Crimson Shore (Agent Pendergast, #15)(87)

Until he could see that footage, Rivera simply refused to speculate on how a single individual, barefoot no less, could have perpetrated all this death and destruction. This was something completely outside his experience, and he needed to reserve judgment…at least until he had seen that footage with his own eyes.

He raised his radio. “Gil?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Is that footage ready?”

“Um, well, sort of, but I gotta tell you—”

“Don’t tell me anything. I want to see it fresh, without any preconceptions.”

“Right, sir.”

Gil didn’t sound his usual cocky self. Rivera hung up the radio and walked toward the command center: a mobile container set atop a tractor-trailer rig. He mounted the steps and entered to find things strangely silent. It didn’t take ESP to sense that the level of tension in the room was through the roof.

“What do you have?” he asked.

A number of edgy glances were exchanged. Gil, the video operator, nodded toward a screen. “This is the feed from the store camera. It was dark, but all the digital information was there, waiting to come out. It covers the area in front of the store, the sidewalk and part of the street. It caught the, the perp both coming and going down the street. Time stamp’s in the lower-right corner. The first segment starts at 21:23, and the next at 22:04.”

“Let’s see the first segment.”

A hesitation. “Okay.”

Rivera folded his arms and watched the monitor. At first there was nothing to see, just a fish-eye view of the empty sidewalk, the edge of the storefront, and the street. The town was in blackout and there were no streetlights, but the camera had recorded a grainy, reddish image that was surprisingly clear. Suddenly, there was a movement and a figure strode across the monitor. It took less than a second—but that was enough.

“What the f*ck?” Rivera said.

Silence.

“It’s a guy in a mask and suit,” Rivera said.

No one responded until Gil, in a weak voice, said, “I’ll go through it frame by frame.”

Rivera stared as the feed was rerun and replayed, this time at one frame per second. The perp—if it could be called that—came into view again, walking in a fast shamble down the sidewalk toward town.

“Freeze it!” Rivera barked.

Gil froze the image.

“I don’t believe this. Go one frame back.”

The operator complied.

“I don’t f*cking believe it. Can you magnify that face?”

The face was magnified.

Rivera squinted, looking close. “That’s no mask.”

“No,” Gil said.

No one else spoke.

Rivera licked dry lips. “Continue.”

He watched the frame-by-frame in deepening shock and disbelief. It was pretty much as the witnesses had said—a deformed monster with a tail. No, he said to himself, not a monster: this was a human being, a freakishly deformed man. The view was from diagonally and above, which accentuated the doglike, bucktoothed snout. But instead of a dog’s nose it had a human nose, squashed like a prizefighter’s. The man’s face was splattered with blood and gore, slowly being washed away by the rain. Its expression positively glowed with hatred, the eyes like slits, the mouth open, showing a swollen pink tongue from which hung a rope of drool. It strode along with a sense of purpose that chilled Rivera to the bone simply because it was so intentional. There was no insanity here, nothing random: this was a brute with a plan. And there they were—those gigantic, splayed bare feet with the three-inch toenails, the tracks of which they’d found everywhere.

Gil cleared his throat. “I’ll advance it to the next segment, with him coming back after the massacre—”

Rivera straightened up. “I don’t need to see any more. I want dogs. Tracking dogs. The son of a bitch went into the salt marshes and we’re going after him.”

“Lieutenant?”

He turned in time to see a striking, dark-skinned individual—who’d been in a far corner, giving a statement to one of Rivera’s men—step forward.

“Who are you?” Rivera asked.

“Paul Silas. Live out past Dill Town. I couldn’t help overhear what you just said. If you’re going into the marshlands, you better have someone who knows his way around or you aren’t ever gonna come out.”

Rivera looked at the man. He had an air of quiet competence about him. “You telling me you know these marshes?”

“A bit. Nobody knows it all.”

“You see that thing on the screen?”

“I did.”

“And you still want to help us?”

Silas cast an eye out the command center, over the darkness of town, then turned back to Rivera. “I surely do.”





57



In the perfect dark, Constance listened to the sounds of the struggle. As intently as she listened, she couldn’t determine who the demon was fighting, only that it must be someone tenacious and powerful. But as the clash of battle progressed, as the demon roared in what sounded like increasing triumph, she sensed the monster’s foe was losing—and when the sounds died away and silence returned, it was only the demon’s loud snuffling she heard. The other one was evidently dead, which did not surprise her.