“What about me?” Benita asked. “Will they keep coming after me?”
Long silence. “We will try to protect you, dear Benita,” said Chiddy. “So long as you are in your home or at work this should be fairly easy. We could always find you, of course, you or any other individual, but it would take time, so keep us apprised of your whereabouts.”
Thanks a lot, she grumbled to herself. She reported to Chad; he thanked her, sounding irritated, though she felt it was irritation at the situation, not at her. She could visualize all those eager hunters, stocking up on ammunition and dehydrated food and buying tickets to … where? India? Brazil? Or would they stick mostly to the U.S? Chiddy and Vess hadn’t specifically mentioned the killings in the U.S. So far, nobody had publicly tied Oregon, New Mexico, and Florida to alien predation.
Law Enforcement—FRIDAY
The retaking of the Morningside Project from the dealers was considered completed on the Friday afternoon when the wagon and attendant patrol cars drove to Morningside, as they had each day for the past several weeks, but returned empty for the third consecutive day.
Sergeant McClellan got down from the passenger seat side of the cab and shook himself, settling his trousers into their customary sag and his face into an unaccustomed grin.
“Any?” asked the captain from the precinct steps.
“Not one,” replied the sergeant. “The Fourth Floor Women’s Circle baked a cake. We had coffee and muffins. The kids sang. It was a party.”
“You did a sweep inside every vacant apartment?”
“There’re only a few vacant ones, and they’re being rehabbed. This last two weeks, the place’s filled up. All the people that wanted to get out, they’ve stayed in. The place even looks better. Somebody donated paint and rollers, and the tenants are painting the halls themselves. A nursery donated some trees. The city’s fixed the elevators. Some teachers and some of the kids from over at the school came over. They gave us thank-you cards the kids made.”
“Thank you, ET’s,” breathed the captain. “What do you think? Have a patrol go by there a couple times a day, just to check?”
“I’d say that isn’t necessary.” McClellan eased himself up the steps and down the hall to his desk, the captain close behind. “The people there, they’ll call us if anything goes wrong. You know, we’re gonna have a new problem, Boss.”
“What’s that?” asked the captain, following along, beaming from ear to ear.
“I read last night the traffic into the States from Mexico is moving right along. All it takes is a touch of the causometer to let somebody through. No more searches for no reason, no more stops with no evidence. It’s working. So, we’re looking at a problem actually solved here. What’re we supposed to do now? No real drug busts for a week. Almost no burglaries for … what, six days? The drug gangs have disappeared. We’ve had no little kids caught carrying weapons. No shooting incidents, drive-by or school yard. Our problem’s going to be finding stuff to do.”
“We still got domestics,” snarled the captain, attempting severity. “We got murders. We got muggings. We got some nut up on Alta Vista trying to get little kids into his car to pet his weenie. It’s not coming up all roses. You haven’t died and gone to heaven yet, McClellan!”
McClellan shrugged. “Hey, let me gloat a little. Let us feel good. Tomorrow somebody’ll figure how to fool the causometer, we’ll be back where we started . . .”
“We are back where we started,” said the lieutenant, from the other side of the room where he’d been tied up on the phone. “We’ve got five people disappeared from the university, three male students, one coach, one woman student, all of them taken from the sports center up on Canoncito, twenty hundred block . . .”
“So? Send a car,” said the captain, looking puzzled.
The lieutenant came across the room to murmur into Riggles’s ear. The captain frowned, shook his head, then said, “McClellan, take Burton with you, go up there and find out what’s happening.”
“Something weird?” asked McClellan, accurately reading his boss’s expression.