by Byron Craft
THE INNSMOUTH LOOK
Book 2 in The Arkham Detective Series
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2016, United States Library of Congress; The Innsmouth Look
www.ByronCraftBooks.com
Artwork by Eric Lofgren; www.ericlofgren.net
ISBN-13: 978-1976245930
ISBN-10: 1976245931
DEDICATION
To Marcia, my beloved wife and companion for thirty years, without whom I’d still be clerking somewhere.
The Innsmouth Look
I was the one who fled frantically out of Innsmouth in the early morning hours of July sixteenth before the Navy's big guns blew the hell out of that place.
I was willing to keep my trap shut while the affair was fresh and uncertain, but now that it's old hat, and there is a big crater where that shadowed seaport of death used to be, there is little reason for me not to tell about those few frightful hours that I spent in Innsmouth by the sea.
I'm a gumshoe. It was my anniversary date of giving up wearing the blues and driving the black and whites, thirteen-years ago when they made me detective. My anniversary gift was an assignment to investigate the case of a woman that had been sliced up like a Thanksgiving turkey by her boyfriend.
The felon got away, but there were a half dozen eyewitnesses. “The Innsmouth look,” is what they all said to describe the perpetrator of the crime. The police sketch artist did a bang up job drawing the amphibian features of the suspect. It was the cat's meow because all of the bystanders said it was an amazing likeness of the culprit. He was an unsightly looking guy. The portrait gave me the creeps just looking at it.
***
I first laid eyes on the corpse at the morgue. Vincent Broadhead, the coroner, had just pulled out the refrigerated drawer and removed the wax paper covering the body when I walked into his basement tomb. “What’s up Vinnie?” I asked.
“Upchuck is what you’ll be doing if you already had dinner.”
Vinnie Broadhead was a wise guy, but I guess it can’t be helped when all day long his customers stare up at him with those dry, dead eyes. “Pretty bad huh?” I answered.
“Have a look see,” he said with a sneer.
I had been down in that concrete cellar dozens of times and witnessed many gruesome sights, deceased guys, and broads stretched out like slabs of meat. At those times I came only to inspect murder victims. Some guy that drops dead of a heart attack on the sidewalk was not my department.
Until that afternoon I thought I had seen everything. A rummage sale Romeo shot by a jealous husband; a dame strangled with her silk stocking; and one time a fellow that had his head sliced off by a loony religious cult that called themselves the “Esoteric Order of Dagon.” Those cult bums got away, for now, and are still part of an open case file that sits on my desk.
The worst experience I ever had, in that undertaker's haven, was when I had to I.D. my ex-partner, Jefferson Buck, who had his face chewed off. It was done by these little creeps a priest at Saint Matthew’s told me were known as “Pilot Demons.” They were all teeth and fangs, and I shot most of the little bastards, the rest I laid to rest by burning my house down around them. That was when the chief made me the head of the Arkham Mythos Division.
Getting closer, I let out a slow whistle; the lady must have been stabbed over a dozen times, all in the chest and abdomen. "Cause of death?” I asked attempting to sound amusing while at the same moment trying to hide my disgust.
“Funny,” his mouth gaping in a rictus equal to one of his corpses. “They just brought her in an hour ago. Haven’t done a full post-mortem yet.”
“Looks like it was done with a big knife,” I added. “A meat cleaver or a butcher knife?”
“More like a Bowie knife or a bayonet,” he surmised. “She was definitely an ugly woman,” observed Coroner Broadhead.
His observation was precise. The dame had nice gams but her face would have stopped a clock. There was a large blackish brown welt on the right side of her face I guessed had not been caused by her attacker. The mark was a grotesque tumor that blanketed her cheek and was only surpassed by the disagreeable left side of her kisser. The muscles in that area sagged in loose folds appearing paralytic. The orb of the female peered at me like a witch’s eye. It was cold and damp in that cellar, and the victim augmented my shivers even more. “Did the perp do this?” I asked feeling my dinner start to climb back out.
