Page 16 (1/2)

So now he ate the ham, all two pounds of it, and he snatched other ite theered hands: a bowlful of cold, leftover rigatoni and one ht yesterday at the bakery in town; a stick of butter, an entire quarter of a pound, greasy and cloying but good food, good fuel, just the thing to feed the fire; four raw eggs; and hter but cooled, subsided, for it was not a real fire at all but a physical symptom of the desperate need for fuel to keep the an to lose so flalow of hot coals

Sated, Mike Peyser collapsed to the floor in front of the open refrigerator, in a litter of broken dishes and food and Saran Wrap and eggshells and Tupperware containers He culled up again and willed hinize hi place in his ans, in sinews and cartilage and muscles and skin, as tides of horical cheh it, but as before the change was arrested with transformation woefully incoe state, inevitably regressing though he strained with all his will, all his will, strained and struggled to seek the higher for shut The kitchen was in the grasp of shadows again, and Mike Peyser felt as if that darkness was not merely all around him but also within hian to screaht Sae He wore a brown leather jacket, blue sweater, jeans, and blue running shoes--an outfit that allowed hiht but that didn’t look suspicious, though perhaps slightly too youthful for a man of his relentlessly melancholy demeanor Ordinary as it looked, the jacket had several unusually deep and capacious inner pockets, in which he was carrying a few basic burglary and auto-theft tools He descended the south stairs, went out the rear door at the bottoe

Thick fog poured up the face of the bluff and through the open railing, driven by a sudden sea breeze that finally had disturbed the night’s cal inland and leave the coast in relative clarity By then Saer needing the cover that the hting insootten the pack of kids fro Because their true nature remained a mystery, he continued to think of them as punks, but he knew they were ely, he had the feeling that he did knohat they were, but the knowledge stirred in him far below even a subconscious plain, in realms of primitive consciousness

He rounded the south end of the building, walked past the back of the coffee shop, which was now closed, and ten minutes later, by a roundabout route, he arrived at the Moonlight Cove Municipal Building on Jacobi Street It was exactly as the Bureau’s San Francisco agents had described it a two-story structure--weathered brick on the lower floor, white siding on the upper--with a slate roof, forest-green store la and the property on which it stood occupied half a block on the north side of the street, but its anti-institutional architecture was in harhborhood Exterior and interior ground-floor lights were on even at that hour because in addition to the city-govern housed the police department, which of course never closed

Froht constitutional, Sam studied the place as he passed it He saw no unusual activity The sidewalk in front of the lass doors he saw a brightly lighted foyer

At the next corner he went north and into the alley in the hted serviceas bracketed by trees and shrubbery and fences that marked the rear property lines of the houses on Jacobi Street and Pacific Drive, by soe cans, and by the large unfenced parking area behind the ht-foot-tall evergreen hedge at the corner of the yard that adjoined the public property Though the alley was very dark, two sodiulow over the city lot, revealing twelve vehicles: four late-reen variety that was produced for federal, state, and local govern the seal of the city and the legend WATER AUTHORITY; a hulking street-sweeping ate; and four police cars, all Chevy sedans

The quartet of black-and-whites hat interested Sa theht Cove owned eight patrol cars, a large number for a sleepy coastal town, five more than other communities of similar size could afford and surely in excess of need

But everything about this police departer and better than necessary, which was one of the things that had triggered silent alarents who’d coate the deaths of Sanchez and the Bustaht Cove had twelve full-time and three part-time officers, plus four full-time office support personnel A lot ofsalaries competitive with law-enforcement pay scales in major West Coast cities, therefore excessive for a town as small as this They had the finest uniforuns and riot guns and tear gas, and-- of all--they were computerized to an extent that would have been the envy of the boys ic Air Corant evergreen hedge, Sam studied the lot for a couple ofin any of the vehicles or standing in deep shadows along the back of the building Levolor blinds were closed at the lighted s on the ground floor, so no one inside had a view of the parking area

He took a pair of soft, supple goatskin gloves from a jacket pocket and pulled the in the alley behind hi deeper into the hedge, he turned his head to search for the source of the sound A pale, cru the blacktop, propelled by the breeze that was increasingly rustling the leaves of the shrubs and trees The carton ainst it, and fell silent

Strea now looked like sh that churning vapor, he satisfied himself that he was alone, then turned and sprinted to the nearest of the four patrol cars in the unfenced lot

It was locked

From an inner jacket pocket, he withdrew a Police automobile lock Release Gun, which could instantly open any lock without da thewheel, and closed the door as quickly and quietly as possible

Enough light from the sodium-vapor lah he was experienced enough to work virtually in the dark He put the lock gun away and took an ignition-socket wrench fronition-switch cylinder fro the wires

He hated this part To click on the video-display ine; the computer was more powerful than a lap-top y-intensivetoowould cover the exhaust fuine The black-and-white was parked eighty feet fro, so no one inside was likely to hear it But if someone stepped out of the back door for some fresh air or to take one of the off-duty cruisers out on a call, the idling engine would not escape notice Then Saiven the frequency of violent death in this town--hethe accelerator with his right foot, he separated the ignition wires with one gloved hand and twisted the bare contact points together The engine turned over i

The computer screen blinked on

The police department’s elaborate coy because they were supposedly using Moonlight Cove as a sort of testing ground for their own systems and software The source of the excess friends so evident in every other aspect of the department was not easy to pin down, but the suspicion was that it came from New Wave or from New Wave’s majority stockholder and chief executive officer, Thomas Shaddack Any citizen was free to support his local police or other arovernment in excess of his taxes, of course, but if that hat Shaddack was doing, asn’t it a e sums of money to a civic cause with co secretive about supporting the local authorities with private funds, then the possibility of bought cops and in-the-pocket officials could not be discounted And if the Moonlight Cove police were virtually soldiers in Thomas Shaddack’s private army, it followed that the suspicious number of violent deaths in recent weeks could be related to that unholy alliance

Now the VDT in the car displayed the New Wave logo in the bottoo would have been featured if this had been one of their ation of the Sanchez Bustaents, Morrie Stein, had been in a patrol car with one of Watkins’s officers, Reese Dorn, when Dorn accessed the central computer for information in departmental files By then Morrie had suspected that the computer was even more sophisticated than Watkins or histheal li to discuss, so he had memorized the code number hich Reese had tapped into the systeeles office to brief Sam, Morrie had said, "I think every cop in that twisted little town has his own coht to work as well as any Saet into their computer and let it throw some menus at you, see what it offers, play around with it when Watkins and hisover your shoulder Yeah, I sound paranoid, but there’s too h-tech for their size and needs, unless they’re up to so dirty At first it seems like any town, even more pleasant than et the feeling the whole burg is wired, that you’re watched everywhere you go, that Big Brother is looking over your shoulder every daut-sure you’re in a miniature police state, where the control is so subtle you can hardly see it but still complete, iron-fisted Those cops are bent, Sa traffic, who knows--and the computer is part of it"

Reese Dorn’s number was 262699, and Sao disappeared The screen was blank for a second Then a menu appeared

CHOOSE ONE

A DISPATCHER