The trees were too far distant and there were no bushes that would afford a decent hiding place. She tried the back door and, quite unbelievably, it opened.
By her watch it was 8:32 p.m. Sam needed her now and she was still a long way from flying Ben's plane-even assuming it would fly at all.
All Sam heard was an excited yelp, but he knew it was the dog crossing fresh man scent. That was an amazingly fast response. At about the same moment Sam found a narrow trail through the forest. Because the dog was near, he changed strategy to gain speed. Pulling out his small light, he began walking as fast as his stiffened knee would allow. With any luck this would be the right kind of trail. It wound through salal, huckleberry, some madronas in the understory, and Douglas fir in the crown. Then it led to the jackpot he was looking for-a fishing spot on the water where people warmed themselves by a large campfire. Or maybe it was teenagers communing in the dark, listening to the gentle lap of the inland sea. Whatever the reason, there were plenty of charred sticks here.
Picking up a good-size stick, with a well-blackened end, he ran it all over his body from the waist down, covering his clothes and skin with the charcoal. Then he walked to the water's edge, backtracked, and ran up the trail for twenty paces before he turned around and ran back to the fire pit. Finally he moved away from the trail, plunging through the brush so that he would not come nose to nose with an aggressive dog. Fortunately, he had gone only about one hundred yards before coming to another trail and a few hundred more yards down the new trail to another small clearing. Again he heard the dog, dangerously close. Apparently the animal was casting about, making an S-shaped search pattern through the woods. The charcoal seemed to have him confused.
They passed each other with only about a fifty-yard gap.
Dogs' noses were so sensitive that they could on occasion distinguish between fires if the combusted wood was of differing species. Sam wanted to smell like every campfire along the edge of the forest, but that wouldn't be possible. He may have found the only one, and even if he hadn't, finding another in the dark was unlikely.
From the clearing he went off into the woods, paralleling the salt water for a couple hundred yards, then dropped down to the steep rocky bank at the water's edge. Hidden behind a badly placed cloud, there was no moon on the darkened wind-ruffled surface and the steep slippery rocks looked ominous. With his bad legs they would be a nightmare.
Without thinking more about the suffering to come, he hobbled down to the water and tried not to scream as the salt water burned into the many cuts and abrasions on his lower leg. He entered the water halfway up to his knees and walked along the rocks, working desperately to keep his already tentative footing. The rocks were uneven and at times he stepped to thigh-deep bone-chilling water when he least expected that result.
Salt water on his raw flesh was a new form of hell. But he would use the water to mask the scent of his footsteps, leaving the dog with nothing more than the fire smell at the beach.
He exited the water around the northern side of a blunt-shaped point and stayed very near the steep rock slope that was the beach so as not to spread any scent in the forest.
Eventually they would try walking with the dog along the entire beach. By that time Sam needed to be gone.
Surprised, he found a lone house accessed by what looked to be a small private drive. It was set in the forest near the point with a good view of the water. Only one light shone inside, no car was in the driveway. It was an isolated spot. Quickly he checked the garage. No car. He decided to chance staying a few minutes. He was only a little bit amazed when he found the door unlocked. It was probably on university property; here people were casual about locking doors and the like.
It was blessedly warm inside. Sam was still shaking from the cold. He needed to wait for Haley and the plane-at the same time an isolated home was an obvious place to search. He would thumb through the papers.
With shaking hands, he pulled out the note he had taken from Ben's pocket. On it was scribbled: SJ: Please remind Lattimer to take groceries to Orcas. That seemed to be the original note; on the back was written: Haley and Sarah meet Nelson 12:00 am. Sunday at M Chef. Then there was a phone number, perhaps for Nelson. Finally came the notation: Flowers Sarah, and a phone number.
Puzzling, he thought. Gibbons to take groceries to Orcas. Ben had no place at Orcas. Or did he?
The other was obviously a reminder note of a meeting with Nelson Gempshorn on a Sunday. But why both Sarah and Haley? Very strange. Haley said nothing about Sarah attending any meeting with Nelson, so perhaps this was a future meeting. Today? Sam was anxious to get Haley's take on the note. He decided to wait to call her, and instead to look at the documents he'd taken, then leave.
He hurried. The first volume's content was obvious and shocking. They were calculating the volume of methane hydrates and trapped methane gas beneath a given area of ocean floor and the small temperature changes required to release about half the methane on the planet. Mostly natural causes. One author argued that placement of a nuclear device in the right deep-sea trench would trigger the methane release; that, in turn, would trigger a landslide that would cause a devastating tsunami.
Sam started to see that portions of this volume had been written for laymen, perhaps policy makers, and that was an interesting new wrinkle. In plain English they described how a chain release of methane might start in the Arctic.
Volume two, the Nobeltec bathyscaphic charts, depicted the seafloor off Cape Hatteras, on the eastern seaboard. Apparently the Arcs had been busy off Cape Hatteras; pock-marks and fissures were opening up off the cape, a clear indication of escaping methane.
According to Ben's notes, the most likely result of methane release would be massive underwater landslides, resulting giant tsunamis and catastrophic global warming, methane being a greenhouse gas. Other authors had postulated massive conflagrations in the atmosphere or simple asphyxiation near the coast.
Sam skimmed, always thinking about a hasty exit.
Hurriedly he looked for the fountain of youth. It was all too complicated. They were searching for some gene. Stranger yet was a notation penned in Ben's hand: The answer may be found in the Sargasso stew.
What the heck was that? He had to go. There was much more and it looked the most interesting-more fountain of youth-stuff. Human mitochondria.
The aging stuff fascinated Sam. He was tired of thinking about global catastrophes and the end of the world. He wondered, though, how much of this Ben had already shared with the U.S. government. Any of it? Sam would have Ernie look into the matter.
Anything that could become a new terrorist recipe would invoke federal jurisdiction over the entire matter. Probably a long shot.
In his excitement over all the new aging material, Sam decided to call Haley.
She answered, clearly out of breath. Quickly he explained what he had found.
'I couldn't tell, but I thought he might be saying there was some important similarity between Arcs and humans. Maybe in the mitochondria.'
'That has me curious as hell,' Haley said. Sam caught a set of headlights coming through the trees. Without a word he stepped out the back door and plunged into the pitch-black forest.
CHAPTER 26
H aley slipped inside the house, spooked out of her mind, sure that at any second the owner would materialize with a gun. Her body wanted to sweat despite the shivering cold of wet clothes and she caught herself breathing as if in a race.
'We haven't seen anybody,' the lady of the house was saying to Frick's men.
The back door entered into a small vestibule, then into the kitchen. She could see through to the front door.
The man of the house stood with the woman.
'Is she dangerous?' he asked.
'She was with the guy who killed Crew Wentworth,' said the officer. 'She escaped with the killer. It would pay to be really careful.'
