"Shit."
Pete shrugged. "That's the way of the world."
Judson put his feet back down on the floor and pulled a stick of gum from his shirt pocket. He slowly unwrapped the gum. "Tell me the truth. Do you think it was a good idea bringing these guys in?"
Pete thought for a moment. "I don't know," he admitted. "I did at first, but they don't seem to be doing any better than we did on this.
Worse, maybe. And they treat us like shit. They're supposed to be cooperating with us on an investigation, but they act like we're their goddamn servants or something."
"Ain'tthat the truth."
"They think that just because we work in a small town instead of a big city, we're Podunk know-nothings and can't be trusted to work on an investigation."
Judson laughed. "The old Barney life situation."
Pete shook his head. "I don't know." He turned around and stared at the lights of the switchboard, flicking on and off for no discernible reason. Behind him, he heard Judson scoot across the floor in his chair and grab the donut bag. He stared at the lights for a moment longer, thinking, then swiveled around again. Judson was eating the last of the crumb donut, licking the excess spices off his fingers. He wasn't quite sure how to bring up what he wanted to say, and he almost turned back around, but he gathered up his courage and cleared his throat. "Jud?" he said.
Judson looked up. "Yeah?"
"Have you noticed anything .. . strange about all this?"
"What do you mean, strange?"
"You know, strange."
"You mean like those strange little footprints in the blood over at the farmer's place?"
Pete nodded excitedly. "Exactly!"
"No, I haven't."
"Come on. Be serious. You know what I'm talking about. You know this isn't any ordinary investigation."
Judson nodded reluctantly. He put the donut bag down. "Yeah," he said slowly. "Yeah, I do. I don't want to, but I do." He sighed. "I've been seeing things, hearing things, thinking things, and I wish to Christ they'd go away."
"What'd you see?"
Judson was silent for a moment. "The footprints," he said, finally.
He looked at Pete. "You saw the footprints, too?"
Pete nodded.
"We all saw the footprints. So how come we pretended we didn't? How come none of us said anything? How come we didn't tell Jim?" He shook his head. "Jesus. Last week, right after all this started, about this time of night, Jim came running out of his office with his gun drawn.
He was scared shitless. I could see it in his face. I was coming back from the head, and he ran into me in the hall, knocking me down. He said he saw something, something strange, running down the hall. I told him he was tired." He laughed mirthlessly. "Jesus, tired."
"You think he really saw something?"
"Hell, I saw the fucking thing too! It was running fast and keeping to the shadows. You know how shitty the lights are back there at night.
But I could see that it was about the size of a small dog. It was hairless and pinkish, and it ran on four legs, babbling to itself. I saw it right after the sheriff left. Right after! He turned around the corner, and it sped by at the other end of the hall. I should've called out to Jim, or at least said something to him the next day, but I didn't. I ignored it, tried to forget about it, pretended it didn't happen."
Pete nodded. "I know what you mean. I saw those footprints too.
Weirdest damn things I ever saw. What do you think they were?"
Judson shook his head slowly. "I don't know, and I don't think I want to know."
"And what about those bodies? The farmers' and the preacher's family.
I mean, we were all acting like it was nothing, like we did this all the time, like we were trained to handle shit like that, but I know damn well that I wasn't trained for anything like that. I've never seen anything like that in my life. And I never thought I would, outside of a movie."
"Me either," Judson said softly.
Pete stood up and began pacing. "People are talking, too, in town. I
hear them. At the store, at the gas station, at the restaurants. They know thisain't no normal situation here. People have a good nose for this sort of thing, and they know there's something strange going on. A
lot of them are talking about that preacher, that Elias. They say he's making predictions, warning them about what's going to happen." He stopped pacing and stared down the hallway toward the back of the building. The lights were off back there, and the hallway disappeared into blackness. He shivered. "Something is going on here, but I'll be damned if I know what it is."
"I don't know either. And I don't think I want to know." Judson picked up the donut bag and pulled out the last piece of maple bar.
"Aren't you even curious?"
"Sure I'm curious. But I'm not going to do anything about it." He gave Pete a halfhearted smile. "It's not my job."
Pete moved back to his seat and slumped down in the metal chair, his eyes focusing on the blinking lights of the switchboard. "Yeah," he said. He stared at the lights. "Yeah."
Dr. Waterston tore up the duplicate copies of the test analysis, wadded up the pieces and threw them across the room in disgust. The crumpled paper fell far short of its intended mark against the opposite wall and landed benignly on the middle of the carpet. Waterston picked up the flask of whiskey next to his right elbow and took a long, healthy, medicinal swig.
Nothing. The test results revealed that there was nothing in the Geronimo Wells water. If anything, the water was cleaner, purer, than average. No chemicals, particulates down to almost nothing, only a few traceable minerals.
So what the hell was it?
There had to be some common denominator, something that linked Julie Campbell, Joni Cooper, Susan Stratford and possibly even old Mrs.
Perry. But what could it be? The water was out. Chances of it being some type of food were slim to none. Could they have been exposed to hazardous waste being transported through Randall? It was possible.
Though it was a much longer route, many trucks preferred to pass through Randall when transporting goods from Phoenix to either Prescott or Flagstaff in order to avoid the weigh and inspection stations on Black Canyon Highway And who knew what those trucks carried? Who knew what sort of substances they were transporting?
Waterston took another swig from his flask. He realized that he was grasping for straws. If there had been any unfamiliar chemicals in any of the women's bloodstreams they would have shown up on the blood tests. There didn't seem to be anything physiologically wrong with any of the women, with the possible exception of Mrs. Perry. But something obviously was wrong. Dreadfully wrong.
He had to admit it: he was baffled.
But at least something good had come out of all this--the chances that something would go wrong with Marina Lewis' pregnancy had been whittled down to almost nothing.
Waterston pulled open his desk drawer and drew out the photographs he had taken of the miscarried babies before the autopsies. On the top of the stack, the half-formed mucilaginous eyes of Julie Campbell's fetus stared blindly up at him. In the next picture, the premature infant's reptilian hands were clenched into permanent fists.
Waterston put the photos down and took another swig of whiskey. He needed courage. He would have to call each of the women and tell them what he had found. Or what he had not found.
He shuffled quickly through the photos, and his eye was caught by the horrible face of Joni Cooper's infant. The smooth bald forehead was wrinkled into a frown, and the toothless mouth was twisted into a hideous grimace. The eyes, pure white, with neither irises nor pupils, bored into his own and caused him to shudder. He dropped the stack of pictures on the desk. It was impossible, but the tiny infant looked angry, furious.