The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (48 page)

I shook my head hard,
practically rattled it, slapped my chest, felt my arms and legs and
pinched my cheek and nose and parts of my neck. I had been pretty
far out for a long moment there, and it was good to be back. I had
a funny feeling that, somewhere in those near-addled thoughts had
been one that was important, very important, but couldn’t pin it
down. Besides, it felt so good to be able to thump my chest and
arms and legs that I said to hell with that noise, there’s work to
be done. And got busy doing it.

I snapped nine shots with
Hank’s little camera, three each of Helga, Guenther, and Rusty, but
taking the three of Guenther started one more shiver rippling up my
spine. His eyes were moving wildly, silently, with an erratic
jerkiness that was unnerving.

Finally I closed that
cabinet door I had opened minutes before. Guenther’s eyes snapped
left again, far left, and stayed there.

I walked away from him,
past Rusty, around those shelves and back into Wintersong’s office.
There was no knob or handle on the concealed door, so I closed it
by pulling on the painting’s frame. Then I sat again behind the
Director’s desk, and grabbed the phone.

I got Hank, but hesitated
about telling him what I’d found. I didn’t know where to start.
Hank, however, started going a mile a minute, explaining that he
already had twenty or thirty people looking for Wintersong’s and
Belking’s automobiles, watching their homes, that he had personally
phoned the Halcyon Hotel and learned Dane Smith had not returned to
her room.

Finally I interrupted, and
just said it bluntly. “I’ve found Rusty, Hank. He’s
dead.”

Silence for ten or fifteen
seconds, maybe longer. Then “In my bones, I knew before you said
it. Sheldon, was he tortured?”

Telling Hank what
Wintersong had done to Rusty—including my own part, at the very
end—was not one of the easiest things I’ve ever had to do. But I
got it said.

Then I told him about the
Vungers.

There were several more
silent seconds, during which I couldn’t even hear Hank breathing: I
guessed he’d squeezed a hand over the phone’s mouthpiece. Then he
said rapidly, sounding almost as cantankerous as normal, but with
perhaps a little more anger than usual in the brnngngg vitality of
his voice, “So, now it is murder that cannot be disguised as health
care even by the symptom-squashers, who usually have a wonderful
bassackward name for their less obvious mistakes. Goddamn, now no
one can get away with calling it “authorized and approved”
treatment to cut off peoples’ heads....

He paused, swearing softly
in Spanish for a while; I didn’t understand any of it, but I would
have sworn it was swearing. “My dog, Rusty,” he said, “and my
patients, Helga and Guenther. For Wintersong, the only thing more
satisfying would be my head stuck on a stick in his laboratory. To
that self-satisfied self-serving gusano it is an unforgivable
disaster that I helped the Vungers cure themselves—of his own
special proprietary disease, IFAI, which like everything else is
incurable—without any drugs, or cutting them up and replacing parts
of them, without even his miserable vaccine. And cheap, for nickels
and dimes instead of an outrageous hundred-thousand bucks per
capita...make that decapita. He and Belking, too, goes without
saying it, hate me furiously and fear me and every doctor like me
who cures any by-their-definition incurable peoples. Plus, they
both know that I, my friends and I, intend determinedly to destroy
them, they have spies—”

“
Hank. Spies? Listen. I’ve
really got to split—”

“
We have had two traitors,
pill doctors who told the sonofbitches about our plans, our
timetable, whatever they learned traitorously—”

“
Hank—later.
Goodbye.”

“
Not yet. Forgive me.
Sheldon, I will not forgive the bastardos, not for Guenther and
Helga, not for Rusty. Oh, shit. Not for Rusty...”

