The Devouring

by T. M. Wright

  He was the toughest kid on the block because he was the biggest, and the most aggressive, and pain had never bothered him a lot—a fact which had put the other kids, even the smart ones, in awe of him (he remembered particularly the time he held the lit end of a cigarette against the back of his wrist; he remembered the acrid smell of burning flesh, the gasps of the kids gathered around him, his own tight sneer against the pain).

  He knocked on the door of Apartment 3C at the Livemore Apartments—he had a bad-check arrest warrant in his suit coat pocket. He listened to the movement inside the apartment, tried to gauge just what kind of movement it was, whether someone was going out a window, or merely getting up from a chair. Funny, he thought, that the memories from his childhood should return with such vibrancy in the last few days, ever since that incredible mess on Lawrence Street.

  "Yes, who is it?" he heard a man call from within the apartment.

  "Police," he called back. And there was silence.

  Maybe, he thought, the memories had returned because he'd realized at last that his position with the Buffalo Police Department was always going to be pretty low, that he was probably never going to make captain, or even lieutenant. Maybe he'd make sergeant if he tried really hard. Sure, twenty years before, in Syracuse, when ' he was a tough eleven-year-old kid who could hold lit cigarettes against the back of his wrist, he was top of the heap. But when you were grown-up, people had words other than "tough" to describe that sort of thing. They called it "stupid," and "juvenile," and even the assholes who hung out at sleazy bars weren't impressed by it anymore. What did impress lots of people, though, was gunplay. Eleven-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, thirty-year-olds—it didn't matter. Guns demanded respect. And Christ, but he was good with a gun!

  "What do you want?" he heard from within Apartment 3C.

  He put one hand on his .45, in a shoulder holster, and the other on his stomach, because, for the past five days, it had been giving him lots of trouble. "Mr. Warren Anderson?" he called.

  "Who's asking?" the man called back. "Are you ..." A surge of pain; he winced. "Are you Warren Anderson?"

  "No. He ain't here."

  "Open the door, please."

  "I said Warren ain't here. He went south. He went to Florida."

  Spurling hesitated, hand tightening on the .45. What would Guy Mallory do now, he wondered, and another surge of pain pushed through him; he winced again, a small "Uh!" escaped him. How would that tough eleven-year-old kid from Syracuse react—not only to the pain, but to this man he had to haul in? The hell with Guy Mallory. Mallory was too cautious; Mallory followed the book, the damned criminal-coddling book.

  "Listen," he called to the man in the apartment, "I've got an arrest warrant for Warren Anderson—"

  "He ain't here. I told you that!"

  "The amount of the check"—another surge of pain went through him, deeper; he doubled over, waited for it to subside. "The amount of the check is just twenty dollars. You pay it, Mr. Anderson, and you're free."

  Silence.

  "Mr. Anderson?" Spurling coaxed, and realized, with relief, that the pain in his stomach seemed to be subsiding.

  "Twenty dollars?" the man called.

  "That's all. Shit, if you haven't got it, I'll loan it to you."

  "Yeah?"

  "Sure." Spurling glanced at the floor; he had seen movement there. His gaze settled on his pants cuffs, which appeared to be hanging over his shoes much more than they usually did. He looked back at the door. "Sure," he called, again. "As long as you promise to pay me back, Mr. Anderson."

  "Twenty dollars? That's all it is? Just twenty dollars?"

  "That's all, Mr. Anderson. I've got it in my hands right now." Once more he glanced in confusion at his pants cuffs, then at the door again. Strange, he thought, but the apartment number seemed to be higher on the door than it had been five minutes before. "Why don't you do us both a favor, Mr. Anderson, and open up."

  And inside the apartment, Warren Anderson wondered if the cop would indeed loan him the twenty dollars to cover the bad check. He opened the door.

  And looked down at the kid standing there who was awash in clothes five sizes too large for his eleven-year-old frame.

