Poe digested her words. "You think Alison's a werewolf?"
"No. I think she thinks she's a werewolf."
"I've got to disagree with you on that one."
"Why?"
"Be…because…" Poe stuttered. "I just don't think that she…how common is this delusion? It is a delusion, isn't it?"
"Yes, lycanthropy is a psychotic delusion. How common? Depends on where you live. In Scandinavia, werewolf tales were very common. If you lived in England, werewolves were unheardof."
"No werewolves in England?"
"No legends, for some reason. I can't figure out why exactly. There are plenty of wolves in English forests. The Brits had a different perspective. I'm sure there were some English people who believed they were animals. But their forays weren't written down as folk legends, rather viewed as an aberrant psychological state akin to insanity."
"Where'd you learn all this?"
"I was a psychiatric resident before I went into pathology. I decided I liked my people dead rather than crazy."
"And I'm supposed to take you seriously?"
"I wrote an impressive, erudite thesis on this very subject—the Panchatantra, which is a Sanskrit book of fables. I related its tales to DSM-listed psychological disorders like lycanthropy—wolves—or kuanthropy—dogs—or boanthropy—cows and bulls. All of this is a very strange concept to you Americans, but a very common idea to us Indians. The ability to switch corporeal identities is inherent in our religious tenets. Hence many of us are vegetarians. The belief in metempsychosis combined with our mainstay of reincarnation means we don't eat flesh because we don't want to eat Aunt Benazir—"
"You are truly sick." A beat. "What's metempsychosis?"
"Transformation from a human form to an animal, and vice versa. For some unlucky souls, it's an involuntary act. Others can do it at will. We've hundreds of fables about people turning into wolves or wild dogs or bulls or bears. But this is all beside the point.
"Rom, the one common factor all these fables and legends have is the need for fresh kill. It is imperative to the well-being of a wild animal."
"So Alison thinks she's a wild animal."
"Why not? She's got all the signs."
"And in this delusional state, does she actually e…e…eat the person? Or does she just think she's eating the person?"
"Judging from the gouges, I'd say someone was definitely dining. I'll look at the skin under the microscope for distinct teeth marks." Rukmani wiped her face with her surgical smock. "God, it's hot. Even I'm sweating. I'm going into the office. Want a Coke and a bag of Chee-tos."
"You can eat Chee-tos now?"
"You said I should eat."
"The idea of Alison…" He covered his face. "Why would she…be susceptible to that kind of delusion?"
"Anyone's guess." Rukmani began to walk toward the office. "Could be she had what she perceived as a meaningful experience with an animal: a dog, a cat, or even a coyote. We live in the desert. She has seen coyotes."
Poe thought about the scratches on his cheek—how she had turned into something feral. He said, "What about a snake?"
"Snakes are big in fables," Rukmani answered. "Look at your own religion—Adam and Eve and a giant talking serpent with hands and feet. You have myths just as we do. Only difference is, you defy logic and insist it's the truth. Sure you don't want some Chee-tos?"
"Positive."
"Suit yourself." Rukmani kissed his lips. "Love you."
She walked away before he could respond.
As if he would have responded.
Emotionally stifled guy that he was. But she accepted him anyway. That was the wonderful thing about love. It sanded down the rough spots, turned everything into fine lacquered furniture.
Poe watched her sway as she bounced toward the office. His groin was still fixated on her ass. But his mind was elsewhere—thinking about the claws of a possessed woman, a howling coyote with doleful eyes, and a rattler with a bite as painful as rejection.
THIRTY-SEVEN
AS THE sun sank, the techs packed their bags. Even though Bruckner had cordoned off the room as an official crime scene, business was booming at the Dunes Inn. The murder was less than a half day old, and already Byron was leading tour groups of locals, explaining it all in gory and inaccurate detail. Of course, no one could go beyond the ropes, but one could use imagination. The clerk talked about wild orgies and high-pitched screams in the middle of the night. Not that he mentioned any of this to the police. So Poe took it with a grain of salt. The owner of the Dunes Inn—one Roy "Mac" Mac-Donald—was delighted, hauling in a tidy profit in drinks and snacks.
By eight in the evening, Poe was back on the road. Weinberg sat shotgun; Rukmani had fallen asleep in the backseat within the first ten minutes of the ride. The loo made a few weak stabs at conversation, then succumbed to slumberland. Heavy blankets of exhaustion pressed down on Poe's brain. He thought about the case to keep awake.
Alison and her breakdowns. Alison as an animal. She sure had acted like one the night she'd gone after his face. More than just a jealous woman, she had had a feline quality.
