The Changing (The Biergarten Series)

by Wright, T. M. ; Armstrong, F. W.

  "Boyfriends, you mean?" Will asked, a small tremor of suspicion in his voice.

  Frances offered sharply, "She had lots of boyfriends, Mr. Biergarten."

  "None that mattered," Will maintained steadfastly.

  "Not boyfriends, particularly," Ryerson said. "I'm talking more about . . . friends—girlfriends, teachers." He paused only briefly, went on, "Did she have any women friends?"

  "Sorry," Frances said, "I don't understand that," and her tone announced clearly that she hoped he wasn't asking what she thought he was asking.

  Ryerson shook his head urgently. "No, not that kind of woman friend. I'm sorry. I mean, an older woman friend. A woman in her twenties, for instance. Someone she . . . talked to; like a big sister." His uneasiness doubled.

  Will and Frances fell silent for several moments. Then Will said, "Yes," and Frances said, almost at the same time, "She had a friend named Joan. Near Erie."

  "Joan?" Ryerson asked. "Do you remember her last name?"

  And there was movement in the dirt over the grave. "Good Lord," Ryerson breathed.

  Will nodded urgently. "She's gonna talk to us, Mr. Biergarten. Lila's gonna talk to us." He looked at his wife. "Frances, our Lila's gonna talk to us."

  "Yes," Frances said matter-of-factly. "I can hear her humming."

  "She hums first, Mr. Biergarten," Will said.

  "Like a singer warming up her pipes," Frances said, smiling slightly, as if pleased with the image.

  The ground quieted. Ryerson heard, from within the grave, what sounded for all the world like someone humming. But it was strained and tight, like air being let out of a balloon.

  The humming stopped.

  And Ryerson saw, for the first time, that the ground over the grave was quite a bit more disturbed than it should have been. He asked, "How long ago did you say it was that your daughter was buried?"

  "Two months," Will answered.

  While Creosote whimpered raggedly in his arms—because the dog wouldn't let go of his treasured soft plastic duck—Ryerson knelt over the grave and touched the earth. It was moist, as if it had been freshly turned. He looked up at Frances and Will Curtis, who were looking quizzically down at him. "I . . ." he began, and wasn't sure what to say next. He looked quickly, anxiously back at the grave.

  Will Curtis said, his voice tentative and unsure, "That ground's not settled yet, Mr. Biergarten."

  The humming started again, lower in pitch, as if the balloon were running out of air.

  "There," Frances said, "Lila's talking to us."

  Ryerson glanced at her, shook his head. "No," he whispered. "No, I'm sorry, no," and he looked yet again at the grave and cocked his head to one side to get a better fix on the source of the humming noise. He looked again at Frances and Will Curtis. "I assume that Lila was embalmed."

  Frances shook her head. "No, she wasn't. Joan said not to, and the medical examiner in Erie said that was okay if her coffin was closed, which it was—"

  "My God," Ryerson breathed; he held Creosote in his left hand and stuck his right hand six or seven inches into the sort earth. He touched something. It felt like the skin that forms on Jell-O that's allowed to harden uncovered. He recoiled, reached into the earth again, let his fingers linger on the thing he was touching there. He kneaded it experimentally and heard the same high, humming sound he'd heard

  moments earlier, like air escaping from a balloon.

  "She's talking to us," Will Curtis cried happily.

  "No, I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Curtis, I'm sorry—”

  “She's talking to us, our Lila is talking to us!"

  Chapter Twelve

  "She'd been dug up," Ryerson said, "and then reburied, though not quite deep enough, I'm afraid." Tom McCabe shook his head in disbelief.

  "And I'm awfully damned sure this friend of Lila's, the woman Frances referred to as ‘Joan,' did it, though I couldn't get much out of Frances or her husband—they were both in a state of shock. He had to be sedated, and she simply refused to talk."

  "In time," McCabe suggested.

  "We can live in hope, Tom. I'll go back down there in a few days, unless you have some objections."

  "No, I don't. I'd like to go with you, though, to sort of keep the whole thing as ... official as we can."

  "Sure."

  "How's the pooch, Rye?"

