The Chimera Secret (12 page)

Sally led them down a hall to the rear of the home and a series of doors, all shut. Only the last one, to the bathroom, was open.

‘That one,’ she said, pointing to one of the doors. ‘I’ll wait for you out here.’

Ethan nodded and took the lead. He opened the door and stepped inside with Lopez behind him.

The room was dark, thin curtains glowing with the sunlight from outside. The room smelled stale, devoid of fresh air. The walls were black, painted roughly by hand with a broad brush that had
left visible strokes. Randy had clearly decided to redecorate, the gloomy walls and worn carpet giving the room a neglected air.

‘Jeez,’ Lopez whispered, ‘what does this remind you of?’

The black walls were covered with images of UFOs, sea serpents, posters of movies like
Independence Day
and
Star Trek.
Plastic models of weird alien creatures adorned hastily
erected shelves.

‘It’s Fox Mulder’s holiday home,’ Ethan replied softly, not wanting Sally MacCarthy to hear him. ‘Randy got himself a slice of science-fiction city.’

Lopez moved across the room to the wall opposite the bed, where a computer sat atop a table cluttered with headphones, discarded mugs and potato chip packets. She reached out and turned the
machine on, the hard drive whirring into life. Within moments a password request appeared.

Lopez walked to the door and peeked out at Sally.

‘Do you know the password to your son’s computer, ma’am?’

Sally nodded as a glimmer of a smile touched her lips.

‘Randy liked to think that he was very careful covering his tracks, but he always forgot that he was my boy and that I knew him too well. His password was
RandyLucPicard
.’

Lopez smiled. ‘A wise choice.’

Ethan tapped the name into the password bar, and the screen changed to an image of Scott Bakula and Jolene Blalock in their full Starfleet regalia. Surrounding the screen’s wallpaper were
dozens of files and programs.

‘This could take a while,’ Lopez said as she scanned the files over Ethan’s shoulder.

‘We’re not exactly in any hurry,’ Ethan pointed out. Fact was, this was pretty much the end of the road as far as any investigation they could make. The only remaining avenue
after Randy MacCarthy was an attempt to locate the remains of Cletus, and Ethan had serious doubts that they would find anything larger than the scattered bones of the unfortunate hunter.

‘What’s that?’

Lopez pointed at a file folder entitled, ‘Research’.

Ethan double-clicked on the folder, and a window opened with dozens of documents all labeled by date and time. The earliest went back at least four years. Ethan scanned the scrupulously named
documents, and then glanced around at the room. Under the bed were shoved old clothes and discarded games consoles, while little pieces of junk littered every available surface. Randy had not been
an organized sort of person, yet here on his computer was evidence of a long and systematic project of some kind.

Ethan clicked on one of the documents, dated two years previously.

An image flicked up in a new window, a high-resolution shot of a muddy riverbed or creek, and in the center of the shot a huge footprint. A ruler placed alongside the print showed a length of
some fifteen inches.

‘That’s like the cast we saw in Chicago,’ Lopez said.

‘A little smaller, but otherwise identical,’ Ethan agreed.

The possibility that Randy MacCarthy was some kind of fantasist had not escaped Ethan’s awareness. The kid had clearly been a nerdy recluse, dreaming of science-fiction worlds while in
reality he spent his days in self-imposed incarceration in a darkened room, locked away from the world outside. It would not have taken much for his imagination to overcome his need for reality,
and that would naturally have left a need for the impossible to be made possible. Fakery was almost exclusively the reserve of con men and attention seekers, and Randy fit the second category like
a glove.

Ethan zoomed in on the image and scanned the very edge of the prints.

‘Dermatoglyphs.’ Lopez spotted the faint lines in the soft mud. ‘Hard to fake.’

‘Randy had time on his hands,’ Ethan shrugged. ‘An attention seeker will go to great lengths to achieve perfection in something like this.’

Ethan began opening more of the files, and each held another image of a huge footprint compressed into soft mud, sand or even gravel. Any of them could have been faked, if not by Randy then by
somebody else: maybe even local kids who knew of Randy’s obsessions and who silently taunted him from afar with their pranks.

Ethan clicked on another image, this one showing a trail of prints crossing a creek and heading off into deep forests beyond. He was about to close it when his finger froze on the mouse and he
stared at the photograph.

