Cutting edge s--1

by Robert W. Walker

  Randy looked at Lucas. “Oh?”

  “Some missing parts, and we need your help.”

  “Oh, how exciting,” declared Darlene, beaming.

  Randy looked from Darlene to Lucas and back to Darlene again.

  Lucas asked, “Well?”

  Darlene threw her hands up. “Don't let me stand in your way. I'm fascinated.”

  “Darlene, all this is like classified stuff,” Randy began. “You… you'll have to go.”

  “Damn it, no!” she moaned.

  “Oh, let her stay,” complained Lucas. “He's such a stickler for regulations. It gets in the way sometimes.”

  Randy glared at Lucas. “I don't want her in harm's way.”

  “She won't be, and neither are you.”

  Randy rolled his eyes and whispered, “The hell I'm not. I've been threatened twice with no less than my life.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “You're too clever for your own good. Detective.”

  “You needn't call me that.”

  “It's for her sake.” He pointed with his upturned head.

  “I want you to access Captain Phillip Lawrence's computer files, see if he's clear of this mess or not.”

  “Are you crazy? Hack into the captain's files?”

  “Just do it.”

  “Look, come here…” he replied, going to his computer console and handing Lucas a printout. “Read this.”

  Lucas stared down at a list of some three hundred people whose religious preferences were classified along the lines of hard-core spiritualism, witchcraft, demonology and vampirology. There were more than just names there; there were social security numbers, ages, occupations, as well as the whereabouts of each person appearing on the list. “The Vampire List?”

  “That's it, and I've had a visit from the FBI.”

  “Agents Bullock and Price? They're in the city? When did you have contact with them?”

  'They warned me to stay out of it in no uncertain terms.”

  “But they didn't confiscate your findings?” He hefted the list again.

  “That's a copy. They got the original, and they warned me that if I ever accessed FBI files again, they would prosecute hell out of me.”

  “I see.”

  Lucas wondered anew about the two agents, pretending friendship and cooperation in South Dakota, now this. Were they to be trusted? Should he call Meredyth, get her over here? Should they brainstorm this thing here and now? 'Take Darlene home. I'm going to contact Meredyth Sanger, get her over here, and we're going to put our heads together.”

  “Fine, fine, but I'll be damned if I'm going to do any hacking inside the HPD Net for you two. I've already got the damned FBI upset with me, Lucas.”

  Lucas stared at Randy Oglesby's bright blue eyes and boyish features, doubting that Randy could ever or would ever look old or sinister or capable of anything but honesty and forthrightness, yet he daily indulged in an electronic dishonesty in his work, or at least he had since Lucas had known him, since Dr. Sanger had entrusted her secrets about the case to him. Again, Lucas wondered if Randy could be trusted, if he had been gotten to, not only by the FBI, but by forces closer at hand.

  “I'll call Dr. Sanger. You come right back. We have more work to do. It's imperative we take these final steps, Randy.

  “Randy frowned, nodded and took Darlene by the arm. “I'll be half an hour.

  “Lucas immediately telephoned Meredyth, telling her to meet him at Randy's apartment.

  “What's up?” she asked.

  “Not over the phone. Just get here as quickly as you can.”

  “I have an evening planned, Lucas.”

  'Tell Conrad it's an emergency, tell him you've got a wigged-out cop on your hands, tell him anything.”

  “Damn,” she muttered. 'This better be good, Lucas.”

  “I can't promise you anything, but I have a direction.”

  “Well, now, that would be novel.” Her sarcasm was more biting than she'd meant it to be. “Sorry, I'm just so frustrated.”

  “With the case or with Conrad?” he joked.

  She fumed at the other end. He could feel it. “I'll see you there as soon as possible.”

  She hung up, and Lucas stared at the phone a moment before returning it to its cradle. He wondered what direction he was talking about and why he felt so strongly that he must see Meredyth tonight.

  THIRTY-ONE

  “It's not over,” Lucas told Meredyth and Randy when they had all assembled. “The priest did not act alone.”

  Randy exchanged a disturbed look with Meredyth. “You think the same way?”