  "I don't know. It was as if he went into shock, too. The vet says he'll be all right, which—"

  McCabe, who clearly had asked about Creosote purely from courtesy, broke in. "So you think this `Joan' woman is Greta Lynch?"

  Ryerson exhaled slowly, a kind of extended sigh. "I don't know," he said. They were at Foggy's Notion; Ryerson had ordered a scotch and soda, though it wasn't yet noon, and he rarely drank at all, let alone before noon. He'd downed half the drink and could already feel it working on him. "I think there's a good chance that `Joan' and Greta Lynch are the same person. Maybe I want to believe it, because it would start bringing things together for me."

  "Oh?" McCabe was intrigued. "How?"

  Ryerson took a sip of the drink, set the glass down. "Okay, we know that Greta worked in Erie, right?"

  "Right."

  "And we know that poor Lila Curtis killed her boyfriend using an M.O. similar to that of The Park Werewolf."

  "Uh-huh. Right."

  "Okay, now Lila Curtis lived in Edgewater, which is only twenty miles from Erie, and Lila Curtis also had a friend named Joan who may or may not have come from Erie."

  "Sure, Rye. But it's damned tenuous. You know that, don't you?"

  Ryerson nodded. "If you're saying we can't get a conviction on it, I'm aware of that. We're also not going to get a conviction if we go to a judge and say, 'Judge, a werewolf did these murders.'

  McCabe grinned. "So, you've settled on that, huh? That it's a werewolf?"

  Ryerson grimaced. "Don't make it sound so melodramatic, Tom. I told you once that I'm not sure I believe in werewolves, and that still goes. I'm not sure what we're dealing with here. First I say that he's got his mythology all wrong, that he's doing his killing not only at times when there's no full moon, but during the day as well, and then this poor bastard—Conkey—gets it under a full moon. I don't know, Tom. I really do not know. And it's frustrating the hell out of me."

  "You and me, both, Rye. But off the record—and this goes nowhere but into my head for now—you're saying that what we've got is a genuine, Hammer-films-variety, snarling, gut-eating werewolf. Is that right?"

  "That's right," Ryerson answered simply. He stood. "But I wouldn't bet my ass on it, Tom. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got to see a man about a dog."

  ~ * ~

  Greta held the sealed envelope in her hand for a full minute before she opened it. It had only her name on it, no stamp, no return address, so whoever had written it had put it in her mailbox himself—and that made her feel more apprehensive than if the mailman had brought it.

  When she did open it, she saw the same dark block lettering that had been used in the first letter:

  My Dearest Greta,

  Our little secrets are what make us human. Animals have no secrets from each other, beyond where they've hidden their stash of food, and under what logs their dens lie.

  So, if we are animal, and human, at the same time, then the things that the animal inside us has to do, to survive, become the human's awful secrets. Because the animal knows no shame. It knows only its needs, and how to satisfy them.

  But secrets like that, Greta, can make us sick and depressed. They can eat away at us and make our human world a place of horror.

  Share your secrets, Greta. Bring them out, into the light, for me. Then, together, we can make them right and good.

  Greta crumpled the letter in her fist and cursed savagely beneath her breath, just as Linda Bowerman appeared from inside the house, her little two-wheel grocery cart in hand.

  "Come to the store with me, Greta?" she asked. Greta shook her head, eyes closed.

  "Can I get you anythin
g, then? It's no problem."

  Again Greta shook her head; she opened her eyes, looked at Linda. "No, thank you. I don't need anything."

  Linda shrugged. "Okay, suit yourself." She descended the porch steps, looked back, waved, and said, "See you later."

  "Sure," Greta called back, and went sullenly up to her apartment.

  ~*~

  It was simply furnished, because she was a woman of simple tastes. In her move from Erie, Pennsylvania, she'd either discarded or given to the Salvation Army a number of things that she and her estranged husband had shared and that he had—with unusual magnanimity, she thought at the time—let her keep. Things like a portable stereo, a ten-year-old color TV, two cherry end tables, a super-8-min movie camera and projector, which they'd used quite a lot during the first year of their marriage, and several boxes of essentially useless odds and ends.

