by Jack Martin
No, it was not her tongue at all.
From out of the croaking hiss of her mined throat crawled the wet, obscene legs of a living black spider.
Challis bolted for the door.
Ellie was wild, disoriented. She started across the doorway. He grasped her arms and propped her against the cabin.
“Don’t move,” he ordered. “And don’t look. It’s going to be all right.”
“No, it’s not! How can you say that? Nothing’s been right since—since what happened to my father! That wasn’t all right! And this is just like it! Something insane that nobody can underst—!”
He shook her into submission and held her close.
Then he had to leave her.
He ran to the Kupfers’ room.
“Buddy!”
Before Buddy could answer, Rafferty poked his head out of the office. He set the phone back on its cradle and wandered out.
“There’s a woman down there,” Challis explained. “She’s had a—a seizure. Get an ambulance right—”
“Seizure?” said Rafferty.
Challis felt the earth tremble. He looked up.
Several late-model cars were converging on the scene, led by a van bearing the sign of the shamrock.
“Don’t trouble yourself, sir,” said Rafferty. “I heard the accident and looked in on her. I’ve taken care of everything. She’ll get the best care money can buy.”
Challis stood by in amazement as a carload of white-suited men poured into Cabin Three. They were dressed similarly to medical technicians, but not the same. He had never seen coats quite like these before. Some detail was not right. He could not put his finger on what it was.
Challis attempted to follow them in.
“I’m a doctor. I found her like this a few minutes ago. She screamed, and then—”
They shuffled him out of the way and brought her out lashed to a stretcher. They did not take time for any emergency measures. They did not bother to examine her. It was as if they were working against a deadline.
“Hey, I told you I’m a doctor! This woman is badly in need of—”
They loaded her into the back of the van.
Challis intervened and bodily prevented them from closing the doors.
“Who is taking responsibility for this patient?” he demanded.
He was gently but firmly lifted aside.
“Why, Mr. Cochran, of course,” said Rafferty, following the activity. “And wouldn’t you know it? There he is now! Never far away when he’s needed.”
The big silver Cadillac docked in front of the motel. The back door opened wide and a distinguished, white-haired man with mirror-polished shoes and an immaculate black suit disembarked. He unfolded to his full height, an effortless motion like an oiled machine. He straightened up and up. His clear, penetrating eyes found the proprietor.
“Evening, Mr. Rafferty,” he said benignly. He possessed the kindly, self-assured air of an undertaker.
Rafferty scraped and bowed. “Mr. Cochran! Good to see you, sir!”
The white-haired man towered over the crowd. His untroubled gaze passed over Rafferty’s head and paused briefly at Challis and Ellie before panning to take in the rest of the small congregation.
There were the Kupfers, Buddy and his wife and son, huddled together in nightclothes as if to watch a pyrotechnics display on a summer evening. Several more unknown faces had emerged from other cabins to witness the disturbance.
Cochran lifted his hands in the manner of a preacher about to lead a communal prayer.
“It’s all over, friends. A small accident. The lady will be given the best of care, I can assure you of that.”
Chin raised high, Cochran smiled to dismiss them all.
He tapped his ring finger on the driver’s door of the van. A white-garbed attendant rolled down the window.
“I don’t like this,” said Challis tajutly, but no one was listening.
No one had seen anything. Ellie was out of it. He was on his own.
He followed Cochran.
“Where are they taking her?”
Cochran broke off his conversation with the driver and turned, unruffled.
“Why, they’re taking her to the factory. We have a wonderful facility there for emergency treatment.”
Surprised to hear that, Challis withdrew a couple of steps.
Cochran resumed his consultation with the driver.
The crowd thinned out and grumbled back to their rooms. Soon there would be no indication that any of it had happened.
But it’s important, thought Challis. It matters. This woman matters.
The tailgate closed and locked.
Challis, standing next to the van, shaded his eyes and peeked in through a small observation window.
There was Marge Guttman. Her litter was locked down to the floorboard and her body was covered with a sheet up to the neck, A methodical technician was unrolling a layer of gauze over what remained of her face. No I.V., no respirator, no medical equipment of any kind was in evidence.
They were doing nothing for her—nothing.
Challis was enraged. He pounded the steel side panel and peered deeper.
He was about to run back and yank the tailgate off its hinges and force some answers from these white-coated efficiency experts, when he caught sight of something else inside the van.
There was another stretcher farther forward, behind the cab, at right angles to Marge Guttman. It, too, bore the weight of a white-sheeted figure. On this one, too, the sheet was drawn up to the neck. But a few inches of dirty T-shirt and rumpled collar showed above the cover.
It was unmistakably the tattered man, the panhandler from the shanty under the railroad trestle. Though his head was in shadow, Challis was sure of it.
No one else in Santa Mira dressed like that.
A company car drove off, its headlights momentarily sweeping the van. A reflection of light scattered through the interior, and then the car was gone and the stretchers inside the van were dim phantoms.
But for a second there had been just enough light to show Challis what was wrong with the tattered man’s head, why he couldn’t see it.
