Watchers

his bristly head with one big hand. “But judging from the body, the killer had sharp teeth, maybe claws, and a nasty disposition. Does that sound like what you’re looking for?”
    Lem could not be baited.
    For a moment, no one spoke.
    A fresh piny breeze came through the shattered window, blowing away some of the noxious stench.
    One of the lab men said, “Ah,” and plucked something from the rubble with his tweezers.
    Lem sighed wearily. This situation was no good. They would not find enough to tell them what killed Dalberg, though they would gather sufficient evidence to make them curious as hell. However, this was a matter of national defense, in which no civilian would be wise to indulge his curiosity. Lem was going to have to put a stop to their investigation. He hoped he could intervene without angering Walt. It would be a real test of their friendship.
    Suddenly, staring at the body bag, Lem realized something was wrong with the shape of the corpse. He said, “The head isn’t here.”
    “You feds don’t miss a trick, do you?” Walt said.
    “He was decapitated?” Cliff Soames asked uneasily.
    “This way,” Walt said, leading them into the second room.
    It was a large—if primitive—kitchen with a hand pump in the sink and an old-fashioned wood-burning stove.
    Except for the head, there were no signs of violence in the kitchen. Of course, the head was bad enough. It was in the center of the table. On a plate.
    “Jesus,” Cliff said softly.
    When they had entered the room, a police photographer had been taking shots of the head from various angles. He was not finished, but he stepped back to give them a better view.
    The dead man’s eyes were missing, torn out. The empty sockets seemed as deep as wells.
    Cliff Soames had turned so white that, by contrast, his freckles burned on his skin as if they were flecks of fire.
    Lem felt sick, not merely because of what had happened to Wes Dalberg but because of all the deaths yet to come. He was proud of both his management and investigatory skills, and he knew he could handle this case better than anyone else. But he was also a hardheaded pragmatist, incapable of underestimating the enemy or of pretending there would be a quick ending to this nightmare. He would need time and patience and luck to track down the killer, and meanwhile more bodies would pile up.
    The head had not been cut off the dead man. It was not as neat as that. It appeared to have been clawed and chewed and wrenched off.
    Lem’s palms were suddenly damp.
    Strange . . . how the empty sockets of the head transfixed him as surely as if they had contained wide, staring eyes.
    In the hollow of his back, a single droplet of sweat traced the course of his Spine. He was more scared than he had ever been—or had ever thought he could be—but he did not want to be taken off the job for any reason. It was vitally important to the very security of the nation and the safety of the public that this emergency be handled right, and he knew no one was likely to perform as well as he could. That was not just ego talking. Everyone said he Was the best, and he knew they were right; he had a justifiable pride and no false modesty. This was his case, and he would stay with it to the end.
    His folks had raised him with an almost too-keen sense of duty and responsibility. “A black man,” his father used to say, “has to do a job twice
    as well as a white man in order to get any credit at all. That’s nothing to be bitter about. Nothing worth protesting. It’s just a fact of life. Might as well protest the weather turning cold in winter. Instead of protesting, the thing to do is just face facts, work twice as hard, and you’ll get where you want to go And you must succeed because you carry the flag for all your brothers.” As a result of that upbringing, Lem was incapable of less than total, unhesitating commitment to every assignment. He dreaded failure, rarely encountered it, but could be thrown into a deep funk for weeks when the successful conclusion of a case eluded him.
    “Talk to you outside a minute?” Walt asked, moving to the open rear door of the cabin.
    Lem nodded. To Cliff, he said, “Stay here. Make sure nobody—pathologists, photographer, uniformed cops, nobody—leaves before I’ve had a chance to talk to them.”
    “Yes, sir,” Cliff said. He headed quickly toward the front of the cabin to inform everyone that they were temporarily quarantined—and to get away from the