  She'd had to acquire a number of things when she'd moved to Rochester and settled into her apartment on Fairview Heights: furniture, cooking utensils, a bed. She bought them all in one day, using her savings to buy only the best, if not the best-looking, stuff she could find. Form, she believed, followed function; if something looked nice but didn't work, what good was it?

  She also read quite a lot, and had built quite an impressive library. Her tastes were eclectic; the only sort of books she didn't read were modern romances. She read historicals, westerns and spy thrillers, horror, poetry, mainstream fiction, psychological fiction, self-help, and current events. She had all of the Arthur Conan Doyle books, all of Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, John Updike, T. M. Wright, Shirley Jackson, Richard Brautigan, Paula Fox, and Peter S. Beagle, to name a few of her favorite authors. And she read every night.

  Tonight she would not read. Tonight she would spend her evening hours agonizing, in vain, over the "goddamned, cowardly bastard"—as she thought of him—who was writing her these anonymous, sophomorically philosophical, and weirdly accusative letters. Why, if he knew her awful secret, didn't he simply share it with her personally? That would be better. That would be better for both of them. Her anxiety followed her to bed and then into sleep.

  ~ * ~

  The following morning, Saturday, May 3, was warm, dry, and cloudless, and Ryerson Biergarten thought there were places he'd rather be than trying to pump a possible murder suspect; the psychic effort always left him weary.

  With Creosote tucked snorting under his arm, he knocked firmly on the massive oak door—there was a window in the middle of it covered by a sheer curtain—at 8 Fairview Heights, saw a doorbell, used it. Seconds later he watched as a short, square-faced, dark-haired woman in a long green terrycloth robe appeared from an inner room, moved to the front door, parted the sheer curtains, and peered out.

  "Yes?" said the woman.

  "I'd like to speak to Greta Lynch," Ryerson called through the closed door.

  "Greta's asleep. Could you come back later, please?"

  Ryerson checked his watch. "You're sure she's asleep? It is 10:30, you know."

  "Yes. I know what time it is."

  "Could I leave her my card, then?"

  The woman looked confused. "Your what?”

  “My card. Could I leave it with you to give to her?"

  The woman hesitated, opened the door slightly, stuck her face into the opening. "Yes, you can leave your card. Are you a salesman?"

  "No."

  "Then what are you?"

  "I'm an investigator." Creosote cut loose; the woman gave him a look that was half confusion, half disgust.

  "What's wrong with him?" she asked.

  "Nothing," Ryerson answered. "He always does that."

  "Oh." Her face vanished from the opening briefly. Ryerson read a momentary anxiety; her face reappeared. "Greta's not up. It's Saturday; I guess it's her day off."

  "You're her—" Ryerson hesitated expectantly.

  "I'm her landlady, Linda Bowerman. And her friend." That last, Ryerson knew, was a veiled warning; I'm her protector, too, it said. "What is it you're investigating?"

  "I'm investigating the murders at The Park."

  Linda Bowerman nodded her acceptance of that. "And how do you think Greta's connected with them?"

  "I'm not saying I do. She does work at The Park, however, so there are some—"

  "And so do ten thousand other people, Mr.—”

  “Biergarten."

  "Uh-huh." Again her face disappeared from the opening. Again Ryerson read anxiety from her. Her face reappeared. She suggested tentatively, "I guess she had a hard night, Mr. Biergarten."

  And then he read something else, something from within the house, from above, from Greta's apartment. Something like fear. Or paralysis. Something that wanted to scream but couldn't, as if the vocal cords were numb, useless.

  He said urgently, "Please, I think I should come in. Let me come in," and he took a step closer to the door.

  Linda Bowerman closed the door until half an inch or less separated it from the frame and hissed, "Go away, this is private property!"

  "You don't understand," Ryerson pleaded, "and I don't have time to explain, but I know that something's wrong in there. Something's wrong in your house."

  "There's nothing wrong in my house. Nothing at all. Now go away, just go away!"

  And Ryerson told himself, If she meant it, she'd close the door. "I'm coming in," he announced, "please step aside," and he straight-armed the door. Linda Bowerman backed out of the way, started for her living room, said, over her shoulder, "I'm calling the police." Ryerson said, "Good," because it was, he knew, the very best thing she could do at that moment.

