fool.
Looking around at the Santa Barbara yacht harbor, Lem tried to relax, for he
knew he needed to be calm and fresh if he was to outthink the old attorney. The
hundreds of pleasure boats at the docks, sails furled or packed away, bobbed
gently on the rolling tide, and other boats with unfurled sails glided Serenely
out toward the open sea, and people in bathing suits were sunning
on the decks or having early cocktails, and the gulls darted like stitching
needles across the blue and white quilt of the sky, and people were fishing from
the stone breakwater, and the scene was achingly picturesque, but it was also an
image of leisure, great and calculated leisure, with which Lem Johnson could not
identify. To Lem, too much leisure was a dangerous distraction from the cold,
hard realities of life, from the competitive world, and any leisure activity
that lasted longer than a few hours made him nervous and anxious to get back to
work. Here was leisure measured in days, in weeks; here, in these expensive and
lovingly crafted boats, was leisure measured in month long sailing excursions up
and down the coast, so much leisure that it made Lern break into a sweat, made
him want to scream.
He had The Outsider to worry about as well. There had been no sign of it since
the day Travis Cornell had shot at it in his rented house, back at the end of
August. Three months ago. What had the thing been doing in those three months?
Where had it been hiding? Was it still after the dog? Was it dead?
Maybe, out in the wilds, it had been bitten by a rattlesnake, or maybe it had
fallen off a cliff.
God, Lem thought, let it be dead, please, give me that much of a break. Let it
be dead.
But he knew The Outsider was not dead because that would be too easy. Nothing in
life was that easy. The damn thing was out there, stalking the dog. It had
probably suppressed the urge to kill people it encountered because it knew each
murder drew Lem and his men closer to it, and it did not want to be found before
it had killed the dog. When the beast had torn the dog and the Cornells to
bloody pieces, then it would once again begin to vent its rage on the population
at large, and every death would hang heavily on Lem Johnson’s conscience.
Meanwhile, the investigation into the murders of the Banodyne scientists was
dead in the water. In fact, that second NSA task force had been dismantled.
Obviously, the Soviets had hired outsiders for those hits, and there was no way
to find out whom they had brought in.
A deeply tanned guy in white shorts and Top-Siders passed Lem and said,
“Beautiful day!”
“Like hell,” Lem said.
5
The day after Thanksgiving, Travis walked into the kitchen to get a glass of
milk and saw Einstein having a sneezing fit, but he did not think much of it.
Nora, even quicker than Travis to worry about the retriever’s welfare, was also
unconcerned. In California, the pollen count peaks in spring and autumn;
however, because the climate permits a twelve-month cycle of flowers, no season
is pollen-free. Living in the woods, the situation was exacerbated.
That night, Travis was awakened by a sound he could not identify. Instantly
alert, every trace of sleep banished, he sat up in the dark and reached for the
shotgun on the floor beside the bed. Holding the Mossberg, he listened for the
noise, and in a minute or so it came again: in the second-floor hallway.
He eased out of bed without waking Nora and went cautiously to the doorway. The
hail, like most places in the house, was equipped with a low-wattage
night-light, and in the pale glow Travis saw that the noise came from the dog.
Einstein was standing near the head of the stairs, coughing and shaking his
head.
Travis went to him, and the retriever looked up. “You okay?”
A quick wag of the tale: Yes.
He stooped and ruffled the dog’s coat. “You sure?”