“I know what you mean,” Kate told him. “Did you find anything else?”
“No,” Ron said. “We didn’t really look around much, to tell you the truth. Not after that. We turned the evidence over to Bill Tatum, head of security out at Salutations. He didn’t look too pleased to be handed a severed dog’s paw, I can tell you. And I think he’d have been happy if it had been a snake. Dodd’s Jurassic Park stories were starting to wind down, and they’d be easier to take than would some dog mutilator stalking his perfect little town. That kind of thing just isn’t supposed to take place in a planned community, you know.”
“You gave it to Tatum? Damn. I’d like to have examined it.”
“What for? I told you something metal cut it. What interest do you guys have in a dognaper?” Ron was confused, a bit. Could the perpetrator be someone from the Eyesore? He thought of Levin carving at the tubful of buzzard guts.
“Ah, no reason,” she said. “I’m always tinkering.”
“Tinkering? With a dog paw?”
She utterly surprised him, then. By asking him out. “What are you doing tonight?”
“Well…when?”
He thought of her looking at a clock, to get the time. “How about eight o’clock? I could meet you somewhere. How about St. Cloud? I know a really good Cajun restaurant there.”
“Damn.”
“What? Don’t like Cajun?”
“No. I mean, yes, I like Cajun food just fine. But, I have to meet someone in Orlando at seven. I’d have to drive from Orlando down to St. Cloud after that, and there’s just no way I could make it by eight.” He thought, trying to figure a way. “Can you meet me in Orlando?”
“God, no. I hate that place. Stay away from there as much as possible,” she told him. “Who are you meeting, anyway? Another lady?”
That sounded almost like jealousy. That was a good sign. “No. Nothing like that. At all. I have to meet that reporter, Tim Dodd. Funny little guy.”
“Dodd? I know who you’re talking about. The one who wrote all of those funny stories in the Inquirer. Why meet him out there? Isn’t he in Salutations?”
“No. He pulled out of there today. In a hurry, too.”
“A hurry?”
“Yeah. He was really very upset. Said something strange had happened to him and he needed my input.”
“Strange? In what way?”
“I couldn’t say. He was all scratched and bruised. Said he’d gotten lost in the woods. Wanted to talk to me about something, and said he had to check out of the hotel and get a room in Orlando.”
“Oooo. Sounds mysterious,” she said.
“I don’t know about that. But I’m to meet him at the Penta on International Boulevard. In fact, I’ll have to be leaving soon if I’m going to make the meeting.”
“Well, I’ll let you go, then.”
“I wish I hadn’t promised to meet him out there,” Ron admitted. “I’d rather spend some time with you. Get to know you better.”
There was some uncomfortable silence from the other end. Ron even fidgeted. Finally, Kate spoke. “That’s flattering, Ron. I enjoyed your company, too. We need to get together to talk at length.”
“No problem to that,” he said, blushing invisibly to her. “You’re a unique woman.”
“We can talk about it. Tomorrow? You call me tomorrow.”
“I will,” he said.
“Well. Bye.”
“Goodbye.”
He sat there for a while, thinking of Kate, wishing he hadn’t promised Dodd to meet him. And then he remembered the way Dodd had passed the object to him as he’d left. As good as his word, Ron hadn’t so much as looked at whatever it was. It was still in the pocket of the shirt he’d been wearing earlier. He had to get it.
Ron went to the clothes hamper and found the shirt lying on the very top. He dug into the left pocket, recalling that Dodd had been left-handed and the thing had ended up in the wrong pocket. He took it out and looked at it. Yes. It was as he’d thought. A computer disk. But not a CD, and not a 3.5" floppy. This was something else. It looked like one of those digital disks he’d seen at a technology demonstration at the office a few months before. In fact, he was fairly certain it was for a digital camera. Well, it wasn’t Ron’s business. He’d give it back to the guy as soon as he saw him.