  ~ * ~

  "Motrin," the resident on call in the Emergency Ward at Strong Memorial Hospital explained to Ryerson. Ryerson had been waiting a good two hours for a report. "She took maybe thirty of them. Thirty of the big ones—six hundred milligrams each. We nearly lost her." The resident was a black woman not quite thirty with long straight hair and a distinctly businesslike air about her.

  Ryerson breathed a little sigh of relief.

  "You're her husband?" the resident asked.

  "No, just a friend." He glanced in the direction of the Emergency Ward down a long narrow hallway to his right. "Can I talk to her?"

  The resident answered, "In a day or two, yes." She paused, nodded at Creosote, who was snorting and belching, though more quietly than usual. "And without the dog, please."

  "Of course," Ryerson answered, embarrassed. "Without the dog."

  ~ * ~

  George Dixon glanced quickly around his office—though there was no one else in it—and opened the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk all the way.

  "Goddamnit!" he whispered. "Goddamnit all the fucking hell!" What in God's name was his damned lunch pail doing here? He'd thrown the damned thing into the Genesee River. He studied the pail for a full minute. Then, tremblingly, he reached into the drawer, grabbed the handle, and lifted the pail out. His brow furrowed; this wasn't his lunch pail. His had had a long scratch down the front. This pail was brand new; Jesus, it still had a price tag on it.

  He opened the pail quickly. It was empty except for a note written on a piece of yellow, lined paper.

  The note said simply, "Who are you trying to kid, George? The world? Or yourself?"

  And he thought desperately, What the hell does someone know about me that I don't?!

  Chapter Thirteen

  HAPPY ACRES GOLF CLUB: SUNDAY , MAY 4

  "Lost it in the sun, damnit!" Jack Youngman whispered.

  "Good drive, anyway, Jack," Doug Miller said and teed up for his own shot. "I saw where it landed." They were at the ninth hole, a 413-yard, par-five dogleg to the left that Doug Miller always parred, but which Jack Youngman had parred only once.

  Youngman growled back, "Just because I let you play through with me once or twice doesn't mean you can call me anything but 'Mr. Youngman,' you got that?"

  Doug Miller grinned, shrugged, and took his shot. The solid thwack of the club head against the ball told
him almost at once that it was going to be a long, straight drive, longer, perhaps, than Youngman's, who usually drove well but ended up taking two or three extra shots on the green.

  Youngman watched the ball arch high, but not too high, then hit the fairway a good 260 yards straight ahead. He grimaced. "Where are those other assholes, anyway?" he said. "I'll be damned if I have to walk another nine holes with just you for company, Miller." He didn't add that the reason he'd let Miller golf with him these last six weeks or so was that Miller was just about the best partner a guy could ask for. He was a good golfer, for one—almost as good, Youngman thought, as he was—and number two, he was just asshole enough that he got the members of the other team mad and flustered enough that they screwed up a lot.

  "They said they'd meet us here, right?" Miller asked. "At the ninth hole?"

  "That's what they said," Youngman answered, a noticeable strain in his voice because he hated to wait for anyone. He glanced at his watch. It said 12:15. "We'll give 'em another ten minutes." He looked suspiciously at the wooden driver that Miller had just used. "What is that, Miller? Is that new?" He thought it was possible that the reason Miller's drives were so good was that he was using an illegal club, one with a head that was heavier than normal.

  Miller handed him the club. "Nice, huh? English; custom made. You wanta try it? Go ahead."

  Youngman shook his head as he studied the club. "I don't need no special club—"

  Miller guffawed. "It isn't special, Jack." Youngman gave him a quick, critical glance. "It's a standard club."

  "Uh-huh," Youngman said, unconvinced. "And what's this?" He pointed at three letters cut into the top of the club head: "DAM."

  "My initials," Miller answered. "Douglas A. Miller."

  "Uh-huh. What's the 'A' for—'Asshole'?" He grinned, pleased with his joke.

  "No." Miller grinned too, as if sharing the joke. " 'Ashland.'”

  "Who the hell gave you a name like that?" He handed the club back, but Miller said nothing; the answer to the question was obvious, and the other players had appeared.