The Pet

by Charles L. Grant

  Folding chairs had been placed in orderly half-moon rows facing the bandstand. The lights were bright and focused on the orchestra that took its place to a smattering of applause that grew, swelled, had people on their feet with smiles and whistles and proud looks for their children.

  A television news crew was off to one side amid a clutch of newsmen who scanned the front rows, discounting the mayor and the community leaders who couldn't keep from glancing surreptitiously at the cameras.

  Don sat between his parents, not liking the way he was looked at, pointed at, highlighted by smiles that claimed him as their own. The Quinteros sat behind him, and he spent as much time as he could whispering to Tracey about how silly this all was as he returned a nod or a wave when it came in his direction.

  The bandmaster climbed to his stand, and the audience settled down; he turned to the microphone set up to his left and cleared his throat, causing a squeal to rip through the clearing. He laughed nervously; the audience laughed with him. He thanked them for coming, and introduced Mayor Garziana, who spent fifteen minutes orating Ashford's history in such a way that the back rows began squirming and the front rows froze their smiles.

  A moment, then, in dramatic pause before he introduced each of the Ashford Day Committee members, the principals of the two high schools, and a dozen others who had worked to bring the town together for its birthday.

  Norman and Joyce stood together, and Don winced when his father turned to the crowd and waved.

  Then the mayor paused again, spoke again in a voice so soft no one dared sneeze for missing a word. He alluded to the Howler, and introduced Don.

  Don didn't move though the applause was loud.

  "Go on," Joyce urged him with a hugging grip on his arm.

  He couldn't. The cameras were watching, and the mayor was beaming, and the police chief in his dress uniform had climbed to the bandstand with a package in his hand.

  "Go, Donald," Norman hissed, poking his ribs harshly.

  He couldn't.

  Where are you?

  Tracey leaned forward and pulled a strand of his hair. "Go for it, Vet," she said into his ear.

  He grinned, shook his hair loose and stood. Hand smoothed his jacket, his throat went dry, and the walk across the infield through the flare of the spotlights was long and slow and filled with the sound of his soles striking the ground.

  Hollow. Booming. Iron striking iron.

  The applause started again when he positioned himself between the police chief and the mayor, and he smiled shyly, unable to see anything beyond the wall of white light.

  The mayor said something—Don heard Amanda's name and heard the silence that followed—and said something else before shaking his hand vigorously; and suddenly there were people right in front of him, kneeling, crouching, cameras working, flashbulbs exploding, mouths working as they ordered this pose and that, bumping into one another, crowding together, a hydra with white fire-eyes that made his own water.

  The police chief said something, and handed him the package. His medal, and a certificate, and the grateful thanks of a town he had saved from further grief.

  The applause punched his ears, the mayor slapped his back, and the chief pumped his hand without once seeing his face.

  Then he was standing in front of the mike, and it was quiet. Only the whirr of a camera forwarding its film, only the scuffle of feet on the grass and the creak of a few chairs.

  It was quiet, and it took him a moment to realize they wanted him to speak. Say a word. Tell them all how a kid had beaten a murderer to death.

  A voice broke through the white wall from somewhere in the dark: "Hey, Duck, tell them the giant crow did it!"

  He looked up sharply, searching for the voice and the derisive laughter that followed.

  "I ..."

  He wasn't close enough to the mike, and only the mayor heard him start; but the laughter was still there, and spreading through the crowd, feeding on his nervousness, sympathetic at his plight and trying to tell him there was only good cheer out there and the gratitude hadn't died.

  But they laughed, a few of them, and Don held the velvet-covered box close to his chest.

  The mayor patted the back of his head and pushed him closer; the bandmaster cleared his throat. The laughter settled, and died, and there was quiet again.

  Except for the wind that waited in the trees.

  He looked down and saw his parents—Joyce was brushing a tear from her eye, and Norman was scowling; behind them, he could see Tracey holding tightly to her father's arm as if holding him in his seat.

