The Wolfman

by Nicholas Pekearo

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “All those cases you boneheads never solved? I solved ‘em. Motherfuckers never got brought in, but they got taken down all the same, and they’re all buried in these woods. Every single one of them.”

  “My God.”

  The gullible prick.

  “Yeah, that’s right. You think you’re dealing with some run-of-the-mill punk? No, I’ve killed more men than you’ve ever talked

  to.”

  “You sick … bitch.”

  “I’m not sick. I’m a public servant, just like you. Vietnam made me a machine. I’m just doing my job for America. Making the community safe. This shit with the Rose Killer has gone on long enough. Pearce knew it. He knew the feds couldn’t get the job done. That’s why he enlisted my aid, man. I’m gonna end it, and you’re gonna help me. Pearce was helping me, now it’s your turn.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “You wanted to know the deal, now you know. What are you gonna do? Play high-and-mighty with me? I think not. You’re not Mr. Untouchable yourself. Your prints are in my house, as are your handcuffs, also with your prints on ‘em. How’d they get there? You’re gonna fuck with me, I’ll fuck you right back. You can’t turn me in, because the second you do I’ll bring this town to its fucking knees. How do you think the public will react when they find out their tax dollars have been going to an executioner? You can’t do that to Pearce’s memory, man. You can’t do that to his wife. His unborn child.”

  A minute passed.

  He said, “What do you want?”

  “I want your wallet.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. Gimme the fucking wallet.”

  He fished out his wallet, then threw it to me. I took out his license, pretty much just for show. I looked around in the sleeves a little more, then chucked it into the open car door.

  “Now I know where you live,” I said, “and I know what your kid looks like.”

  “Okay,” he said, “that’s enough.”

  “What’s the boy’s name?”

  “That’s enough!”

  “Not quite. You’re going to get me the information I need, just like Danny did. If you don’t, or if you fuck with me in any way, I have a number of bombs—I won’t tell you how many—planted throughout this town. A signal needs to be sent to these bombs every twelve hours. When a signal isn’t sent, say, if I’m arrested and unable to, or injured, or something like that, then the bombs kind of take it upon themselves to blow up. You copy?”

  “Yeah,” he grumbled. “You’re the goddamn devil, Higgins.”

  “Only if one of those bombs happened to be planted in the school where your little boy learns his letters, Van Buren.”

  “Monster.”

  “You have no idea,” I said, “but at least my first name ain’t Clancy. You must have gotten beat up a lot as a kid.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You may not want to help me. You may want this to be personal. But if you feel like you can still be a hero in this, just think of the hundreds of innocent people in this town that will die by fire if my bombs go off. Now, I need to know everything there is to know about that Polaroid box they found up at the Crowley property. Everything. And I need to know if a church break-in occurred on the same night as all the murders.”

  “A church break-in?”

  “Yeah. It happened this time, with Betsy Ratner, and with Josie Jones and Gloria Shaw. The same thing also happened over in Edenburgh. You fuckers have the resources to go through the archives of all these cities to see if this correlation goes all the way back.”

  “Shit … you’re right. It did happen last time, didn’t it? Let’s say I get this information for you. Then what?”

  “That’s it. I take care of business, and whatever happens after that happens. This evil prick might kill me, or I might kill him. If it’s the latter, I’ll get out of Evelyn before his body goes cold, you have my word on that, but this thing I’m doing, I’m doing it for Danny. When this is over, no matter how it plays out, I sure as hell won’t be a problem for you. I guarantee you that much. We can pretend this little meeting of the minds never happened.”

  “You take care of business? What about the case?”

  “Fuck the case. You see, that’s why Pearce was a good man. He put his job aside for this business on the side. What I do … what we did … it wasn’t for any case, it wasn’t for his job, it was for the greater good. One less disease in the world. You understand that?” It was close enough to the truth that I didn’t need a poker face.

  “When do you need this by?” he asked.

  “What? Pal, we’re going back to the precinct right now.”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “Don’t fuck with me,” I said, leveling the gun at his privates, “and don’t give me that shit about your wife missing you….”

  “No, Higgins. I can’t go back now. I punched out and I’ve been fucking shot at. I can’t go snooping through the fucking computers without one of the feds seeing me, asking me what the fuck I’m doing back so soon. I’ll do what you’re asking, but I’m not going to lie to the feds for you.”

  I thought for a second. There were less than forty-eight hours until that full moon started to shine. Shit was coming to a head.

  “Fine. Tomorrow. I’ll call for you, we’ll meet somewhere. No funny business.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  I popped the clip out of his gun and ejected the cartridge in the chamber, threw it all into the dirt.

  “Be good,” I said, and I walked back down the road.

  TWENTY-THREE

  I watched from the shadows as Van Buren got in his car and took off. I didn’t trust him, but he felt like my only hope. With any luck, he’d take my insane blackmailing scam seriously, and do what he was told to do.

  After he was gone, I walked across Old Sherman and went a few blocks east to where I had my own truck stashed. On the passenger seat, under a blanket, was my rifle. The extra shells were in the glove, as was Van Buren’s pair of handcuffs.

