Watchers (54 page)
Travis shook his head. “No. We won’t risk it.”
“What have you in mind to do?” Garrison asked.
“Run,” Travis said. “Stay on the move.”
“And what will that accomplish?”
“It’ll keep Einstein free.”
The dog woofed in agreement.
“Free—but for how long?” Garrison asked.
Travis got up and paced, too agitated to sit still any longer. “They won’t stop looking,” he admitted. “Not for a few years.”
“Not ever,” the attorney said.
“All right, it’s going to be tough, but it’s the only thing we can do. Damned if we’ll let them have him. He has a dread of the lab. Besides, he more or less brought me back to life—”
“And he saved me from Streck,” Nora said.
“He brought us together,” Travis said.
“Changed our lives.”
“Radically changed us. Now he’s as much a part of us as our own child would be,” Travis said. He felt a lump of emotion in his throat when he met the dog’s grateful gaze. “We fight for him, just as he’d fight for us. We’re family. We live together . . . or we die together.”
Stroking the retriever, Garrison said, “It won’t only be the people from the lab looking for you. And not only the police.”
“The other thing,” Travis said, nodding.
Einstein shivered.
“There, there, easy now,” Garrison said reassuringly, patting the dog. To Travis, he said, “What do you think the creature is? I’ve heard your description of it, but that doesn’t help much.”
“Whatever it is,” Travis said, “God didn’t make it. Men made it. Which means it has to be a product of recombinant-DNA research of some kind. God knows why. God knows what they thought they were doing, why they wanted to build something like that. But they did.”
“And it seems to have an uncanny ability to track you.”
“To track Einstein,” Nora said.
“So we’ll keep moving,” Travis said. “And we’ll go a long way.”
“That’ll require money, but the banks don’t open for more than twelve hours,” Garrison said. “If you’re going to run, something tells me you’ve got to head out tonight.”
“Here’s where we could use your help,” Travis told him.
Nora opened her purse and withdrew two checkbooks, Travis’s and her own. “Garrison, what we’d like to do is write a check on Travis’s account and one on mine, payable to you. He’s only got three thousand in his checking, but he has a large savings account at the same bank, and they’re authorized to transfer funds to prevent overdrawing. My account’s the same way. If we give you one of Travis’s checks for twenty thousand—backdated so it appears to’ve been written before all this trouble—and one of mine for twenty, you could deposit them into your account. As soon as they clear, you’d buy eight cashier’s checks for five thousand apiece and send them to us.”
Travis said, “The police will want me for questioning, but they’ll know I didn’t kill Ted Hockney because no
man
could’ve torn him apart like that. So they won’t put a lock on my accounts.”
man
could’ve torn him apart like that. So they won’t put a lock on my accounts.”
“If federal agencies are behind the research that produced Einstein and this creature,” Garrison said, “then they’ll be hot to get their hands on you, and
they
might freeze your accounts.”
they
might freeze your accounts.”
“Maybe. But probably not right away. You’re in the same town, so your bank should clear my check by Monday at the latest.”
“What’ll you do for funds in the meantime, while you’re waiting for me to send you the forty thousand?”
“We’ve got some cash and traveler’s checks left over from the honeymoon,” Nora said.
“And my credit cards,” Travis added.
“They can track you by credit cards and traveler’s checks.”
“I know,” Travis said. “So I’ll use them in a town where we don’t intend to stay, and we’ll scoot out fast as we can.”
“When I’ve purchased the cashier’s checks for forty thousand, where do I send them?”
“We’ll be in touch by phone,” Travis said, returning to the couch and sitting at Nora’s side. “We’ll work something out.”
“And the rest of your assets—and Nora’s?”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Nora said.
Garrison frowned. “Before you leave here, Travis, you can sign a letter giving me the right to represent you in any legal matters that may arise. If anyone does try to freeze your assets, or Nora’s, I can beat them off if at all possible—though I’ll keep a low profile until they connect me with you.”
“Nora’s funds are probably safe for a while. She and I haven’t told anyone but you about the marriage. The neighbors will tell the police I left in the company of a woman, but they won’t know who she is. Have you told anyone about us?”
“Just my secretary, Mrs. Ashcroft. But she’s not a gossip.”
“All right, then,” Travis said. “I don’t think the authorities will find out about the marriage license, so they might take quite a while to come up with Nora’s name. But when they do, they’ll discover you’re her attorney. If they monitor my accounts for canceled checks in the hope of learning where I’ve gone, they’ll know about the twenty thousand I paid to you, and they’ll come looking for you—”
“That doesn’t give me the slightest pause,” Garrison said.
“Maybe not,” Travis said. “But as soon as they connect me to Nora and both of us to you, they’ll be watching you closely. As soon as that happens . . . then the next time we call, you’ll have to tell us at once, so we can hang up and break off all contact with you.”
“I understand perfectly,” the attorney said.