Beside him, Lopez peered at the image.

‘That one’s got scenery in it,’ she observed.

The photograph had been taken to show the trail of prints, and in doing so had caught the horizon line and soaring mountains beyond that dominated the sky in a row of jagged peaks. Ethan
frowned, and turned to Lopez.

‘Where’d you think this was taken?’

The answer came from behind them.

‘That’s the Pioneer mountain range,’ Sally said. ‘I’d know that skyline anywhere.’

She walked over to join them, her arms folded protectively around her and her gaze fixed rigidly to the computer monitor’s screen, as though she didn’t want to look at the rest of
the room around her.

‘How’d you know?’ Lopez asked.

‘Cletus loved it down that way,’ she replied. ‘I recognize that mountain: Pyramid Peak. It’s near Fox Creek.’

Fox Creek was where Jesse alleged that he and his brother had been attacked, and Gavin Coltz killed. Ethan scanned the image one last time as a new train of thought formed in his mind.

‘Randy was a recluse,’ he said, turning to Sally. ‘You said he didn’t get out much.’

‘He wasn’t a woodsman like his father and brothers,’ Sally replied.

‘Then who took this photograph?’

Sally looked at the image for a moment and seemed momentarily surprised.

‘I hadn’t seen these pictures before on Randy’s computer.’

‘But you knew his passcode,’ Lopez said.

Sally sighed and nodded.

‘I worried about Randy, not gettin’ out and all. It wasn’t healthy, him stayin’ in his room all hours of the day and night. I worried about what he might be getting up
to, so I . . .’

Sally broke off, and Ethan offered her a reassuring grin.

‘Parental concern isn’t something to be ashamed of,’ he said. ‘You were looking out for him is all.’

‘I was spyin’ on him,’ Sally protested, but her regret faded in the wake of a smile that briefly lit her features. ‘But I never found anything more incriminating than
friends he’d chat to from other countries and science-fiction fans forums that he subscribed to. And those files, his research.’

‘You ever ask him why he had these images on his computer?’ Lopez asked.

‘Couldn’t,’ Sally confessed. ‘I’d have had to tell him I was watchin’ on him. I couldn’t do that.’

Ethan looked at Lopez.

‘Randy didn’t take those photographs. His brother Cletus must have shot them while he was out in the forests.’

Lopez raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? Maybe Randy went wanderin’ now and again.’

‘Never,’ Sally said. ‘He’d have gotten lost before he’d set foot out of Riggins. The Pioneer range is at least twenty miles drive from here, most of it off-road,
and Randy didn’t get his license yet.’ She looked at Ethan. ‘You think that they were working on something together?’

‘I’m hoping so,’ Ethan replied. ‘We’ll need to download these files so that we have a copy. We might find something else on them that could help us. Is there
anybody else we could talk to who might be able to help?’

‘You could try Olivia, Cletus’s wife.’ Sally’s face fell again. ‘Widow.’

Nobody knew much about agents working for the Central Intelligence Agency. They thought that they did, their supposed knowledge provided by a wealth of television dramas
depicting elaborate underground facilities with satellite links and hotlines to the White House and beyond.

Mr. Wilson knew better.

The nondescript dark-blue Cadillac Catera in which he drove ensured that he drew absolutely no attention to himself whatsoever. The windows were lightly tinted, just enough to shield his face
from traffic cameras and casual observers. Virginia plates, a child-seat in the back and a Virginia Cavaliers sticker in the rear window completed the illusion that it was a family car. He pulled
into the sidewalk near the corner of 4th and Independence, opposite a Presbyterian church. His close proximity to the building allowed him to exit and be inside in the shortest amount of time. Mr.
Wilson liked to observe the world around him without himself being observed. Where possible he traveled at night, a shadow flitting like a dangerous thought from one pool of darkness to the next.
Today, however, was a special day.

Mr. Wilson climbed out of the car and strode across to the church. A handful of anonymous pedestrians on the sidewalk parted either side of him like chaffs of wheat gusted by a passing tornado.
Whether by instinct or knowledge, people had avoided Mr. Wilson for as long as he could remember, as though somehow they sensed the undiluted violence veiled behind his unassuming exterior.