After a long pause, Hank
went on, “Take a photograph of him, Sheldon. Of my fine dog-friend,
that was. Not for me, but for evidence—”

“
I already have, Hank. And
of the Vungers—which means the law has to be told about them right
away, told about this whole operation. I can call the LAPD from
here myself, even if the Sheriff does have
jurisdiction—”

“
No, Sheldon. No. Let me
inform the proper official persons, please—I have already spoken
for you to one of your LAPD friends, about Miss Dane Smith, and the
possibility she departed from Omega with Dr. Wintersong or Mr.
Belking. But of this new monstrousness, it is of excruciating
importance how, and to whom, the informing is consummated. You have
more important things to do, one of which is to stay alive—and
bring me your photographs and eye-witnessing testimony. Beside...”
He stopped briefly, continued, “To nearly everyone in the United
States, even the world, Dr. Wintersong and Hobart Belking are men
possessed of great virtue, men of exceeding ability and honor. Few,
in the absence of overwhelming proof, will believe they are
duplicitous monsters. Most importantly if through even small error,
word of our intentions should reach these honored monsters, the
evidence you have found would swiftly disappear. It would then be
your word against theirs.”

“
My word—plus some
photographs of severed heads.”

“
If, fortunately they—and
you—did not also disappear into the Bermuda Triangle. Wintersong
and Belking would say you faked the pictures, doctored them. And
Hobart Belking could spend a billion dollars, if necessary, to
prove it. He has spent much already to pervert justice, so this
would be nothing new. You understand?”

“
Well, yeah...enough,
anyhow. But, Hank, if you’re going to inform the law, I would hate
to think you mean sometime tomorrow—”

“
No, no, this afternoon,
soon, with only small delay, for accomplishment of certain vital
things. Trust me.”

“
I suppose I’ll have
to.”

“
I must confess, Sheldon, I
hoped you would not have to force yourself to place trust in
me.”

Hank, didn’t sound hurt,
or offended, or angry, but there was a certain, “something” in his
tone, rather like that of a high school teacher greeting a favorite
student arriving in class, very late, without any pants
on.

I said, “Can I force
myself a little?”

“
Hokay.” It sounded as if
he were smiling. Then he went on, quite seriously, “It is essential
that the evidence you have found remain available—to be seen by
official people so it cannot later be denied. But you must not stay
there. You must expeditiously bring your photographs, anything you
can bring of value, here to me.”

“
You’ll be in your office
if...whenever I get there?”

“
Yes. This office is, as
you might express it, a command center, and central place for
communications from many others, such as those looking for the
Mercedes and Jaguar automobiles. So come speedily, but ah...well,
when you depart from Omega, it would be considerate if you left a
door unlocked, or open. Even two doors.”

I thought about that. But
only a little; it didn’t require a lot of thinking. “Hank, if
you’ve got some fruitcake idea about coming out here—”

“
Do not concern yourself
with fruitcakes. This is our most important opportunity in several
years, and the time could not be more propitious—”

“
Hank, dammit, if you’re
thinking of coming out here, the damned guards will blow you
away!”

“
They cannot blow away a
hundred tourists from Iowa, unless they are equipped with machine
guns and bazookas, nor is it likely they would annihilate a mere
mob of fifty or so citizens, peacefully assembled at Omega to
protest organized cruelty to animals and bugs, particularly should
such citizens be carrying crudely-lettered signs and placards
saying ‘DOWN WITH SCIENTISTS WHO’—”

“
Are you off your nut? You
must...hey. Citizens, placards—you didn’t just now think of this,
did you?”

“
No, months ago, years. Now
is always too late—but you do not wish to hear this.”

“
Yeah. I mean, no. I don’t
think I do.”

“
Come speedily, Sheldon. I
will have much to tell you—some important things I have withheld,
but will withhold no longer.”

I started to ask him about
those “things,” but he was asking me, “Have you been elsewhere in
Omega?”

“
Not yet, just this main
building. After checking that burn-bin, I came straight here to
Wintersong’s office.”

“
Is good enough. There is
much more you might see were there leisure, which there is not. But
you have already seen more than plenty, more even than I hoped,
which pleases me. You have done well, Sheldon. But the essential
action is getting yourself out of Omega safely. You did not finish
telling me before—you have a plan for this?”

