Strum Again? Book Three of the Songkiller Saga (8 page)

"Wish you'd get off night shift so we could
go watch together, sweet thang," he teased.

"Yeah, they're long gone by the time I get
off at eight," she said. "I used to see them all the time before I
left home, though. I think that's what always interested me in
science so much. The experts claimed it was swamp gas, but any fool
can see there's no swamp out there. Still, it's gotta be caused by
somethin' natural, don't you 'magine?"

Lamprey felt uncomfortable. He had run into
a thing or two before he left the Texas Rangers that wasn't exactly
natural. He didn't want Janey Lynn to think he was weird or
anything, though, so he kept his mouth shut and stared out the
window while he waited for the next morning's sweet rolls to come
out of the oven.

* * *

There was something sane in conspiracy
theories that all the shrinks had overlooked, Gussie thought, as
she ran three steps behind the bouncing green light. At least if
that knife-wielding bastard got her, she wouldn't waste a lot of
time while she was dying wondering "Why me?" Nope, she had a pretty
fair idea, and it would be illogical and ludicrous besides to
imagine that somehow or other she had managed to attract a totally
independent and unaffiliated butchering maniac.

And if he did get her, that would make her a
martyr to the cause, wouldn't it? Not that she couldn't wait
indefinitely for such an honor, but at least it would make sense of
her death and give it some kind of purpose. They'd probably write a
real powerful song about her. They'd damn well better. And if the
cause failed and they couldn't get anybody over here to listen to
the moving ballad about how heroic she was, they could just take
the song back over to the UK where people would listen, or she'd
come back and haunt them. Come to think of it, another ghost among
all they'd seen lately wouldn't be any more impressive than her
living self, so she thought if it was all the same to everybody
else, she'd prefer to get out of this with a whole skin.

Behind her the truck tires screamed and the
engine roared, and she glanced back to see the headlamps sweeping
crazily around the field as the truck turned in circles, the
taillights as red as some crazy wild animal's eyes. As if they were
indeed eyes, they found her, and when the truck spun around again,
she felt the glow of the headlamps hot as sunlight on her face and
arms. For a moment she stood frozen as the maniac behind the wheel
jerked his tires into a straight line to head for her, then the
green light bobbed back overhead so that she was momentarily caught
in a cross-spot like some kind of opera star. Realizing what a good
target she was making, she jumped sideways, away from the light,
heedless of cactus and stones, and as she jumped, something long
and skinny whizzed through the light to land in the glow of the
green with a thunk and stand there quivering. An arrow—long steel
sucker. Not the play-acting Indian kind, but a serious,
bear-hunting type arrow, the kind sportsmen used when they wanted
an extra challenge.

Jesus, hadn't the bastard ever heard of
guns? But if he had, she'd have been a goner already.

Her eyes had been fixed on the truck, and it
bore down on her, targeting the green light. Then, abruptly, there
were three green lights, and two of them charged toward the truck,
swooping toward the windshield. The brakes shrieked and the
headlights twisted sideways.

But the wheelbase was too short for that,
and the truck must have struck a boulder, because all of a sudden
the headlights were on top of each other instead of side by side,
and Gussie heard an awful grinding sound as the wheels still in
contact with the ground dug into it. Had he survived? She wasn't
about to go look. She ran instead toward the remaining light and
now noticed, beyond all the extraneous illumination, other lights,
small and distant but stable. She could just make out the neon sign
that said "Cafe." The green globe fell behind as she stumbled
toward the new beacon.

* * *

James Francis Farnham was awakened by the
smell of gasoline and burning rubber, the sound of grinding,
spinning tires, and realized without surprise as he turned off the
ignition that he was going nowhere fast. He had failed the voices,
after all. He had not kept the old bitch from crossing the border.
He became aware of a sharp, burning pain in his left leg as he
pulled himself out of the driver's seat, toward the passenger door.
He must have damaged the leg when his weight slid over against the
driver's side and a boulder dented the door. On top of the
passenger's side of the truck, he took just an extra moment to
claim a flashlight from the glove box. Reluctantly he decided to
leave the butcher knife behind. Something that would work just as
well was easy to find. The same wasn't true of the crossbow, of
course, but he was out of practice anyway, or the bitch would have
been skewered by now. Besides, it was too incriminating.

Limping away from the ruined truck, he saw
the green lights jigging up and down, as if they were laughing at
him.

CHAPTER 5

Hugh Graham, the man from SWALLOW, was
everything a SWALLOW agent was expected to be. He was possessed of
a good memory, a firm grasp of mission, a knowledge of the law, a
knowledge of music, and the self-assurance that would help him
convince others of his arguments and would allow him to intimidate
them when necessary. Just an edge of self-righteousness was also
required, and this particular agent had more than his share of
that. Since he was English by birth, he also possessed a touch of
international glamor that impressed a lot of the small-town
operators he had dealt with in the course of his career.

Lately, however, despite the fact that
he traveled constantly, his work held less thrill for him than
before. He couldn't think why that was. He had been effective—that
was clear by how seldom he had to talk sternly to radio stations
and restaurant and bar managers to impress upon them the gravity of
hiring entertainers who performed songs protected by—or even
worse,
not
protected
by—SWALLOW.

Protected songs, of course, could not
be performed, except by the licensed artist, without royalties
being owed to the artist through SWALLOW. The royalties were paid
as a flat fee by the clubs and radio stations on a monthly basis.
Then SWALLOW distributed them on a proportionate basis, with the
top artists, like Duck Soul, taking the lion's share of the
acquired "dues." The money was a fairly hefty amount for people
like Soul. Well, back when there
were
people like Soul, it had been a hefty
amount. It never had amounted to much, if anything, for the
lower-echelon artist. There were no longer any of those either. In
fact, Graham supposed that mostly the dues were pretty much split
between SWALLOW and Soul these days.

