eighty feet in from the perimeter of the woods. Something moving quickly and stealthily from one sheltering shadow to another. Lem put his right hand under his coat, on the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.
. A ripple in the murkiness beneath the evergreen boughs. About eighty feet in from the perimeter of the woods. Something moving quickly and stealthily from one sheltering shadow to another. Lem put his right hand under his coat, on the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.
“But then just one day later,” Walt said, “we find this poor son of a bitch Dalberg torn to pieces—and the case is peculiar as hell and about as ‘exceedingly violent’ as I ever hope to see. Now here
you
are, Mr. Lemuel Asa Johnson, director of the Southern California Office of the NSA, and I know you didn’t come choppering in here just to ask me whether I want onion or guacamole dip at tomorrow night’s bridge game.”
you
are, Mr. Lemuel Asa Johnson, director of the Southern California Office of the NSA, and I know you didn’t come choppering in here just to ask me whether I want onion or guacamole dip at tomorrow night’s bridge game.”
The movement was closer than eighty feet, much closer. Lem had been confused by the layers of shadows and by the queerly distorting late-afternoon sunlight that penetrated the trees. The thing was no more than forty feet away, maybe closer, and suddenly it came straight at them,
bounded
at them through the brush, and Lem cried out, drew the pistol from his holster, and involuntarily stumbled backward a few steps before taking a shooter’s stance with his legs spread wide, both hands on the gun.
bounded
at them through the brush, and Lem cried out, drew the pistol from his holster, and involuntarily stumbled backward a few steps before taking a shooter’s stance with his legs spread wide, both hands on the gun.
“It’s just a mule deer!” Walt Gaines said.
Indeed it was. Just a mule deer.
The deer stopped a dozen feet away, under the drooping boughs of a spruce, peering at them with huge brown eyes that were bright with curiosity. Its head was held high, ears pricked up.
“They’re so used to people in these canyons that they’re almost tame,” Walt said.
Lem let out a stale breath as he holstered his pistol.
The mule deer, sensing their tension, turned from them and loped away along the trail, vanishing into the woods.
Walt was staring hard at Lem. “What’s out there, buddy?”
Lem said nothing. He blotted his hands on his suit jacket.
The breeze was stiffening, getting cooler. Evening was on its way, and night was close behind it.
“Never saw you spooked before,” Walt said.
“A caffeine jag. I’ve had too much coffee today.”
“Bullshit.”
Lem shrugged.
“It seems to’ve been an
animal
that killed Dalberg, something with lots of teeth, claws, something savage,” Walt said. “Yet no damn animal would carefully place the guy’s head on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. That’s a sick joke. Animals don’t make jokes, not sick or otherwise. Whatever killed Dalberg . . . it left the head like that to taunt us. So what in Christ’s name are we dealing with?”
animal
that killed Dalberg, something with lots of teeth, claws, something savage,” Walt said. “Yet no damn animal would carefully place the guy’s head on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. That’s a sick joke. Animals don’t make jokes, not sick or otherwise. Whatever killed Dalberg . . . it left the head like that to taunt us. So what in Christ’s name are we dealing with?”
“You don’t want to know. And you don’t
need
to know ’cause I’m assuming jurisdiction in this case.”
need
to know ’cause I’m assuming jurisdiction in this case.”
“Like hell.”
“I’ve got the authority,” Lem said. “It’s now a federal matter, Walt. I’m impounding all the evidence your people have gathered, all reports they’ve written thus far. You and your men are to talk to no one about what you’ve seen here. No one. You’ll have a file on the case, but the only thing in it will be a memo from me, asserting the federal prerogative under the correct statute. You’re out from under. No matter what happens, no one can blame you, Walt.”
“Shit.”
“Let it go.”
Walt scowled. “I’ve got to know—”
“Let it go.”
“—are people in my county in danger? At least tell me that much, damn it.”
“Yes.”
“In danger?”
“Yes.”
“And if I fought you, if I tried to hang on to jurisdiction in this case, would there be anything I could do to lessen that danger, to insure the public safety?”
“No. Nothing,” Lem said truthfully.
“Then there’s no point in fighting you.”
“None,” Lem said.
He started back toward the cabin because the daylight was fading fast, and he did not want to be near the woods as darkness crept in. Sure, it had only been a mule deer. But next time?
“Wait a minute,” Walt said. “Let me tell you what I think, and you just listen. You don’t have to confirm or deny what I say. All you’ve got to do is hear me out.”
“Go on,” Lem said impatiently.
The shadows of the trees crept steadily across the bristly dry grass of the clearing. The sun was balanced on the western horizon.