“No,” he answered. “Birth defects, probably caused by a botched delivery, years ago.”
“The guy that did this was supposedly her boyfriend,” I told him, but I couldn’t imagine what the attraction was.
“The Chief told me to tell you to get your butt upstairs,” he responded evidently tired of my inquiries. “He’s got a credible eyewitness in the interrogation room. Wants you to give him the once over.”
***
I had never been to that city by the sea, but I was afraid that the case the Chief dropped on me would eventually send me packing in that direction. It was after midnight when I hoofed it to the interrogation room. The lights were off, and someone had left the poor bugger sitting in the dark. He jumped when I flicked the light switch. The witness was a skinny little mug. Hawkish nose, receding hairline with eyes close set. Under the glare of the single light bulb hanging from the ceiling he squinted and looked up at me with a cockeyed smile. It reminded me of the type of look my old man use to say, when questioning certain perps, had the appearance of funeral absorption. The description was apropos because he kept his mitts clasped together rotating his palms back and forth. It was like an undertaker dry-washing his hands.
“What’s your name,” I asked as if I didn’t know, waving his signed statement in front of him. It was my way of getting him to loosen up.
“Howard,” he answered.
“Well, Howard,” I said, pulling a chair out for myself. “It says here that of all the witnesses you were the only one to see what happened from start to finish. Is that correct?”
“I dunno.”
“What do you mean, you ‘dunno?’” realizing, right then, that I was parroting him.
“I don’t know what the other people saw,” he returned talking slowly.
He looked jittery; fear popping out of his pores. I decided to up the amperage and put the fear of God into him. “Well, I wanna know Howard!” I shouted at him. “Your statement says that you saw the whole damn thing and that’s it! I need details, Howard!”
“I don’t think I should cooperate any further,” he answered, shaking like a leaf.
“Oh, you’ll cooperate all right Howard if I have to put you in a cell and beat it out of you with a rubber hose.” The threat of jail time and the rubber hose was always a good persuader. It was my method of getting suspects to fess up, even if I didn’t really mean it. But Howard wasn’t a suspect. He was a bystander, and I needed all the info I could squeeze out of him.
“Please don’t make me,” he bawled. “I know the guy, and I am afraid that he’ll come after me if I tell you.”
“It will be worse if you don’t accommodate my requests,” I challenged, looking at him straight on. Rifling through the papers, I came across Howard’s profile, his bio. “I’ve got your life story here Howard. You’re the fella that runs that flophouse down on River Street where all those warehouses are. Why that’s the fifty-cent a bed joint. Before you can say, ‘Jack Robinson’ I can have the Board of Health climbing all over the place. I can see it now, bad food, bad water, lice all over your little domicile. Whaddaya say, Howa
rd, let’s join forces and work together?”
“All right, all right,” he sputtered.
“You said you know the perp. What’s his name?”
“I dunn . . . I don’t know. I never knew his name. He was one of those fish face people that would come to town from time to time. He would just appear at my hotel and look around.”
“Looking for what?” I asked. The term “fish face” was a racial slur that a lot of Arkham residents would use when describing someone that came from Innsmouth.
“Women,” the little slum lord spits out.
“You’re kidding. And he was attracted to the stiff that is now downstairs?” I guessed in their case ugly must have attracted ugly.
“They met through an ad in the paper,” he replied, squirming in his chair.
“Lonely Hearts huh? So I’m guessing that Miss Ugly was one of your tenants and he came looking for her?”
“No,” he countered looking more frightened than ever.
“What do you mean, no? Come on, Howard open up. We’re just starting to become friends here.”
Howard’s fear was starting to turn to terror. I could see it in his eyes, in how pale he was becoming and by the vein pulsating in his neck. “I think they corresponded for a while. I don’t think they ever met before. Because when he showed up, he didn’t come for her.”
