The Death Gods (A Shell Scott Mystery) (9 page)

I opened the book about a
quarter of the way through, glanced at the photo there. It looked
very similar to that first one. I didn’t understand what I was
supposed to be seeing, or why Hank had wanted me to look at
this.

“
Are all these pix the
same?” I asked him.

“
No, each slightly
different. The book is a series of sixty prints made from
consecutive frames of an eight-millimeter movie film. This film,
made at a medical-research facility for its record of an
experimental procedure, was secretly removed from the facility by a
lab worker friendly to POCUEA. And returned the next day. After we
had made copies.”

“
Sounds kind of–well,
illegal to me.”

“
Me, too. Probably a dozen
of us broke two or three hundred laws. Interestingly, the
experiment, the research, was not illegal, but we are.” He smiled
and went on, “As I say, the pictures are all a little different.
Look more closely, Sheldon.”

I did. And then I could
see that, in this later photo, the chimpanzee’s head was tilted
slightly more forward and down, the eyes were protruding slightly,
and the lips instead of being in the “Whoo!” oval were spread to
the sides, exposing the large teeth. Finally, I noticed that the
metal cylinder was not a foot behind the chimp’s head but was
against the back of its skull.

And suddenly, with a quick
prickling coolness at the nape of my neck, I understood.

CHAPTER FIVE

I dug a finger into the
pages of the book, opened it near the end. Here, the chimp’s head
was far forward and twisted to one side; the eyes appeared to be
bursting from the brown skull; the lips were pulled so wide it
looked as if the stretched skin of the mouth might tear, as in
photos I’d seen of astronauts straining against several G’s of
acceleration. And there was blood....I closed the book, stared at
Hank.

He told me, “As I said, a
series of photographs, from movie film, each frame printed
separately on paper, so the pages may be flipped, giving the
illusion of movement, or reality.”

I nodded. “Sure. When I
was a kid, I had a bunch of little books like this, smaller ones.
Flip books we called them at school, but most were just cartoons,
sex stuff, and if the teachers caught us guys–even a few giggling
girls–with what they told us was mind-destroying pornography, we
were sent home with sealed notes. Punishment for looking at dirty
pictures. At least, they called them dirty.”

“
Not as dirty as these,
Sheldon. Flip them, look, learn.”

I held the book with thumb
and finger of my left hand near its spine, riffled the pages with
my other thumb, and for two or three seconds it was a real little
movie, starring a chimp. And now I could see that the cylindrical
thing was a kind of steel hammer, actuated and thrust forward by
the Rube-Goldberg mechanism of shafts and rods and metal elbows and
ball bearings, its power supplied by something outside the camera’s
view; and that the hammer jumped forward and struck the brown
skull, after which the chimp’s head snapped toward the camera and
then jerked slightly back, pulled by the distended and twisted
neck.

Hank was saying, “This was
an experiment–very expensive, not only because the researchers were
highly paid but because the chimpanzees cost a great deal, they are
so rare now–to measure the effect on a living brain, a brain very
similar to mine, or yours, of concussion produced by a given weight
moving at measurable acceleration. As in automobile accidents, or
falls from high places. The results were never put to any practical
use, a report filled with useless numbers was written, that is all.
It was just–scientific information and we, POCUEA, have a dozen
others, all different, most worse than this. In this particular
scientific experiment the three researchers—laughing and joking
during its progress, by the way—repeated the crushing blow to the
chimpanzee’s skull a total of ten times. What information of any
possible value could the second blow reveal? Much less the fourth,
the fifth. After the first impact the animal—these researchers
themselves named him Jock-Jock—was unconscious. After the second or
third he was unquestionably dead.” Hank was silent for a few
seconds, then said simply, “Ten.”

I suppose several seconds
passed before I became aware that I had crushed the book-sized
series of photographs in my hand, crumpling the pages. The cover
was torn.

Hank, without my being
aware of his movement, had gone back behind the big desk, was
seated in his leather chair again. Without a pause, he went on
casually. “You should see my little movie flippers of cats in small
cages being given electrical shocks, hundreds of shocks, to
determine how long is required before the cats stop jumping and
making pain noises, or convulsing, how long until they give up and
stop attempting to escape from the box that cannot be escaped from.
It is a portion of research by psychiatrists, those who testify as
experts in court about our sanity.”

It was a very strange
moment. With part of my attention I had been following Hank’s
words, visualizing some of what he described, almost involuntarily
pursuing his suggestion that I consider the mentalities of those
people he spoke of; and at the same time, in my mind’s eye, I had
glimpsed a flickering and almost cartoon like procession of men,
and even women, who looked and walked and talked like all the other
citizens of earth but who beneath the skin-deep surface of smile
and speech and joke and grin were cold, cruel, calloused, like
bloodless aliens in our midst, strangers more at home with pain
than pleasure and with death than life.

But the rest of the
strangeness of that moment was a recognition, in that other less
busy part of my mind, a sudden certainty that nothing said to me
this morning by Henry Hernandez, M.D., had been merely a pleasant
old geezer’s ramblings or the casual poppings-off of an overly
“exercised” new client. Some of that, maybe; but most of it and
maybe all of it had been the product of a keen and calculating
mind, a controlled and considered exercise deliberately designed
to... To what?

The silence, in which
neither of us spoke, lasted only a few seconds; but it was a long
silence nonetheless. “Hank,” I said finally, “what is it you really
want from me?”

He smiled slightly,
pointed mustache lifting to form and almost straight gray line
across his upper lip. “For now... keep me from getting run over,
find Rusty, tell the Vungers to make new appointments, take two
aspirins and call me in the morning.”

I smiled, the strangeness
of that earlier moment slipping away, being replaced by
common-sense normality. So I said, “Feel better already, Doctor,”
and stood up.

