Ghouls (35 page)

Glen spoke for the first time since they’d entered the morgue. Dark circles under his eyes looked like smudges of soot. His voice was dull as wax. “What makes you think there was even a crime committed? Looks to me like she just got dragged off by some dogs or something. A crippled girl wouldn’t stand a chance against wild dogs, even in front of her own home.”

“Yeah, but she
wasn’t
in front of her own house,” Kurt reminded him. “She wasn’t even outside. Harley Fitzwater said her wheelchair was still by her bed, so even if she wanted to go outside for some fresh air or something, she would have been in the chair. There’s no way this is an accident. Someone entered that trailer and physically removed her.”

Bard and Glen finally surrendered to the conclusion. A drape of silence followed them down the corridor and out into the abandoned parking lot. They walked tilted, like drunks, still slightly warped by the state of affairs in Greene’s shop of horrors.

“I’ll have to call Choate, give him a complete report,” Bard complained. “The
fucker’ll
have county shirts all over my town.”

Emptiness amplified Glen’s otherwise subdued voice. “Somebody’s going to have to tell Harley Fitzwater that that skeleton back there is probably his daughter.”

“We’ll wait till positive ID is official,” Bard said. “And you’ll have to do some writing for this. County, too.”

“I know,” Glen said, and pulled open his Pinto’s door.

“You log trespassers at Belleau Wood, don’t you?” Kurt interjected.

“Sure.”

“Anything out of the ordinary last night?”

“No. No one on foot, at least.”

“Any
smoochers
?”

“A few, but that’s not out of the ordinary. I’ll give you the plate numbers tomorrow, and all my logs for the last couple of weeks.”

Kurt and Bard slid into the T-bird. Bard made no attempt to turn the ignition. Instead, he stared past Kurt, out the passenger window. He seemed to be staring at Glen.

“Something’s really starting to smell like a can of shit around here,” the chief said as Glen weaved off the lot.

“Elaborate, huh?”

“You know what I’m talking about.” Bard singled out the ignition key in the dark. “A dug-up coffin, a missing cop, and a crippled girl stripped down to the bones. And look what they all have in common.”

“Maybe I’m just naturally stupid this time of the morning,” Kurt said. “So how about telling me what you’re driving at.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Kurt. Open your fucking eyes. All this shit’s gone down at Belleau Wood. And Glen just happens to work there, and he
just happens
to be the one finding it all of a fucking sudden.”

“Unless I’m reading you wrong, you’re saying Glen’s got something to do with it, aren’t you? Look, Chief, I’ve known the guy for damn near my whole life; he’s practically a brother, and he’s straight. I don’t know what you’ve got in mind, but whatever it is, the idea that Glen’s involved is ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” Bard retorted, finally starting the car. “Just ’cause we’re friends with the guy doesn’t mean he can’t drop a few bolts. Now, I don’t know what he might be up to, and I’m not saying he’s the
perper
or anything. But one thing’s certain. Glen sure as hell knows something he’s not telling us.”

— | — | —

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Dawn broke faultily, changing the spectacle of first light into a blunder. Low and gray, storm clouds massed in the sky and crawled like swollen tumorous creatures ready to burst. Fog hung adhesively between the trees, and a chill breeze made the forest shiver, while animals hid from the certainty of rain.

By 5:30
a.m.,
Kurt had traveled the length of Route 154 several times. He’d gone back to bed after Bard had dropped him off, but found sleep impossible, thanks to the residual images of Greene’s morgue. Next, after a steaming, nearly painful shower (he felt sure the formalin fumes had seeped into his pores as well as his clothes) he paced the front porch, smoking, thinking, and staring across into the fog-filled woods until his solitude and the silence chased him out. He got into his car and drove, randomly and quite conscious now that the Ford had become a sanctuary against the private
paranoias
which seemed to be circling him over the past week. He lost track of time. He drove. And thought.

He thought about Vicky. He thought that he should be happy, since she was getting out of the hospital today. Instead, he felt cold and dry inside. For years his inhibitions had kept his feelings for her safely distant. But with her release from the hospital—and her departure from Lenny—Kurt knew that this was his last opportunity to confront her with the truth. It would be the first positive move he’d made with her, yet the prospect filled him with a sudden, certain dread.

Then he thought about Bard’s suspicions of Glen. Kurt knew both men well but knew Glen better. Glen was a loner, he’d always been. He’d once told Kurt that he preferred just a few friends, choosing them carefully to maintain quality friendships rather than superfluous ones. Lots of people misinterpreted this idea—along with his preference to work at night—and tended to dismiss Glen as peculiar. “I’ll always work at night,” he’d once laughed to Kurt. “No traffic jams, no rush hour, no hot sun to make your upholstery simmer and your ass burn. And at night I don’t have to be around lots of people and catch their colds”—an antisocial notion perhaps, though Kurt could not remember Glen ever being sick.

No, Glen wasn’t a flake, he was just set in his ways. And despite a few flukes, he was the most honest person Kurt had ever known. He was the kind of guy who returned lost dogs and declined the reward, and who left other’s forgotten change in pay phones. If he found money in the parking lot and was unable to locate the owner, he would drop it in the Jerry Lewis bottle at 7-Eleven, because the idea of spending money he did not earn seemed as bad as stealing.

