Watchers

on the butt of the pistol in his shoulder holster.
    “But then just one day later,” Walt said, “we find this poor son of a bitch Dalberg torn to pieces—and the case is peculiar as hell and about as ‘exceedingly violent’ as I ever hope to see. Now here you are, Mr. Lemuel Asa Johnson, director of the Southern California Office of the NSA, and I know you didn’t come coppering in here just to ask me whether I want onion or guacamole dip at tomorrow night’s bridge game.”
    The movement was closer than eighty feet, much closer. Lem had been confused by the layers of shadows and by the queerly distorting late-afternoon sunlight that penetrated the trees. The thing was no more than forty feet away, maybe closer, and suddenly it came straight at them, bounded at them through the brush, and Lem cried out, drew the pistol from his holster, and involuntarily stumbled backward a few steps before taking a shooter’s stance with his legs spread wide, both hands on the gun.
    “It’s just a mule deer!” Walt Gaines said.
    Indeed it was. Just a mule deer.
    The deer stopped a dozen feet away, under the drooping boughs of a spruce, peering at them with huge brown eyes that were bright with curiosity. Its head was held high, ears pricked up.
    “They’re so used to people in these canyons that they’re almost tame,” Walt said.
    Lem let out a stale breath as he holstered his pistol.
    The mule deer, sensing their tension, turned from them and loped away along the trail, vanishing into the woods.
    Walt was staring hard at Lem. “What’s out there, buddy?”
    Lem said nothing. He blotted his hands on his suit jacket.
    The breeze was stiffening, getting cooler. Evening was on its way, and night was close behind it.
    “Never saw you spooked before,” Walt said.
    “A caffeine jag. I’ve had too much coffee today.”
    “Bullshit.”
    Lem shrugged.
    “It seems to’ve been an animal that killed Dalberg, something with lots of teeth, claws, something savage,” Walt said. “Yet no damn animal would carefully place the guy’s head on a plate in the center of the kitchen table. That’s a sick joke. Animals don’t make jokes, not sick or otherwise. Whatever killed Dalberg . . . it left the head like that to taunt us. So what in Christ’s name are we dealing with?”
    “You don’t want to know. And you don’t need to know ‘cause I’m assuming jurisdiction in this case.”
    “Like hell.”
    “I’ve got the authority,” Lem said. “It’s now a federal matter, Walt. I’m impounding all the evidence your people have gathered, all reports they’ve written thus far. You and your men are to talk to no one about what you’ve seen here. No one. You’ll have a file on the case, but the only thing in it will be a memo from me, asserting the federal prerogative under the correct statute. You’re out from under. No matter what happens, no one can blame you, Walt.”
    “Shit.”
    “Let it go.”
    Walt scowled. “I’ve got to know—”
    “Let it go.”
    “—are people in my county in danger? At least tell me that much, damn it.”
    “Yes.”
    “In danger?”
    “Yes.”
    “And if I fought you, if I tried to hang on to jurisdiction in this case, would there be anything I could do to lessen that danger, to insure the public safety?”
    “No. Nothing,” Lem said truthfully.
    “Then there’s no point in fighting you.”
    “None,” Lem said.
    He started back toward the cabin because the daylight was fading fast, and he did not want to be near the woods as darkness crept in. Sure, it had only been a mule deer. But next time?
    “Wait a minute,” Walt said. “Let me tell you what I think, and you just listen. You don’t have to confirm or deny what I say. All you’ve got to do is hear me out.”
    “Go on,” Lem said impatiently.
    The shadows of the trees crept steadily across the bristly dry grass of the clearing. The sun was balanced on the western horizon.
    Walt paced out of the shadows into the waning sunlight, hands in his back pockets, looking down at the dusty ground, taking a moment to collect his thoughts. Then: “Tuesday afternoon, somebody walked into a house in Newport Beach, shot a man named Yarbeck, and beat his wife to death. That night, somebody killed the Hudston family in Laguna Beach—husband, wife, and a teenage son. Police in both communities use the same forensics lab, so it didn’t take long to discover one gun was used both places. But that’s about all the police in