Walt’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
“Listen, research money is always damn tight, and there’s fierce competition for
every major and minor grant, so no one’s going to be able to afford to
experiment with something that has no use. Get me? Now, because I’m involved
here, you know this has to be a matter of national defense, which would mean
Banodyne was squandering Pentagon money to make a carnival freak.”
“The words ‘squander’ and ‘Pentagon’ have sometimes been used in the Same
sentence,” Walt said drily.
“Be real, Walt. It’s one thing for the Pentagon to let some of its contractors
Waste money in the production of a needed weapons system. But it’s altogether
another thing for them to knowingly hand out funds for experiments with no
defense potential. The system is sometimes inefficient, sometimes even corrupt,
but it’s never outright stupid. Anyway, I’ll say it one more time: This
entire conversation is pointless because this has nothing to do with Banodyne.”
Walt stared in at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Jesus, Lem, you’re
good. I know you’ve got to be lying to me, but I half-think you’re telling the
truth.”
“I am telling the truth.”
“You’re good. So tell me . . . what about Weatherby, Yarbeck, and the others?
Got their killer yet?”
“No.” In fact, the man Lem had put in charge of the case had reported that it
appeared as if the Soviets had used a killer outside of their own agencies and
perhaps outside of the political world entirely. The investigation seemed
stymied. But all he said to Walt was, “No.”
Walt started to straighten up and close the car door, then leaned down and in
again. “One more thing. You notice it seems to have a meaningful destination?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“It’s been moving steadily north or north-northwest ever since it broke out of
Banodyne,” Walt said.
“It didn’t break out of Banodyne, damn it.”
“From Banodyne to Holy Jim Canyon, from there to Irvine Park, and from there to
the Keeshan house tonight. Steadily north or north-northwest. I suppose you know
what that might mean, where it might be headed, but of course I daren’t ask you
about it or you’ll heave me straight into prison and let me rot there.”
“I’m telling you the truth about Banodyne.”
“So you say.”
“You’re impossible, Walt.”
“So you say.”
“So everyone says. Now will you let me go home? I’m beat.”
Smiling, Walt closed the door at last.
Lem drove out of the hospital garage to Main Street, then to the freeway,
heading home toward Placentia. He hoped to make it back into bed no later than
dawn.
As he piloted the NSA sedan through streets as empty as midocean sea-lanes, he
thought about The Outsider heading northward. He’d noticed the same thing
himself. And he was convinced that he knew what it was seeking even if he did
not know where, precisely, it was going. From the first, the dog and The
Outsider had possessed a special awareness of each other, an uncanny instinctual
awareness of each other’s moods and activities even when they were not in the
same room. Davis Weatherby had suggested, more than half seriously, that there
was something telepathic about the relationship of those two creatures. Now, The
Outsider was very likely still in tune with the dog and, by some sixth sense,
was following it.
For the dog’s sake, Lem hoped to God that was not the case.
It had been evident in the lab that the dog had always feared The Outsider, and
with good reason. The two were the yin and yang of the Francis Project, the
success and the failure, the good and the bad. As wonderful, right, and
good as the dog was—well, The Outsider was every bit as hideous, wrong, and
evil. And the researchers had seen that The Outsider did not fear the dog but
hated it with a passion that no one had been able to understand. Now that both
were free, The Outsider might single-mindedly pursue the dog, for it had never
wanted anything more than to tear the retriever limb from limb.
Lem realized that, in his anxiety, he had put his foot down too hard on the