Apocalypse Island (15 page)

“No!”

Hardwick stared.

Wolf’s heart was racing in his chest like a trapped animal.

“I can’t help you if you’re not honest with me.”

For a long silent moment Wolf stared down at the headline while his heart hammered in his chest. Finally he said, “Okay, I knew her.”

“And you knew Janet Own didn’t you?”

“How could you possibly know that?”

“I suspected.”

“How?”

“I pride myself on my intuitiveness.”

Wolf’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “No,” he said. “This is bullshit. You’ve had someone following me. You’ve got some sort of deal going with the cops and the parole board.”

“Did you kill those girls, Danny?”

“No!”

A buzzer sounded on Hardwick’s desk, loud and accusing. Wolf jumped. Hardwick looked appraisingly at his patient before picking up the phone. “I told you, I did not want to be disturbed this afternoon!” He stopped and listened for a moment before saying, “Oh dear, I see! All right, tell them I’ll be there in half an hour. No, that’s okay. I’ll be there. Thanks, Jane. Sorry I was so short with you.”

Hardwick hung up and gave Wolf a grim look. “I hope you don’t mind, Danny, but I have an emergency. One of my patients just attempted suicide and I must get to the hospital. Would it be possible for you to come back...let’s see...” He looked at the calendar on his desk. “How about tomorrow, say three o’clock?”

“I don’t know,” Wolf replied. “You’re making blatant accusations. I’m thinking about going to the parole board and telling them about it. I don’t like your methods and I don’t like what you’re insinuating.”

Hardwick glared at Wolf. “You go then, Danny. But what do you think will happen when they find out it’s been nearly a month since you’ve seen me? And what do you think they’ll do when they find out you knew both the dead girls?”

Wolf glared angrily at Hardwick. “You fuck!” he said. “I didn’t kill those girls.”

Hardwick stared. “Portland’s a small city with minimal crime, and now we have two murdered women in the last several weeks, and as it turns out, you knew them both. You
screwed
them both.”

“That doesn’t mean I killed them.”

“Will I see you tomorrow, Danny?” Hardwick’s stare was hard and unyielding.

“I’ll be here,” Wolf said, “but I don’t like this.”

“Noted,” Hardwick replied. He stood up and escorted Wolf to the door. “Now I must be going. I’ll expect to see you at three o’clock sharp tomorrow.”

“Sure, doc, whatever you say.”

Chapter 32

Wolf left the psychiatrist’s office and took the elevator down to Congress Street. He walked the crowded streets for an hour or so, trance-like, numb, his mind heavy with the burden of the two dead women. Was it possible that he could be committing these horrible crimes? Even as the question arose he remembered the dream he had not dared mention to Hardwick,
seeing through a monster’s eyes, carrying a dead woman in his arms, the mud and blood on his clothing,
and he knew that something beyond his understanding was at work here.

He’d been wishing for an end to this nightmare. It’s why he’d taken this last desperate step of going back to Hardwick after storming out on him nearly a month ago. And now Hardwick was accusing him of the same things he himself had seriously been considering.

In the years since the illness had taken over his life, Wolf had come to some harsh conclusions. Rarely did another human being give a shit as to whether you lived or died. It was useless to think otherwise, useless to believe that anyone felt anything but contempt for you:
I want to help you; I’ll never leave you; trust me forever and always.
He had never been loved. Yes, he had made love to women, true, so many he could not keep count, and in the throes of passion more than a few had professed love for him, but had any of it been real love? Weren’t those just words spoken in passion, too soon forgotten? Siri was the only one he had ever believed. Now she was gone and he did not know what to believe.

Wolf understood the harsh realities of his present situation. Hardwick did not wish him well. The man had an agenda; it was almost certainly the case. Hardwick had a perverse sense of the macabre, no doubt about it, and he was using it to squeeze some sort of twisted confession out of Wolf. But how could he confess to crimes he had no memory of committing? True, everything else was there: seeing through the eyes of a monster as he carried a dead woman along a dark and muddy road; blasphemous religious symbols everywhere he looked; the dreams of a ghost woman come back to haunt him.

