I wondered if Pearce and I had ever really been friends, but I knew we were. However, the purpose of this friendship was twofold. One, he liked my company, and two, he felt obligated to keep tabs on me. Feeding me information about cases he knew he wouldn’t be able to solve was his way of manipulating me, and I didn’t even know it.
Why, I asked myself, was he up at the Crowley property if he knew the wolf would be out that night? Did he see it as two heads working toward the same end?
Pretty much. He thought he’d at least be safe.
And why did he leave me the envelope? To rub my face in it? To prove he wasn’t as bumbling as I might have thought? No. It was so if anything ever happened to him, I could avenge his death.
“Well, knock me the fuck down.”
I looked down at my hand and saw it explode, but it was all in my head. It was time. The wolf was going to give me the memories of that night that I’d been hoping for.
They say birds can see colors in the spectrum that people can’t, and that dogs can smell things that people can’t too. The wolf experienced the world more fully than any man could ever imagine, and on those occasions in which its memories would bleed out and seep into mine, it was as if I was given the power and the privilege to see this world through the eyes of God, or at least a notable competitor to his title and throne.
In living day-to-day, I see the world as I always have, but because I know of how it could look, it has lost its shine, its flare, and its magic. It is dull, lackluster, and rusted, and I always know that there are things that dwell just below the surface that I, in my human form, could never put my finger on. The taste of metal filled my mouth. I tasted … I tasted blood … I changed.
The beast rose on its own two legs from the murky red puddle that still steamed on the floor. It howled low, grunted, and quickly swept the house for signs of life with its ears, its nose. It smelled my detergent, it picked up the mouse living under my kitchen sink by the rustling of dust bunnies, the minuscule pitter-patter of tiny feet.
The beast made the decision to leave it be. It knew it had a target in the Rose Killer, and even if it didn’t have a target, it would not have settled for the death of an animal. It smelled the collected smoke from my years of cigarettes, permanently clogging the air in the house, and living in the walls and fabrics. The beast wrinkled its wet nose and let out an animal sneeze.
It lurched through the house slowly and left through the front door, stooping its shoulders to fit under the frame of the door. Once it was outside, its ears perked up; it breathed deep and bellowed. The night glowed and screamed with life. Like I’d trained it to, it closed the door behind it before taking off into the night.
It ran at speeds beyond my comprehension, faster, perhaps, than the great cats that prowl the prairies of faraway lands. Through backyards, dark roads, then the woods that surround the town of Evelyn, and finally, the open road, it ran. Wind kissed it, streaking trails through its thick, dark hair. The moonlight came down, washing over it like a mother’s love.
The sounds and smells of an entire world enticed it, beckoned it, pulled it in a million different directions, but the beast was focused. The beast knew what it had to do. It was hungry for it. It had the intent. Thank God for that.
The wolf reached Edenburgh and quickly found the spot where that poor girl had been found over there, the backyard to the house with the swimming pool. As it had done countless times before, it got down low on all fours and smelled the ground, leaving drips of snot and spit on the crushed blades of grass. With its tongue, it picked up the soil, rolled it around in its mouth, all with the purpose of picking up the scent, the taste, the smell of the perpetrator. Once it had that, the bells would toll and it would be only a handful of minutes or hours before the target would meet his destroyer.
After several seconds, the wolf wrinkled its brow, clenched its giant fists, and growled somewhere deep inside it. It spit out the soil and howled. It was mad. It was a feeling, a sensation, an instance that had never occurred before, and the beast didn’t know what to make of it. The beast was frustrated. It hadn’t picked anything up.
How is that possible?
The beast angrily went on to what it felt was the next possible spot to help it along, using the same kind of reasoning skills one would expect only real people to be capable of. In the blink of an eye, it stood upon Judith Myers’s grave, breathing heavily. With fingers stretched and claws bared, it went to the business of digging out the coffin, hoping in its own, animal way to get a scent off the dead girl’s body.
When it got to the shell of the coffin, six feet down, it pulled the lid off the casket. The beast looked down, and there rested the young, dead lady. Like a burnt piece of paper, she had begun to turn a darker shade around her edges—her eyelids, her fingertips, her lips. She was discolored, as if she were covered in a fine layer of soot. Her dress was stained by dirt now, and as the beast took her by the back of her neck more carefully than I ever imagined it could handle something, the stitches in the dress where they had sewn it around her stiffened form began to pop open.
The beast lifted her up. As she bent at the waist, the beast heard cracks. To its otherworldly ears, they sounded like firecrackers. It smelled the putrid fumes of chemicals and death rise from her like angry phantoms. Her dress fell away to one side, exposing a dead breast. The wolf groaned low, and hunched up, almost as if it were ashamed of itself, or sad for what had happened.
Its left hand sliced the dress away from the body, exposing rows of thick stitches along the chest and lower regions, forming a Y, as if it was a question branded into her so she could remember to ask God that, just in case she happened to run into him.
More dank smells, almost too powerful for the wolf. It wanted out of that grave, but it would not go. It smelled her down there, privately, up along the blackened stitch holes, and up further still to the eyes, or, more accurately, the sockets where eyes used to live and swim and dart. Where beautiful eyes used to see, to know, to wonder, to radiate joy and love, and watch the rain come down.