  For the rest of that night, I drove all through Evelyn, hoping just like the cops that I’d catch the bastard in the act. The business with the church break-ins and the Polaroid box was good information—the only lifelines for a drowning man—but the chances of any of it panning out and leading me to the Rose Killer were slim at best. All I could do was hope and pray that all the girls in the world were behind locked doors that night.

  I didn’t want to think about what would happen if my plan didn’t work. In my mind, I was attacking on two fronts. First, this fucking guy was still my target. The wolf very well could get him, but because of this invisibility he seemed to possess, the only way to get him would be for me to know exactly who it was. I needed a name, a face. My only hope of that was if Van Buren came up with something. An arrest for one of the church break-ins, maybe. It was my job as a doomed man to take this Rose Killer down with me, because if the beast truly had gone haywire, I was going to have to kill myself, and God knows I didn’t want to do

  that.

  I called the precinct at two in the afternoon and asked for Van Buren. He clicked on a minute later. “Van Buren,” he said.

  “You get my presents for me?”

  “Yeah, but I’m in the middle of something right now. I can’t get away.”

  “You’re going to have to. Maybe you don’t realize there’s a man out there on the verge of killing someone’s daughter, huh? And me to boot, gunning for you. Meet me where I took you last night. Half hour. No excuses. Or fireballs will fill the sky. I do not give a shit, cop. Just do it.”

  I hung up, hoping he wouldn’t call my bluff. I lit a cigarette, got my gear, and went out to the truck.

  I drove my truck all the way down that little dirt path and parked it off to the side. In the daylight, being lost in the trees was enchanting, pretty, even comforting. At night, I noted, you couldn’t help but want to run as fast as you could towa
rd the nearest metropolis. Being in the woods at night always made me think of Vietnam.

  I left my weaponry and whatnot on the seat, but I wanted it near just in case I needed to put the fear of God into Van Buren, or if he brought the cavalry, we could shoot it out. Maybe they’d put me down once and for all….

  He came down the path in his hatchback about ten minutes later. Even in daylight, it was impossible to see us from Old Sherman. I was thankful for that. I was leaning against a tree, a cigarette in one hand and the other slung over my belt. He got out and closed the door behind him. One of his hands immediately went under his jacket, as if to go for the piece he kept there.

  “Chill out, cop,” I said.

  “Just stay back,” he said sternly.

  “Give me what I asked you for. What did you come up with?”

  “I didn’t have the time to check all the way back, but a church break-in occurred on the same night or the night before every murder outside the state of California.”

  “Knock me down,” I said.

  “Good work, asshole.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “Was anything ever stolen?”

  “No. Petty vandalism at the most.”

  “Like what?”

  “Spit. Broken candles and so on.”

  “You should have the spit examined, see if it matches the fluids taken off the girls.”

  “Spit isn’t saved from petty property crimes, Higgins. Try again.”

  “Anyone ever brought in?”

  “No.”

  “Suspected?”

  “No. Try again.”

  “Any witnesses to any of these break-ins?”

  “Nope.”

  “No surveillance footage or anything like that?”

  “Nope.”

  There was nothing there to help me just then, but at least I was right. That would get me far in life. “The Betsy Ratner murder seemed much sloppier than the others. Was any evidence left behind? Fingerprints, a puddle of pee, anything like that?”

  “No. The guy is good.”

  “But he … he’s fucking these girls, yeah? You guys have his seed….”

  “Yes, Higgins, we have his ‘seed,’ as you so lovingly call it.”

  “What are the chances of me getting my hands on that?”

  I had to ask. The scent the wolf would get from that little Baggie of play-pudding would get the job done.

  “No chance,” Van Buren responded. “It’s all been sent out to different labs, you sick, sick man.”

  “Do you have addresses for these labs?”

  “What do I look like to you, a goddamn directory?”

  “What about the Polaroid thing? No prints?”

  “No prints,” he said.

  “No hair? None of that?”

  “No.”

  “Do those Polaroid boxes have serial numbers? Would you be able to figure out where it came from?”

  “Yeah, the feds did that the day we found it.”

  “Where was it from? Around here?”

  “No.”

  “Where?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Higgins, it didn’t pan out.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, man, just tell me.”

  “A fucking bumwater town, Higgins. No murders happened there, so whatever. People weren’t on the lookout, so no one down there knows a damn thing.”

  “Just … where?”

  “This fucking shantytown in New Mexico. Marshall something or other.”

  I swallowed hard. A heavy meal I couldn’t recall eating plunged its way into the lowest areas of my belly.

  “Marshall Falls,” I said.

  “Yeah, that’s it. You know it?”

  “Vaguely,” I replied.

  “I’d never heard of it.”

  That sonofabitch prettyboy was mine. “Well, knock me the fuck down,” I said.

  With that, Van Buren rushed me. This time with a football tackle that sent me back into the dirt. He jumped on top of me and gave me three right jabs to the face. Four. Before I knew it, he was going crazy on my face with short punches. I got a thumb in his mouth, hoping to pull his head down, but he bit it.

  I grabbed his ear after that, and twisted it back. I could feel blood on my fingertips. He screamed. With that, I brought a leg up over his head and kicked him off of me. He went flying onto his back. We both got up, he more slowly than me.