In case anyone else
tried
to play unauthorized music,
however, Graham knew the rules: (1) Unprotected songs were not
supposed to be played in clubs that paid the fees. (2) Any artist
who wished to perform had to likewise pay a fee to SWALLOW (a) to
protect his or her interests with the clubs, (b) to license the
material, and (c) to collect the fees. (3) Under the new laws each
artist was also supposed to pay royalties every time he or she
performed songs by other licensed artists. The only way to escape
this clause was by singing only one's own licensed material. Even
material that had previously been considered in the public domain
was subject to licensing laws since an individual artist's
arrangements were considered the work of that artist. So unless
substantially altered—and the alterations had to be authorized by
SWALLOW—an arrangement of a traditional tune that was not an
authorized, much-altered version fell into the same category as an
entirely new song.

Furthermore, there were now the obscenity
laws SWALLOW enforced. Those laws were why Hugh Graham ultimately
decided that a posting in America would be a better career move
than remaining in Britain or on the Continent. The laws were
difficult to enforce in Britain. Itinerant folk clubs, often
composed of amateur musicians or mere fans, drifted like floating
crap games (to use an American idiom) from pub to restaurant to
private home, providing entertainment often without benefit of
money or contracts changing hands. People played pirated music and
unlicensed songs at parties that SWALLOW was sure involved some
sort of fee, but since SWALLOW representatives were not invited to
the parties, they had not been able to find out where and when such
violations occurred.

Graham was flying back to the home office
listening to a Duck Soul tape—after all, he had gotten into the
business because he loved listening to music. Since he was a top
SWALLOW agent, and his salary was supplemented by commissions that
were bounty on the fees and fines he collected, he sat in first
class, drinking the fashionable beer he favored. He was a short
man, but trim from afternoon workouts in hotel and motel rooms, or
sometimes at a gym, track, or park when the neighborhood looked
safe. He'd started working out in the afternoons when he realized
that the late nights, irregular meals, and frequent intake of
alcohol were wearing down his body. He used to arise no earlier
than eleven o'clock in time to shower and shave after a night
checking for violations. That part was pleasant. The unpleasant
part was informing the performers and the management of their
wrongdoing. He used to admire musicians before he got into this
business. If he hadn't learned to divorce his appreciation for the
music from the bloody-mindedness of its performers long ago, he
wouldn't have been able to continue his work.

Listening to the steady thump of the drum
machine, the lyrics being bawled into his ear, he began to feel
that perhaps the time had come when he no longer did appreciate the
music. Certainly he didn't care any more for Duck Soul and his lot
than he had for others he'd dealt with—although he had never been
called upon to chastise Soul yet.

Soul had managed to override the
obscenity laws due to a cross-generational language barrier, and
Graham could
almost
understand both sides of the conflict now. The law said that
records containing obscene lyrics couldn't be sold to minors, and
stores went out of business all over the country as SWALLOW agents
helped police crack down. They confiscated lots of old English and
Scottish murder ballads and, for a time, rap and rock records, but
then the producers of the music got smart and garbled the lyrics so
badly no one but the targeted teenage audience could understand
them. When the lyrics were printed for publication, of course, they
were perfectly innocuous. When the rap records were intelligible,
they were encoded. He wondered how the kids deciphered the messages
in the songs.

But though for a time his job had been
increasingly interesting as he enforced regulation after
regulation, it had, now that most people were used to the
regulations, finally become grindingly dull. Because except for
Soul, and until recently the few of his brethren who could afford
to pay the licensing fees, taxes, and union dues, and to bypass the
laws, there was now very little music for the man from SWALLOW to
listen to, never mind regulate. He was wondering what he ought to
do about that—request assignment in England or Europe and search
out new frontier, regulation-wise? Even though the music scene was
still so wild and untamed over there as to be impossible, it would
be a challenge.

Or perhaps he might quit altogether.
Because, since he was not an unintelligent man, he began to see
that there just might be some sort of cause and effect between the
zeal with which he had done his job because he was such a music
lover and the fact that music of most species was now, in the
States, extinct or endangered.

* * *

Gussie didn't plan what she was going to
tell the police when she half fell through the cafe door. She just
wanted to put the door between her and the nut who was after her.
When she saw the brown uniform sitting at the stool in front of the
counter, she thought she had hit a snag, and she was too tired and
too plain scared to deal with it.

"Help me," she panted. "Lock—the—door.
There's a crazy guy out there. Got a knife. Blue pickup. Chased me.
Lights—green lights—God, do you mind if I sit down?"

She fell into one of the booths along
the side of the room, and the cop, standing cop-style with his
hands on his hips and his feet spread, said, "Take it a little
slower now—this guy
what
?"

She looked up but couldn't see him for the
sweat that was pouring into her eyes. She grabbed a handful of
napkins from the rectangular metal dispenser and mopped her face,
then did her best to look like an innocent little old soul who just
had the pee-waddin' scared out of her. "This nut followed me,
officer. I—" She took a better look at his face, which was very
familiar. She hadn't seen it for seven years, but they had spent an
intense week together in a traffic jam along the Oregon Trail when
the devils were trying to kill them. "You're that ranger, aren't
you? Bud—?"

"Buddy Lamprey," he said in a guarded voice
and then, looking more closely at her, asked, "Gussie? You back?
Why didn't any of you write and tell me what happened?"

"It's a long story, Buddy. But they're after
me again. Would you take me back to my van? Have your gun out."

"What happened?"

"Buddy?" Janey Lynn said from the counter.
"Look!" She pointed at the three lights that hovered just across
the street, on the edge of the field, as if they were looking in
the cafe window wondering if they could afford something. "What do
you suppose they want?"