Firestarter(129)

His secretary greeted him with a pile of overnight telex cables, which Cap simply took without bothering to shuffle through them to see if there was anything hot enough to demand immediate attention. The girl at the desk was going over a number of requests and messages when she suddenly looked up at Cap curiously. Cap was paying no attention to her at all. He was gazing at the wide drawer near the top of her desk with a bemused expression on his face.

"Pardon me," she said. She was still very much aware of being the new girl, even after all these months, of having replaced someone Cap had been close to. And perhaps had been sleeping with, she had sometimes speculated.

"Hmmmm?" He looked around at her at last. But the blankness did not leave his eyes. It was somehow shocking... like looking at the shuttered windows of a house reputed to be haunted.

She hesitated, then plunged. "Cap, do you feel all right? You look... well, a little white."

"I feel fine," he said, and for a moment he was his old self, dispelling some of her doubts. His shoulders squared, his head came up, and the blankness left his eyes. "Anybody who's going to Hawaii ought to feel fine, right?"

"Hawaii?" Gloria said doubtfully. It was news to her.

"Never mind these now," Cap said, taking the message forms and interdepartmental memos and stuffing them all together with the telex cables. "I'll look at them later. Anything happening with either of the McGees?"

"One item," she said. "I was just getting to it. Mike Kellaher says she asked to go out to the stable this afternoon and see a horse-"

"Yes, that's fine," Cap said.

"-and she buzzed back a little later to say she'd like to go out at quarter of one."

"Fine, fine."

"Will Mr. Rainbird be taking her out?"

"Rainbird's on his way to San Diego," Cap said with unmistakable satisfaction. "I'll send a man to take her over."

"All right. Will you want to see the..." She trailed off. Cap's eyes had wandered away from her and he appeared to be staring at the wide drawer again. It was partway open. It always was, per regulations. There was a gun in there. Gloria was a crack shot, just as Rachel before her had been.

"Cap, are you sure there's nothing wrong?"

"Ought to keep that shut," Cap said. "They like dark places. They like to crawl in and hide."

"They?" she asked cautiously.

"Snakes," Cap said, and marched into his office.

5

He sat behind his desk, the cables and messages in an untidy litter before him. They were forgotten. Everything was forgotten now except snakes, golf clubs, and what he was going to do at quarter of one. He would go down and see Andy McGee. He felt strongly that Andy would tell him what to do next. He felt strongly that Andy would make everything all right.

Beyond quarter of one this afternoon, everything in his life was a great funneling darkness.

He didn't mind. It was sort of a relief.

6

At quarter of ten, John Rainbird slipped into the small monitoring room near Charlie's quarters. Louis Tranter, a hugely fat man whose bu**ocks nearly overflowed the chair he sat in, was watching the monitors. The digital thermometer read a steady sixty-eight degrees. He looked over his shoulder when the door opened and his face tightened at the sight of Rainbird.

"I heard you were leaving town," he said.

"Scrubbed," Rainbird said. "And you never saw me this morning at all, Louis." Louis looked at him doubtfully.

"You never saw me," Rainbird repeated. "After five this afternoon I don't give a shit. But until then, you never saw me. And if I hear you did, I'm going to come after you and cut me some blubber. Can you dig it?"

Louis Tranter paled noticeably. The Hostess Twinkie he had been eating dropped from his hand onto the slanted steel panel that housed the TV monitors and microphone pickup controls. It rolled down the slant and tumbled to the floor unheeded, leaving a trail of crumbs behind. Suddenly he wasn't a bit hungry. He had heard this guy was crazy, and now he was seeing that what he had heard was certainly true.

"I can dig it," he said, whispering in the face of that weird grin and glittering oneeyed stare.

"Good," Rainbird said, and advanced toward him. Louis shrank away from him, but Rainbird ignored him altogether for the moment and peered into one of the monitors. There was Charlie, looking pretty as a picture in her blue jumper. With a lover's eye, Rainbird noted that she had not braided her hair today; it lay loose and fine and lovely over her neck and shoulders. She wasn't doing anything but sitting on the sofa. No book. No TV. She looked like a woman waiting for a bus.

Charlie, he thought admiringly, I love you. I really do.

"What's she got going for today?" Rainbird asked.

"Nothing much," Louis said eagerly. He was, in fact, nearly babbling. "Just going out at quarter of one to curry that horse she rides. We're getting another test out of her tomorrow."

"Tomorrow, huh?"

"Yep." Louis didn't give a tin shit about the tests one way or the other, but he thought it would please Rainbird, and maybe Rainbird would leave.

He seemed to be pleased. His grin reappeared.

"She's going out to the stables at quarter of one, huh?"

"Yeah."