Night Howl

by Andrew Neiderman

  “Liquid shit,” he said, his eyes directly on Carlson.

  “So what else is new? Come on,” he said, nudging Carlson, “I’ll buy you a cup.” They walked past Harry and into the waiting room. He took another sip of his coffee and threw the rest into the water fountain behind him. After that, he deliberately involved himself in conversations with hospital staff so he could avoid talking to Carlson. Finally, Dr. Hamilton called them into one of the hospital conference rooms to discuss his findings. He also knew Carlson, but if he had any of the same impressions Harry had, he didn’t show them. He seemed oblivious to his audience, anyway. Harry thought Doc might as well be talking to a classroom of criminology students.

  “My initial diagnosis was correct. The subject died from asphyxiation. Aside from a fair-size hematoma on the diaphragm and contusions on the back, there were no other signs of struggle. I believe the subject was taken by surprise, had the breath knocked out of him, and put up only a small resistance. I found hairs in the fingernails and on the face and some strands on the clothing. The dirt, pebbles, embedded in the anterior of the head indicate strong pressure kept him down and under.”

  “Under what?” Harry asked quickly.

  Hamilton looked at him as though he had just realized Harry was there; he seemed to snap out of a hypnotic state. “That’s something Lieutenant Carlson will have to tell us.”

  “A pillow, a coat?” Blocker suggested.

  “Or a dog,” Carlson said. He didn’t crack a smile, but there was laughter in his eyes.

  Harry ignored his sarcasm for the sake of the investigation. “There’s something else we’ll have to check out,” he said. He took out the strands of hair he had found on the hay in the barn and put them on the table in front of them. “I found these in the barn on a bed of hay right by the door. I’m pretty sure they’ll match the ones you took off Ken Strasser,” he added.

  “Why weren’t they placed in a proper container?” Carlson demanded.

  “There’s plenty more in the hay.”

  “So the killer was lying on the hay with a coat or pillow,” Blocker said.

  “Maybe,” Harry said.

  “I’d better head up to Strasser’s farm,” Carlson said, “before some other evidence gets misplaced.”

  “Nothing was misplaced,” Harry said. His face reddened.

  “There’s no point in you two not getting along,” Blocker said. “The only one to benefit from that is the killer.”

  Carlson smirked, but he nodded. “Well I gotta get up there,” he said.

  “I’ll show you the way,” Harry said.

  Blocker caught up with him in the hospital parking lot. “Why do you keep harpin’ on this dog thing?”

  “There was a bad incident with a German shepherd recently on that street. It attacked its master and his son. They’d had it for years.”

  “Rabies?”

  “No.”

  “What happened to the dog?”

  “We shot it and had it examined.”

  “So what the hell are you talking about, Harry, a ghost dog?”

  “That’s not as funny as it sounds. The guy’s kid claims he saw the dog that night and the wife claimed she heard it and saw it in the doghouse today.”

  “Harry, for Christ’s sake—”

  “I’m just tellin’ you what’s been happenin’ on that street.”

  “Do me a favor, willya? Let Carlson run this one.”

  “You know what, Steve, normally, I’d resent bein’ cut out completely, but after tonight, he can have it.” Carlson pulled up behind them. “Don’t worry, I’ll cooperate with him and I won’t say anything about any ghost dog.”

  “I’ll speak to you in the morning, Chief. Regards to Jenny.”

  “Thanks.” He looked behind at the impatient I.D. man and then drove off. When he paused at the light by the hospital entrance, he reached into his shirt pocket and took out the few strands of hair he hadn’t turned over. He looked at them again, shook his head, and continued on to Ken Strasser’s.

  Kevin Longfellow and Gerson Fishman stood talking to the security guard at the front gate of the institute when Qwen drove up in his ‘64 black Ford pickup truck. They heard him coming long before he made the turn toward the entrance. Although the engine sounded fine, the body of the truck was so battered and rusted that it was hard to believe it was still a viable means of transportation. He had somewhat worn snow tires on all four wheels, and a piece of rabbit’s tail dangled from the inside rearview mirror. Maggie, his hound, sat beside him in the cab of the truck; she looked as nonchalant and as unperturbed about the bouncy, rough ride as Qwen did.

