He then requests a private consultation with the head of security. Once we’re comfortable in the same little back room in which I just answered questions for two hours, Blaine explains the situation and asks why there should be a problem in letting me aboard the government plane waiting on the tarmac. The head of security, Grouse, his name tag reads, is not inclined to let me go.
Blaine pulls a notebook from an inside pocket and says, “May I use your phone?”
“Why?” Grouse says. Apparently he is not in love with the FBI.
“I need to get higher authority.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to call your high and mighty director himself.”
Blaine looks at him as though he’s trying to analyze him over a pair of reading glasses. “I’m not privileged with that number. However, I hope to be able to track down someone who would make my shorts stick to my ass just about as quickly. I’m sure he’s going to want to speak with your supervisor.”
“I’m the highest authority here.”
“So am I but I answer to several powerful people in Washington, D.C. Who do you answer to?”
Grouse thinks for a moment.
“Listen, Mister Grouse. This is the way things work. I have my job to do and you have your job to do. I don’t think I’d ever want your job. I get enough shit as an FBI Agent. I can’t imagine the shit you get every day from impatient and irritated travelers. I respect your concern for the security of your airport; however, I feel that a word between our supervisors can help persuade you to ease up on this man who has been through a lot in the last forty-eight hours. He has been one of many victims in a terrible crime, has been shot at, lost his eye–literally and then worst of worst, had to sit in this very room and get bombarded with questions from four Federal Agents. Right now all he wants to do is get to his wife in Denver, who’s lying in a hospital bed with a broken back and a punctured lung, also a victim in this terrible affair.”
Grouse thinks for a couple seconds and then stands. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be right back.”
After he leaves the room Blaine says, “He’s considering if he should call his supervisor. He won’t. You’ll be out of here in a few minutes.” He looks at the computer sitting open on the table. “When you get settled, take that to a good computer repair facility and have them take it apart carefully. If the hard drive was not touched they’ll be able to remove it and install it in another machine to recover all your files. Do you do backups?”
I stick my hand down in the pocket where I keep the CD backups. There are two. As I pull them out, little pieces of plastic crumble to the table. I analyze the ragged hole that passes through both of them.
“So much for backups,” Blaine says.
I put the CDs back in the bag, scoop the slivers from the CD cases into the trash, retreat into my depressed thoughts and wait.
Blaine is right. When Officer Grouse returns he says, “Get him on your plane before I change my mind.”
“Thanks,” Blaine says.
“But I’ll have to confiscate that bullet.”
Agent Blaine shakes his head. “Sorry. It’s now official evidence in a federal crime investigation.”
“I figured so. Get the hell out of here.”
As we walk out to the plane, I ask the agent, “Why is it evidence?”
“If it matches the bullets that killed the two we found in the burned out building we can surmise that the shooter is your security guard. Chances are it’ll turn into a small piece in a long line of evidence we expect to uncover in the next few weeks.”
On board the plane Blaine introduces me to another agent. “Mister Price, this is Special Agent Joseph Gregory. I’m afraid he and Special Agent Nancy Prust, who is with your wife right now, are going to live with you two for a while, at least until we get some handle on where this Victor Vandermill has gone and if there is any real threat on either of your lives.”
“Wonderful,” I say without enthusiasm. “Good to meet you,” I say to the new agent.
“Likewise,” he says with the stereotypical dry enthusiasm of an FBI Agent.
It suddenly occurs to me why we have permanent escorts and body guards. “We’re your only witnesses, aren’t we?”
Agent Blaine’s aura gives me the answer before he says, “Afraid so.”
“Would you be giving us protection if we weren’t?”
“No. Not without some direct evidence that your lives are in danger.”
I think he expects me to give him a hard time about that, but I don’t. I understand budget constraints and the thinning of manpower. “Okay. Just want to know where we stand.” In the back of my mind, though, is my concern about the medical bills for Tanya. I’m thinking that with Vandermill out of the financial picture, I may have to find a way to lean on the government for aid, seeing as we are their star witnesses.
“You’ll need to get seated and buckled,” Agent Gregory says. “We’ll be taking off momentarily.”
Blaine shakes my hand. “We’ll be calling on you again eventually because I’m sure we’ll have plenty more questions once we see the scope of what we’re working with. Good luck to you.”
“And to you as well,” I say. “Could I get a copy of that disk I gave you?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” To Agent Gregory he says, “Joe, I should let you know, this guy is a psychic, so don’t let your emotions show.”
“Thanks.” He looks at me. “Guess I can’t be my usual outgoing self. I’ll keep my guard up.”
Agent Gregory delivers as promised. He is naturally cold and emotionless. His guard is always up. He reminds me a lot of Victor Vandermill; only in this case, he’s a good guy. The only psychic read I get from him is the fact that he is hungry. Maybe it’s my own hunger I’m reading. I didn’t get breakfast, and it doesn’t appear there are going to be complimentary snacks served.
Once we are off the ground I push back in my seat, which is a bit larger and more comfortable than a commercial airliner, and close my eye. The next thing I know Gregory is waking me and telling me we are about to land.