  “You sonofabitch,” I hissed.

  “Your ass is mine, Higgins,” he said calmly. “You think you can get away with this shit? Blackmail me, threaten my family? You’re not making it out of these woods.”

  “Let’s not get dramatic,” I said. “You’re a jerk, but you ain’t no killer.”

  “We’ll see.”

  I rushed him this time. He threw a handful of dirt at me that he’d palmed, hoping to get it in my eyes, but he failed. I faked, then came up with a left hook that spun him on his heels. Before he fell, I grabbed him by the shoulders and delivered two swift knees to his guts. A karate chop to the back of his neck. He went down on his knees. I punched him in the forehead.

  He drove an elbow up into my crotch. I lost my breath.

  He pulled on me by my belt and came up with an uppercut. My teeth met like chimes. My face vibrated. He followed the uppercut up with a series of gut shots. Lefts, rights—all of them left me wishing I’d had breakfast just so I could have thrown up on him. I backed up into a tree, wheezing. I saw his hook coming from a mile away—he put so much of his weight behind it—that I had time to duck. His fist rammed into the tree, and he let out a scream. I grabbed him by the lapels of his jacket, and then I head-butted him. Once. Then again. I let him fall in a heap, his nose a bloody mess.

  I limped away, toward his car. I was going to take the keys out and chuck them in the woods, just to be an asshole, but I was interrupted. He came up behind me and cracked the butt of his handgun off the back of my head. I got dizzy and stooped forward. He used my momentum against me and hurled me onto the hood of his car. My head cracked his windshield. A little bit of blood got in my eye.

  I rolled onto my back, saw him lunging. I raised my leg and let him run into my boot. It made contact with his jaw, and did enough damage that he had to take the time to shake out the cobwebs. I rolled off the hood, got a kick to my knee, but it grazed without breaking bone, and with him off balance, I took advantage. My right hook came out of nowhere and met his jaw like an atomic bomb.

  He went down and didn’t get up again.

  I went through his pockets, found his cuffs in a belt holster, and cuffed him out of spite. Then I took his badge. He started to come to.

  I grabbed him by the collar and said, “Keep your boys in blue away from me. There’s a lot more people at stake here than your goddamn family, and that’s a fact.”

  “I can’t let you go,” he mumbled.

  I brought a foot down into his face.

  “You’re gonna have to. You have too much to lose, cop. Let me do my job.”

  Back in the truck, I looked at myself in the rearview mirror. I wasn’t as inconspicuous as I’d been five minutes earlier. With the blanket on the seat, I wiped the blood off my face. My hands were shaking, but I felt great.

  “Anthony,” I said. “Anthony, Anthony, Anthony. Time to pay the piper.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The sun came down in brilliant rays, and the air was warm. There was a slight breeze. On any other day, it all would have been enough to make you happy to be alive, but to the citizens of Evelyn, the daytime had become nothing more than a handful of hours in which they felt just a little bit less afraid. Me? I was in good spirits. I was bleeding out of my face, but I knew who the Rose Killer was.

  I still didn’t know what the deal was with how he had been able to conceal himself from the wolf, but it didn’t matter too much anymore. I knew his face. I knew his name. I knew his car. Hell, a little bit of his blood had run onto my hand when I knocked his li
ghts out in the parking lot. He was as good as dead. But still, I wanted him. He had caused too much pain and chaos in my life for the wolf to have all the fun. I wanted a little piece of him just for me. All I had to do was find him.

  The whole situation with the bloody face was kind of pressing, though. I couldn’t very well go around town looking like I’d gotten intimate with an ugly stick, so once I drove back to Old Sherman Road and the civilization on the other side of it, I headed to the closest deli. There was one just a few blocks away.

  I walked in, and the old man behind the counter took one look at me and opened his mouth. “Son,” he said, “you’re not looking like you’re doing too good.”

  “I can’t complain,” I said, and went back to one of the coolers to grab myself a bottle of water.

  I took one of the few remaining dollars out of my wallet, slammed it on the counter, and headed back out. It was there on the sidewalk that I saw someone I didn’t expect to see again.

  She was wearing a pair of sweatpants, sneakers, and a tight white T-shirt with a picture of Jimi Hendrix on it. Sunglasses hid her beautiful eyes from me. I stopped dead in my tracks.

  “Hey, darling,” I said out of habit. I kind of instantly regretted it.

  She removed her glasses. “Hey, Marley,” said Alice.

  “You look good.”

  She laughed. “I wish I could say the same about you. What happened?”

  “Oh, you mean this? Just been a tough day is all….”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t be talking now,” she said plainly, like she’d flipped a switch inside her and turned off her emotions.

  “Wait, please, let me explain.”

  “Marley, you don’t need to explain anything to me. It’s not

  like …”

  “Please don’t say it, Alice.”

  She stopped.

  “I need to apologize about the other day. About following you.”

  “That’s fine, Marley. You don’t owe me an explanation.”

  “I feel like I do. I know you have a line. It’s something I’ve heard you say a thousand times, and I know you don’t want to hear it, but I care about you.”