Hank was also standing,
looking at his watch. “Good timing,” he said. “My patient is in
half a minute.”

I felt like asking him
what this patient had been dying from when he brought him/her back
from the grave; and I still had several unanswered questions
concerning the Vungers, among a number of other curious
things.

But I merely said, “I’m on
my way, then. I don’t really know what to think about... Well,
let’s just say for now that I guess I got some sort of medical
education this morning–or brainwashing–along with the case. Hadn’t
expected that, but I’ve done jobs for a circus snake-charmer and a
belly dancer from Bombay, so I guess–”

“
Wait,” he interrupted me,
walking around his desk and stopping before me. He placed one hand
lightly on my shoulder and, looking first at the wall, then the
floor, and finally at my face, said, “I must be truthful with you,
Sheldon. I must confess. This, the medical things, the brainwash,
was most purposeful. It was not an accident that I went into areas
that may seem not germane to the case you have taken. But I wished
you to hear certain things, and I wished to observe closely your
reactions to them.”

He paused. “I need
someone...” It was clearly difficult for him to get the next part
out for some reason, but he continued briskly, “...to help me. In
more than just the hit-and-miss green van. And that someone–I now
believe for certain it is you, Sheldon–cannot be one who will
become dizzy, or resign, if I tell him the earth is really flat, or
shock his intelligence with strange truth. I do not like asking
another to help me do what I should do myself, but they are coming
at me from so many directions, and now, at eighty-four, I have not
the energy I once–”

“
What? At what? How old are
you?”

“
Eighty-four. Oh, birthday
is next month, so eighty-three and eleven-twelfths is more
accurate.”

He kept on talking, but I
wasn’t listening. I almost sat down in my chair again,
involuntarily. I was astonished. This old geezer was an old geezer.
Oddly, my next thought–that Henry Hernandez, M.D. was sure doing
something right–inclined me toward belief, or at least some belief,
in the other things he’d told me this morning. Of course, what if
the old boy was lying? What if he was really just a fifty-year-old
duck in terrible shape?

During my confusion,
Eleanora’s voice announced over the intercom that the doctor’s next
patient was waiting. So I waved a hand at Hank, who nodded briskly,
and then I left. But in my Cad, before turning on the ignition, I
looked past the painted wooden sign to the front door of Dr.
Hernandez’ little house-and-office, wondering: What the hell have I
gotten myself into?

Then I started the car,
drove past the nearby intersection and on for another block, and
took a right at Lemon Street–to start finding out.

* * * * * *

The guy’s name was
Williston, and he was sweaty from mowing the handsome green lawn
before his house half a block down Lemon Street. I’d stopped at
both other houses before his on this side of the street, rung the
bells and asked my questions: Nine days ago, green panel truck or
van, two men in it, dog chasing them? No luck–until
Williston.

He was about forty years
old–or maybe a hundred; I was still confused about ages–leaning on
the handle of his muscle-powered mower when I walked up to him.
Half a minute before he’d been actually running back and forth,
like the speeded-up film of a maniacal gardener. It was a bright
Los Angeles morning, a little warm for October, and the man’s face
and hairy arms was slick with sweat because he’d already clipped
ninety percent of the grass and was beginning to look, I thought,
dubious about clipping the rest of it.

“
Morning,” I
said.

“
Hi.” He grinned
cheerfully. “You wanna finish this goddamn lawn for me?”

I laughed, thinking that I
had correctly interpreted the sweat, heaving chest, and his tongue
hanging out. “Sure,” I said. “And you can paint my house. It’s only
four stories–“

“
Nah, I gotta do this for
my health. Wife said she’d kill me if I didn’t. Last week of my
vacation, and this I’m doing. Next year, the Caribbean. And let the
lawn die.”

I nodded sympathetically,
told him my name and that I was a P.I., showed him my wallet card,
and found out he was Ed Williston–then asked my questions. This
time there was a positive response.

“
Yeah, week or so ago.
Let’s see, ah, nine days, that’d be Wednesday? Uh-huh, I was out
here looking at the goddamn lawn, thinking maybe I should buy a
coupla sheep. Anyway, this green job came skidding around the
corner there–” he pointed to the intersection of Lemon and
Mulberry–“and ripped past here. And then, coming after them running
like hell was this dog. German Shepherd you said?”

“
Mostly. Three years old,
black and tan, with these crazy white eyeb–”

“
Must’ve been him, he was
going like a bullet, beautiful, then the guy driving the van hit
his brakes and came to a screech up there in front of Erickson’s.”
He pointed again, in the opposite direction and across the street.
“Doors in the back opened up and the dog jumped in. And off they
went.”

“
They took him? Drove off
with him?”

“
Yeah. You mean, like
stole? Looked like he was after them, not the other way around, so
I thought it was probably their dog. You know how if you leave ‘em
and drive off and they get out, they’ll chase you for a hundred
miles. Well, who was he, yours?”

I shook my head. “Belongs
to a friend of mine. He hasn’t seen the dog since then.”

After another minute we’d
agreed there must have been two men in the van, one driving and
another who opened the rear doors–but he hadn’t seen either of
them. Also, like Hank, he’d noticed some kind of lettering on the
van’s side, but had no idea what it said. And he hadn’t seen the
green van since that Wednesday, or any time before then for that
matter.

So I thanked him, gave him
one of my cards and said, “If you remember anything else, I’d
appreciate your calling me.”

He nodded slowly, looking
past me as if thinking of something else. “You know,” he said,
“talking about your friend’s dog getting taken away like that,
maybe stole, reminded me. Couple of the neighbors here lost pets in
the last month or so.” He looked at me then. “You know, one pet
missing, you figure it ran away, got lost, hit by a car, whatever.
But that dog, after two others right here on this
street.”