Watchers

dropped the cassette and clutched itself and rocked back and forth in agony.
    Travis took another step forward.
    The Outsider’s hideous face was so repulsive that there was almost something exquisite about it. In its unique ugliness, it was darkly, strangely seductive.
    This time, when the thunder crashed, the barn lights flickered and nearly went out.
    Raising its head again, speaking in that same scratchy voice but with cold, insane glee, it said, “Kill dog, kill dog, kill dog,” and it made a sound that might have been laughter.
    He almost shot it to pieces. But before he could pull the trigger, The Outsider’s laughter gave way to what seemed to be sobbing. Travis watched,’ mesmerized.
    Fixing Travis with its lantern eyes, it again said, “Kill dog, kill dog, kill dog,” but this time it seemed racked with grief, as if it grasped the magnitude of the crime that it had been genetically compelled to commit.
    It looked at the cartoon of Mickey Mouse on the cassette holder.
    Finally, pleadingly, it said, “Kill me.”
    Travis did not know if he was acting more out of rage or out of pity when he squeezed the trigger and emptied the Uzi’s magazine into The Outsider. What man had begun, man now ended.
    When he was done, he felt drained.
    He dropped the carbine and walked outside. He could not find the strength to return to the house. He sat down on the lawn, huddled in the rain, and wept.
    He was still weeping when Jim Keene drove up the muddy lane from the Coast Highway.
 
     
    ELEVEN 1
    On Thursday afternoon, January 13, Lem Johnson left Cliff Soames and three other men at the foot of the dirt lane, where it met the Pacific Coast Highway. Their instructions were to allow no one past them but to remain on station until—and if—Lem called for them.
    Cliff Soames seemed to think this was a strange way to handle things, but he did not voice his objections.
    Lem explained that, since Travis Cornell was an ex-Delta man with considerable combat skills, he ought to be handled with care. “If we go storming in there, he’ll know who we are as soon as he sees us coming, and he might react violently. If I go in alone, I’ll be able to get him to talk to me, and maybe I can persuade him to just give it up.”
    That was a flimsy explanation for his unorthodox procedure, and it did not wipe the frown off Cliff’s face.
    Lem didn’t care about Cliff’s frown. He went in alone, driving one of the sedans, and parked in front of the bleached-wood house.
    Birds were singing in the trees. Winter had temporarily relaxed its hold on the northern California coast, and the day was warm.
    Lem climbed the steps and knocked on the front door.
    Travis Cornell answered the knock and stared at him through the screen door before saying, “Mr. Johnson, I suppose.”
    “How did you. . . oh yes, of course, Garrison Dilworth would have told you about me that night he got his call through.”
    To Lem’s surprise, Cornell opened the screen door. “You might as well come in.”
    Cornell was wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, apparently because of a sizable bandage encasing most of his right shoulder. He led Lem through the front room and into a kitchen, where his wife sat at the table, peeling apples for a pie.
    “Mr. Johnson,” she said.
    Lem smiled and said, “I’m widely known, I see.”
    Cornell sat at the table and lifted a cup of coffee. He offered no coffee to Lem.
    Standing awkwardly for a moment, Lem eventually sat with them. He said, “Welt, it was inevitable, you know. We had to catch up with you sooner or later.”
    She peeled apples and said nothing. Her husband stared into his coffee.
    What’s wrong with them? Lem wondered.
    This was not remotely like any scenario he had imagined. He was prepared for panic, anger, despondency, and many other things, but not for this strange apathy. They did not seem to care that he had at last tracked them down.
    He said, “Aren’t you interested in how we located you?”
    The woman shook her head.
    Cornell said, “If you really want to tell us, go ahead and have your fun.”
    Frowning, puzzled, Lem said, “Well, it was simple. We knew that Mr. Dilworth had to’ve called you from some house or business within a few blocks of that park north of the harbor. So we tied our own computers into the telephone company’s records—with their permission, of course—and put men to work examining all the long-distance calls charged to all the numbers within three blocks of that park,