  Anderson muttered, "What in the hell—" and smiled a big smile of deep relief. His smile broadened when the kid produced a gun from inside his suit jacket and pointed it directly at Anderson's forehead. Anderson threw his hands into the air. "Hey, don't shoot me, kid!" he laughed. The kid fired. A .45-caliber bullet tore at a hard angle through Anderson's forehead, into his brain, out the other side, and imbedded itself high on the north wall of Apartment 3C.

  ~ * ~

  At Frank's Place the woman named Doreen was getting off her barstool. "Nice talkin' to ya," she said, took one last tug on her glass of whiskey, called, "Hey, I'll see ya, Sam," to the bartender, who looked over and said, "Yeah, sure."

  Then Ryerson asked her, "Who are you?"

  "Name's Doreen," the woman answered.

  "No, it isn't," Ryerson said, because for just one moment, one half second, the snow he was reading from her had lifted and he had caught a glimpse of something hard and dark and obscene beneath.

  The woman smiled coyly. "Whatever I want to call myself, my man, then that's my name. I want to call myself Ginger Rogers, then that's what you gotta call me." She turned her back to him, glanced around. "Nice little dog you got there. Better watch out no one steps on him," and she laughed quickly, and left the bar.

  The bartender watched her go, then turned to Ryerson. "That's one nasty dame," he said.

  "Yes," Ryerson said, "she is that."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lilian Janus, dressed in a pink vest and skirt, white blouse, nylons, and white Naturalizers for her part-time job at Sibley's Department Store, had been sitting for two hours on the edge of her bed with her eyes on the naked corpse of her husband. It lay on the floor on its stomach, arms out straight, legs together, feet pointing in opposite directions, head supported by the handsome, cleft chin.

  She was noticing for the very first time that the hair on his legs ended abruptly at the tops of his thighs. Practically every other part of his body, even his shoulders and his back, was covered with curly black hair. She remembered how proud he was of that hair; she remembered that he said he looked "manful" with so much hair on his body.

  She had already sent her children off to school. They'd asked, "Where's Daddy?" because he was almost never absent from the breakfast table, newspaper in one hand, coffee cup in the other. "He went to work early," she'd explained, which they had readily accepted.

  She now had a pair of scissors in her hand. They were a good, sharp pair of hair-cutting scissors that she'd used countless times on her husband's and kids' heads, and she was transferring them from one hand to the other, blade to palm, handle to palm. As she did this, she was remembering the way her husband had tried to seduce her the night before, his erection bobbing up and down as if to beckon her to the bed with it.

  "Damned pig!" she hissed at him. "Whoever killed you, I thank them!"

  She'd developed a few theories about the murder. Perhaps, while she and Frank were asleep, a burglar had come into the house and had put a knife straight into his heart, just to be safe. Or perhaps Frank had gotten up to fix himself a ham sandwich and as he carried the knife about, he fell on it. That would account for the fact that the point of the knife was now protruding from his back just to the right of his spine.

  She got off the bed, kneeled next to Frank's body, and settled back on her heels. She had the hair-cutting scissors clutched tightly in her right hand. She transferred them to her left, leaned forward, and whispered to Frank's corpse, "Even in death you're very manful, aren't you, Frank?"

  She had another theory about his murder. It was, she thought, the least likely of all because it involved another woman. His lover.

  She'd seen her, briefly, in the mirror over the bathroom sink—a woman with flashing green eyes, an exquisite oval face
, and an air of murder and hate that hung about her like a shroud. Lilian had known about that woman for a long time. She'd often seen her in mirrors, though never as clearly as she had last night. She knew that the woman's name also was Lilian, which was not, she thought, a very strange coincidence, because Lilian was a common enough name.

  That woman could have killed her husband, she decided.

  The woman named Lilian who seemed to exist only in mirrors.

  Last night she could have come out of the mirror and shoved a steak knife deep into Frank's heart and then laid his body out straight.

  So she, the real Lilian, could cut that awful black hair from him.

  She leaned over Frank's back. With the hand that held the scissors she put the tip of her finger to the tip of the knife and pressed on it till a trickle of blood started. She smiled, withdrew the finger, and began to snip.

  ~ * ~

  Ryerson Biergarten said to Joan Mott Evans, "I can't shake it, Joan. It just sits there and I can't shake it."

