Anna jumped from her seat, was headed into the foray, shouting to a uniformed cop, "Where was he sighted? You see him?"
"I didn't see anything. Calvin saw something move down there. He fired two rounds, but nothing's moving."
Stroud came around with a flashlight, and he shouted for some of the police cars to shine their spotlights down into the clearing where Kerac was supposedly holed up. The lights were quickly brought forth, everyone agreeing they'd like to see better. Someone fired off a flare that provided a brilliant blue light. People began to congregate around the edges of the park, curious; others at their windows in homes all around stared down on the scene.
"There!" shouted someone, and this was followed by a volley of fire that echoed down the streets and off buildings.
Stroud saw the thing that was Kerac.
He gasped at the sight, and he felt the torment of the creature, its confusion, fear and outrage. He felt the encrusted blood on its body, smelled the animal musk.
It was crouched, its limbs powerful and long, apelike, and it ran with an animal grace. Stroud saw a man take aim, fire, and he saw the bullet hit Kerac, and yet Kerac merely flinched and kept running, finding new cover. In the strange light, it was impossible to tell much, and everyone who had seen the moving form was asking others what they had seen. Stroud stood with his mouth open, amazed at the sight of the man who would be a wolf....
"Goddammit," said one man, "he's unarmed. We just go in and take him. Come on."
A few of the cops went forth. Anna wanted to go with them, but Stroud stopped her. "A bullet isn't going to stop Kerac. You saw what I saw."
"Get out of my way." She barreled past Stroud. Stroud pursued her.
"Anna, wait."
"He's hit, and he's dying!" she shouted, pulling away from Stroud with determination coloring her dark features. "One way or another, Stroud, we end it here, now."
The small band of brave--or stupid--cops had reached the stand of trees and bushes where they'd last seen Kerac. They were a few feet from the water and a stone bridge, below which was a causeway for a bike path that was dark and cavernous-looking where the light had been destroyed by children hurtling rocks, no doubt. Suddenly one of the cops ahead of Stroud and More screamed horribly and was silenced when something dropped from overhead onto him, slashing his throat instantly. His two partners lifted their weapons, but the body of their comrade was hurled into them with such force that they were knocked over, their own uniforms smeared with the blood of the first man.
Anna drew a bead on the dark form camouflaged against the black greenery and fired, striking a tree. The streak of shadow that followed raced down into the viaduct below the bridge as Anna fired off a second and a third round.
"I hit him!" she shouted. "I know I hit him."
She raced after Kerac, who let out with a blood-chilling howl from below the bridge, stopping her and Stroud in their tracks.
"We need nets, a goddamned cage for this guy!" shouted Stroud. "A bullet won't bring him down!"
Anna could not be dissuaded, pulling away from Stroud, going for the dark interior below the bridge.
Stroud rushed to stay with her, bringing the light along, flashing it ahead of them. He searched the nooks and crannies of the bridge, including the ceiling, imagining that Kerac might somehow suction his huge body against the stones there, to drop down as he had from the trees earlier.
Another pair of cops came at the bridge from the other side with the same design in mind as Anna More. Their light combined with Stroud's to tell them all that the fleeing killer was not here.
"The water!" said Anna. "Flash on the water."
All lights went to the lagoon, all guns trained on it as well. A few shots were fired into the water at branches that broke the surface, but nothing substantial was picked up in the lights. For long moments, the lights scanned the water. Another flare was sent up over the lagoon. More shots were fired at shadows. Some of the men said that John Kerac had swum out to the pavilion and had circled it and was hanging on there. Men on the ground encircled the pavilion with lights, firing into it, sending shards of white-painted wood in all directions, littering the pond with the result, making the black lagoon look like a field on which cut flowers lay.
"Cease fire!" shouted Stroud, but still some guns were going off. Some of the men were having fun; some of them wanted to make amends for their dead comrade.
Finally, the firing stopped.
"If he's in there, he's dead of his wounds," said Anna, "and thank God for it."
"We'll have to get some divers out here, dredge for the body," said Phil McMasters, who'd rushed here from the murder scene in the alley off Kedzie.
