Watchers (20 page)

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.”

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.

“Let me get this straight, Walt. Are you saying the United States government had its own scientists
killed
to shut them up?”

Walt frowned, knowing how unlikely—if not downright impossible— his scenario was.

Lem said, “Is life really just a Ludlum novel? Killed our own people? Is it National Paranoia Month or something? Do you really believe that crap?”

“No,” Walt admitted.

“And how could Dalberg’s killer be a contaminated scientist with brain damage? I mean, Christ, you yourself said it was some animal that killed Dalberg, something with claws, sharp teeth.”

“Okay, okay, so I don’t have it figured. Not all of it, anyway. But I’m sure it’s all tied in with Banodyne somehow. I’m not entirely on the wrong track—am I?”

“Yes, you are,” Lem said. “Entirely.”

“Really?”

“Really.” Lem felt bad about lying to Walt and manipulating him, but he did it anyway. “I shouldn’t even tell you that you’re chasing after false spoor, but as a friend I guess I owe you something.”

Additional wild voices had joined the eerie howling in the woods, confirming that the cries were only those of coyotes, yet the sound chilled Lem Johnson and made him eager to depart.

Rubbing the nape of his bull neck with one hand, Walt said, “It doesn’t have anything at all to do with Banodyne?”

“Nothing. It’s just a coincidence that Weatherby and Yarbeck both worked there—and that Hudston used to work there. If you insist on making the connection, you’ll just be spinning your wheels—which is fine by me.”

The sun set and, in passing, seemed to unlock a door through which a much cooler, brisker breeze swept into the darkening world.

Still rubbing his neck, Walt said, “Not Banodyne, huh?” He sighed. “I know you too well, buddy. You’ve got such a strong sense of duty that you’d lie to your own mother if that was in the best interests of the country.”

Lem said nothing.

“All right,” Walt said. “I’ll drop it. Your case from here on. Unless more people in my jurisdiction get killed. If that happens . . . well, I might try to take control of things again. Can’t promise you that I won’t. I’ve got a sense of duty, too, you know.”

“I know,” Lem said, feeling guilty, feeling like a total shit.

At last, they both headed back to the cabin.

The sky—which was dark in the east, still streaked with deep orange and red and purple light in the west—seemed to be descending like the lid of a box.

Coyotes howled.

Something out in the night woods howled back at them.

Cougar, Lem thought, but he knew that now he was even lying to himself.

On Sunday, two days after their successful Friday lunch date, Travis and Nora drove to Solvang, a Danish-style village in the Santa Ynez Valley. It was a touristy place with hundreds of shops selling everything from exquisite Scandinavian crystal to plastic imitations of Danish beer steins. The quaint architecture (though calculated) and the tree-lined streets enhanced the simple pleasures of window-shopping.

Several times Travis felt the urge to take Nora’s hand and hold it while they strolled. It seemed natural, right. Yet he sensed that she might not be ready for even such harmless contact as hand-holding.

She was wearing another drab dress, dull blue this time, nearly as shapeless as a sack. Sensible shoes. Her thick dark hair still hung limp and unstyled, as it had been when he’d first seen her.

Being with her was pure pleasure. She had a sweet temperament and was unfailingly sensitive and kind. Her innocence was refreshing. Her shyness and modesty, though excessive, endeared her to him. She viewed everything with a wide-eyed wonder that was charming, and he delighted in surprising her with simple things: a shop that sold only cuckoo clocks; another that sold only stuffed animals; a music box with a mother-of-pearl door that opened to reveal a pirouetting ballerina.

He bought her a T-shirt with a personalized message that he would not let her see until it was ready: NORA LOVES EINSTEIN. Though she professed she could never wear a T-shirt, that it wasn’t her style, Travis knew she would wear it because she did, indeed, love the dog.

Perhaps Einstein could not read the words on the shirt, but he seemed to understand what was meant. When they came out of the shop and unhooked his leash from the parking meter where they’d tethered him, Einstein regarded the message on the shirt solemnly while Nora held it up for his inspection, then happily licked and nuzzled her.