“Garrison,” Nora said, “you don’t have to involve yourself in this. We’re really asking too much of you.”
“Listen, my dear, I’m almost seventy-one. I still enjoy my law practice, and I still go sailing . . . but in truth I find life a bit on the dull side these days. This affair is just what I need to get my ancient blood flowing faster. Besides, I do believe you have an obligation to help keep Einstein free, not just for the reasons you mentioned but because . . . mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we’ve come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God. In this case, justice and mercy require that Einstein remain free.”
Einstein raised his head from the attorney’s lap, gazed up admiringly, then nuzzled his cold nose under Garrison’s chin.
In the three-car garage, Garrison kept a new black Mercedes 560 SEL, an older white Mercedes 500 SEL with pale-blue interior, and a green Jeep that he used primarily to drive down to the marina, where he kept his boat.
“The white one used to belong to Francine, my wife,” the attorney said as he led them to the car. “I don’t use it much anymore, but I keep it in working order, and I drive it often enough to prevent the tires from disintegrating. I should have gotten rid of it when Franny died. It was her car, after all. But . . . she loved it so, her flashy white Mercedes, and I can remember the way she looked when she was behind the wheel . . . I’d like you to take it.”
“A sixty-thousand-dollar getaway car?” Travis said, sliding one hand along the polished hood. “That’s going on the run in style.”
“No one will be looking for it,” Garrison said. “Even if they do eventually connect me with you two, they won’t know I’ve given you one of my cars.”
“We can’t accept something this expensive,” Nora said.
“Call it a loan,” the attorney told her. “When you’re finished with it, when you’ve gotten another car, just park this one somewhere—a bus terminal, an airport—and give me a call to tell me where it is. I can send someone to collect it.”
Einstein put his forepaws on the driver’s door of the Mercedes and peered into the car through the side window. He glanced at Travis and Nora and woofed as if to say he thought they would be foolish if they turned down such an offer.
With Travis driving, they left Garrison Dilworth’s house at ten-fifteen Wednesday night and took Route 101 north. By twelve-thirty they passed through San Luis Obispo, went by Paso Robles at one o’clock in the morning. They stopped for gasoline at a self-service station at two o’clock, an hour south of Salinas.
Nora felt useless. She was not even able to spell Travis at the wheel because she did not know how to drive. To some extent, that was Violet Devon’s fault, not Nora’s, just one more result of a lifetime of seclusion and oppression; nonetheless; she felt utterly useless and was displeased with herself. But she was not going to remain helpless the rest of her life. Damn it, no. She was going to learn to drive and to handle firearms. Travis could teach her both skills. Given his background, he could also instruct her in the martial arts, judo or karate. He was a good teacher. He had certainly done a splendid job of teaching her the art of lovemaking. That thought made her smile, and slowly her highly self-critical mood abated.
For the next two and a half hours, as they drove north to Salinas and then on to San Jose, Nora dozed fitfully. When not sleeping, she took comfort in the empty miles they were putting behind them. On both sides of the highway, vast stretches of farmland seemed to roll on to infinity under the frost-pale light of the moon. When the moon set, they drove long stretches in unrelieved darkness before spotting an occasional light at a farm or a cluster of roadside businesses.
The yellow-eyed thing had tracked Einstein from the Santa Ana foothills in Orange County to Santa Barbara—a distance of more than one hundred and twenty-five air miles, Travis had said, and probably close to three hundred miles on foot in the wilds—in three months. Not a fast pace. So if they went three hundred air miles north from Santa Barbara before finding a place to hole up in the San Francisco Bay area, maybe the stalker would not reach them for seven or eight months. Maybe it would never reach them. Over how great a distance could it sniff out Einstein? Surely, there were limits to its uncanny ability to track the dog. Surely.
At eleven o’clock Thursday morning, Lemuel Johnson stood in the master bedroom of the small house that Travis Cornell had rented in Santa Barbara. The dresser mirror had been smashed. The rest of the room had been trashed as well, as if The Outsider had been driven into a jealous rage upon seeing that the dog lived in domestic comfort while it was forced to roam the wildlands and live in comparatively primitive conditions.
In the debris that covered the floor, Lem found four silver-framed photographs that had probably stood on the dresser or nightstands. The first was of Cornell and an attractive blonde. By now Lem had learned enough about Cornell to know that the blonde at his side must be his late wife, Paula. Another photo, a black-and-white shot of a man and woman, was old enough that Lem guessed the people smiling at the camera were Cornell’s parents. The third was of a young boy, about eleven or twelve, also black-and-white, also old, which might have been a shot of Travis Cornell himself but which was more likely a picture of the brother who had died young.
The last of the four photos was of ten soldiers grouped on what appeared to be the wooden steps in front of a barracks, grinning at the camera. One of the ten was Travis Cornell. And on a couple of their uniforms, Lem noticed the distinctive patch of Delta Force, the elite antiterrorist corps.
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