  Meredyth slowly nodded.

  Randy swore under his breath and started pacing. “The man was a lunatic.”

  “Agreed.”

  “He had a Messiah complex.”

  “Agreed.”

  “He thought he could hideously destroy people, whole families, and that his actions would be rewarded by God.”

  “Agreed.”

  “In the man's mad rantings, he calls himself Helsinger and Questor I, doesn't he?”

  “Agreed.”

  “But that's not enough for you two?”

  “Agreed.”

  “Damn… damn,” muttered Randy as he paced, nervously biting at his nails. “I've got something to show you, something I was afraid to show anyone, still am,” he qualified, going for his desk, tearing open a bottom drawer, rummaging there and coming out with a sheet of computer paper.

  Meredyth looked over Lucas's shoulder. “What is it?” Lucas stared at the bulletin board message he held in his hand while Randy explained, saying, “I located that just after you two went off to South Dakota, but I didn't know what to make of it until I heard about your being ambushed there.”

  With Meredyth looking over his shoulder, Lucas read the veiled threat on their lives.

  764LTl: C42119Category42… Topic 49LOG… Message 440… Sat-July 30-1996…2:10:21

  Questor 1… Helsinger's Pit…

  Q1: There is a further threat. A new enemy has risen in perdition this realm. These are two enforcer demons — male and female. They must be stopped. Do all necessary to protect the brothers and sisters and children of Helsinger. Reply this board after evil is wiped out. God's speed to you Questor 1

  END TRANSMISSION Category 42, Topic49LOG…2:13:26

  Category 42…. Topic 49LOG…Message 441… Sat. July 30, 1996…3:55:05

  Questor 2…. from the Pit….

  Q2: Understood-will take care of perdition's problem.

  END TRANSMISSION. Category 42, Topic 49LOG…3:57:01

  Category 42…. Topic 49LOG…. Message 442 Sun-July 31, 1996 -8:10

  Questor 1….

  Time to take out all threats-Set trap and exterminate the mice. No more fun and games. Eliminate the leaders of our enemy. See message drop new station.

  END FINAL TRANSMISSION. THIS EMAIL.

  “Good Lord,” Meredyth said with a gasp. “It's an electronically ordered hit.”

  Lucas agreed. “And we were-probably still are-the targets.” He turned back to Randy and asked, “How did you come by it?”

  “Surfing the Net; purely accidentally, I assure you. When Aguilar and his goons were killed, I figured it was over, so I put it aside. I'd planned to talk to Meredyth about it when… when things settled a bit.”

  “How did you come by it?” he repeated.

  “Like I said, damn it. I was plugging into any Helsinger Pit activity, not expecting to find anything.”

  Lucas badgered, repeating his words. “Not expecting to find anything?”

  “The Net is jammed full with such trash, but as it happens, nobody's really playing that particular gloom and doom game anymore, except maybe Aguilar and his friends.”

  “It's not over, kid, just because you want it to be,” replied Lucas, staring a hole in Randy. “It doesn't work that way.”

  Meredyth snatched at Lucas's arm, saying, 'Take it easy, Lucas.”

  Luca
s pulled away, while Randy, taking offense, shouted,

  “Hey, I'm nobody's fool, Lucas! I know this much: Any damned ranting lunatic nowadays who has access to a computer can and will set up his own vigilante committee, just as Aguilar set up his own little electronic shrine to declare himself the vanguard of a war against Satan-the authority, the one fount of truth, the goddamned cyberspace church, where all his followers and converts either kneel before him or die. And you know who Satan was to this guy, Lucas? You, Redskin, you and Dr. Sanger and me… yeah, me…”

  Randy fell into an overstuffed chair, throw pillows flying.

  “But he didn't act alone,” countered Lucas. “I can feel it in my bones.”

  “Four, no, five died alongside him!” countered Randy, sitting up.

  “No, not followers. There was a mastermind behind the whole damned thing. I can't put my finger on it, but I believe Phil Lawrence is somehow involved, him and his pals Pardee and Amelford.”

  Randy looked for Meredyth's support, his hands going up in the air. “So, you want to rattle some more cages, is that it?”

