The Totem

by David Morrell

  The medical examiner reached for his own beer can, and Slaughter shrugged.

  "Okay then," Slaughter told him. "How about this? The nut rips Clifford's throat and runs away. A dog finds Clifford and starts chewing. That way all the first marks are obliterated."

  The medical examiner just shook his head again.

  "Well, why not?" Slaughter asked.

  "All the wounds showed evidence of bleeding."

  "Oh." And Slaughter leaned back in the chair and studied his beer can. That was final. Only living bodies bleed, so Clifford must have been alive when he was mangled. If some nut had ripped his throat, Clifford might have lived for half a minute longer, but not long enough to bleed from what a dog might later do.

  It was half-past two at night, and they were in the medical examiner's office. Slaughter had stayed near the stockpens, helping Rettig and the new man ask the neighbors if they'd heard some trouble in the night. He had asked about a prowler or a stray dog that was barking. Then he'd met with Rettig and the new man, but they hadn't learned a thing. The trouble was, the field was too far from the houses. Near the noisy stockpens and the highway over there, a sound from a dog would not have carried very well. Slaughter told his men to write their report and go home but in the morning to search the field.

  "What for?"

  "I'm not quite sure yet. Do it, though."

  Then he'd looked at the setting sun and known he couldn't put it off much longer: he would have to go see Clifford's widow. In Detroit, he'd on occasion had to tell someone that a wife or child or husband had been killed, but he'd never known the people he was telling. By contrast, here those he told were always people he knew, and some days it was worse than being the chief of police was worth.

  Like today. To see his friend Doc Markle dead beside that mangled steer. To hear about his friend's wife so distraught that she was in the hospital (Slaughter planned to visit her as well). And then to go out and explain to Clifford's wife what had happened. It was bad enough to have to say that Clifford had been killed. But not to know why he'd been killed or how, that made Slaughter feel inept and worthless. He had held Clifford's widow, let her keep on crying, and helped her sit down on the sofa. He had brought her coffee, waited until her son arrived from the other side of town, and finally decided that he'd earned the right to leave. He told her that he'd let her know when she could have the body, that he'd pass on any news the minute he received it. Then he'd said good-bye and went outside and nearly lost his balance on the porch.

  By then the sun was gone, and he was looking at the stars, the rising moon, thinking that he ought to go see Mrs. Markle, but he couldn't make himself. The scene with Clifford's widow had been just too much. The only thing Slaughter wanted was to get away from this, to get inside his car and roll the windows down and drive. To his place out in the country where he fed and watered both his horses-he'd forgotten when he last had ridden them-and then because the things he'd seen today had ruined any appetite he might have had, he put off supper, driving back to town.

  He parked, lights off, in the shadows by the stockpens, looking toward the field in case he saw some movement. But there wasn't anything, and after all, he couldn't spend the night like this, so he drove to the station. The lights were on along the hall. The night man was on duty by the two-way radio. Tall and thin. An Adam's apple that bobbed whenever he spoke. "Hi, Chief. I wondered who was out there."

  "Much doing?"

  "Quiet."

  "For a change today."

  Slaughter walked toward his glassed-in section of the office. He sat and thought a moment, looking at the night sheet he had read in the morning. He tapped a pencil on his desk and reached to open the phone book. First, the hospital. Mrs. Markle? She's asleep now, resting better. Thank you. Then a number in the valley. Sam Bodine. But no one answered. Then the state police.

  "It's Slaughter here. I wondered if you'd check on someone for me. Sam Bodine… That's right. He's got a ranch on Route 43, twenty miles north of town. I wonder if you'd look in on him for me… No, there's nothing wrong, at least not that I know of. But I went out there today, and no one was around. It seemed like they had left in quite a hurry. I phoned later this afternoon and then again just now, but both times no one answered, and I thought if you had a man out that way, he could maybe have a look… Thanks. I appreciate it."

  Slaughter hung up and again tapped his pencil on his desk.

