In his office next to Blake Tanner's, Jerry Harris switched off the tiny machine that had been recording every word spoken in the office next door. He leaned back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head as he thought over what he'd just heard. Finally coming to a decision, he leaned forward and picked up the phone, dialing a series of digits from memory. A moment later Marty Ames came on the line.
"We may have another problem on our hands," he said, neither speaking Ames's name nor identifying himself. "I'll be out there within the hour. We can talk about it then."
"I've got a couple of things scheduled-" Ames began, but Harris cut him off abruptly.
"Change them." Harris hung up the phone, then removed the tinymicrocassette from the recorder in the bottom drawer of his desk and slipped it into his pocket.
CharlotteLaConner had been dealt with.
And if it came to that, Sharon Tanner could be dealt with, too.
Sharon wasn't certain if she'd deliberately turned the wrong way when she left Blake's office, but she suspected she had. Nor did she know exactly why it was that she wanted to explore the offices ofTarrenTech. Was she really looking for something specific, expecting to find some clue that would trigger the answers to all the vague and indefinable questions churning in her mind?
Of course not.
The building, like any other office complex, was just that: a maze of corridors with doors leading off them, some of them open, most of them closed. But still she moved on, wandering in the halls until even she was no longer certain where she was.
Then, in the distance, she heard a sound, as if some kind of an animal were in pain.
She hurried her step, moving toward it. A few seconds later it was repeated. She was in a wide corridor now, and ahead of her was a closed door with a wire-meshed window mounted in it at eye level; a few feet from the door was an elevator. Sharon paused for a moment, waiting for the sound to come again. While she was waiting, the elevator doors opened and a man dressed in what looked like a lab coat stepped out.
He was carrying a cardboard box-no more man a foot square-but even from where she stood, Sharon could clearly read a single word printed on its side in large red letters:
INCINERATE
As she watched, the eerie sound came again. The man frowned, then glanced toward the door with the reinforced window in it. When the sound came again, he set the box down on the floor, used a key to unlock the door, and pushed his way through.
Barely even considering her action before carrying it out, Sharon hurried to the box and picked it up. Lifting the lid, she peered inside, then nearly dropped the box as a gasp of surprise burst from her lungs.
She hesitated a split-second, her eyes flicking toward the ceiling as she searched for security cameras.
She saw none.
Making up her mind, she rummaged in her purse for the packet of Kleenex she always carried with her. Taking a deep breath, she reached into the box with trembling fingers, removed two of the objects it contained, and carefully wrapped them in a wad of tissue. Finally she gingerly placed the two wrapped objects in her purse. Putting the lid back on the box, she carefully replaced it on the exact spot from which she had picked it up a few seconds before, and hurried down the corridor.
She had just disappeared around the corner when the door near the elevator opened again and the lab technician emerged, picked up the box, and continued on his errand to the incinerator at the rear of the building.
Sharon had turned two more corners when she saw a man in a guard's uniform coming toward her. Her first instinct was to duck through the nearest door, but she thought better of it.
"Excuse me," she said, only slightly too loudly, as the guard came near.
He eyed her suspiciously, then seemed to figure out what her problem was. "Lost?"
Sharon called forth an embarrassed smile. "I feel like a fool," she said. "I'm Mrs. Tanner. I stopped in to speak to my husband, and I must have turned the wrong way…" She shrugged helplessly, and the guard's expression softened into an amused grin.
"Happens all the time," he told her. "One wrong turn around here and you can wander for twenty minutes before you find the lobby. Come on-I'll show you."
He walked along beside her, made a left turn then a right, and a moment later they were back in the main lobby. "Thank you," Sharon said as the guard held the door open for her. His fingers touched his hat politely and he turned away. Her heart pounding, Sharon stepped out into the chilly fall afternoon and scanned the parking lot for the station wagon.
It wasn't until she was well out of sight ofTarrenTech that she pulled the car over to the side of the road, left the engine idling, and reached for the purse she'd dropped on the floor in front of the passenger seat.
Her fingers trembled as she opened the bag and pulled out the first of the two objects she'd removed from the box by the elevator.
It was a tiny white mouse, weighing no more than a couple of ounces.
It was dead, its body stiff with rigor mortis.
Sharon gazed at the tiny corpse for a moment, then carefully laid it on the car seat next to her.
The other object was larger, weighing nearly half a pound. It looked very much like the mouse, except that its feet and claws seemed abnormally large and its whole body had an oddly deformed look to it. Sharon's hands trembled even more violently as she held it, as if her hands themselves sensed something wrong.
The white rat-if that indeed was what it was-was also stiff with the rigor of death, but there was one other difference between it and the mouse.
The fur on the rat's neck had been shaved away and there was a dark bruise, in the center of which was a puncture mark, as if a needle had been used to pierce the rat's skin.
Both the animals had small metal tags attached to their right ears. Sharon had to fish in her purse once more to find her reading glasses before she could make out the tiny letters stamped on each of the tags.
The tags were nearly identical. Each bore the same series of numbers and letters: 05-08-89/M#61F#46.
But on the tag on the rat there was an additional number: GH13.
Sharon stared at the creatures for a moment, trying to figure out what the numbers might mean. The first six digits, she was absolutely certain, were a date. But the rest?
And then she thought she knew the answer, but it didn't quite make sense.
Quickly returning the two small corpses to her purse, she put the car in gear and sped away, her mind already trying to figure out a way to confirm her suspicions.
Was it really possible, she wondered, that the two animals could have come from the same litter? And if they had, what had been done to the second creature that could have made it grow so large?
She shuddered, knowing already that she didn't want to know the answer-and at the same time knowing that nothing would stop her from finding out exactly what that answer was.
Mark closed his notebook as the three-ten bell rang and fished under his desk for his book bag. He hadn't taken much in the way of notes today; indeed, he'd found it hard to concentrate on the history class at all. Instead he'd found himself fidgeting and glancing at the clock every few minutes, waiting eagerly for the bell to ring. Now, as the last echoes of its shrill clanging died away, he was on his feet and out the door. He took the stairs to the main floor two at a time, then paused as he heard Linda Harris calling his name. She hurried up to him, her expression apologetic.
"I'm sorry about this morning," she told him. For the first time in nearly three weeks, she hadn't met him at the corner three blocks from the school so they could walk the rest of the way together. He'd waited a few minutes, then decided she wasn't coming at all. When he'd gotten to school he found that she was already there, sitting on the steps with Tiffany Welch. When he'd spoken to her, she pretended she didn't hear him for a minute, then been cool when she finally acknowledged his presence. "I-I guess I acted like a kid this morning, didn't I?" she asked now.