What was wrong with his head was that he didn’t have one.
Challis reeled back on his heels. It must have been an optical illusion, a trick of perspective. It’s dark, my eyes—
“All right,” Cochran was saying to the driver. Challis barely made out the words. “What happened?”
The driver stuck his head out the window. “It was a misfire. She must have—”
The driver noticed Challis and ducked back in.
Cochran turned again. In the departing headlights, the movement appeared to take an uncommonly long time, stopping and starting, stopping and starting with the jerkiness of a slowed-down film.
Before he could say anything, Challis felt a hand on his arm.
“Don’t,” whispered Ellie. She appeared to be in control again. “We can’t afford it.”
He wanted to tell her that she hadn’t seen what was in the van. Then he remembered that she had seen Mrs. Guttman. And her father. That was enough.
Challis backed off without another word. For the moment.
Cochran was unperturbed. He waited until the van and the other company cars were gone and the bystanders were back in their rooms. Then he adjusted his cuffs, gave the motel a last, approving glance, like a shepherd overseeing his flock, and returned to his silver limousine.
As soon as the grounds were clear Challis ran for the phone in the office. Fortunately Rafferty was occupied elsewhere. He made his call and slipped back to Cabin One in the belief that he had not been seen.
Ellie dragged him back inside and sat him on the bed.
“A misfire?” said Challis. “Did you hear that? What the hell were they talking about?”
“There’s something crazy going on here,” said Ellie with breathtaking understatement. “Did you call the police?”
“I called the sheriff in
Sierra Mesa. I don’t even think they have a police force around here. If they do, Cochran’s probably running the show. He runs everything else.”
“What did he say?”
“I started to lay it all on him. For some reason he didn’t let me finish. He said to get the hell out and phone it in from Leytonville. He must know something we don’t. Odd . . .”
“What?”
“When I asked him how the investigation’s going back there, he said—oh, it doesn’t make sense.”
“Don’t do this to me! He was my father. I have a right to know who killed—”
“All right. He said there was a mistake of some kind. The body of that man who burned up in the parking lot? They examined the wrong specimen. There wasn’t much left. Got him mixed up with the dashboard or something. All they had was a big pile of plastic.”
Challis eyed her for a reaction.
She had the kind of face that would never give her away, not unless she wanted it to. But her spine was rigid as a ramrod.
“Want to leave?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Ellie intensely. “Very much. But not until I find out what happened when my father went to that factory.”
You can run, thought Challis. But you can’t hide.
FINAL
PROCESSING
C H A P T E R
9
The morning sun was a white-hot eye in the sky over Santa Mira.
The early mist burned out of the fields, a fine gauze of steam unwinding from the vines and rutted irrigation beds. Challis divided the curtains and saw a jury of black crows disarranging the yellow-green creepers of a pumpkin bed that had been neglected in the harvesting. The largest of the melons were cracked open like fiery skulls, with shriveled features pecked into their faces to reveal decay within.
He let go of the curtains and the room was a haven once more.
Ellie stirred on the bed.
She stretched her arms up and curved her hands by the soft oval of her face. Her dark curls were tangled on the pillow.
She had not fallen asleep till the moon was low. That she had slept at all was a very special dispensation. She had clung to him through the night with a fierceness he had never known. It both frightened and exhilarated him. But it was a precarious edge he could not maintain much longer. Shortly before dawn he had felt the abyss opening beneath him. Shadows on the wall had taken on form and the dripping faucet in the bathroom had become a clock ticking away the minutes of his life. The fevered sleep that followed for him was worse than no sleep at all.
A car rumbled past on its way to the factory, and the Kupfers were already singing in the shower and flushing their toilet repeatedly.
Challis fingered one of the instant coffee service packets left in the rooms for guests of the motel. But his body was too near the breaking point to handle a dose of caffeine nerves now.
The smell of fresh coffee, though, would not hurt. Linda used to wake him with it every morning as soon as the children were up . . .
But that was years ago. Years and years; another lifetime.
It was not until some time later, when the sun was past its zenith and slanting in through the curtains, that Ellie sat up in the battlefield of sheets.
“Hi,” she said, and yawned.
“Hi.”
“You let me sleep.”
“You needed it.”
“What time is it?”
“Afternoon.”
She shook her head clear and the curls fell into place. Just like that. She thought for a few seconds. Then it all came back to her. It was like a physical blow forcing her out of bed.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she told him, and reached for her jeans. “We have to get over there.”
Her breasts were high and firm. She paused once, with her blouse halfway buttoned.
“I want you to know something,” she said.
“Yeah?” He was afraid to hear it, but wrote that off to paranoia.
She tucked in her blouse and said with great solemnity, “I wouldn’t have tried all this if you hadn’t come along. You know that, don’t you?”
He wasn’t sure how to take it.
She came over to him. When he didn’t touch her at once, she leaned into his chest and held his lapels. Her hair smelled impossibly sweet.
“So thanks,” she said.
He breathed again and closed his arms around her.
