It's Alive!

by Richard Woodley

He gnawed on his cigar. “Okay, I know what’s going on. And I know what’s bothering you. You’ll just have to ignore what people are saying about us and do your jobs. It’s tough on me too. But that’s the way it is when you got a tough case.”

  He spat a piece of the cigar end into the wastepaper basket. “Everybody wants to put their two bits in, second-guess you, criticize you. It’s the nature of our business that we can’t run around giving progress reports every step of the way. So people think we’re doing nothing. Until we solve the case. Then they think we’re heroes. They’re wrong on both ends of the deal. But that’s the way folks are. They don’t ever think anything’s going on until it’s done. Folks think pigs are just fat-slob animals until they can bite into a good pork cutlet.”

  The men chuckled.

  “Could I ask a question, sir?” A young patrolman raised his hand. Perkins nodded. “I just wondered, why didn’t you tell the State Troopers what you think the pattern of killings indicates?”

  “I did.”

  “Well, I know you said about it being an unpredictable animal, but I mean your theory on what the thing might be after?”

  Perkins worked his lips and teeth vigorously around the cigar. “In the first place, I didn’t like those guys being called in. That ain’t my business, of course, and what the mayor or the governor want to do we just have to live with. But they just barge in here, trampling all over everything, thinking they’re smarter than anybody. I ain’t saying it’s not a serious case. But it ain’t a question of just calling in every Tom, Dick, and Harry cop—we got plenty of bodies to do the work. It’s a question,” he tapped his head hard several times with his index finger, “of using your goddam brain. That’s the difference between ordinary cops and good cops. Sure, you gotta beef up patrols, have special communications, all that stuff. That’s easy. It’s basic. We had that set up before the Troopers came in.”

  He paced back and forth among the officers, his cigar growing shorter as he chewed and spat.

  “So, fine, they get ordered into this, we just make more patrols. Nothing wrong with that—maybe—if they don’t end up shooting at us or their own damn shadows. But as far as my theories are concerned, that’s something else. I ain’t telling them because they’d either laugh at me or try and horn in on it and run it all themselves. And they aren’t up to it. They don’t know the area like we do, the nooks and crannies, the holes and pipes, the alleys and stairways. They’d stumble into a goddam swimming pool in somebody’s backyard and drown.

  “Plus, I may be wrong. And if I’m wrong, the fewer cops who know about it the better, am I right?”

  The officers nodded.

  Perkins chuckled. “If I’m wrong, no sense in getting everybody in a uproar over it, ’cause I don’t feel like retiring just yet. And if I’m right . . . if I’m right . . .” he stared out the window, “. . . then we gotta play it cool and quiet. A small group of us are all that’s gonna be in on it, so it don’t get blown. Ready to move fast. ’Cause there’s gonna be some shooting. And I don’t want a whole mob of cops pumping lead into half of L.A.”

  A sudden banging on the door. “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” More banging. “Lieutenant! They got it! The state cops got it! May I come in?”

  The door swung open and a red-faced, breathless young desk officer sprang into the room waving a piece of paper. “I just monitored the call! They got it surrounded! Some Mexican’s house . . .”

  State Troopers ringed the yard around the small house, crouched behind bushes, nervously fingering their shotguns.

  Captain Sanford clutched his .357 Magnum so tightly that his entire fist was white. His eyes, like the others’, were focused on a low section of shrubbery just off to the left of the front porch. Beside him hunkered a middle-aged man in overalls and a plaid shirt.

  The cry came again, a low, mournful, hiccuping cry just like a regular baby.

  “That’s it!” the man whispered in the captain’s ear. “Just like I said when I called.”

  “Okay,” Sanford whispered to the Troopers nearest him, “move in slowly, all together, pass the word.”

  The circle of Troopers emerged from the bushes and started edging toward the cluster of small shrubs, their shotguns at the ready. The captain was a step ahead.

  Again the cry, unmistakable, louder.

  The men crept forward. They were a few yards from the spot. The crying rose to a wail.

