in an improbable angle.
The wild boars had been left unharmed. They snorted and sniffed continuously at
the dusty earth around the feeding trough in their separate enclosure, looking
for bits of food that might have spilled yesterday and been missed until now.
Other surviving animals, unlike the boars, were skittish.
Park employees—also skittish—were gathered near an orange truck that belonged to
the county, talking with two Animal Control officers and with a young, bearded
biologist from the California Department of Wildlife.
Crouching beside the delicate and pathetic fawn, Lem studied the wounds in its
neck until he could no longer tolerate the stench. Not all of the foul odors
were caused by the dead animals. There was evidence that the killer had
deposited feces and sprayed urine on its victims, just as it had done at
Dalberg’s place.
Pressing a handkerchief against his nose to filter the reeking air, he moved to
a dead peacock. Its head had been torn off, as had one leg. Both of its clipped
wings were broken, and its iridescent feathers were dulled and pasted together
with blood.
“Sir,” Cliff Soames called from the adjoining pen.
Lem left the peacock, found a service gate that opened into the next enclosure,
and joined Cliff at the carcass of the ewe.
Flies swarmed around them, buzzing hungrily, settling upon the ewe, then darting
off as the men fanned them away.
Cliff’s face was bloodless, but he did not look as shocked or as nauseated as he
had been last Friday, at Dalberg’s cabin. Perhaps this slaughter didn’t
affect him as strongly because the victims were animals instead of human beings.
Or perhaps he was consciously hardening himself against the extreme violence of
their adversary.
“You’ll have to come to this side,” Cliff said from where he crouched beside the
ewe.
Lem stepped around the sheep and squatted beside Cliff. Though the ewe’s head
was in the shadow of an oak bough overhanging the pen, Lem saw that her right
eye had been torn out.
Without comment, Cliff used a stick to lever the left side of the ewe’s head off
the ground, revealing that the other socket was also vacant.
The cloud of flies thickened around them.
“Looks like it was our runaway, all right,” Lem said.
Lowering his own handkerchief from his face, Cliff said, “There’s more.” He led
Lem to three additional carcasses—both lambs and one of the goats— that were
eyeless. “I’d say it’s beyond argument. The damn thing that killed Dalberg last
Tuesday night, then roamed the foothills and canyons for five days, doing . .
“What?”
“God knows what. But it wound up here last night.”
Lem used his handkerchief to mop the sweat off his dark face. “We’re only a few
miles north-northwest of Dalberg’s cabin.”
Cliff nodded.
“Which way you think it’s headed?”
Cliff shrugged.
“Yeah,” Lem said. “No way of knowing where it’s going. Can’t begin to outthink
it because we haven’t the slightest idea how it thinks. Let’s just pray to God
it stays out here in the unpopulated end of the county. I don’t want to even
consider what could happen if it decides to head into the easternmost suburbs
like Orange Park Acres and Villa Park.”
On the way out of the compound, Lem saw that the flies were gathered on the dead
rabbit in such numbers that they looked like a piece of dark cloth draped over
the carcass and rippling in a light breeze.
Eight hours later, at seven o’clock Monday evening, Lem stepped up to the
lectern in a large meeting room on the grounds of the Marine Air Station at El
Toro. He leaned toward the microphone, tapped it with a finger to be sure it was
active, heard a loud hollow thump, and said, “May I have your attention,
please?”
A hundred men were seated on metal folding chairs. They were all young,
well-built, and healthy-looking, for they were members of elite Marine
Intelligence units. Five two-squad platoons had been drawn from Pendleton and
other bases in California. Most of them had been involved in the search of the
Santa Ana foothills last Wednesday and Thursday, following the breakout at the