One of two arrows pierced his heart, which sprayed forth blood across the wheel and dash as the car careened out of control, first veering into the median, heading straight for the van, just barely missing it and sheering off before bumping back up onto the shoulder tarmac from which it had come, decelerating as it went into the right-hand ditch, bumping along this trench for another forty yards before coming to an abrupt, dead standstill, thanks to a tree. The impact sent Timothy Little's body lurching forward, but the body was saved any meeting with the jagged, shattered windshield not by the air bag or the seat belt but by the two steel arrows that had pinned him in place like a marionette.
The assassins brought the van around behind the wrecked vehicle, and like dark vultures they descended on Timothy Little. They had to wrench him from the car seat, where both his chest and an arm were pinned to the cushions by the steel shafts of the arrows that'd killed him. His heart was still pumping blood, but he was in such a state of shock and dying that he didn't feel a thing when they tore him from the cab, laid him out across the hood, and efficiently went to work on removing his extremities.
One of the assassins worked to decapitate Little's head, with its bulging eyes and grimacing teeth, necessarily causing a great gout of blood in the process. The blood ran in many small rivers over contours of the rental car, and several unusual dents across the hood of the car were left where the meat cleavers had done their work.
A passing motorist's lights momentarily shone on them, but the driver, speeding at well over sixty-five, didn't give them a thought beyond the minimal, Car trouble… glad it's not me…
Meanwhile, Timothy Little's feet, hands and head were bagged in two separate large plastic Hefty bags. These were thrown into the back of the van as one of the assassins climbed in.
The other two climbed into the cab, the engine still running. Cigarettes were lit, great breaths of relief were taken, and finally a cheer went up among them. It had been a job well-timed and well-executed. Helsinger I would be proud.
With a last look at Little's now limbless torso sprawled across the hood of his midnight-blue, regal-looking rental, a shining steel shaft sticking straight up into the air from his chest, the other shaft still in the car, the black- hooded killers congratulated one another, one taking credit for the direct hit on Timothy's heart.
They then disappeared down the highway toward Rogue River, leaving the silence of night and the body behind them. Only the absolute stillness and Timothy's mangled remains, sliding down the hood now, were left when the raccoons came to investigate the pungent odor left in the wake of the passing humans.
TEN
Lucas Stonecoat looked up, thinking he had heard someone quietly snooping at the door to the Cold Room, but there was no one there. The room had filled with dark men, hunched forms, gargoyles-all shadows. He glanced across the room at the cubed and barred single window, finding it had been painted vermilion on this side, black on the other.
Night had come on and he hadn't been aware of it, so enthralled had he become in some of the other files Dr. Meredyth Sanger had checked out of the Cold Room over the past two weeks. Apparently, she had already run a computer check on cases involving arrows and had done the research, casting out many an archery accident to find these cases where an arrow was used with deadly intent.
He hadn't gotten very far into the other files Meredyth had logged out when he realized he'd put in overtime. Neither Kelton nor Lawrence would appreciate him putting in for overtime his first day on the job, not after all the paperwork he'd already cost them with his field trip to the Texaco station.
Lucas had lost track of time, and his black coffee had turned to cold mud while he had scanned the month's roster to locate the ID numbers of other files borrowed on Meredyth Sanger's name. Except for the dust kicked up and the allergy itch running along the canals of his nose, he effortlessly found these ancient files as well, long forgotten by all but a lone police shrink, and now him.
The dust was not so thick or undisturbed on these folders, making it obvious they'd recently been fanned and scanned. He piled them atop one another, four in all, and placed them into a battered briefcase he'd been using for his classes. Not bothering to log the fact, not wanting to leave the kind of tracks Dr. Sanger was leaving in her wake, he pushed the files into his case, intending to study them overnight. Switching off the light, he limped from the exit of his monastic hole in the wall, his leg killing him from having sat so long in one position.
Locking up, he turned to the service elevator and waited for the damned pachyderm to come get him.
More coffee, Stonecoat told himself, pouring the last of the pot, long cold, into his cup. Instead of going to class as he should have, Lucas had spent a restless and long evening with the remaining files, holed up in his bare apartment in an effort to follow in Meredyth Sanger's curious footsteps along the convoluted trail she had blazed. He was trying his damnedest to punch holes into her reasoning and the stubbornness with which she had come down this path in the first place. But he wasn't having much luck in doing so.
He paced what little space remained here for him to walk, what with the files strewn about the floor, along with boxes yet to be emptied since his move. He was using unopened boxes as chairs and tables for the moment, as he'd taken the unfurnished apartment with the desire and design that he would decorate in a manner suiting him self. So far his interior decorations amounted to a handful of prints of noble Indian faces and early tribal life, which adorned the walls along with an authentic Cherokee blanket his aunt had sent him during his convalescence in Dallas. Lucas had moments before risen with some difficulty from the floor, where he'd been splayed out for an hour now, going over the final papers of the final file he'd taken from the Cold Room. He didn't own a table, so the papers were spread across boxes.
Going for the refrigerator, which was owned by the super, along with all the other appliances in the flat, he located a cold Coors and drank long and deeply, savoring the cool feel of the liquid and its bite as it slid familiarly and easily down his throat. Earlier, he'd ordered Pizza Hut's complete spaghetti meal, along with a small pizza, and what remained of the pizza sat on one edge of two unopened cardboard boxes that he'd been meaning to get to but was now using as a makeshift tray table in his nearly empty flat.
The chief features of the place were the hardwood floor, the poster bed he'd bought for the bedroom, and a pair of first-model Colt. 45's he'd hung in a special place above his bed. Lucas hadn't had the time required to do the place up right. And if he followed Sanger down the primrose path she wanted him to take, there'd be less time than ever to pursue personal interests, such as making a suitable home for himself, fishing, boating, diving or hunting. One of the allures of Houston was its proximity to the ocean on the one hand and to good hunting grounds on the other. Houston itself had very few lures. It was, like all cities its size, an abominable place to be if you were poor, a lovely place to be if you were rich. But within a two-hour drive, out beyond the last development, Lucas knew he could find the trail ways of his ancestors alongside those of Sam Houston, Davy Crockett, Austin, and Travis. He could canoe through a primeval swamp, angle for a free crab dinner or go sailing. There were ferries to ride to distant destinations, beaches to walk, and quiet country roads to drive. There were horse farms and sugarcane mills in every direction. It just took a little effort and looking to find sea-rimmed marshes and wilderness trails. And despite all of his physical problems, Lucas Stonecoat had dedicated himself to returning one hundred percent to the man he once was, a man who loved the outdoors and the open prairie.
He continued to pace, to think, and to become angry all over again at the circumstances closing in around him. Dr. Sanger was no fool; she knew he'd do almost anything to get reassigned out of the Cold Room. And damned if he didn't want it both ways-wanted her to be wrong about the files, about the connections she'd perceived, so he could safely bow out, and yet he wanted her to be right, so he could get excited about something and go back to being who and what he was before the accident. But that renegade was hardly more than a faint memory now, a shadow puppet in the theater of remorse. Still, he had promised the God who daily moved him that one day he would return to full health and vigor, and perhaps by getting involved here and now, getting excited about his work, this case… then perhaps.
Still, he found himself as curious about Meredyth as the journey she'd been on, forged as it was from tantalizing footprints which, while timeworn and wholly spectral, had roused his most basic instinct for the hunt. Indeed, he wished very much to understand her motives as best he might, and to determine if he really wanted to get any deeper into this figurative hotbed with her, aligned as she was against the one man in the department who could most easily make his life miserable. Of course, Phil Lawrence's decision to place him in the Cold Room had
