‘Yes.’
‘We didn’t know until he was dead, for God’s sake! You’re withholding information from a police investigation, Haldane, and it doesn’t matter a rat’s ass that you’re a cop!’
‘What happened to Koliknikov?’
Seames told him about the gaudy public execution in the Vegas casino. ‘It was like a poltergeist,’ the agent repeated. ‘Something unseen. An unknown, unimaginable power that reached into that casino and beat Koliknikov to death in front of hundreds of witnesses! Now there’s no longer any doubt that Hoffritz and Dylan McCaffrey were working on something with serious defense applications, and we’re goddamned determined to know what it was.’
‘You’ve got his papers, the logbooks and files from the house in Studio City—’
‘We had them,’ Seames said. ‘But whatever reached into that casino and wasted Koliknikov also reached into the evidence files in this case and set fire to all of McCaffrey’s papers—’
Astonished, Dan said, ‘What? When was this?’
‘Last night. Spontaneous fucking combustion,’ Seames said.
Obviously Seames was teetering on the edge of blind rage, for a federal agent simply did not shout the F-word at the top of his voice in a public place. Such behavior wasn’t good for the image, and to the feds, their image was as important as their work.
‘You said eight,’ Dan reminded him. ‘Eight dead. Who else besides Koliknikov?’
‘Howard Renseveer was found dead in his ski chalet this morning, up in Mammoth. I guess you know about Renseveer too.’
‘No,’ Dan lied, afraid that the truth would so enrage Seames that he would put Dan under arrest. ‘Harold Renseveer?’
‘Howard,’ Seames corrected in a sarcastic tone that indicated he was still half convinced that Dan knew the name well. ‘Another associate of Willy Hoffritz and Dylan McCaffrey. Evidently he was hiding up there. People in another chalet, farther down the mountain, heard screaming during the night, called the sheriff. They found a mess when they got there. And there was another man with Renseveer. Sheldon Tolbeck.’
‘Tolbeck? Who’s he?’ Dan asked, playing dumb in the name of self-preservation.
‘Another research psychologist who was involved with Hoffritz and McCaffrey. Indications are that Tolbeck was in the cabin when this thing … this power, whatever it is, showed up and started to bash Renseveer’s brains in. Tolbeck ran into the woods. He hasn’t been found yet. He probably never will be, and if he is … well, the odds are pretty damned high that the best we can hope for is that he froze to death.’
This was bad. Terrible. The worst.
Dan had known that time was running out, but he hadn’t known that it was pouring away like floodwater through the broken breast of a damn. He had thought that at least five of the conspirators from the gray room remained to be disposed of before It would turn its attention to Melanie. He had figured those executions would require another day or two and, long before the last of the conspirators had been destroyed, he would have confirmed his suspicions about the case and would have found a way to bring the slaughter to an end in time to save Melanie. He’d thought he might even be in time to save one or more of those manipulative and amoral men, although they didn’t deserve to be saved. But suddenly his chances of saving anyone were diminished: Three more were gone. As far as he knew, two conspirators remained: Albert Uhlander, the author; and Palmer Boothe. As soon as they were terminated, It would turn to Melanie with a special rage. It would tear her apart. It would hammer her head to bits, hammer the last glimmer of life out of her brain before finally releasing her. Only Boothe and Uhlander stood between the girl and death. And even now, either the publisher or the author — or both — might be in the merciless grip of their invisible but powerful adversary.
Dan turned away from Seames, jerked open the door, and plunged out into the parking lot, where a cold wind and a stinging rain and an early fog were industriously putting the lie to the standard postcard image of Southern California. He sloshed through several puddles, getting water in his shoes.