The Devil's Assassin by Brian Page B

reporters
have been hounding you about the creature?” asks Linus.
    Jay is on the
phone in his office at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Them
and every professor and postdoc from here to Timbuktu. And while they
don’t mind siphoning me for information, as little as I have to give them,
guess who they really want to talk to?”
    “I don’t know,
Bill Nye the Science Guy?”
    “Yeah. Nooo . It’s you they want, chum.”
    “I wonder why,”
asks Linus rhetorically.
    “Maybe because you discovered the creature.”
    “Caught it actually. By accident. So what are you telling them?”
    “That you’re on
vacation with a beautiful brunette,” says Jay.
    Linus chuckles
and looks at the door as if expecting someone to be there. “It’s funny that you
should say that, Jay.”
    “Yes. What does
that mean?”
    “Nothing,” says
Linus. “Just a game we were playing.”
    “So you’re
getting along?”
    “So far so good. Listen, keep giving them the same line if it makes your life
easier. We’ll be back in a couple of days and some pressure will be off of
you.”
    “Good,” exclaims
Jay. “As I mentioned, I’ve got some bad news. Someone else has been killed.
This one was in the paper. That’s why there’s been so much publicity. It seems
the creature killed a homeless man in Franklin Park in Philadelphia. Another
homeless man watched it happen.”
    “Oh man...”
    “The victim tried
to fight the creature with his cane. He lost his life pretty quickly, the other
man says. When the cops got there he was afraid they’d throw him in the can for
the murder, but he was drunk enough to tell them the story, which to his
surprise, they believed.”
    “So they any closer to finding it?”
    Van Houten says
they haven’t found it yet.”
    “Figures.”
    “Speaking of Van
Houten,” says Jay. “He seems pretty keen to see you as well.”
    “Whatever for?”
says Linus without worry.
    “I couldn’t tell
you, Linus. I’ll let you go on that mysterious thought. What’s next down there,
by the way?”
    “We’ve finally
persuaded the police here thanks to you and the lab. I do believe we’re going
hunting.”
    “You really like
to get into the thick of things, don’t you?” says Jay. “Well, you and June be careful, seriously. It doesn’t seem like too many people
have much luck staying alive around this animal.”
    “I know, thanks,
Jay. Hasta la vista.”
    ›
    It’s a cloudy
morning. A police four-wheel drive vehicle drives quickly down a rural
Argentine road. Behind it follow four similar vehicles, each packed with people
and guns. Inside the lead car are Detective Arroyos and his deputy, Pablo, who
is driving, and Linus and June. The two are sitting in the backseat of the SUV.
June is dressed a la Banana Republic . Linus has on
Levi’s and a brown button-down shirt. A restless dog paces behind Linus and
June in the back of the vehicle.
    “We have ten men
from the provincial office,” stated Detective Arroyos, “four men from my
department, five men from the ranch of the man who was killed and three men
from the station in the village where the creature was spotted, and us. Twenty-six and two hounds. Not a bad start.”
    “It’s not enough
to put a noose around him,” said Linus skeptically.
    “This is the best
that we could do for manpower in two hours. When I get two hundred men we can
try to surround him in a noose. But I don’t have two hundred men. Do you?” The
detective pauses. “This ‘ poco diablo’ is an animal
after all, isn’t he?”
    Linus is looking
eye to eye with Arroyos as he says this, then looks
out the car’s window to watch the plains roll by. “This is no typical animal,
Detective. His intelligence is practically human, and what’s worse is that all
his genetic code, all of his instincts and intelligence have one goal – to hunt and kill humans, and get away.”
    Arroyos is dismissive, turning back to the front of the car. “We’re hunting him now. You say