A huge, gray mass blocked the front door—a huge, gray, bloody mass. Someone had sliced a manatee's throat and left its carcass on the doorstep of EPA Administrator Hogood. Dirk shook his head to clear it and backed slowly through the front door.
There was going to be hell to pay for this. It wasn't smart to leave not-so-subtle messages for a man with his father's political connections. Dirk went to summon a maid to clean up the bloody mess.
* * *
Aurora Jabloski was up before dawn, packing her gear for the Cascades Area Audubon Society's annual hike and workday. She was nine now and big enough to help, but she'd gone to workday every summer since she could walk. Sometimes having an activist for a mother could be a real pain, but on days like this she was glad her mom was the president of the Audubon Society. She opened the front door to check the weather and saw a small bundle on the porch steps.
She plopped down on the top step and indulged the nine-year-old girl's love of surprise packages. When she ripped the bundle open, a stiff spotted owl carcass fell onto her lap.
“Mommy,” Aurora wailed, running into the house and leaving the front door wide open. “Mommy, come see what some bad person has done!”
* * *
Guillaume Langlois was late. He was due in Baton Rouge at a breakfast fundraiser for Save The Whales in forty-five minutes and if he didn't leave immediately, he'd be lucky to make it in time for a cup of coffee. That was fine. Guillaume had made a career of exquisitely timed entrances, and he was capable of bringing an audience to well-paying tears solely on the strength of his closing remarks. But in order to pull it off, he had to leave now.
The sun was just up and its light had not yet penetrated the depths of his front veranda when he opened the front door. The air was quiet, as usual, and oppressively damp, also as usual. The odor, however. . .the odor of the morning was far more fetid than the simple mildewy smell of his hundred-year-old home. His foot brushed something and he flicked the porch light on.
There before him was a tableau worthy of the most twisted Mardi Gras float. A huge mass of sticks and twigs lay at the top of his porch steps. It was a bald eagle's nest, he knew, because an eagle's body was lying mutilated beside it. The nest was still attached to a tree branch as thick as Guillaume's thigh and Spanish moss was arranged artistically around it. But the piece de resistance, the apex of the terrorist's art, was inside the nest. The eagle's chicks were resting there. Their necks had been wrung and the headless bodies posed around the perimeter of the nest. Their heads were laid neatly in the center.
Guillaume was famous for his blustering rages, but there was no one to witness his reaction, so he didn't waste energy on a tantrum. He sat on the porch swing and clapped his hand over his mouth to hold in the anger and to still the nausea.
He tried to think. Someone hated him badly. He knew that already. Lots of people hated him and lots of them were capable of violence. But not so many of them were this creative. Very few were willing to undergo the kind of risk involved in pulling off this stunt. And damn near none of them had such a finely developed sense of the absurd.
Manipulating absurdity was Guilllaume's stock-in-trade. He felt a grudging respect for the monster who had pulled this stunt. There were so few worthy adversaries on God's green Earth.
Guillaume stood quietly for a moment. If he wasn't going to throw a tantrum and he wasn't going to throw up and he wasn't going to scream, what would be the most appropriate action at this point? Slowly, he began to smile, then to laugh his big, deep, famous laugh. He laughed until the tears came.
* * *
Larabeth was drying herself with a scratchy hotel towel when she heard a noise outside her hotel room. She figured it was a bellboy throwing the complimentary daily paper outside her door. He hadn't been very quiet about it the morning before, either.
She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and set to work with a blow dryer, which required her to face a mirror. Her eyes and skin said she was tired, and they did not lie. There was something about being stalked and terrorized that disturbed her beauty sleep. Maybe a perky shade of lipstick would fool her into feeling perky herself. God knew she needed to perk up. A bunch of regulatory bureaucrats dominated her agenda for the day.
More specifically, her agenda included schmoozing with employees of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Control, pumping them for any information on the herbicide spill that might help her find Babykiller. And while she was at it, maybe she could position BioHeal as the obvious firm to clean up any residual Agent Blue contamination. She was certainly motivated by money, but there was more to it than that. There were those rare projects that offered more than money. This one offered the chance to heal, to take a devastated spot of ground and restore it to some semblance of its former self. She had no illusion of restoring the land to its long-gone prairie ecosystem. But if some farmers could use their land again, and wildlife could use the Platte without filling themselves full of toxins, well, that would be the kind of accomplishment she had in mind when she named her company BioHeal.
Larabeth was mentally engineering the cleanup and fluffing her hair when J.D. called. Slipping on her shoes as she talked, she said, “Of course, I'm ready. I can't imagine what takes you men so long.”
He grunted. “Yeah, right. I've been listening through the wall—unwillingly, I might add—to your morning routine for an hour. When it got quiet in there, I thought it might be time to give you a call.”
“Good Lord,” she said. “Did I snore, too? Don't answer that. This is the last time I sleep anywhere close to a detective.”
She hung up the phone and started stuffing spare makeup and a bundle of laboratory reports into her briefcase. She was damned if she'd give him the satisfaction of waiting even a second for her to get ready.
