Chaingang

21

WATERTON

Royce Hawthorne had kept his bargain with the phonemen who were supposedly watching over him. It was time to call in the cavalry. He'd done his part. It was their turn now.

Sitting across from his old girlfriend, he felt a lot of different things tugging at him in several directions at once: He knew he was changing. He already felt like a different man from the one who was looking to pack his nostrils a few days ago. There was one upside to being scared shitless all the time—you didn't have time to worry about staying high.

The thing that cocaine does is, it tricks the brain. The great rushes of fear that Royce had been experiencing had acted as a kind of neural blocker to his addiction, and his system was working overtime to rebuild the bridges he'd burned with the seductive white lady. He felt like he wouldn't go that route again, if he could just stay alive.

The skanky, strung-out, self-centered burnout was history. For the first time in a long while he had something better to set his sights on, and the lady was here right now, looking delectable without trying. What he really wanted was to touch her; to stroke Mary's beautiful hair, cup her lovely face in his hands and kiss her, and tell her this bad stuff was all going to go away.

“I got hold of the law again,” she told him.

“Kerns?"

“No,” she said, “that FBI bozo. You know something? They don't pretend to take what I say to them seriously."

“You can forget the Feds."

“I can't forget them,” she said, misunderstanding him.

“I mean if we're going to find out anything, it has to be us that does it. For whatever reason, the law is not giving out any information it doesn't have to. I'm not even all that sure they're trying very hard to investigate the missing-persons cases—much less the murders."

“But that makes no sense."

“Yeah. Right. But we have to run with the ball now.” And I do mean run, he thought.

“What can we do without the cops? We don't even know anything.” He could see how tired she was.

“There's actually quite a lot we can do—but it won't be easy. And you should realize—I think you have to assume you're in danger. Don't ask me why I feel this way. Part of the feeling is just gut instinct. Doll, I think we've got to start being very careful. I think we need to get you out of here—maybe to a motel or something, for, you know, just a few days till we see which way this is going. And I may do the same.” She cocked her head at him. “I mean get my own motel room. I don't think we should be too easy to find for a while. I'll explain it more later, but right now I want to know if you really feel like pursuing this thing. No matter where it leads?"

“Sure I do. I just don't see—"

“Look. There's a time element involved now, and I'll explain that, too. But here's what I think you should do: Start packing. Pack enough that you don't have to come back here for four or five days."

“That's out of the question, Royce.” She thought it was a ridiculous idea. Where would she be safer than in her home? “I might get calls here about Sam or something—I've got to—"

“I've already got that covered, babe.” He explained to her about the answering service, and how they could call in from pay telephones to get any messages.

“Oh.” She sighed, “I don't know ... I don't see why it's necessary.” But she knew him well enough that she recognized something altogether different in his face, and it frightened her. “Do you really feel like it's that important?"

“I really do. Come on,” he said, taking her hand, “let's get to work.” And without letting her really sort options, he had her filling a suitcase before she knew it, and making notes of whom to inform.

He didn't even want to tell the authorities. He told her he'd explain more about it as they got moving, and he did, telling her of some of the things he suspected, of his massive “professional paranoia” about the newest innovations in electronic surveillance, and how easy it was to put an ear into a home or business.

“I don't think we should go to a motel. Do you know of anywhere we might go? Relatives or friends in a nearby town—anything like that?” He was deadly serious.

“No."

“My cabin is being watched. I think your house will be, if it isn't already. The phone may be bugged. You don't know who we're dealing with. There's no point in going to some motel. If somebody wanted to find either one of us, it would make their job too easy."

“But why would they want to? I don't—"

“Just trust me for now. Keep trusting me—okay?"

“Okay."

“Don't give up on me yet."

“I'm not giving up on you for a second, you nut case. I'd like to know what suddenly made you like this, though."

“I'll tell you. But first things first. We need a place to kind of hang out for a while. Think."

“We've got a little place at Whitetail. It's just a shack. No running water. We couldn't stay there—"

“Sure we could. It would be perfect. I didn't know you guys had a place out there."

“Sam bought it the second year we were married. As a little place to get away on the weekends. We ended up taking a couple of vacations there, we enjoyed it so much."

Mary felt absurdly vulnerable and uncharacteristically malleable. She realized that for years now she'd let Sam make so many decisions for their mutual welfare, trusting him to shield her, to make her world safe. Suddenly she was plunged into something that had torn that world apart, and her knight in shining armor had been replaced by a man she didn't really know. “A cocaine dealer,” Marty Kerns had called him.

