right hand corner, just as the IBM logo would have been featured if this
had been one of their machines.
During the San Francisco office's investigation of the Sanchez
Bustamante case, one of the Bureau's better agents, Morrie Stein, had
been in a patrol car with one of Watkins's officers, Reese Dorn, when
Dorn accessed the central computer for information in departmental
files. By then Morrie had suspected that the computer was even more
sophisticated than Watkins or his men had revealed, serving them in some
way that exceeded the legal limits of police authority and that they
were not willing to discuss, so he had memorized the code number with
which Reese had tapped into the system. When he had flown to the Los
Angeles office to brief Sam, Morrie had said, "I think every cop in that
twisted little town has his own computer-access number, but Dorn's ought
to work as well as any. Sam, you've got to get into their computer and
let it throw some menus at you, see what it offers, play around with it
when Watkins and his men aren't looking over your shoulder. Yeah, I
sound paranoid, but there's too much high-tech for their size and needs,
unless they're up to something dirty. At first it seems like any town,
even more pleasant than most, rather pretty . . . but, dammit, after
a while you get the feeling the whole burg is wired, that you're watched
everywhere you go, that Big Brother is looking over your shoulder every
damn minute. Honest to God, after a few days you're gut-sure you're in
a miniature police state, where the control is so subtle you can hardly
see it but still complete, iron-fisted. Those cops are bent, Sam;
they're deep into something-maybe drug traffic, who knows-and the
computer is part of it."
Reese Dorn,s number was 262699, and Sam tapped it out on the VDT
keyboard. The New Wave logo disappeared. The screen was blank for a
second. Then a menu appeared.
CHOOSE ONE A. DISPATCHER B. CENTRAL FILES C. BULLETIN board 0.
OUTSYSTEM MODEM To Sam, the first item on the menu indicated that a
cruising officer could communicate with the dispatcher at headquarters
not only by means of the police-band radio with which the car was
equipped but also through the computer link. But why would he want to
go to all the trouble of typing in questions to the dispatcher and
reading the transmitted replies off the VDT when the information could
be gotten so much easier and quicker on the radio? Unless . . . there
were some things that these cops did not want to talk about on radio
frequencies that could be monitored by anyone with a police-band
receiver.
He did not open the link to the dispatcher because then he would have to
begin a dialogue, posing as Reese Dorn, and that would be like shouting,
Hey, I'm out here in one of your cruisers, poking my nose in just where
you don't want, so why don't you come and chop it off.
Instead, he tapped B and entered it. Another menu appeared.
CHOOSE ONE A. STATUS - CURRENT ARRESTEES B. STATUS - CURRENT COURT
CASES C. STATUS - RENDING COURT CASES D. PAST ARREST RECORDS - COUNTY
E. raspite ARREST RECORDS - CITY F. CONVICTED CRIMINALS LIVING IN
COUNTY G. CONVICTED CRIMINALS LIVING IN CITY Just to satisfy himself
that the offerings on the menu were what they appeared to be and not
code for other information, he punched in selection F, to obtain data on
convicted criminals living in the county. Another menu appeared,
offering him ten choices MURDER, MANSLAUGHTER, RARE, SEX OFFENSES,
ASSAULT AND BATTERY, ARMED ROBBERY, BURGLARY, BREAKING AND ENTERING,
OTHER THEFT, MISCELLANEOUS LESSER OFFENSES.
He called forth the file on murder and discovered three convicted
killers-all guilty of murder in either the first or second degree-were
now living as free men in the county after having served anywhere from
twelve to forty years for their crimes before being released on parole.
Their names, addresses, and telephone numbers appeared on the screen
with the names of their victims, economically summarized details of
their crimes, and - 123 the dates of their imprisonment; none lived in
the city limits of Moonlight Cove.
Sam looked up from the screen and scanned the parking lot. It remained
deserted. The omnipresent mist was filled with thicker veins of fog
that rippled banner-like as they flowed past the car, and he felt almost
as if he were under the sea in a bathyscaphe, peering out at long
ribbons of kelp fluttering in marine currents.
He returned to the main menu and asked for item C, BULLETIN BOARD. That
proved to be a collection of messages that Watkins and his officers had
left for one another regarding matters that seemed sometimes related to
police work and sometimes private. Most were in such cryptic shorthand
that Sam didn't feel he could puzzle them out or that they would be
worth the effort to decipher.
