'Said she was coming out of this building over here, okay, and the guy blows up. Her words. 'He just blew up. It was awful. I thought something fell on him or hit him or something.' She said he was just somebody walking down the street.'
'I.D. on the body?'
'Louis Sheves. Lives in Foley Park. Trying to reach a relative or neighbor, so far no luck.'
They reached the body, which was surrounded by people. There was a crime photographer and another evidence tech doing pictures and measurements. The people from Kay Cee Memorial were obviously waiting for the police to finish. There was certainly no hurry. The victim was long gone. Literally. The lieutenant pulled back the cover from the remains.
'Holy Mother!' he said.
'Jesus!' Llewelyn heard another cop murmur. There was nothing left of the head. It had been almost completely torn from the body of the victim by whatever killed him. The force that had exploded the head had ripped it from the neck leaving only a hideous mess of ragged, bloody skin, bone, gristle, torn veins, and arteries, and a bit of spine stalk.
'Where's the man's head?' Llewelyn asked. Nobody answered. They were standing in some of it. Dark blood had stained the filthy street all around the body. Llewelyn could imagine the witness screaming as this lifeless corpse pumped blood from the neck.
Blackened, oily blood was everywhere. On a nearby parked truck. On the splattered coat of the luckless woman who had experienced the bad fortune to be in Louis Sheves's proximity when he blew up, but had the good fortune to be missed by whatever hellish force had struck him. It was the sort of crime scene where you didn't want to think about the soles of your shoes.
'Lieutenant,' one of Llewelyn's guys said.
'Leo. Where's the head?'
'We found some skull fragment and hair 'n' that, but'—be shrugged—'the rest of him's all over the street.'
'M.E. done?'
'He said they can't tell us anything till they do an autopsy.'
'What a surprise,' the lieutenant said dryly.
'Witness see anybody? Vehicles? Anything?'
The detective was looking at his notebook, shaking his head. 'She works in the building over there. She was coming out and he was walking down the street. 'There was kind of a noise like a baseball bat or something hitting and this man blew up. He just blew up. It was awful. I thought something fell on him or hit him, you know, like that. But I didn't see anything. He just exploded and I screamed and tried to cover myself. His body kind of went up in the air and came back down in the street.''
'If the evidence techs are done I guess they can take him.'
The homicide team moved aside as they covered what was left of the man and the people from Kay Cee Memorial began loading the remains on a gurney. 'I want to talk to her,' Llewelyn told his men, stepping over to the sidewalk.
'Yes, sir. We're trying to locate anybody else who might have seen it happen.'
'Good.' Llewelyn watched the emergency team roll what was left of the dead body over to the waiting ambulance, open the doors, and expertly slide the gurney in. The legs folded up under it as it went in the ambulance with its grisly load. That's the way he felt sometimes, as if his legs would fold up under his weight if he moved the wrong way.
Llewelyn was a prematurely balding, bedraggled-looking, thirty-seven-year-old career cop who suddenly felt one hundred and thirty-seven, and not without good cause. He had solid instincts, proven in combat and in the dicier halls of both military and civilian strivers. He could see his captaincy puddling and running down the nearest storm drain before his eyes if this thing got away from him. Oh, he thought, with an exhausted sigh, there was going to be a world of shit on this one. Twelve of the fucking hits—
He ran a small 'elite' unit that people fought to get on. One of his best investigators, Hilliard, pulled up and parked. They exchanged nods and she checked the scene over, speaking with T. J. Kass, the other one of the female dicks on his squad, then came over to where he was making notes.
'You talk to the witness yet, El Tee?' she asked him.
'Uh-uh.' He shook his head. 'Let's go.' They went over to where the woman was beginning her tale of horror for the third or fourth time, telling them what she'd seen, what she thought she'd seen; telling them nothing.
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12
Fort Meade, Maryland
The man reading a memorandum from his immediate superior in the Special Action section of SAUCOG's hierarchy shared something with the man whom he was about to call, the legendary Dr. Norman at Marion Federal Penitentiary. Neither of them knew the identity of M. R. Sieh, Jr., yet the conversation they would now have was a result of a memo he had received, subsequent to the latest datafax from NCIC, VI-CAP, and other data-gathering centers feeding their computers. When one of their field men had gone rogue, which in this instance meant he had escaped from prison, in 1987, a detective had followed a trail that led to the Special Action Unit's doorstep. No one had been amused.
The existence of the offender had been expunged from Whirlwind and other computers at that time, deleted but left as a trigger, to search, trace, and transfer back to the section any and all data about who might come looking. The trigger had various spurs. One of these had just been activated for the first time in more than six years.
Inside the control center, a pair of technicians finished their thorough investigation of the facility.
'Okay, folks,' the sound man said, in the direction of a man seated at the central communications console. 'We'll see you next month.' Nobody acknowledged his comment or his wave. It was considered proper form to ignore them at all times. A professional habit. The men understood it. They wore Day-Glo yellow jackets bearing a stenciled admonition on the front and back:
ELECTRONIC SOUND SWEEP
IN PROGRESS
W * A * R * N * I * N * G!
DO NOT SPEAK TO ME OR
REFER TO MY PRESENCE IN ANY WAY
When the sound lock had been reactivated, he placed a secure call to the penitentiary, via double-scrambled hookup. After a moment, he heard Dr. Norman's voice on the hotline.
'Hello?'
'Yes. I'm afraid our problem is worse instead of better. I'm looking at some tragic data. If this printout is correct the person in possession of SAVANT has killed eight men and four women, that we know of—in the last few days—with no guarantee the end is in sight. He has to be terminated, as you predicted.'
'It won't be a problem.'
'Our superiors will be relieved to hear that taking out a cunning professional executioner armed with a million dollar weapon system is no problem.' He said it without sarcasm.
'Not our problem, I should have said. We'll leave it to the individual most capable.'
'What will you do to put this guy out of business?'
'With due respect, do you want to know details?'
'I think in this case—yes. I'll be asked for some of the operational details, I feel sure. What are your plans?'
'As I told you in our last conversation, I've been prepared for this contingency. A special communication has