  "Thank you," he said at last and clearly, and stepped off the platform before anyone could stop him.

  The applause was swift and short, and by the time he reached his seat, the bandmaster was already rapping his baton.

  The police station was deserted except for the desk sergeant and dispatcher and, in a second floor office that faced the main street, Thomas Verona. His shift was over at twelve, but he felt as if he'd already strung three of them together. His eyes were bleary, his hands unsteady, and whenever he tried to concentrate on anything for more than a few moments at a time, the world began a slow spinning that forced him to shut his eyes tightly before he lost his balance.

  Three fingers massaged one cheek as he stared out the window. There were few pedestrians, and the cars that stopped at the light on the corner were more than likely from adjoining towns, passing through, going home.

  He shifted his ministrations to the other cheek and imagined he could hear the concert in the park. Susan was there, sitting with the Quinteros, and he wished he could have joined them. But he couldn't. It was Luis's night, not his—Luis had found the boy and had taken care of him until the ambulance had arrived, Luis, who also managed to clear up the accident between a bus and car that had jumped a boulevard island.

  Luis Quintero deserved what attention he could get; he, on the other hand, was needed to fill in when one of his colleagues was taken ill.

  Still, it would have been nice, sitting beside Susan and holding her hand. A hell of a lot better than sitting in here.

  "Shit," he muttered, and turned away from the window, laid his palms on the cluttered desk, and stared at the file folder spread open before him. Test results on Falwick's injuries. Test results on Amanda Adler and the Howler's other victims. Test results on the blood found on Boyd's clothes and hands. A preliminary autopsy report made just around noon, precedence over others because of the case's notoriety. He poked at them with a finger and frowned. By necessity, most of what he looked at was initial findings only, though certainly conclusive enough for him to shut the folder, file it away, and move on to the next thing.

  But he couldn't.

  He kept seeing the slender figure of that boy lying in the hospital bed, seeing the fear in his eyes, in the way he spoke without really answering questions. It wasn't right. He would have surmised through visual evidence that Boyd was hiding something, covering up for a gang that had almost torn the retired sergeant to shreds and he had, until the first results came in and he saw he was wrong, another theory shot to hell like hundreds before it and the ancestor of hundreds more.

  One kid. One victim.

  Footsteps in the hall and he looked up in time to see a white-jacketed man stride past his open doorway.

  "Hey, Ice!"

  The footsteps hesitated and returned. A short man with wispy hair atop a constantly wistful face leaned against the doorframe and grinned. "Such devotion, I can't stand it," he said.

  Verona lifted his middle finger, smiled over it, then used it to stab at a sheet of green paper. "This thing here."

  Ice Ronson stretched without leaving his place. "Right, Tom. It's a piece of paper."

  "The Boyd thing."

  "Okay. It's a piece of paper about the Boyd thing." He snatched a stick of gum from his breast pocket and folded it into his mouth. Blew a bubble he sucked back before it broke. "So?"

  "So who did most of the work? I don't rec
ognize the signature here." He turned the sheet around and waited until Ronson crossed the room to stare. "Christ, you guys can't even write your own names except on checks."

  "Hey, man, it's tough down there in the trenches," Ronson said, taking a pair of wire-rimmed glasses from the same pocket as his gum. "We deal in volatile chemicals, delicate measurements, knowing all the time a man's life may hang in the—shit, this is impossible! Why the hell don't you get a decent lamp, huh? A man could go blind." He held the paper up toward the fluorescent light in the ceiling. "Oh, yeah, it's Adam. He did this stuff."

  "Adam?"

  Ronson sighed for the ignorance of the people he had to work with. "Adam Hedley, don't you know him? Incredibly brilliant chemist wasting his time teaching high school. He likes police work, does this part-time when he ain't babysitting the brats. Y'know, he could get three, four times what he's making now and he doesn't? Stupid, if you ask me. The guy's a genius."

  Verona nodded. "Nice for him. But even Einstein was wrong once in a while."