So why did Bard link Glen with Belleau Wood’s recent mysteries? Bard had always been a fussbudget, a walking case of anxiety; he lived to worry and to suspect. Kurt acceded almost immediately that a progression of mishaps had piled up against Glen’s favor, had made him victim to coincidence. It was a rational conclusion, but Bard, though, had never been one to demonstrate rationality. And exactly what did Bard suspect? That Glen was a closet sociopath? A
necrophile
? A murderer? Outlandish.

Kurt turned around at the Liquor Mart, the very end of Route 154. Left of him, at the intersection that marked Tylersville’s boundary, intermittent vehicles blew through the traffic light, barreling away down West Street, strangely silent in the queer darkness of early morning. This was the secret pre-rush hour of Annapolis, pickup trucks mostly, or watermen on their way toward the docks center of town. Kurt parked here for a time, the Ford’s headlights stressing the fog which blurred 154’s most northern end. Just yards ahead, the road descended like a narrow tunnel, or a maw. Mist grew on the windshield. The fog seemed to be moving toward the car, thickening, as if the maw were expelling breath on him.

It was an eerie passage of minutes. With the rumbling of the Ford’s engine, he tensed at his own perceptions and sensed something ominous in the fog, as though some malignant entity had slipped into his town unnoticed and was pulsing there now, steady and content.

It was not a coincidence, nor a series of inexplicable events. Conspiracy thrived within the fog, a subtle corruption waiting to devour the town he’d lived in all his life.

It was there. He could feel it quite clearly now. Somehow, he knew. There was something in Tylersville that had never been there before. Something vile. Something atrocious.

««—»»

“No,” Vicky said. She looked peevishly into her lap. Did she really mean no? Or could there be something appealing about the idea? “No, I couldn’t. I don’t want to intrude.”

“Who’s intruding?” Kurt argued, one eye on the road and one on her. “Uncle Roy won’t be back for another week, and he wouldn’t mind anyway. Besides, where else can you go?”

She didn’t answer, still contemplating her knees.

Kurt drove steadily down 301, heading back to Tylersville. It was past noon now; he’d picked Vicky up at the hospital as soon as the doctor had authorized her release. But that presented a problem, as it had not yet been established exactly
where
she was going. Waiting in the left-turn lane at the junction of 301 and 154, he decided to change the subject rather than press her further. “You look a lot better,” he said.

She flipped down the visor mirror and frowned. “Liar. My hair looks like a rat’s nest, and my face looks like someone used it for karate practice.”

Kurt accelerated through the light when the green arrow finally appeared. But it was true, she did look better. She had her color back, and though the frightfully large bandage was still on her forehead, the bruises and overall swelling in her face had receded dramatically. Kurt had the privilege of being the very first to sign her cast. She could look forward to taking showers with a plastic garbage bag over her forearm for the next six to eight weeks.

“But at least I feel better,” she went on. “And thank God that son of a bitch didn’t break any of my teeth.”

Kurt would not comment on Lenny Stokes, even if she did. Earlier, he’d told her how he came to be suspended. Busting Stokes in the jaw made the knight in him expect her to be delighted, but she’d reacted with disappointment, and a touch of anger, instead. He realized now that in punching Stokes he’d resorted to the least mature, least responsible motives available, and Vicky’s disappointment made him feel like he belonged on a playground rather than a police department.

He wheeled into Uncle Roy’s cracked driveway, parked, and rushed Vicky into the house to keep the drizzle off her. Inside, she said, “I don’t care how much you like this town—that’s one thing you can’t deny.”

“What?”

“Maryland weather sucks.”

“Nonsense,” Kurt replied, hanging up her coat. He would not admit that Maryland weather did indeed suck, and that right now it was sucking voraciously. “Spring’s just off to a lazy start. Another week or two and it will be warm and sunny— you’ll see.”

“Now I get it. You must be drunk.”

They went into the family room, where Melissa lay on the floor in front of the TV, her usual position of worship. She gave a careless “hello” to Vicky without parting her attention from the screen on which a young couple was arguing heatedly in bed. The woman’s nipples could be seen very plainly through the
bedsheet
.

“What is this?” he remarked, faintly nettled. “Since when do they show sex movies on TV?”

“It’s not sex movies,” Melissa said. “It’s
Search for Tomorrow.
Isn’t Mark Goddard a dream?”

Kurt shook his head. She should be doing homework or something. “Well?” he said to Vicky.

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Then it’s settled. You’ll stay with us till you figure out what you’re going to do.”

“All right,” she agreed. “But only if you’re sure I won’t be in the way.”

Kurt flouted. “How can you be in the way? Melissa doesn’t mind sleeping in the laundry hamper.”

Melissa’s head snapped around.

“Only kidding,” he assured her, though it was a nice thought. “Just wanted to see if you were still with us; you can go back to the wasteland now.” To Vicky, he said, “I’ll drum something up before tonight—”

But before he could finish, Melissa interrupted, “I forgot to tell you. Fat man called a little while ago.”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”