Pete tossed him a crumpled white sack. 'Some.'
Judson pulled out half a crumb donut and a small piece of maple bar. He dropped them back in the sack and threw the sack at Pete in disgust.
'That's it? You ate all the rest?'
'I saved two for you.'
'Two pieces you bit out of.'
Pete laughed. 'I didn't bite out of them. I tore pieces off with my fingers. What a pansy.'
'Pansy hell. I just don't want to get your AIDS germs.' Judson pulled the chair out from Rita's desk and sat down, pushing his feet against the wood and tipping the chair back on two legs. He nodded toward the switchboard. 'Anything?'
Pete shook his head. 'Slow night.'
'So what'd that dickhead from Phoenix have to say?'
'McFarland? Nothing new. I think thestaters are concentrating more on the Valley than here.'
'That's bullshit.More's happened here than there.'
Pete laughed. 'What is this? A contest? Sure,more's happened here than there, but they figure Phoenix is bigger, he'd have more place to hide. Up here, we'd notice someone new immediately, the town's too small.'
'He, huh? They've narrowed it down to a single person?'
'Don't play goddamn word games with me. You know what I'm talking about. They think the perpetrator or perpetrators is or are in the Phoenix area, all right? Is that clear enough for you? They're concentrating their efforts in the Valley. McFarland's staying here, butRalphs will be operating both here and in Phoenix.'
'That's bullshit. Did you tell him about the preacher? What's his name?'
'Elias something. Yeah, I told him. He said he'd talk to Wilson about it, but he himself couldn't make any decisions. He said he'd tell him about the fire this afternoon, too, but he thought that last fire was totally unconnected. He has a real bug up his ass about everything being centered in Phoenix.'
'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