  “This is your Daniel Boone,” Gerson said. He laughed and shook his head.

  Kevin told the guard to open the gate and let Qwen drive his truck into the parking lot. The brakes squeaked and the truck bed rattled as he did so.

  “ ’Morning,” Kevin called out as he and Gerson walked toward the truck. Qwen stepped out, smiling.

  “Glad you could make it,” Gerson said and laughed again.

  “Don’t let her fool ya,” Qwen said. He patted the roof of the truck cab. “Solid as a rock.” He snapped his fingers and Maggie hopped out to stand beside him. She remained obediently nearby but sniffed the air suspiciously. Qwen noted his dog’s natural paranoia. “Maggie doesn’t like it here,” he said, looking up from the hound and then at the building. “She must know something I don’t know.”

  The security guard laughed quite loudly, but he stopped abruptly when Gerson Fishman turned his way. Kevin smiled and shook his head at Qwen. Fishman, who stood just behind him, folded his arms across his chest and straightened his posture. He scowled like a suspicious Indian. Qwen caught the look but chose to ignore it. Instead, he gazed out at the wooded area to the south of the institute. It was a clear morning, although a little cooler than usual. Some fog had yet to lift from the tops of trees in the distance, and the mountains that loomed ahead looked silvery and wet. For Qwen it was a good morning. The air invigorated him. He felt his heart pumping joyfully, his blood moving richly through his body. Today he wore a flannel shirt over an undershirt, a pair of very worn-looking jeans, white wool socks, and his moccasins. He had his hunting knife and his tobacco, but he had some sticks of beef jerky and a pocketful of dried apricots, too. He enjoyed them as dessert. Before anyone spoke, he reached into the truck cab and took out his twenty-two automatic rifle and a box of shells. He put the shells securely into his back pants pocket and clipped on his canteen.

  “What the hell’s the gun for?” Gerson asked.

  “Dinner, breakfast, maybe another dinner,” Qwen said. He looked at Kevin. “You ready?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” he said, smiling. “Oh, this is Gerson Fishman. He’s the head of security here and my director thought that he should go along with us.”

  Qwen looked at him more closely. Gerson had lowered his right hand to his side, catching his thumb in his wide belt. He wore army fatigues and high laced boots. Qwen could see that the bulge in the side of his jacket was made by a pistol. It looked like a forty-five.

  There was something in the security man’s demeanor that caused Qwen to reject him immediately. He was a big man, probably six feet three and at least two hundred and thirty pounds, but it wasn’t only his size that was intimidating. There was a cold, calculated look in his eyes that Qwen usually saw in mad animals.

  There was no softness in this man’s face; it was as though compassion and pity had been extracted from him as a dentist might extract a tooth. The gaping holes in his personality had been quickly filled with harder, insensitive material, giving him the look of someone driven by cold efficiency, concerned only with achieving a single goal. He looked as though he had been wound up and pointed in one direction and God help anyone who stood in his way.

  His uncovered dark brown hair was closely cropped in marine boot camp style. While he looked at Qwen, he narrowed his eyes to make a quick evaluation. Qwen imagined some kind of
computer printout forming on the surface of the man’s brain. Gerson tightened his lips and nodded.

  “What’s the pistol for?” Qwen asked.

  “I might not like what you make for supper,” Gerson said. He laughed only with his eyes.

  Qwen shook his head and turned to Kevin. “You bring something for Maggie to smell?”

  “I’ve got a piece of his blanket in here,” Kevin said and reached into the backpack he had at his feet. He took out the material and Qwen inspected it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Put the bag on and let’s get started.” He knelt down to let Maggie get a whiff of the blanket. At first she backed away from it as though she smelled something very unpleasant. Qwen sniffed too to see if there was something, but he didn’t detect anything unusual. Still, the dog didn’t like putting her nose right up to it. “Where the hell’s this from?”

