A “friend” of hers reported her missing the previous evening, though the last time she had been seen alive was the night of the twentieth. It occurred to me that the FBI show on the television aired the night of the twentieth.
Maybe the killer took her away in response to it. Maybe he was communicating by taking a hooker. Maybe he was saying something about his mother. Manson’s mother was a hooker. Maybe he just took a hooker because she was easy to get to, and he wanted the lawmen to look bad. On another page was a short article about a church break-in the previous night. Nothing taken. Weren’t they picking up on this? It had to mean something.
Abraham came through the double doors to steal some French fries. He must have seen me gritting my teeth over the paper.
“Are you okay?”
“Sure,” I said.
“You haven’t been the same lately. If you need to talk …”
“I feel like I need a drink, Abe.” It was the truth. Just then, I realized that my hands were shaking.
He came over and hit me in the arm. “I don’t want to hear it. Drinking is my deal, not yours. Besides, if you hit the sauce again it would be the excuse Frank has been waiting for to can your sorry ass. Don’t give him the satisfaction.” He hit me in the arm again. “Don’t fuck up,” he said.
“I won’t.”
“Because I love you.”
“Fuck you.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“Get the fuck out of my kitchen,” I said.
Most of the time, I hated the bastard, but every so often, Abraham knew how to make me feel better.
That night I put the new articles up on the wall. There were getting to be too many. It shouldn’t have been that way. I was starting to feel that if another girl died, the blood would also be on my hands.
I went back to the living room and fiddled with the rabbit ears until I got a decent picture. Then I sat down with a can of tuna and watched the news late into the evening.
I was very much hoping for the joint task force to come through on their promise of catching the fucking guy. It would save me the trouble of doing it myself. After all, if they had him in custody, I would surely know who to kill when the time came. But what was still killing me was whether or not the wolf would still obey.
Another fucking question mark. The biggest one of the bunch.
I tried constantly to get the wolf to reveal any of its memories from the night Pearce died. If it did, I would at least know enough to come up with a theory as to what went wrong. I lit a cigarette, having forgotten that two were already burning in the naked-lady ashtray.
The phone rang at just about the stroke of midnight. I knew it was the prick who had been calling me lately. But it kind of worried me that I had been targeted for something at the same time all these other events were going on. It made me feel … involved, and I didn’t want anyone to make me feel that way. I had to know who it was, and what they thought they knew about me.
I picked up the phone. “Yes,” I said.
Silence. The sound of light traffic in the background.
“Mom?” I said.
“I know what you did,” the man’s voice said.
“What did I do?” I said softly.
“You know what you did, and I know too.”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Pearce,” said the voice.
My blood ran cold in my veins. “Fuck you.”
“Do you miss me?”
“You’re a sick fuck.”
I hung up the phone.
It began to ring again. I picked it up.
“Leave me the fuck alone!” I screamed, slamming it back down in the cradle.
It began to ring again.
. . .
The dead hooker was found in the early morning hours of May 24, propped up on a bench in Applegate Park. She was naked as the day she was born, her knees tied with twine to the armrests so her ravaged privates were exposed to anyone who was unlucky enough to pass by. Her raven-black hair was sheared off, probably with the knife that had killed her, and tossed about like birdseed on the grass. Her insides were unraveled and spread out along the dirt path along the lake, and in her head where her eyes used to be were two red roses.
And I felt as responsible for her death as the man who had done the deed.
I immediately regretted sending the hunting knife off to the police. Not that I should have held on to it, but I shouldn’t have lied when I wrote I had come across it in the park. This was a terrible coincidence, and I feared that the mailed-in knife would wreak havoc with their investigation.
I blinked, and all of a sudden I was seeing the world through Pearce’s dead eyes. He was up at the Crowley property. The wolf charged forward, becoming all he could see.
“No!” cried Pearce, but it was too late. The vision ended.
All this shit was really fucking me up. I needed to see Alice. She was the only thing left that made me feel at least the slightest bit normal.
I took a seat on the edge of the soft bed and lit a cigarette. There was a part of me that was tempted to take all my clothes off and ravage Alice the second she walked through that door, but there was another part of me that wasn’t feeling it at all. I also knew that after having lost a friend, just like me, she probably wouldn’t be in the mood to do the nasty. It was unfortunate that there wasn’t a union for hookers. She would have been able to take the day off.
Alice stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. She was wearing a long white nightgown and a pair of slippers. She would usually come in with a smile on her face no matter what the circumstances were, but not on this day. There was only so much she could pretend. I patted the bed next to me and gave her my cigarette.
“Tough day?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “The police have been in and out, and Mama Snow’s worried about what’s going to happen.”
“Are they gonna shut it down?”
“Never,” said Alice. “You’d be surprised who comes here.”
“I’m worried about you,” I said.
“She’s not. She’s worried about business.” She put her head on my shoulder. “I’m glad it’s you tonight. I don’t know if I’d be able to deal with anyone else.”
“Were you and Josie close?”
