“That’s right.” The agency had realized that local police could not be
sufficiently controlled and, therefore, could not be fully trusted. It was a job
for the military. “Issued in error.”
“Like hell. By late afternoon of the same day, we learn Marine choppers from El
Toro are quartering the Santa Ana foothills. And by Wednesday morning, a hundred
Marines with high-tech tracking gear are flown in from Camp Pendleton to carry
on the search at ground level.”
“I heard about that, but it had nothing to do with my agency,” Lem said.
Walt studiously avoided looking at Lem. He stared off into the trees. Clearly,
he knew Lem was lying to him, knew that Lem had to lie to him, and he felt it
would be a breach of good manners to make Lem do it while they maintained eye
contact. Though he looked crude and ill-mannered, Walt Gaines was an unusually
considerate man with a rare talent for friendship.
But he was also the county sheriff, and it was his duty to keep probing even
though he knew Lem would reveal nothing. He said, “Marines tell us it’s just a
training exercise.”
“That’s what I heard.”
“We’re always notified of training exercises ten days ahead.”
Lem did not reply. He thought he saw something in the forest, a flicker of
shadows, a darkish presence moving through piny gloom.
“So the Marines spend all day Wednesday and half of Thursday out there in the
hills. But when reporters hear about this ‘exercise’ and come snooping around,
the leathernecks suddenly call it off, pack up, go home. It was almost as if . .
. whatever they were looking for was so worrisome, so damn topsecret that they’d
rather not find it at all if finding it meant letting the press know about it.”
Squinting into the forest, Lem strained to see through steadily deepening
shadows, trying to catch another glimpse of the movement that had drawn his
attention a moment ago.
Walt said, “Then yesterday afternoon the NSA asks to be kept informed about any
‘peculiar reports, unusual assaults, or exceedingly violent murders.’ We ask for
clarification, don’t get any.”
There. A ripple in the murkiness beneath the evergreen boughs. About eighty feet
in from the perimeter of the woods. Something moving quickly and stealthily from
one sheltering shadow to another. Lem put his right hand under his coat, on the
butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.
“But then just one day later,” Walt said, “we find this poor son of a bitch
Dalberg torn to pieces—and the case is peculiar as hell and about as
‘exceedingly violent’ as I ever hope to see. Now here you are, Mr. Lemuel Asa
Johnson, director of the Southern California Office of the NSA, and I know you
didn’t come coppering in here just to ask me whether I want onion or guacamole
dip at tomorrow night’s bridge game.”
The movement was closer than eighty feet, much closer. Lem had been confused by
the layers of shadows and by the queerly distorting late-afternoon sunlight that
penetrated the trees. The thing was no more than forty feet away, maybe closer,
and suddenly it came straight at them, bounded at them through the brush, and
Lem cried out, drew the pistol from his holster, and involuntarily stumbled
backward a few steps before taking a shooter’s stance with his legs spread wide,
both hands on the gun.
“It’s just a mule deer!” Walt Gaines said.
Indeed it was. Just a mule deer.
The deer stopped a dozen feet away, under the drooping boughs of a spruce,
peering at them with huge brown eyes that were bright with curiosity. Its head
was held high, ears pricked up.
“They’re so used to people in these canyons that they’re almost tame,” Walt
said.
Lem let out a stale breath as he holstered his pistol.
The mule deer, sensing their tension, turned from them and loped away along the
trail, vanishing into the woods.
Walt was staring hard at Lem. “What’s out there, buddy?”
Lem said nothing. He blotted his hands on his suit jacket.
The breeze was stiffening, getting cooler. Evening was on its way, and night was