31
“What do you mean, not quite?” Stackhouse asked.
Instead of answering, Donkey Kong hurried across the room to Stackhouse’s intercom. The top of the casing was thick with dust. Stackhouse had never used it a single time—it wasn’t as if he had to announce upcoming dances or trivia nights. Dr. Hendricks bent to inspect the rudimentary controls and flicked a switch, lighting a green go-lamp.
“What do you mean—”
It was Hendricks’s turn to say shut up, and instead of being angry, Stackhouse felt a certain admiration. Whatever the good doctor was up to, he thought it was important.
Hendricks took the microphone, then paused. “Is there a way to make sure those escaped children don’t hear what I’m going to say? No sense giving them ideas.”
“There are no speakers in the access tunnel,” Stackhouse said, hoping he was correct about that. “As for Back Half, I believe they have their own separate intercom system. What are you up to?”
Hendricks looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Just because their bodies are locked up, that doesn’t mean their minds are.”
Oh shit, Stackhouse thought. I forgot what they’re here for.
“Now how does this… never mind, I see.” Hendricks depressed the button on the side of the mic, cleared his throat, and began to speak. “Attention, please. All staff, attention. This is Dr. Hendricks.” He ran a hand through his thinning hair, making what had been crazy to begin with crazier still. “Children have escaped from Back Half, but there is no cause for alarm. I repeat, no cause for alarm. They are penned up in the access tunnel between Front Half and Back Half. They may attempt to influence you, however, the way they…” He paused, licking his lips. “The way they influence certain people when they do their jobs. They may attempt to make you harm yourselves. Or… well… to turn you against one another.”
Oh, Jesus, Stackhouse thought, there’s a cheerful idea.
“Listen carefully,” Hendricks said. “They are only able to succeed in such mental infiltration if the targets are unsuspecting. If you feel something… if you sense thoughts that are not your own… remain calm and resist them. Expel them. You will be able to do this quite easily. It may help to speak aloud. To say I am not listening to you.”
He started to put the mic down, but Stackhouse took it. “This is Stackhouse. Front Half personnel, all children must go back to their rooms immediately. If any resist, zap them.”
He flicked off the intercom and turned to Hendricks. “Maybe the little fucks in the tunnel won’t think of it. They’re only children, after all.”
“Oh, they’ll think of it,” Hendricks said. “After all, they’ve had practice.”
32
Tim overtook Luke as the boy opened the door to the holding area. “Stay here, Luke. Wendy, you’re with me.”
“You don’t really think—”
“I don’t know what I think. Don’t draw your gun, but make sure the strap is off.”
As Tim and Wendy hurried up the short aisle between the four empty cells, they heard a man’s voice. He sounded pleasant enough. Good humored, even. “My wife and I were told there are some interesting old buildings in Beaufort, and we thought we’d take a shortcut, but our GPS kinda screwed the pooch.”
“I made him stop to ask for directions,” the woman said, and as Tim entered the office, he saw her looking up at her husband—if that was what the blond man really was—with amused exasperation. “He didn’t want to. Men always think they know where they’re going, don’t they?”
“I tell you what, we’re a little busy just now,” Sheriff John said, “and I don’t have time—”
“It’s her!” Luke shouted from behind Tim and Wendy, making them both jump. The other officers looked around. Luke shoved past Wendy hard enough to make her stagger against the wall. “She’s the one who sprayed me in the face and knocked me out! You bitch, you killed my parents!”
He tried to run at her. Tim caught him by the neck of his shirt and yanked him back. The blond man and the flower-dress woman looked surprised and puzzled. Completely normal, in other words. Except Tim thought he’d seen another expression on the woman’s face, just for an instant: a look of narrow recognition.
“I think there’s some kind of mistake,” she was saying. She tried on a bewildered smile. “Who is this boy? Is he crazy?”
Although he was only the town night knocker and would be for the next five months, Tim reverted to cop mode without thinking, as he had on the night those kids had stuck up the Zoney’s and shot Absimil Dobira. “I’d like to see your IDs, folks.”
“Really, there’s no need of that, is there?” the woman said. “I don’t know who that boy thinks we are, but we’re lost, and when I was a little girl, my mom used to tell me that if you get lost, ask a policeman.”
Sheriff John stood up. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, that may be true, and if it is, you won’t mind showing us your drivers’ licenses, will you?”
“Not at all,” the man said. “Just let me get my wallet.” The woman was already reaching into her purse, looking exasperated.
“Look out!” Luke shouted. “They have guns!”
Tag Faraday and George Burkett looked astounded, Frank Potter and Bill Wicklow perplexed.
“Whoa a second!” Sheriff John said. “Hands where I can see them!”
Neither of them paused. Michelle Robertson’s hand came out of her purse holding not her driver’s license but the Sig Sauer Nightmare Micro she had been issued. Denny Williams had reached behind him for the Glock in his belt rather than his wallet. Both the sheriff and Deputy Faraday were reaching for their service weapons, but they were slow, slow.
Tim was not. He pulled Wendy’s gun from her holster and pointed it with both hands. “Drop the weapons, drop them!”
They did not. Robertson aimed at Luke, and Tim shot her a single time, driving her backward against one of the station’s big double doors hard enough to crack the frosted glass.
Williams dropped to one knee and aimed at Tim, who had just time to think, This guy’s a pro and I’m dead. But the man’s gun jerked upward, as if pulled by an invisible cord, and the bullet meant for Tim went into the ceiling. Sheriff John Ashworth punted the blond man in the side of the head, sending him sprawling. Billy Wicklow stomped on his wrist.
“Give it up, motherfucker, just give it—”
That was when Mrs. Sigsby, realizing things had gone wrong, told Louis Grant and Tom Jones to open up with the big guns. Williams and Robertson weren’t important.
The boy was.
33
The two HK37s filled DuPray’s formerly peaceful twilight with thunder. Grant and Jones raked the brick front of the sheriff’s station, raising puffs of pinkish-red dust, blowing the windows and the glass door panels inward. They were on the sidewalk; the rest of Gold team was standing spread out behind them in the street. The only exception was Dr. Evans, standing off to one side, his hands over his ears.
“Yeah!” Winona Briggs shouted. She was dancing from foot to foot, as if she needed to go to the bathroom. “Kill their asses!”
“Go!” Mrs. Sigsby shouted. “All of you go now! Take the boy or kill him! Take him or—”
Then, from behind them: “You’re not going anywhere, ma’am. I swear by the Savior a bunch of you goan be dead if you try. You two fellas up front, put down those grease guns this minute.”
Louis Grant and Tom Jones turned, but did not put down the HKs.