“I hope you know what you're getting us into,” she said to Royce, smiling to take the barbs out of it. Her teeth were small, well formed, and the front teeth were as prettily white as an actor's cap job. Royce wanted to put his arm around and lean over and stick his tongue in her mouth, and he knew the second he touched her, she'd be out of the ride and walking back home, and any chance they'd ever have would be over from that second.

“I hope so, too,” he said, thinking that it was pretty damn late to start worrying about little details like that now.

“Phew! Gross!” Mary screamed, fanning the air and opening wooden shutters.

“Home away from home."

“I told you it was just a shack."

“You think this is a shack...” he laughed, “...you should see my place.” Maybe we will sometime.

“We need to talk about something.” She pointed to the bed, and he read her mind, or thought he did.

“No sweat. We can hang a sheet or something. I'll put my sleeping bag over there. We'll build a fire. It'll work out fine."

“Okay,” she said, very unsure and more so all the time. Here they were cut off from the world. No running water. No stove. Worse yet—no telephone anywhere around for miles.

“As soon as you get your stuff unpacked, we need to get to work on our overall plan,” he told her. He'd decided she was about to fall apart on him, and he wanted to keep her game as tight as he could. “We're going to need each other now, Mary. I won't kid you. This may get hairy."

“All right,” she sighed. But she finished getting her things put away, and after lugging some firewood in, he made a mark on the crude wooden trestle table in the center of the room.

“Here we are. There's the rock quarry. Okay? Here—” he swept his arm in a half circle “—is the back edge of what's supposed to be Ecoworld. Right? That's where we're going tonight."

“Why?"

“Recon. Take a nice quiet look-see. Something's wrong with that deal. The first thing we're going to do is find out what the hell's going on. Are you game?"

“I'm game, aw'right,” she said. “I just don't understand."

“Right.” So far he was doing one great job keeping her out of any danger. The first thing they were going to do was break into a construction site.

“I want you to look at my notes. I'm not sure they prove a damn thing,” he said. “But I don't have any better starting places, and no matter how many times I run World Ecosphere, Inc., through my head, I set off some kind of buzzer. It stinks. The whole deal."

“I'll admit it never made a lot of sense. Even when Sam was so excited about the fortune we were making on it."

“Who are the people involved with the land deal? What are their links, if any, to the other missing or murdered persons in this area?” He pointed to a hand-lettered list of names, the names connected with curving arrows.

“Who is investigating each of these cases of missing men and women, and who is investigating the violent deaths? Look at the jurisdictional breakdowns. The amount of known follow-up within our community. We're a town of six hundred and change—okay? We know when the heat is shining us on.

“What are the suspicious elements that keep pointing back to a possible involvement by the Ecoworld guys?” He pointed to a two-page summary he'd put together. “Read it."

She started reading it, and he said, “Read it out loud,” wanting to hear his thoughts played back to him. Maybe he'd think of something they'd overlooked. She began reading slowly:

“* Adult men and women—disappearing. Links? Geography. Land deal.

* Adult men and women—murdered. Links? None known.

* Adult men and women—violent deaths. Murders? Links? None known. No proof of crime.

* Jurisdiction: Waterton. Attempt to cover up murders. Stated reason: to control possible panic situation.

* Jurisdiction: Maysburg. No further follow-up known by Tennessee authorities after liaison with federal and Missouri authorities.

* Jurisdiction: county (Missouri)—No further follow-up.

* Jurisdiction: federal—FBI agents investigate two crime scenes. Request other lab work. No follow-up known.

* Suspicious element: initial approach by Christopher Sinclair for mysterious holding company's nonexistent front.

* Suspicious element: ecological research & development center/theme park building in remote Missouri small town. (Reasons such as ‘underdeveloped real estate within easy driving distance of several major population centers, ready regional pool of inexpensive skilled/unskilled blue-collar labor force, acceptable climate factors, etc., not convincing.) What is reason for location?

