Vince shuddered with intense pleasure, and was briefly overcome by the wealth of
life energy that he had just absorbed. He could not speak. Then in a tremulous
and raspy voice, he said, “Thank you.”
When he turned away from the booth, he saw his waitress standing in the middle
of the room, frozen in shock. Her wide blue eyes were fixated on the dead men,
but now her gaze shifted slowly to Vince.
Before she could scream, he emptied the rest of the magazine into her, maybe ten
shots, and she went down in a rain of blood.
Ssssnap.
“Thank you,” he said, then said it again because she had been young and vital
and, therefore, of more use to him.
Concerned that someone else would come out of the kitchen—or maybe someone would
walk past the restaurant and look in and see the waitress on the floor—Vince
stepped quickly to his booth, snatched up the beach bag, and jammed the Uzi
pistol under the towel. Putting on his mirrored sunglasses, he got out of there.
He was not worried about fingerprints. He had coated the pads of his fingers
with Elmer’s glue. It dried nearly transparent and could not be noticed unless
he turned his hands palms-up and called people’s attention to it. The layer of
glue was thick enough to fill the minute lines in the skin, leaving the
fingertips smooth.
Outside, he walked to the end of the block, turned the corner, and got into his
van, which was parked at the curb. As far as he could tell, no one gave him a
second look.
He went to the ocean, looking forward to some time in the sun and an
invigorating swim. Going to Redondo Beach, two blocks away, seemed too bold, so
he followed the Coast Highway south to Bolsa Chica, just north of where he lived
in Huntington Beach.
As he drove, he thought about the dog. He was still paying Johnny The Wire to
keep tabs on animal pounds, police agencies, and anyone else who might be
dragged into the search for the retriever. He knew about the National Security
Agency’s bulletin to veterinarians and animal-control authorities in three
states, and he also knew that the NSA had so far had no luck.
Maybe the dog had been killed by a car, or by the creature that Hudston had
called “The Outsider,” or by a coyote pack in the hills. But Vince didn’t want
to believe it was dead because that would mean an end to his dream of making a
huge financial killing with the dog either by ransoming it back to the
authorities or selling it to a rich showbiz type who could work up an act with
it, or by finding some means of using the animal’s secret intelligence tO pull a
safe and profitable scam on unsuspecting marks.
What he preferred to believe was that someone had found the dog and had taken it
home as a pet. If he could just locate the people who had the dog, he could buy
it from them—or blow them away and just take the mutt.
But where the hell was he supposed to look? How was he supposed to find them? If
they were findable, the NSA would surely reach them first.
Most likely, if the dog was not already dead, the best way to get his hands on
it was to find The Outsider first and let that beast lead him to the dog, which
Hudston had seemed to think it would. But that was not an easy task, either.
Johnny The Wire was also still providing him with information about particularly
violent killings of people and animals throughout southern California. Vince
knew about the slaughter at the Irvine Park petting zoo, the murder of Wes
Dalberg, and the men at Bordeaux Ridge. Johnny had turned up the rash of reports
about mutilated pets in the Diamond Bar area, and Vince had actually seen the TV
news story about the young couple who had encountered what they thought was an
extraterrestrial in the wilds below Johnstone Peak. Three weeks ago, two hikers
had been found horribly mauled in the Angeles National Forest, and by hacking