“You don’t want to know. And you don’t need to know ‘cause I’m assuming jurisdiction in this case.”
“Like hell.”
“I’ve got the authority,” Lem said. “It’s now a federal matter, Walt. I’m impounding all the evidence your people have gathered, all reports they’ve written thus far. You and your men are to talk to no one about what you’ve seen here. No one. You’ll have a file on the case, but the only thing in it will be a memo from me, asserting the federal prerogative under the correct statute. You’re out from under. No matter what happens, no one can blame you, Walt.”
“Shit.”
“Let it go.”
Walt scowled. “I’ve got to know-”
“Let it go.”
“-are people in my county in danger? At least tell me that much, damn it.”
“Yes.”
“In danger?”
“Yes.”
“And if I fought you, if I tried to hang on to jurisdiction in this case, would there be anything I could do to lessen that danger, to insure the public safety?”
“No. Nothing,” Lem said truthfully.
“Then there’s no point in fighting you.”
“None,” Lem said.
He started back toward the cabin because the daylight was fading fast, and he did not want to be near the woods as darkness crept in. Sure, it had only been a mule deer. But next time?
“Wait a minute,” Walt said. “Let me tell you what I think, and you just listen. You don’t have to confirm or deny what I say. All you’ve got to do is hear me out.”
“Go on,” Lem said impatiently.
The shadows of the trees crept steadily across the bristly dry grass of the clearing. The sun was balanced on the western horizon.
Walt paced out of the shadows into the waning sunlight, hands in his back pockets, looking down at the dusty ground, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. Then: “Tuesday afternoon, somebody walked into a house in Newport Beach, shot a man named Yarbeck, and beat his wife to death. That night, somebody killed the Hudston family in Laguna Beach -husband, wife, and a teenage son. Police in both communities use the same forensics lab, so it didn’t take long to discover one gun was used both places. But that’s about all the police in either case are going to learn because your NSA has quietly assumed jurisdiction in those crimes, too. In the interest of national security.”
Lem did not respond. He was sorry he had even agreed to listen. Anyway, he was not taking direct charge of the investigation into the murders of the scientists, which were almost surely Soviet-inspired. He’d delegated that task to other men, so he’d be free to concentrate on finding the dog and The Outsider.
The sunlight was burnt orange. The cabin windows smoldered with reflections of that fading fire.
Walt said, “Okay. Then there’s Dr. Davis Weatherby of Corona Del Mar. Missing since Tuesday. This morning, Weatherby’s brother finds the doctor’s body in the trunk of his car. Local pathologists hardly arrive at the scene before NSA agents show up.”
Lem was slightly unnerved by the swiftness with which the sheriff evidently gathered, coordinated, and absorbed information from various communities that were not in the unincorporated part of the county and were not, therefore, under his authority.
Walt grinned but with little or no humor. “Didn’t expect me to have made all these connections, huh? Each of these things happened in a different police jurisdiction, but as far as I’m concerned this county is one sprawling city of two million people, so I make it my business to work hand in glove with all the local departments.”
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that it’s astonishing to have six murders of upstanding citizens in one day. This is Orange County, after all, not L.A. And it’s even more astonishing that all six deaths are related to urgent matters of national security. So it arouses my curiosity. I start checking into the backgrounds of these people, looking for something that links them-”
“Walt, for Christ’s sake!”
“-and I discover they all work-or did work-for something called Banodyne Laboratories.”
Lem was not angry. He couldn’t get angry with Walt-they were tighter than brothers-but the big man’s canniness was maddening right now. Lem said, “Listen, you’ve no right to conduct an investigation.”
“I’m sheriff, remember?”
“But none of these murders-except Dalberg here-falls into your jurisdiction to begin with,” Lem said. “And even if it did… once the NSA steps in, you’ve no right to continue. In fact, you’re expressly forbidden by law to continue.”
Ignoring him, Walt said, “So I look up Banodyne, see what kind of work they do, and I discover they’re into genetic engineering, recombinant
DNA-”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“There’s no indication Banodyne’s at work on defense projects, but that doesn’t mean anything. Could be blind contracts, projects so secret that the funding doesn’t even appear on public record.”
“Jesus,” Lem said irritably. “Don’t you understand how damn mean we can get when we’ve got national security laws on our side?”
“Just speculating now,” Walt said.
“You’ll speculate your honky ass right into a prison cell.”
“Now, Lemuel, let’s not have an ugly racial confrontation here.”
“You’re incorrigible.”
“Yeah, and you’re repeating yourself. Anyway, I did some heavy thinking, and I figure the murders of these people who work at Banodyne must be connected somehow to the manhunt the Marines conducted on Wednesday and Thursday. And to the murder of Wesley Dalberg.”
“There’s no similarity between Dalberg’s murder and the others.”
“Of course there’s not. Wasn’t the same killer. I can see that. The Yarbecks, the Hudstons, and Weatherby were hit by a pro, while poor Wes Dalberg was torn to pieces. Still, there’s a connection, by God, or you wouldn’t be interested, and the connection must be Banodyne.”
The sun was sinking. Shadows pooled and thickened.
Walt said, “Here’s what I figure: they were working on some new bug at Banodyne, a genetically altered germ, and it got loose, contaminated someone, but it didn’t just make him sick. What it did was severely damage his brain, turn him into a savage or something-”
“An updated Dr. Jekyll for the high-tech age?” Lem interrupted sarcastically.
“-so he slipped out of the lab before anyone knew what happened to him, fled into the foothills, came here, attacked Dalberg.”
“You watch a lot of bad horror movies or what?”
“As for Yarbeck and the others, maybe they were eliminated ‘cause they knew what happened and were so scared about the consequences that they intended to go public.”
Off in the dusky canyon, a soft, ululant howl arose. Probably just a coyote. Lem wanted to get out of there, away from the forest. But he felt that he had to deal with Walt Gaines, deflect the sheriff from these lines of inquiry and consideration.
“Let me get this straight, Walt. Are you saying the United States government had its own scientists killed to shut them up?”
Walt frowned, knowing how unlikely-if not downright impossible-his scenario was.
Lem said, “Is life really just a Ludlum novel? Killed our own people? Is it National Paranoia Month or something? Do you really believe that crap?”
“No,” Walt admitted.
“And how could Dalberg’s killer be a contaminated scientist with brain damage? I mean, Christ, you yourself said it was some animal that killed Dalberg, something with claws, sharp teeth.”
“Okay, okay, so I don’t have it figured. Not all of it, anyway. But I’m sure it’s all tied in with Banodyne somehow. I’m not entirely on the wrong track-am I?”
“Yes, you are,” Lem said. “Entirely.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Lem felt bad about lying to Walt and manipulating him, but he did it anyway. “I shouldn’t even tell you that you’re chasing after false spoor, but as a friend I guess I owe you something.”
Additional wild voices had joined the eerie howling in the woods, confirming that the cries were only those of coyotes, yet the sound chilled Lem Johnson and made him eager to depart.