as if he either planned to sabotage the Springville plant and go on the run or anticipated a disaster for which he might be blamed. Whatever work might have been underway there, it sure as hell hadn’t been the cancer research that the media reported, in which the NSA would have had no interest.
And why would Palmer’s boss, knowing of his preparations to go on the run in a crisis, have kept him employed at that facility? What a snake’s nest this seemed to be—a tangle of threats, yes, but also, for a man like the sheriff, a squirming mass of opportunities.
Now, following the departure of Frawley and Zellman with the bodies of the victims and all associated evidence, Sheriff Eckman had settled at his desk to write a memo describing that transfer, giving special attention to the behavior of Dr. Carson Conroy. The medical examiner had questioned the propriety of the transfer, had raised issues of protocol and ethics, infuriating the sheriff. If this ever ended up in a court, Hayden wanted a version of events, composed immediately afterward and time dated, that would diminish Conroy’s credibility. According to Hayden’s reimagining of events, the medical examiner hadn’t shown up uninvited, but had been called to assist in the transfer and had arrived inebriated; Conroy hadn’t questioned anything about the procedure, but in fact had been both confused and abusive toward the men from Sacramento.
Hayden enjoyed writing dialogue for the drunken medical examiner and inventing convincing details of his erratic behavior, careful not to make him unbelievably clownish. If ever he needed to present this memo in court, he would first share it with Frawley and Zellman, so that they could corroborate it in their testimony.
Hayden had just finished the memo, printed it, and personally filed it both electronically and physically, when Carl Fredette, the watch commander currently on duty at the front desk, buzzed him on the intercom to report a home invasion with shots fired at the residence of Megan Bookman, on Greenbriar Road.
Home invasions hereabouts were as rare as incidents involving elephants.
Although Hayden always put his own interests above those of the community and defined corruption less strictly than did the law, he had a cop’s good intuition. He suspected at once that Nathan Palmer, whoever he might really be, had not moved on from Pinehaven County.
62
Like all members of the Mysterium, Kipp could turn the Wire on and off as if it were a radio, though emergency transmissions always came through.
He didn’t turn it off now, because the boy’s cry of emotional pain and desperation was a signal to home onto.
Giving directions to Ben Hawkins could be accomplished without words because the man was smart enough to believe in the impossible when evidence showed him it was possible, after all.
Sad to say, not all human beings were that open-minded.
Some believed the most ridiculous things without a shred of evidence, but wouldn’t believe a truth even when it stuck its fingers in their eyes. So to speak.
Anyway, when they came to an intersection, Ben pointed and asked, “That way?”
If he pointed the right way, Kipp barked once enthusiastically.
If he pointed the wrong way, Kipp whined with disapproval.
As always, there was much he would have liked to say if he’d had the physical apparatus necessary for speech.
He would have said, You’re a really good driver.
He would have said, Faster, faster, though Ben already exceeded the speed limit, aware that this was urgent business, whatever else it might be.
Given speech, Kipp would have asked a thousand questions about Ben Hawkins’s life, what kind of books he wrote, whether he’d read Dickens, whether he believed those physicists were right who said there were parallel universes perhaps infinite in number.
Dorothy had been fascinated by quantum mechanics and string theory and all that.
She had a way of making you interested in what fascinated her.
This was a theory of Kipp’s: There are parallel universes, and when we die, we go on living in other realities.
Dorothy was lost here, but not lost everywhere.
He took comfort in that.
He wouldn’t go so far as to say that Heaven was a parallel universe where everyone lived forever. He wasn’t a theologian.
From Olympic Village, they went north on State Route 89 and then west on Interstate 80.
They left I-80 for State Route 20, still heading west.
If he were just an ordinary dog, he would as often as possible ride with his head out the passenger-door window.
But he understood the danger of flying debris causing