They wish to destroy you, Danny. Don’t let them.

He could not understand why anyone would want to destroy him. He was just a musician, an ex-con, no threat to anyone. Truth was he seemed to be on a course of self-destruction. Maybe that’s what Siri meant. Each night he crawled into the pit and flirted with demons. He needed to find a way out. He didn’t like the darkness down there.

Wolf realized that he had stopped on the sidewalk and was staring trancelike into the reflective glass of a store window. A figure from within the store began moving toward him at an accelerated rate. He began to panic as he had a sudden vision of a giant and hairy man-thing attacking him from within. He took a step back in recoil until he realized that his attacker was coming up swiftly from behind him and that he was seeing the reflection in the glass. He tried to turn, but in a sudden blur of dizzying motion, hands attached to powerful arms grabbed him roughly by the shoulders, slamming him face-first into the window, rattling the huge plate of safety glass in its frame. He felt the searing pain as his skull connected with the solidness of the glass. A powerful vice-like hand gripped his wrist and gave his arm an upward twist causing him to cry out in pain. He gasped for breath and tried to scream but in his panic his lungs would not take in air.

“What the fuck you doing skulking around my city, Wolf?”

At the sound of that voice Wolf felt both relief and a powerful surge of hate. He knew the voice of his attacker, and even though he despised the man, he felt a sudden and dizzying wave of gratitude that what had hold of him was a man, not a monster. In an adrenaline rush of cold fury, Wolf broke free of his assailant’s grasp, spun around and faced him. “Fuck you, asshole,” he spat viciously.

Detective Frank Cavanaugh grabbed Wolf by the throat with a powerful right hand, slamming the back of his head against the window and putting intense choking pressure on his wind pipe. To Wolf, Cavanaugh’s eyes looked insane, like those of a cruel and desperate creature on the cusp of a kill. The thought occurred to him that perhaps his mind had seen the detective for what he really was; some sort of beast.

“If it was up to me you’d still be getting fucked up the ass by degenerate lifers,” Cavanaugh said. His grin was diabolical.

Between gasps of breath, Wolf said, “I...paid...for...my crimes...you...fascist...pig!”

“You didn’t pay for shit, you fucking murderer,” Cavanaugh said.

Wolf’s eyes were rolling in their sockets and he was making little choking sounds as Cavanaugh strengthened the hold on his throat. Finally he let go and Wolf staggered forward. almost falling.

“The Lieutenant wants to see you down at the station, pronto.”

“Is that what this is about, you fuck?”

Cavanaugh raised his hand. “You want more of this?”

Wolf shook his head and massaged his sore neck. “What’s he want with me?”

Cavanaugh made a face like a man who’d discovered dog shit on his shoe. “Just get in the car.” He pointed curbside.

“Am I under arrest?”

“You want to be?”

Wolf shook his head.

“Then get in the fucking car.”

Wolf did as he was told, and as they drove through town a cold rain began to fall.

Chapter 33

At the station Wolf was ushered into Jennings’ office.

“Sit down,” Jennings said.

“I don’t want to sit down.”

“Suit yourself. What happened to your head?”

Wolf touched his forehead and winced. His fingers came away wet. “City’s finest,” he said. “His wife and dog must be out of town this week.”

Jennings sighed and shook his head, amazed at how close Wolf had actually come to the truth of the matter. He pointed at a door to his right. “Go clean yourself up.”

Wolf went into the bathroom, took his time cleaning the blood off with a wet paper towel, thinking about the morning Cavanaugh had come to his apartment to arrest him for the murder of a man he didn’t kill. He remembered how cruel and insensitive Cavanaugh had been, and wondered, not for the first time, what it would feel like to take the bastard down. When the bleeding stopped he stepped up to the toilet bowl. unzipped his fly and took a piss.

“What’re you doin’ in there?” Jennings called from the other side of the door. “Shitting out a Buick?”

“A Mack Truck,” Wolf retorted. He finished pissing, washed his hands at the sink and stepped back into Jennings’ office.

Jennings held up the band flyer
.
“Recognize this?”