Catlike in action as well as in her beauty. A sleek, muscled woman with magnetic eyes. And her legs—long and slender. He remembered a time that they had wrapped around him as they panted in the backseat of his claptrap Buick.
So young.
Twenty years ago.
Where had the time gone?
Where had Alison gone?
That night he had searched the cave, the coyote looking at him with doleful eyes—human eyes. How it had howled—as if in deep psychic pain….
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
It was his own imagination working overtime. So absorbed with fear and dread, he had chosen to anthropomorphize a wild beast to make it more palatable. Besides, why would Alison imagine herself to be a beast?
Rukmani stirred, opened her eyes. "My mouth feels like sandpaper."
Poe handed her a bottle of designer water. She downed it in three gulps. "Thanks."
"Have a nice nap?"
"Yes, I did, thanks. Where are we?"
"About an hour from home."
"I've got all this dictation to go over." She blinked several times. "And since Bruckner was kind enough to release the corpse to Clark County, I should start the autopsy."
"Are you up for it?"
"I'm sure I'll be fine as soon as I eat. I'm hungry."
"I'll take you out to dinner."
"What about Mama Emma?"
What about her, Poe? He felt his head throb. "I should peek in on her. Do you mind a late dinner?"
"Actually, it would be preferable. Fewer chemical changes in the corpse. Let's go out afterward. Would you mind Indian?"
"As long as you don't mind me eating tandoori chicken in front of you. I don't want you to feel I'm eating second cousin Shoba—" He stopped talking, then said, "Rukmani, in your thesis, did you only analyze the werewolf legends? Or did you actually study people who had werewolfism?"
"I related myths of the Panchatantra to medical case studies of lycanthropy."
"In these myths, did the people turn into beasts? Or did they just think they were turning into beasts?"
"Depends on the legend." Rukmani gave the question some thought. "Some actually transformed their whole form at will. Some needed a concrete object to bring about the transformation. Usually it was an animal skin. If I remember correctly, skins were pretty much a cross-cultural requirement for transformation. As a matter of fact, the word 'berserk' comes from the Berserkrs—old-time marauders and murderers who wore animal hides and went on spree killings in Scandinavia. They were objects of intense fear, and the subjects of many a scary ghost story. Ber means "bear" and serkr means "shirt"—they wore bear skins."
"These Berserkrs were real people then."
"Yep."
"And they'd don bear skins and go around killing people, believing they were bears."
"Exactly."
>
"Ed Gein's predecessors."
Rukmani wrinkled her nose. "Yes, Gein did flay his murder victims and wear their skin."
"I suppose he got the idea from somewhere." Poe paused. "I didn't see any kind of animal skins in Alison's house."
"Which means?"
"She doesn't fit the mold."
"Romulus, there's no mold. There are only legends to explain medieval psychosis. As long as Alison believes she's a wolf, she's a wolf. Besides, didn't you say something about Alison dressing up in men's clothing? That she might be the guy who was in Nate Malealani's bar?"
"I suggested it as a possibility—"
"Seems to me she's already in the process of doing some kind of transformation."
"Ruki, it's speculation."
"If she's delusional enough to believe she's a man, she's delusional enough to believe she's a wolf."
"Maybe." They rode in silence for a couple of minutes. Then Poe said, "I never stated explicitly that Alison dressed up as the ponytail man."
"But you did say something about finding a sneaker belonging to your mysterious hat man—"
"Maybe it belonged to him—"
"And it was Alison's size—"
"Maybe it was Alison's size. I was tossing out ideas."
"Fine. We'll leave it at that."
Another moment of silence. Then, Poe said, "Don't laugh at me, okay?"
"I'd never laugh at you, Rom. What's on your mind?"
"The ni…ni…" Poe took a deep breath. "The…night I got bitten by the snake, there was this coyote." He tapped on the wheel of the car. "It looked very human to me, especially the eyes."
"The eyes looked human?"
"Yes. Human…and very familiar."
"Alison?"
"Ruki, it was very dark and I was in a lot of pain. I could have been hallucinating. But yes, the eyes looked like Alison's eyes. That same color, and the same expression." He hit his forehead. "Maybe I'm going nuts."
"You were under stress, Rom. You were frantically searching for Alison, and you found her wherever you could."
He exhaled forcibly. "You're probably right."
"On the other hand, Alison bolted as soon as she gouged you," Rukmani continued. "Maybe she had been to that cave before. Maybe she kept her skins there. Someone should go back and check."
"There're rattlers in the cave, girl. Remember?" Poe blew out air. "I suppose I could go back wearing boots and gloves."
Rukmani patted his hand. "You've just pulled a body out of an attic. The cave can wait."
