for lab tests to pinpoint it. Weather’s been pretty warm lately, which makes a
difference in the rate of decomposition.”
Tuesday night . . . In the predawn hours of Tuesday morning, the breakout had
occurred at Banodyne. By Tuesday night, The Outsider could have traveled this
far.
Lem thought about that—and shivered.
“Cold?” Walt asked sarcastically.
Lem didn’t respond. They were friends, yes, and they were both officers of the
law, one local and one federal, but in this case they served opposing interests.
Walt’s job was to find the truth and bring it to the public, but Lem’s job was
to put a lid on the case and keep it clamped down tight.
“Sure stinks in here,” Cliff Soames said.
“You should’ve smelled it before we got the stiff in the bag,” Walt said.
“Ripe.”
“Not just . . . decomposition,” Cliff said.
“No,” Walt said, pointing here and there to stains that were not caused by
blood. “Urine and feces, too.”
“The victim’s?”
“Don’t think so,” Walt said.
“Done any preliminary tests of it?” Lem asked, trying not to sound worried.
“On-site microscopic exam?”
“Nope. We’ll take samples back to the lab. We think it belongs to whatever came
crashing through that window.”
Looking up from the body bag, Lem said, “You mean the man who killed Dalberg.”
“Wasn’t a man,” Walt said, “and I figure you know that.”
“Not a man?” Lem said.
“At least not a man like you or me.”
“Then what do you think it was?”
“Damned if I know,” Walt said, rubbing the back of his bristly head with one big
hand. “But judging from the body, the killer had sharp teeth, maybe claws, and a
nasty disposition. Does that sound like what you’re looking for?”
Lem could not be baited.
For a moment, no one spoke.
A fresh piny breeze came through the shattered window, blowing away some of the
noxious stench.
One of the lab men said, “Ah,” and plucked something from the rubble with his
tweezers.
Lem sighed wearily. This situation was no good. They would not find enough to
tell them what killed Dalberg, though they would gather sufficient evidence to
make them curious as hell. However, this was a matter of national defense, in
which no civilian would be wise to indulge his curiosity. Lem was going to have
to put a stop to their investigation. He hoped he could intervene without
angering Walt. It would be a real test of their friendship.
Suddenly, staring at the body bag, Lem realized something was wrong with the
shape of the corpse. He said, “The head isn’t here.”
“You feds don’t miss a trick, do you?” Walt said.
“He was decapitated?” Cliff Soames asked uneasily.
“This way,” Walt said, leading them into the second room.
It was a large—if primitive—kitchen with a hand pump in the sink and an
old-fashioned wood-burning stove.
Except for the head, there were no signs of violence in the kitchen. Of course,
the head was bad enough. It was in the center of the table. On a plate.
“Jesus,” Cliff said softly.
When they had entered the room, a police photographer had been taking shots of
the head from various angles. He was not finished, but he stepped back to give
them a better view.
The dead man’s eyes were missing, torn out. The empty sockets seemed as deep as
wells.
Cliff Soames had turned so white that, by contrast, his freckles burned on his
skin as if they were flecks of fire.
Lem felt sick, not merely because of what had happened to Wes Dalberg but
because of all the deaths yet to come. He was proud of both his management and
investigatory skills, and he knew he could handle this case better than anyone
else. But he was also a hardheaded pragmatist, incapable of underestimating the
enemy or of pretending there would be a quick ending to this nightmare. He would
need time and patience and luck to track down the killer, and meanwhile more
bodies would pile up.
The head had not been cut off the dead man. It was not as neat as that. It
appeared to have been clawed and chewed and wrenched off.