“What’s this?” he asked. It appeared to be a crude but detailed pencil drawing of a cylinder. In the background were several dozen small x’s, scattered randomly across the paper. No, not x’s. Crosses.
“I asked her to draw what she had seen when she encountered Mr. Carson in the airport. This is what she produced.”
He studied the drawing. A cylinder. So what? “And these marks? Crosses?” “She told me that the cylinder was filled with dead people. Thousands of them. Millions of them.”
“Terrific. What in the hell does that mean? I wonder.”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. She said the man was bad, but that this thing, whatever it is, was worse. Much worse.”
He studied the drawing again. The cylinder had knurled caps at each end, a detail he had missed the first time. “Can I keep this?” he asked.
“I’ll make you a copy.” He gave it to her and she went back into the office. He picked up the empty coffee cups and followed her.
“I still feel like I should interview Jess,” he said. “Although actually, I don’t know what I would ask.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder, and his breath caught in his throat for a second. “Your first instincts were probably correct. Here’s a copy. Perhaps it will make sense later.”
He took the drawing and folded it into his coa? pocket. He looked at his watch and said he should probably go. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t think of an excuse to prolong his stay. She smiled again and walked him to the door. He thanked her for dinner and said he would let her know if anything came of the drawing. She took his hand for a moment. Her fingers were warm and soft.
“Mostly, keep it away from us, will you?” she said. “Whatever it is?
This is a pretty fragile group of kids, despite appearances. Your world would not bring us anything good.”
“My world?”
“You’re a federal policeman, Dave. What’s in your world that’s good for kids?”
Absolutely nothing, he thought. He thanked her again, reluctantly letting go of her hand, and walked out to his car.
As he drove out onto the state road, he looked back at the big house framed by all those trees, but all the outside lights were already out.
He went down the hill toward tpwn, driving slowly on the unfamiliar road, thinking about Gwen Warren. There was so much he wanted to know about her. After the wreckage of his own marriage, the upheaval of the whistle-blowing incident, and his arm’s uncertain prognosis, he had pretty much put women out of his mind. Every attractive single or divorced woman he met in the Washington milieu looked or sounded like his ex-wife, so putting them out of his mind had been easier to do than he had expected. But Gwen was not like them at all.
As he drove into the town of Graniteville and turned right up the hill toward the motel, he became aware of headlights behind him. The car followed him, some distance back, almost all the way to the motel, until he turned up the driveway by the Waffle House. As he pulled into the parking lot, he saw the car slow and then turn around. It was a police car. Now that’s interesting, he thought. He wondered if that might be Sheriff John Lee, minding the store.
Carson saw the two county arson investigators out the front door of the admin offices and went back to his own office., The Haller woman had wanted some background on Bud Lambry, what his job had been here at the DRMO, and why he might have quit. Carson was pretty sure he’d deflected any further inquiries.
He’d told them Lambry had just gotten mad and quit. Man even took the derail control console’s keys with him. Damned inconvenient. The personnel records indicated the address in southeast Atlanta, no further family data, no prior criminal convictions or serious disciplinary problems, and certainly no motives for arson. He had asked Haller if it had been arson, but she hadn’t really answered the question, giving him instead some “We’re still investigating” IJS.
Fair enough. He’d seen the television news report. They’d need an aircraft accident investigating team down there to prove anything other than that a propane leak had touched off an explosion. Well, no shit, Sherlock. Hardly a surprise event in those dilapidated old houses down there.
He sat down at his desk and thought about his latest conversation with Tangent, who had been less than thrilled at the news that the Army might know the cylinder was missing. Carson had switched immediately to the offensive: They would come and check the place out; he was sure of it.
Once the Army saw the demil machine, however, they would assume the missing cylinder had been destroyed in its environmental container, and then Tangent would be buying an object that didn’t exist. Tangent hadn’t been so sure the Army would make that assumption, but Carson had pointed out that the Army would also be looking desperately for a reason, any reason at all, to cover up their screw up. He had suggested that they shelve the deal for a few more days. Tangent reluctantly agreed, but he wanted to be informed the instant the Army backed out.
Carson tapped a pencil on his desk. Now he just had to wait. He had not been blowing smoke; he was sure in his bones that the Green Machine would be here, and probably very soon. Maybe even today. He wanted to go get the records of the Tooele shipment, although he dared not. Anything he did now connected with the containers would raise suspicions. The shipment had come in and the containers had become Monster feed. That’s all. And nothing could escape the end processes of the Monster. Not metal cylinders, not toxic substances, not the mortal remains of Bud Lambry. And this had happened some time ago. He listened with some satisfaction to the muted shrieking of rendering metal floating across the tarmac from the demil building.
One million in cash. All he had to do was wait. And keep his cool. The only wild card now was Stafford, but there was no way he could know anything. And the cylinder was hidden well. He could and would worry about it, but his sense of the matter told him his secret was safe.
18
At Stafford’s request, Ray Sparks agreed to go to lunch with him.
Stafford had not wanted to discuss what he had learned at Willow Grove right there in the office. They went to a local chain restaurant, where he reviewed what had happened to date. Sparks was politely skeptical.
“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You have no direct evidence of any crimes at the DRMO. All you’ve got is a strange occurrence at the airport involving this guy, Carson, and a teenage girl from an orphanage, whose director claims the girl is some kind of psychic. The girl can’t physically speak, and all this woman can produce is the girl’s drawing of a cylinder and her impression that the cylinder is a bad thing. Right?”
“Not your basic winning grand jury package, is it?”
“Well, there you have it, Dave. I mean, I know you’ve barely scratched the surface at the DRMO. You’ve been there — what, two business days altogether? I think you ought to forget all this extraneous stuff and see if you can find out some way the guys at the DRMO could — fix the auction process and make some damn money.”
Stafford was silent for a moment as Sparks finished his sandwich.
“Trouble is,” Stafford said, “I’m beginning to think there’s something else going on. I know, I know, all I’ve got is a gut feel. And it’s not what I’m supposed to be looking for, but something else, out there at the edges.”
“Your trademark, as I recall,” Sparks reminded him.
Stafford grinned. “Yeah, but tally it up: that weird guy coming up to me and talking about immunity, and then telling me to find Bud Lambry. Next day, Lambry’s house has been blown up. The employees down there seem to have a hate-on for the manager, and they knew from the git-go that I was a cop and not some auditor down from DLA. The incident at the airport?