David Morrell - The Totem

He touched her arm, and she responded, walking with him along the hallway. Neither looked at Cody. At the corner, she glanced back at the windows in the wall down there, and then she went downstairs with him, and he was watching by the back door as she walked across the parking lot.

That poor, sad, lonely, tortured woman, he was thinking. When she raised that baseball bat, she must have been in agony. He waved in farewell as she drove away, then thought a moment before heading toward the phone inside the nurses' station.

He'd avoided making this call much too long, reluctantly dialing Parsons' number, and the man answered, sleepy, angry.

"Slaughter? Eight o'clock? On Sunday? Can't this wait until a decent hour?"

"No, we really have to talk."

"Well, Jesus, Slaughter-"

"This is serious. We don't have too much time."

Parsons exhaled. "All right, then. I'll see you in my office in an hour. But this better be important."

"Oh, don't worry," Slaughter told him. "You'll wish that you didn't know."

Slaughter frowned and hung up. He was thinking that in all the years he'd lived here he had never been to Parsons' house, and he wondered why just now he'd thought of that, with everything he had to keep his mind on. Then he guessed it was because of all the power games that Parsons liked to play. The man kept his subordinates away from where he lived because he wanted to dissociate them, keep them from assuming friendship. That way he intimidated them. But Slaughter didn't care much. He had never been afraid of Parsons, although in truth he didn't want to go through this with him, and needing to keep occupied, he went out, driving to the station where already, even early in the morning, there were calls about more prowlers, about mangled cats and dogs and cattle, several missing persons. Well, it's just beginning, he decided. Then he did his best to shut his mind off as he cleaned up, washing in the men's room, changing from his sweaty shirt to one he kept inside his office drawer. No, Parsons wasn't going to like this, and a half hour later, as the two men (Slaughter unshaven) sat facing one another, it was worse than Slaughter had expected. Parsons had been fifteen minutes late, and Slaughter had been forced to wait outside the locked doors of the Potter's Field Gazette . Then Parsons had shown up, freshly showered, wearing a suit and tie. "No, not yet. Wait until we're in my office," the man had told him, and upstairs the man had listened, then quite calmly answered, 'You expect me to believe this?"

"I don't know. I wish I didn't."

"Really, Slaughter, think about it. All you're sure of is that a boy came down with some disease, or maybe he just had a breakdown. Then his mother got hysterical and fought her husband. Cody is in shock. He's got a raging fever. There's your explanation."

"You've forgotten Clifford's body."

"No, I haven't. Clifford was attacked all right and likely by a wild dog as you say. But were there any tests performed?"

"Just to find out what attacked him. At the time, we had no reason to suspect a virus."

"So the only tests were on that sick dog, and the evidence was very close to rabies."

"But the medical examiner-"

"Look, Slaughter, I don't want to disillusion you, but everybody knows that he came back here because no one else would have him. He broke down in Philadelphia, and it wouldn't surprise me if he made a crisis of this just so he'd seem important. As I interpret what you told me, there's been no time to test the dead boy for this so-called virus. Granted that his brain had been infected, if what the medical examiner says is true. But that could be because of many things. To do a proper slide for the electron microscope takes at least a couple of days. I gather that some steps can be eliminated if a person's in a hurry, which explains how Owens had his samples ready, but I know this much-the slides from that dog's brain were made so quickly that we shouldn't put much faith in them. I'll need a lot more to convince me. Think about it as I told you. Which makes more sense? Rabies or a brand-new virus?"

"You weren't there to see the boy."

"But I heard all about it."

Slaughter straightened.

"Sure, what's the matter, Slaughter? Did you think I didn't know? I run the god-damned paper. I'm the mayor. I have all kinds of people watching for me. If those parents choose to prosecute, the medical examiner is in shit to his eyebrows. He administered a sedative without the proper cautions. Now of course he's going to say a virus killed the boy. He surely won't incriminate himself. His word on this is hardly what you'd call objective. And that's something else I want to talk to you about. We'll leave aside for now the issue of this woman you employ who hit the mother with a baseball bat, although I wonder why you haven't charged her and I'm positive there'll be a lawsuit. Let's just think about the medical examiner. He was the last man I'd have chosen to do tests on that boy. He-"

"It's not important. If you'd seen the boy, you'd know he wasn't acting normally."

"That's exactly what we pay you for. To deal with things like that. To stop trouble, not cause more of it. You've had it fairly easy, Slaughter. Not too much goes on here. Now the first time something unusual happens, you come waking me on Sunday morning with your crazy notions about sealing off the valley and exterminating all the livestock."

Slaughter scowled. He kept his fists gripped tightly by his legs where he was sitting, and he felt his face go warm. He tried to control his breathing. "I said if it came to that. I don't know if it's necessary. I'm just asking your opinion."

"Well, it isn't necessary. Let's relax a minute, Slaughter. Let me talk about my job a little. I was mayor for many years before you came here. I was mayor when all those hippies came to town, to name an instance, and I knew that there'd be trouble, plus I knew that all I had to do was flex my muscles and arrange to move them out of town. I didn't, though, because there would have been complaints about that, people saying that, sure, no one liked those hippies but maybe we should have let them have a chance. And so I waited for the opportunity. Their foul mouths and their dope and garbage got extreme, and still I waited because I knew people shortly would come begging me to move them, which precisely is what happened. Now I got what I intended, but I did it diplomatically. Does all that make some sense to you?"

Slaughter's gaze intensified.

"The truth is that the people always know what's best for them. A proper leader only goes along with what they tell him," Parsons said. "That's why they've kept me as their mayor all these years. Because I understand that. All I want is what they tell me. So you say there's going to be an epidemic. Well, that's fine. Let's wait and see. The evidence is inconclusive, but I'll keep an open mind about it. Even so, the steps that you suggest are inadvisable. Exterminate the livestock, all the animals in town? Now really, Slaughter, what if there's no epidemic, what if this is just a case of poor tests and a biased medical examiner? The people would come for our heads. They'd want someone to pay for all the cattle that were killed, and you sure as hell don't earn enough for that. Even sealing off the valley. Christ, this valley's livelihood is cattle. If a rumor starts that all our cattle are diseased, we might as well destroy them anyhow. There won't be any way to sell them. No, we'll wait and see. If there is an epidemic, we'll hear from the people what to do. They'll tell us, and their choice will be the right one, and we'll all survive this with a conscience, just the way we did with all those hippies."

"But the difference," Slaughter said, "is that nobody died because you waited. On my desk right now, the messages are piling up, and there'll be more until the valley's in a panic. Not just mangled cattle. Not just Clifford and that boy. We're going to wade through corpses before long, and nothing's going to help those people."