The honcho led the VIP civilian into the deadlock between the two nine-and-a-half-inch steel-sheathed doors, a “lock vault” in the jargon, and they stood there for a few long seconds waiting for the duty sergeant to pop the inner door.
“Evening, sir,” the duty man said smartly.
The honcho nodded and escorted his guest past a desk where a rather attractive woman sat, staring at them as they strode by. Neither rank nor civilian brass impressed anyone inside the control complex. There were no salutes here. The attractive woman was too busy to salute, for example. In her left ear she was listening for the order to execute, which in this case was a literal order. It would mean that the individual or individuals who had just gained admittance to this highly secret chamber were not to be allowed to leave. There was no such order, and she removed her right trigger finger from the .22-caliber pistol concealed under the desk. She happened to be a world-class handgun champion, and she'd miss her period before she'd miss a head shot at that range.
“Who has him?"
“Red tracker."
“Good.” They walked over to the appropriate cubicle where a civilian sat with his hands on a control console and his eyes glued to an electronic display.
“That's the subject. That little blip right there,” the honcho explained. “Probably gone nighty-night, but—” he shrugged “—one never knows. We stay on him right around the clock. Change these monitor teams constantly. Helluva lot of manpower, but it pretty much assures us that he doesn't take off. He's in a twenty-five-mile radius of protection—that's his kill zone. And if he sets one big toe outside it..."
“You guys pick him up?"
“No, sir. We dust him right there."
“How do you keep an eye on him? It looks like there would be so many places he could go, you know?"
“We've got two hundred people in place. Eyeball surveillance. Every move recorded—sound-on-film. Overflights. Infrared. Satellites—he belongs to us every second. We own Big Boy."
They watched the tiny, glowing pinpoint of light with a mixture of unspoken anxiousness and proprietary pride. There was a kind of pioneering feeling inside the control center, a sense that one was part of a history-making endeavor.
The COMSEC and NEWTON SECURE systems interlinked with the on-line terminals served by OMEGASTAR, the mobile tracker that had been developed to monitor the man who was the core of SAUCOG'S continuing experimental research program.
Inside his weird brain a microscopic servomechanism (one that had cost a millionaire CEO his job when a Japanese firm beat his San Jose chip company to the punch and delivered the goods to Uncle first) happily rested, sending out its perpetual emission to whosoever might receive it.
Whosoever, in this control complex, watched the glowing screens of the Omni DF MEGAplex Secure Tranceiver Auto-lock locator Relay unit and movement-detection monitor.
Every telephonic, radar, infrared, seismic, satellite capability known to engineering science (and whose battery never needed replacing) tuned in, hooked up, plugged in, switched over, clicked on, and down-linked the signal from the eye in the sky—the cyclops that received the continual transmission that emanated from inside Chaingang Bunkowski's head.
Owning “Big Boy” was one thing. But taming him—ah, that was an altogether different can of worms.
19
WATERTON
According to the official record, the incident report, Officer Harold Schaeffer was “investigating locked premises, gained entrance to Waterton Pharmacy at approximately 10:39 A.M., at which time I found the decedents.” But Marty Kerns had the tape where Harry Schaeffer, crying, throwing up, on the job for eighteen months, had stepped into one of the worst multiple homicide scenes in memory, run in flat-out panic, mashed the handset of the two-way, all radio procedures and call signs and codes thrown to the wind, and screamed, “Oh, Jesus, help, Christ, there's two dead people maybe more. Waterton Pharmacy. There's blood everywhere and they're all cut up—Jeezus somebody help me! Hurry!" Not exactly “One Adam Twelve requesting backup.” And this about a hundred feet away from the chief's office.
Bob Lee, the pharmacist, and Trish Clark. Both corpses mutilated. Huge footprints in the blood. No witnesses. Perpetrator had come in about the time they opened and somehow done the deed without any screams being heard, or passersby observing anything going on. If Mabel Dietz hadn't gone on so about having to get her prescription, and Mrs. Lee saying that her husband had gone down to open up the drugstore “over an hour ago,” it might have been noon before the bodies were found.
Waterton Pharmacy. Next door to the jail and the city administration building. That was what really got Marty Kerns going. Kerns sealed off the crime scene best he could. Took a thousand pictures. Measured. Lifted. Dusted. Tried to think like a big-city evidence technician, and remember everything he'd learned from those criminology seminars. He called Doc Willoughby over at the clinic, who served as me, coroner, undertaker, and lab man.
First thing he learned was “some kind of sex pervert” done the deed. There was sperm in just about every one of Trish's orifices other than her ears. And there was one other small detail that wouldn't require an autopsy: her heart was gone.
He was on the phone screaming to the FBI, both the regional SAC and Washington. They'd send agents in, but go ahead and “shoot us the lab work,” they said.
Meanwhile Marty Kerns was sitting on a spate of murders and missing-persons cases and suspicious-looking “accidents,” the likes of which he'd never encountered.
Kerns got his gig through patronage. He was an old-time Waterton pol with a half-assed record as a cop. Once upon a time he'd run the local Eagles drinking emporium, where he'd acquired a couple of small scars and a rep for being a tough guy. Paunchy, jowly, corrupt, stupid Chief Kerns was simply not up for this:
Rusty Ellis. Missing.
Butchie Sutter and Connie Vizard. Dead in a suspicious-looking tavern fire. Nobody was crying over them—not even the Sutter bunch. But they were on the list.
Betty and Gill Poindexter—missing.
Luther Lloyd—missing. One of Kerns's only modest successes: so far he'd been able to convince Mrs. Lloyd to keep quiet about his disappearance.
Three dead over in Tennessee. Maysburg PD found ‘em along with a fourth John Doe, wired into a car: Gordon Truett, Walter Smith—a fine old boy—and Slug Kelly. Those three shot to shit with some kind of machine gun, it looked like. The John Doe with the heart gone.
Sam Perkins gone.
Now two more for the list. Bob Lee and Trish Clark. Whoever this crazy bastard was, he had the balls to take two people down right next door, and in broad daylight.
That was fourteen dead bodies, maybe. He wasn't sure about the fire at Butchie's, but all the others—he had a real bad feeling. He was certain they were all tied in somehow. What would Mary Perkins have said if he'd told her he knew there were five, not four, missing folks who'd been in the land thing together? He still knew damn well that was pure coincidence. This killer was doing away with people at random.
Why weren't the Feds already moving in, the way they always did on a big serial case like this? Why did they keep blowing him off when he tried to get outside help?
Marty Kerns had learned to trust his big gut. And his gut kept telling him this thing was going to get a lot worse before it got any better.
It hadn't helped that old goofy C. B. Farnum had called, swearing up and down that he'd been driving down Market Road and he'd seen “Bigfoot” heading into the woods. That was all he fucking needed now—a raft of goddamn Sasquatch sightings.