A Child's Garden of Death (25 page)

“You know, Rocco,” Lyon said, “there's a distinct advantage in driving from point to point with you—unadulterated, suicidal speed.”

“You said you were in a hurry,” the large man replied and inched the speedometer toward ninety. “You really think your friend will be in New London?”

“It's worth a try.”

The Sequnquit Hotel had known its good days, seventy years before. Now its white facade was sun-peeled along the upper edges, and the small lobby had given up pretensions thirty years ago. The overstuffed chairs, lumpy from protesting springs, were covered in a film of dust. To the right, off the lobby, a bar created the only vitality in the ancient building. A juke box blared country and western as young Iowa-born sailors drank pitchers of beer.

“I'll check in here,” Rocco said and slipped into the bar.

Lyon had to tap lightly on the counter to catch the attention of the clerk engrossed in an ancient copy of
Playboy
magazine. The clerk looked at him without interest until Lyon slipped a crumpled ten-dollar bill across the scarred counter. He inwardly winced and vowed not to inform Beatrice of his latest expenditure. He did realize, with a start, that he was getting better at this sort of thing.

“Where's Our Lady of Fatima?” Lyon asked.

“Room 412,” the clerk replied and slipped the bill into the magazine.

The small, self-service elevator had last been inspected in 1948 and rose the four flights in short jerky movements. It would be the irony of life, Lyon thought, to have plummeted four thousand feet earlier in the day only to die in a four-story elevator accident. The elevator eventually stopped and he pushed the creaking gate and protesting door open.

He walked slowly down the broad hallway with its worn carpet—reminiscent of a more affluent era. The door to room 412 was unlocked and he stepped into the room.

The nude young man sprang toward Lyon with upraised fists. “Hey, I'm not finished, damn it!” he yelled.

“Leave him alone, honey,” Helen Houston said from the bed. “He's a special one I've been expecting.”

Lyon leaned against the wall as the young sailor threw on his clothes while muttering obscenities about pimps and bitches. Helen turned languorously on the bed and propped her head with one hand. Her firm breasts were pointed with erect nipples, and she ran one hand along her thigh.

As the sailor slammed out of the room she turned on her back. “I knew I'd get you by and by,” she said and spread her legs.

“How long have you been here?” Lyon asked. He wiped the beads of perspiration from his forehead with a bandaged hand.

“Oh, ages and ages, baby. I have to have fun and games for a while before I really get started.” She stood and walked across the room toward him with a pronounced sway to her hips. “Does it bother you?” She ran her hands along Lyon's body. “I'll take a shower and get all squeaky clean … and then …”

“When did you get here?”

“This morning,” she said as her hands slipped under his shirt.

“That's true,” Rocco said from the doorway. He shook his head as he crossed the room to the bed and threw a blanket at Helen. “She's taken on half the Atlantic Fleet since this morning.”

The police cruiser was going due west with Rocco's usual high rate of speed when he turned to Lyon with a smile. “She had a great body,” he said. “Of course I'm trained not to notice such things, but just where would you be if I hadn't been along?”

“In trouble,” Lyon said.

“You knew it wasn't her all the time—why the damn trip down here? Or were you bent on seeing her in the buff?”

“No, just a loose end. Now we know; it's Graves without a doubt. It all fits, Rocco, every damn piece.”

“He's heard the news by now; he knows you're alive, and that we're after him. He's probably halfway to Brazil.”

“I don't think so,” Lyon said. “I think I know exactly where to find Jim Graves.”

There was a disquieting atmosphere about the closed industrial plant. Spotlights mounted on the corners of buildings illuminated large swatches of space, leaving slivers and corners in darkness. The chain link fence surrounding the property shone silver in the reflection of lights, while the front administration building was bathed in light from ground-mounted lamps. The hum of high-tension wires overhead implied a dormant power.

The gate guard called the night security captain, and he stood in the administration building doorway as Rocco pulled the cruiser into a parking space. Painfully, the two of them limped from the car and climbed the steps.