The day held only one bad moment for them. As they turned a corner and approached another shop window, Nora stopped suddenly and looked around at the crowds on the sidewalks—people eating ice cream in big homemade waffle-cookie cones, people eating apple tarts wrapped in wax paper, guys in feather-decorated cowboy hats they’d bought in one of the stores, pretty young girls in short-shorts and halters, a very fat woman in a yellow muumuu, people speaking English and Spanish and Japanese and Vietnamese and all the other languages you could hear at any Southern California tourist spot—and then she looked along the busy street at a gift shop built in the form of a three-story stone-and-timber windmill, and she stiffened, looked stricken. Travis had to guide her to a bench in a small park, where she sat trembling for a few minutes before she could even tell him what was wrong.

“Overload,” she said at last, her voice shaky. “So many . . . new sights . . . new sounds . . . so many different things all at once. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s all right,” he said, touched.

“I’m used to a few rooms, familiar things. Are people staring?”

“No one’s noticed anything. There’s nothing to stare at.”

She sat with her shoulders hunched, her head hung forward, her hands fisted in her lap—until Einstein put his head on her knees. As she petted the dog, she began gradually to relax.

“I was enjoying myself,” she said to Travis, though she did not raise her head, “really enjoying myself, and I thought how far from home I was, how wonderfully far from home—”

“Not really. Less than an hour’s drive,” he assured her.

“A long, long way,” she said.

Travis supposed that for her it was, in fact, a great distance.

She said, “And when I realized how far from home I was and how . . .
different
everything was . . . I clenched up, afraid, like a child.”

“Would you like to go back to Santa Barbara now?”

“No!” she said, meeting his eyes at last. She shook her head. She dared to look around at the people moving through the small park and at the gift shop shaped like a windmill. “No. I want to stay a while. All day. I want to have dinner in a restaurant here, not at a sidewalk café but inside, like other people do, inside, and then I want to go home after dark.” She blinked and repeated those two words wonderingly, “After dark.”

“All right.”

“Unless, of course, you hoped to get back sooner.”

“No, no,” he said. “I planned on making a day of it.”

“This is very kind of you.”

Travis raised one eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“You know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“Helping me step out into the world,” she said. “Giving up your time to help someone . . . like me. It’s very generous of you.”

He was astonished. “Nora, let me assure you, it’s not charity work I’m involved in here!”

“I’m sure a man like you has better things to do with a Sunday afternoon in May.”

“Oh, yes,” he said self-mockingly, “I could have stayed home and given all my shoes a meticulous shining with a toothbrush. Could have counted the number of pieces in a box of elbow macaroni.”

She stared at him in disbelief.

“By God, you’re serious,” Travis said. “You think I’m here just because I’ve taken pity on you.”

She bit her lip and said, “It’s all right.” She looked down at the dog again. “I don’t mind.”

“But I’m not here out of pity, for God’s sake! I’m here because I like being with you, I really do, I like you very much.”

Even with her head lowered, the blush that crept into her cheeks was visible.

For a while neither of them spoke.

Einstein looked up at her adoringly as she petted him, though once in a while he rolled his eyes at Travis as if to say,
All right, you’ve opened the door of a relationship, so don’t just sit there like a fool, say something, move forward, win her over
.

She scratched the retriever’s ears and stroked him for a couple of minutes, and then she said, “I’m okay now.”

They left the little park and strolled past the shops again, and in a while it was as if her moment of panic and his clumsy proclamation of affection had not happened.

He felt as if he were courting a nun. Eventually, he realized that the situation was even worse than that. Since the death of his wife three years ago, he had been celibate. The whole subject of sexual relations seemed strange and new to him again. So it was almost as if he were a
priest
wooing a nun.

Nearly every block had a bakery, and the wares in the display windows of each shop looked more delicious than what had been for sale in the previous place. The scents of cinnamon, powdered sugar, nutmeg, almonds, apples, and chocolate eddied in the warm spring air.

Einstein stood on his hind feet at each bakery, paws on the windowsill, and stared longingly through the glass at the artfully arranged pastries. But he didn’t go into any of the shops, and he never barked. When he begged for a treat, his soulful whining was discreetly low, so as not to bother the swarming tourists. Rewarded with a bit of pecan cake and a small apple tart, he was satisfied and did not persist in begging.