“As close as you can be, living this way,” she said.
I lit myself another cigarette. “We don’t have to do anything tonight. I just wanted to be here with you is all.”
“How come?”
“To make sure you’re okay.”
She laughed.
“You don’t have to do that. Leon’s here.”
“I know,” I said. “With all that’s going on, I just wish you didn’t have to do this. They’re saying on the TV that no one’s safe now, and this isn’t exactly the safest … you know …”
“I know,” she said, “but I can’t just stop.”
“What if I asked you to?”
“What?”
“Just till all this is over. Just so I know you’re okay?”
“Marley …”
“I don’t know. Maybe you can stay at my place for a while. I got
an extra room and all….”
“I couldn’t.”
“Maybe, like, if you wanted to, I could drive you around. Pick you up at home, drive you home in the morning. Just so you don’t have to be alone.”
I regretted asking. I knew just by her expression how much I had made her uncomfortable.
“Marley,” she said, “that just wouldn’t be appropriate.”
I hung my head.
“I know.”
“I know you know. There’s a line …”
“I know,” I said, cutting her off. “I just don’t want anything to happen to you.”
I could have told her how much she meant to me. I could have told her that if I lost her, I wouldn’t care who the wolf went after, because I’d have no reason to go on anyway. But I didn’t.
I’d have been out on my ear faster than lightning.
“I can take care of myself,” Alice said.
I’m sure Josie Jones had said the same thing a thousand times, but I didn’t press the issue. Before long, we went to bed, and in the morning I left with a little bit of pain in my heart, just like I always did.
By the time I got to work, two things had happened. One, the trucker whose knife it was had contacted the police when the knife made an appearance on the news as a possible murder weapon. He claimed ownership of it, and stated on the television that he had been robbed of it almost three weeks earlier. He was not charged with anything.
Two, since the Rose Killer had struck too close to home for me, I decided to keep an eye on Alice. She had been unwilling or unable to accept my offer of protection. I couldn’t let a little thing like acceptance stand in my way. I had lost too much. I couldn’t lose her too. And maybe, just maybe, she would lead me to the bad guy.
FIFTEEN
Alice left her house at seven-thirty in the evening, got behind the wheel of her Honda, and drove to work. I was right behind her in the truck.
She parked on the corner, several doors away from Mama Snow’s, and walked the rest of the way. At the front door, she was greeted by the monster known as Leon, who actually smiled. I drove past the house, made a U-turn, and parked on the far corner for my nightlong stakeout. I had a full view of everything, like a mountain bird.
Before long, the sky grew black.
It gnawed at my soul knowing she was in that house for all those hours with men that weren’t me. There was a part of me that understood what she did for a living, the fact that I paid her just like everybody else. But there was another part of me that longed for something more than that. It was the part of me that cared and was much more likely to get me into trouble. What made those long, dark hours worse was that the radio didn’t work in the truck. I couldn’t very well keep the overhead light on, so I sat in the dark all night, stewing in my own crap thoughts, and watching German cars pull up to Mama Snow’s one after another.
As midnight came and went, I got to thinking about the war.
At night in Vietnam we spent a lot of time staring into the longest, blackest night, waiting for something bad to happen, like hearing a twig snap, or hearing a bang and realizing someone just died. We couldn’t smoke because the snipers would be able to put a bullet in your face. The glow at the end of a cigarette became a beacon for VC—it meant an American was taking a drag. It felt the same as I watched Mama Snow’s house from the cab of my truck. Sitting in the dark, waiting for something bad to happen.
I couldn’t think about Vietnam without thinking of the ambush. It was in that ambush that I should have died. Instead, I became a monster. It was a triple-canopy jungle. The sunlight reaching the ground was scarce, and further obstructing our field of vision were patches of bamboo and elephant grass. Those conditions alone were terrifying. Every nook and cranny was a potential hiding place, every anthill a potential airhole for the tunnels that were probably running directly under us. Cambodia was just a handful of hours west on foot, we were that close. We were knee high in mud and foliage, a few miles away from where they wanted us camped that night.
It started off with Chandler’s head getting blown off.
As his limp body tilted and fell to the wet earth, we all ran for cover because we didn’t know where the shot had come from. We set our rifles to rock and roll and began spraying the green hell to our front.
Before long, we figured out there was more than one sniper. There were at least two. Shots started raining down on us from different directions. We didn’t know where was safe, and everyone was screaming.
The second man to die was the radio man, Talbot. The enemy always went after the radio man. More so than a commander, the radio man was the prime target. Talbot caught one in the thigh, and he started screaming, dragging himself through the brush so someone could relieve him of the radio. Someone ran over to him to get the radio off him. As long as there was one man alive, that radio was more important than bullets. It was the only way to let anyone know where we were and that we were under attack. This was a fucking ambush.
Baxter—who made the run to get the radio—lost his jaw in a plume of gore. I had never seen anything like it, a man with a surprised expression in his eyes, and everything below his nose just a deep, red hole. Blood pouring out like puke from a mouth-less cave. His eyes asked if he was okay, and then he just curled up in a ball and died. Didn’t make a sound.