Stroud brought his light around to the bricks and stones of the bridge. In the commotion he'd heard a strange, metallic noise, but he had heard no rustling or disturbance of water. He moved closer to the bridge wall, and at the base of it, directly in the center, he found a large old grate that looked down into a black hole where water reflected his light back at him. Signs that the grate had been disturbed were evident, a deep cut in the concrete floor, a dusting of rust from the grate itself as it had been pried loose. There was also a splotch of blood on the multicolored stones where Kerac had placed a hand. Aside from this, there was hair glued against the stone by the blood, and small wisps of animal-like hair about the mouth of the grating.
"He's made his escape through here," said Stroud from where he crouched.
McMasters and Anna came closer, McMasters saying, "Christ, he's in the sewers."
"They go on for miles in every direction," said one of the uniformed cops nearby.
McMasters bellowed like a bull at this cop and all the others standing about. "So, get on it! Every unit down the streets, following the sewer lines. Sonofabitch's got to come out somewhere. Nobody's going to stay down there if they don't have to. I want cars covering every goddamned manhole between here and Cubs Park, damn it!"
"Conventional methods won't work against this ... this man," Stroud said to McMasters, who merely put a hand on Stroud's chest and said, "You, Doctor, just stay the hell out of the way."
Anna came to Stroud, looked into his eyes, and he saw her inwardly shiver, recalling what she'd just seen.
"You saw it suck up those bullets, Anna. It's not Kerac anymore. It's a wild beast."
"McMasters!" she called out after the captain. "I want in on this."
-11-
The Chicago Police Department's efforts went for nothing. The following day, Kerac was still at large. Special teams of tactical experts had been brought in and swat teams circulated still in the city's sewers in search of the elusive savage. Stroud knew now that ordinary methods would not contain Kerac, and that he was safely holed up in a den or warren like any sensible and cunning animal. Stroud knew that bullets, while inflicting pain, were useless against Kerac unless they penetrated a vital organ, such as the heart, lungs or brain. Even this was questionable from what Stroud had observed the night before.
Stroud had spent his morning with animals--in the Chicago Police Department of Animal Control, talking with Bob Arnold, a division chief who had shared a unit with Stroud when they were both much younger. The place was as noisy as a dog kennel, and there were animals of every size and stripe locked in holding pens, most of them waiting for a death sentence to be carried out. In one pen an agitated raccoon spat through the bars at a squalid house cat beside it. The cat huddled in a corner as far from the raccoon as it could get. A dog below these two was foaming at the mouth, rabid.
Arnold was a no-nonsense, hefty black man with a perpetual crooked smile which might be taken as a sneer if you didn't know him; his close-set, squinting eyes made of his features a large question mark where the eyebrows joined whenever he was confused. Stroud was confusing him now.
"Wait a minute, Abe. You want me to set up a trap for a man? Same as I would a mad dog?"
"That's about the size of it."
"Ankle snare, cage?"
&nb
sp; "Net, cage--you're the expert."
"Hell, you going to read the guy his rights while he's looking out from the bars?"
"You have any idea, Bob, how bloody dangerous this man is? Have you seen the results of his fun?"
"All right, all right, Abe. I haven't said no to the idea."
"He's a lunatic, Bob."
"So I heard. A lunatic with a bad attitude and a lot of hair, according to some. Rumor has it that forensics has him sprinkling wolf hairs wherever he goes. Bizarre, pal ... but then, you always were in the thick of the nut cases, as I recall."
"Just tell me, Bob. Hypothetically, if there was, say, a wolf roaming Chicago, how would you go about catching him?"
"Come on, I'll show you my contraptions."
Arnold led him into an inner room filled with various mechanical devices for snaring animals of all sizes and wits. He demonstrated for Abe the usual traps used by hunters that acted on the spring-coil principle and might take an animal's foot halfway off, latching on to the bone and anchoring there. He showed Abe other devices which could take an animal's head off, or send it flying into the branches of a tree, tethered on a line. His showroom was something of a macabre museum of deadly objects. The walls were lined with explanatory information on various traps, along with pictures of the results.
"This one's only good if you know his exact whereabouts and can count on his stepping down a path where you plant it, Abe. Camouflage, all that."
"He'll smell it before he sets foot in it," said Abe. "He's got a heightened sense of smell."
"Hmmmmmm. All right, then what about the neck snare, if you want to kill the SOB outright?"
"No, I don't want him decapitated. I want him caught, alive."
"Why didn't you say so?"
"I thought I had."
"Not to me you didn't. Come on."
"This guy's too smart for anything buried below a few leaves or strung across a causeway. He'd see the snare. He's got ... excellent vision."