“
I don’t, well, I don’t.” I
scowled. “Look, just leave all that to me, okay? I’m going to hang
up, give this joint a quick tour—get more photos and split out of
here, hopefully employing a clever stratagem or two, which, if I
do, I’ll tell you about, and if...Adios! I go!”

“
Con Dios.”

We hung up.

I sat in the Director’s
chair a little longer, thinking.

Until I’d mentioned it to
Hank, I hadn’t really planned to “quick tour” the Omega facility,
but that struck me as well worth doing—particularly right now, when
I was already inside and the guys with guns were outside. Who could
ask for anything more?

Since seeing Rusty, and
the other ugliness in the lab next door, I hadn’t been thinking of
much else, just fully occupied with each moment. But it was now
time to start planning ahead, devising stratagems, and...like
that.

The thought of
Wintersong’s lab next door reminded me of Hank’s suggestion to
leave a door or two unlocked. It also reminded me that very few
people, and no outsiders except me, could know about Wintersong’s
secret switch that opened the door concealed right here behind its
rainbow-colored painting. If I was going to leave any door
unlocked, that had to be number-one.

So I pulled out the desk’s
top-left drawer, poked my left hand inside, and found the little
bowling pin...and that was all.

I didn’t hear him come
inside. Bending toward the drawer, I didn’t even see him, not at
first. But I knew from the tone of his voice, from the three little
words he yelled, that he had a gun in his hand, that it was pointed
at me, and that he was damned close to squeezing the trigger. All
that, without the least doubt about any of it, merely from:
“FREEZE, you bastard!”

CHAPTER THIRTY

I froze. The man’s voice
was usually lower and more whispery, sometimes sibilant, but even
when he was yelling in apparent surprise or even shock I knew that
voice was Grinner’s.

Without moving my head, I
slanted my eyes right to get a look at him. As I also looked at
Grinner’s hard face with nothing pretty in it now, at both his
muscular arms extended toward me with his left hand cupping the
right holding a fat-bodies Colt .45 pointed at my teeth—I could
still see those wild eyes in Guenther’s head, rolling, sliding and
jerking and almost spinning. Spinning faster and faster.

Grinner said, “How the
hell did you get in here?”

Clearly, for a fraction of
a second, he really wanted to know. But, even more clearly, he
wasn’t going to wait for an answer, because right after that he
continued, almost whispering, “Never mind, Scott. Good—”

I knew he was already
saying “Goodbye,” maybe already before squeezing the Colt’s trigger
to blow me away, and even though my holstered .38 was only two feet
from my right hand I also knew there wasn’t a chance I could reach
it in time. So, not even thinking about it, without consciously
planning to distract Grinner or startle him or shoot him, without
planning a damned thing, I curled my trigger finger—not on my right
hand, on the left, squeezing that finger against the bowling-pin
lever it was already touching, and the suddenly-opening door made
an ear-smashing click-BLAM sound like a .45 caliber pistol going
off—which is precisely what it was.

My eyes were on Grinner’s
gun, but I could see the face behind it, and I saw his eyes jerk
toward the painting-covered door, or at least toward the click as
that door jumped ajar, and the muzzle of his fat .45 followed his
eyes. Not much, not far: Just far enough.

The heavy slug hissed past
my ear almost close enough to burn part of it off, but it missed
the teeth he’d been aiming at, missed my head. And that gave me
time to yank out my own gun, and fire, before Grinner recovered
enough to fire at me again. I shot at him three times and hit him
twice. That first .38 Special slug smacked into the wall behind him
and at least a yard to his left, but the next two went into
him.

Sometimes men, hit two or
three times, even more, with .38 caliber bullets are able to stay
on their feet long enough to empty their own gun at you, or walk
around the block, drive to the pool hall. Not Grinner. I didn’t
know what I’d hit inside him, but it must have been something
fairly significant. He went straight down, landed hard, and fell
against the wall behind him with his head smacking it and bouncing
forward like a rubber ball, then slowly moving back to touch the
wall again, and stay there.