They followed the captain through the quiet corridors toward the security center. The room was dark except for the multi-faced glow of television monitors. The screened pictures flickered and changed as the mobile cameras, spotted throughout the plant, made their continuous sweeps.

“Are you sure he isn't in his office, or anywhere else in the administration building?”

“Positive, Chief. After you called, I had one of my men make a complete search of this building.”

“But he is here?” Lyon said.

“Nothing unusual about Mr. Graves coming in after second shift goes off. He often just walks through the place, sometimes even runs some quality control. What's going on here anyway?”

“We'll fill you in later,” Rocco said. “Let's find him first.” The large man sat at the console. “I understand you can see most of the plant from here with these gizmos.”

“Most, except for the ladies' lounge,” the captain said and laughed.

“Knock out the humor and show me how to work the damn things.”

The security captain bent over Rocco and showed him how each monitor had a dial for movement and focus. He explained that although the cameras were pre-set, they could be individually hand-operated to expand the viewing area.

They found Jim Graves after manipulating the fourth camera. “Can you focus for a close shot?” Lyon asked.

“Sure.” The captain turned a dial. Jim Graves was clearly in focus on the monitor. He was bent over a drafting table near a work console, hurriedly rolling blueprints and stuffing them into cardboard tubes. The yellow dial lights of the console cast an odd glow across his face.

“That's the automated plant,” Lyon said. “Where is it?”

“He's at the control panel of Building Three. Why do you suppose he went there?” the guard asked.

“I knew he wouldn't leave without his prints and plans,” Lyon said.

“Keep him in focus,” Rocco said and reached for a nearby telephone. “I'm having the gates sealed and calling in the city police.”

Lyon slipped out the rear door and hobbled down the corridor as fast as painful muscles allowed. It was a hundred yards to Building Three, and he grotesquely loped the distance, at one point falling to his knees as the muscles of his lower back gave out. Stumbling to his feet, he continued in cold anger.

Building Three was the largest in the entire factory complex. Many of the warehouses and subsidiary buildings fed material and parts into Three by conveyors, runways and loading docks. He remembered that this was the main assembly area, that pre-assembled parts, sub-contractual parts and hundreds of other increments necessary for final engine assembly were destined for final routing to Building Three.

The main entrance of the building was locked, and as Lyon rounded the corner of the building, away from the periphery of light, he stumbled over a crate and cried out in pain as he again broke his fall with injured hands.

The door through the right loading dock was slightly ajar and he slipped into the dim interior. His entry was into a supply area where parts bins stretched to the ceiling. Through the entrance onto the main floor he could see the dim interior of the main assembly area.

Work lights, high on side walls, spaced every twenty or thirty feet, cast small areas of light along the major walkways, while large machines and unimates loomed in the center darkness.

The perpendicular arms of the strange unimates loomed in unfamiliar shapes. Skeletal outlines of overhead conveyor belts broke the dim work light patterns into odd pentagonal shapes on the hard floor. His breath was coming in choking gasps, and Lyon stopped and leaned against a pillar.

Both in the board room and also in the entrance to the administration building large photographs of Building Three in full operation hung on display. Most of the pictures were taken from a high angle at the end of the building and showed the assembly line stretching several hundred yards. He closed his eyes momentarily to visualize the photographic details, placement of machinery and full interior structure of the building.

As he recalled, engine blocks started on the line to the rear of his present position. As the blocks moved slowly through the plant interior, they stopped for varying times at assembly stations along the way. At these points conveyors fed parts to the assembly area while automated machinery or workers performed the necessary functions.

The text below the pictures of Building Three pointed with pride to the extent of automation in the plant, that fewer workers were required than at any similar engine assembly plant in the world. That, in fact, one skilled man operating the console, with computer connections, could perform many of the plant's functions.

