Watchers

either case are going to learn because your NSA has quietly assumed jurisdiction in those crimes, too. In the interest of national security.”
    Lem did not respond. He was sorry he had even agreed to listen. Anyway, he was not taking direct charge of the investigation into the murders of the scientists, which were almost surely Soviet-inspired. He’d delegated that task to other men, so he’d be free to concentrate on finding the dog and The Outsider.
    The sunlight was burnt orange. The cabin windows smoldered with reflections of that fading fire.
    Walt said, “Okay. Then there’s Dr. Davis Weatherby of Corona Del Mar. Missing since Tuesday. This morning, Weatherby’s brother finds the doctor’s body in the trunk of his car. Local pathologists hardly arrive at the scene before NSA agents show up.”
    Lem was slightly unnerved by the swiftness with which the sheriff evidently gathered, coordinated, and absorbed information from various communities that were not in the unincorporated part of the county and were not, therefore, under his authority.
    Walt grinned but with little or no humor. “Didn’t expect me to have made all these connections, huh? Each of these things happened in a different police
    jurisdiction, but as far as I’m concerned this county is one sprawling city of two million people, so I make it my business to work hand in glove with all the local departments.”
    “What’s your point?”
    “My point is that it’s astonishing to have six murders of upstanding citizens in one day. This is Orange County, after all, not L.A. And it’s even more astonishing that all six deaths are related to urgent matters of national security. So it arouses my curiosity. I start checking into the backgrounds of these people, looking for something that links them—”
    “Walt, for Christ’s sake!”
    “—and I discover they all work—or did work—for something called Banodyne Laboratories.”
    Lem was not angry. He couldn’t get angry with Walt—they were tighter than brothers—but the big man’s canniness was maddening right now. Lem said, “Listen, you’ve no right to conduct an investigation.”
    “I’m sheriff, remember?”
    “But none of these murders—except Dalberg here—falls into your jurisdiction to begin with,” Lem said. “And even if it did . . . once the NSA steps in, you’ve no right to continue. In fact, you’re expressly forbidden by law to continue.”
    Ignoring him, Walt said, “So I look up Banodyne, see what kind of work they do, and I discover they’re into genetic engineering, recombinant
    DNA—”
    “You’re incorrigible.”
    “There’s no indication Banodyne’s at work on defense projects, but that doesn’t mean anything. Could be blind contracts, projects so secret that the funding doesn’t even appear on public record.”
    “Jesus,” Lem said irritably. “Don’t you understand how damn mean we can get when we’ve got national security laws on our side?”
    “Just speculating now,” Walt said.
    “You’ll speculate your honky ass right into a prison cell.”
    “Now, Lemuel, let’s not have an ugly racial confrontation here.”
    “You’re incorrigible.”
    “Yeah, and you’re repeating yourself. Anyway, I did some heavy thinking, and I figure the murders of these people who work at Banodyne must be connected somehow to the manhunt the Marines conducted on Wednesday and Thursday. And to the murder of Wesley Dalberg.”
    “There’s no similarity between Dalberg’s murder and the others.”
    “Of course there’s not. Wasn’t the same killer. I can see that. The Yarbecks, the Hudstons, and Weatherby were hit by a pro, while poor Wes Dalberg was torn to pieces. Still, there’s a connection, by God, or you wouldn’t be interested, and the connection must be Banodyne.”
    The sun was sinking. Shadows pooled and thickened.
    Walt said, “Here’s what I figure: they were working on some new bug at Banodyne, a genetically altered germ, and it got loose, contaminated some-
    one, but it didn’t just make him sick. What it did was severely damage his brain, turn him into a savage or something—”
    “An updated Dr. Jekyll for the high-tech age?” Lem interrupted sarcastically.
    “—so he slipped out of the lab before anyone knew what happened to him, fled into the foothills, came here, attacked Dalberg.”
    “You watch a lot of bad horror movies or what?”
    “As for Yarbeck and the others, maybe they were eliminated ‘cause they