kept the neighborhood California-green in February, but there were also numerous sycamores and maples and birches that were bare-limbed in winter. Harris focused largely on the interesting patterns of sunlight and tree shadows that alternately swagged and filigreed the sidewalk ahead. He tried to use them to induce a state of self- imposed hypnosis, in which all thought was banished except for an awareness of the need to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
He had some success at that game. In a half trance, he was only peripherally aware of the sapphire-blue Toyota that passed him and, abruptly chugging and stalling out, pulled to the curb and stopped nearly a block ahead. A man got out of the car and opened the hood, but Harris remained focused on the tapestry of sun and shade on which he trod.
As Harris passed the front of the Toyota, the stranger turned from his examination of the engine and said, “Sir, may I give you something to think about?”
Harris continued a couple of steps before he realized that the man was speaking to him. Halting, turning, rising from his self-induced hypnosis, he said, “Excuse me?”
The stranger was a tall black man in his late twenties. He was as skinny as a fourteen-year-old, with the somber and intense manner of an elderly man who had seen too much and carried too great a grief all his life. Dressed in black slacks, a black turtleneck sweater, and a black jacket, he seemed to want to project an ominous image. But if that was his intention, it was defeated by his large, bottle-thick glasses, his thinness, and a voice which, while deep, was as velvety and appealing as that of Mel Torme.
“May I give you something to think about?” he asked again, and then he continued without waiting for a response. “What’s happened to you couldn’t happen to a United States Representative or Senator.”
The street was uncannily quiet for being in such a metropolitan area. The sunlight seemed different from what it had been a moment ago. The glimmer that it laid along the curved surfaces of the blue Toyota struck Harris as unnatural.
“Most people are unaware of it,” said the stranger, “but for decades, politicians have exempted current and future members of the U.S. Congress from most of the laws they pass. Asset forfeiture, for one. If cops nail a senator peddling cocaine out of his Cadillac by a schoolyard, his car can’t be seized the way your house was.”
Harris had the peculiar feeling that he had hypnotized himself so well that this tall man in black was an apparition in a trance-state dream.
“You might be able to prosecute him for drug dealing and get a conviction — unless his fellow politicians just censor him or expel him from Congress and, at the same time, arrange his immunity from prosecution. But you couldn’t seize his assets for drug dealing or any of the other two hundred offenses for which they seize yours.”
Harris said, “Who are you?”
Ignoring the question, the stranger went on in that soft voice: “Politicians pay no Social Security taxes. They have their own retirement fund. And they don’t rob it to finance other programs, the way they drain Social Security.
Harris looked anxiously around the street to see who might be watching, what other vehicles and men might have accompanied this man. Although the stranger wasn’t threatening, the situation itself suddenly seemed ominous. He felt that he was being set up, as if the point of the encounter was to tease from him some seditious statement for which he could be arrested, prosecuted, and imprisoned.
That was an absurd fear. Free speech was still well guaranteed. No citizens of the world were as openly and heatedly opinionated as his countrymen. Recent events obviously had inspired a paranoia over which he needed to gain control.
Yet he remained afraid to speak.
The stranger said, “They exempt themselves from healthcare plans they intend to force on you, so someday you’ll have to wait months for things like gallbladder surgery, but they’ll get the care they need on demand. Somehow we’ve allowed ourselves to be ruled by the greediest and most envious among us.”
Harris found the nerve to speak again, but only to repeat the question he had already asked and to add another. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I only want to give you something to think about until the next time,” said the stranger. Then he turned and slammed shut the hood of the blue Toyota.
Emboldened when the other’s back was to him, Harris stepped off the curb and grabbed the man by the arm. “Look here—”
“I have to go,” the stranger said. “As far as I know, we’re not being watched. The chances are a thousand to one. But with today’s technology, you can’t be a hundred percent sure anymore. Until now, to anyone observing us, you just seem to’ve struck up a conversation with a guy who has car trouble, offered some assistance. But if we stand here talking any longer, and if someone
He went to the driver’s door of his Toyota.
Bewildered, Harris said, “But what was this all about?”
“Be patient, Mr. Descoteaux. Just go with the flow, just ride the wave, and you’ll find out.”
“What wave?”
Opening the driver’s door, the stranger cracked his first smile since he had spoken. “Well, I guess…the microwave, the light wave, the waves of the future.”
He got in the car, started the engine, and drove away, leaving Harris more bewildered than ever.
The microwave. The light wave. The waves of the future.
What the
Harris Descoteaux turned in a circle, studying the neighborhood, and for the most part it seemed unremarkable. Sky and earth. Houses and trees. Lawns and sidewalks. Sunlight and shadows. But in the fabric of the day, glimmering darkly in the deep warp and woof, were threads of mystery that had not been there earlier.
He walked on. Periodically, however, as he had not done before, he glanced over his shoulder.
Roy Miro in the Empire of the Mormons. After dealing with the Cedar City Police and the county sheriff’s deputies for nearly two hours, Roy had experienced enough niceness to last him until at least the first of July. He understood the value of a smile, courtesy, and unfailing friendliness, because he used a disarming approach in his own work. But these Mormon cops carried it to extremes. He began to long for the cool indifference of Los Angeles, the hard selfishness of Las Vegas, even the surliness and insanity of New York.
His mood was not enhanced by the news of Earthguard’s shutdown. He had been further rattled by subsequently learning that the stolen helicopter had descended to such a low altitude that two military facilities tracking it (in response to urgent agency requests that they believed had come from the Drug Enforcement Administration) had lost the craft. They hadn’t been able to reacquire it. The fugitives were gone, and only God and a couple of kidnapped pilots knew where.
Roy dreaded having to make his report to Tom Summerton.
The replacement JetRanger was due from Las Vegas in less than twenty minutes, but he didn’t know what he was going to do with it. Park it in the shopping-center lot and sit in it, waiting for someone to sight the fugitives? He might still be there when the time rolled around to do Christmas shopping again. Besides, these Mormon cops would undoubtedly keep bringing him coffee and doughnuts, and they would hang around to help him pass the time.
He was spared all the horrors of continued niceness when Gary Duvall telephoned again from Colorado and put the investigation back on track. The call came through on the scrambler-equipped security phone in the disabled chopper.
Roy sat in the back of the cabin and put on the headset.
“You’re not easy to track down,” Duvall told him.
“Complications here,” Roy said succinctly. “You’re still in Colorado? I thought you’d be on your way back to San Francisco by this time.”
“I got interested in this Ackblom angle. Always been fascinated by these serial killers. Dahmer, Bundy, that Ed Gein fellow a lot of years ago. Weird stuff. Got me to wondering what in hell the son of a serial killer is doing mixed up with this woman.”
“We’re all wondering,” Roy assured him.
