Wounded Earth (17 page)

He looked at a blurry copy of a bad photograph. Lots of dark hair around a tiny face. Huge dark eyes. Larabeth's daughter.

Everyone had an Achilles' heel, and he should have known that an apparently invincible woman was hiding a big one. A daughter. This could be too easy, but Larabeth was a rare individual. She would surely prove entertaining, even with an Achilles' heel this obvious and this unprotected. He would enjoy crushing her.

He opened a desk drawer, selected a fresh cell phone, and dialed.

* * *

“It was a good sweep. No bugs,” Kydd said as she bent over her equipment.

“Well, that's one small blessing,” J.D. said. “I don't know how the creep is getting all that personal information on Larabeth, but at least we know he hasn't bugged her house. I've swept her office, but your electronics are better than mine. It's too late in the afternoon to start today, but I want you to give it the once-over first thing in—”

The phone rang. “Maybe it's not him. Maybe it's just a sales call,” Larabeth said without moving toward the phone.

“Maybe, but we hope it's Babykiller.” Larabeth hated J.D.'s reasonable tone. “That's why we asked Kydd to come today,” he continued, “because he called twice on Monday, then he missed yesterday altogether. Maybe he's due.” J.D. laid his hand on her shoulder. “Everything will be okay. Just pick up the phone.” Kydd headed for her van.

“Good morning, Doc,” said the voice in her ear. She made a flapping motion with her free hand to signal J.D.

Larabeth imagined that she could hear the Tattletale humming as it recorded his words. Maybe Babykiller could hear it too. And maybe he could hear the things Kydd was doing to tap into the phone signal.

”I'm feeling jealous, Doc. I called to tell you not to talk to other men. I don't like that Yancey fellow. He might distract your attention from important matters. Like me.”

“That would be hard to do. You have a way of getting in a girl's face and staying there.”

“This is only the beginning. The time will come when you can think of nothing but me, and Yancey won't be able to help you. The FBI has been looking for me since young Yancey was riding on training wheels. They have found nothing. Not my name, not my location. They haven't even infiltrated past the second level of my organization. They won't be able to help you. They're hoping you will help them.”

Larabeth pictured Kydd fiddling with her electronic toys while Babykiller bragged that the FBI had been chasing him for years. Surely the FBI—the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for God's sake—had the best equipment and top personnel. And she was naive enough to think that one of J.D.'s Internet buddies was going to do better than they had.

“I didn't talk to Yancey. Even if you've bugged my phone or my office, surely you heard that I didn't tell him anything.” Larabeth hated the submission in her voice. She hoped Kydd and her van were already on the road triangulating, whatever that was.

“See that you don't speak to him or anyone like him, because I don't want to hurt you. You would be the love of my life, Larabeth, if I were capable of love. As it is, I admire your charm, your brilliant mind, and your spirit. I would like to possess you, whole and unharmed, but I will break you if I must.”

“Nobody's broken me yet, and people have tried.”

“I don't know the meaning of the word ‘try.’ If I decide to break you, I will, but I want to cherish you. Surely you can see that. And what have you done for me in return? I left a gift on your desk yesterday and you haven't even thanked me. And last night—last night I showed you how deeply I wanted to shower you with silk and perfumed bathwater. Won't you let me?”

He's talking a long time
, Larabeth thought, trying to concentrate on technical issues and blot out Babykiller's insinuations. In the movies, keeping crooks on the phone made them easier to catch.
But Babykiller's not stupid enough to make things easier for us. Please, God, let Kydd be smarter than he is.

“I still don't understand what you want from me.”

“I want you to listen to me. I want you to appreciate the complexity of my plans. I want you to entertain me.”

Suddenly, Babykiller's crazy talk didn't scare her as it had. “If you want an entertainer, call Liza Minelli,” she snapped. “If you want someone to quake in their boots, then you might as well say something really scary. Why don't you enlighten me about those mysterious plans you've been blathering about?”

“Curious, are we?” Babykiller sounded mildly pleased. ”I believe I'll ignore your rudeness and enlighten you, but just a bit. This is not the time for details. I can give you the big picture in two words. World destruction.”

Larabeth almost laughed. “What—like in the comic books? Are you planning to hold the world hostage for money like the guy in Superman? What's his name? Lex Luthor?”

“Now, now,” Babykiller said. “You haven't paid attention to the little information you already have. I told you I have all the money I could ever use. I'm bored. I don't have much time. I have some scores to settle. I don't much like the idea of the world carrying on without me.”

“So you're planning to destroy the world.” Larabeth clapped her hand over the phone. She couldn't stifle it any longer. She needed to laugh. Babykiller didn't seem scary any more, just ludicrous. He was only a lunatic who'd picked her to listen to his ravings. There was no way he was responsible for the well-organized Agent Blue spill or the animal slashings.

“Go ahead and laugh out loud, Doc. I can tell you don't believe me. Even if you did, you couldn't stop me. No one on earth would take you seriously. If you told anyone about this little talk, they'd think you were a paranoid schizophrenic. And if you played them the tape you're undoubtedly making of our conversation, they would write me off as a paranoid schizophrenic, but I'm not.”

“What are you then?” Larabeth said, already thinking of ways to get this tape to Guillaume so he could pass it on to Yancey. ”Are you just paranoid, or just schizophrenic?”

“I am neither,” Babykiller said in crisp, unaccented tones. “I am a killing machine, used and cast aside by our worthy government, and I left any scruples I may once have had in Vietnam. Beside the bodies of a few hundred massacred women and children. And, though I'm exaggerating when I say I'm planning to destroy the world—the technology isn't quite in place for that—I'm not exaggerating by much. It wouldn't be too impractical to make the world a hellish place to live.”