  "Name three."

  "Ice, look, this isn't right, okay?"

  Ronson spread his hands. "Tom, I said Adam did it."

  "Then he did it wrong."

  Ronson perched on the edge of the desk and shook his head. "I may do it wrong, boss, but not Adam. He's a maniac. Every test gets done a zillion times, and he still wants us to send samples to the FBI, just in case he's goofed."

  Verona leaned back. "Well, he's goofed this time."

  Ronson shook his head; Verona was declaring the impossible.

  The detective sighed, took out a handkerchief and mopped his face. "Ice, read it."

  Ronson shook his head; Verona was declaring the impossible, when he was done, he closed the folder. "Interesting."

  "Interesting, shit!"

  The lab man shook his head and took off his glasses, added another stick of gum to the first, and blew another bubble as he moved out into the hallway. Then he locked an arm around the frame and leaned back to peer in. "I think," he said, "if Adam's right, and he probably is, you've got a problem, Dick Tracy."

  "The same to you, fella," Verona said without smiling, and swiveled his chair back to the window, three fingers to his cheek, trying to imagine Susan listening to the music, hoping she was missing him as much as he missed her.

  Then he glowered at the dim reflection in the pane and stood, took his coat down from the rack and walked out. He would take a car, ride around with the window down to clear his head, and maybe he would come up with a reason why there were no particles of wood found on Falwick's corpse.

  And why there were no chips or gouges or strips missing from the club the Boyd kid had used.

  Just before he reached the entrance he stopped, considered, and took the stairs down into the basement, to the room at the back, where the evidence was kept.

  He unlocked the heavy iron door, locked it behind him, and moved through the stacks like library shelves. When he found the Boyd case he took down the cardboard carton and sat on the floor with the box between his legs. There wasn't much; shards of clothing in plastic bags, bits of grass and dirt, the branch with bags tied at both ends. The light was dim, only a single bulb overhead, but he held the branch close to his eyes and stared, shaking his head at the streaks of dark on the grey bark, at the heft of it, swinging it once and knowing that two or three collisions with a man's skull or shoulder would have shattered it.

  But the Howler was dead, case closed, decreed by a relieved and gleeful chief who reported to a mayor whose first reaction was to wonder if he could declare a national holiday.

  He stood, swung the club like a bat once more, and replaced it, replaced the box, and unlocked the door before switching off the light.

  The kid didn't do it.

  Goddamnit, that kid didn't do it.

  Then he heard it, footsteps in the hall that curved away from him to the right. To his left it curved again, a circular corridor in whose center core was the boiler room. He waited, listening to the steam heat gurgling and hissing through the pipes bracketed to the low ceiling.

  "Ice?"

  The footsteps moved closer, slow, steady, and Verona felt his hand moving toward the gun holstered under his arm. He chided himself for the reflex, but didn't stop it when he saw the shadow growing on the wall.

  It was indistinct and dark, and spread to the ceiling, bled onto the floor.

  "Ronson, goddammit, stop playing games!"

  The footsteps halted, the shadow remained.

  Verona felt behind him with his free hand and turned the heavy knob on the evidence room door. Forty-three is too old to be having hallucinations in the stationhouse, but he knew damned well that what he saw wasn't a man.

  The footsteps began again, hollow and soft.

  The shadow darkened, spread farther, form hidden in the dust that floated in the cold air.

  The gun was out, the door was open, and any thought he had of running for the stairwell was erased when the shadow made a sound like an animal snorting, the footsteps grew louder, and the lights went out.

  Verona whirled into the room, slammed the door and locked it; the gun was still in his hand when he pressed an ear to the iron, knowing he wouldn't hear anything, hoping he would be able to feel the vibrations should the intruder attempt to break in.

  He backed away when he sensed something stopped on the other side, jumping when his shoulder struck a shelf, swearing when something pounded softly on the door.

