“I believe what we just witnessed was Panfauna Associates’ delivery service in action,” Kitrell remarked, his voice cleaving the stillness.
“How can you be sure?” I asked, even now wondering if someone might be hidden close by, listening to our conversation.
Kitrell’s eyes gleamed. “By the size of the crates. Each was exactly large enough to hold a juvenile chimp.”
“In that case, you might be right about Pierpont. Maynard and Johnny Lambert are headed toward the Flying A ranch, which happens to be where the good doctor is based.”
“Then I guess Gracie will be joined by a few others of her own kind tonight,” Kitrell grimly replied.
The idea of trailing Maynard and Lambert back to the ranch in the dark was more than ludicrous, it was potentially suicidal. Our headlights would be a dead giveaway, setting us up to be knocked off as easily as sitting ducks. As for hiking in on foot, we’d be forced to climb over security gates while tracking across land neither of us knew. The logical choice was to wait until just before daybreak to make our move. At least then, we’d stand a shot.
We headed back to where we had parked, having agreed to meet at my place before sunrise.
“We can’t fuck this up, Porter. I don’t want to have to worry about something happening to you,” were Grizzly’s parting words.
“Screwing things up is not what I do. You watch your back. I can take care of my own,” I retorted, and drove off.
Sixteen
When I arrived home, Sonny’s collection of animal skulls leeringly greeted me. All in all, it seemed the appropriate way to end my day. I wandered into the kitchen to find a surprise: Tia Marta had hung a colorful strand of dried red chiles on the wall. But that wasn’t the only thing she’d left for me. Sitting on my kitchen table was a small pouch attached to a leather thong and a hand-written note. I opened the fridge and grabbed a can of soda, then read the message.
I made this amulet especially for you. It includes all the right herbs to help keep you safe. But remember, it won’t do any good unless you wear it! Something is causing bad spirits to hover around the house. I’ll be over first thing in the morning to give you another cleansing.
I picked up the leather pouch, opened it a crack, and took a whiff. Whew! It contained enough vile herbs to drive away a legion of werewolves. I threw the amulet on the table and began to walk out of the room, only to be stopped cold by my incessant Jewish guilt. If Tia Marta arrived before I woke up and found the pouch lying there, her feelings would be hurt. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was bunking down with some hunky male who’d be offended by the smell. I backtracked and slipped the thong around my neck. Harrison was the kind of man who’d understand. Anyway, I had the advantage: I controlled his sleeping habits.
My pager went off again. It had driven me crazy the entire drive home, and I hoped the vibrating action had at least firmed my left hip a bit. I planned to wear the gadget on my right hip all day tomorrow. I slipped it off my belt, secretly hoping it was Prince Charming, desperate to get my attention. But wouldn’t you know, Fat Boy was trying to reach me.
First things first. I strode into the living room, removed my .38, and bent over to slip it in the desk drawer. Something sharp jabbed my thigh, and I reached down to discover Kitrell’s granite souvenir. I pulled the stone out of my pocket and threw it on the desktop, then headed into the bedroom to return Fat Boy’s call.
Juan picked up before the phone barely had a chance to ring. “Where the hell have you been, Porter?” he demanded. “Haven’t you heard me paging you all night?”
“I just got back from a cruise in the Caribbean,” I wisecracked, wishing there was a pina colada in my hand. “What do you want?”
“What I want is protection!” he screamed. Lola jabbered furiously in the background. “Someone is out to get me and it’s all because of you! You must have told people that you’ve been talking to me!”
I clicked back through my memory bank. The only person aware of my connection to Juan was Kitrell. I shelved any doubts on that subject, and took another approach.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone,” I told him. Maybe we’d been spotted at the Chicken Hut together. “Why? What happened?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Fat Boy retorted sarcastically. “Besides someone sneaking into my yard and destroying my entire statue collection. They lopped off the heads of all Seven Dwarfs, and buried Jack and Jill up to their necks in sand. Mother Goose was cut into eight different pieces and strewn about. It’s too disgusting to even tell you what they did to Mary and her little lamb!”