  “Lucas thinks,” began Meredyth, “we think… Aguilar took the fall for a much bigger operation. The same thought must've crossed your mind, too, Randy.”

  “It might have… it might've, sure, but I was smart enough to run away from it…”

  “What about Lawrence, Randy?” she cajoled. “We need to eliminate him. Can you scan his computer for anything like this?” She held out the sheet of paper that represented their death warrants.

  “I did it already, once.”

  Meredyth and Lucas looked from Randy to one another. “And…” she finally said.

  “That's when I came across this.” He walked to the computer console and turned on the monitor; onscreen was the encrypted message, using the same category number and log number as the threat on Meredyth and Lucas. It was the message to kill the Shirleys, although their names were not spelled out.

  Randy's state-of-the-art computer was so silent, Lucas had not known it was on. “You say you got this from Lawrence's computer files?”

  “I found it while tracing the other message's origin. I followed the computer tracks right into Lawrence's files. He's Helsinger One.”

  “Damn, then that makes it conclusive proof.”

  “Proof for whom?” asked Randy. “Who's going to believe us? Before we're all killed, that is. Damn, I wish I'd never met you two…”

  Randy was shaken, his face a mask of fear illuminated only by the dim light reflecting off his computer screen. He wheeled so they could not study the fear in him.

  Lucas again wondered about Randy. He had told them that he'd played Helsinger's Pit as a child, that it had become an addiction for him for a while. Suppose the baby-faced computer whiz had never actually overcome his addiction? Suppose he was behind the real-time, real-life vampire stalking murders? Suppose he was Father Aguilar's light and salvation? Lucas felt a thousand doubts swirling about his head. “How long have you known about Lawrence's involvement? Why didn't you confide in us before now? Why did we have to drag this from you?” Lucas said, suddenly turning on Randy.

  “Damn it, I was trying to keep us all alive. This gets out, that I know this stuff, and… and we're all dead, all of us…” He looked long and hard into Meredyth's eyes.

  Meredyth tugged at Lucas's slinged arm. Lucas relented.

  Randy sounded convincing, sincere, and Lucas cursed himself for being unable to trust in anyone anymore.

  “We've got to get help, tell someone,” Meredyth told the other two. 'This just has become to big for us to handle alone.”

  “Bullock and Price?” he suggested. “The FBI?”

  “I tried to get them earlier, but I got a strange response.”

  “Strange?”

  “Just a foul-up, I'm sure-a secretary who didn't know anything, had never heard of Tim Bullock and Stu Price.”

  His eyes danced with hers in a slow waltz of measured confusion. “Bullock and Price didn't exist?”

  “But then why would they warn us?”

  “Maybe someone likes sporting events to be sporting. I don't know.”

  “I'm sure it was just a mistake. I'll call the FBI here, ask them to patch us through to wherever Bullock and Price might be.” She got on the phone and attempted to reach the elusive FBI men, but again she was told there were no agents matching the description or the names given.

  “They were sent in to find out how much we knew,” he offered.

  “And to keep a tail on us,” she agreed.

  “Damn… damn,” muttered Randy, distraught now, locating beers for them all from his refrigerator, weakly joking, “We may's well empty out the fridge so nothing 'U spoil after I'm killed dead.”

  “Who do we take it to?” Meredyth asked.

  “Commander Bryce,” replied Lucas, “and we have to do it now, tonight.”

  The three exchanged glances, agreeing to make their move.

  Commander Andrew Bryce could only be reached at his home, a sprawling horse ranch he owned just outside Houston. There had been a heated controversy when he'd become a chief in the Houston Police Department that he give up living outside the city lines and move his family into the city proper, that a city police chief had to live in the city he swore to serve and protect. It was the kind of nonsense that Lucas had no patience for, and he had heard that the now Commander Bryce had continued to fight the ancient ordinance in court.

