WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

arrange for taps to be put on those as well; obtain telephone-company records of

all long-distance calls made from Dilworth’s home and office phones; bring in

extra men from the Los Angeles office to staff an around-the-clock surveillance

of Dilworth, starting within three hours.

While Cliff was attending to those things, Lem strolled around the boat docks in

the harbor, hoping the sounds of the sea and the calming sight of rolling water

would help clear his mind and focus his thoughts on his problems. God knew, he

needed desperately to get focused. Over six months had passed since the dog and

The Outsider had escaped from Banodyne, and Lem had lost almost fifteen pounds

in the pursuit. He had not slept well in months, had little interest in food,

and even his sex life had suffered.

There’s such a thing as trying too hard, he told himself. It causes constipation

of the mind.

But such admonishments did no good. He was still as blocked as a pipe full of

concrete.

For three months, since they found Cornell’s Airstream in the school parking lot

the day after Hockney’s murder, Lem had known that Cornell and the woman had

been returning, on that August night, from a trip to Vegas, Tahoe, and Monterey.

Nightclub table cards from Vegas, hotel stationery, matchbooks, and gasoline

credit-card receipts had been found in the trailer and pickup truck, pinpointing

every stop of their itinerary. He had not known

the woman’s identity, yet he had assumed she was a girlfriend, nothing more, but

of course he should never have assumed any such thing. Only a few days ago, when

one of his own agents went to Vegas to marry, Lem had finally realized that

Cornell and the woman could have gone to Vegas for that same purpose. Suddenly

their trip had looked like a honeymoon. Within hours, he confirmed that Cornell

had, in fact, been married in Clark County, Nevada, on August 11, to Nora Devon

of Santa Barbara.

Seeking the woman, he discovered that her house had been sold six weeks ago,

after she’d vanished with Cornell. Looking into the sale, he found she had been

represented by her attorney, Garrison Dilworth.

By freezing Cornell’s assets, Lem thought he had made it harder for the man to

continue a fugitive existence, but now he discovered that Dilworth had helped

slip twenty thousand out of Cornell’s bank and that all of the proceeds from the

sale of the woman’s house had been transferred to her somehow. Furthermore,

through Dilworth, she had closed out her local bank accounts four weeks ago, and

that money also was in her hands. She and her husband and the dog might now have

sufficient resources to remain in hiding for years.

Standing on the dock, Lem stared at the sun-spangled sea, which slapped

rhythmically against the pilings. The motion nauseated him.

He looked up at the soaring, cawing seagulls. Instead of being calmed by their

graceful flight, he grew edgy.

Garrison Dilworth was intelligent, clever, a born fighter. Now that the link had

been made between him and the Cornells, the attorney promised to take the NSA to

court to unfreeze Travis’s assets. “You’ve filed no charges against the man,”

Dilworth had said. “What toadying judge would grant the power to freeze his

accounts? Your manipulation of the legal system to hamper an innocent citizen is

unconscionable.”

Lem could have filed charges against Travis and Nora Cornell for the violation

of all sorts of laws designed to preserve the national security, and by doing so

he’d have made it impossible for Dilworth to continue lending assistance to the

fugitives. But filing charges meant attracting media attention. Then the

harebrained story about Cornell’s pet panther—and perhaps the NSA’s entire

cover-up—would come down like a paper house in a thunderstorm.

His only hope was that Dilworth would try to get in touch with the Cornells to

tell them that his association with them had been at last uncovered and that

contact between them would have to be far more circumspect in the future. Then,

with luck, Lem would pinpoint the Cornells through their telephone number. He

did not have much hope of everything working out that easily. Dilworth was no

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