“Then who the hell did he come for?”
“Her daughter,” he groaned.
I almost choked. Oh, my God, I felt it in the pit of my stomach, and it wasn’t indigestion. I was pretty sure I knew what was coming. “What happened next?” I nearly retched.
“After he sliced her up, oh dear God it was horrible, he looked at me as if I was next, and then he took the kid and ran.”
“How old is she?” I was afraid to ask.
“Seven, I think,” his face distorted into a sadness that I will never forget.
“Where did he go?” I was yelling at him now.
“The child was screaming and kicking. He ran through the street, with her over his shoulder, holding that big knife of his out in front of him but nobody dared to get in his way. Then he holstered the knife, pulled out a handkerchief and placed it over the little girl’s face. A second or two later she was asleep . . . I think.”
“Chloroform?”
“I guess.”
“And then?” I shouted quickly getting out of my chair and standing over him.
“He got on a bus. It was strange. It had been parked there for a while as if it was waiting for him.”
“What bus, damn it?” I screamed in his ear.
“The bus to Innsmouth.”
***
Tragically, the barbaric practice of marrying children was originally part of the Innsmouth culture. Obed Marsh, one of the early settlers of Innsmouth, married a six-year-old girl by the name of Elisabeth and consummated the marriage before she turned nine. Rumor has it that the people inhabiting that town approved of pedophile-style marriages and that the practice still continues to this day.
Normally Innsmouth is not part of our jurisdiction. As they say, “what happens in Innsmouth stays in Innsmouth,” but this fish face perp had crossed the line, and I was going after him.
***
Before I left, I wanted to be loaded for bear. I planned to go in blazing, the next day, with several police cruisers to back me up but the Chief nixed it. The municipal budget was very tight, and he’d said: “they couldn’t afford the extra manpower, let alone all them squad cars.” These were bad economic times. We were in the midst of a depression. Politicians tried to make us believe that prosperity is on the next page of the calendar, but the whole country was a total bust. That meant I had to go it alone.
It was late, and I was dog tired. I had a lot of thinking to do on top of everything else. If I wasn’t very, very careful tomorrow, I could end up empty handed and dead. I went to my apartment for some shut-eye. After several hours of contemplation, I nodded off.
The day snuck up on me like a thief. I rolled over in bed and faced the curtain-less window in my room. It was one o’clock in the afternoon. I had plenty enough time though. The bus to Innsmouth didn’t leave until 7 p.m. That was going to be my mode of transportation. I was certain that an Arkham police car, even an unmarked one, would be too conspicuous. Besides, I had an idea to muster up some evidence while on the bus, and I was itching to try it. The Chief had given me a double sawbuck for expenses and told me to “make it last.” The SOB was a tightwad.
I went over to Granny Bertram's Diner to stoke up on a combo of breakfast and lunch. After finishing my two meal brunch, I went outside and lit up a cigarette and thanked God that the American Indians had discovered tobacco. Things were pretty clear by then. I hadn't had a drink in two days. Booze from the night before can fog up the old noggin. Whatever it took, I had to go to Innsmouth and get that dead dumb Dora's kid and bring her back to Arkham and hopefully get my man as well.
***
I went back to my apartment to get ready. I had requisitioned a box of .45 caliber Dum-dum shells from supply. They’re expanding bullets. The projectiles are designed to increase in diameter upon impact. They were to be the ammo for my 1911 Colt semi-automatic. It had been my old man’s gun when he was on the force, back before the Great Depression. He no longer needed it anymore since he went six-feet under. It was a family heirloom and my chief Roscoe. To keep my Colt company, I also concealed a snub nose .22 in my ankle holster. I taped a stiletto to the inside of my left forearm and donned a fisherman's waterproof jacket. An old pal of mine used to play baseball on the Miskatonic University team. They finished the season in last place that year, and he gave me his Arkham Angels ball cap, before moving to Dunwich. I slipped it on and put my trench coat, badge and fedora in a seaman’s duffel. Snapping a pair of dark shades over my eyeglasses, I hoped that my disguise was complete and that I wouldn’t attract too much attention in downtown Innsmouth.
