"The girl?" His fatuous smile was wormy with sincerity.
"You know? Sidra Sperling? The dead girl?" What the hell, was he trying to pretend Storch was insane in hopes he'd forget, and he'd be able to keep her?
"Ah yes, yes. I've never seen anything quite like it. Turns out my earlier diagnosis was somewhat premature, yes."
"Premature how? You mean she wasn't tortured, or she's not the girl from the milk carton?"
"Oh, there's no doubt in my mind about that. But she wasn't raped, no, no, no. Opened up, certainly, but not tortured."
"What's the difference?"
"She died in childbirth, is what it looks like. Her pelvis was wrenched outwards, her cervix and vaginal canal were obliterated, her lower vertebral disks were pulverized, and the perineum was surgically incised from the vagina to the rectum, even her floating ribs were broken off. Her blood was inundated with hormones, but there was no trace of any of the common sedatives. Someone cut the bottom out of her to accommodate a birth, Zane, and the fetus was of such prodigious size that it took her life, if the procedure itself didn't." He cast an awestruck gaze at the privacy curtain encircling the examination table. "How proud she must have been."
"What do you know about Radiant Dawn? Hiram?"
The hermit snapped out of his reverie and turned a quizzical face on Storch. This time, at least, his puzzlement seemed genuine. "What?"
"Harley said something about a group called Radiant Dawn. That's who he said they were fighting against."
"Who was fighting against?"
"I don't know. I don't know anything."
"Try to sleep."
Storch nodded feebly. The aching of his limbs and the leaden fatigue in his head would no longer be ignored. He looked around for something resembling a guest room. Hansen got up and fetched a kerosene lantern from a hook in the wall, and led him through a curtain of hanging beads, down a lightless, unadorned cavern. Thirty feet from the curtain, Storch made out the shape of a deluxe camper shell on an old Chevy pickup. Beyond it, stretching into the darkness, was a line of vehicles of every description, parked nose to bumper as if waiting to pass through a tollbooth: pacing down the line, Storch saw a Nash Rambler, a Chevy minivan, a '62 Chrysler Imperial, a tow truck, an AMC Pacer, an ancient police cruiser from Pahrump Nevada, a Mexican Highway Patrol car peppered with buckshot holes, a Honda Odyssey minidunebuggy, and a world war two surplus amphibious "duck" truck before Hansen called him back. The back door of the camper was open, and Hansen was unrolling a sleeping bag on the fold-out bed in the kitchenette. "You'd be more comfortable here than anywhere else I have…I keep odd hours."
"Where'd you get all these?"
"I got a few at police auctions, but most of them I just found abandoned, in perfect working order, out in the middle of the desert. Some get killed by drifters, and I take those, but they're nothing special. But alot of other times, people leave them there with a suicide note, claiming they're going out to shoot themselves where nobody'll ever find them, or throw themselves into a mine shaft. More than half of them, they slip onto a Greyhound at a rest stop or hitch a ride on a semi, and start over again. The Golden Gate Bridge is the most popular spot, but Death Valley would run a close second if not for people like me. Collectors. People say the American dream is to own a house or a business, or whatever, they're wrong, or they're deluding themselves. The American dream is and always has been to shed your old life and start a new one somewhere else. Go to sleep, Zane."
10
As a child, Martin Cundieffe's secret vices were two and he spoke of them only in prayers. The first was people watching, which wasn't a vice in any sense except for its intensity. He was a snoop, nosy, a buttinski; but where other children earned reproofs for asking too many questions, Cundieffe merely stared, making mental notes in his earnest, childish fashion, on every observable aspect of human behavior. He might've picked up this habit in imitation of his father—who'd served under Hoover as SAC of the Washington, D.C. listening post in the Old Post Office Building, in the days when every kid wanted to grow up to be Ephraim Zimbalist, Jr.—if his father had spent any time with his boy. Cundieffe was a firm believer in nature over nurture, and apologized to God every night with the caveat that snooping and secret-lust ran in his blood, and he hoped it was okay, if it made him a better agent.