The television image in the security center showed Graves huddled over a bank of dials in a glass-enclosed booth. The control center—where was it? Crossing to the center of the floor at the main assembly area he climbed atop a work bench. The additional four feet of height allowed him to see over much of the looming machinery and material.

In a far distant corner, slightly raised off the assembly floor, he saw the glass operation center with the vague form of a man in its interior.

“That's you, isn't it, Wentworth?”

The voice echoed and reverberated throughout the large building. “I'm glad it's you, Wentworth, you son-of-a-bitch. Very glad it's you.”

The public address system must have had speakers every few feet to overcome the noise when the plant was in operation. Lyon climbed off the work bench and started up the aisle toward the distant control center.

In neatly aligned overhead banks, the full interior lights began to come on. As switch after switch was thrown, the building was lit in sections to daytime intensity.

The hum of power surrounded Lyon as the assembly line began to inch slowly forward. The room had come alive with pulsating machinery. Throughout the building, machines gathered speed and momentum—automatic welders began to beat a staccato, while conveyor belts carried parts uselessly to the line.

Lyon stopped a hundred yards from the control booth. Graves' outline was now quite clear as he stood before the large console, arms akimbo, watching the line with an unnatural patience. The distant man shrugged and sat in a chair before the dials as Lyon walked toward him.

A jungle of machinery moving in ways foreign to him surrounded him on all sides. The prey sat in his perch unperturbed, seemingly unconcerned, and turned to the dials that made the room alive to his touch.

A conveyor overhead whined as its speed increased.

Lyon threw himself quickly to the side and bounced off a vending machine as the steel block, released directly over the spot where he'd been standing, crashed to the floor.

“Missed you, Wentworth.” The voice laughed through two dozen speakers throughout the building.

A waist-high cart with six wheels scuttled down the aisle, narrowly missing the crumpled steel of the fallen engine block. It swiveled on two rear wheels and positioned itself a few yards in front of Lyon.

He waited until the last possible moment before throwing himself sideways. The cart crashed into the vending machine and crumpled the light metal of the machine. The automatic cart immediately began to reverse direction for another run at Lyon as the laughter crashed throughout the plant.

Ahead and to the right was a parts bay with a parked fork lift. Lyon ran toward the lift as overhead conveyors, with a series of large blocks suspended underneath, began to move forward, and the cart swiveled on its wheels to find a proper angle of attack.

The keys were in the fork lift. Lyon clambered on to the driver's seat and almost fell sideways as the delivery cart crashed into the side of the lift. The lift started on the first try. He backed it into the aisle and turned the wheel quickly, swiveling it into position.

The conveyor belt released a block directly over his head and the steel crashed onto the protective mesh at the top of the fork lift.

Lyon threw the small vehicle into gear as another car scuttled in his path and headed directly toward him. Raising the prongs of the lift slightly, he continued forward toward the cart.

The beveled front edges of the prongs dug into the small cart and brought it to a halt. Lyon reversed the cart, disengaged the prongs from the now useless automated vehicle, and threw the lift into forward.

The control booth was only yards to his front, the contorted face of Graves viewing him with a combination of alarm and hate.

Lyon swiveled the lift to the side of the aisle as parts and pieces of machinery crashed along his path. He raised the forks of the lift several feet and threw the small machine into its greatest acceleration.

In the instant before the forks penetrated the glass of the control booth, Graves raised his arms protectively and screamed. As the lift ground to a halt against the supporting structure of the booth, Lyon threw the lever, lowering the forks.

The crushed man in the booth's interior screamed and continued screaming as Lyon laid his head over the steering wheel and closed his eyes. The screaming changed in pitch until words were audible.

“Myself,” Graves yelled. “I'll run the whole thing myself. I don't need anyone … don't need anyone …”

Lyon crawled from the fork lift and fell to the floor, where his hands ground painfully into glass shards from the booth's shattered windows. He pulled himself over the edge of the booth toward the incoherent man. The forks of the lift had lowered across Graves' legs and hips, crushing bone and cartilage.