Wounded Earth (15 page)

Babykiller's voice wafted out of the recorder like a pungent odor. “So Langlois wishes he could take care of you. That, my dear, is my job. I left you a token of my esteem, and I don't think you appreciated it. You must never reject me again. And, Doc—from now on, I expect you to take more pains with your appearance. If it takes a safety pin to hold your underwear in place, then use the goddamned safety pin. I will always expect perfection of you, because I know you can deliver it. Stay close to the phone.”

* * *

Larabeth was startled by J.D.'s voice. She had assumed she was alone. The long lunch with Guillaume had put her incurably behind in her work and the message from Babykiller had left her too distracted to work efficiently. She was working her way through a stack of financial statements that she had failed to finish by the close of the business day.

J.D. stood at the door, obviously waiting to be invited in. She declined to indulge him.

“So you're speaking to me now,” she said. “I thought I disgusted you.”

“Norma called me while I was working down in accounting and insisted that I come up and escort you home. I was already planning to do that, but I let her think it was her idea. She refused to go home until I promised to come protect you.”

“Well, I thank you for that. And Norma.”

J.D. stopped lingering in the doorway and invaded her space. She could hear the denim of his jeans creak as he sat on the end of her desk.

“I've lined up a surveillance expert for tomorrow. Be up bright and early because we're coming to sweep your house for bugs. And we'll take our time about it, because Babykiller's overdue. Maybe he'll call while we're there. If he doesn't, we'll have to keep trying until he does.”

Larabeth bent back over her financial reports. He leaned closer and asked, “Am I bothering you?”

“It
is
uncomfortable, being protected by someone who thinks you are pond scum.”

He pulled away. “Do you really think that? And did you really think I would leave you to deal with Babykiller alone? Look, I don't understand why you can't either tell your daughter the truth or get out of her life, but I haven't walked in your shoes. And I've grown up some.” He put a tentative hand on her shoulder. “It's going to be harder for you to get rid of me this time.”

Larabeth wanted to believe him, but she kept one eye on the door.

Cynthia
drove through a Savannah River Site security checkpoint, the first of three she would pass on the way to the remediation site where she worked every day. There were two guards at each checkpoint and, since the day shift worked from seven to three, she saw a different set when she left each afternoon at five. They worked rotating shifts so, sooner or later, everybody worked this checkpoint during Cynthia's workday. After twelve years on the job, she knew each of the guards on sight and most of them by name.

Butch didn't look too good as he waved her through. He looked like he'd had a hard night or three—red-rimmed eyes, sallow skin, sloppy shave. He had looked that way for a while. And yesterday, as she was going home, she'd had to honk the horn to get Payton's attention. She could have sworn he was asleep. Every day, she passed a self-congratulatory billboard proclaiming that the Savannah River Site employed the largest security force in the country.

That sounded like a lot of security, but they were hardly all front-line personnel and three hundred square miles was a lot of ground to cover. Site security was the butt of many jokes among workers at the Savannah River facility. One story, unbelievable but sadly true, was invariably told to new BioHeal employees during their first week of employment as contractors at the facility.

Once, during a surprise inspection, DOE representatives masquerading as terrorists had successfully stolen some plutonium and escaped into the woods because one guard didn't know how to load his machine gun, another couldn't get his machine gun unjammed, and the pursuit helicopter was dispatched without weapons. The guards were still shooting at each other twenty minutes after the fake terrorists had made off with the plutonium, or so the story went.

Of course, that incident had happened years ago, and a crack government team had drawn up a multi-year security improvement plan. It was top-secret, of course, so no one knew how much progress had been made, but the current joke was that the first step had already been taken: All pursuit helicopters had been armed with popguns and water pistols.

Cynthia thought that maybe she was a stick-in-the-mud, but she was also a safety engineer. She knew a lot about protecting workers from contaminants and nearly nothing about security, but she believed in worker safety. Right now, she was seeing clear signs of substance abuse in the security staff and she wanted something done about it.

She wheeled her car around and headed for the security chief's office. Butch barely looked up as he waved her through the checkpoint.

* * *

“So you see,” Cynthia finished, “I think you may have a problem that needs close attention. God forbid we ever have a serious security breach, but if we do, your staff needs to be at their best.”

“I appreciate your concern,” Chief Danka said. He gave an unctuous smile. “I'll get right on it. I'm proud to say that no employee on my watch has ever failed drug screening, but a supervisor can't be everywhere. When I think of the consequences of a security breach here. . .well, I appreciate your sharp eyes, young lady, and your willingness to come to me with your concerns.”

Danka seemed reasonable enough. Cynthia prepared to leave, but the man kept talking.

“My employees know that nobody thinks much of them. It's a real morale problem. And their jobs are tougher than they look. It isn't easy to sit, day in and day out, checking traffic, keeping track of the closed-circuit monitors, keeping the pursuit copters maintained just in case they're needed. Eternal vigilance can be pretty boring.”

“That's what I'm worried about,” Cynthia said. “Repetitive jobs
are
boring and those are the workers who are prone to substance abuse. I know that from my own training. It hasn't been so long since they busted twenty-five guards at Oak Ridge—twenty-five—for drugs.”

She rose to end the conversation, but Danka kept talking. “I do appreciate your concern, Miss, and if you see anything—I mean anything—out of the ordinary, please come straight to me. I'll take care of it.”

Cynthia thanked him and backed quickly out the guardhouse door before he could start apologizing again. The man was certainly eager to please. Perhaps that explained his staff's lack of discipline. Sometimes the boss just has to be the boss. It was a hard lesson, but she'd learned it. Certain employees will wipe their boots on anyone or anything that looks like a doormat.

