Lem’s palms were suddenly damp.
Strange . . . how the empty sockets of the head transfixed him as surely as if
they had contained wide, staring eyes.
In the hollow of his back, a single droplet of sweat traced the course of his
Spine. He was more scared than he had ever been—or had ever thought he could
be—but he did not want to be taken off the job for any reason. It was vitally
important to the very security of the nation and the safety of the public that
this emergency be handled right, and he knew no one was likely to perform as
well as he could. That was not just ego talking. Everyone said he Was the best,
and he knew they were right; he had a justifiable pride and no false modesty.
This was his case, and he would stay with it to the end.
His folks had raised him with an almost too-keen sense of duty and
responsibility. “A black man,” his father used to say, “has to do a job twice
as well as a white man in order to get any credit at all. That’s nothing to be
bitter about. Nothing worth protesting. It’s just a fact of life. Might as well
protest the weather turning cold in winter. Instead of protesting, the thing to
do is just face facts, work twice as hard, and you’ll get where you want to go
And you must succeed because you carry the flag for all your brothers.” As a
result of that upbringing, Lem was incapable of less than total, unhesitating
commitment to every assignment. He dreaded failure, rarely encountered it, but
could be thrown into a deep funk for weeks when the successful conclusion of a
case eluded him.
“Talk to you outside a minute?” Walt asked, moving to the open rear door of the
cabin.
Lem nodded. To Cliff, he said, “Stay here. Make sure nobody—pathologists,
photographer, uniformed cops, nobody—leaves before I’ve had a chance to talk to
them.”
“Yes, sir,” Cliff said. He headed quickly toward the front of the cabin to
inform everyone that they were temporarily quarantined—and to get away from the
eyeless head.
Lem followed Walt Gaines into the clearing behind the cabin. He noticed a metal
hod and firewood scattered over the ground, and paused to study those objects.
“We think it started out here,” Walt said. “Maybe Dalberg was getting wood for
the fireplace. Maybe something came out of those trees, so he threw the hod at
it and ran into the house.”
They stood in the bloody-orange late-afternoon sunlight, at the perimeter of the
trees, peering into the purple shadows and mysterious green depths of the
forest.
Lem was uneasy. He wondered if the escapee from Weatherby’s lab was nearby,
watching them.
“So what’s up?” Walt asked.
“Can’t say.”
“National security?”
“That’s right.”
The spruces and pines and sycamores rustled in the breeze, and he thought he
heard something moving furtively through the brush.
Imagination, of course. Nevertheless, Lem was glad that both he and Walt Gaines
were armed with reliable pistols in accessible shoulder holsters.
Walt said, “You can keep your lip zipped if you insist, but you can’t keep me
totally in the dark. I can figure out a few things for myself. I’m not stupid.”
“Never thought you were.”
“Tuesday morning, every damn police department in Orange and San Bernardino
counties gets an urgent request from your NSA asking us to be prepared to
cooperate in a manhunt, details to follow. Which puts us all on edge. We know
what you guys are responsible for—guarding defense research, keeping the
vodka-pissing Russians from stealing our secrets. And since Southern
California’s the home of half the defense contractors in the country, there’s
plenty to be stolen here.”
Lem kept his eyes on the woods, kept his mouth shut.
“So,” Walt continued, “we figure we’re going to be looking for a Russian agent
with something hot in his pockets, and we’re happy to have a chance to help kick
some ass for Uncle Sam. But by noon, instead of getting details, we get a
cancellation of the request. No manhunt after all. Everything’s under control,
your office tells us. Original alert was issued in error, you say.”