The eyes saw the killer. Could that be why he took them?
The holes had been stuffed with cotton and glued shut, heavily caked with makeup, giving the impression that nothing had been done to the face. With the grace and precision of a surgeon, the beast, with one gleaming nail, plucked through the gunk sealing the eyeholes and opened them up. It brought its nose up close, close enough to leave wet marks, and smelled there in the dried and putrid pits. Nothing.
The beast crawled out of the hole and screamed. Before taking off into the night, the beast laid the lid back down and filled in the hole by kicking the dirt in, like a cat in a litterbox. The beast was now in a rage. It had struck out twice, unable to get a lead on its target, and it was now getting close to seething. It felt … denied. The anger was rising, and it was running out of options.
With nowhere else to go, the wolf came back to Evelyn, racing through the darkness of the woods along the northern edges of the town. A million animal eyes watched it dart past them, unafraid. They knew. There was a communication there. There was only one prey for that night. No substitutes.
When the beast reached the perimeter of the Crowley property, it slowed down to a careful, silent stalk, kept low to the ground, all senses focused out on the horizons. It smelled the ground, the occupants of the great house many, many yards away. It heard the occupants, sleeping, breathing deeply and slowly. To the south, it heard the low rumble of a car engine, tasted the grainy tang of gasoline fumes on the air. It heard a cough. Picked up the scent of meat loaf.
It was crawling now, down on its hands and knees. With its nose twitching, it came up to the spot where she died. It could at least smell her there, the scent left behind of Gloria Shaw, but nothing else. No one else. The beast was … lost.
And that was it. It knew it. The scent of its prey was gone. It had vanished to such a degree that not even the wolf’s otherworldly senses could pick it up. The target was go
ne, and without a target, the beast was without anchor, without guidance. It cried. It roared.
The beast heard a twig crack behind it, and it turned. Pearce was there, standing right there, his gun drawn and pointed. He did not fire. His eyes were wide and filled to the brims with fright. With its uncanny hearing, the beast heard a rumble in the man’s belly as loud as a passing train. The man spoke.
“Don’t,” Pearce said, stepping back slowly. “Get back. I’m not the one you want.”
The wolf rose up, towering over Pearce by a foot, if not more. Its veins, its teeth, its very being called out for blood.
“We’re in this together,” said Pearce. “Don’t come closer.”
The lust could not be denied. That’s what it was.
“Don’t make me,” cried Pearce. “Don’t fucking move.”
The beast howled in his face. There was no more mission. No more target. Just the core-deep cry of its purpose. To kill. That’s all there was inside it. Everything else, in that moment, was gone. The beast felt nothing but the need for blood, nothing but hunger, and the flesh in front of it that could satiate that calling. Pearce was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have been anyone.
The beast got into a striking stance and lunged. Pearce yelled my name, “Marley,” and his finger tightened around the trigger. “No!”
The sound of metal moving inside the gun was like a spring being compressed in a mattress. He was not fast enough to fire a single shot. He died quickly.
The beast bit into him and drank as the life force evaporated from Pearce’s body. In its bones, the beast could hear—feel—his dying pulse. The smell of shit filled the air. The beast gnashed, lost in it, and when it drew back its head to catch the moonlight in its scarlet eyes, it moaned with what I could only call sadness. It did what its nature made it do, but it knew somewhere in its hide that it had done wrong. Still, it could not stop. Like a glutton, it lapped at the hot blood around the corners of its mouth and went back to work on the body.
The spell broke. I was shocked back to reality as if I’d been hit by lightning. I was shaking, and I couldn’t stop. I needed a drink, but there would be no more of that. I lit a smoke to calm my nerves.
Why couldn’t the beast get the scent? It certainly had tried. It had something to do with those church break-ins, I was sure of it. I needed those police files, or at least a man on the inside, like Pearce was. Someone who could feed me the information I needed. Someone to check back and go through all those Rose murders to see if a church break-in coincided with all of them and if anything was ever boosted from any of these places. Maybe nothing was stolen, but maybe something was left behind at one of these churches, some clue as to who this man was. Maybe someone had been caught at some point busting into a church. Maybe it was the Rose Killer.
The church angle was a lead, as was this Polaroid box that was found up at the Crowley property. I couldn’t count on the beast with this next full moon, that much was clear, and it wasn’t even the monster’s fault. This target was a wraith. A fog. A ghost. He had some kind of trick up his sleeve that protected him from the wolf. I wasn’t used to being proactive—Lord knows I wasn’t good at it—but for me, for the girls, and for Pearce, I was going to get the Rose Killer. The only question was how.
I put my cigarette out, lit another, and came up with a plan. Just like Nancy Drew.
I tore the envelope, the pictures, and reports to shreds and put them in the fireplace. I lit a match and watched it all burn.
TWENTY-TWO
Detective Van Buren arrived at the Evelyn Police Station just after nine. It was a two-story building erected in the forties, and up on the second floor was where the Rose Killer Task Force was situated. That’s where he was off to, I supposed. I was watching him from across the street, blended into the crowd of television and radio reporters who had set up tents outside the front of the building. When they were on the air, it was from the “frontlines.”