I knew how much the yard art meant to Juan, and made a note to pick him up a couple of new statues. “I’m sorry it happened. But it sounds like the work of mischievous kids.”
“Oh, yeah?” Fat Boy spat. “Then what do you call the fact that someone broke into my house and threw everything around? The place is a total wreck!”
“Lola trying her hand at housecleaning?”
“Very funny, Porter. You won’t think it’s so amusing when you learn that whoever was here also took all of Timmy Tom’s business papers!” Fat Boy exploded.
He was right; suddenly the events took on a whole new meaning.
“Poor little Lola was so scared, I couldn’t find her for hours. I almost keeled over, thinking someone had stolen her from me.” Lola added her own two cents by grabbing the phone out of Fat Boy’s hands, continuing to chatter like a lunatic. “Lola! Give me the phone back, dammit!”
“Juan! Are you still there?” I yelled, trying to be heard above the ruckus.
“Lola’s very upset and is probably going to need a sedative just to go to sleep,” Juan sullenly responded.
I could relate to that. “I want you and Lola to take a few days off, and get out of town. Go tour the clubs where you’re going to be playing. Or head down the coastline and kick back for a while,” I suggested.
“No way!” Fat Boy protested. “This is a critical time for us. I’ve still got a bunch of costumes to make, and Lola’s not totally confident about the act yet. We’ve got to work out the glitches before we hit the road, or we’ll never get a recording contract!”
“Look, what I’m trying to say is that I’m a little worried,” I admitted, not wanting to frighten Juan any more than necessary. But I’d seen this pattern before: people who cross my path during an investigation too often end up in trouble.
“Yeah, well, I’m a little worried too.” Fat Boy snorted. “Why the hell else do you think I’m calling? But as for leaving town, you can forget about it. Lola and me have too much to do. I just want to make sure that whatever you’ve got going doesn’t get us killed! Comprende?”
Juan hung up without waiting for my answer. The problem was, I still wasn’t sure what I’d become involved in. I needed to figure out not only why someone would nab Timmy Tom’s files, but how the admiral and Pierpont fit into the picture. And I feared whoever had killed Timmy Tom was now after Fat Boy.
The phone rang again and I swiftly picked up, for once hoping it was Juan on the line.
“I’m glad you called back! Just say the world and I’ll have you out of town by tomorrow,” I instantly offered.
“Rach? It’s me, Lizzie. Is everything all right?”
The voice floating through the phone wire was barely a whisper. Either we had a bad connection, or something was wrong. I glanced at the clock. Three fifteen A.M. Prickly needles of concern pierced my skin, sharp as a porcupine’s quills.
“I’m fine. What are you doing up so late?” I asked apprehensively.
“I’ve found something I think you should know about.”
“Is it safe for you to be on the phone?”
“I think so,” Lizzie responded in a voice taut as a bowstring. “Anyway, I’m too wired to sleep after what I discovered.”
She instantly had my full attention. “What did you learn?”
“I found out that Martin was the former head of a biotechnology firm called Alphagen,” she said
in an excited whisper.
Other than the name, this was already old news to me. “Did you trip across anything indicating what kind of research Pierpont planned to do?”
“Yes, I scribbled down a few quick notes.” She rustled through some papers. “They were developing a new drug delivery technique—which sounds pretty boring. But they also had plans to experiment on nonhuman primate models. Some kind of study was to be done to determine the effectiveness of a specific antibody injected in chimps,” Lizzie responded. “I figured you’d be interested in that.”
It suddenly felt as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. This was exactly what Kitrell was talking about! Alphagen must have been one of those private labs trying to get chimps in order to conduct secret medical experiments.
“Except testing was never done because Alphagen ran out of money,” Lizzie read from her notes. “But you know what’s interesting?”
“What’s that?”
“Alphagen formally shut its doors the same day Martin arrived in Texas to begin work for us on cloning Ten-Karat. I remember the exact date because I was so excited.”