1. Mineral rights? Oil? Gold? Other?

2. Low density of population: toxic waste dump? Missile silo? Nuclear power plant? Other?

3. Cover for government-sponsored production or manufacturing of some type?

* Suspicious element: the lack of available information on violent mutilation murders—a multijurisdictional ongoing investigation of deaths and perhaps related disappearances in a community of less than seven hundred persons has generated only gossip and street rumors. Yet World Ecosphere, Inc., was able to investigate privately and conclude that a serial murderer was operating in the Waterton-Maysburg area. ‘Has targeted the Waterton area’ were Joseph Fisher's exact words. Slip of the tongue or did he have reason not to say ‘Maysburg-Waterton area'? Same conversation: Fisher said he wanted to help us, ‘but I've been asked by the chief of police not to divulge certain information our investigator obtained from another law enforcement agency.’ Is this the Maysburg police department or a federal agency such as the FBI? Why does the chief executive officer for a Washington-based (or New York-based) company know more about a possible serial murder/ missing-persons case in the Midwest than the immediate families of victims?

Conclusions: Based on the known facts, it appears that ‘World Ecosphere, Inc.’ and their hush-hush land development project could be responsible in some way for at least elements of Sam's disappearance, such as the subsequent cover-up of related information. The big question is—what is their motive?

Best guesses as to possible motives:

(a) They have learned about the serial killer and are afraid that adverse publicity about such a widespread spate of (unsolved) murders might have an unfavorable effect on public's acceptance of the proposed theme park.

(b) They have learned about the killings and abductions and fear a possible adverse effect on whatever is really behind the land deal, such as creation of a nuclear dump, strip mine, or whatever (possibly a government-funded. project).

(c) They themselves are directly responsible for the disappearances and/or deaths. The least likely possibility.

Bottom line: the project itself must be investigated further. We need to know if Ecoworld is what the company purports it to be."

She went over and sat down on the dusty bed, suddenly quite cold.

On the way to town, they were both in their own world. Royce was concentrating on playing detective, telling himself he was paying Mary back—for a lot of things—and Mary was trying to sort out her weird emotions.

Her world was upside down, yanked inside out. She was hiding—from what, she wasn't completely sure, a serial murderer, she supposed, trying not to second-guess the man beside her—sequestered in the Perkins vacation cabin at Whitetail. It was all too strange, and a no-win cruise for all hands aboard. Nothing good could come out of this mess.

Royce had spoken with Cullen Alberson, and they were going to see him today. The man had been open and seemingly unguarded, which was more than one could say of most of those involved even peripherally in the land deal. They'd gone by the Alberson house and he'd left for town already, and Royce had used their phone to call the hardware store and left word for Cullen to wait for them there.

Horvath's, one of the town's thriving all-purpose “general stores,” was located under the Waterton water tower, a distinctive silver and green onion standing tall above the north edge of the city limits. They pulled in to the parking lot and saw Cullen standing near the bed of his pickup, in animated conversation with another farmer. They waited until the other man walked away. Then they got out and said hello.

“Thanks for letting us pick your brain about this, Cullen,” Royce said.

“Sure ‘nuff. Still no word about Mr. Sam?” He looked at Mary and she shook her head, making a face of sadness. What would everyone say when they heard she'd been hiding out with Royce Hawthorne in the family's cabin? That would give the town plenty to talk about. It was the least of her troubles—what people thought of her.

“I know you've already answered a bunch of questions and so forth, but I was talking about the deal Sam had been working on—talking to Mary, you know?—and we wondered if we could ask you, in confidence, when the contract was signed, were there any riders or changes to this contract? This is the copy from Sam's files.” Royce handed a photocopied sheaf of legal-size papers to Cullen Alberson, opened to the page where it told what the “Community Communications Company” was getting for its money.

Alberson, a man close to retirement age, took his spectacles out and started reading, holding the document rather far from him and squinting, even with his bifocals on.

“We noticed that you didn't sell off any mineral rights, at least in the contract we saw,” Royce said.

“Oh, no. I wasn't about to sell no mineral rights. That was the first thing me and the wife talked about when Mr. Sam told me about the offer. I figured a—whaddyacallem?—geologist ... somebody'd done some testing and found something valuable. I made that clear from the start. He said no—I could retain all mineral rights. They just wanted that little bite out of my corner ground. At the time, I never could understand why they'd throw that kind of money on the table—but, hey, I wasn't going to look no gift horse in the mouth neither.” He shook his head, chuckled, and looked at the contract some more.

“But you never got a direct explanation out of them why they were paying so much for a small piece of farm property?"

“Yeah.” He looked up. “I felt like they were honest enough about what they wanted it for. You know how these big corporations are, they got more money than sense. They take it in their heads they want to do something, it's got to be the way they want it. Somebody out East drew a circle on a map, and I was just lucky enough to be part of the circle.” He smiled and handed the copy back. “Who'd turn down money like I was offered?"