She hoped Chief Danka got his staff whipped into shape quickly, because sloppy management of the security team was intolerable. Not here at the Savannah River Site, a nuclear target that would make any red-blooded terrorist salivate. If she didn't see clear improvement in one week's time, she would take the matter to Danka's supervisor.

Cynthia hoped she didn't have to go over Danka's head. He seemed like such a nice guy.

* * *

As Cynthia's car pulled away, Danka said, “Bitch,” in a low, clear voice. He twirled the combination on the safe concealed in the rear of his filing cabinet. It was time to restock his supplies. He only dealt in pills at work, just generic prescription sedatives. Some of his customers preferred pot or crack or heroin, but pills weren't so bulky and there was no paraphernalia to deal with. And it was easy to manipulate the dosage in a capsule. That meant a lot to his supplier.

He enjoyed looking at the merchandise. The pills, segregated by color, rattled around in huge Tupperware containers. There were yellow ones and green ones and nondescript gray ones. Half-yellow and half-red ones. Pink ones. The only difference between them was the concentration of phenobarbital hiding inside the plastic. And no one but Danka and his supplier knew for sure which was which.

There had been a message with his last shipment, telling him that the next batch of pills would be much stronger. Danka didn't see any point in selling better stuff for the same price. Maybe his supplier was concerned about keeping the clientele hooked. Danka laughed out loud. There was no problem there. He had trouble maintaining his inventory as it was. Especially the pink ones. Everybody seemed to like the pink ones.

The message specifically cautioned him to avoid taking the stronger pills himself. If he got too stoned, he might have trouble keeping track of the money and the merchandise. Danka laughed again. He didn't take any of his own stuff. Life was good as it was. Besides, somebody had to supply vials of clean piss to the laboratory flunkies.

* * *

Agent Yancey was exultant. The Babykiller tapes that Dr. McLeod had sent him were weak and inconclusive, but they had been good enough. The Bureau was sending him some help.

He wished he could talk to Dr. McLeod directly. She would make a better agent than any real agent he knew. Her idea to use Langlois as a drop was inspired and her execution was flawless. The asshole calling himself Babykiller could not possibly know that he, a representative of the much-maligned Federal Bureau of Investigation, was now in possession of tapes and transcriptions of the asshole's conversations with Dr. McLeod. And he would be getting more tapes just as quickly as Dr. McLeod could make them and funnel them through Langlois.

Not only had he gotten himself some help in pursuing this lead, he'd pulled a personal coup while he was at it. When Agent-in-Charge Chao promised to fly another agent down within twenty-four hours, Yancey had asked for Lefkoff. He pointed out that Lefkoff could drive over from Mobile in a couple of hours so they could chase any leads while they were hot. If it took another agent a day or two to fly down to Mobile to replace Lefkoff, no big deal. Nothing was happening there, anyway.

Chao had hesitated, but he finally agreed that Yancey's logic was good. Yancey had other motives besides good logic. He liked Lefkoff, they worked well together and, most importantly, Lefkoff liked to keep a low profile since his mysterious disgrace.

Yancey could smell glory coming his way and Lefkoff wouldn't try to take over the investigation. They might call him "The Kid" back in Washington, but that would change when he caught Babykiller and proved that he and the Bambi Slasher were one and the same. Yancey really hated being low man on the totem pole.

* * *

Gerald called Babykiller as soon as he got the news. The McLeod woman was smart and she was sneaky. Using Langlois to funnel information to the Feds was a stroke of genius. How would Babykiller ever know what she had done? She trusted Langlois like a brother. She slipped him some information right before the Feds paid him a routine call. It should have been easy for him to pass the information on, undetected.

But he had been detected and now the Babykiller would know. Gerald wouldn't want to be in Dr. Larabeth McLeod's patent leather pumps.

* * *

Babykiller sighed. So Larabeth had taped their conversations and given the tapes to Langlois, who had passed them on to the Feds. He should teach her a lesson. She wouldn't pull any more foolish stunts if she knew her daughter would be the one who paid the price.

Fortunately for Larabeth and her daughter, Babykiller was feeling magnanimous. He was willing to let her transgression slide, just this once. Unfortunately for Guillaume Langlois, Babykiller didn't feel like letting his transgression slide. Not even a little bit.

* * *

Larabeth was ready for bed when she got home. Before she got home. She reactivated the security system as soon as she came through the door, just as J.D. had taught her, and unbuttoned her blouse before she even reached the bedroom door.

There was a white nightgown on her bed and she would have stepped out of her clothes, put it on, and crawled under the covers, but there was a single, tiny problem.

It wasn't her nightgown.

The bathroom light flickered strangely and she walked through the doorway without thinking about what might be on the other side. Dozens of white candles blazed around her oversized whirlpool tub. They floated in the sinks. Long slender candles had been wired to the limbs of her weeping fig tree. The scent of vanilla hung in the air.

The tub was full. Larabeth took note of its copious frosting of bubbles and the lack of wax dripping from the candles. She dipped her hand into the bathwater. It was still warm.

The person who did this had just left. Or maybe they hadn't. Larabeth backed slowly out of the bathroom, knowing that she would be running if she were thinking at all clearly. She paused by the bed and fingered the fine, sheer cloth of the mysterious nightgown. It was a bride's negligee and she had never worn one.

Larabeth knew that the person who had left this thing wanted her to pick it up, to examine his gift, and she felt a hypnotic need to do so. She lifted the gown by its narrow lacy straps and it parted along a crazy diagonal slash that reached from breast to knee. Lying on the bed, where it had been hidden beneath the negligee, was a kitchen knife she didn't recognize.

She threw the negligee to the floor and started running. She was halfway to her car before she felt the cool evening air on her skin and realized that her blouse was still open to the waist.