Wounded Earth (10 page)

“This place is crawling with cops and I'm glad because I'm scared to death,” she said, watching J.D. peer out the window, “but it doesn't make sense. Sure, Ridley's sea turtles are endangered. Killing one is a serious thing, but it doesn't rate such a hyperactive police response. It seems like a job for environmental regulators. I expect a bunch of them to show up any minute, as soon as they finish filling out a pile of forms in triplicate.”

J.D. laughed and pointed to a cop sitting on a courtyard bench, collecting reports from the other officers. “I guess paperwork is a necessary evil for any government worker,” he said.

Larabeth rolled her eyes. “Why do you think I work for myself?” She stood up and resumed pacing the same pattern she'd been tracing for an hour. “A few days ago,” she mused, “someone broke into my house and the police made me feel like I should just leave the doors open and invite all the harmless crooks in for a visit. Why do I rate all this police coverage this time?”

“This may hurt your self-esteem, but the police coverage isn't all about you.” J.D. said, closing the curtain. “I chatted up one of the other officers while you were being questioned. It seems you aren't the only prominent environmentalist who received a message this morning.”

“What do you mean?”

“They don't know the size of it yet, but you're definitely not the only victim. This thing is nationwide. In California, people—all of them well-known in the environmental field—are still waking up and finding carcasses on their doorsteps.”

“That's bizarre.”

“That, madam, is an understatement. And who is the most bizarre person that we know at the moment?”

“Babykiller. I told the police about his calls and about the break-in at my house. They wrote everything down, but they seemed mildly interested, at best. Don't you think they'll take him seriously now?”

“Maybe, but try thinking like an investigator. A good one will follow every lead, but this thing is big. It will be in papers coast to coast. Hundreds of crackpots will call in useless leads. Every victim will have a theory, and frankly most of them will be more plausible than a lunatic who calls himself ‘Babykiller.’ You heard who the victims were. These people have enemies, lots of serious enemies.”

He presented a convincing list of possible suspects, ticking them off on his fingers. “Loggers who lost their jobs to the spotted owl. Scientists who lost years of data when an animal rights group sabotaged their lab. Business owners staggering under a zillion environmental regulations. The investigators heard and duly recorded your Babykiller theory, but don't count on them spending too much time on it. From their point of view, they have bigger fish to fry.”

“But we have Babykiller on tape.”

“Yeah, I listened to the recording last night. He's not one of your more charming friends. But did he admit any wrongdoing?”

“Not in so many words, but—”

“Has he ever made any out-and-out threats against you?”

J.D.'s tone was reasonable. Larabeth was exceedingly annoyed.

“Not exactly, but he hinted at it.”

“Did he give you permission to tape your conversation?”

“Of course not," Larabeth sputtered, “but—”

“Then what makes you think the police would even consider listening to our little tape?”

“Then why,” Larabeth said in the steely drawl she reserved for erring senior executives, “did we bother to make the tape?”

“Because we have almost nothing else to go on. He's calling from a cell phone, unless he's an idiot. Do you think he's an idiot?”

“No.”

“Then he's a moving target, even if we are able to trace a call. It's going to be damn difficult to find the bastard. We'll get all the electronic help we can, but maybe the sound of his voice or the way he turns a phrase will help us out. Maybe a background noise will give him away. I saw that happen in a movie one time.”

“A movie.” Larabeth closed her eyes and shook her head. “I thought I hired a professional investigator, not Inspector Clousseau. Can't you just get an electronic doo-hickey that will tell us who's calling me and where he is and what he wants with me?”

“Not easily and maybe not at all. Let me talk to some hacker friends today and maybe I'll have better news.”

“I can't believe we're having this conversation.” Larabeth sighed and stretched. “At least Cynthia is safe. Nobody knows I'm her mother but you and me and, for once, I'm glad I never told her.”

She said it without tears, but J.D.’s eyes said he didn't believe her for a moment. He moved closer to her, and his concern almost broke her need to stifle the tears, almost caused her to admit weakness.

His face was near hers, with its squinty brown eyes and strong bones. She nearly reached up to brush back the blonde curl that always hung over his forehead, but she didn't.

She had found it best to stay away from men like J.D. She preferred to spend time with men she only liked a little. It hurt less that way.

Larabeth
sat in the headquarters of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Control—N-Deck, for short—with three high-ranking staffers. They had been surprisingly helpful. She guessed that the special treatment was due to two things: her status as victim of a high-profile environmental crime and her prominence in the environmental world. It was amazing what a few interviews in
Newsweek
did for impressionable people.

She would have been grateful, but they'd said nothing she didn't already know. Mac MacGowan had known almost as much about the herbicide spill as these people did.

As for the news of the day, her companions at the conference table knew virtually nothing about the slaughtered animals left on doorsteps across America. Larabeth was discouraged, but she knew that she had a gift for getting people to chat. It was a gift that had brought BioHeal millions of dollars in contracts. If she got these people talking, they might say something substantive in spite of themselves. Then she could free herself of Babykiller and his madness.

The lowest-ranking bureaucrat answered the phone and jotted a quick note. When he hung up, he announced, “I've got another name here. Some guy in New Orleans. I'm not sure I can pronounce his name, but it looks French.”

“New Orleans?” Larabeth said, reaching for the paper. “That's my stomping ground. I know any number of people there with unpronounceable names.”

“Why, it's Guillaume Langlois!” she said pronouncing it correctly, with a hard
G
:
Gee-YOME LangWAH
. “What did they do to him?”

“Whoever did this must really hate him,” the young man said. “They shot a bald eagle, stole her nest—chicks and all—and artistically arranged the whole kit and kaboodle on his front porch.”

Everybody busied themselves adding this news to the notepads carefully laid in front of them.