There is still snow at the higher elevations to the north of Denver, but Denver itself is dry. I do a little rejoice in that. Once on the ground we step off the plane and straight into a waiting van. I barely have time to register that I’m wearing an arctic parka good to a double-digit minus figure and that the temperature is in the mid-sixties. I’m out of the coat before the van is cleared through a gate. I do register that the FBI seems to have a better relationship with the airport here.
I consider asking to stop at a fast-food place, but I’m more anxious to see Tanya. I push the growling in my stomach aside and wait patiently during the trip through the snarling big city traffic. We slide onto the interstate and suddenly we’re traveling seventy miles an hour in the middle of four lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic. And then, almost as quickly I’m shoved against my shoulder strap and we’re creeping along at twenty miles an hour. I rejoice a little more because this really tells me I’m back in civilization. This is music to my ears and a great sight to my one eye.
We’re met at the door to Tanya’s room by a beautiful young woman in a knee length blue skirt and matching jacket, but with Gregory’s personality. Nancy something, I remember Agent Blaine saying.
“Mister Price. I’m Agent Prust.
I shake her hand.
“Your wife is asleep right now. You can go in, but please don’t wake her. Let her awake on her own.” She looks at her watch. “We have a meeting in about thirty minutes with Doctor Murgall. I’ll come and get you.” With that I go in and she closes the door behind me.
At first I wonder if I’m in the wrong room because the person lying in the hospital bed barely looks like the woman I married. Her cheeks are sunken and her arms are as thin as a little girl’s. She’s lost so much weight. I pull a chair close, sit and take her hand in both of mine. A wave of emotion runs through me and I start to cry. I don’t attempt to stop the tears, but rest my
forehead on the bed and let them soak into the bleached white sheet. After a time I look up and find her looking at me. In her smile I see that the real Tanya is still in there.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
“You look terrible.” Her voice is soft, nearly a whisper.
“You look beautiful.”
“One of us is lying.”
“Then it must be you because you told me once that I was the most handsome man you ever saw.”
“Still are.”
I had forgotten how much I loved this woman.
“But then there is Doctor Murgall,” she adds. “He’s running a close second.”
“Hmm! On the other hand, Agent Prust isn’t bad herself.”
“I see.” She points to a bottle of water with a straw. I pass it to her, she takes a sip. “Nancy and I have had a talk about the fact that she’s going to be living with us for a while. I told her that if she got near you I’d kick her ass.” She sips some more water. “She has no sense of humor.”
I’d laugh except I know that beyond her smile, she’s serious. I get serious. “I’ve learned my lesson. There’s no way to express how sorry I am, not only about cheating on you but even more about endangering your life and putting you here.”
“I was as much in agreement with the escape plan as you and Aileen. Besides, I’m the one who made the decision to come to you.”
“If I hadn’t put that link on Rebecca’s web page, you wouldn’t have come.”
“A lot of ifs,” she says. “We’ve got to rebuild our lives—look forward, not back.”
My wife, the eternal optimist. “Yeah,” I say. “Do you think I can get my job back at Blushneck?”
“You don’t want to do copywriting.”
No I don’t, but I’d ride on the back of a garbage truck if it would help straighten out our lives. Hell, I’d even learn to say, “Would you like fries with that super burger?”
“Maybe not forever,” I say, “but for a while, it’s something to do. I could freelance on the side, maybe get a column again; who knows. What’s important is you and the girls.”
Her smile broadens and then we say nothing more until she falls asleep again. I’m still holding her hand when Agent Prust comes in and says it’s time for the appointment with Doctor Murgall. I kiss Tanya on the lips and whisper, “I love you.”
Chapter 43
“To be surrounded by three sets of eyes, three powerful bodies, and linked with one intelligence, with the capacity to learn and reason!”
– from the journals of Zechariah Price
It’s over.
A year has gone by and there have been no positive leads as to the whereabouts of Victor Vandermill, although they thought they had him a couple of times, but the leads dead-ended. I wonder if he has a paid informant on the inside. I don’t understand how someone worth a billion could just disappear. Maybe he bought himself and his closest associates face lifts and new identification and he’s the guy running some big corporation now. Maybe he’s started a new company with what’s left of his loyal staff. Are they still making babies?
I don’t much care.
The male body found in Sans Sanssabre’s ashes wasn’t Merwin Boggs as I had suspected. It was Henri Cassell. At first that surprised me and then I remembered the warning he gave me. “You need to get out of here while you can, Zach . . . You’re not so deep into us that you can’t get out . . . Take heed.” He played his cards real close, but he still lost.
They did find Boggs. He also had been shot, but he managed to escape somehow. When the fire was started, he retreated into the vault where Smilodon was kept under air tight security, a level below the sublevel. The fire never reached there. If he hadn’t been shot, would he have survived until he was found? It’s hard to tell. He bled to death within hours. I feel badly for his wife and son.
Doctor Jacob Zitnik was found dead by beachcombers in New Hampshire. That was in July. He had an appointment with the head of a genetic research lab in Boston. He had told them he had information that would revolutionize the way we looked at and handled DNA. Nothing was ever found in his effects.