Something in his voice made Larabeth believe again. “Nuclear bombs?” she asked in a small voice.

“Such an obvious answer. You disappoint me. No, my business operates in the private sector and my end-of-the-world scenario can be achieved without the military. It will simply take longer.”

He waited for Larabeth to respond. She didn't. “Consider what happened at Three Mile Island. You remember what happened?”

“Of course. It was an operator error.”

“Oh, but it was so much more than an operator error. Putting it in laymen's terms, a switch malfunctioned. Have you ever had your car's thermostat stick? The car overheats without warning because nothing tells the driver that there's a problem.”

“That's a pretty good analogy,” she said slowly.

“It's damn good. Now, think. I just proved that I could put dead animals on doorsteps across the country. I just proved that I could get Agent Blue into ordinary pesticide drums. Don't you think I could get sabotaged parts into privately owned nuclear power plants?”

“Well, maybe you could, but they have quality control checks and—“

“How competent do you think the average quality control technician is?”

Babykiller snorted. “Let me rephrase my last statement. Don't you think I have
already
gotten sabotaged parts into nuclear power plants around the world?”

Larabeth stopped short. It was possible. Could it be possible? “You're hoping to trigger a meltdown somewhere. Or several meltdowns. Why? What would be the point?”

“Think about it. A meltdown. Contaminated debris spewing into the air we breathe. Burning through the soil and into the water we drink. Radiating wide swathes of populated areas. Think about it happening simultaneously in New York, Florida, California, a few Midwestern states, France. Maybe the Ukraine. Maybe China. China would be good. It's an end-of-the-world scenario, to my way of thinking, just not a very spectacular one. Call it the death of a thousand cuts.”

Larabeth believed him. She hated to admit it, but she did. If she went public with this, she'd be considered a raving lunatic, but she'd have to try. She heard herself say, “I'll stop you. I have connections. I can get every nuclear plant between here and Iceland shut down.”

“But you won't. You won't be talking to anybody and you won't be playing that tape you're making for a single soul. Because people will die if you do. You will live your life precisely as if you were ignorant of my existence, because within an hour of any foolish move you make, I can blow the Savannah River Plant sky-high. You know the place?”

Larabeth's breath left her. “I've worked there,” she whispered.

Cynthia works there
, her mind echoed.

“There's no need to whisper when there's no one to hear you. And even if there were, who would believe a word of this conversation? Just remember—you mess up and thousands of people die. And more people downstream on the Savannah River lose their drinking water. Forever. And habitat covering countless square miles will be wiped clean, along with all its furry inhabitants. A lovely image, isn't it? I believe I'll leave you with that image. I remind you, stay away from the police, the FBI, the Royal Dogcatcher. Everybody. This is between you and me.”

* * *

Larabeth looked out her front door. Kydd's van sat, unmoved, a symbol of failure. Kydd herself was walking up the sidewalk.

“You couldn't trace him? Why not? It seemed like I kept him on the phone for an hour.”

Kydd placed her equipment carefully into padded cases. “I explained this to you when I first got here. Once Plan A failed, it didn't matter much how long you kept him on the phone.”

Larabeth rubbed the aching spot over her right eye. “Refresh me. What was Plan A and why did it fail?”

Kydd kept packing equipment as she spoke. “Plan A assumed that he was calling from an analog phone so I could pick him up by scanner receiver and track down which cell he was calling from. That part of Plan A worked.”

“I remember this part now. Plan A must have failed because he's not calling from nearby.”

“Right. He was calling from Florida. I caught signals from four different cells. Maybe he was in a car and just happened to cruise through parts of four cells. Or maybe he was in a private plane, moving like a bat out of hell.” She handed a couple of cases to J.D. and cradled a third in her arms.

“You're telling me this is hopeless,” Larabeth said.

Kydd headed for the door. “I didn't say hopeless. It may be hopeless, but I haven't said it yet.”

“But you're leaving.”

“I'm going home to my real computer. The local Baby Bell will have records of recent calls to your number, but I need to find them while they're still recent.”

“And that will give you his name and number.” Larabeth picked up two heavy cases and followed Kydd and J.D. out.

“No, that will give me a switch number I can cross-reference to the cell phone company.”

“And you can get into their computer?”

“Yes.” Kydd set the cases on the driveway and slid open the van's side door.

“And that will give you his name and number?”

Kydd stacked the cases behind the passenger seat. “Maybe.”

A slight shake of J.D.'s head staved off an outburst from Larabeth. She just said, “What does 'maybe' mean?”

“It means we'll see what I find when I get in there, but first I have to get started. Now. The phone companies only store their records on local drive for a day or two. Even with the size of the systems some of them have now, their drives have to be flushed pretty often. I'll call you when I know something, but I've got to get to work.”

“Thank you,” Larabeth said quietly.

Kydd slammed the van door and jogged around to the driver's side. “I was listening to what the man said. He's psychotic and he threatened you. He threatened a lot of people and he meant it. I could tell. If he can be found, I'll do it. But I don't have time to stand around talking about it.”

“Thank you,” Larabeth said again, but Kydd wasn't listening. She was trying to fasten her seatbelt and speed down the driveway at the same time.

* * *

His computer was logged onto the AP newswire. Babykiller scanned the news of the coming day and, intrigued by one entry with a New Orleans dateline, downloaded it and forwarded the file to Gerald.

He was in a rare mood this afternoon. His pranks with the dead animals and the Agent Blue had gotten such good press. His conversations with Larabeth were so entertaining. He only wished he could have been there to see Larabeth's face when she ran smack into her longlost daughter. In Nebraska, of all places. He was having so much fun for a dying man, but this was only a warmup. He could hardly wait until people started to die.