A moment later, J.D.'s voice came through the door. It was muffled, but her name was distinct. “Larabeth.” She thought it odd that he didn't knock. “Stay put. There's been some trouble and I need to check things out.”
She didn't quite stay put. She pulled the draperies back an inch and peered through the sheer white curtains beneath. There was nobody outside except J.D., but when he drew his handgun and started to search the stairwell, she let the curtains close.
Larabeth backed to the bed and sat down. Guns, rifles, revolvers, weapons—how she hated them all. God knew she had seen enough of weapons and their victims. It was just like Vietnam all over again. She sat there, hoping some faceless enemy wasn't waiting outside for her, hoping J.D. would be safe, dreading shots and groans and blood.
She wished she could forget the things that bullets do to human beings. She couldn't forget, so she just sat on her bed and tried to leave the insanity in the past. Her fingernails left red crescents in her palms that said she would never be wholly free of the past.
A few minutes later, J.D. knocked quietly and called her name. She released the chain and turned the knob, but the door only opened a crack. J.D.'s hand was keeping it nearly shut.
“Larabeth,” he said, “Something has happened. Let me come in for a minute.” He opened the door a few degrees more and slid inside, closing it behind him. He was pale and his lips were a firm gray line. “Someone is sending you a message.”
“What kind of message? Let me see.” She reached for the doorknob, but J.D. didn't take his hand off it.
“Someone wants you to know they are capable of violence. They want you to realize that they know where you are. They want you to know that they are willing to destroy something you hold dear and throw it in your face. I want you to know that I will never let this bastard harm you.” He opened the door. “This is going to be hard for you.”
She could see three heaps on her doorstep. She couldn't tell, but she thought they were bloody, somehow. She rushed past him and knelt beside the objects.
“It's a sea turtle,” she said, “an Atlantic Ridley, I think. Probably a juvenile. I don't know for sure. I keep people on my payroll to tell me things like that. I do know t
hey're an endangered species. But why would somebody do this?”
The turtle was dismembered, or at least it was as dismembered as a two-foot-long turtle can be by an attacker who isn't armed with a sledgehammer or explosives. Someone had thrust a large knife as far into the openings in its shell as possible, carving off the head, the legs, the tail. They had brought the remains to Larabeth's doorstep in a black plastic bag, which lay discarded on the sidewalk. Blood, still in the process of coagulating, pooled around the bag's opening.
The pieces of the turtle itself were arranged neatly on Larabeth's morning newspaper. The shell rested on its belly in the middle of the paper and the body parts, coated with blood, were stacked in two piles on either side of the shell.
She looked up at J.D. He had holstered his gun, but he kept his hand on it as he stood over her, scanning the ridiculously ordinary motel courtyard for signs of a killer. Still on her knees, she laid a trembling hand on the turtle's shell.
It was gemstone-smooth and precisely curved, a magical work of nature. The sticky, clotted blood surrounding the turtle shell was a work of nature, too, but the beast who had spilled that blood was nothing natural. She knew who that beast was. Certainly a babykiller was capable of murdering an innocent animal.
How could she fight this shadowy figure who knew her secrets, who tracked her everywhere she went? And if he could do such violence to a harmless creature, what might he do to her?
* * *
Larabeth sat in J.D.'s room, nursing a warm soda and suffering the odd, suspended sensation that she remembered so well from Vietnam. The dead turtle crisis had passed, but the overall Babykiller problem was unresolved. Once upon a time, she remembered working with all her might to save each wounded soldier, knowing all the while that there was still a war going on outside. The feeling was the same.
The police had interviewed her quickly; she didn't have much to say. She had seen nothing and heard nothing but a bump outside her door. She had no way of knowing whether she'd heard the turtle or the newspaper being left on her doorstep.
At any rate, the noise she heard had established the earliest possible time that the turtle could have been deposited. The bellhop might be noisy, but he probably wasn't so stupid that he would have tripped over a dismembered animal without mentioning it to someone. The police had gone to question him immediately after leaving Larabeth.
“This place is crawling with cops and I'm glad because I'm scared to death,” she said, watching J.D. peer out the window, “but it doesn't make sense. Sure, Ridley's sea turtles are endangered. Killing one is a serious thing, but it doesn't rate such a hyperactive police response. It seems like a job for environmental regulators. I expect a bunch of them to show up any minute, as soon as they finish filling out a pile of forms in triplicate.”
J.D. laughed and pointed to a cop sitting on a courtyard bench, collecting reports from the other officers. “I guess paperwork is a necessary evil for any government worker,” he said.
Larabeth rolled her eyes. “Why do you think I work for myself?” She stood up and resumed pacing the same pattern she'd been tracing for an hour. “A few days ago,” she mused, “someone broke into my house and the police made me feel like I should just leave the doors open and invite all the harmless crooks in for a visit. Why do I rate all this police coverage this time?”
“This may hurt your self-esteem, but the police coverage isn't all about you.” J.D. said, closing the curtain. “I chatted up one of the other officers while you were being questioned. It seems you aren't the only prominent environmentalist who received a message this morning.”
“What do you mean?”
