“Miles, you’re not making any sense. That’s a biotech firm—they screw with vegetables or something. What’s that got to do with all these disappearances?”
A deputy opened the door and stuck his head out into the hallway. “Sheriff, a message came in for you, there’s been some kind of disturbance at the high school. We sent a couple of cars down there. A fight or something. When’s Eileen coming back? I’m having trouble handling the phones by myself. We got a lot of people calling in about missing persons.”
“How many people we got out sick today?” Quentin asked the deputy.
The young man stopped and counted on his hand. “Four. And T.C. must have gone home; he should have been back from Sacramento by now. But we can’t get him on the radio and he’s not answering his cell phone, either. It seems like half the town is missing,” the deputy said. “Sheriff, are you all right?”
“Deputy. Does anyone in your family work at Genesoft?” Miles asked.
“What?” The man looked at Miles as if he’d gone off the deep end. The deputy tried to hand Quentin a telephone-message form.
“Answer him!” Quentin said. “Does anyone at your place work up there? Did you get any food from up there?”
“Or in the last week?” Miles said.
“I don’t know. I had an omelet this morning,” the man said, baffled. “And no. My wife works at the bank. My mom does too.”
“Breakfast. Where?” Miles said.
“At the Copper Penny.” The deputy nodded toward the street.
“How do you feel?” Miles said.
“Quentin, what the hell is Miles talking about?”
“I’m not sure,” Quentin said.
“Oh, and Sharon’s over at the gun shop,” the deputy said, handing Quentin the message.
“What?”
“Yeah, Mike just called for you. You were out. He said Sharon is at the shop and she’s— she’s stoned,” the deputy said.
“Look, Miles. I’m going to give you one minute, then I’m walking out of here and getting my daughter.” The deputy went back into the office.
“The pilot says that he was attacked by fifty or sixty people who weren’t people anymore. He called them Howlers because they make some kind of weird screaming sound when they attack,” Miles said.
“Obviously he’s crazy,” Quentin said.
“Is he? How many people are missing here in Timberline since yesterday? A hundred, maybe more? Look, I didn’t put it together until the pilot told me what happened to him,” Miles said. “I don’t think he’s crazy.”
“Put what together?”
“I told you there was a worker at Genesoft this morning who said that a lot of the employees were sick there. She said there was something wrong with the new product line, R-19 —that it was responsible for illnesses.”
“Miles, are you telling me all this is about Genesoft?”
“Yes, I think so. I got their shipping reports for the new product. The shipped to supermarkets in Southern California, in the Bay Area and back East. Even here in Timberline. They sent free products to several restaurants in Nevada City too, all over the Goddamn state—starting two weeks ago.”
CHAPTER 14
Lieutenant Bell looked at the name written in dark pencil lead under the window of the jail celclass="underline" Willis Good. It stood out amongst the other graffiti. Something about it made it stand out, centered under the window. Bell read the Latin: In hoc lacrimarum valle. He’d gone to a Catholic high school and managed three of the words, but was at a loss for lacrimarum. He smiled: a Latin graffito seemed fitting after what he’d been through.
He stepped closer to the Plexiglas windowpane and looked out on the street below. It was snowing and the Christmas lights strung over the intersection were swinging in the wind. A car stopped in front of the Bank of America, which was built on a slight knoll; a long flight of granite steps led up to the entrance. Bell watched three men get out of the car. The lieutenant caught sight of a pistol tucked quickly under a jacket. He turned around and looked at the cell door they’d locked behind him. He thought of calling out, but hesitated. He looked again out the window and down on the street. The car had pulled up the street; the men who had gotten out were walking quickly up the steps to the bank.
Bell turned around. He saw the MPs at the door of his cell.
“Lieutenant.”
“What are you doing? I thought you guys had left,” Bell said, moving from the window.
“We got a call from the Colonel. He said they’re going to drop the charges. You’re to come back to base immediately,” the MP said. Bell heard the key move in the door’s steel lock. The cell door swung open and the young MP stood aside, making way for the deputy who had opened his cell door. The young military policeman seemed embarrassed by the sudden turn of events.
“So, the U.S. Army made a mistake,” Bell said. The Colonel who had arrested him had probably understood finally what was going on out there, and that Bell had been telling the truth about what had happened to his sergeant.
“Won’t be the first time, sir,” one of the young men said.
Bell walked out of the cell and followed the MPs down the stone stairway. They walked out of the jail and piled into the U.S. Government van waiting for him outside in the alley.
“You guys don’t mind driving with a crazy man then, I take it?” Bell said. The two MPs didn’t answer.
“The colonel said he wanted me to give you his apologies, sir,” the driver said.
Bell was looking again at the car that had pulled up in front of the bank. The driver, an older black man, was holding the wheel with both hands as if he expected something other than his wife to come out of the bank. The car’s windshield wipers moved slowly over the glass, pushing snow out of the way.
“Apology not accepted,” Bell said. The van’s engine started. The driver pulled out onto the street from the alley.
The black man at the wheel of the Ford glanced up at the van as it pulled onto the street and passed him. Bell thought of telling the van’s driver to stop. He contemplated going back and warning the sheriffs that there was probably a bank robbery in progress—right across the street, no less. But he didn’t. He told himself there were much more important things going on in the world, and said nothing.
Something about the way the Ford was parked, or perhaps the cloud of white exhaust coming from the primer-gray Ford Explorer’s tailpipe, or the hard glancing look of the stranger sitting behind the wheel of the car caught Quentin’s eye as he stepped out from the Copper Penny, where he’d been looking for Lacy. It was snowing hard enough that he had to pull up the collar to his coat. Instinctively, and despite the fact he was looking for Lacy on the street, Quentin glanced again at the Ford, this time unbuttoning his coat.
His right hand found and rested on the butt of his automatic. The black man behind the wheel, a stranger to him, looked at the sheriff and then into the Ford’s rearview mirror. Quentin, hand firmly on his pistol, started to cross the icy street. All his internal alarm bells were going off.