“I saw a black shape,” Brome said slowly. “What I shot at was a black shape over seven feet tall. I don’t know who or what it was, but I am guessing that same shape knocked me out and killed—”
Evidently, Brighton had had enough. He got off the desk and became taller than Brome once again.
“You got hit on the head,” he said.
“I remember it clearly—”
“Enough,” Brighton cut him off, raising his hand and lowering his voice. “It might seem clear to you, but you put that in the report, and I guarantee you’ll be chasing Internet movie pirates for the rest of your career. The case is closed, as far as The Bureau is concerned. Whales is innocent; the psycho is dead. Cops are searching for the hit-and-run driver and they probably will not find him. I don’t care. Go home, take a pill and think about it. Better yet, don’t think about it. Your vacation has already been approved.”
With that and a slap on the shoulder, Brighton retired to his own desk.
He was right, Brome knew. Brighton was right about the report, and Brome had just been threatened. He doubted the mention of medication had been Brighton’s own idea. Most likely his partner had been specifically instructed on how to deal with Brome’s predictable stubbornness regarding his vacation. Someone must have overlooked the doctor-patient confidentiality clause.
What are they going to do, Brome thought as he looked about his desk in search of personal items to take home, give me over to the prescription cops? There had never been anything personal on his desk, he remembered. The thought about the Rexes renewed the bitter taste in his mouth, because it was when he had turned on the news, having just won the mute insult contest against his reflection and having manly consumed the pill without water, that Special Agent Brome lurched to the bathroom to regurgitate his future as a normal citizen and Super Agent Gumpy.
He didn’t bother with customary elevator theatrics on the way to the garage.
A bench made of two logs and a wide untreated plank had no back, so it faced both east and west. Around it, like giant hooded druids arranged in a Stonehenge-like circle, stood six gnarled elms. Their stooping sinewy limbs were bare. On this Caribbean island they were the only subjects of the flora kingdom that remembered autumn.
The elms also remembered Britain, from where their new landlord had them moved. They were the last survivors of the ancient British breed consumed by the Dutch disease.
Their savior presently sat on the bench wrapped in his customary black wool coat, which caused him no discomfort in the eighty-degree heat. He faced east, staring at the lightening horizon. His attention, however, was directed northwards. It was from the north the beam came, causing the man’s form to blur briefly.
—You killed a Sobak.
—Lower caste. A Seeker.
—You broke the rule.
—I believed you.
—Do you know when the last Sobak was killed?
—Wasn’t that a couple of years back?
The man’s lips stretched into a smile.
—They think it was me.
—Or one of your friends.
—Same thing.
—If I am you, I do not want to be in Chicago right now.
—But you are in Chicago.
—I am very inconspicuous.
—You came closer to being discovered than you know. A stupid prank, or mistake, almost led them to you.
—Someone played a prank on a Sobak? One of yours?
—No. But one of mine reports the prankster is still alive because they think he is mine.
—Feeling sorry for him?
—Just telling you to be careful.
—Noted. What now?
—Now Whales is in trouble.
—Now he’s in trouble?
—Before they thought he was just a pawn in my game of messing up their plans.
—Before a Seeker was killed to protect Whales’s life.
—Right.
—So why is he still whole?
—I don’t know. Maybe they don’t know what to make of it yet. After all, I haven’t acted overtly in… a couple of years? Maybe they will try and find use for him to contest my efforts. Maybe they want to bait me. Or think they already have. They do know that I don’t have many friends left who can kill a seeker. And they are watching Chicago.
—I know, but they cannot detect my transmissions.
—That fact could lead them to you as well.
—I did not think of that. That’s why I am just an errand boy.
—We will have to wait for their next move. It will not be long.
—What if their next move kills Whales?
—It will be an elaborate death. We should be able to react.
—I’ll pass that along to reassure him.
—Where did you pick that up?
—What? The humor?
—Yes.
—Same place you did.
The beam wavered and was gone. The dark-haired man rose from the bench, glanced northwards and grinned.
“From humans,” he said to the elms.
There weren’t any holes, not even the variety known as “windows,” in the faded façade of a one-story edifice that housed the “Temple of God,” but the place looked even more uninhabited than the ruined house Special Agent Brome had just revisited. After a brief inspection and a futile rap on the door, Brome drove around the block and parked the car in the building’s parking lot.
Three feet away from the grill of his “Chrysler,” the back door hung half-open.
Immediately, Brome experienced the distinct feeling of being baited. Like the majority of other bait targets who become aware of being baited, he decided that the target’s awareness of being baited equals the baiter’s failure and removed the safety from his gun. Leaving the car door ajar, he stepped inside.
Even though it was early afternoon, it was early November afternoon, and on top of that clouds sucked into the city from the lake seemed to have gathered purposely in the southwestern corner of the sky, casting a kind of macabre twilight over the land. Inside the narrow hallway darkness was almost pitch black.
As Brome navigated the first silent passage sideways, to let the thin light from the open door illuminate the way, his grip on the weapon tightened. He wasn’t really scared, although a thought had occurred to him that it would be very hard to quickly notice a dark shape in some corner, even it was seven feet tall. His tension was of another, frustrating kind, the kind he owed to years not of work in the field, but of watching “thrillers” and police dramas on TV.
He expected some stupid cat, or a rodent, or a random hollow object to fall off a shelf suddenly and scare the bee-gees out of him. The feeling of anticipation was almost unbearable. Brome found it very hard to keep himself from making a loud noise just to break the silence before something else had the chance to. He stopped, took a deep breath, loosened his hold on the handle and continued. Then he remembered that usually, when the goof who freaks out at some mundane mammal turns around sighing with relief and embarrassment, he finds some ugly, huge, but ninja-like stealthy brute holding a melee weapon of choice two inches away from his nose.
In short, Special Agent Brome was aching all over and trying to keep sharp.
He turned the corner and found himself in now complete darkness. After a brief hesitation he flicked on the gun-mounted flashlight. Its blue cone revealed a shorter corridor ending in a doorway. The door that was supposed to shield that doorway stood leaning neatly on the wall to the left.
Here comes the cat, Brome thought, as he stepped through into an office left in state of extensive disarray. A desk lay on its side, two chairs lay on their sides and piles of paper had been thrown around the room, with some visibly torn to pieces. It seemed impossible to keep silent there, and he listened for a while before taking another step. He heard nothing. Stepping lightly, he passed through the room and the door on its other end. He entered the auditorium, with many folding chairs placed in rows and a single broken window in the middle of the ceiling. The gray rectangle on the floor directly under it shone with bits of glass and was dotted with first drops of rain. Despite the abundance of easily moveable furniture here, only the pulpit had been toppled.