His second vice was that he liked to stir up anthills. He never intentionally killed a single ant, goodness no, he meant them no harm. But he would lose himself for hours in the backyard, watching them tirelessly repair the methodical damage he wreaked upon them with a tiny twig or a little water. The way the nest came to life to undo chaos filled him with a sublime sense of nature's master plan, of individuals and societies as machines for preserving order, that saw him through his difficult and lonely childhood, and made him the agent he was today. It'd been widely acknowledged throughout the Bureau that he was a very good agent indeed—better than his father, in fact. When Mother passed on and no longer needed him, he'd been told, he'd be welcome at Headquarters or at the Academy in Quantico.
Thus it was that Cundieffe hadn't been able to go home after the briefing, indeed hadn't been able to so much as sit still since he'd left Assistant Director Wyler. He did his work at an optimum efficiency even as the rest of the field office churned and buzzed like a breached ant nest, wrangling with the rapidly snowballing crisis in the desert.
Lane Hunt had come back from Riverside as soon as he completed his stakeout and jumped on the case with both feet, but his attitude, Cundieffe had to conclude, wasn't nearly as sunny or can-do as his own. As he'd gone over the summary Wyler'd left for him before jetting back to Washington, he'd chugged piping hot coffee and chanted "Fuck" over and over again, as if he were venting off the steam building up between his ears. Cundieffe tried to keep his poise; even with his rather limited experience in the field, he'd heard foul language often enough, but it rankled him to hear such a word out of the mouth of another FBI man. His father, who never drank coffee even at home because Hoover thought it bad form for his men to ingest any sort of drug, never once used that word, Cundieffe knew.
When he was done reading and blaspheming, SA Hunt had looked at Cundieffe with that patronizing expression he knew of old, from school days. The strong, not-too-bright boy looks that way at the class bookworm who's going to do his homework for him if he doesn't want to get stuffed into a locker. Cundieffe knew Hunt was a good agent who carried his weight, but he also knew his own use to the Domestic Counterterrorism Section began and ended with research and more research, and that was what he was going to do.
He'd reviewed and collated his files all day long, while the rest of the office milled around, spreading rumors, waiting like fans of a secret sports team, awaiting the outcome of a championship match that would never be televised: The FBI vs. the Navy in the White House.
More than a few times, Cundieffe had solved a case from his desk, telephoning Hunt and the others with the answer like a bright child with a Junior Jumble solution, while they were still out chasing themselves in the field. He simply dumped out all the data he could lay hands on from the region in question: dossiers on the relevant parties, police and news reports, applications for firearms and explosives, local newspapers. Taken as a whole, they were a junkpile of tangents and random trivia, but each piece, observed keenly and without prejudice, could point the way to the next and betray the hand of its author.
First, Cundieffe reviewed police reports and sundry other data from the Mojave area. Military materials would be a few hours coming, as clearances were obtained and turf wars waged. It had been a busy week, just counting the items forwarded to the resident agency office in Victorville. Four telephoned complaints were filed, all anonymously, about a raid by "agents of the New World Order" on the unincorporated town of Thermopylae, near Furnace Creek in Death Valley. All of the accounts varied in detail and would be consigned to the kook file, but Cundieffe smelled something significant in them that all the other hands the reports had passed through had not. The squatter community of Thermopylae had been referenced in Cundieffe's database time and again as a possible temporary haven for disgruntled anti-government misanthropes, and had been observed a few times as closely as the FBI dared in years past, but without conclusive results. In Cundieffe's estimation, the people of Thermopylae were fellow travelers and inveterate Internet ranters, but hardly a threat to anyone but themselves. The reports might be a prank or mass hysteria, and had been judged as such by the agent in Victorville who took the reports, because no such action had been undertaken by any government agency. But look again. They coincided in a few details: that one unidentified man was shot in the back while attempting to flee, and that a cache of weapons was seized, but no arrests made. Shortly thereafter, the embattled store burned to the ground, cause unknown. Beyond that, the stories all digressed into individual hysteria, and couldn't agree on which government agency had staged the alleged raid. A follow-up check by the Victorville agent with the Furnace Creek Sheriff's office had turned up nothing, because no one had answered the phone. Another report on Cundieffe's desk posited a logical reason for this: an earth tremor localized in the Inyokern area of the Owens Valley had caused some structural damage in Furnace Creek, and they were probably out putting things back together.