  A car screeched up to the curb. A girl’s voice yelled, “What’s going on? What’s wrong?”

  A teenage girl and boy came running from the car, their long black hair flowing behind them. “What’s WRONG?”

  They broke through the line of Troopers and headed for the shrubs.

  “Watch it!” Captain Sanford bellowed. “Everybody down!”

  The Troopers flopped into prone firing positions.

  The two teenagers parted the shrubs to reveal a stroller in which a diaper-clad baby now goo-gooed happily.

  “Stay away from its fingers!” yelled the captain.

  The girl picked up the baby and hugged it to her chest. “But what’s wrong, officers? We just left the baby for a few minutes.”

  Captain Sanford stood up, brushed himself off, and gingerly approached the girl.

  “You can put that leg of lamb away,” she said, waggling her hand at the huge pistol.

  “What the hell is going on here?” the captain asked gruffly.

  “I’m babysitting,” she said. “My boyfriend came by and we just left the baby for a few minutes to pick up some tacos.”

  “But why the devil’d you put it in them damn shrubs?”

  “The mother said not to leave him alone in the house. And we put him back there so he wouldn’t see us leave and get upset. He likes to be out in the sun. We thought he would go to sleep like he usually does.” She kissed the top of the baby’s head. “We were gone just a few minutes.”

  Captain Sanford clicked on the safety and jammed the Magnum down in his hip holster. “Well, goddam.” He turned and glared at the man in overalls. “Why’d you call us for a thing like that?”

  “It was a baby’s cry, just like I read about.” The man blushed deeply and fumbled with the straps of his overalls. “I couldn’t see nothin’. I didn’t mean no harm. Better to be safe than sorry, ain’t that right?”

  Captain Sanford snarled and glared at the man. “But if you live next door or something, didn’t you know there was a baby in this house?”

  “I don’t live around here. I’m a carpenter, on a job down the block. I was just walkin’ by.”

  Three local police cars careened around the corner, slid up to and over the curb, and came to a skidding halt on the lawn behind the Troopers. The men, led by Detective Perkins, spilled out of the cars.

  “What in blazes . . .” Perkins pushed through the crowd, saw the baby, then turned slowly around to Captain Sanford. “Anybody shot?”

  “Naw. False alarm. This damn plumber here don’t know a baby from his uncle.”

  Perkins looked at the man in overalls, who stared nervously at the ground.

  “Sorry, I heard a cry . . .”

  By now several people had come from nearby houses and were bunched on the sidewalk, watching the scene.

  “Okay, okay,” Perkins waved them away, “keep it moving. Family dispute. Everybody back to their knitting.”

  “We were here within seconds after the call,” Sanford said proudly.

  “I’m sure you were.”

  “And I can tell you this.” The captain leaned to Perkins’s ear confidentially. “If it’d a been that monster brat we’re after, it’d a been plastered all over the wall of that house before it could say boo.”

  “I don’t doubt that either.”

  “Okay, men, back in your cars! Good trial run!”

  The Troopers scrambled into their cars and sped away.

  “Gee, officer,” said the man in overalls, standing with one toe on top of the other, “did I do something really wrong
?”

  “No, mister,” Perkins replied. “You did exactly the right thing. You might a saved a life. As it was, I think the babysitter here performed that service just in the nick of time.”

  She came shyly over to the lieutenant. “I can’t tell you how sorry and embarrassed I am,” she said, looking at the baby who gurgled merrily at her chest. “It was wrong, leaving the baby. I hope I don’t lose the job.”

  “You deserve to.”

  “I know.”

  Perkins turned to leave.

  She took a hesitant step forward. “I was just wondering . . .” she followed him to his car, “. . . whether I should have called the police about something I saw, last night.”

  He stopped short and turned back to her. “What did you see?”

  “Well, um, nothing really. I mean, that’s why I didn’t call, because I couldn’t really tell—”

  “Tell me now.”

