Puppet Show and Shaow Plays: Part 4b – Santana’s Run
The thrum of the helicopter pounded around the team’s earphones.
“The car that it stole was found at this gas station,” said Hammer. The helicopter was coming to a landing nearby. It was one of the advantages of Arizona. The landscape was flat as far as the eye could see.
“Ready?” asked Blade. Everyone had their pistols out. They nodded. “Go!”
The team hopped out of the chopper. Confused gas station attendants and tourists screamed.
“Everyone DOWN!” shouted Hammer, flashing his badge. “We’re federal agents! Down on your knees, hands on your head!”
They corralled the people who were there. It was a large gas station along I-10 West, but it was the only gas station for miles around.
“Is this everybody?” asked Blade.
“Yep,” said Hammer.
“Not quite,” said Jim-Bean. “There’s a corpse with his mouth open in the car over there.”
Blade pointed at one of the attendants. “You’ve got video cameras here, right?”
“Uh, yes sir?” asked the pimply-faced teenager.
“Good. I want to see it.” Blade turned to the others. ““Find out what they saw. I want an inventory count of every car in this station. Nobody leaves until we check them out.”
The attendant popped the tape into an old VCR. The footage was grainy.
They had found Santana lying dead, with the tracks of a Ferrari nearby. He had feigned some sort of heart attack on I-10, they surmised, enough to make a good Samaritan pull over. And then whatever was in Santana abandoned him, taking over the driver of the Ferrari, one Joseph Guttierez, a plastic surgeon.
Guttierez, in the black and white video camera, walked over to his car and mechanically plunged the gas spout into his tank. When they had entered the gas station, the Ferrari was in the same position Guttierez had left it.
Then he walked off screen. A few seconds later he came back and collapsed. People ran over, concerned. There were eight of them in total, all chattering on their cell phones and kneeling down to look at Guttierez. Some of their heads bobbed out of the camera’s view.
Then they all stood up and mechanically walked away from the corpse.
“Guppy, check to see if there’s any gas in the car,” Blade said on his Cistron. He turned to the attendant. “Did you see anything?”
The kid shook his head. “The man just stared around, like he was taking in the place while he was waiting for the car to gas up.”
“You didn’t find that strange?” asked Blade.
“Everyone does that,” muttered Hammer. “Hell, I do that.”
Blade tapped his Cistron. “Any witnesses?”
“Nobody remembers anything,” said Caprice. “They all have a moment of lost time where they’re not sure what happened.”
“What about the body?” asked Blade.
“Drained of blood,” said Hammer. “Missing some teeth too. Like something burst out of his throat…”
”How many people left since it was here?” asked Blade.
“Eight,” came the reply.
Guppy, still weak from his wound, huffed back his report. “He never filled the gas tank.”
“So he never planned to leave with that car,” said Caprice. “It was looking to jump to a new body as soon as it got here.”
Suddenly Blade punched the table near the monitor. The attendant jumped.
“Damn it!” he snarled. “We lost it!”
“This thing has an appetite for fast cars and fast women,” said Archive over the Cistron. “We’ll track the police band. It won’t be lost for long.”