Today it was like tasting heaven.
She squirted a little on her face and eyes, clearing out the dirt caked on over the last five days. She didn't have anything to wipe off the water, but she didn't care. It just felt wonderful.
She forced herself to take another, slower drink, then a handful of grain. Then more water.
Around her others were doing the same.
She took a large mouthful of grain, then took two full bottles of water and another handful of grain and moved back to the edge of the cave away from the door. Just maybe a few of them would now live another day or two.
What for, she didn't know.
Again the image of Jerry cut open on that alien table flashed in her mind and she knew the reason.
Chapter Thirteen
Reason is the method by which those who do not know the truth, step by step, finally discover it.
——MELVILLE DAVISSON POST
FROM THE STRAW MAN
7:03 A.M. JUNE 24.
BELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON
The statues of the two Klar towered over Neda Foster as she glanced up at the two men sitting in front of her desk. One of them was her chief investigator, Luke Ellis, who had returned last night from Portland. She had just finished reading his report on the abduction of Albert Hancer. There was nothing wrong with the report, but the contents bothered her. And those contents bothered her a lot.
The Klar were changing their patterns and habits. And that was not a good sign.
She turned to Dr. Cornell, a bald-headed man sitting to her right in a large, overstuffed chair. He looked fifty, but was actually barely forty. He had an overly-large nose, bad teeth, and held five different doctorate degrees. Cornell was her right hand, closest adviser, and chief researcher into alien actions. He had also witnessed the abduction of a close college friend twenty-one years ago and had put all his energies into researching the aliens ever since. If it wasn't for Cornell, Neda's program would not be as advanced as it was.
Yet at the moment it seemed as if they knew nothing.
Things were changing. The Klar, after almost fifty years, were changing patterns and habits. Now there was something happening with human abductions and it wasn't expected. And the oddest thing was that the Klar were taking the elderly out of nursing homes, and no one could come up with even a far-fetched reason why.
"How many does that make, Cornell?" Neda asked.
He didn't even need to look at the printout on his lap. "It seems they've abducted at least one elderly person near almost every major city around the world over the last week."
"Are any of the others this blatant?" Neda asked, tapping the Portland report. "With this many witnesses?"
Cornell nodded. "Over the last few days they're acting as if they don't much care who sees them. Not like their practices over the last fifty years. It's as if the end is almost here as far as they're concerned."
Neda nodded and Luke visibly paled, glancing up at the two looming statues and then back at Cornell. "You're kidding, right Doc?"
Cornell shook his head no.
"I've been thinking the same thing," Neda said. "But what do we do to stop them?"
"I don't think there is any stopping them," Cornell said. "We still don't know what they're planning, let alone where. Forget the minor problem of how to stop it."
"Well," Neda said, "it seems we'd better be finding out what they're up to first, huh?"
Cornell laughed. "Yeah, it would seem to be the next logical step."
After a moment of silence he continued, "It is also logical that if they're taking one elderly person from each city, they plan on using that person in that city."
Neda nodded. "A decent assumption. But for what reason? And much more importantly, how and when?"
Cornell shrugged. "We've studied the aliens for a long time. For a moment let's stay inside the information we already have. We've ascertained, from computer programs run with the information from fifty years of sighting, that the aliens have less than twenty ships worldwide."
Neda sighed, her stomach twisting even more than it had been. "Agreed. Go on."
"We'll assume," Cornell said, "no more ships are coming for now. If the reason they're becoming more bold is because more of their ships are arriving, we have no hope anyhow. So we'll go on and just skip that possibility."
Now Luke was really pale. He obviously hadn't thought of that possibility. Neda had, but like Cornell she figured that was best ignored.
Cornell continued. "We have assumed that they have a use for humans, beyond studying us. Most likely slave labor."
Neda hoped Cornell would get to his point soon. "So they now have use for an elderly person in every major city," Neda said. "We're back to how and why."
Cornell nodded. "My point exactly. Assuming that they have finally figured out a way to control humans, just to the why of it. What purpose would the aliens use an elderly person for in every city?"
Luke shrugged. "The cities are full of the elderly poor. Living in rooms and on the streets."
Cornell pointed to him, his face lighting up. "So they would fit in. Right?"
Luke nodded. "Yeah. Easily. No one would pay the slightest attention to another elderly person."
Neda leaned forward. "So what would the Klar want with the elderly in the cities? I'm just not following. Even if they could control them, to what use would an old person be put?"
Luke said softly, "Smuggling."
"What?" Neda asked.
"Oh, my, yes," Cornell said. "Of course."
"Well," Neda said, facing Luke. "Explain it to me. I must have missed a cup of coffee this morning."
"I worked in customs at Sea-Tac International for a year," Luke said. "We were constantly reminded by our bosses not to ignore elderly travelers as potential smugglers. Yet I found myself looking at a woman the age of my grandmother and not believing that a person that age could do anything wrong."