  “Well, I was walking through the parking lot of the shopping center, you know, over on Hooper Street? I had worked late at the supermarket—that’s my main job—and the stores were closed, but it wasn’t completely dark. And as I was walking along, I saw something move, on the other side of the fence, on the ground. You know that picket fence they have? Well I saw something move. At first I thought it was a dog, or some squirrels. But it wasn’t. I mean I don’t think it was. It was getting pretty dark. I thought I saw the head of something. I can’t be sure. I thought it was a head. Just the back of it. Like it was looking in the direction—”

  “Look, miss, just tell me exactly what you saw, even if you’re not sure.”

  “Well, like I said, I thought it was a head. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “Now please, don’t laugh at me, or call me crazy or anything—because I said I just thought I saw it . . .”

  Perkins sighed.

  “. . . But I swear to God, officer, the head was very big and bald and round, like some kind of giant human baby.”

  Detective Perkins bit his cigar in two. “Then what happened?”

  “It was as if it suddenly saw something, in the other direction, like over toward the school. And then all at once a whole bunch of leaves flew up around it, and it was gone. Please, officer,” she put a hand on his arm and looked at him pleadingly, “don’t call me crazy. I know how it sounds. That’s why I didn’t tell anybody, not a soul.”

  “Don’t tell anybody else. Maybe you saw something, maybe you didn’t. Appreciate you mentioning it to me. Let’s go, men.”

  They got into their cars and backed off the lawn, leaving the girl standing there cradling the baby, her boyfriend waiting for her at the front door.

  The officer behind the wheel looked over at Detective Perkins. “What do you think, lieutenant?”

  “I think she saw something,” Perkins said, “maybe a balloon. But I don’t think it was a balloon.”

  “Looks like you’ve been right about it, then.”

  “If that’s a consolation to you. But this town ain’t gonna give a damn how right I’ve been. All anybody’s gonna care about is that we get this job done. And we ain’t done it yet. All we know is that thing’s still loose. And it’s still here, most likely.”

  “At least now we know for sure it’s got a big, bald head.”

  “We don’t know nothing. We see, we hear, we think. Even if that girl did see something, she couldn’t be sure about that at night. And I don’t care if it’s got a bowling ball for a head. She’s the luckiest person in this town that she didn’t turn up this morning with her throat missing. Next person that sees it might not be so lucky. So next time it’s seen, it better be by us.”

  The hospital was quiet, clean, and orderly—approximately back to normal. Nurses bustled soundlessly through the corridors; doctors huddled over patients; even the delivery room was functioning efficiently.

  Nobody talked about what was now referred to as “the Davis incident.” But memories of it hovered in the air, and the spirit of the personnel was more somber than before.

  It was perhaps to be expected—given all the furor, tensions, misunderstandings, and publicity of that tragic time—that the hospital’s public-relations man, Ned Schultz, resigned, in the best interests of everybody concerned. He was congratulated all around for his unselfishness and grace under pressure, and given a cake. He managed to find a job with KBOP Radio-TV. Dr. Norten, the chief resident, had weathered the storm. It was not, after all, any of the hospital’s fault. Some felt that he, like Schultz, perhaps should resign, only because the public tended to associate him with the awful events.

  But, as a direct result of those same events, the hospital was short of doctors. And Norten had, by reason of his quietly professional demeanor, been able to convince the hospital board that he above all others should be relied upon to use his experience at the hospital to keep it functioning medically well. That he should run everything, in fact.

  And that he did. He was superbly organized himself, and able to transmit that skill upon his staff. So well-ordered was he that not only was he able to continue and expand his practice with patients, but also he found time to stay abreast of all details relating to the horrible occurrence of a few days before.

  As a matter of fact, at his recent overnight private meeting with a publisher in Chicago, he’d been assured of a six-figure amount whenever he would be able to deliver a suitable manuscript, which he had tentatively entitled: “The Davis Incident.”

  “Telephone for Dr. Norten,” announced the P.A., “. . . telephone for Dr. Norten . . .”

  He broke off a conversation with some interns in the corridor, and took the call in his office.

