Warren Murphy - Dr Quake

The telephone rang. McAndrew reached a hand toward the noise which came from under a pile of magazines.

"Hello," McAndrew said. Then he tilted the receiver away from his ear slightly so that Feinstein could hear the conversation.

"Yes, Sheriff Wyatt. Yes. Has he been here? Yes. Why do you ask?"

Wyatt's voice came over the phone smooth and very calm. It shocked Harris Feinstein how intelligent long distance could make Wade Wyatt sound.

"Well, frankly, Mr. McAndrew, we were worried about Mr. Feinstein out here in San Aquino. He's one of our leading citizens and best loved, too. He's a very sensitive person and belongs to many charitable organizations. I hope this will go no further, Mr. McAndrew, but he's become disturbed over earthquakes. Very deeply. He thinks that they're part of a plot and that someone controls them. Now he's trying to get other people to think that way. I don't know what he told you, whether he's talked to God. Did he tell you that?"

"No.,"

"Well, he feels obliged to save the world from earthquakes. It's an assignment from God, he says. I've spoken to the FBI, Mr. McAndrew. It's not that he's dangerous. And if you could spare the effort, I and a lot of people here in San Aquino would appreciate it if you would humor him. Sort of pretend that you are going to investigate. I know that will help him and perhaps he'll return then to his wife. He's had trouble at home."

"I see," said Silas McAndrew, looking over his clear rimless glasses at the gentleman from California. "Perhaps you would suggest our even investigating whatever he suggests. We could send some men to San Aquino to look around. Thev won't on a real mission. They'll go through it, just like it was all for real."

"Oh, no," Wyatt said. "That won't be necessary. You don't have to go that far."

"Why not?" said McAndrew, his Ohio face calm as the Miami River on a flat hot July day.

"Well, it isn't necessary, that's all."

"We've got to investigate something. We'll investigate his earthquake thing." McAndrew saw a smile grow on Feinstein's face.

There was a pause and a slight hint of muffling as if a hand had been put over the phone. Then: "Sure, fine, that'll be great. We think it's really wonderful. I mean, I really think that's fine that you'll go so far to humour a sick man. Thanks very much. So long,".

"Goodbye."

To Feinstein, McAndrew said: "Somebody's got brains back there."

"You Easterners are pretty sharp," said Feinstein. "I've known Wyatt all my life and I believed right up until the end of the phone conversation he had hidden his brains from me."

"Yeah. A lot of brains out there. If I had gotten that call before you came in, I would have treated you like you were treated everyplace else in Washington. I'm from Ohio, by the way."

"That's what I said,' said Harris Feinstein. "An Easterner."

Before they left his office, Silas McAndrew typed a routine memo which might very well have represented his and Harris Feinstein's last gift to the United States. They would never be able to make another, not after they flew back to California and made the mistake of discussing that State's problems with an eccentric scientist and his two extraordinary assistants.

CHAPTER SIX

When Sheriff Wade Wyatt saw the bodies in the Cowboy Motel on the mountain road highway just outside San Aquino, he said, "Oh, sweet Jesus, God have mercy, no."

Then he reeled out of the motel suite into the men's room in the lobby, where he vomited into a urinal, and kept flushing and upchucking and seeing his lunch collect on the large white mothball cube in red and white splotches, evidence that he had not yet learned to chew.

"No," he said, keeping his hand on the flusher. "No. He was in Washington, just yesterday. No."

"Yes," said his young deputy. "Should I call the county coroner?"

"Yeah. The coroner. Sure."

"And the town police. The motel's always been kinda half county, half town anyway."

"No," Wyatt said. "No town police. We'll take care of it."

"Should I get a photographer?"

"Yeah. Good move. A photographer."

"They sure look bad, the two of them, don't they, sheriff?"

"Yeah. Bad."

"What do you think killed 'em?"

What had killed them and he was terrified. His head had returned to the urinal. Now he was breathing the freshness of the cold running water near his head, almost a chlorine freshness.

"You going back in the room, sheriff?"

Wyatt caught his breath. "Yeah. Got to."

"They sure look bad, as if they was grabbed by two giant hands that just popped 'em open, like squeezing a grape. Pow!"

Sheriff Wyatt went to the sink and steadied himself. His eyes had reddened. His hands trembled. He washed his face with cold water, then dried it with the paper towels provided by the Cowboy Motel, the only motel in San Aquino County with massage beds and headboard electric outlets for any device you might want to plug in. Batteries were sold at the front desk.

He glanced at the young deputy in the mirror. His mouth was moving.

"You eating something?" asked Wyatt.

"No. Just sucking on a Mary Jane."

"You get outta here, boy, before I bust you. Get out."

Sheriff Wyatt brushed his crewcut with his hands as he heard the door slam. He replaced the Stetson he had parked on the top of the urinal and strode back into the lobby, ordering people back into their rooms, saying everything was under control.

The motel owner was standing by the suite when Wyatt reached it.

"Stay out. My deputy will have questions for you."

"Uh, sheriff. I don't know how to say this, but, you know, I recognize one of the victims. They didn't pay in advance. They had American Express and now there's no one to sign."

"What do you want from me? He's one of your kind."

"I'm Armenian," the owner said.

"That's Jew, ain't it?"

"No. You see. ..."

"You look Jew."

"I'm not."

"Tough titty, baby, 'cause you sure look it. Now you stay outside of this suite. I'm going in. You see the bodies?"

"Yes."

"Pretty horrible, huh?"

"When there's no one to sign, it's very horrible. You see the Cowboy Motel is a marginal business...."

Sheriff Wyatt shut the door behind him. And there they were on the bed with the massager still running. Both of them naked, like two fruits. Who would have thought it of Feinstein? Sure, Sheriff Wyatt called him faggy, but not faggy like that. Not faggy nude in bed with the young fellow who according to the ID card was Silas McAndrew, a geologist for the Department of the Interior. The fellow Wyatt had talked to the day before.

Sheriff Wyatt kept focusing on the knees and groins to keep from looking at their mouths. He didn't want to look at their mouths or their heads. He looked at the water that soaked the bed near the men's waists, and then his eyes strayed up to their heads and he ran from the room again.

What he had seen was two men with their intestines squeezed out through their mouths, like they had choked on their own stomachs, dark red balloon organs squeezed like toothpaste from the bowels of their bodies.

He had been warned there could be deaths like that. One could even await him. But he hadn't really believed it. Not until now.

Wyatt lurched into the men's room again and made it to the urinal but there was nothing left and he just stood there, leaning into the flowing water. Naturally, he had parked his Stetson on top of the plunger before surrendering to his stomach.

The bathroom door opened again and the deputy came in mumbling something about looking for the sheriff again because the photographer was here to get the pictures of the two bodies.

"Go ahead. Take 'em."

"Should I question the owner too for a report?"

"Yeah."

"Then remove the bodies, sheriff?"