Suddenly the possibilities were starting to dawn on Neda. The Klar couldn't really fly their ships anywhere near the heart of a city without a high risk of being spotted. In all the years of abductions, the Klar had never taken people from the heart of cities. Never. The Klar had always acted as if they were afraid of the cities. So if they wanted something taken into a city, they had to have a human do it. That would be normal Klar thinking.
She turned to Cornell. "You said every major city?"
"Almost," Cornell said. "And we may have missed a few reports."
Neda turned to Luke. "How do we find them if they are in every city? How do we prove this is happening?"
"Start small," Luke said. "That's the theory of searches. Start small and expand the search pattern."
"Portland," Neda said, glancing at Cornell.
"Portland," he said, smiling.
She turned back to Luke. "We have to find out what those elderly people are doing and find out now! I want every person you can find, or hire, searching the streets of Portland with pictures of this Albert Hancer. Portland's a small enough city that we should be able to cover it. Find him if he's there."
Luke stood and without another word headed for the door. Neda knew he was good. And within a few hours she knew he'd have at least a hundred people on Portland's streets.
But for some reason that didn't feel like enough.
After he was gone Neda turned to Cornell. "Seems like a good day to take some of the staff and visit beautiful downtown Portland, doesn't it?"
He smiled. "I'll round up about twenty of my people and meet you at the airport hangar in twenty minutes."
"I'll match your twenty," she said as he headed for the door.
She waited for the door to close, then picked up the phone and dialed a very private number she'd only been given the day before. The vice president needed to know what they were doing. And he just might be able to round up a little help himself.
Chapter Fourteen
The reading of detective stories is simply a kind of vice that, for silliness
and minor harmfulness, ranks somewhere between crossword puzzles and smoking.
——EDMUND WILSON
FROM AN ARTICLE IN THE NEW YORKER
1:15 P.M. JUNE 24.
PORTLAND, OREGON
Frustrating described McCallum's morning.
He had spent two hours going over every detail about Tina Harris's disappearance, from the photos of the camp to the reports on her boyfriend's father. Nothing to give him even the slightest clue. At eleven he had called a staff meeting and all four of his hired detectives brainstormed over the case. The kid with the freckles, Arthur, came up with the same theory McCallum had: the kids were flown out of that valley. But he had no reason, why, either.
So after almost two hours of meetings he had the same result he started the morning with: Nothing.
So by one he was hungry, tired, and frustrated. He called Henry, hoping his ex-partner hadn't eaten yet. As it turned out, due to a bank robbery right before lunch, Henry hadn't. And he wasn't happy about the fact.
They met at a little deli called Joe's on Burnside, across from Powell's Bookstore. The place was small, but it had great chowder and sandwiches. Henry hated the booths there because his stomach was almost too large for him to get into them, but the food was good enough to overcome that one minor problem.
Henry spent the first part of the lunch harping on the stupidity of banks and their alarm systems and swearing he was going to quit the force and start that doughnut shop. Then finally, halfway through a large tuna sandwich, he asked McCallum about the Idaho trip.
McCallum told him his frustrations and lack of progress, and laid out what he had seen and read. Henry had no suggestions. He said it was just plain weird.
"Yeah, weird is right," McCallum said, agreeing. "But not as strange as the Hancer disappearance up on the north side."
Over the last bite of his tuna sandwich Henry looked at McCallum. "You working on that case, too?"
McCallum nodded. "Afraid so."
"Sure is nice you can afford to hire so much help," Henry said, shoving his plate to the edge of the table.
"Help?" McCallum asked. "I just got the four, and Arthur is so damn young I don't know what to do with him half the time."
"So then, who do you have working the streets?" Henry asked. "We got a call this morning saying the family was going to show some pictures around downtown today to see if they could find him. Last I heard there were a dozen or so at least. Damned if I know what they're going to find, but I suppose it couldn't hurt."
"Family?" McCallum asked. He was getting more and more confused by the moment. From the file he'd gotten on Albert Hancer, the only family the guy had was the mayor's mother. He never had kids and the mayor was an only child.
Henry finished his Coke and waved for the waitress. "Lemon pie," he shouted when he got her attention.
McCallum glanced at his watch. It was approaching two in the afternoon. Claudia would be in the office. He shoved the uneaten part of his ham sandwich away and told Henry he'd be right back. He went to the front desk and borrowed their phone, cussing at himself for not making time to get a cell phone. One of these days he'd do it. It was the nineties thing to do.
It took him only a moment before he confirmed with Claudia exactly what he had thought: No family of Albert Hancer had paid for a search for him. He had no family to do so.
Henry was about halfway through his lemon pie when McCallum slid back into place across from him. "No family," McCallum said. "I'm the only one hired on the Hancer case. But yesterday two guys from Seattle were asking questions at the nursing home."
Henry gave McCallum a puzzled look. "Then who has all the manpower out there on the streets?"
McCallum only shrugged, smiling at the puzzled look on his ex-partner's face.
"Damn," Henry said. "If it's not the stupid banks, it's something else." He popped one more large forkful of pie into his mouth, then pointed at the check as he worked his stomach out of the booth. "You're buying."