That did seem like a funny coincidence. “Was there any mention as to whether Alphagen was bought by another firm? Or did the company simply file in bankruptcy court and close its doors?”
“Alphagen was taken over, all right. But not by your normal, everyday company,” Lizzie said, stringing out the suspense.
“Then by what?” I asked, wishing I could reach through the phone and grab the information.
Lizzie remained silent for a moment, making me wonder if she was still there, or if F.U. had snuck up from behind and grabbed her. “Lizzie?” I asked worriedly.
“Sorry, Rach. It’s just that I’m having a hard time understanding this whole thing myself. It seems Alphagen was purchased by a private conglomerate of wealthy business associates.”
I tried to figure out where all this was headed, but couldn’t.
“It gets even weirder, Rach. I checked out the environmental group which took over the Flying A ranch, and guess what? Not only is the Flying A the only land-holding that Southwest Heritage Trust ever acquired—but their board of directors are the same people who purchased Alphagen from Martin Pierpont!” Lizzie hesitated, letting me know there was still more to be disclosed. “To top it off, you’ll never guess who the CEO of Southwest Heritage Trust is—my soon-to-be-former louse of a husband, F.U. Krabbs!” she proclaimed, releasing her bombshell.
“What!” My mind raced to catch up with the information. “Are you telling me F.U. is secretly running the very environmental group that he gave the Flying A ranch to? And that this group owns Alphagen?”
“Exactly!” Lizzie responded. “What a scumbucket! I still can’t believe he’d do something like that.”
Passing the ranch off as a landtrust was probably the least of F.U.’s chicanery. Southwest Heritage was obviously nothing more than some sort of front. The question was why a conglomerate of businessmen would pose as an environmental group to hide the acquisition of a biotech company? I now understood why Johnny Lambert had been so determined to run me off the property.
“I also found an odd set of numbers in one file. I wrote them down just in case you might want them,” she offered.
A set of numbers, huh? Now, that had a familiar ring to it. I copied them down and stashed the paper in my pocket. With any luck, they’d prove to be the phone number for Panfauna Associates.
A wave of exhaustion hit me like a tsunami, telling my brain it was time to close down for the night. Then I remembered there was one more thing I’d asked Lizzie to check.
“Did you find any mention of what Pierpont did when he worked for the government?” I reminded her.
“Darn it! I knew I forgot something. That’s okay; I’m still sitting at F.U.’s desk. I’ll just boot his computer back up.”
“Lizzie, please be careful!” I warned.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t worry. I’ve got F.U.’s hearing aids right here in my pocket. He can’t hear a thing,” she replied.
A moment later, a series of high-tech beeps told me F.U.’s computer had thrummed to life.
“By the way, how did you figure out his password for the computer?”
“Oh, that was easy,” Lizzie remarked. “All I did was type in his favorite expression.”
“What’s that?” I asked, trying to calm my frazzled nerves.
“Cupcake. It’s what he calls every woman he wants to sleep with,” Lizzie informed me.
So much for any illusion that I was special.
“Hurry up, Lizzie,” I urged.
Pierpont and F.U. had gone to great lengths to hide whatever they were up to, and my stomach clenched tighter as I realized the danger in which I’d placed my friend. I was about to tell her to forget the whole thing when Lizzie emitted a low laugh.
“Here we are! I think I’ve found something,” Lizzie’s voice throbbed with excitement. “Martin worked on a military project identifying the genes special to humans, by sequencing the full DNA of chimps and then comparing the two. Does that make any sense to you?”
All I knew was that I didn’t like the sound of it. “Thanks, Lizzie. Now get off the computer, and destroy any notes you’ve got,” I cautioned.
“Rach, is this beginning to frighten you as much as it is me?” she asked anxiously.
Probably even more. I just didn’t want to tell her.
After I hung up, I noticed the red light flashing on my answering machine.
“I gotta hand it to ya. You’re a real firecracker, Porter,” Sonny’s voice rumbled. “My friend finished his autopsy on that vulture. I think you’ll find the results real interesting. Give me a call soon as you get in and I’ll hop on over.”