“I could get my feelings hurt. They didn't go to nearly as much trouble for me.” Larabeth was on a roll now. If she didn't soften these people up, they'd never do her any good at all. Maybe bad humor would help. “They just stole a turtle from the zoo, cut it up, and dumped it in front of my hotel room. How hard could it be? Turtles don't move that fast.”

Larabeth scanned their faces. The young man who answered the phone had laughed and the only other female in the room, a thirtyish woman with no apparent makeup on her serious face, had a twinkle in her eye. She had little hope of unearthing a sense of humor in the official-looking, gray-suited man at the head of the table.

“You know this guy?” asked the gray gentleman. He knew of Guillaume and she could tell he disapproved of him.

“Oh, Guillaume and I go way back. We were in graduate school together. Just because we took separate paths afterward doesn't mean we aren't friends. We've reached a truce. He says he could never prostitute himself for corporate America the way I do but, when cornered, he admits that I do it with integrity. I think his antics are pointless and counterproductive, but at least he's sincere.”

“I remember him now,” the telephone guy broke in. “He founded one of those radical environmental groups. GAIA's the name of it, right? And isn't he the one who highjacked the oil company's supply boat?”

“Yeah,” Larabeth said. “It wasn't much of a highjacking, but he got some national exposure. He kept a crew of offshore workers stranded on a drilling rig waiting for that supply boat to bring them home. I was right in the middle of the hubbub—the boat he highjacked belonged to one of my best clients.”

“Did he serve jail time for that?” The serious young woman had spoken. Larabeth's audience was warming up.

“Nope. My client was desperate to get those workers off that rig. Not because they were in danger. It was just that one of them was his daughter, who had a highly paid summer job working for Daddy. Unfortunately, she was being married within the week and, if Guillaume didn't return the crew boat, Daddy would have to charter a very large, very expensive boat to retrieve her and her co-workers. Maybe even a helicopter.”

Even the gray gentleman was beginning to smile. She seized the moment. “Guillaume made him squirm just long enough. He espoused his radical opinions—specifically, that my client was an air-polluting, water-befouling demon—on the evening news. Then he struck a deal. He would return the boat if my client dropped the charges. I'm sure Guillaume knew about the wedding and planned accordingly. My friend is a clever man.”

“Was your friend right?” The serious young woman had leaned forward, resting her arms on the table. “Was your client an air-polluting, water-befouling demon?”

“Not in the grand scheme of things, no. He'd be happy to pollute and befoul if he could, but he stays within the law because he has to. Even Guillaume admits that my client's not so bad as corporate tycoons go, but he was an easy target and Guillaume had a message to get before the American people. Nobody gets in Guillaume's way when he has a message.”

“I like his style,” said the guy with the telephone.

Larabeth half-expected the young man to dart out the door to join Guillaume's group of flamboyant malcontents, but the phone rang before he completely lost control.

“Three more victims. Three more dead animals. That makes forty-eight this morning,” the young man said as he hung up. He marked their locations on a wall map and the group settled in again to the task of looking for common threads that might help them pinpoint a culprit.

* * *

Randall Yancey surveyed the memorandum with a level of enthusiasm unbecoming in an FBI agent. This was his most exciting assignment yet. Okay, so it was only his third assignment, but it was exciting. He had never been to New Orleans.

He had a couple of questions, though. The task force assigned to these animal slashings seemed small. Anybody who could organize the slaughter and delivery of fifty endangered animals to victims scattered across the country—even in Alaska and Hawaii—was a threat to national security.

He considered the level of coordination required to pull it off so perfectly. Nobody, not one animal killer, not one messenger, had even been arrested. This organization could just as easily take out fifty people. It could happen tomorrow, fifty people dead on the doorsteps of America. He picked up his phone and buzzed Lefkoff. “What gives with this animal massacre thing? I'm supposed to interview and keep tabs on every victim and every lead in Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. You've got Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. I can't cover an area that size and neither can you. What am I missing here?”

Lefkoff gave a knowing grunt. He'd been with the FBI for nine years. Yancey had no idea what Lefkoff had done to get busted back to his level, but the man knew the Bureau inside and out.

“You left politics out of the equation. Hogood, at EPA, is a pompous ass and the chief would chew the heads off nails before he'd help him out. Hogood announced at his press conference that the investigatory arm of the EPA was eminently qualified to pursue this case, with or without the support of the FBI. The chief is hanging Hogood with his own rope.”

Yancey dropped the memorandum and let it float to his desk. “You mean I got this assignment because—”

“You got this assignment because you are devoid of experience. I got this assignment because I am a disgrace to every red-blooded Fed carrying a badge. The chief is giving this thing the smallest, least-qualified task force that he can assemble. Have fun in New Orleans. And, son, stay off Bourbon Street. Those people won't just eat you for lunch. They'll use you for hors d'ouerves.”

* * *

Larabeth strapped herself into the rental car. She missed her Mustangs. Either one of them would look positively feral next to this nondescript Euro-Japanese blob of steel.

Larabeth had always driven a Mustang. Her father bought her first Mustang when she earned her driver's license, shortly after Cynthia was born. It had been an extravagant gift for a fifteen-year-old—a powder-pink convertible with all the options—but this fifteen-year-old had been to hell and back. Her father had wanted Larabeth to feel normal again, just like the other high school girls, so he bought her the foolish car every high school girl dreamed of owning.

Her father's plan failed. Larabeth never ever felt like one of the normal girls again. She felt like an old woman with an old woman's problems who still had to get up every morning and pretend to be just a teenager with a cool car. She concentrated on her studies, graduated a year early, and sold the car to someone who was going to be around to use it. Before the ink was dry on her diploma, she was in Vietnam, as far away from her troubles as a girl could get.