Wolf saw four emotionless faces—one of them his own—staring out at him from the sheet of paper. Above and behind the portrait, painted on the brick wall of an old burned out building, was a giant, jagged red cross. Wolf winced at the sight of it. He’d never liked the symbol or the circumstances surrounding it. “Yeah, its one of my band’s advertising circulars. So what?”

“Tell me something, Danny. What’s the significance of the cross?”

Wolf shrugged. “Beats me. I hate the fucking thing. It was the band’s trademark long before I joined them.”

“What about the band’s name,
Bad Medicine?”

“Told you I don’t know. I’m just a hired hand.”

Jennings sighed. “You know who came up with the cross idea?”

“I heard it was Johnny Redman. The guys said he thought it was cool. Why don’t you ask him about it?”

“You know I can’t do that, don’t you, Danny? Johnny’s dead. Knifed in an alley after a gig one night.”

“Yeah, a shame.”

“Did you know Redman?”

Wolf shook his head.

“You sure about that, Danny?”

“I was in prison when he got murdered.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Wolf was silent in thought for a long moment. “I might have known him years ago when we were both playing the circuit. What’s your point?”

“Just wanted to establish the truth, that’s all. So you did know him?”

“What are you getting at?”

Jennings still held the flier. “Found this yesterday morning at the landfill near the body of the latest victim, along with about a dozen others.”

“What’s it got to do with me?”

“The dead girl had a big cross carved on her. Looked a lot like this one.”

Wolf sat down then, exhaled a weary sigh, and didn’t even try to hide the look of panic on his face. “It’s got nothing to do with me,” he said. “There are a lot of those fliers around. We plaster them all over the place. Cars in mall parking lots, storefronts. We put stacks of them in music and record stores. The landfill must be full of them.”

“Yeah, I figured that,” Jennings said.

“So why are we talking?”

“Because these same fliers were found near the bodies of both victims. You read the papers?”

“Sometimes.”

“Some name the press has given our killer, huh?”

Wolf did not reply.

“
Cross my Heart killer
.
That’s some name,” Jennings said again. His smile was a grim line on his face. “You agree, Danny?”

“What’s your point?”

“The papers, especially one reporter in particular, a woman named Persephone Wilder, is talking about a serial killer in the city of Portland.”

“She’s a sensationalist.”

“Ah, I see you’ve read her work.”

“Work?”
Wolf said. “That’s a good one. Why do I care about this?”

“The name Jennifer Colvin mean anything to you?”

“No. Should it?”

“Think back five years to just before you were arrested for murder.”

Wolf thought a minute then shook his head.

“She might have been one of your groupies.”

“There were lots of groupies. I didn’t know most of their names. Why? What’s she got to do with me?”

“Just trying to get to the truth. What do you think about all these goth/vamp chicks running around these days?”

“I think they’re idiots.”

“Both dead girls were goth’s,” Jennings said.

“Yeah, so?”

Jennings pointed at the flier. “Funny how this same cross was carved on both victims. You think the killer was trying to send some sort of message by copying the cross on your band’s flier?”

Wolf shrugged. “How should I know? A cross is a cross.”

“Know who the latest victim is?” Jennings asked.

Wolf said nothing.

“I asked you a question.”

“What is this?” Wolf said, jumping to his feet.

“Sit your ass down, Danny. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

“Then what
are
you doing?”

“Her name was Amy Salinger. You knew her, right?”

Wolf’s body went cold. He offered no reply.

“Just like you knew Janet Owen. Am I right?”

“How the hell do you know that?”

“They were both your groupies, weren’t they?”

“Doesn’t mean I killed them,” Wolf said. “Groupies get around. A hundred other guys knew them, bartenders, bouncers, customers, cops—”

Jennings held his hand up to silence him. “I know that, but there’s one thing you have in common with them both that as far as I can tell no one else does.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“You had...relationships with them, didn’t you?”

Wolf said nothing.

“Talk to me, Danny.”

“Who told you?”

“I had a little chat with the boys in your band and they all said the same thing.”

Wolf’s mind went numb.

“Where were you this afternoon?”

“You know where I was. You had your Gestapo posted out front. Why can’t you just leave me the hell alone?”