It was 3:33 A.M., far too late to call. Besides, I needed to catch a few hours sleep before dawn. I crawled into bed, too exhausted to replay Lizzie’s conversation in my mind.
Soon I was no longer in the room, but back clambering over the rocks at Hueco Tanks. I climbed towards the sky when my fingers brushed the pictograph of a deer, and the creature sprang to life. It turned its head in my direction, and I fell into two pools of liquid light. I ascended the boulders once more, only to discover that instead of two legs, I now had four. So this was how it felt to be a doe! I reveled in my new-found freedom.
My hooves leaped over crags and stones. I pranced onto escarpments and passed bleached bones, until I saw the rock painting of the warrior adorned with a bird’s hooked beak and a pair of devil’s horns. My heart beat to the sound of invisible drums jostling the air with the rat-a-tat-tat of a dead man’s bones. The warrior locked onto my eyes and I began to run so fast that my hooves didn’t touch the ground. But my warrior easily glided along. Extracting an arrow from its sheath, he placed it in his bow, pulled back, and fired. The steel point ripped through my sinew, muscle, and bone. But rather than the rush of pain, there was only the distant, eerie tinkling of chimes as the warrior’s stare bore into my eyes.
This is what happens when you choose to dance with the devil.
I bolted upright in bed to the sound of chimes jangling louder, as my blood shot through my veins with the speed of a train, carrying me from the Land of Nod into reality. I took a deep breath and stale air rushed into my lungs.
Then I heard the tinkling again. It took a moment before I realized it came from the windchimes dancing outside my bedroom window. I lay back, lulled by their song until it suddenly hit me that there wasn’t enough breeze to rock them. The sound was some kind of warning. I knew enough not to question what was happening, but to get up, run for the door, and head for my revolver.
I swung my feet onto the floor, when a hard blow rapped me on the back of the neck. My legs gave way and the room began to spin as my knees hit the ground with a heavy thud. I tried to grab onto the bedpost with my palms, knowing I had to keep moving or my life would be over.
Scrambling past the bed, I headed for the door. Someone grabbed my hair,
nearly pulling me down to the floor. I stumbled back against pointy boots of cold, scaly leather. A second hand grabbed at my chest, and a tremor of revulsion rushed through me. My fear turned to anger, and my survival instinct kicked in.
Drawing my arm forward, I rammed it back with all my might, transforming my elbow into a one-woman pile driver. I heard a grunt, followed by a groan, as my assailant’s grip loosened. Spinning around, I slammed the side of his head with my fist. He fell to the ground, and I ran for the door.
Lurching out of the bedroom, I headed for the living room desk. I was nearly there when the heavy clomp of boots came behind me, guided by a faint beam of moonlight.
I tried to lunge for the drawer, only to be roughly jerked back as pain ripped at my throat, taking my breath away. My attacker had grabbed hold of the leather thong which lay around my neck, and proceeded to strangle me with Tia Marta’s amulet.
I struggled to breathe as my limbs thrashed and my eyes filled with tears. All the while, I tried wedging my hand between the cord and my throat, but the leather fought back, biting deep into my fingertips. I reached once more for the drawer, and my hand fell upon something sharp with a triangular point—the granite chunk from Hueco Tanks. My fingers wrapped around the rock.
My assailant responded by twisting the cord even tighter. Spots of bright light danced before my eyes as I frantically lodged the rock’s razor sharp point between the thong and my throat and sawed at the leather cord with my last ounce of strength.
The next moment, I heard the cold, silken swish of a blade being drawn from its sheath. The rock nipped my skin in a foretaste of what was nearly upon me, then the leather cord finally broke.
I fell forward on the floor, and a gust of air rushed down my lungs. Then I quickly rolled on to my back to confront my attacker. The gleam of steel obscured his face. I pulled my knees into my chest and violently lashed out, ramming my feet into him.
Border Prey Page 20