He tried item 0 on the main menu, OUTSYSTEM MODEM, and was shown a list
of computers nationwide with which he could link through the telephone
modern in the nearby municipal building. The department's possible
connections were astonishing LOS ANGELES PD (for police department), SAN
FRANCISCO PD, SAN Diego PD, Denver PD, HOUSTON PD, Dallas PD, PHOENIX
PD, CHICAGO PD, MIAMI PD, NEW YORK CITY PD, and a score of other major
cities; CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF MOTOR VEHICLES, DEPARTMENT OF PRISONS,
HIGHWAY PATROL, and many other state agencies with less obvious
connections to police work; U.S. ARMY personnel FILES, NAVY personnel
FILES, AIR FORCE; FBI CRIMINAL RECORDS, FBI FILES (Local Law-Enforcement
Assistance System, a relatively new Bureau program); even INTERPOL's New
York office, through which the international organization could access
its central files in Europe.
What in the hell would a small police force in rural California need
with all those sources of information?
And there was more data to which even fully computerized police agencies
in cities like Los Angeles would not have easy access. By law, some of
it was stuff that police could not obtain without a court order, such as
the files at TRW, the nation's premier credit-reporting firm. The
Moonlight Cove Police department's ability to access TRW's data base at
will had to be a secret kept from TRW itself, for the company would not
have cooperated in a wholesale disgorgement of its files without a
subpoena. The system also offered entrance to CIA data bases in
Virginia, which were supposedly secured against access from any computer
beyond the Agency's walls, and to certain FBI files which were likewise
believed to be inviolate.
Shaken, Sam retreated from the OUTSYSTEM MODEM options and returned to
the main menu.
He stared out at the parking lot, thinking.
When briefing Sam a few days ago, Morrie Stein had suggested that
Moonlight Cove's police might somehow be trafficking in drugs, and that
New Wave's generosity with computer systems might indicate complicity on
the part of certain unidentified officers of that firm. But the Bureau
was also interested in th
e possibility that New Wave was illegally
selling sensitive high technology to the Soviets and that it had bought
the Moonlight Cove police because, through these law-enforcement
contacts, the company would be alerted at the earliest possible moment
to a nascent federal probe into its activities. They had no explanation
of how either of those crimes accounted for all the recent deaths, but
they had to start with some theory.
Now Sam was ready to discount both the idea that New Wave was selling to
the Soviets and that some executives of the firm were in the drug trade.
The far-reaching web of data bases that the police had made available to
themselves through their modern-one hundred and twelve were listed on
that menu!-was greatly in excess of anything they would require for
either drug trafficking or sniffing out federal suspicions of possible
Soviet connections at New Wave.
They had created an informational network more suitable to the
operational necessities of an entire state government-or, even more
accurately, a small nation. A small, hostile nation. This data web was
designed to provide its owner with enormous power. It was as if this
picturesque little town suffered under the governing hand of a
megaLomaniac whose central delusion was that he could create a tiny
kingdom from which he would eventually conquer vast territory.
Today, Moonlight Cove; tomorrow, the word.
"What the fuck are they doing?" Sam wondered aloud.
Safely locked in her room at Cove Lodge-dressed for bed in pale
yellow panties and a white T-shirt emblazoned with Kermit the Frog's
smiling face-Tessa drank Diet Coke and tried to watch a repeat of the
Tonight show, but she couldn't get interested in the conversations that
Johnny Carson conducted with a witless actress, a witless singer, and a
witless comedian. Diet thought to accompany Diet Coke.
The more time that passed after her unsettling experience in the motel's
halls and stairwells, the more she wondered if indeed she had imagined
being stalked. She was distraught about Janice's death, after all,
preoccupied by the thought that it was murder rather than suicide. And
she was still dyspeptic from the cheeseburger she'd eaten for dinner,
which had been so greasy that it might have been deep-fried, bun and
all, in impure yak lard. as Scrooge had first believed of Marley's
ghost, so Tessa now began to view the phantoms that had frightened her
earlier Perhaps they'd been nothing more than an undigested bit of beef,
a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.
As Carson's current guest talked about a weekend he'd spent at an arts
festival in Havana with Fidel Castro-"a great guy, a funny guy, a
compassionate guy"-Tessa got up from the bed and went to the bathroom to
wash her face and brush her teeth. As she was squeezing Crest onto the
brush, she heard someone try the door to her room.
The small bath was off the smaller foyer. When she stepped to the
threshold, she was within a couple of feet of the door to the hall,
close enough to see the knob twisting back and forth as someone tested
the lock. They weren't even being subtle about it. The knob clicked
and rattled, and the door clattered against the frame.
She dropped her toothbrush and hurried to the telephone that stood on
the nightstand.
No dial tone.
She jiggled the cutoff buttons, pressed 0 for operator, but nothing
worked. The motel switchboard was shut down. The phone was dead.