Chapter Fifteen
You can't have a tin can tied to your tail and go through life pretending it isn't there.
—-JOSEPHINE TEY
FROM THE FRANCHISE AFFAIR
1:30 P.M. JUNE 24.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
The vice president of the United States walked off the luncheon dais after his speech to a local San Francisco women's group and moved purposefully up to Louise, his top aide. She was in her mid-fifties and was known inside the Beltway as one of the top political strategists in the business. She was also fiercely loyal to Alan Wallace and everyone knew she'd run his presidential campaign when the time came. And most likely end up as chief of staff if he won.
"Let's go," he said to her and, with two Secret Service men behind them, they moved quickly through the back door and into the waiting limo.
After they were both in and alone, and the limo was headed for the airport he turned to her. "Any word yet from Portland?"
"Nothing," she said. "I checked just before you finished your speech and they had found nothing so far." She reached into her briefcase and pulled out a file. "Here's all the material you asked for. Had to call in a favor to get it this fast."
He nodded and opened the file. It didn't take him long to confirm from the documents in front of him that elderly people had gone missing over the last week in almost every major city of the world. Ten of the reports had credible witnesses saying that the abductees were lifted into the air by a white light. Neda Foster had been right. The vision of those statues of the Klar standing over him made him feel cold. He'd had nightmares last night thinking about real Klar standing over him.
He looked up at Louise and indicated the report. "Did you read this?"
She nodded.
"What do you think?"
"To be honest," she said, "it gives me the creeps."
The vice president nodded. "You should have seen those two statues they have. Hollywood couldn't have done it better."
"No thanks," Louise said. "I have enough trouble sleeping at night worrying about your speeches. I don't need aliens, too."
They rode in silence for a moment. Then he closed the file. "What am I going to do with this?" He tapped the manila file on his leg.
"I assume that's a real question," Louise said.
The vice president smiled. "It is. To be honest, I don't really know what I should be doing."
"My suggestion," Louise said, "is wait. You've sent what help you can. See what they find in Portland. That's what Neda recommended also, wasn't it?"
The vice president nodded. "If the aliens do exist. And if they are planting something in the cities using the elderly, I just hope we don't wait too long."
Louise took the file from his hands and put it back into her briefcase.
"Damn," the vice president said. "Why, of all the people in the government, did Neda and her father pick me to tell?"
Louise gave him no answer and they rode the rest of the way to the airport in silence.
Chapter Sixteen
A realist is somebody who thinks the world is simple enough to be understood. It isn't.
—-DONALD WESTLAKE
FROM AN ARTICLE IN MURDER INK
1:40 P.M. JUNE 24.
PORTLAND, OREGON
Using Henry's car, they cruised the streets along Burnside near the river. Henry and McCallum hadn't cruised the streets in a car, just looking, since the days of their first patrols. McCallum clearly didn't miss it, especially since Henry's air-conditioning was out.
Finally, about the point McCallum was going to melt right into the front seat, he spotted a group of five men in suits standing on a corner. One of the men looked as if he was holding an eight-by-ten photo in one hand. Amid the old buildings in this area, McCallum had never seen a group who looked so much out of place as those guys.
"Bingo," Henry said when McCallum pointed them out. He pulled over beside them and shut off the car. "Let me do the talking," he said to McCallum as he pushed open
his door.
McCallum didn't much care who did the talking. He just wanted a few answers. And after all the questions and frustrations of the last few days, and the heat of Henry's car, just about any answer would do. He was in that kind of mood.
McCallum climbed out as Henry moved around the front of the car and flashed his badge at the men. "Portland PD," he said. "You fellows looking for Albert Hancer?"
One of the men, a tall guy with red hair and freckles around his eyes, stepped forward. "Yes, we are, sir," he said.
McCallum noted that the others sort of dropped back behind the redhead. They were clearly a group of men used to working together and the redhead was without doubt in charge.
"Having any luck?" Henry asked, doing his friendly act. McCallum had seen him do it hundreds of times, and most of the time it got the answers they needed. It had also gotten Henry punched a few times, too.
"I'm afraid not," the redhead said. "We were about to spread out and try this street here." He pointed down past three of the city's older hotels that stood side by side along the right. All three dated from the turn of the century and were rattraps used by the poor, the elderly, and streetwalkers.
"Too bad," Henry said. Then he glanced down the street before turning back to the redhead. "Who exactly are you guys working for?"
The redhead reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a brown card as if he'd been doing it all day. And most likely had.
Henry studied the card and then handed it to McCallum. It had the same name—Underground Investigations—as the card of the two men who had talked to the nursing home manager. Only this card had no name on it.
McCallum raised an eyebrow as he handed it back to Henry, letting Henry know he'd seen the card before, but wouldn't say where at the moment.
Henry turned back to the redhead. "Mind if I talk to your boss? My lieutenant wants me to make periodic checks on your progress, since it's an open case on our books and we're kind of hoping you find the guy."
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