***
Hammond’s Drug Store in Old Market Square is where I bought my ticket. I stood outside of Hammond’s and waited. The damn bus was a half hour late. It wasn’t surprising because when it finally arrived, it looked like a terrible rattletrap. It was a small motor coach of extremely poor condition and the color of dirt. Propped up behind its windshield, that looked like it hadn’t been washed in ages, was a faded narrow pasteboard sign with half legible lettering that read; ARKHAM-INNSMOUTH-NEWB’PORT.
The driver of the bus turned away from me when I stepped on board. His back was arched and his greasy head, almost hairless, had a few straggly yellow strands upon his gray scabby skin. He probably had developed some kind of skin disease or deformity. His clothes looked like they had been purchased from a secondhand store. I plopped down on the bench seat shotgun side of the bus facing my Innsmouth chauffeur. He pulled a lever and a series of metal rods, linked together, drew the folding door of the carriage shut. Stomping his foot, he put our ride into first gear, the ancient transmission protested with a grinding lurch, and he turned in his seat peering out the windshield. The side of his neck was all shriveled and creased.
There were two others on the bus with us. One was an old heavy set woman more stoop shouldered than our driver. She wore a large babushka type head scarf that covered the top of her noodle trailing down and around her neck, leaving the face exposed. I was amazed by the size of her bulging eyeballs that looked like they would pop out of their sockets at any moment. The staring eyes never seemed to blink.
Farther down the aisle was a young woman, pretty, but very skinny. Her feet were incredibly immense. The more I studied them, the more I wondered how she could buy any shoes to fit them. She was holding a wicker shopping basket close to her bosom, and I saw that the first three fingers of her right hand were joined by the webbing of flesh.
It was midsummer and, even though it was well after seven, it was still fairly light out. Over the shabby shoulder of our driver, I could plainly see that the motor coach’s speedometer was broken. Judging by
our momentum, we couldn’t have been traveling more than thirty-five miles per hour. At our current rate, it would take us forever to reach the shoreward realms of Innsmouth. Given a normal journey, on a normal Greyhound, I would have taken a nap to while away the time. Given the countenance of my motley companions, I opted to stay wide awake.
***
All of the windows of the bus were heavily soiled, but under the prevailing sunshine, I was able to make out much of the landscape as it slithered by at a snail’s pace. Briefly, I glimpsed the sandy outline of an island as the road slowly drew near a beach. Around eight-thirty it grew dark. The sky ahead seemed to grow darker, much too rapidly the closer we got to our destination. Too dark to see much of anything clearly. The interior of the coach was dimly lit by one feeble electric bulb centered in the ceiling. The stooped shouldered old hag was munching on something. Squinting against the pale light, I saw that whatever she was eating squirmed, for a fleeting moment, I thought I caught a glimpse of two finger length wriggling tendrils that she sucked into her trap and swallowed with one gulp.
I was getting the willies, and I could have sworn that the minute hand of my watch was now sweeping at a much slower degree of measure. After what seemed to be an eternity, we came upon the lights of a city, Innsmouth. Like Arkham, it was of remarkable antiquity, but nowhere near the high state of preservation of my home town. Innsmouth was more of a village than a city and the amount of municipal street lighting compared to, say, Arkham was minimal.
I shifted my position in my seat for a better view as our ancient means of transportation left the highway and drove into town. Row upon row of decaying buildings slipped by my window. I rubbed the glass with the sleeve of my jacket, trying to remove some of the grime that partially obscured my vision, only to make it worse, smearing the filth. The town of Innsmouth has been described as being in a horrendous state of deterioration, with many of the buildings rotting on the verge of collapse. Those descriptions were accurate.