"But it should be checked out. Worse comes to worst, I confront my own demons." Again he blew out air. "Maybe Alison's mother acted that way…like an animal? Linda was involved in the Bogeyman murders."
Rukmani said, "But as the victim, not the killer."
Poe thought about the note.
This is for what I did.
What if she had murdered Janet Doward? Later, in a more lucid moment, she had realized what she had done, had come to regret her deed and couldn't go on knowing what she had done?
This is for what I did.
Poe said, "When I broke into Alison's house, I found a shoe box filled with articles about her mom."
"Did Alison ever mention her mom in connection with animals?"
"No. But she rarely spoke about her mother, period."
The car turned silent except for Weinberg's gentle snores.
Poe said, "She had three shoe boxes, actually. One concerning her mom. But the others dealt with the Nevada Test Site."
"Well, there's a non sequitur."
"Not really," Poe said. "I think in her demented mind, she blames the NTS and the atmospheric testings for her mom's mental condition—all the radiation and fallout. I think that's why she was collecting articles on the bomb shots."
"Mostly the fallout has been linked to thyroid cancer from I131." Rukmani shrugged. "Of course, we're only at the tip of the iceberg. The complete NTS story hasn't even begun to be told. There was so much bureaucratic lying and paper-shredding we'll never know what really went on."
"I agree. As a matter of fact, I truly believe that the fallout caused my mom's cancer. She was a downwinder."
Rukmani sat up. "She was?"
"Yep. St. George, Utah. Right in the downwind path."
"That could explain her atypical leukemia."
"So I'm right? The fallout could have caused her cancer?"
"Certainly."
Poe said, "I found out that the government had passed some kind of downwinders' compensation act in 1990. Maybe I can get some money from them to help defray her medical bills."
"I think you have a legitimate case." She paused. "Rom, you said that Alison blamed the tests for her mother's condition?"
"I suggested it."
"Was her mother also in the line of fallout?"
"Yep. She was also from St. George. She was two years younger than my mom."
"What about Alison? Where was she born?"
"St. George."
"Same as you. Your families go back, then."
"Yes. Except Linda Hennick was a white Mormon, Mom was a brown Mormon."
"A little discrimination."
"Just a tad."
"And Alison and you…you two were…an item."
"Yes, we had sex. It lasted about six months. After she started high school, she blew me off. Mr. Brown Tic Boy was cramping her style. I understand how it is…the need to be popular…but…" He threw up his hands. They landed back on the steering wheel. "It still gets to me. That was almost twenty years ago. I'm such a doofus."
"We're all prisoners of our past."
"I'd settle for parole."
"You, me, Alison." Rukmani shook her head. "Look at Alison and her shoe boxes of her mother."
"One shoe box of her mother. But two shoe boxes of NTS."
"Meaning?"
Poe smiled. "More people wrote about NTS than about Linda Hennick."
Rukmani paused. "I think you've hit on something."
"Good." A beat. "Fill me in."
"The boxes of the test site material. Maybe she was blaming the tests for her mother's condition and for her own condition as well."
Poe paused. "That seems logical. Radiation does have this mystical, mutative aura—"
"Borne out by science," Rukmani added.
"Definitely borne out by science. That's why it would fit perfectly in delusions of a twentieth-century woman. It would make complete sense for Alison to incorporate the bomb shots into her psychosis. Hell, for all we know, she could blame fallout for turning her into a werewolf."
THIRTY-EIGHT
THE OLD man appeared droopy, aimlessly plunking quarters down two poker machines, alternating from one slot to the other. His sand-colored shirt was wrinkled, his jeans sported a big brown stain, and his moccasins were coming apart. He hadn't shaved in a while and he looked like a bum. Any other establishment would have thrown him out. But in this town, as long as you had money…
Poe took the stool next to his. "How much have you played back, Chief?"
Y didn't answer, instructing the machine to deal him two electronic cards. "I want my money back."
"What money?"
"The money you took from me."
"I didn't take any money—"
"My winnings."
Poe smiled patiently.
"You want to end up on the streets, Y?"
"I'm already on the streets." He drew a pair of sixes, losing to the machine's pair of nines. "The money's mine. I want to piss it away, it's my business."
"Do we have to go through this every time?"
Y hit a three of a kind. Poe said, "There you go, old man. Chump change to blow. That should last all of ten minutes." He regarded the Indian's haggard face. "How long have you been here?"
Y didn't answer, dropped another quarter in the slot.
"Have you eaten in the last twenty-four hours?"
Again no answer.
Poe called over a waitress, gave h
er a fifty. "Roast beef sandwich on rye to go, please. Keep the change."
She pocketed the bill. "Thank you, sir."
"You know what? Bring me a beer—a Heineken."
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