Don’t thank me, he thought. Not yet.
The factory was humming with activity. Overheated trailer trucks arrived empty and departed with their mudguards dragging in the dirt. Challis parked Ellie’s Oldsmobile at the south side.
Without any trouble they soon found their way to a door marked OFFICE.
The first thing they saw inside was a Silver Shamrock trademark dominating one wall like an expanding map of the world. Above it in the reception area hung a fatherly portrait of their founder, Conal Cochran, all silver hair and stylish benevolence.
Challis wondered if the employees were required to genuflect on their way in and out.
A short hall led to a central receiving counter, where a dedicated hive of office workers made busy with bills of lading. The most Irish-looking was clearly in charge. Of course. Challis made a sound to get her attention.
“May I help you?”
“Yes,” said Ellie. “I—my father put in an order last week. Something’s gone wrong. We never received it.”
The secretary’s rosy cheeks inflated in a pleasant smile. “What firm do you represent?”
“Grimbridge’s, Sierra Mesa.”
“Just a moment,” lilted the secretary.
She sorted through a desk piled high with orders. Challis heard typewriters and telephones chiming from all directions. Office personnel puttered between desks and files. Yet the ambience was not entirely convincing.
It’s the voices, thought Challis. There are none. No one else has spoken a word except into a telephone since we walked in.
He put his mouth over Ellie’s ear. “Have you noticed . . . ?” he began.
“There must be some mistake, dearie,” said the secretary. Nothing would furrow that brow of hers. She proffered a yellow form. “Mr. Grimbridge himself picked up that order on the twenty-first. Here’s his signature.”
Ellie relieved her of the form. “Hmm. Well. Er—thank you. Do you remember the transaction?”
“No,” said the secretary, unruffled, “but you can talk to someone who might.”
She rang a button on the counter.
Immediately a broad-shouldered man with red hair entered from the back. Again, something was off-center. The timing was too pat. He would almost have had to be standing on the other side of the door, waiting for a signal to come in.
“Red? These people lost an order.” She took the bill back. “Did you load this one?”
“Sure did,” he said promptly. “Last week. Man in an old green station wagon.”
Ellie gasped. “That’s right! Did he say where he was going?”
“No, ma’am. He headed out to the north, though. I remember that.”
Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “Thank you.”
“Are you going to place another order?” said the secretary.
“No.” That was that. Ellie took Challis’s arm.
“Let’s go.”
Before they could get back up the hall, heavy footsteps plodded around the bend and the Kupfers arrived, blocking the way. Challis drew Ellis aside.
Big Kupfer planted himself flat-footed before the counter.
“Well!” he said. “How you doin’?” He held out his meaty hands and attracted his clan to him. He announced proudly, “Buddy Kupfer and family to see Mr. Cochran!”
The secretary had the same rosy smile for them, too. “Yes, Mr. Kupfer. Welcome! I’ll tell Mr. Cochran you’re here.”
Little Buddy tugged at his father’s doubleknit leisure suit. “When do we get to see ’em makin’ the masks?”
“Real soon, Little Buddy, real
soon.”
The child wandered off, sat restlessly and took a pocket computer game out of his high-water pants. The game produced a volley of blipping noises.
Betty Kupfer was having trouble with something under her skirt. She wrinkled her powdered face. “Buddy,” she confided, “I’m bushed already.”
Big Buddy’s face fell. He set his bulk stubbornly. “C’mon! The fun’s just starting.”
Ellie said behind her hand, “I’ve seen enough. Let’s get out of here.”
There was a new agitation at the back of the office.
The typewriters silenced. Only the ringing of a telephone and Little Buddy’s battery-powered war-gaming broke the tension.
“Wait one more minute,” said Challis.
A door opened and Cochran himself sauntered in, a living picture of health and goodwill. He had on a dark blue suit that fit his tall frame like a glove, and a spectacular tie blossomed on his white silk shirt.
He held out his hands.
“So this is Buddy Kupfer and his lovely family! My friends, Mr. Kupfer has sold more Silver Shamrock masks this year, by far, than anyone else in the country.”
He clasped his hands together in praise.
The office workers broke into a tattoo of applause.
Cochran took possession of Buddy’s hand and beamed until the champion salesman was ready to bust his buttons.
Betty flushed.
“If she cries,” whispered Ellie, “I’ll throw up.”
Little Buddy picked his nose.
Cochran would not let go of Buddy’s paw. “Silver Shamrock likes to do something special for its champion each year, and that’s why you’ve been invited here. I hope your stay is a merry one, so I do!”
The milk of human kindness was dripping oleaginously from his lips.
Buddy pumped Cochran’s hand in return. He would not quit. He blushed beet-red. “Thank you! Thank you, sir!”
At this point he would have polished Cochran’s shoes with the oil on his nose if asked.
“Do you think this is a little off-the-wall?” whispered Ellie. “Or is it just me?”
The applause died down and the workers returned to their papers. On cue.
Cochran repossessed his hand. He fastened his penetrating gaze on the two unscheduled spectators.