“Not me. We just thought maybe—like you said—they'd found something like a rich gold ore deposit, or oil, or whatever. And when I couldn't find anything about you selling the rights—"

“It was the same with Lawley, ya know?” He meant his next-door neighbor to the east, Weldon Lawley, who'd sold his entire farm to CCC and the parent holding company. “He said—'Shoot, I'd gladly sold them mineral rights for reasonable money, if that's all they wanted.’ It was part of his package deal, but they didn't seem ‘specially interested in that. According to what he said to me."

The three of them talked some more, and Royce and Mary left, checking in with Mary's answering service from a pay telephone. She phoned Alberta Riley, and they made a couple of other calls, including one to Luther Lloyd's home, trying to see if anything had changed with respect to the missing persons. Mrs. Lloyd was no longer stonewalling it for the cops. Mary spoke with her, at Royce's suggestion, and the woman confided in her.

“They tol’ me not to say anything about Luther being gone and such—said I'd just be making folks panic. They're all in a panic now any which away. There was more killed yesterday—Kenneth Roebeck and Dub Olin and a feller that worked for him. Shot down in the middle of—” She caught herself, and Mary thought she'd decided she was overstepping her place to say these things. But she was weeping. Soft, muted snuffles into the telephone.

“It's all right, now. It's okay there.” She didn't know how to comfort the woman. “I've done plenty of crying, too. It's a terrible feeling—not to know.” This only made it worse, and the floodgates opened. Royce watched Mary. She teared up a little herself. Finally Mrs. Lloyd was able to get back under control.

“We don't have to talk anymore if you don't want to, Mrs. Lloyd."

“No. It's okay. I don't mind."

“Have you ever felt like there was something wrong with the deal they made to buy your ground? I wouldn't repeat what you say to me."

“I don't care if you do repeat it. Of course I've felt like there was something wrong with the thing. Luther would a never sold that piece of ground. It was slicked offa him some which away. I don't care how much money they give us, he loved the farm. It was no-account river ground that had just about been farmed out, and we could barely scratch a living off it, but by gols, his gran'daddy give him this ground."

“But yet...” She wanted to be careful how she worded it. “The contract and all ... That was Mr. Lloyd's signature on it, wasn't it?"

“I reckon so. But I went to the lawyer over in Maysburg, and he said that, aw, you know—if we wanted to try to go to court an’ that we might be able to prove that it wasn't done under the right conditions and so forth—"

“Or that he was under pressure of some kind to make him sell—something like that maybe?"

“Yeah. I forget all the things he said. I tol’ him go ahead and do it and I'd pay him best I could. And then he called up later on and said he didn't think he could recommend it on my behalf anymore. That I'd just spend all my money for nothing. He said he'd still take them to court if I insisted, but he was purty sure I'd lose."

“Why was that?"

“He thought they were too big. Some big company that had dealings with the U.S. government, he said. And they'd tie it up in court for years. I told him finally if he thought we'd best drop it, then drop it. If Luther was here and it was him and me, it might be different; he'd want to fight it. But I can't deal with all that and him gone too."

“I understand.” They traded wishes of sympathy, Mary thanked her and wished her well, and rang off.

She filled Royce in on the other side of the conversation, and he voiced the question that had occurred to her as well:

“It would be very interesting to know what Mrs. Lloyd's lawyer found out, and who told him. I wonder how difficult it would be to get any information out of him."

“You know lawyers.” She shrugged.

“Right. But what if we had Mrs. Lloyd call her lawyer and ask him where he got his information. Just have her hint around. You know—she wants to know so she can decide whether or not to pursue the thing against the company for maybe forcing him to sell the farm under duress or whatever?"

“Do you know Mrs. Lloyd?"

“Umm. Yeah. I see what you mean. She's good people, but I can't really see her bringing that off either. What if you were to go to him—as a friend of the family considering the same kind of lawsuit? Think that could work?"

“I'd be willing to try."

“Tell you what, Mary, let's see if we can find out any more information by poking around out there at the construction site. We'll see what we can find out this evening. Maybe we can learn something that will point us in the right direction. Tomorrow—if nothing's changed—we can go rattle the bars on Mrs. Lloyd's lawyer's cage. Okay?"

