"No." He tried to quell her with a warning look. "Just some private researchers who somehow got their hands on one or more of Mrs. Bridewell's curiosities."
"Ah," Isabella said. "So we're talking mad scientists. What about the funding?"
He abandoned the attempt to introduce a degree of logic into the discussion. "What funding, damn it?"
"Who financed this small, private lab?" she asked with an air of sweet reason. "Labs take money. Lots of it."
"I don't know who financed the project," he admitted. "But I doubt that it was the government."
Isabella was disappointed, but this time she stayed silent.
Fallon turned back to Henry. "You said this lab was only in operation for about a month?"
Henry scratched his ear. "That's all. Right, Walker?"
Walker nodded in his jerky fashion. "And then s-something real bad happened down there."
"Tell me about that part," Fallon said to Henry.
Henry heaved a massive shrug. "Who the hell knows? Whatever it was, it killed one of the three researchers. They hauled the body out of the shelter, threw it into the back of a van and drove off. Like I said, no one ever returned."
"Did they take anything with them in addition to the body?" Fallon asked.
Vera and Henry turned to Walker.
"Book," Walker said, voice ringing with certainty. He jiggled anxiously. "One of them had a book. Black cover."
"Sounds like a lab notebook," Fallon said.
"Like I said, they took off in a hurry," Henry said. "At that point we figured everyone in the Cove was probably walking six feet under."
Isabella stared at him. "You thought you were going to die?"
Henry grimaced. "Hell, as far as we knew it was a secret weapons research lab and something had gone real wrong. What else were we supposed to think? Figured we'd all been irradiated or poisoned."
"Of course," Isabella said, nodding in sympathy. "Those are certainly the first two possibilities that would come to my mind."
Fallon looked at Henry. "What did you do?"
"In another life I was trained as an engineer," Henry said. "I drove to San Francisco and bought a radiation detector and some basic soil, water and air-quality test equipment. Brought the instruments back here. Ran every test I could think of. There was no detectable radiation. No traces of any poisonous gas leaking out from under the ground."
"So you decided to go down and take a look, didn't you?" Fallon asked.
"Yeah." Henry shook his head. "Guess it was the engineer in me. I had to know what we were dealing with."
"A-alien technology," Walker rasped.
"I agree with Vera and Henry," Isabella said to Walker. "This looks more like a black-ops group conducting research on paranormal weapons."
Walker pondered that. "Alien paranormal weapons."
"Well, that's certainly a possibility," Isabella allowed.
With a valiant effort, Fallon possessed himself in patience. "What happened when you opened the shelter, Henry?"
"Hard to describe." Henry stared down at the thick steel hatch with a troubled expression.
Vera took up the tale. "He made everyone move several yards back before he raised the hatch."
Henry did not take his eyes off the steel lid. "Some kind of energy poured out. Felt like a strong wind but nothing moved. It didn't ruffle the leaves or my shirt or my hair. But it was intense and very disturbing."
"We all felt it," Vera said, "even though the rest of us were standing some distance away."
"Sounds like paranormal radiation of some kind," Fallon said.
"I couldn't handle the wind, whatever it was," Henry continued. "But the Asshole was still around at the time. He didn't seem bothered by it. Neither did Rachel Stewart. The radiation didn't seem to affect Walker, either. So those three went down into the shelter."
"What happened?" Isabella asked.
"When they came back up, Walker seemed to be his usual self."
They all looked at Walker, who rocked harder in response to the attention.
"I take it he was always like he is now?" Isabella asked quietly.
"Yes," Vera said. "Just the same. But Rachel and Gordon Lasher were terribly excited when they came up the ladder, especially Lasher. He was shivering and he could hardly speak."
"When he calmed down, he told us that he'd seen a lot of lab equipment down there," Henry explained. "He told us that there were signs of a violent explosion but that the place was so hot with some kind of energy that no one else should risk going down."
"He said we should let the shelter cool down for a few weeks or months before anyone went back into it," Vera said.
"By then I couldn't stand the guy," Henry added. "But I agreed with him."
"But the shelter has never cooled down, has it?" Fallon asked. "Paranormal radiation tends to hang around for a while."
"Yeah, I noticed that," Henry said. "The Asshole took off with Rachel a couple of days later. That was the last we saw of either of them. A few weeks after that I decided to try going down into the shelter. I made it as far as the bottom of the ladder. That's the last I remember."
"What happened?" Isabella asked.
"Damned if I know," Henry said. "I passed out."
Walker rocked harder. "The Q-Queen."
"When I came to, I was lying flat on my back on the ground up here," Henry said. "Vera and Walker were standing around looking down at me."
"How did you get out?" Fallon asked.
"Walker was with us when Henry opened the hatch," Vera said. "Henry went down alone and disappeared. We called out to him but there was no response. I couldn't get through the energy wind no matter how hard I tried. But Walker climbed down and brought Henry back out."
"Figure Walker probably saved my life," Henry said.
Isabella smiled at Walker. "You were a hero."
Walker rocked and looked confused.
"Yes, Walker was a hero," Vera agreed. "Afterward everyone who was left in town got together to talk about the situation. We concluded that we could not allow whatever was down there in the shelter to fall into the wrong hands. We also needed to make sure that no children or thrill seekers fell into the shelter."
"We get a few drifters through the Cove from time to time, as you know," Henry added. "Didn't want to take a chance that some of them might try to go down, either."