  “The dog’s cage.”

  “Where was the cage?”

  “In the institute laboratory.”

  “What’s the problem?” Gerson asked.

  “Some other odor from something in there got onto it. I don’t know if it’s going to do us any good.” He took hold of Maggie’s collar and forced her to get closer. She whined and struggled to get away, so Qwen released his grip on her and threw the cloth back to Kevin. Just as he turned to start away to begin the search again, their attention was drawn to Ann Bergman, who had come out of the side entrance of the institute and called to them. Kevin was surprised because she was dressed in a jacket, jeans, and sneakers. She, too, wore a backpack.

  “What the hell—” Gerson began.

  Qwen was amused by his anger. “Looks like this is becoming a regular garden party,” he said.

  “Ann, what are you doing?”

  “I’m coming along,” she said.

  “You can’t do that,” Gerson said. He stepped forward as if to block her from joining their group.

  “Who says so?” She widened her hazel eyes and tightened her lips. Qwen stepped back, a half-smile on his face. This woman was a little over five feet two and probably weighed just about a hundred pounds, but she showed a genuine sense of authority and firmness about her. Obviously the giant security man didn’t intimidate her one bit. Qwen thought the brightness in her eyes was the only thing that suggested anything feminine about her. She had the build of a small teenaged boy. He hated women who cut their hair that short. When she relaxed her lips, the paleness didn’t leave them. Her face was bland. She looked like a flower shut away from sunlight.

  “Dr. Bronstein didn’t assign you to this,” Gerson said. His voice quivered a bit with uncertainty.

  “So what?” She turned to Kevin. “I have to go along, Kevin. You know that.”

  “This isn’t going to be a little walk in the woods, Ann. We might have to be out for a couple of days.”

  “I’ve camped out before. I have what I need,” she said. She turned to Qwen.

  “I don’t care if you go along or not, lady, but like the man here says, it’s not a picnic.”

  “I’m very well aware of that,” she said.

  “But what about your work?” Kevin asked. He stepped forward so that he could be between Ann and Qwen. Qwen understood that Kevin wanted some privacy, so he went to the truck and leaned against the bashed-in fender.

  “You know as well as I do that I need him back in the laboratory before I can go much further.”

  “Dr. Bronstein said we have to think about working around that.”

  “Listen to me, Kevin,” she said. She drew him farther from Gerson, who glared hatefully at her defiance. She took a deep breath. “I haven’t told you everything. I haven’t told anyone.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There was something I saw happening. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to see any delays or participate in any stupid roundtable discussions about morality.”

  “Ann, what the hell are you talking about? I’ve got this guy ready to go. We’re already wasting precious daylight...”

  “I knew that eventually he would escape,” she said.

  “What?”

  “He was making judgments about us, about what we were doing.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Dammit, Kevin. He didn’t want us to know how intelligent he had become. He deliberately failed tests. He deliberately made mistakes. Don’t you see, that’s more than intelligence growth. That’s . . . that’s foresight. We didn’t just expand an animal’s perception and ability to make conclusions on a higher level. We’ve developed something beyond that. We’ve created a creature with ego. You know he has self-awareness. You know what that means.”

  Kevin stared at her.

  “We should have talked more about this. You were in there doing all those tests, all those other things . . .”

  “I know, but I thought it was interesting,” she said, looking down, “and I didn’t want to fill the others in on everything just yet. You know how it gets to be, everything becomes a committee decision.”

  “It’s supposed to be a group effort, Ann. For Christ’s sake—”

  “I don’t mean to interrupt,” Qwen said, “but we could have been a half a mile or so by now.”

  “Right. One more moment.”

  “I’ve got to go along,” Ann said when Kevin turned back to her. “Don’t you see? I know things about him that you don’t, and when you confront him, it might come in handy.”

  “Okay,” he said. “But when we get back, we’re going to have one helluva meeting with Dr. Bronstein. And no holding back on anything.”