“They don't know the size of it yet, but you're definitely not the only victim. This thing is nationwide. In California, people—all of them well-known in the environmental field—are still waking up and finding carcasses on their doorsteps.”
“That's bizarre.”
“That, madam, is an understatement. And who is the most bizarre person that we know at the moment?”
“Babykiller. I told the police about his calls and about the break-in at my house. They wrote everything down, but they seemed mildly interested, at best. Don't you think they'll take him seriously now?”
“Maybe, but try thinking like an investigator. A good one will follow every lead, but this thing is big. It will be in papers coast to coast. Hundreds of crackpots will call in useless leads. Every victim will have a theory, and frankly most of them will be more plausible than a lunatic who calls himself ‘Babykiller.’ You heard who the victims were. These people have enemies, lots of serious enemies.”
He presented a convincing list of possible suspects, ticking them off on his fingers. “Loggers who lost their jobs to the spotted owl. Scientists who lost years of data when an animal rights group sabotaged their lab. Business owners staggering under a zillion environmental regulations. The investigators heard and duly recorded your Babykiller theory, but don't count on them spending too much time on it. From their point of view, they have bigger fish to fry.”
“But we have Babykiller on tape.”
“Yeah, I listened to the recording last night. He's not one of your more charming friends. But did he admit any wrongdoing?”
“Not in so many words, but—”
“Has he ever made any out-and-out threats against you?”
J.D.'s tone was reasonable. Larabeth was exceedingly annoyed.
“Not exactly, but he hinted at it.”
“Did he give you permission to tape your conversation?”
“Of course not," Larabeth sputtered, “but—”
“Then what makes you think the police would even consider listening to our little tape?”
“Then why,” Larabeth said in the steely drawl she reserved for erring senior executives, “did we bother to make the tape?”
“Because we have almost nothing else to go on. He's calling from a cell phone, unless he's an idiot. Do you think he's an idiot?”
“No.”
“Then he's a moving target, even if we are able to trace a call. It's going to be damn difficult to find the bastard. We'll get all the electronic help we can, but maybe the sound of his voice or the way he turns a phrase will help us out. Maybe a background noise will give him away. I saw that happen in a movie one time.”
“A movie.” Larabeth closed her eyes and shook her head. “I thought I hired a professional investigator, not Inspector Clousseau. Can't you just get an electronic doo-hickey that will tell us who's calling me and where he is and what he wants with me?”
“Not easily and maybe not at all. Let me talk to some hacker friends today and maybe I'll have better news.”
“I can't believe we're having this conversation.” Larabeth sighed and stretched. “At least Cynthia is safe. Nobody knows I'm her mother but you and me and, for once, I'm glad I never told her.”
She said it without tears, but J.D.’s eyes said he didn't believe her for a moment. He moved closer to her, and his concern almost broke her need to stifle the tears, almost caused her to admit weakness.
His face was near hers, with its squinty brown eyes and strong bones. She nearly reached up to brush back the blonde curl that always hung over his forehead, but she didn't.
She had found it best to stay away from men like J.D. She preferred to spend time with men she only liked a little. It hurt less that way.
Chapter 8
Larabeth sat in the headquarters of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Control—N-Deck, for short—with three high-ranking staffers. They had been surprisingly helpful. She guessed that the special treatment was due to two things: her status as victim of a high-profile environmental crime and her prominence in the environmental world. It was amazing what a few interviews in Newsweek did for impressionable people.
She would have been grateful, but they'd said nothing she didn't already know. Mac MacGowan had known almost as much about the herbicide spill as these people did.
As for the news
of the day, her companions at the conference table knew virtually nothing about the slaughtered animals left on doorsteps across America. Larabeth was discouraged, but she knew that she had a gift for getting people to chat. It was a gift that had brought BioHeal millions of dollars in contracts. If she got these people talking, they might say something substantive in spite of themselves. Then she could free herself of Babykiller and his madness.
The lowest-ranking bureaucrat answered the phone and jotted a quick note. When he hung up, he announced, “I've got another name here. Some guy in New Orleans. I'm not sure I can pronounce his name, but it looks French.”
“New Orleans?” Larabeth said, reaching for the paper. “That's my stomping ground. I know any number of people there with unpronounceable names.”
“Why, it's Guillaume Langlois!” she said pronouncing it correctly, with a hard G: Gee-YOME LangWAH. “What did they do to him?”
“Whoever did this must really hate him,” the young man said. “They shot a bald eagle, stole her nest—chicks and all—and artistically arranged the whole kit and kaboodle on his front porch.”
Everybody busied themselves adding this news to the notepads carefully laid in front of them.
“I could get my feelings hurt. They didn't go to nearly as much trouble for me.” Larabeth was on a roll now. If she didn't soften these people up, they'd never do her any good at all. Maybe bad humor would help. “They just stole a turtle from the zoo, cut it up, and dumped it in front of my hotel room. How hard could it be? Turtles don't move that fast.”
Larabeth scanned their faces. The young man who answered the phone had laughed and the only other female in the room, a thirtyish woman with no apparent makeup on her serious face, had a twinkle in her eye. She had little hope of unearthing a sense of humor in the official-looking, gray-suited man at the head of the table.
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