Watchers

Kasavaris, also of Glendale. Also vicious bite marks, slashes. Her throat—”
    Cutting him off again, Lem said, “When were they killed?”
    “Best guess before lab tests is that they died late yesterday. We believe the bodies were carried up here because they’d be found quicker on the ridge top. A popular hiking trail runs along here. But it wasn’t other hikers found them. It was a routine fire-patrol plane. Pilot looked down, saw them sprawled here on the bare ridge.”
    This high ground above Boulder Canyon was more than thirty air miles
    north-northwest of Johnstone Peak, where the young campers had taken refuge from The Outsider in their van and had later fired at it with a .32 pistol on June 18, twenty-eight days ago. The Outsider would have been reckoning north-northwest by sheer instinct and no doubt would have frequently been required to backtrack out of box canyons; therefore, in this mountainous terrain it had very likely traveled between sixty and ninety miles on the ground to cover those thirty air miles. Still, that was only a pace of three miles a day, at most, and Lem wondered what the creature had been doing during the time it was not traveling or sleeping or chasing down food.
    “You’ll want to see where these two were killed,” Bockner said. “We’ve found the place. And you’ll want to see the den, too.”
    “Den?”
    “The lair,” one of the forest rangers said. “The damn lair.”
    The deputies, rangers, and crime-lab men had been giving Lem and Cliff odd looks ever since they had arrived, but Lem had not been surprised by that. Local authorities always regarded him with suspicion and curiosity because they were not accustomed to having a powerhouse federal agency like the NSA show up and claim jurisdiction; it was a rarity. But now he realized that their curiosity was of a different kind and degree than what he usually encountered, and for the first time he perceived their fear. They had found something—the lair of which they spoke—that gave them reason to believe this case was even stranger than the sudden appearance of the NSA would usually indicate.
    In suits, ties, and polished street shoes, neither Lem nor Cliff was properly dressed for a hike down into the canyon, but neither of them hesitated when the rangers led the way. Two deputies, the lab men, and one of the three rangers remained behind with the bodies, which left a party of six for the descent. They followed a shallow channel carved by runoff from rainstorms, then switched to what might have been a deer trail. After descending to the very bottom of the canyon, they turned southeast and proceeded for half a mile. Soon Lem was sweaty and covered with a film of dust, and his socks and pant legs were full of prickling burrs.
    “Here’s where they were killed,” Deputy Bockner said when he led them into a clearing surrounded by scrub pines, cottonwoods, and brush.
    The pale, sandy earth and sun-bleached grass were mottled with enormous dark stains. Blood.
    “And right back here,” one of the rangers said, “is where we found the lair.”
    It was a shallow cave in the base of the canyon wall, perhaps ten feet deep, twenty feet wide, no more than a dozen steps from the small clearing where the hikers had been murdered. The mouth of the cave was about eight feet wide but low, requiring Lem to stoop a bit as he entered. Once inside, he was able to stand erect, for the ceiling was high. The place had a mildly unpleasant, musty smell. Light found its way through the entrance and through a two-foot-wide water-carved hole in the ceiling, but for the most part the chamber was shadowy and twenty degrees cooler than the canyon outside.
    Only Deputy Bockner accompanied Lem and Cliff. Lem sensed that the others held back not out of any concern that the cave would be too crowded, but out of an uneasiness about the place.
    Bockner had a flashlight. He switched it on and played the beam over the things he had brought them to see, dispelling some of the shadows and causing others to flit batlike across the room to roost on different perches.
    In one corner, dry grass had been piled to a depth of six or eight inches to make a bed on the sandstone floor. Beside the bed was a galvanized bucket full of relatively fresh water carried from the nearest stream, evidently placed there so the sleeper could get a drink upon waking in the middle of the night.
    “It was here,” Cliff said softly.
    “Yes,” Lem agreed.
    Instinctively