  “It’s a promise,” she said.

  “Ann’s coming along,” he said, turning to Gerson and Qwen.

  “Bullshit,” Gerson said.

  “What the hell’s the difference to you?” Kevin asked. Gerson shot a look at Qwen and then at him.

  “Dr. Bronstein said—”

  “I’ll take full responsibility for her going. Don’t worry,” Kevin said.

  “Why don’t we ask the dog how he feels about it?” Qwen said and then laughed, but he stopped when all three of them turned toward him and looked at him as though he had just solved some great mystery.

  “Let’s go,” Kevin said, and the four of them started toward the gate. Qwen took a chaw of his tobacco, chewed it vigorously, and then spit a glob high in the air to his left. It wasn’t until after the institute disappeared behind the forest that he began to feel this little trip could somehow become life-threatening. He made a mental note not to trust anyone or anything but himself and Maggie’s instincts.

  Sid was up at dawn. He wanted to be on the road by six-thirty because he had a good five hours of driving ahead of him. Clara heard him in the bathroom and rose to make the coffee and get him some breakfast, even though it would be a quick one. He had done almost all of his packing the day before, so he expected his departure to be smooth and fast.

  “I don’t think I fell asleep,” Clara told him. “I think I passed out.”

  “You’re right. I thought I’d wake you with my tossing and turning.”

  “Didn’t hear a thing,” she said.

  They spoke to each other softly, almost as softly as they had when he’d courted her on a summer night, the two of them sitting on the porch of her house, her parents just inside, watching television, the sounds of the neighbors subdued, their own conversation broken occasionally by her parents’ laughter within. There were strong feelings just under the surface of things, passions and emotions lying dormant, just below the thin membrane of courtesy and restraint. He wanted her in his arms just as much as she wanted to be in them. The truth of their desires was written between sentences, in the lingering glances, and in the closeness of their bodies.

  Now, in the early morning hours, there was a similar thin membrane of courtesy and restraint between them, only this time it covered disturbing tensions, aroused by the events of the past few days and Sid’s impending business trip. They both searched for small t
alk to avoid any references to the pain and fear.

  “What’s this place like?” she asked him. She usually inquired about his projects.

  “They make paper containers for things like dairy products, ice cream. That kind of thing. They’re growing, but not at the rate they should. They’ve had some labor problems, but I think they’re top-heavy in management. There’s a lot of duplication.”

  “I guess you won’t be too popular with the executives.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I’m in and out. If they want to listen, good, it’s their nickel. If not . . .” he shrugged and she forced a smile.

  “You have everything?”

  “Just about. I was looking for that new calculator Morris gave me last time I was in New York.”

  “Oh, Bobby had that.” She thought for a moment. “He was down in the basement with it, last I remember. It’s probably right on the bar or the table. I’ll look for it.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’ll go.” He got up quickly. “You’ve got to get the kids up for school soon.” He was hoping they’d be awake before he left.

  He went to the basement door, flipped on the lights, and descended the steps.

  In the darkness below, he had awakened with the first sounds of Sid’s rising. He had listened intelligently to the movements upstairs, recognizing the heaviness that identified the adults. He was naturally more afraid of the man; he was keenly aware of Sid’s location above him every moment. It wasn’t his intention to go right into battle now. He wanted to wait and look for opportunity. Although he liked where he was and was comfortable here, he wasn’t satisfactorily familiar enough with all the surroundings yet.

  The early dawn light that flowed through the basement windows gave him a better view of the room and its contents. He explored with a sharp curiosity, looking for familiar things. There was another part to the basement, a room that housed the water pump and hot water heater, as well as the box of circuit breakers. There was no oil burner or gas heater, since the house had electrical heat. The room had no carpeting, nor did it have paneling on the walls. There was a cold cement floor and rough, poured cement foundation walls. Pipes and wires were freely exposed. Because they weren’t heating the basement playroom at this time, the door to this utility area was left open. The morning light penetrated a single basement window here, too.