  Too much in one day, he thought. Fifteen minutes later, the night man told him that the medical examiner was on the line.

  Slaughter picked up the phone. "So how'd you know I was working?"

  "Well, I called your house, and no one answered. Where else would you be? You mean you've got a lady friend shacked up that I don't know about?"

  "You would have wakened me at this hour?"

  "Why not? All the rest of us are working. Actually I knew you'd be waiting, and I phoned this number first. You care to visit?"

  "You're finished?"

  "Just this minute."

  "On my way."

  "Hey, hold it. Don't forget-"

  "I have it in my trunk."

  Slaughter stood and left the office. "I'll be at the medical examiner's," he told the night man. He was moving down the hall. What he'd put inside his trunk were two six-packs of Coors that he'd picked up at a convenience store as he was heading toward the office. It was now a ritual with them. Whenever Slaughter made the medical examiner work late, he always dropped in at the hospital and offered beer and talked with him a while. The gesture was a small one but appreciated, and besides, the chance to talk, to get to know the people whom he worked with, that was part of Slaughter's reason for his move out here. In fact, he'd even started looking forward to their chats, as if a corpse were not the reason for their late-night conversations. Not this time, however. No, not this time.

  Slaughter got there in five minutes. In a town this size, there wasn't any place he couldn't get to quickly. He parked in back beside the spaces for the doctors and went in through the Emergency ward. The hospital was small by big-city standards: two stories made of brick and glass with wings off to the right and left, and one wing down the middle. But though small, it served the town quite well, and thinking of the nightmares of Detroit, Slaughter was grateful that he seldom saw a bleeding, groaning patient who'd been brought in from a knife fight or a shooting. He walked along the corridor and reached the section marked pathology where, without knocking, he turned the office doorknob, and the medical examiner was in there, sitting, waiting.

  As they sipped their beer, Slaughter shifted in his chair to face the darkness beyond the open window where a dog began to bark. A frenzied howl came shortly afterward, then some sounds that Slaughter couldn't identify. He listened, strangely fascinated, at the same time apprehensive.

  "You know," he said and turned and paused because he saw that the medical examiner was looking toward the window too and evidently concentrating on the sounds out there. "You know," he said again. "Since we saw Clifford in that hollow in that field, I kept remembering the night sheet that I read this morning. There's a mention about Clifford being missing. Something bothered me about it. I went back tonight and read it through once more. A couple lines above where Clifford's missing, there's a note about a dog that howled all night, another note about a prowler."

  "So?"

  "Both complaints were from that neighborhood."

  The medical examiner glanced from the window, looking at him.

  "Not quite near the field, but close enough." Slaughter squinted. "How drunk was he anyhow?"

  The medical examiner just shrugged, not even checking through the papers before him. "Point-two-eight percent, and he'd been drinking like that several years. His liver looked like suet."

  "Could he walk, though?"

  "I see what you mean. Did someone drag him to that field, or did he walk? I found no evidence of a struggle. It could be you'll find something different in the field. I did find some bruises on his
right forearm that are compatible with his position in that hollow. Also bruises on his shoulder."

  "So?"

  "Well, think about it. All those bruises were fresh, so fresh in fact that he incurred them just before he died."

  "Not after? Someone kicking at him once he'd died?"

  "No, bruises are just localized internal bleeding. If you strike a corpse, you'll cause some damage, but not bruises in the sense we mean them. Only living bodies bleed, hence only living bodies can develop bruises. Now a bruise will take a little time before it starts to color. Half an hour as an average…"

  Slaughter stared at him. "You mean he landed in that hollow at least half an hour before he was attacked?"

  "That's right. But bear in mind the words I used. I said the bruises were compatible with his position in that hollow. Could be he received them earlier some other place. But it's my educated guess that they're from where he fell down in that hollow. Now it's possible that someone pushed him. If so, I don't know what point there would have been, because the cause of death was dog bites at least half an hour later."

