Bentley Little - The Walking

Wolf Canyon.

He was the one who'd been in charge of the investigation. Or what was officially referred to as the "investigation." For there'd been no real effort to determine what had happened. No one was interested in finding out why the residents of the town had not been evacuated or, indeed, who was responsible. The priority had been to maintain secrecy, to keep the existence of the community quiet and to make damn sure that no one outside---particularly no one from the press---got wind of the fact that the United States government had been not only harboring but actively supporting a community of witches.

The phrase "plausible deniability" had not yet been coined, but the reasoning behind it had been in place for quite some time, and that was their goal: to ensure that if word somehow did leak out about Wolf Canyon, everyone above a certain level in the chain of command could plead ignorance. The fact was, in those early days of the Cold War, a sitting president could not afford to be seen as the patron of a band of godless witches. The heathen commies were bad enough, but supporting a secret society of spell casters here at home, with tax dollars, in the Grand Canyon State no less, would have been grounds for impeachment.

The operation had been a complete success. Not only had no one found out about the witches--not even the men from

the dam project--but neither the press nor the general public had ever learned about the drownings. No one connected with Wolf Canyon had ever spoken publicly, had even leaked enough to bring about congressional hearings, closed door or otherwise. This dam had held.

He himself still had questions. Despite the fact that he'd led the investigation, he had never fully satisfied himself as to whether the drownings had been accidental or intentional. Their true mission had been to hush everything up, not ferret out the truth, and they had followed their assignment to the letter: they had seen the site, examined the bodies, spoken with the workers, and quietly closed the books. It was not inconceivable that someone somewhere within the bowels of the Eisenhower administration had learned of the existence of Wolf Canyon, judged it a political liability, and determined that the town had to be destroyed, its people silenced. It was rather unusual to have two dams built so closely together, and though the reasoning sounded plausible, he could also believe that there had been an ulterior motive, that the decision had been made to neutralize what could have been a political atomic bomb in those Red-baiting times.

Hell, maybe Tricky Dick had even been involved.

So, over the years, he'd put out unofficial feelers, curiosity taking the place of circumspection as he rose through the ranks, letting it be known to trustworthy individuals in the various agencies involved that he was interested in any news related to Wolf Canyon. ,

Now another folder had been delivered, and McCormack sorted through the document copies provided. His mood darkened as he scanned the material. As before, there was nothing concrete, everything was circumstantial, but the connections to Wolf Canyon lent it all an ominousness that would not otherwise be there.

He read one death certificate and autopsy report.

The truth was, he had never really believed in witches. Oh, he had believed that they believed they were witches, but as far as magical powers and mystical potions and all of that hocus-pocus mumbo jumbo, he'd thought it was a load of crap. It was a remnant of the seventeenth century, not something that anyone would take seriously here in the latter half of the twentieth.

At least that was what he'd thought until now.

He was not so sure anymore.

Several weeks ago, Russ Winston, one of the undersecretaries at Interior, had been killed here in D.C." in his own garage, in what had been characterized for the press as an "unusual" manner. In reality, it was far more than that. He had been torn apart, and both his son and grandson had told investigators that the perpetrator was a small creature, a hairy toothy thing that had lain in wait for Winston and had disappeared immediately afterward.

A monster.

Monsters and witches. These were the elements of children's fairy tales, not things that should be taken seriously by a government agency. But the government was taking them seriously and once again was doing everything within its power to shield the public from information that it felt its citizens would not be able to handle.

He had known Russ Winston from Wolf Canyon. He'd interviewed him as part of the investigation. Russ had been one of the shift supervisors, and he'd been sharper than most of the others, more helpful, more observant, which explained why he'd made something of himself in Washington. Over the years they had kept in touch in that superficial way casual acquaintances do, but neither of them had ever talked about Wolf Canyon again, and McCormack now wished that they had. He'd always been under the impression that Russ felt guilty about the drownings, that he'd blamed himself and never really gotten over it. That was one of the reasons

McCormack had never brought it up on the rare occasions that the two of them spoke. But he wondered now if the undersecretary had known more than he'd let on and if his guilt was based on knowledge rather than misplaced blame.

The other casualty was a man from Utah, an accountant who had died of cancer. There was nothing connecting the accountant to Wolf Canyon, but a local coroner had brought in the CDC and the FBI because the man had continued walking even after his death.

Apparently, whoever had left him the folder thought there might be a connection.

He did too, and McCormack perused the provided information, ncluding two newspaper articles, one from a local Utah paper and one from a tabloid. There was a leg, apparently, that was still animate. The Bureau's top men were examining it now. Southern Utah was not that far from Arizona and Wolf Canyon, and it wasn't much of a stretch to think that there might be a relation.

Was this Stuff real?

The Soviets had always been rumored to be studying ESP and psychokinesis and Kirlian photography and all that. If there was any troth to psychic phenomena, perhaps the United States should have followed suit. Maybe they should have let the Pentagon have a crack at Wolf Canyon, used those witches as a resource, instead of just burying all trace of their existence beneath a man-made lake.

But whether as a result of accident or policy, it was. too late now.

He called Greg Rossiter, over at the Bureau. Rossiter had some experience with this paranormal shit, and whether it was true or not, he'd set himself up as an expert. He'd recently obtained black-budget funding to install a new database, cataloging unsolved cases by possible supernatural explanation, which would have made him the laughingstock of the FBI if not for the fact that Rossiter had actually put

to rest a host of unsolved murders dating back decades, proving fairly conclusively that they had all been performed by the same murderer and that that murderer was a vampire who had been hiding out in the Arizona desert. He had been part of the party that had dispatched the monster, and while there'd been no body, there'd been enough circumstantial evidence and eyewitness testimony to substantiate his claims. Not everyone believed Rossiter's vampire story, but enough of the higher-ups did that he had been promoted out of Phoenix and was now working here in Washington. McCormack knew him from countless seminars and workshops, and though Rossiter was not one of the people to whom he'd put out feelers regarding Wolf Canyon, McCormack thought that it might be time to bring the agent in on this.

Rossiter arrived after lunch, and after a quick informal greeting, McCormack handed over the folder and asked for his take on the information presented. Rossiter sat down and sorted through the documents. He looked up. "I know that area," he said. "Arizona. My old stomping grounds."