“Who was conducting the Whitaker investigation?”
“Pardee and Amelford, remember? They were there from the beginning Coincidence?”
He recalled the records he'd read, and she was right. “Those two bastards have got to see the similarities in the Mootry killing. Maybe it's time we paid them a little visit.”
“And what do you expect to get from such a visit, after the two played chopping block with your throat last night, Lucas? They're not going to share what they've turned up with either of us.”
“Why weren't they silenced ten years ago along with Felipe and Covey?”
'They didn't make the connection between Palmer and Whitaker, Felipe and Covey did.”
“Either that or think the unthinkable.”
“What? That Pardee and Amelford were part of Felipe's and Covey's downfall? That they were interested in some sort of cover-up in the Palmer and Whitaker deaths?”
“Well, you saw how scant the file information was.”
“Wheeew, that's quite a stretch.”
“It might explain why they were so testy with me.”
“They could have killed you last night, and if they are as deeply involved in some sort of conspiracy as you say, maybe they would have.”
“One of them wanted to finish me off; Pardee, I think. Said as much.”
“What precisely did he say?”
“I don't know. I was half unconscious from the blow he'd delivered.”
“They knocked you unconscious? You didn't say that before.”
“I didn't want to worry you.”
“Goddamn your stubborn, prideful hide.”
“I got the distinct impression they felt more than a little threatened by my having stepped into the Mootry crime scene.”
“What else did they say?”
“I was in a hell of a daze when they started conversing with one another. Hell, they thought I was completely out.”
“I think we could refresh your memory with a bit of regression therapy. Would you sit still long enough for me to hypnotize you?”
His eyes widened. “You can do that?”
“I can. I'm fully trained. We might get some interesting bits of… insight.”
“All right, but I don't want you digging around for anything but last night,” he commanded.
“What do you think I am? Some sort of psychic vamp? I'm only interested in helping your recall of the isolated event.”
He nodded. “Good… good, then we'll do it.”
They left the prison, going down its stark corridors, past the rattling bars and the whistles, finally out into the courtyard and the parking lot. The place seemed like some sort of hell on earth, like one of the rungs in Dante's Inferno, she thought.
TWENTY — ONE
Randy Oglesby had gotten a call from Dr. Sanger, who was still out at Hempstead with Stonecoat; in fact, she said they were having lunch at the Hempstead Inn. Randy wondered if all they were having there was on a plate.
“Randy, I want you to push hard for any computer crosses that might link Judge Charles Mootry with Dr. Wesley Palmer and/or Whitaker. Can you do that. Randy?”
“Sure, but what kind of links are we talking?”
“Anything whatsoever. Credit references, organizations they belonged to, schools they attended, you name it.”
“That'll take some time, but sure, I'll get on it.”
“That's why I called you, Randy. I knew you'd be game.”
'This is really big, isn't it, Doctor?”
“I don't know yet.”
'Today's trip of any help?”
“Don't know yet.”
“Gotcha… I'll get right on it.”
And Randy Oglesby was a young man of his word. He had spent several hours after that telephone call running down crosses-cross-references between Mootry, Palmer, and Whitaker-without any clear-cut satisfaction. Some of the information came over while he was on break. He had simply let the machines talk to one another while he grabbed a Snickers and a cup of coffee. When transmission had ended, He stored the new information without going through it. He had a lot of other jobs to attend to today, and it was getting later and later.
An hour later, he sat before his terminal at the Thirty-first, chipping away at the deluge of work left him from previous days. There were notes, articles, and other items to electronically file away. But he quickly grew tired of the case studies and the usual materials coming out of Dr. Sanger's office. In a moment, bored, he was surfing the Internet for news bulletins on deaths by strange arrows around the nation. While he had earlier checked with all police agencies worldwide, including Interpol and the FBI and Scotland Yard, he wondered with fresh eyes if there could be people out there on the Net who might know of any additional bizarre stories involving bows and arrows and murder.
He soon found himself inundated with stories, many of which he recognized for the bullshit they were; some of them were reminiscent of Dungeons and Dragons, Doom, and Helsinger's Pit, all games he had played as a child. People out there weren't taking him seriously.
“Oh, yeah, sure, get real,” ridiculed some of the electronic responses. “Hey, Cochise,” shouted another. “Way to go, Geronimo!” came a third.
One message he got was strange and crude. “Keep fucking around with this stuff, Mr. Squeegee,” someone responded to his electronic handle, with no clue as to where his request had originated from, “and you'll get a tempered steel arrow through your goddamned evil heart and another up your ass.”
A second vulgar message said, “We'll scalp your head and your prick, punk.”
Just the ramblings of assholes hanging out their entire lives on the Net, seeking identity, seeking validation, seeking kicks, highs, and even sex in a world of silicone and bytes rather than in a real bed with a real woman, he told himself, shrugging off the threats as childish bullshit.
He turned his mind instead to Darlene and the problem of having discovered that he liked her too much to go on lying to her. Still, he feared what she'd think now if he told the truth, once she learned he was just a computer support person in the department working for Dr. Sanger, and not a detective at all. It was a quandary that had been taking up much of his time lately, and there didn't seem any solution but to tell her the truth, but when, where, and how? he wondered.
He surfed off the Net and got back to his duties. But halfway through a routine case study Dr. Sanger wanted all her notes organized on, his screen went blank. There was no explanation for the interruption. A few bleeps and grinds later, a handful of words suddenly flashed across his screen.
The flashing few words were scary words. They read:
You'llpay dearly, withyourheart'sblood….
Randy swallowed hard. It was one thing to be threatened by computer nerds on the Net; it happened every day. But this was different. Someone had hacked their way into his system. They knew who he was, where he was, and the threat, using the words heart's blood, was a little too close to home, with all these crossbow murders Dr. Sanger and Stonecoat were investigating.
Just as suddenly as the message appeared, it disintegrated into black and the program he had been working on re-appeared.
Randy steeled his nerves and tried desperately to trace the break-in, but whoever it was, he was clever,
