fear.
45
He insisted on moving to the chairs, so they could not be seen as easily from the street. Tessa was leery about sitting beside him. He said that he was operating undercover and therefore carried no Bureau ID, but he showed her everything else in his wallet driver's license, credit cards, library card, video rental card, photos of his son and his late wife, a coupon for a free chocolate-chip cookie at any Mrs. Fields store, a picture of Goldie Hawn torn from a magazine. Would a homicidal maniac carry a cookie coupon? In a while, as he took her back through her story of the massacre at Cove Lodge and picked relentlessly at the details, making sure that she told him everything and that he understood all of it, she began to trust him. If he was only pretending to be an agent, his pretense would not have been so elaborate or sustained.
'You didn't actually
'They were killed,' she insisted. 'You wouldn't have any doubt if you'd heard their screams. I've stood in a mob of human monsters in Northern Ireland and seen them beat men to death. I was filming an industrial in a steel mill once, when there was a spill of molten metal that splattered all over workers' bodies, their faces. I've been with Miskito Indians in the Central American jungles when they were hit with antipersonnel bombs — millions of little bits of sharp steel, bodies pierced by a thousand needles — and I've heard
He stared at her for a long time. Then he said, 'You look deceptively—'
'Cute?'
'Yes.'
'Therefore innocent? Therefore naive?'
'Yes.'
'My curse.'
'And an advantage sometimes?'
'Sometimes,' she acknowledged. 'Listen, you know something, so tell me What's going on in this town?'
'Something's happening to the people here.'
'What?'
'I don't know. They're not interested in movies, for one thing. The theater closed. And they're not interested in luxury goods, fine gifts, that sort of thing, because those stores have all closed too. They no longer get a kick from champagne …'
He smiled thinly. 'The barrooms are all going out of business. The only thing they seem to be interested in is food. And killing.'
46
Still standing at a tower-room window, Tom Shaddack said, 'All right, Loman, here's what we'll do. Everyone at New Wave has been converted, so I'll assign a hundred of them to you, to augment the police force. You can use them to help in your investigation in any way you see fit — starting now. With that many at your command, you'll catch one of the regressives in the act, surely … and you'll be more likely to find this man Booker too.'
The New People did not require sleep. The additional deputies could be brought into the field immediately.
Shaddack said, 'They can patrol the streets on foot and in their cars — quietly, without drawing attention. And with that assistance, you'll grab at least one of the regressives, maybe all of them. If we can catch one in a devolved state, if I've a chance to examine one of them, I might be able to develop a test — physical or psychological — with which we can screen the New People for degenerates.'
'I don't feel adequate to deal with this.'
'It's a police matter.'
'No, it isn't, really.'
'It's no different than if you were tracking down an ordinary killer,' Shaddack said irritably. 'You'll apply the same techniques.'
'But…'
'What is it?'
'Regressives could be among the men you assign me.'
'There won't be any…'
'But … how can you be sure?'
'I told you there won't be,' Shaddack said sharply, still facing the window, the fog, the night.
They were both silent a moment.
Then Shaddack said, 'You've got to put everything into finding these damned deviants. Everything, you hear me? I want at least one of them to examine by the time we've taken all of Moonlight Cove through the Change.'
'I thought …'
'Yes?'
'Well, I thought …'
'Come on, come on. You thought what?'
'Well … just that maybe you'd suspend the conversions until we understand what's happening here.'
'Hell, no!' Shaddack turned from the window and glared at the police chief, who flinched satisfactorily.
'These regressives are a minor problem, very minor. What the shit do you know about it? You're not the one who designed a new race, a new world.
Watkins looked down at his white-knuckled hands.
As he spoke, Shaddack paced barefoot along the curved glass wall, then back again. 'We now have more than enough doses to deal with the remaining townspeople. In fact, we've initiated a new round of conversions this evening. Hundreds will be brought into the fold by dawn, the rest by midnight. Until everyone in town is with us, there's a chance we'll be found out, a risk of someone carrying a warning to the outside world. Now that we've overcome the problems with the production of the biochips, we've got to take Moonlight Cove quickly, so we can proceed with the confidence that comes from having a secure home base. Understand?'
Watkins nodded.
'
'Yes. Yes, sir.'
Shaddack returned to his chair and sat down. 'Now what's this other thing you called me about earlier, this Valdoski business?'
'Eddie Valdoski, eight years old,' Watkins said, looking at his hands, which he was now virtually wringing, as if trying to squeeze something from them in the way he might have squeezed water from a rag. 'He was found dead a few minutes past eight. in a ditch along the country road. He'd been … tortured … bitten, gutted.'
'You think one of the regressives did it?'
'Definitely.'
'Who found the body?'
'Eddie's folks. His dad. The boy had been playing in the backyard, and then he … disappeared near sunset. They started searching, couldn't find him, got scared, called us, continued to search while we were on our way … and found the body just before my men got there.'
'Evidently the Valdoskis aren't converted?'
'They weren't. But they are now.'
