Greg Iles - True Evil

Rusk ordered a cheeseburger and a Coke and watched one of the tail cars park in the lot a few yards away. What the hell could he do? If they were following him like this, then they were tapping his phones as well. The office, the house, his cell phones. For a moment he wondered if Carson Barnett had turned him in.

No way, he assured himself. Barnett wanted out of his marriage, and he was willing to do anything to accomplish that. It was that fucking Morse. But was it only Morse? That was the question.

Last night, Thora Shepard had called his house fourteen times. After two hysterical messages had been left on his answering machine, Rusk unplugged the phone. When he arrived at his office this morning, Janice had reported twelve messages left by a Mrs. Shepard, each one more frantic than the last. Thora wasn't so stupid as to have stated her reason for needing to talk to him, but something told him that Alex Morse was involved. That, or Thora was having second thoughts about killing her husband. That wouldn't surprise Rusk. The woman might be movie-star hot, but she was also nuts, as he had seen the first time around. Typical society chick, really. She looked as if she had it all together, but underneath the facade she didn't know whether she was going or coming.

He took his cheeseburger from the girl in the window and paid with a $10 bill. "Ketchup," he said. "I need some ketchup."

He took a huge gulp of his Coke and pulled into the exit lane. One of the tails pulled right up behind him. These guys weren't even trying to conceal themselves.

The funny thing about Thora Shepard, he thought, crossing over the interstate and turning onto I-55 North, was that they hadn't even had to kill her first husband. The poor guy had died of natural causes. Of course, Rusk had never told her that. Thora had made her payments just as instructed, and he was happy to take her money. The irony of that woman becoming a return customer was almost too much. But Rusk didn't have time to enjoy it now. Thora was flipping out, and if she lost it in front of the wrong people, it could cost him dearly. He needed to make contact with Dr. Tarver, and soon. He had no idea how to do that, but as he roared north toward Jackson, he realized that he didn't have to-Dr. Tarver would do that for him. All he had to do was play it cool. Sometime in the next twelve hours, he would walk around a corner or step into an elevator or climb into his car, and Tarver would be there. Like magic. That was how the guy worked. And all the FBI agents in the world wouldn't be able to stop him.

Rusk looked at his rearview mirror and laughed. It was time to cash in his chips and split the country. He only hoped they could fleece Carson Barnett before D-day. Barnett would be their piece de resistance, and he would set them up for the last couple of decades of their lives. As the interstate flowed beneath him like a gray river, Rusk saw himself on a sun-drenched beach with a dark rum drink in his hand and Lisa lying nude beside him. He hated to leave the kids behind, but there was nothing to be done about that. Business was business. He slowed down until the dark sedan behind him had no choice but to pass. As its clean-cut driver glanced his way, Rusk smiled like the Cheshire cat.

Dr. Tarver regretted the look of dumb incomprehension on his adoptive brother's face. It was exactly the look he had expected, the puzzled disbelief of a child being told that his dog has been run over by a car.

"All of them?" Judah said. "Every one?"

"I'm afraid so," said Eldon. "I'm sorry."

"Even the chimps?"

They were standing in the back room, beside the primate cages, not the best place for this discussion. "The chimps most of all. Nothing can remain that would tell anyone what we've been doing here."

Judah's face was working like that of a boy doing sums that were beyond him. "I thought what we were doing here was good."

"It is good, Judah. But people won't understand that. You know what they're like."

"I know, but, but what if I kept them? Just some of them?"

"I wish you could. I really do. But you know that's impossible."

"I been studying hard. I been practically running the front this past year. Why couldn't I keep running the breeding part, you know? Just the beagles?"

"You don't really know what's involved in the business part, Judah. There's so much more to it than taking care of the dogs. There's ordering and records, computers and taxes. Plus, you have to be licensed. If I'm not here, the whole thing just doesn't work."

A new fear entered Judah's eyes. "Where are you going?"

"I don't know that yet. But I'm going to send for you once I get there."

"Are you?"

"Don't I always?"

Judah's eyes darted toward the cages again. "Why can't we just give the animals away?"

"Because they're sick. They're carrying special germs now. They would infect other animals, and that might be a disaster. It might even cause Armageddon, like in-"

"The Revelation of St. John," Judah said in the voice of an automaton. "Chapter sixteen. The seven vials of the angels. My name is in that book." His voice dropped in pitch. "‘And the second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man. Every living thing that was in the sea, and had life, died, and-'"

"That's right," Eldon said, cutting him off before the spirit took him. "You don't want to be called to account before God for bringing that to pass, do you?"

After long reflection, Judah shook his big head.

"I tell you what," Eldon said, as if just thinking of this idea on the spot. "You take care of the beagles and leave the primates to me. I know how hard that would be for you."

Judah bit his bottom lip. "The beagles is hard, too, you know? I know every one of 'em now. Every one has a given name."

It amazed Eldon that a man as tough as Judah could be so soft when it came to animals. For Judah was a fearsome creature, once roused to anger. He was a match for any jihad-minded suicide bomber. It was men like Judah who had taken Iwo Jima from the Japanese. Men who could bayonet their way through endless ranks of the enemy, then charge uphill into withering machine-gun fire and never question the orders that put them there. That unthinking patriotism had allowed America to survive into adolescence, and a continued lack of it would insure that she never saw national maturity.

"You don't know," Judah went on. "You're never up front with 'em. It's like they're all mine. Like June Bug when we was kids."

June Bug was an old mutt with cataracts that had lived with them for fifteen years. Judah had doted on her, right to the end.

"This is like when daddy used to drown the runts," Judah said. "In the big washtub."

Eldon put his arm around his brother's massive shoulder and led him away from the primate cages. It was amazing that anyone had ever mistaken him for Judah's biological brother. Intellectually, they inhabited two different dimensions; Eldon's mind probably contained four times as many neurochemical connections as Judah's. Yet his adoptive brother had proved quite useful over the years, and he would in future.

They were in the front now, with their little town of beagles, two walls of black, white, and brown fur glinting with plaintive eyes. It would take Judah most of the day to euthanize them all. Not that they would resist. One of the reasons beagles were used for medical research was that they were so docile and friendly. They would only look up with mild reproof while you stuck in needles and probes; they were living proof that the meek would not inherit the earth, at least in the animal word.

"How are you going to do it?" Judah asked. "The chimps, I mean?"

"I'm going to dart them with a barbiturate. After they're fully unconscious, I'll use potassium chloride. They won't feel a thing, Brother."