Our Agents, Joe and Nancy, stayed with us for a full month, to our surprise. We were both relieved and saddened at their departure. More than four weeks integrated into our household made them a part of the family. The girls loved them and they loved the girls. It was Christi who melted them both, turned them into human beings. I hope they’re still good FBI agents. We hear from them regularly on the pretense that they want to be sure we haven’t been kidnapped by Victor Vandermill.
Just yesterday we returned Tanya’s walker to the medical supply and rental place. We decided to keep the wheelchair for a while, just because. She’s still quite dependent on her cane, but the prognosis is nearly full recovery. Her lung power is still not what it should be. Her doctor says it may never be.
As for me, I’m fully healed, except of course for the three tooth implants and the plastic eye where my right eye used to be. It’s a very close match to my left eye as long as someone only glances at me. Tanya says it’s weird when my left eye moves and the artificial eye doesn’t. My Ocularist is talking about a transplant. There’s concern that the damage to the supporting nerves might eliminate me as a candidate. That’s just fine with me. I don’t want to have surgery to do something that won’t even restore my vision. “While the government is still footing the bill,” Tanya says, “You should go for it.
No thank you.
Joseph Manski, my old boss at Blushneck Advertising Agency, gave me a hard time, but today doesn’t at all regret taking me back. His problem now is keeping me. With a Pulitzer nomination under my belt—I have no idea where it came from, or even why since I’m nowhere close to Pulitzer material—I can go almost anywhere I want.
First, though, I think I’ll go ask for a raise.
Oh! You might be wondering what happened to the nine sabre-toothed cats that escaped into the Northwest Montana wilderness. By my count they are now thirteen or more depending on how big Nadia and Duscha’s litters were. The problem is, the only people who’ll admit to having actually seen them—let’s face it, Vandermill’s group isn’t going to come forward—are myself, Tanya and Sheriff Shwartzberg. The sheriff is starting to deny it. He’s got a reelection to worry about. The only pictures I got were of Aileen and Tricia, and then I left my camera to be consumed by the fire. Officials tried tracking the cats but the temperatures hit nearly seventy, melted the snow and wiped out the tracks. The official conclusion was that they were nothing but a bunch of mountain lions.
My Pulitzer nomination kicked my fictionalized non-fiction book, Seven Inches of Death in the Flathead, up to the New York Times Best Seller list. We then started getting letters accusing us of, “. . . sensationalizing and fictionalizing for profit . . . scaring the good people of Montana . . . damaging the tourist trade.” That was the nicest language. When we moved to a home more suited to Tanya’s need for easy mobility we shifted to a post office box for fear someone would actually try to personally express their opinions about the sabre-toothed cat situation.
There have been sightings, but they’re ranked alongside Big Foot.
There have been more than normal disappearances–of cow–of sheep–of buffalo . . .
. . . of man.
Just as there are societies of people who believe in Big Foot or Aliens, there are now two societies on the watch for the sabre-toothed cat. The first stems from the disappearances of people and livestock. No longer is the grizzly to blame. It’s now the sabre-tooth and this group is dedicated to tracking them and eliminating them. The second group has dedicated themselves to the preservation of the returned extinct species. I don’t actually know which one was formed first. It’s obvious one took on their name to counter the other. The two groups are:
SABERS–SABertooth ERadication Society
SABRES–SABretooth REstoration Society
I’ve been approached by both of
them, first for presidency and when I declined, for endorsement. I declined that as well. Neither of the two is very happy with me. Another good reason to have a post office box.
I have made mention of them in my column, though. Yes, I have a column again, but due to my questionable level of lunacy—I’ve involuntarily acquired the nickname, “Sabre-tooth Zach”—I can’t seem to get syndicated. I write about extinct and nearly extinct animals of the wild. I do manage to get picked up as a guest columnist with a magazine or two on occasion, and a splattering of newspapers, more for reading fun than anything else. The columns are not enough to make a living but they help keep the girls in ballet, Little League, and swimming. Only the SABRES and SABERS take me seriously and always one of them doesn’t like what I write.
It’s a beautiful spring morning. The first anniversary of my escape from Sans Sanssabre is in a week and I’ve been asked to write an article for the Interlake, Kalispell’s newspaper. I stare at the blank screen with no earthly idea where to start. I’m not normally without words—have not known writer’s block in the year—but suddenly I’m stymied. I close my eye and revisit that time of cold sweat fear, walking back to back with Tanya and Aileen, seeing flashes of the huge cats through the blinding snowstorm, attempting not to transmit to the women my certainty that at least one of us would not get out alive. I see the tracks, huge paws, the claws of which could compete with the grizzly. I see the two sabre teeth, seven, eight inches, again with which even the grizzly could not compare. I think of the way they stalked, the way they communicated and realize there is probably no way man will ever eliminate them. I wonder what wiped them out ten thousand years ago.
I search through the many books I’ve acquired about dangerous and near extinct animals and come upon the one I started with in Seattle prior to my departure to Montana. One of the books I acquired after my conversation with Lance Evans was, “Spell of the Tiger” by Sy Montgomery. I find one paragraph that with a little alteration I’m able to suit well for the sabre-toothed cat, and so my column begins.
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 39