I watched Van Buren get out of his car and go in. I had no idea where he lived—he wasn’t in the phone book, and after riffling through Pearce’s memories I couldn’t come up with it—but I needed him, so I at least had to know which car was his.
It was a maroon-colored Ford hatchback with a bumper sticker that read “Life’s a Beach.” Just for that and that alone I wanted to punch the guy in the stomach until I broke all the bones in my hand. But again, I needed him, and in order to get him to help me, I was going to have to lie through my teeth.
When it got dark out, I snuck into the precinct parking lot and jimmied open the door of his car by sticking a hooked wire between the window and the frame. I thought it was great, me breaking into a car after so many years, and where was it? A cop parking lot. Better still, it was a cop’s car, and he hadn’t even set the alarm. I couldn’t help but laugh. I had a sharp knife on me from my kitchen drawer. All I had to do was wait.
He came out through the back door at midnight. He looked exhausted. His black suit was wrinkled, and even in the dim light of the parking lot the bags under his eyes were evident enough that I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. I felt pretty bad too, having spent one whole evening hiding in the back of a car, but I’d gotten good at hiding out the last few weeks anyway, so it could have been worse.
He got to the car, got his keys out of his inside jacket pocket, unlocked the door, and got in the driver’s seat. He started it up, then tapped on the radio. Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay” came on.
The idiot sighed.
Before he switched into drive, I got up off the backseat and sprang forward. He saw movement in the rearview mirror and went for his piece, but I was already upon him, the tip of the knife poking a tiny little hole into the underside of his neck.
He stopped breathing.
“Higgins,” he sneered, “you motherfucker. You’re going to get yourself killed.”
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, chief, just keep your hands on the wheel.”
“I told you you’d fuck up, and guess what? You just did. I’ll kill you for this.”
“Not if I kill you first.”
I put more pressure on the knife.
“Okay, okay,” he grunted. “What the hell do you want?”
“Well, I want you to drive, man. Get us outta here. There’s too many cops here.”
“Oh, really? At a police station? You’ve got to be fucking kidding me….”
“Can the sarcasm. It doesn’t go with the suit. Drive. And don’t do any bullshit signaling to anybody. No flashing headlights, no secret wave, none of that, cuz I’ll cut your fucking head off. You copy that?”
“Yeah, I copy.”
He put the car in drive and eased out of the space. We got to the street, and without direction from me, he made a left, avoiding the circus show outside the precinct. When we got a little farther away, I reached into his jacket with my free hand and relieved him of his piece. With that, I put the knife in my back pocket and sat back with the gun trained on the side of his head.
“You’re not such a big man now, are you? Not without your fucking gun.”
“Fuck you, Higgins.”
“No,” I said, “you won’t be doing that today. Keep going till we get to Old Sherman. From there, I’ll direct you further.”
“My wife knows I’m on the way home. She knows my schedule.”
“Tight leash, eh?”
“Higgins …”
“Just drop it, okay? You’ll be getting home soon enough, given you don’t fuck with me. Now, just focus on the road. Safe driving saves lives, you know.”
We got to Old Sherman Road. We took that about a mile north to where there was this little dirt road that went about a hundred yards into the woods and ended in the middle of nowhere. Why it was there in the first place was anyone’s guess. We took that little road to the end of the line, and then I ordered him out of the car. The point of the gun never strayed from his body. I came around and stood about ten paces in front of him.
It was pretty funny, if you got to thinking about it. In the last few weeks I’d held guns on more people than I ever had in my entire life.
We were in the middle of darkness, perfectly concealed. The only light came from the car, and I think this made Van Buren a little more nervous than he was when we were driving. For all he knew, there were wild dogs in those woods. Dogs that … well …
“Black Is Black” started playing on the car radio.
“I love that song,” I said.
“Okay already,” said Van Buren. “Get to it.”
“Arright. Well, first I want to apologize for the inconvenience. Your wife didn’t want you seeing me in the house. But basically, I’m going to need you to do a couple of favors for me.”
“Me? Do favors for you? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I’m for real, man. The way I see it, you pissed me off good and proper. Came into my home, cuffed me, treated me like a fucking scoundrel. Threatened me, even. You were the one making all those crazy phone calls, and you busted into my house and left that fucking note. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit. You and I gotta even up.”
“I don’t owe you shit, Higgins.”
I fired a shot into the trees. He jumped. It was time to spin my web of lies and hope he fell for it. “You do owe me, cop. You have no idea. You see, I know you take crazy pills, and something up in your brain is way offtrack. You’ve been dedicating all this time to my ass when you could have been tracking down the killer. Instead you’ve been satisfying your dementia, and innocent people have died. All the while you’ve just been making things more complicated than they ever had to be.”
“Who told you about my medication?”
“I got sources, you prick. I’ll run it down for you. The arrangement Pearce and I had? You wanna know what it was? You wanna know how we were in cahoots? I was his garbage man,” I said.
The Wolfman Page 22
