The Wolfman

by Nicholas Pekearo

  “Please don’t …”

  “You’re a scumbag, Van Buren. You’re no kind of cop. Where did you get that car you rammed me with?”

  “Impound,” he said. “You ruined my truck.”

  “I shot you …”

  “Yes you did, you motherfucker.”

  “You should be dead. How …”

  “You’re a cop, Van Buren. You would know that they didn’t pull a body out of that truck. Don’t pull this shocked shit with me, and if you thought I wouldn’t come back for you, you’re a bigger fool than I thought.”

  “I thought you’d crawled into the woods and died, Higgins….

  What’re you going to do?”

  I know what I would have liked to do.

  I pulled an envelope from the back pocket of my jeans. It contained Van Buren’s shield and a hand-drawn map I’d made for him. The map was crude, but showed exactly where in those thick and haunted woods off of Old Sherman Road there was a little ancient shack with a broken window, a body, stacks of incriminating photos, and the cameras that took them. It was a gift from me to him, even though he shot me. Twice.

  I tossed the envelope into the car and said, “There’s a treat in there for you and the federales.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Where to find the Rose Killer.”

  “You got him?”

  I let the question go. It seemed redundant to me that he felt it necessary to ask.

  “I can kill you anytime I want, Van Buren. But I won’t. I want you to forget my name though. The contents of that envelope were stuck under your windshield wiper when you left the house this morning, you copy that?”

  He nodded.

  “Forget my fucking name. Forget I exist. If I ever see you again, I won’t be merciful, and I won’t fuck up. I’ll do things to you so bad I won’t be able to live with myself.”

  I threw his gun into the car, stood, and slammed the door.

  “Your badge is in there too.”

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Don’t thank me. Quit. You don’t deserve it.” I walked away. No one followed.

  After dropping off the shield and the map to Van Buren, I paid Mrs. Pearce a visit. I had every reason to believe the house was still under the watch and guard of the police, but I couldn’t leave without seeing her.

  She opened the door and was much more cordial this time around. She invited me in, led me to the couch, and made me what must have been the best cup of tea I’d ever had in my life. I was never a big fan of tea, but Pearce liked it, and it was that part of him that was inside me that enjoyed the drink she made for me.

  Her face looked not as exhausted as it did the first time I was there, and the aura that surrounded her seemed a little less gray.

  When she finally got around to asking me what I was doing there, I pulled from a sleeve in my wallet a single piece of black, human hair. I gave it to her carefully, as if the fingers that held it were fine surgeon’s tools, and once she held it tight between her fingers, I told her that it was a hair from the head of the man who was responsible for her husband’s death. It was true enough for me.

  She inspected it like it would answer her questions, like why her husband had to die so young, or what kind of man could have done such a thing. I just hoped it would put them down for her.

  “Why are you giving this to me?” she asked, teary-eyed.

  “There’s never going to be a trial,” I said. “No sense of closure for you. This piece of hair is going to have to do.”

  “How did you get it?”

  “That’s something you don’t have to think on,” I said, “and you shouldn’t.”

  She felt her stomach and smiled.

  “I am a cop’s wife. I know when to leave well enough alone. Thank you.”

  “How’s the baby?”

  “Fine. Coming along. She’ll be popping out just about any day now,” she said. “I wish Danny were here for this….” She stopped, brought a tissue to her eye.

  “Me too,” I said.

  She cleared her throat and asked, “Any ideas for a name?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “actually, I do. I’ve always been fond of Doris.”

  Last, I pulled up outside Alice’s little house on the north side of town. I felt bad that things had gone so sour between us. I knew that our relationship was just as much a figment of my imagination as it was real, and I had scared and offended her by thinking it was anything more than what it was—an arrangement. But I didn’t regret following her all the times I did. Half the reason was because I wanted to make sure she got home safely. I always did. The other was because I loved her.

  I blew the horn. It was not yet ten o’clock, and she was sleeping. By nature, her schedule was, sadly, nocturnal, like mine. I blew the horn again, and this time her face appeared behind the kitchen curtain. A minute later, she came out in her real jammies—a pair of boxers and a tank top. Her hair was down, and she came out to the curb barefoot. I loved her feet. She never looked better than she did outside of Mama Snow’s house.