“Yes. What do you think we'll find out there?"

“I don't have a clue. But all that traffic and massive concrete work and whatnot—there have got to be some plans around, maybe in a trailer or something. Surely we can get a better idea of what they're doing out there in the middle of the boonies."

“Won't it be guarded?"

“Typically a job site like that might have a guard—a retired cop glued to his TV, or a kid sitting around in the trailer getting high. They don't even make builders get construction permits on unzoned county ground—and if they do have a construction guard, he won't be any big thing.” He'd have good cause to reconsider the wisdom he'd just dispensed.

The first thought that occurred to Royce had been that they were building some sort of military airfield in the middle of nowhere—there was such a vast expanse of concrete. Poured concrete had covered much of the construction project, from the center of what had been the Lawley farm to the northernmost edge of Bill Wise Industrial Park. The great span of concrete reminded one of several airstrips viewed side by side.

But this was no airfield. The concrete formed a sublevel, a gigantic flooring and walls. A shallow-walled fortress? Some kind of NORAD deal maybe? A defense command to be housed in this immense subterranean bunker? For what purpose? The North American Defense Command was buried under the heart of Cheyenne Mountain, and impervious to nuclear strike. This one was only a few feet down—too vulnerable.

He tried to imagine a Disneyland for adults. What would it resemble? A fanciful landscape of spiraling turrets and minarets and geodesic domes as drawn by Alex Raymond? Perhaps this was the beginning of an environmental theme park, a showcase for earth-sensitive projects of research and development just as World Ecosphere, Inc., claimed. Maybe they'd had the misfortune to concoct a land deal at the worst possible time and place, coincidentally picking a small town targeted by a serial killer.

Royce turned to Mary, bundled up in sweaters and a heavy coat, and whispered, “Let's get closer.” She whispered okay and they moved as quietly as they could, going over the top of the embankment where they were parked, and down the fairly steep hillside that was adjacent to Russell Herkebauer's drainage ditch, and Lawley's northern ground.

There was a wood line at the base of the hill, and they stopped there, hiding in the trees.

“That's the place where we want to go, I think.” He pointed to a rectangular-shaped building about the size of a trailer-truck bed. “I think that's the office trailer.” There was a similar-size affair without side doors, which he knew was a place where tools were locked up at night.

He was starting to get up, almost ready to reach for Mary and tell her they were going to check out the trailer, when the first guard came out of the trees beside them. Royce grabbed Mary, shushing her and pulling her down all in one move, and only luck kept her from making a noise.

“Jeezus! I didn't see him at all,” he whispered, when the man and his dog were well away from the trees. Mary was frozen in terror, literally speechless. She tried to swallow. Realized, suddenly, she needed to take a breath.

“That was close,” she said, gasping.

An armed man, carrying what appeared to be, by its silhouette, a rifle, with a leashed guard dog, had been in or very near the wood line at the base of the hillside, not fifty feet from where they'd just come down the embankment.

“Right. Just stay chilly.” In a couple of minutes, scanning the dark shapes, he spotted a second man. This one carrying what was unmistakably a small machine gun of some kind. No dog.

“Come on,” he whispered after a bit, “we're going back.” In the vehicle he told her.

“That cinches it. You don't put guards with silent attack dogs and machine guns on an environmental research park. No way."

“What is this all about?"

“I don't know ... I know one thing.” She looked at him quizzically. “If the wind had been coming from the other way and that guard dog had picked up our scent—we'd have been in a world of bad news."

“Is that what happened to Sam, you think? He found out what they were up to?"

“Maybe so. We've got to get some help. Whatever this deal is, it's a lot bigger than you and yours truly can do anything about. And Marty Kerns—forget it!"

“If this is something to do with the government, maybe the FBI is in on it somehow. That would explain why they haven't done more about the missing people."

“Yeah. Let's get out of here.” He started the engine and they headed for the county highway that would take them over to Market Road, and eventually across the bridge into Tennessee.

“I got a bad feeling,” Royce said. “And I've got you in over your head, too. I've turned out to be some friend to you."

“You've been a good friend,” she said softly, touching the back of his hand. “I'm the one who got you in this mess, remember?"

Little did she know. Little did they both know. Royce had nothing to go by but his vibes and a lot of experience running games on folks, and having games run back on him, but one thing he knew: They were in deep shit. And everything he did, every new fact he gleaned, seemed to leave them in a more precarious situation, and knowing less than they knew before.