  Joan, seated next to him on the couch, their hands clasped, had a good idea what he was talking about, not only because he'd described it to her—the field of pale blue, the dark gray smudges—but because she could see it, too, after a fashion. Not as clearly as he saw it, it was true. And it didn't stick with her, either; it came and went randomly on waves of psychic interference. But she could sense what he sensed in it—the evil, the threat, the obscenity.

  "They're people," Ryerson whispered. "Yes," Joan said.

  "People like Lila." He felt Joan's hand tighten. He added, "And Laurie Drake."

  "It's always the young ones," Joan whispered.

  "I don't think so," Ryerson said. "I don't think age matters. I think it's all in the soul."

  She smiled. "You surprise me."

  "With talk of the soul? I don't mean to."

  "I got the clear idea that you were … antireligious."

  He smiled, turned his head slightly to look at her. "I'm not antireligious, Joan. I have my beliefs, like everyone else."

  "I'm glad to hear it."

  "Yes," he said, "I know you are."

  She let go of his hand suddenly. "I don't think I could ever get used to that, Rye."

  "Get used to what?" he asked, feigning ignorance.

  "You know very well what. That ... habit you have of looking into people's heads whenever you want."

  He took her hand; she resisted a little, then gave in. "It's not as simple as that, Joan. You of all people should know that. And I don't look into anyone's head. Whatever I see comes to me unsolicited, and most of what I see—God, most of it is best left unseen! You'd be surprised how many of our thoughts are ..." He searched for the right word.

  "Nasty?" Joan offered.

  He smiled. "I was going to say 'inappropriate.' It's the academic in me, I guess. `Nasty' is better." A short pause. "This ... thing I'm looking at now is nasty." Another pause. "I tried to talk to him, Joan. He's right in the middle of it—"

  "Who? Captain Lucas?"

  Ryerson nodded. "Yes. Captain Lucas. Yesterday morning, he threw me out of his office. Then I went looking for him this morning—" He stopped.

  "Rye?" Joan coaxed. "What's wrong?"

  Ryerson said nothing.

  "Rye, please."

  "I don't know. I don't know. Something's not right here."

  "Something's not right where? What in the hell are you talking about."

  "Here, Joan." He looked earnestly at her. "In this house."

  "Jesus, Rye—you're scaring the hell out of me.

  "Yes, I know. I'm sorry." He shook his head; he was clearly agitated. "Joan, you've got to leave here, you've got to leave this house."

  ~ * ~

  In the Buffalo Police Department Records Division

  Glen Coffman said, "What was that shriek I heard? It sounded like someone goosed you."

  Irene Sabitch looked over at him, a huge smile on her face. "I got it, Glen."

  "Well, for heaven's sake, don't give it to me."

  "I got into those damned files. I found the user number and I got into them. I asked myself, now, what number would I use if I were Captain Lucas. And I answered myself, hell, there could be any of a number of different combinations, but the most likely combination would probably reflect my ego. My birth date, my shield number, my telephone number. So I got hold of all the numbers associated with him—at least all the numbers I could find, and I've been inputting them for the last two days." She paused.

  "And?" Glen coaxed.

  "And, at last, I got it. Two-one-five, that's the date of the Curtis murder/suicide. February fifteenth. So, two one five point LUC, for Lucas. It wasn't very inventive, but I guess that was the beauty of it—someone like me nosing about would probably discard the obvious. And I did, until the unobvious didn't work."

  Glenn said nothing for a moment; he was surprised. Then, "Congratulations; you may yet learn to be a computer operator." He got up, studied her monitor a moment, then looked confusedly at her. "Well, c'mon, where is it, where's the readout?"

  "That's it," she said.

  "That's it? That's the whole thing?" He was looking at three sets of numbers, one on top of the other. They read:

  5556892

  843

  28910

  "That's it," Irene said. "Every file contains only those three numbers. My guess was that this one"—she pointed at the top number—"was a phone number."

  "Try it," Glen said.

  "I did. I had the computer check it." She paused.

  "Well, go on," Glen said impatiently. "What is this, suspense night in Records Division? What did the computer say?"