He put it in the pocket of the short-sleeved shirt he was wearing and tried not think of it. For all he knew, it contained some incriminating evidence against some executive from Berg Brothers. Yes, best to give it back to Dodd as soon as possible.
Quickly, he had locked up the house, climbed into the little Toyota Corolla he owned, five years old and going to have to serve for five more before he bought another one: Fish & Wildlife did not pay as well as Ron had hoped. He headed toward Orlando.
In less time than he would have thought, he had pulled off the interstate, on to the big boulevard that paralleled it, and was in the parking lot of the Penta. It was a very nice hotel. Four stars, and very plush. He had stayed there with Mary once, doing the tourist stuff when they weren’t having sex, which was only about half the time. She had almost been the one for him. Maybe Kate would be the real thing. He thought of the rest of his life with a woman half a foot taller than he was. Well, they’d turn a lot of heads.
But not as many heads as yours and Mary’s dark-skinned children would, eh, you jerk? Ron shook the subversive thought from his mind and tried to pretend it had never been there.
The evening was dark, no moon, but you’d never have known it. Orlando was, as usual, lit up like the all night party it was. There were people everywhere, going to restaurants, to clubs, to parks, to money traps, to everything one could imagine. He doubted any of them were headed home.
Soon, he was in the lobby of the hotel. If the façade was false marble, and not the real thing, then it was an excellent imitation. The place was all pink and white; carpet and what appeared to be polished stone. Very nice. Again, if you liked that kind of thing. Ron was one of those people who did like it, from time to time. He’d never be able to take a steady diet of it, though. It was good for a laugh, now and again.
He got in a short line at the front desk, waiting his turn. Finally, a lean, dark-headed and cleanly pressed young man indicated with a friendly wave that he could step forward.
“May I help you?” the young man asked.
“Yes,” Ron said. “I’m meeting someone here. Someone who’s supposed to have checked in today. Could you ring his room for me? I don’t know the room number.”
“Certainly,” the man said, picking up a receiver, his manicured fingers poised above a bright yellow keyboard. “What is the guest’s name?”
“Dodd. Tim Dodd.”
The young man’s fingers played quickly and expertly over the keyboard, flitting with practiced speed. There was a short pause. Then, “I’m sorry. We don’t have anyone by that name registered. Not even a Dodd,” he added.
“Huh,” Ron grunted. “Hmm. How about his company? Maybe he’s registered under the company name. He works for the National Inquirer.”
The young man’s eyebrows perked up at that. “That’s interesting,” he said, his fingers already jotting away. And then, “No. Nothing registered to them, either. I’m sorry, but your friend doesn’t seem to have checked in yet.”
“Were you guys full today? He was going to come in early this afternoon. Maybe you had no vacancies.”
“No, sir. We’ve had vacancies all week. This isn’t our peak season, you know.” The young man was still smiling, but Ron could tell he wanted to be done with this so that he could deal with paying customers.
“Okay, then. Maybe he just hasn’t had time to check in. I’ll have a drink at the bar and then come back and see if he comes in.”
“You do that,” he said, already motioning for the next person in line to come forward.
Ron faded away, and found himself on a stool in one of the Penta’s less expensive bars. The place had four clubs and three restaurants
, all part of a mini-mall attached to the hotel. So, for an hour Ron nursed a couple of beers from chilly to warm as he slowly sipped them, waiting for Dodd.
At last, he went back to the front desk and once more asked the nice young man the same questions. And once more he received a negative reply.
Damn and hell. He could have spent the evening with Kate. He was really looking forward to getting to know her. To kissing her, in fact. He really wanted to kiss her. “Screw you, Dodd,” he muttered.
And within another hour he was back at home, ready to crash. He was asleep about as soon as his head hit the pillow. He’d even forgotten about the disk, and it sat in the pocket of the shirt, which lay in a heap of sea green cotton fabric on the floor. He dreamed. In his dream, instead of Kate, there was Dodd, muttering to him. “I’ve got something to tell you,” the scabby-faced dream image was saying.