He reached the church, where on the north side a narrow iron gate led to a concealed path hidden between the church walls and rows of trees and bushes lining the sidewalk. Wilson vaulted lithely
over the gate, into the shade of the trees and out of sight from the road.

Wilson walked only a few paces along the path before a man emerged ahead from where he had been leaning unobtrusively behind the church’s ornate brickwork. Wilson stood in front of him
and, unlike the pedestrians before, he saw no signs of intimidation in the man’s eyes as he removed a pair of expensive Ray-Bans.

‘You were able to get out without alerting suspicion?’ Wilson asked.

‘It’s not a problem,’ came the reply. ‘They work flexible hours in there. It’s like a holiday.’

Wilson did not smile. The agent before him was extremely capable and used to operating in far harsher and more dangerous climes than the center of the district.

‘Our program has been stepped up,’ he announced. ‘Collateral is no longer an obstacle.’ Wilson hesitated, and then added: ‘Within reason.’

‘None of the staff is a problem,’ the agent replied. ‘Only one is doing any real digging, Natalie Warner. I’m not sure what she’s after but it’s beyond her
remit.’

‘Keep a sharp eye on her,’ Wilson ordered him. ‘If she becomes an issue, ensure that she is removed from play.’

‘Time-scale?’

‘The problem at hand will be resolved entirely within twenty-four hours, probably less. All you are required to do is ensure that the GAO does not collate enough evidence to warrant
Congressional intervention in CIA programs. If they should do so, then you are to prevent that information from reaching either the committee or the inspector general.’

The man nodded. ‘Where will you be?’

‘Here in the district. I’ll maintain a watch on the key figures personally. If any should show signs of making a case against the agency, then we will make every effort to prevent
them from doing so.’

The man raised an eyebrow.

‘That might be easy out here on the street, but taking down a Congressional aide in the accountability office is another matter entirely. It will be difficult to maintain cover.’

‘Use your imagination,’ Wilson replied. ‘As soon as our task is complete you will be extracted and placed far from any inconvenient inquiries or investigations.’

‘Fine,’ the agent replied. ‘I’ll keep the office covered. If anyone leaves, I’ll inform you immediately.’

Olivia MacCarthy was a bulky, businesslike woman with a florid, round face and brown hair that hung in thick tresses across her shoulders. Her dark eyes squinted at Ethan and
Lopez as though they had landed outside her creaking homestead from another planet.

‘Have the both of you lost your minds?’

Lopez took the photograph that Olivia shoved back in her direction.

‘This is where the evidence has led us,’ Ethan said. ‘Crazy as it sounds, we think that Cletus and his brother Jesse were attacked by something in the woods.’

Olivia’s face screwed up on itself.

‘I ain’t heard such rubbish since years gone by. That boy Randy lived in a world all of his own. You look hard enough you could probably find evidence that Cleet and Jesse were
abducted by aliens.’

‘That’s probably true, ma’am,’ Ethan replied, ‘but right now your brother-in-law is facing a triple-murder charge on his brothers and a park ranger and we
can’t ignore that.’ Olivia’s haughty demeanour faltered slightly and Ethan pressed his advantage. ‘It was Jesse who said they were attacked by something, ma’am.
We’re just trying to find out what.’

Olivia relented, and stepped back as she opened the porch door for them to enter.

It appeared that Olivia and Cletus MacCarthy had lived a Spartan lifestyle. The house was more like a cabin, set amid deep forest near the Salmon River. The smell of wood smoke and dried meat
tainted the air, but somehow it seemed cleaner than the clinical whiff of air conditioning.

Coals smoldered in a fireplace in the main room, still hot enough to warm the cabin to a comfortable temperature despite the chill air outside. Ethan realized that there was no mains
electricity, just a diesel generator he’d glimpsed outside in the yard.

‘You’re off the grid?’ Lopez asked Olivia, noticing the same thing.

‘Don’t got no need for the grid,’ Olivia replied. ‘The land provides most of what we need, if you know where to look.’ She smiled faintly. ‘Cleet taught me
that.’

‘How often did Cletus go hunting?’ Lopez asked her.

‘Quicker to ask when he
wasn’t
hunting,’ Olivia replied. ‘He was either acting as a tour guide in the summer months or hunting for game in the winter. I’d
reckon him to be out five or six days a week come rain or shine.’