  "What time?"

  "Three o'clock. Three-thirty at the latest."

  "Yeah, the people at the bar said Clifford left a little after two when they closed. Fifteen minutes walk up to that field. Half an hour or so beyond that. Yeah, it brings him pretty close to three o'clock."

  "You're understanding then?"

  "I'm getting it. There wasn't any other person, as the untouched wallet more or less suggested. He came lurching from that bar and stumbled up the street. He had to piss, he tried a shortcut, or maybe he was just confused. We'll never know exactly why he tried that field. But halfway through, he passed out from the booze. That's how he got the bruises. Then he slept a little, and at last the dog came on him."

  "That's the way I reconstruct it."

  "But how many?"

  "What?"

  "How many dogs? One? Or several?"

  "Oh. Just one."

  "You're sure about that?"

  "You know how the language goes. My educated guess."

  "Sure, but on what basis?"

  "Well, the teeth marks were all uniform. But let's assume for argument that we've got two dogs with the same sized teeth. Their enzymes would be different, though."

  "Their what?"

  "Their enzymes. Their saliva. Hell, the crud inside their mouths. A dog can't plant its teeth in something and not leave saliva. All the enzymes in those wounds were uniform. They came from just one dog."

  "Not a coyote, or a wolf?" Slaughter asked.

  "No, the teeth were too big for a coyote's. Yes, all right, a wolf, I'll give you that. A wolf would be a possibility. No more than that, however. No one's seen a wolf down here in twenty years. It's hardly worth considering."

  "All right, a dog, then," Slaughter said, abruptly exhausted. "Tell me why."

  "You've been living here-what?-five years?"

  "Just about."

  "Well, I was born and raised here. Dogs are something to be frightened of. People take them into the mountains, camping. They lose them or abandon them. The weak and spoiled ones die. The others turn more wild than many animals who live up there. You see a dog up in those mountains, get away from it. You might as well have stumbled on a she-bear with a cub. I've heard about some vicious maulings. Hell, I've seen some victims with an arm chewed off."

  "But this is in the town."

  "No difference. Sure, they live up in the mountains, but they come down here for food. The winter was a bad one, don't forget. You know yourself, the stockpens put on guards at night to make sure that the steers are safe from predators. The field is near the stockpens. Some dog from the mountains came down near the stockpens and found Clifford."

  "But nothing tried to eat him. He was just attacked."

  "Without a reason. That's the point. We're dealing here with totally perverted animal behavior. They just like to kill. They'll sometimes come down here and chase a steer for several miles just to get some exercise. They'll bring the steer down, kill it, and then leave it. In a human, we would call that kind of behavior 'psychopathic.'"

  Slaughter put his beer can, vaguely cold yet, up against his forehead. He was thinking of old Doc Markle. "In the morning, I want you to go over to the Animal Clinic. I want you to examine that steer we saw this morning." "What?"

  Slaughter's eyes became stern. "I know it sounds a little crazy. All the same, just do it. Look for similarities. Something's going on here." He managed to stand.

  "Slaughter, you don't look too good." "I need a few hours sleep is all." Slaughter headed toward the door.

  "Hey, what about the beer? There's still a six-pack left." "You keep it. Hell, you've earned it. What you did on Clifford. Just make sure you do that steer. Let me know when you're finished." Slaughter reached for the doorknob. "Something's going on, you said?" "That's right, and what, I wish to God I knew."

  THREE

  The corridor was empty, and the sound the door made when Slaughter closed it echoed. Like a mausoleum, he was thinking, looking at the imitation marble floor. He paused beneath the harsh neon lights in the ceiling, trying to decide if he had finally accomplished everything he'd meant to do tonight, and still not certain, vaguely troubled, he walked down the hallway. One turn to the right, he nodded to the nurse on duty at Emergency, and then, the automatic doors hissing open, he stepped out to face the night.

