Devoted(63)
Already, Palmer was stirring. He cursed and tried to turn over. He strained his bound wrists and kicked his shackled legs. He arched his back impossibly, as if he might be able to lock his vertebrae in sequence, like a snake, and curl his upper body erect, but he could not, and so he cursed more furiously.
“For God’s sake, what is he?” Walter asked. “Shoot the freak, kill him while you can.”
His partner’s uncharacteristic fear further chilled Freeman. He rose to his feet and retrieved the cattle prod and stood ready as sirens rose in the distance. Backup.
No moon or stars above the narrow service road, the cool wind roaring overhead like the caissons of Armageddon, the forest deep and black and crawling with mystery as it had never previously been for Freeman Johnson.
66
Police car lightbars flung off glisters of red and blue that washed across the windshield and the dashboard of the Range Rover.
Kipp and Ben sat in a line of cars at a blockade, northbound on Greenbriar Road.
Ben waited more patiently than Kipp, who panted with anxiety.
“What’s wrong, fella?”
Ben didn’t know about the boy, that the boy had been screaming and was now almost silent on the Wire, issuing only a pitiable sound of perfect despair.
Two species on this planet had been bonded for many thousands of years. Maybe more than a hundred thousand. Dogs and people.
Dogs had been at the side of human beings for millennia before horses or cats.
They had hunted together when hunting had been essential for survival.
They had protected each other from all threats in a primitive world where nature was even crueler than it was now.
Of all the creatures on Earth, only people and dogs engaged joyfully in play all the days of their lives.
In the relationship between humanity and dogs, some mutual destiny existed that had not yet been fulfilled.
That was what Dorothy had believed.
She had been sure that Kipp and the others in the Mysterium must represent the next stage in that human-canine destiny, that they would change the world.
And now this boy, unknowingly, was able to use the Wire. Which might mean that, in the near future, the human-dog bond would knit the two species more tightly together.
Kipp felt that an event of historic importance loomed.
The police went slowly from vehicle to vehicle, questioning the drivers, looking in the trunks of the cars.
A historic event loomed, and the police delayed traffic on Greenbriar Road, and if Kipp became any more frustrated, he would need to get out and pee.
67
Deputy Carrickton and her partner, Deputy Argento, were gone, Megan’s statement having been deemed adequate by Sheriff Hayden Eckman.
With the assistance of Argento, the sheriff had set right the overturned highboy and settled on the edge of the armchair, to speak with Megan while she remained at Woody’s bedside.
Having entered the room with a sense of the antagonism between Megan and Carrickton, he apologized for his deputy’s aggressive style of questioning, but also excused it by asserting that the woman was one of the best in his department.
Megan had once met the previous sheriff, Lyle Sheldrake, a low-key folksy man with a leathery face and white hair that glowed as if irradiated. She hadn’t known him, but those who had long experience of him said that he was a dedicated and honest man—whom Eckman had run against and defeated in a campaign of low character. Now, even as the new sheriff sought to smooth away what irritation Carrickton had caused, he struck Megan as oleaginous, not trustworthy. These days, Americans seemed attracted to such politicians if they were exceptionally gifted at virtue signaling while they slandered their opponents.
Eckman didn’t want to rehash all that Megan told Carrickton, but he was intently interested that she knew her attacker and that his name was Lee Shacket. “To the best of your knowledge, Ms. Bookman, has he ever used the name Nathan Palmer?”
“No, not to my knowledge. But I wouldn’t know, really. The last time I saw him was at a corporate affair with my husband eight years ago, and before that . . . thirteen years since I knew him socially.”
“You said he was the CEO of Refine, Inc., part of Dorian Purcell’s empire?”
“That’s right.”
“Are you aware of the catastrophic fire at Refine’s operation outside Springville, Utah?”
“No. I avoid the news, Sheriff. There’s nothing I can do about the people who make it, and I’m determined to keep my art positive in a world that increasingly isn’t.”
“Well, he may be on the run from responsibility for the deaths of ninety-two people at that facility.”
She grimaced, but there was nothing she could say about such a tragedy that would mean anything to anyone. “Then you’ve even more reason to find him quickly. There’s something gone very wrong with him.”
“Do you have a photograph of this Lee Shacket?”
“I’m sure you can find one online.”
“No doubt. But all we have now is a driver’s license he was carrying. It’s in the name Nathan Palmer. If you have a photo, Ms. Bookman, I could confirm in a minute that they’re one and the same.”
“It’s Mrs. Bookman.”