As that was going on, Conrad caught one in the shoulder, and Talbot caught another one in or close to his liver. We fired into the trees, and the sergeant kept screaming for someone to get on the horn so we could get some air support. By this time, Talbot was dead. In all, he got hit three or four times. Conrad was dead. Chandler was dead. Baxter. We lost four men in no more than five minutes.
The radio was sitting there in the dirt. We set off some smoke for cover, and this other guy, Morris, made a move for the radio. He went down hard, and when the smoke cleared, the radio was toast. Shattered and lost in a hail of bullets, like us.
Night fell. We couldn’t hardly see the man in front of us. We were trapped like fish in a barrel. Every once in a while, someone would shuffle in his little cove, his few square feet of cover, and shots would ring out. Tracers from the treetops.
Vietnamese snipers lived up in those trees for God knows how long. It was their land, and it was in their blood, and they knew every inch of it. We were like parasites out there, getting picked off one by one for our trespasses. The sergeant ordered us not to talk because the snipers knew how the sound bounced in the
jungle.
As the hours went on, we resorted to throwing stones out into the night. Shots would ring out, and tracers would mark a trail through the darkness. When we thought we saw where these shots came from, we’d let loose with our rifles, but it was almost more dangerous shooting our guns because of the small flashes of burning powder that would ejaculate from our weapons when they discharged.
We lost Poe, and we lost Wells after that.
Wells died slowly, from a gutshot, and he kept moaning and crying for his mother.
“Please, Hooper, I want my momma. Oh, God, man, it hurts!”
He was twenty years old. He kept screaming, and Sergeant Hooper started to crack up. He kept whispering to the kid, “You’re going to give us away, you sonofabitch.”
When the kid wouldn’t shut up, the sergeant whispered, “Someone give him a fucking shot.”
No one knew where the shots were, the morphine. They were probably on one of the bodies, so the sergeant made the decision to have someone shoot Wells, to put him down for the good of the men. I’d later learn that wolves in the wilderness have the same policy for sick members of the pack.
No one made a move to shoot Wells.
Wells kept screaming, “I don’t wanna die, I wanna go home!”
The sergeant shot him, and then Wells just moaned. The sergeant shot him again and again until he didn’t make any more noises.
A few minutes later, we heard a lone shot, and when someone called out for Hooper, he didn’t answer.
That’s when our worst fears became a reality. Our only hope was Charlie Company coming to look for us, but we knew it wouldn’t happen until first light. We were on our own, and I doubt anyone thought we’d make it through the night. I can’t communicate the feeling of what it’s like being surrounded by boys—being just a boy yourself—and knowing that it’s only a matter of time until you and everyone you know is going to die. Everyone started whispering prayers. In the distance, the dark, we could almost hear the snipers laughing at us.
I didn’t pray. I thought of Doris.
Unbeknownst to me, my father had died a day earlier. He’d been hit by a bus backing into a space on the lot where he worked. He was rushed to the hospital, and spent the better part of his last day on earth in the intensive-care unit. Anyone else caught under the wheels o
f that bus would have died instantly. It takes an extraordinary amount of punishment to kill a Higgins man, and getting crushed under the bus was enough, but my father lived long enough to talk to his wife, and to pray that his only son was already dead. In a cruel twist of fate, I wasn’t. And then my father died.
From the moment he died to the time that I myself was trapped and waiting to die, the spirit of the wolf crossed continents, perhaps as an invisible specter, or as a fast-moving storm cloud, and came to me in that jungle. I wonder if it watched me as I cowered there in that narrow ditch where water once flowed. I wonder if it laughed at the fear I had of my own mortality. Out in the jungle, the glare of the full moon barely came through the blanket of trees that shielded us from that exquisite, damning light. The only thing we could see were the tracers that got fired at us every few rounds.
I had my arms around Ritter, and he had his arms around me, and there we were—huddled down and waiting to die. We didn’t want to die alone. No one does. You can have your friends and the people you didn’t get along with, but when the pearly gates are in your sights, everyone’s on the same team and you have to be brothers.
Men were crying. Someone whispered Ritter’s name, and Ritter lifted his head up just a fraction of an inch. A subconscious reaction to his name being called through the silence.
Shots rang out. A tracer burned a brilliant hole through his cheek, and before his head exploded, it seemed to glow from the inside out like a jack-o’-lantern. His head literally exploded like a ripe melon. The smell of burning hair filled my nostrils, and Ritter’s hot blood washed over me like a wave. A spilled drink. I could feel it in my eyes, and I could taste it in my mouth. I breathed in deep, and let out a bloodcurdling scream.
Ritter’s body fell against me, and I pushed it away. I pushed it away as if the death that had infested it, had consumed it and claimed it, would wash off on me. Like it would contaminate me and I would be the next to die.
He could have the fucking ditch, I remember thinking deliriously.
The Wolfman Page 14
