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.”
“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 close behind it.
“Never saw you spooked before,” Walt said.
“A caffeine jag. I’ve had too much coffee today.”
“Bullshit.”
Lem shrugged.
“It seems to’ve been an animal that killed Dalberg, something with lots of teeth, claws, something savage,” Walt said. “Yet no damn animal would carefully place the guy’s head on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. That’s a sick joke. Animals don’t make jokes, not sick or otherwise. Whatever killed Dalberg… it left the head like that to taunt us. So what in Christ’s name are we dealing with?”