"Sounds like goddamned Superman."
"Close."
"You still have to know where he is to throw a net over him, or trick him into a door that's the entryway for a cage. You have any idea where this guy's holed up?"
"Not yet, but could you have a team at the ready should I call? With these?" Stroud pointed to a huge steel-mesh net that hung on the wall like a fisherman's net.
"Best choice ... Sure, we could be on alert. Don't know how it'll be viewed from above, or how the press'll deal with us, but if you think this is the only way to get this mother, then I'm your man, Abe. My guys and me know every hole and back alley and gutter in the city where an animal can hide. Problem is, there're just too damned many of them."
"Exactly."
"Causeways, undersides of porches, below cellars, bottoms of steps, and I hear this guy's in the sewers."
Stroud went to a map of the city that Arnold had pinned against one wall. He found Humboldt Park on it and pointed. "He went in here, and inside ten minutes had eluded police in all directions, and they haven't figured out how."
"River's not too far from there," said Bob Arnold thoughtfully.
"River?"
"Tributary of the Chicago River, runs here, curls along here, goes up past Western and north. Used to be the centerpiece of the old amusement park, Riverview, remember?"
"So, you think he could've gotten to the river, swam out and away from the sewer system while McMasters and the rest of his crew were concentrating on the system?"
"Phil's probably figured it out by now."
Stroud stared at the map. "In which case McMasters would have sent his search teams south and north along the river."
"If they didn't give up."
"No, they're still out ... new shifts coming on."
Stroud studied the map and the area along the river where Kerac might have eluded them. If he followed it northerly, he was going in the general direction of the residence where the Kerac family was still being kept under watch. Perhaps he was trying to make his way back to his brother and his brother's family. Perhaps in his calmer periods, Kerac still held out some hope that these people could help him ... perhaps.
"We have stun guns, too. Very effective in rendering an animal helpless."
"Drugs?"
"Electricity, disables them long enough so we can get firm hold without getting torn to ribbons. That's how we got that pit bull out there."
"Good idea. Thanks, Bob. I'll get back to you when I have some idea where Kerac is."
"Look forward to it."
"And Bob--"
"Yeah?"
"Not a word to anyone about the operation, or that we had this conversation."
"Hey, man, since you left I've got rank! I call the shots from here."
"Great ... knew I could count on you, Bobby."
"I have to talk to my men about the objective, however. Got to be sure they know what they're up against and how we plan to operate."
"Sure, understood, but--"
"My guys are the best, and they're loyal to me, Stroud. Not to worry."
Stroud thanked his friend again and left, going through the den of noise past the animal cages that lined both sides of the hallway. Animal Control needed more space.
Almost out the door, Stroud felt a shudder ripple through his body, a shudder of pain, fear and cold. He felt Kerac, as if the man's eyes were on him. He turned and saw the angry, snarling pit bull Bob had mentioned, staring into his gaze, his fangs bared. The dog butted its head viciously against the cage. It wanted nothing more than to tear out Stroud's throat.
Stroud's mind flashed on the standing, multicolored dead horses again.
His eyes were locked on the dog's eyes and he saw clearly what the meaning of the dead horses was.
He rushed back into Bob Arnold's "armory" room and went back to the map, Arnold astonished at the look on his face.
"Assemble your team, Bob. I know where the bastard is."
"Where?"
Stroud pointed to the map, his finger covering the area of Western Avenue at Addison.
Arnold knew what he meant in an instant. "Yeah, if I was right, and yeah, if he followed the river north."
"Horses, Bob."
"Horses?"
"He's in a place with a lot of stiff horses."
"Stiff horses?"
"A merry-go-round. It was a merry-go-round all along."
"Riverview Park?"
"How long will it take to get set up?"
"Place like that ... to come in unnoticed ... we'll need time to prepare."
"And about that stun gun, Bob. Bring 'em along, sure, but this guy is fast. You may need a dart gun with a dosage that won't kill a man, but is strong enough to bring down a ... a wolf."
Bob Arnold looked squarely at him. "You think this guy's got a wolf with him for a pet?"
"It's no pet like you've seen before, Bob."
Just then they were interrupted by one of Arnold's staff who had escorted an aged man back to them. Stroud instantly recognized the old man's features and eyes as that of an Indian.
Werewolf's Grief (Bloodscreams #2) Page 11