Several times Chrissie had to scurry off the road, taking cover in
the brush along the verge, until an approaching car or truck went past.
One of them was a Moonlight Cove police car, heading toward town, and
she was pretty sure it was the one that had come out to the house. She
hunkered down in tall grass and milkweed stalks, and remained there
until the black-and-white's taillights dwindled to tiny red dots and
finally vanished around a turn.
A few houses were built along the first mile and a half of that two-lane
blacktop. Chrissie knew some of the people who lived in them the
Thomases, the Stones, the Elswicks. She was tempted to go to one of
those places, knock on the door, and ask for help. But she couldn't be
sure that those people were still the nice folks they had once been.
They might have changed, too, like her parents. Either something
SUPERNATURAL or from outer space was taking possession of people in and
around Moonlight Cove, and she had seen enough scary movies and read
enough scary books to know that when those kind of forces were at work,
you could no longer trust anyone.
She was betting nearly everything on Father Castelli at Our Lady of
Mercy because he was a holy man, and no demons from hell would be able
to get a grip on him. Of course, if the problem 7 - 127 I was aliens
from another world, Father Castelli would not be protected just because
he was a man of God.
In that case, if the priest had been taken over, and if Chrissie managed
to get away from him after she discovered he was one of the enemy, she'd
go straight to Mrs. Irene Tokawa, her teacher. Mrs. Tokawa was the
smartest person Chrissie knew. If aliens were taking over Moonlight
Cove, Mrs. Tokawa would have realized something was wrong before it was
too late. She would have taken steps to protect herself, and she would
be one of the last that the monsters would get their hooks into. Hooks
or tentacles or claws or pincers or whatever.
So Chrissie hid from passing traffic, sneaked past the houses scattered
along the county road, and proceeded haltingly but steadily toward town.
The horned moon, sometimes revealed above the fog, had traversed most of
the sky; it would soon be gone. A stiff breeze had swept in from the
west, marked by periodic gusts strong enough to whip her hair straight
up in the air as if it were a blond flame leaping from her head.
Although the temperature had fallen to only about fifty degrees, the
night felt much colder during those turbulent moments when the breeze
temporarily became a blustering wind. The positive side was that the
more miserable the cold and wind made her, the less aware she was of
that other discomfort-hunger.
"Waif Found Wandering Hungry and Dazed After Encounter with Space
Aliens," she said, reading that imagined headline from an issue of The
National Enquirer that existed only in her mind.
She was approaching the intersection of the county route and Holliwell
Road, feeling good about the progress she was making, when she nearly
walked into the arms of those she was trying to avoid.
To the east of the county route, Holliwell was a dirt road leading up
into the hills, under the interstate, and all the way to the old,
abandoned Icarus Colony-a dilapidated twelve-room house, barn, and
collapsing outbuildings where a group of artists had tried to establish
an ideal communal society back in the 1950s. Since then it had been a
horse-breeding facility (failed), the site of a weekly flea market and
auction (failed), a natural food restaura
nt (failed), and had long ago
settled into ruin. Kids knew all about it because it was a spooky place
and thus the site of many tests of courage. To the west, Holliwell Road
was paved and led along the edge of the town limits, past some of the
newer homes in the area, past New Wave Microtech, and eventually out to
the north point of the cove, where Thomas Shaddack, the computer genius,
lived in a huge, weird-looking house. Chrissie didn't intend to go
either east or west on Holliwell; it was just a milestone on her trek,
and when she crossed it she would be at the northeast corner of the
Moonlight Cove city limits.
She was within a hundred feet of Holliwell when she heard the low but
swiftly swelling sound of a racing engine. She stepped away from the
road, over a narrow ditch at the verge, waded through weeds, and took
cover against the thick trunk of an ancient pine. Even as she hunkered
down by the tree, she got a fix on the direction from which the vehicle
was approaching-west-and then she saw its headlights spearing into the
intersection just south of her. A truck pulled into view on Holliwell,
ignoring the stop sign, and braked in the middle of the intersection.
Fog whirled and plumed around it.
Chrissie could see that heavy-duty, black, extended-bed pickup fairly
well because, as the junction of Holliwell and the county road was the
site of frequent accidents, a single streetlight had been installed on
the northeast corner for better visibility and as a warning to drivers.
The truck bore the distinctive New Wave insignia on the door, which she
could recognize even at a distance because she had seen it maybe a
thousand times before a white and blue circle the size of a dinner
plate, the bottom half of which was a cresting blue wave. The truck had
a large bed, and at the moment its cargo was men; six or eight were
Dean Koontz - (1989) Page 17