Cundieffe leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his heavy head. Lane was probably already at China Lake with a forensics team by now. The evidence turned over to them by the Navy wasn't terribly promising; the audio tape which contained the coded security transmissions that'd granted the thieves access to the base, and a tiny pool of chewing tobacco juice on the landing deck where the rogue helicopters had landed. Hunt had control issues, and was prone to fly off the handle when he felt he wasn't getting full cooperation, or when his investigations butted heads with other agencies. Even if AD Wyler toughed out the turf war with the Navy, Cundieffe thought, Hunt probably wouldn't be able to hold onto the case after today. He hoped he would be kept on himself, at least long enough for Wyler to give him that security clearance. New files to read, new mysteries to plumb.
His phone trilled, the blinking light above the section's intra-agency line. Cundieffe looked around the office, saw no one else reaching for it. He picked it up. "Counterterrorism, Special Agent Cundieffe here."
"Agent Munoz in Victorville, here. Lane Hunt around?"
"No, Special Agent Hunt is on assignment. Can I relay a message?"
"I'd like to talk to him myself, if you can locate him for me. We've got a situation in Furnace Creek, and I think his expertise may come in handy. Understand he's got a hell of a database on militia activities."
Furnace Creek?
Hunt's
database? Cundieffe felt two or three almost irresistible urges to use foul language hit him at once. "Actually, I'm the primary agent in charge of our background database. If there's some checking you require—"
"We've had a double homicide. Local named Zane Storch burned down his place of business and shot up the Sheriff and a deputy a few hours ago. He's a fugitive. Probably a solo nut, but after interviewing a few people in town, we decided to give you a call."
Cundieffe printed out the name Munoz'd given him at the top of his yellow legal pad in block capitals. "Any reason you think we could help?" he asked.
"Well, to hear them tell it, Storch is a paramilitary nut—ran a survivalist supply store in a squatter community called Thermopylae—"
Cundieffe sucked in air through his teeth, felt a mild cold sting in his left lower rear molar. A cavity, maybe. "I've heard of it."
"And he was a Green Beret some years back, got sick in Desert Storm. Not all there, people said. Anyway, Storch pulled up in his truck, went in and shot the two of them cold. The other deputy was on his way out, but saw Storch leaving the office and came in after him. He notified the Highway Patrol and the Sheriff's in Darwin, and pursued him. They lost him on dirt roads just short of the Nevada line, and have asked us to cooperate in his capture. Just thought you could tell us if the guy had any past associations with militia groups in the area, you know, people who might be hiding him."
Cundieffe tapped his pen on the paper, making circles within circles around Storch's name. "Tell you what, Agent Munoz," he said, "I'll do a search in just a few minutes, and we'll get something faxed over to you in about a quarter hour. Sound good?"
"Sure. Probably nothing, but you have to cover all the bases."
"Right, right. I'll give you a call just before I send anything I have over to you."
Cundieffe hung up with one hand and riffled through his Rol-A-Dex with the other. Suddenly, he felt in his mind that he did have all the pieces he needed, now. In his gut, however, he began to wonder how many puzzles he was really trying to put together.
He pulled out the new card for the direct line to Wyler's office at headquarters. He didn't expect the Assistant Director to be in, and he wasn't disappointed. Wyler's machine was succinct, if a little unprofessional. "Gimme the bad news," it said, and beeped.
"Chief, this is Special Agent Martin Cundieffe, from Los Angeles? You'll recall we spoke this morning about—"
Bring it home, Marty
. "Well, I think I have a related case that could provide us with a break in the China Lake affair."
A plastic clatter and a hoot of feedback, then a voice said, "Agent Cundieffe? Don't hang up."
"Yes, sir, I'm still here. I've got—"
"This is Deputy Assistant Director Warden. Agent Cundieffe, Assistant Director Wyler's still in conference, but he left me a message to forward to you."