  There was no other exit, no windows, no air or heating ducts; no place else to go but stand against the back wall and listen to the pounding, listen to his heart, and feel the gun in his hand become slippery and warm.

  Norman was talking with a reporter, Joyce was conferring with the mayor, and Don sat rigid in his seat, wishing they would all go away.

  It seemed that no one could wait until the last note of the last piece had drifted into the sky before they were on him, wanting to shake his hand, kid him, or just stand by him so they could be in one of the pictures. He had squirmed around the first chance he got, but the Quinteros were already gone, and when he asked his father about Beacher's, he was told that it would be a better idea to get a good night's sleep. Don't try too much, Joyce had cautioned, not so soon after.

  Don had agreed without more than token argument; a cloud had enveloped him, soporific, making it difficult for him to keep his eyes open, to keep his lips in a smile. At one point, just when he thought he was going to bolt through the crowd and head for home on his own, he caught Chris's eye as she walked by with a portly florid-faced man he assumed was her father. She smiled in anticipation, but he mugged a sorrowful expression, signaling with a jerk of his head and a shrug that he was trapped into going home. She grinned, and mimed holding up a noose around her neck, her eyes popping, her tongue hanging out, and walked on, with a single glance over her shoulder before the crowd closed in again and she was lost.

  Finally, when a buzzing began deep in one ear, he shoved himself to his feet and took hold of his father's arm. Norman tried to brush him off without looking, then turned and saw the boy's face. A wavering that Don wanted to slap from his face before he said one last word into the mike held toward his lips. A smile, a shake of hands, and Don felt himself being led toward his mother. The mayor was long gone, a handful of men and women in his place; one of them was Harry Falcone.

  "Joyce," Norman said with a brusque nod to the teacher, "we have to be getting home."

  She balked and the others groaned at his unsociable behavior until he took her arm and pointed at Don. "Oh, god, I'm sorry," she said, was flustering in her farewells and did not object when Falcone congratulated Don with a handshake, Norman with one as well, and kissed Joyce's cheek with both hands on her shoulders.

  In the station wagon Joyce kicked off her shoes and whooped. "Keerist, did you see them?" she yelled as they pulled away from the curb. "Jesus, I had them eating out of my damned hand!"

  "What about the other committee members?" Nor
man asked, taking a corner too quickly and squealing the tires, braking too abruptly and almost sliding her into the well.

  "Hell, they had their glory, too, don't worry," she grumbled. "God, a woman can't even have a moment in the sun around here."

  "You did a great job, Mom," Don said hastily from the backseat, his medal beside him, the box still unopened.

  "Thank you, darling."

  "He's right," Norman agreed with an expansive show of good humor. "Great job, Mrs. Boyd. If you run for mayor, I want to be dogcatcher."

  "You got it," she said.

  "It was still a great job."

  She grunted, "Damn right," and less than five minutes later they were in the driveway, and the wind picked up before they reached the door; it bellowed down the street ahead of a cloud of dust and leaves and clattered branches together, caught one house's shutters and banged it hard against the wall. A garbage can tipped over and rolled into the gutter, a dog howled, and somewhere near the corner someone's window was smashed.

  They tumbled laughing into the foyer, brushing back hair and staggering toward the kitchen, Joyce declaring a moratorium on coffee in favor of their best brandy.

  "What timing," she yelled from the den while Norman fetched three glasses. She peered through the back door curtains, twirled on her toes and presented the bottle to her husband, who poured. "Fantastic! One more encore and we would have been drenched."

  Don was about to tell her it wasn't raining yet when he heard it begin in a lull of the wind, slapping the windows, hissing in the grass. A downpour that wouldn't last more than ten minutes, but she was right-the timing was so perfect, she must have a divine guardian somewhere. Then he blinked when his father pressed a warm glass into his hand.

  "It's okay," Norman said laughingly to his surprise. "It's a special occasion. I'm not trying to corrupt you." He cleared his throat and took hold of a narrow lapel. "I think ... to us."