It was an exercise in futility, and Sharon knew it. Even if Charlotte or Jeff were patients in one of the hospitals she'd called, they might have been admitted under other names, or they might have notations in their records to the effect that no information was to be given out.
And now, on Wednesday afternoon, she was finally ready to face the fact that what she had really been doing was procrastinating, putting off the moment when she would finally have to deal with the mice in the freezer-the one that seemed so normal, the other that was so grotesquely deformed and unnaturally large.
She knew she'd been trying to evade the issue, trying to deny the possibility that the mice had anything to do with the sports center at all. And yet, every time she thought about them, an image of the Silverdale High football team kept coming unbidden into her mind.
Big boys-oversized boys-all of them.
But it wasn't possible, was it? SurelyTarrenTech wouldn't allow any kind of experimentation on human subjects, let alone on the children of their own employees? After all, Jerry and Elaine Harris's own son was on the football team.
And he was big, she reminded herself. Much bigger than either of his parents.
Once more she remembered the skinny asthmatic boy who had left San Marcos three years before. Was it really possible that nothing more than a regimen of vitamins and exercise, combined with clean mountain air, had effected such a change in Robb? It sounded too good to be true.
But if something was going on atTarrenTech and at the sports center, it meant that Mark was already involved.
That, of course, was what she'd been avoiding facing up to. She didn't want to believe that the changes in Mark-the changes she'd tried to deny were taking place until Kelly had talked about them this morning-could be anything except the natural changes that occur in every teenage boy.
But the mice kept coming back to haunt her.
She looked at the phone again, reaching out to pick it up, then hesitated. She told herself there was no reason for her to be worried, that she'd done nothing wrong in calling around, trying to locate CharlotteLaConner. And yet several times as she'd talked on the phone during recent days, she'd heard an odd hollowness, as if someone, somewhere, had picked up an extension. Twice she was certain she'd heard faint clicks, as if someone had either come on the line or gotten off it.
Could her telephone be tapped?
My God, she groaned to herself, I'm starting to sound as paranoid as CharlotteLaConner! She gasped out loud at the thought. Hadn't she herself insisted that perhaps Charlotte wasn't paranoid, that maybe something really was going on and that Charlotte had stumbled onto it?
Taking her fears firmly in hand, she picked up the phone and dialed the county hospital. A moment later she recognized MacMacCallum's friendly voice at the other end of the line.
"D-Dr.MacCallum?" she stammered, still not quite certain what she was going to say. "It's Sharon Tanner-Mark's mother."
"Well, hello,"MacCallum said, then his voice took on a note of concern. "What's going on? Mark's all right, isn't he?"
"Yes," Sharon said. Then, even though she knew the doctor couldn't see her, she shook her head. "I mean-well, I guess he's all right. But I was just wondering if I could talk to you about something."
In his office,MacCallum frowned. He could tell from Mrs. Tanner's voice that she was upset, but if there was something wrong with Mark, why had she said he was all right? "What's the problem, Mrs. Tanner?"
Sharon hesitated, and was just about to try to explain her fears when she heard a soft click and the phone took on that odd, hollow quality she'd noticed before. She felt a chill run through her body, and when she spoke again, she knew she sounded nervous. "It-Well, it's not something I feel comfortable discussing on the phone," she said.
MacCallum'sfrown deepened. What was going on? Had someone come into the room as she spoke? Was the woman afraid her phone was tapped? "I see," he said slowly. "Then perhaps you'd like to come out here," he suggested, glancing at the appointment book that lay open on his desk. "How about four o'clock this afternoon?"
Sharon hesitated a split-second, and tried to keep her voice casual. "That's not very good for me," she countered. "I mean-well, this isn't really a medical matter. It's just something I need some advice about, and… well…"
MacCallumsat up straight in his chair. When Mark had been in the hospital that night, Sharon Tanner had struck him as a strong woman who knew her own mind and seldom hesitated to speak her thoughts. But now she was floundering around, searching for words, apparently unable to tell him what was on her mind.
Shewasafraid her line was tapped.
And her husband was second in command atTarrenTech.
"Tell you what," he said. "I have a couple of errands to run in the village. If you're going to be down there, maybe we could have a cup of coffee."
Sharon felt almost weak with relief. He'd understood and gone along with her. "As a matter of fact, I do have some shopping to do," she said. "Shall we say half an hour?"
"Sounds good,"MacCallum replied. He hung up the phone, sat pensively at the desk for a moment, then headed toward the main doors. As he passed the admissions desk, Susan Aldrich glanced up at him curiously. "Since when do you take the afternoon off?"
MacCallumgrinned. "Since that phone call," he told her. "It seems like we might just have a chink in the great wall of security aroundTarrenTech."
Jerry Harris's private intercom buzzed discreetly and he immediately picked up the receiver that would connect him directly with the security office in the basement. "Harris. What's up?"
"Might be nothing," the voice at the other end replied. "But Mrs. Tanner's been on the phone a lot the last couple of days, trying to find CharlotteLaConner. And now she's set up a meeting withMacCallum."
Harris frowned thoughtfully. "Okay," he said after a few seconds of silence. "I want that meeting monitored, and I want to know what happens right away." Knowing his orders would be obeyed without question, he put the receiver back on its cradle and returned to the file he'd been studying.
It was a complete report of the experimental procedures Martin Ames had implemented in the case of Mark Tanner.
Sharon nearly took the car to the village that afternoon, but changed her mind at the last minute. She knew it was stupid-knew she was once more giving in to the same kind of paranoid thoughts that had made her wonder if her phone were tapped. Still, better to look as if she had nothing more on her mind than a leisurely walk to the store. She pulled the collapsible shopping cart out of the broom closet, struggled with it for a moment before it suddenly expanded in her hands, its wire bottom falling into place, then went to the hall closet and pulled out her parka. Only when she was ready to leave the house did she finally go to the freezer and pick up the small package containing the dead animals she'd brought home fromTarrenTech. Her stomach feeling vaguely queasy at the knowledge of what the little package contained, she carefully tucked it into the bottom of her large carryall, then slung the bag itself over her shoulder. At last, awkwardly pulling the little cart behind her, she went out the back door and up the driveway to the street.
It was a chilly afternoon, but the sky was clear, a deep cobalt-blue dome over the valley which made it seem as if Silverdale had been cut off from the rest of the world and was now accessible only to those few people fortunate enough to live here.
Except that every day the perfection of the village had felt more and more claustrophobic to Sharon. Eventually she had come to believe that one way or another, nearly all the people in Silverdale were living lives that were as artificially decorated and as carefully planned as the community that housed them.