  I got out and rested against the hood.

  “Marlowe,” she said.

  “I’m sorry to wake you. You look great.”

  She smiled.

  “And you look okay. A lot better than the last time I saw you. I guess everything worked out for you.”

  “It worked out good enough.”

  “Where did you get this car?”

  “I traded it in,” I said.

  “Where? I’ve never seen that ride around here before.” Thank God for that.

  I blinked, and just for a moment, I saw her through Raynor’s eyes, the way he would have seen her. It made me sick. I blinked again to make it go away.

  “It’s from out of town,” I said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a ‘73 Mach 1. They don’t make ‘em like this anymore.”

  The Rose Killer’s deathmobile would be my ride until I got out of Evelyn and got the cash together to pick up a new car for myself. I could only hope the tags wouldn’t pop if I ever got stopped for anything.

  “What happened to your accent?” she asked.

  “It went the way of the Duke, Alice. I may not need it where I’m going, depending on where that is. I tried telling you that there was a lot more to me than people know, and this is one of those things. I’m not really a Bible Belt kind of guy. It’s not my history.”

  “Well, that much I’ve always figured, Marley, you being who

  you are….”

  “I’m not a bad man, Alice.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you?”

  “I know it now,” she said softly.

  “I just wanted you to be okay. And I just wanted you to hear my real voice before …”

  “So … is this it?” she asked.

  “Yeah, darlin’, this is it. I’m just about used up here. I’m gonna be hitting the highway in a short while.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking down.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to come with me.”

  She thought for a moment. She looked off into the distance, and finally said, “No, I don’t think I will, I hate to say. We all have our … burdens … and I got mine. I can’t go.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  “But thanks for saying good-bye, Marley.”

  “I couldn’t go without seeing you.”

  She smiled again, came up close, and kissed me on my mouth. I kissed her back. My fingers laced their way through her hair for the last time. A second later, she pulled herself away. That’s all there could be. And all there was.

  “Take care, darlin’.”

  “You too,” she said.

  She turned and started to walk back toward the house. I watched her pad away in her bare feet, away from me for the last time, and I couldn’t take it.

  “Wait,” I said.

  She stopped.

  I opened the car door and rummaged through the trunk in
the backseat.

  I handed her the old, clown-faced night-light.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “It’s a little light,” I said. “In case it ever gets too dark for you to see.”

  I drove through the opened gates of Wild Oaks Cemetery and up the main road that wove among the graves like an artery. After a few minutes of slow driving, I saw Pearce’s grave up ahead.

  I parked the car on the shoulder, and went the rest of the way on foot. The crime-scene tape had been removed, but all about the place was trampled grass from the most action the cemetery had seen since the War of the States. When I got to his grave, I took out a cigarette and rested it on the tombstone. He deserved one.

  In my head, I remembered one of his last solid memories. He was sipping from a cup of coffee in his well-lit kitchen, and Martha was in the living room going through his jacket pockets because she was getting a load of laundry together. She discovered the note I had written to him in the guise of a rather trashy cross-dresser. Danny looked over to see what she was looking at with such disgust. “What’s up?” he asked calmly.

  “What the hell is this?” she gasped. “Who the hell is Tommy Candy?”

  Danny walked over and took the note from her hands. He read it, then cursed under his breath. “That sonofabitch.”

  His wife’s eyes were digging holes into him. Danny smiled and said, “It looks as if Marley’s trying to help us get a divorce.”

  “Dear Christ,” she said. “Why do you associate with that bum?”

  “C’mon, Martha,” Danny said. “He’s not that bad. He just has a little bit of a devil’s streak in him. He’s trying, you know.”

  I looked down at the grave and tipped my invisible hat to him.

  “I did what I could,” I said. “Take care, partner.”

  Like Bill Parker used to do, I drove a loop around Old Sherman, just to let me know, in some crazy way, that everything was going to be okay. I had no name and no destination, but there was always going to be a road to take, there was always going to be a full moon waiting for me, and no matter where I ended up, I’d keep on doing what it is that I do best.

