Then he had started walking back down the road to his unit, still breathing hard, his heart pounding away violently, and finally the old ticker had given out on him. Hal was not just the oldest deputy on the force but also the heaviest, forever coming in last on the physical-fitness tests. He had been eating the farm diet ever since he was born: real cream in his coffee, straight from the cow, and planks of home-cured bacon for breakfast, tenderloin sandwiches for lunch, doughnuts for snacks, steak for dinner. Everyone had been waiting for this.
Finally the ambulance came; it parked out on Boundary, and the crew came sprinting up the road carrying their big fiberglass gear boxes. They hooked him up to a number of tubes and machines right on the spot, getting a read on his vital signs and radioing the information back to the trauma center at Methodist Hospital. Clyde listened to this traffic and knew that the news was bad. They tore the uniform shirt off Hal’s body right there in the dirt, a gesture that somehow offended Clyde even though he understood it. They took out the paddles and they shocked him once, twice, three times, each time shooting a different combination of substances into his heart with a giant horse needle. After the third time Clyde suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to start crying. He turned his back on the scene and walked up the road until he reached the horse, whose eyes were still glowing in the beam from Hal Karst’s spotlight. Great patches of coagulated blood had thickened on its flanks and on the side of its neck, obscuring whatever marks had been carved into it by the mutilators. But whatever Hal had done and said to it seemed to have calmed it down, and it was patiently snuffling through the line of grass and weeds along the fence wire, looking for something worth eating. Clyde stood there and talked to it for a while about nothing in particular, until the tears had drained away from his eyes and he no longer had the tightness in his chest. He unwrapped the reins from the fence post where Hal had placed them and led the horse up along the fencerow toward Boundary. By this time they had taken Hal away, and nothing was left at the place where he had died except for a great deal of colorful litter: the torn-open wrappings of various medical supplies scattered all over the road like a bouquet that had been dropped from a procession. The wind was picking up as dawn approached, and the litter was already starting to stir and to tumble back up the road.
Clyde picked up his flashlight and a few other items he had dropped, then continued leading the horse up the road. Just as he was reaching Boundary, a pickup truck happened along, a white one with black letters on the door identifying it as a U.S.-government vehicle. It was towing an empty horse trailer, which almost jackknifed around into the ditch as the truck stopped abruptly, right in the middle of the lane. Two men jumped out, not bothering to close the doors: a white man and a black man, young and trim, with neat, short haircuts and in good shape, to judge from the way they sprinted toward him. “Thank you, Deputy,” one of them said as he was still several paces away; then he reached out with one gloved hand and took the reins from Clyde’s hand. “Come on, Sweet Corn,” he said to the horse, leading it forward with a firm tug. Sweet Corn roused itself to a faster gait, and the man jogged alongside it back toward the trailer.
The other man from the truck stayed where he was, looking at Clyde. But he wasn’t looking at Clyde’s face as if he were interested in conversation. His eyes were traveling up and down Clyde’s body, inspecting him. Finally he focused on Clyde’s name tag.
“Deputy Banks,” he said distinctly, as though committing it to memory, “thank you for your assistance.”
“Hope Sweet Corn’s okay,” Clyde said.
“She’s a lot tougher than you’d imagine,” the man said.
Clyde stopped, faced the man, straightened to attention, and snapped out a salute. Uncertainly, the man returned it. As he did, Clyde could not help noticing that he was wearing latex surgical gloves.
“Thanks again,” he said weakly, turned away, and jogged toward Boundary. The other military man—for they were definitely military—had already got Sweet Corn loaded into the trailer. They took off as quickly as they had arrived, leaving Clyde alone with two units to look after. The sight of Hal Karst’s abandoned vehicle made him depressed, so he busied himself stringing crime-scene tape around the place until reinforcements began to show.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Betsy had worked with Spector enough to know when things were really bizarre. Usually Spector had the taciturn, understated approach to life, death, joy, and tragedy that American men had all picked up watching TV and movies during the Peter Gunn and Dragnet era. He could even handle the possibility of his ship going down if Betsy screwed up in a big way. But today, as he walked into her office, he was visibly shook up.
He shut the door, sat down, ran his hands over his translucent buzz cut, and silently passed a sheet of paper across the desk to Betsy. It was an “Eyes Only” memo. Betsy focused in on the letterhead: the National Security Council. The memo didn’t take long to read.
“Goodness!” she exclaimed.