  Bryce was receptive to the idea that Aguilar could not possibly have been working alone. In fact, he had said over the phone that the more time away from that night when Aguilar was gunned down, the more he had pondered the possibilities, and the more he had felt a definite pat hand had been dealt them all by Captain Phillip Lawrence, Pardee, and Amelford. He didn't need much prodding once Lucas opened up about his misgivings with respect to what he feared were perhaps the dirtiest cops he had ever run across.

  “We'll need conclusive proof, though, Stonecoat, you realize, before anything can be moved on. Can you give me anything more than your suppositions?”

  “We can, sir. We can.”

  “You and Meredyth Sanger, you mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then why don't the two of you drive out to my place? It's the only private place I know of where we won't be bothered. Then we'll talk this thing through over coffee or a drink, perhaps? If you're certain of your facts, and if you've really got the goods, Stonecoat, we'll bring in the D.A.

  Lucas intentionally left Randy Oglesby out of it. “Yes, sir. We'll be there as soon as we can, sir.” Lucas took down the address, a map of landmarks, actually, and the name of the ranch: the Rocking B.

  Nightfall painted the deserted, dust-laden landscape outside Houston where tall cacti stood sentinel to time and comings and goings of men in machines as cars hurtled along the superhighways. Lucas and Meredyth pulled off the Interstate onto narrow County Road 341, occasional houselights like fallen stars here. Small roads led deeper into the desert area west of the city, which had disappeared in the distance behind them like the setting of the moon. Storm clouds scudded about, harmlessly dispersing, but in the distance, great streaking lightning bolts split the darkness with a laser display, like a scalpel tearing at the dark folds of the sky, the world tonight like so much leftover fabric being incised. In the distance, quietly sloping hills lay like sleeping camels, disturbed only by the intermittent light display. The occasional trailer home in the middle of nowhere rose and fell behind them as they drove on toward the Rocking B.

  In a moment, they began to see signs for the ranch, fences leading them now, guiding them to the great, wide, tree lined drive. It was thirty minutes out of the city, but it may as well have been days, the place was so remote.

  Commander Bryce welcomed them from a brightly lit wraparound porch, the front porch quite a showplace in itself. The house was elegantly done up, rivaling any ranch house in the country, Lucas thought, its warm log frame both richly textured and
inviting. Noisy cicadas chirped all around them as they exited Lucas's car. The night air was crisp, a breeze playing its fingers over Lucas's brow and playing a lilting tune on a collection of wind chimes all about the expansive porch. Lucas stared appreciatively at the chimes.

  “My wife's collection,” Bryce noted. “She loves the sounds they make. Me, sometimes it drives me nuts.” He gave a full-throated laugh. “Come on inside where we can get comfortable.”

  On entering the beautifully kept house, nothing aside from books and newspapers out of place, Lucas was struck by the number of photos lining the walls and each mantel and table, pictures of children and grandchildren.

  Meredyth noticed, too, asking Bryce how many grandchildren he had. He laughed, his face beaming. “I stopped counting at sixteen!”

  'Then you must have had quite a few children of your own,” she continued with the small talk.

  “Seven, two daughters and five sons, but who's counting?

  Can I get you two coffee, a drink, anything?”

  “We wouldn't want to impose on Mrs. Bryce,” replied Meredyth.

  “Who said anything 'bout Mrs. Bryce? No, no, she's off to her sister's place for a week, and as you see, all my children have grown and have families of their own now. I gave them each a parcel of land here, kinda as a bribe, to keep them all nearby, you see. Now, what about that drink?”

  “I could use a whiskey, scotch if you have it,” confessed Lucas, looking about, seeing several mounted hunting trophies on the wall, an enormous elk, a Rocky Mountain longhorn goat, and even a buffalo, which Lucas's eyes lingered over.

  “Purchased that one,” confessed Bryce, a bit sheepishly. “Against the law to actually kill a buffalo nowadays, you know. Found it at a place that sold all sorts of Indian artifacts and antiques in Carson City, Wyoming. The wife and me, we both thought it would set off the place, give it the kind of rustic look we were looking for.”

  There were hawks and stuffed eagles in the corners as well, their long-dead eyes as piercing and sharp in death as in life.

  “White wine,” Meredyth suggested for herself.

  “Coming right up. Make yourselves at home.”