Walt paced out of the shadows into the waning sunlight, hands in his back pockets, looking down at the dusty ground, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. Then: “Tuesday afternoon, somebody walked into a house in Newport Beach, shot a man named Yarbeck, and beat his wife to death. That night, somebody killed the Hudston family in Laguna Beach—husband, wife, and a teenage son. Police in both communities use the same forensics lab, so it didn’t take long to discover one gun was used both places. But that’s about all the police in either case are going to learn because your NSA has quietly assumed jurisdiction in those crimes, too. In the interest of national security.”
Lem did not respond. He was sorry he had even agreed to listen. Anyway, he was not taking direct charge of the investigation into the murders of the scientists, which were almost surely Soviet-inspired. He’d delegated that task to other men, so he’d be free to concentrate on finding the dog and The Outsider.
The sunlight was burnt orange. The cabin windows smoldered with reflections of that fading fire.
Walt said, “Okay. Then there’s Dr. Davis Weatherby of Corona Del Mar. Missing since Tuesday. This morning, Weatherby’s brother finds the doctor’s body in the trunk of his car. Local pathologists hardly arrive at the scene before NSA agents show up.”
Lem was slightly unnerved by the swiftness with which the sheriff evidently gathered, coordinated, and absorbed information from various communities that were not in the unincorporated part of the county and were not, therefore, under his authority.
Walt grinned but with little or no humor. “Didn’t expect me to have made all these connections, huh? Each of these things happened in a different police jurisdiction, but as far as I’m concerned this county is one sprawling city of two million people, so I make it my business to work hand in glove with all the local departments.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that it’s astonishing to have six murders of upstanding citizens in one day. This is Orange County, after all, not L.A. And it’s even more astonishing that all six deaths are related to urgent matters of national security. So it arouses my curiosity. I start checking into the backgrounds of these people, looking for something that links them—”
“Walt, for Christ’s sake!”
“—and I discover they all work—or did work—for something called Banodyne Laboratories.”
Lem was not angry. He couldn’t get angry with Walt—they were tighter than brothers—but the big man’s canniness was maddening right now. Lem said, “Listen, you’ve no right to conduct an investigation.”
“I’m sheriff, remember?”
“But none of these murders—except Dalberg here—falls into your jurisdiction to begin with,” Lem said. “And even if it did . . . once the NSA steps in, you’ve no right to continue. In fact, you’re expressly
forbidden
by law to continue.”
forbidden
by law to continue.”
Ignoring him, Walt said, “So I look up Banodyne, see what kind of work they do, and I discover they’re into genetic engineering, recombinant DNA—”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“There’s no indication Banodyne’s at work on defense projects, but that doesn’t mean anything. Could be blind contracts, projects so secret that the funding doesn’t even appear on public record.”
“Jesus,” Lem said irritably. “Don’t you understand how damn mean we can get when we’ve got national security laws on our side?”
“Just speculating now,” Walt said.
“You’ll speculate your honky ass right into a prison cell.”
“Now, Lemuel, let’s not have an ugly racial confrontation here.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Yeah, and you’re repeating yourself. Anyway, I did some heavy thinking, and I figure the murders of these people who work at Banodyne must be connected somehow to the manhunt the Marines conducted on Wednesday and Thursday. And to the murder of Wesley Dalberg.”
“There’s no similarity between Dalberg’s murder and the others.”
“Of course there’s not. Wasn’t the same killer. I can see that. The Yarbecks, the Hudstons, and Weatherby were hit by a pro, while poor Wes Dalberg was torn to pieces. Still, there’s a connection, by God, or you wouldn’t be interested, and the connection must be Banodyne.”
The sun was sinking. Shadows pooled and thickened.
Walt said, “Here’s what I figure: they were working on some new bug at Banodyne, a genetically altered germ, and it got loose, contaminated someone, but it didn’t just make him sick. What it did was severly damage his brain, turn him into a savage or something—”
“An updated Dr. Jekyll for the high-tech age?” Lem interrupted sarcastically.
“—so he slipped out of the lab before anyone knew what happened to him, fled into the foothills, came here, attacked Dalberg.”
“You watch a lot of bad horror movies or what?”
“As for Yarbeck and the others, maybe they were eliminated ’cause they knew what happened and were so scared about the consequences that they intended to go public.”
Off in the dusky canyon, a soft, ululant howl arose. Probably just a coyote.
Lem wanted to get out of there, away from the forest. But he felt that he had to deal with Walt Gaines, deflect the sheriff from these lines of inquiry and consideration.
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