That was when the phone awakened him.
Fumbling out of bed, he looked at the red light digits on his clock. “Seven ay emm,” he groaned. “This is my day off. Who the hell is calling me on my day off? This better be good.”
“Hello,” he could not hide the drowsiness in his voice.
“Ron.”
“Kate?” He was perking up already.
“Yeah. Listen. You were supposed to meet Tim Dodd, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, he’s dead.”
“What? What?”
“Some Osceola County Mounty stopped a car late last night. Pulled them over for something. Speeding, I think. Something wonky was going on with the license of the guy driving the car, and he tried to make a break for it. Wrong cop. Big chase. He ended up pushing the guy off the road. Somewhere off of twenty-seven, I think. Into a drainage ditch full of water and lily pads. Don’t ask me how, but the driver got away. Something about a third car and another suspect. But when they pulled the car out of the ditch and looked in the trunk…”
“Dodd?”
“Dodd.” Silence. “He’d been shot. Once. In the head.”
“Jesus.”
“I think you might want to talk to the cops,” Kate said.
“Grief.” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, stared at nothing. “Thanks for calling, Kate. But…I’d better go. You’re right. I’d better call the cops.”
And now. Now, he thought seriously about the small disk that Dodd had given him. He gazed down at the heap of cotton fabric that was the shirt, and was almost afraid to reach down and retrieve it.
But, finally, he did.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kate Kwitney was sitting in Vance Holcomb’s huge office. The doors were closed tight, the big windows were shuttered, and she knew without having to be told that he’d activated and rechecked all of his safeguards against electronic surveillance. The room was cool, silent, relatively comfortable, and disturbingly silent. She waited for Holcomb to speak.
“What do you make of this?” he asked.
“I couldn’t really say,” she told him. “I only know what I’ve told you so far. Who do you think killed him?”
“I could conjecture, but I’d only be guessing.”
“The studio. It was the studio, wasn’t it?” She shrugged. “I can’t think that they would be so upset over his little articles, which his editors were probably about to stop running, anyway. I really don’t think anyone would kill him over that.”
Holcomb snorted. “Do you have any idea how much money is involved in Salutations USA? Do you?” There was a razor-like anger in his voice.
“No, sir. A lot, I know.”
“We’re talking profits in the billions of dollars. Long term, in the many billions of dollars. These are just the profits, Kate. Not gross.”
“I understand,” she said.
“No. I don’t think that you do understand.” He moved from his post behind his desk. “Listen. I grew up with these people. My father was one of them. He earned hundreds of millions of dollars doing whatever it took to earn it.” Vance looked over at Kate, his face all but in shadow. “Do you hear me? Whatever it took.
“These kinds of men put no value on a human life. A man like Dodd is a minor detail. An extra decimal point misplaced on a page, and to be done away with. Erased. Whited out.
“Do you understand?” He pointed at her.
“Yes. I understand. But what kind of danger would he have posed?”
“I think he saw something,” Holcomb said.
“What do you think he saw?”
“I think he’s seen what we’ve seen.”
“How? I don’t believe it. There’s just no way. No way, at all.”
Holcomb turned his back on her. “What about the dogs missing from Salutations? I think there’s something to that. I think what your Mr. Riggs told you confirms it.” He sighed. “Damn. I wish we’d been able to have a look at that dog’s foot.”
“I don’t know if that’s enough evidence that they’re coming into the city, Vance.”
“I think so. The red one. The scarlet one. It isn’t with the rest, anymore. It’s so big, maybe they chased it out of the group.”
“God. I hope not. He’s so huge. He could be spotted too easily.”
Holcomb moved from behind his desk and walked slowly toward Kate. Finally, he stopped just in front of her. “I think Dodd saw one of them. Maybe the red one. I think he may have taken photographs.”
“Why would you say that?”
“Because of the bullet in his head. I think they killed him because he had proof of something out there. I think they killed him to keep him from being able to prove it.” He remained where he was and continued to stare down at Kate.