  The parking lot was rimmed by darkness. There were floodlights just above him, though, illuminating the lot itself, and he was walking toward the cruiser, noticing the countless insects that were swirling around those lights. The swarm of insects bothered him, making him scratch at a tingle that inched down his neck. The air at least was cool, pleasant after the heat of the day, and fresh as well in contrast with the cloying sick-sweet smell of the formaldehyde which, because he liked the man, he never mentioned to the medical examiner. He reached the cruiser and glanced in the back seat before sliding into the front, a habit that he retained from when he'd worked nightshirts in Detroit. Then he sat there, thinking once again, not prepared to go home, but still uncertain what it was a part of him intended he should do. He was tired, that was certain, but he couldn't keep from feeling that his work was not yet complete. No, it wasn't even duty. Something strong out there was drawing him.

  He turned on the engine and backed the cruiser from between two cars. After glancing one last time at all those swirling insects, he drove along the side of the hospital and out the front to reach the street. The night was darker here. He swung left without thinking, merely following his inclination, and when he steered right at the next intersection, he was guessing that he meant to go back to the station. But he reached a stoplight, and when it changed to green, he didn't go straight through but instead veered left, and now he found that he was driving toward the outskirts, toward the northeast section of the city, and he finally knew where he was going.

  There was little traffic. The lights were out in most of the houses. A few streetlights were out as well, and he came around the corner, driving slowly, glancing around, stopping by the Railhead tavern. It was closed by now. This late it had better be, he thought. He got out, his flashlight in his hand, and walked up to check the doors. But they were locked as he'd expected, although it would have been a pleasant joke to come here for a different reason and then as an accidental extra find that they were serving liquor after hours. To be certain, he checked all the windows, too, and then the back. He even checked the garbage bin to see that all the bottles had been broken as the law required. Now you're getting mean, he told himself, and switching off his light, he walked back to the cruiser.

  It was three o'clock now, just about when Clifford had been killed. Of course, Clifford had entered that field at least a half hour earlier, and maybe if he'd fallen, sleeping, closer to an hour. But now was when the attack had occurred, and Slaughter stood by the cruiser, staring up the street toward the field. There were houses all along the far side o
f the street, rundown mostly since this section was the closest that the town had to a slum: listing porches, dirt instead of grass, cardboard here and there in place of windows. But the people, although poor, were peaceful, and he'd never had much trouble with them. From the bar, of course, but that was mostly workers from the stock-pens, and Slaughter stared up past the field toward the vague silhouettes of buildings at the stockpens. Three of them. The cattle stayed outside except for special auctions, and there wasn't any need for more than just an office and two arenas. In the stillness, Slaughter heard cattle lowing faintly from the far side of the field. He hesitated, then started up the sidewalk toward them.

  In the open like this, he had no need for his flashlight. There were stars, a nearly full moon. They gave the night a glow that made it almost magical. So Clifford would have thought, he guessed. He himself was trying hard to think like Clifford. Last night had been bright like this, and Clifford had come from the bar and walked up this way toward the field. Clifford had been drunk, of course. With that much alcohol inside him-point-two-eight percent-the glow would have been just about the only thing he noticed. And he wouldn't have been walking. He'd have staggered, lurching slowly up the street, and maybe that was why he'd tried the awkward shortcut through the field instead of going twice the distance around the block. Because Clifford knew that in his condition he would never otherwise have managed to get home. He had stumbled slowly toward the field, and anything that might have hidden low in the weeds there would have seen he was an easy target. No, the timing was all wrong, Slaughter thought. Keep remembering those thirty minutes between when he fell and when he was attacked. Anything that saw him come and knew he was an easy target would have tried him right away. There wasn't any reason for the animal to put off lunging. Unless the thing had not been interested. Unless it tried the cattle next and didn't like the men on guard there and then came back, killing Clifford. Why? It didn't eat him. Out of anger? And the thought was strangely chilling now as Slaughter left the sidewalk, stepping into the rustling grass and weeds and crunchy gravel of the field.