  “Dr. Norten? Professor Eckstein speaking. I promised I’d keep you posted. I’ve been going over some reports in the coroner’s office. Fascinating details. But I guess you’re pretty familiar with all that.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “But there is something I find rather curious.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, in the blood samples. In the umbilical cord. Tell me, doctor, is Mrs. Davis an unusually energetic or nervous person?”

  “Nervous perhaps, according to Dr. Francis’s files. She seemed to have an odd feeling while she was carrying the . . . child. She was apparently not terribly lucid or articulate about it, but she used the words ‘strange’ and ‘weird’ often, according to the notes. I do remember, now that you mention it, the nurse who tended her in the labor room saying that Mrs. Davis did appear, as she put it, ‘highly agitated’ before she went to delivery. That is, before her husband visited her in labor. The nurse recounted to me that she seemed quite upset indeed, apprehensive not about labor pains and the usual things, but about something she didn’t seem to express readily. And again, after she left her husband, when she was being wheeled in to delivery, there was something she said about it being ‘too late,’ and Mrs. Davis sat up. Almost as quickly, she collapsed back down on the bed, and remained relatively calm after that. Does any of this relate to what you’re curious about?”

  “Perhaps, Dr. Norten. And now, is Mrs. Davis feeling especially tired, more spent than you would expect?”

  “Hmm. Odd. When last I saw her, yesterday, she was in fact surprisingly energetic, I thought. Surprisingly. I urged her to take a Valium and stay off her feet, but she was fairly dancing around the room.

  “For how long?”

  “We left within minutes, so I can’t say.”

  “You don’t know if that energy abruptly left her soon after that?”

  “No. Come, come, my good man, you must tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “Just this, doctor. In the umbilical cord, I discovered that there was an amazing supply of hormones, primarily adrenaline. The umbilical was saturated with it. It is as if every ounce of adrenaline in her body was suddenly thrust into the child. Anything in Dr. Francis’s files about her hormone balance?”

  “Nothing I can recall, professor.”

  “Had she ever been o
n the pill, if I may ask?”

  “Why yes, in fact, for many years. Remarkably enough, she stopped taking them some time ago, then began taking fertility pills of some sort—I don’t remember the make and model. Quaint ambivalence about the procreative processes, what?”

  “Lord! Didn’t anybody warn her about playing with her hormonal balance so flagrantly?”

  “I daresay, professor, just between you and me, had she been my patient I most certainly would have counseled a more careful approach. Have you some conclusions from all this?”

  “I fear I might bore you, doctor, with matters you have already contemplated.”

  “Tut, tut. Professor Eckstein. If I have considered what you are about to tell me, you will either confirm my conjectures or deny them. Either way, we advance our knowledge of the science and the case.”

  “Very well. We have here a woman who, at least at the moment of birth, infused her infant with a horrendous dose of adrenaline and other hormones. Not only would that deplete her, but it would also tend to oversupply the infant. It would be enough to kill an ordinary newborn child. But this one accepted the hormones. Such a capability would suggest grotesque consequences: abnormal growth and strength, and God knows what other abnormalities and deformities. It could even suggest why such an infant could survive in cold and damp.”

  “Ahh.”

  “But of course we must ask ourselves: How could such an infant accept this hormonal overdose at the last moment?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Supposing we postulate that the woman was producing and transferring gross amounts of these hormones, including adrenaline, from the moment of conception and through the entire term.”

  “Precisely.”

  “It challenges standard doctrine, but were that possible, we might have found the important clue in the mystery of how this mutant developed.”

  “Certainly.”

  “And we shall know what form it finally took soon, when we have the corpus for examination.”

  “Assuredly.”

  “But not, doctor, precisely why.”

  “Hunh?”

  “If this theory is correct, and if our interests involve more than just the lurid, sensational, short-sighted details of the mutant itself—such as what one might find in the Guinness Book of Records—then we must address the riddle of why Mrs. Davis produced these massive amounts of hormones, what in her body caused them to be loosed by the truckload so as to produce this gargoyle of a child . . .”