  "It said that that was the number for Greyhound Package Express, on Peacock Street, ten years ago."

  Chapter Eighteen

  At 1:15 that afternoon, two bodies, a male and a female, were discovered at the home of Frank and Lilian Janus. The bodies were discovered by the couple's housekeeper, Mrs. Glassman, who spent no time examining them and had to be sedated when the authorities arrived a half hour later. Captain Jack Lucas, Detective Guy Mallory, and Detective Andrew Spurling were among those on the scene.

  Captain Lucas bent over the female; she was on her back, and was dressed in a pink vest, pink skirt, and white Naturalizers. There was no clear evidence of the cause of death, although from her open mouth and eyes, her dilated pupils, and the pale light blue cast of her skin, she clearly was dead. Lucas said, "Where are the lab boys, dammit? I want to get this one turned over."

  Mallory, who was kneeling near Frank

  Janus, said, "Hey, this guy's been shaved." Detective Spurling stood by quietly, taking notes. Mallory said to him, "You okay, Andy?”

  Spurling continued taking notes.

  "Andy?" Mallory coaxed.

  He looked up, smiled a little. "Yeah? What's the problem?"

  "Are you all right?"

  "Why wouldn't I be?"

  "No reason; I guess you look a little ... removed."

  "Double shift," Spurling explained. "I can handle it."

  Lucas called, "Mallory, come here."

  Mallory went over to Captain Lucas. Lucas asked, "If I got the name right, this is the woman who was attacked on Baldridge Street."

  Mallory looked over at a uniformed cop standing near the doorway. "What's the name here, McGuire?" he asked.

  McGuire answered, "Janus," spelled it, nodded at the body on the bed. "Her name was Lilian." He nodded at the body on the floor. "His was Frank. They were married, they had three kids, all in school. The two youngest are due home soon, I think."

  Mallory turned back to Lucas. "She's the one, Captain."

  Lucas straightened. "Help me turn her, Guy."

  Mallory balked. "Don't you think we should wait for—"

  "Help me turn her, goddammit."

  Mallory sighed, came forward, stood next to Lucas, and together they turned the body of the female just enough that they could get a good look at her back. It was all but nonexistent.
Where a wide flat plane of skin should have been, there was a gaping hole; at the edges of the hole were the broken and splintered ends of ribs, and within the hole a random jumble of internal organs. Covering these splintered bones and jumbled organs, softly reflecting the glow of the ceiling light, was the same creamy substance that had covered Laurie Drake. “Jesus Christ!" Mallory breathed, and covered his nose against the bittersweet smell of it.

  Lucas said calmly, "Well, there's your cause of death, Mallory," and they let the body down.

  Mallory said, "But where are the bandages, Captain?"

  "What's that, a joke?" Lucas growled.

  Mallory shook his head. "No," he said, "I'm sorry. You don't understand. The woman who was attacked on Baldridge Street had the entire side of her face ripped away." He nodded at the body on the bed. "And there's nothing wrong with her face, Captain."

  ~ * ~

  Benny Bloom was very concerned. "What do you mean, Carlotta's in the psychiatric wing? I just talked to her yesterday."

  The nurse who had taken Nurse Scotti's place was a chunky, gray-haired woman of sixty who affected a gentle and motherly bedside manner that Benny found annoying. She answered, "Nurse Scotti will be fit as a fiddle before you know it, Benny." She gave him her version of a sly grin. "It seems you've developed something of a crush on our pretty nurse. Ah, Benny, boys your age—"

  "What's wrong with her?" Benny cut in, taking her by surprise—few people ever interrupted her sweet pontifications.

  Her sly grin changed to a motherly, caring smile as she cooed, "Benny, Benny, your pretty nurse just needs a little rest; and so do you."

  Benny shot back, "No, I don't," swung his feet over the bed to the floor, and went on brusquely. "Where is she? Where's the psychiatric wing?"

  The chunky nurse's caring smile stuck on her face; she put her unusually strong hands on Benny's chest and tried to push him firmly but gently back onto the bed. "Ah, Benny," she cooed, "please be a good boy—"