  I took a left where Main Street turned into a country road at Old Sherman and took it into the woods where it lay cracked and shaded under a tent of tree limbs. The town of Evelyn, the first place I’d had the chance to call home since I was just a boy, receded into the distance in my rearview mirror. Before long, I reached the St. Michael River and crossed Whitman’s Bridge on my way to the west.

  With that, I was gone.

  EPILOGUE

  Mick Hanson parked his stolen car on the corner and looked out at the long and winding residential street through the dirty windshield. There wasn’t a soul in sight, and up in the cloudless sky the full moon shone, shedding enough light that he wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over anything when he was stumbling through someone’s backyard. He got out of the car, closed the door gently, and disappeared into the shadows.

  He had been in San Antonio for just a couple of months. He’d never been there before coming in on one of the trains, but he knew it was a big city. There was no reason there shouldn’t be a lot of work around for a guy like him, even if his record was less than perfect. Texas was supposed to be a religious kind of place after all, and if some shopkeeper there couldn’t see past his faults, then who could?

  So far, Hanson hadn’t been successful in finding work, but he got by all right just the same. Locks just seemed to open at his will. And no matter where he ever found himself, there was always going to be a pawnshop close by that didn’t ask questions about how he got all the jewelry that lined his filthy pockets.

  He walked along the sidewalk. Up high, there was a sign nailed to a post that spoke of a neighborhood watch. He laughed under his breath, then caught sight of a nice-looking house a few doors down. There was a car in the driveway—a red Toyota Corolla with Texas plates. He peeped through the car’s side window and covered his mouth when he saw what was there for all the world to see in the open glove box. There was a box of tampons in there. His other hand disappeared into his pants pocket. Then he went around to the back of the house.

  There was a bed of flowers that filled the air with a sweet scent, and past that was a small vegetable patch, a garden hose woven across the dirt like a snake that he would have tripped over if it wasn’t such a bright night. He didn’t like tripping. Nor did he like making noise.

  Hanging on a line from between the two short trees was a clothesline, and on that clothesline were several tops of varying, garish colors, a pair of jogging pants with a racing stripe along the side, a tan nightgown, and a single brassiere, pink, that fluttered in the gentle breeze. Mick Hanson licked his lips and wiped the sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his dingy T-shirt.

  He touched the female garment, felt the smoothness of the synthetic fabric as he rolled it back and forth between his fingers. Then he brought it to his face and rubbed his cheek with it. It might have just been in his head, but he would have sworn that it was warm, as if a woman had just taken it off seconds earlier. He stuffed it in his pocket, and then went over to the window.

  It was opened just a crack, but as the curtains swayed back and forth in the breeze, he could see the woman pacing through a faraway room, talking on the phone. She was wearing next to nothing. A pair of men’s boxer shorts, that’s it. Her hair was golden and bounced around the top of her head in a thick perm. Mick Hanson liked straight hair, but wasn’t the kind of guy that got picky about such things. The woman’s breasts were small and lifeless. Tired-looking. One of them had a mole on it, just above the nipple, and it was that kind of fine detail that made Mick Hanson reach for his manhood again, made him pat it through his slacks like it was a dog waiting for a treat. Mick Hanson bit the inside of his mouth to keep himself from moaning.

  The fact was that it didn’t matter what she had been wearing, or even what she looked like. All signs pointed to her being alone in that house, and sometimes, if the opportunity presented itself, Mick Hanson just couldn’t help himself. Any valuables in the house that he could hock would be nothing more than a bonus at that point.

  He stuck his fingers in the thin space between the open window and its frame with the intent of opening it enough so he could sneak into the house. As he did so, he heard a growling sound behind him.

  His heart skipped a beat, and he thought of what it was like the last time he’d been attacked by a dog on someone else’s property. He still had the deep, jagged scars on his forearm to remember it by.

  He turned slowly, and when he saw what was standing in front of him, all seven feet of it, its teeth glistening with spit, its eyes as red as bloody pools, Mick Hanson lost control of his bowels, and the smell of his cheap, digested lunch filled the air.

  The wolf raised its giant hand in the air so Mick Hanson could see it before he died. There, clutched in one of the beast’s fists, was a sock. Mick Hanson’s old, dirty sock. He took in a great big breath to scream, but the target never made another sound again.