“Then…” Her hands moved up to her chest. She could feel her heart suddenly pounding at her ribs.
“Then, if they’d kill Tim Dodd, they might as well kill us, too,” he finished for her.
“Do you think they know? I mean, that we’re aware of what’s living in this wilderness?”
“That would depend on whether or not Dodd had any proof, and whether or not they recovered it from him. And I think the answers to both of those questions are yes. Just taking the images from him would not have prevented him from telling anyone, nor would it have prevented him from coming back, with help, to get more proof.
“That’s why the bullet in the head.”
“Jesus.” Kate swallowed. The idea of being shot or even the chance of it happening was not something she thought that she could deal with. “What should we do?”
“I think…” He stopped short. “I’m not sure, just now. But it might almost be time for us to go public.”
Kate came out of her chair, standing up to face her employer. She was almost as tall as he was. “No. You know what will happen. This place will be crawling with people. We can’t have that. Not now. Who knows how they’ll react to other humans in their habitat? I mean…the only reason they haven’t reacted to us is that our studies have no impact on their lives.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Geez-o-Pete,” Ron muttered. It was a mild exclamation he’d picked up from an old girlfriend. He had pulled at his hair until it spiked up on his head like that of some punk or Goth, as he had tried to decide his course of action. “What the hell am I supposed to do?” he whispered to himself.
For a long time he had simply sat on the edge of his bed and had gazed down at the green shirt he’d shed the night before. It lay there harmlessly, the disk in its pocket, looking to Ron like some deadly viper waiting to strike at him. He had no doubt but that Dodd had been killed for the contents of that disk.
Ron didn’t know if he’d be suspected of having killed Dodd. He could account for most of his whereabouts the previous morning. But of course part of that had been in the company of the murdered man, so what did that get him? And he had told two people that Dodd wanted to meet with him before he’d actually left to do just that. Mary knew him well enough to know he wasn’t a murderer, but Kate was barely familiar with him beyond his name and occupa
tion, and knowing that he wanted to date her. And if Dodd had been murdered after Ron had left the hotel, then he had no way of confirming where he’d been or what he’d been doing. It didn’t look good.
With a groan, Ron had stood, gripping the disk in his right hand, examining it. Maybe if he looked at what was on the disk first, he’d have some idea of what was going on. Cops loved to close the books on a murder, as fast as they could; if they could nail Ron as a prime suspect, then they’d certainly do it. He knew that much about police work. They hated not being able to close a murder case, and they dearly sought after anyone on whom to nail a felony. “What the hell are you?” he asked the disk, holding it between thumb and forefinger.
Where could he take it? He knew he only had a couple of hours. Kate had already made the connection between himself and Dodd, so if she was questioned, he’d have to admit that he didn’t go to the cops for a while. Well, he wasn’t guilty, so maybe he just cleaned up and ate some breakfast. And maybe they’d never get around to asking Kate, anyway. There was no reason for them to, unless she volunteered the information. He’d chance it, if he could decide where to go to have a look at the contents of the disk.
The office was out. He was on a rotating schedule and it was his day off, and he never went there when he was off. His coworkers would be suspicious. At any rate, he’d have to show it to someone there, to see if they had the hardware to download it, and then he’d have to ask someone in the office for help if it proved to be too technical for him. He had a couple of hacker pals, but Ron didn’t really want to implicate them. Where, then?
“Kate,” he said. He could take it out to Holcomb’s compound. He knew he had seen some impressive computer equipment there. In Levin’s lab and in a room he’d passed on his way to Holcomb’s office. Surely Kate would give him a hand if he told her what was going on. He’d do it.
Ron went to his desk, where his own computer sat, an ancient 486 that had become obsolete years ago, and of no use for downloading this type of software. But he found a small envelope of thick paper that accommodated the bare disk, and he dropped it in and sealed it shut. He took a pen and scribbled a D on it, and dropped it in the top drawer.
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